We are Destiny. You have been assimilated.

The Dots are getting ready for the big beginning of the year party. They are worried about how to introduce all of the changes to everyone at the party. This is complicated by not being able find out what the changes are. The Lime Green Project Manager keeps promising to get back to them. He must not be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs because he never manages to find his way back. It turns out that breadcrumbs are very important in Destiny so maybe LGPM will figure it out soon. The LGPM was concerned that the Destiny screen colors didn't match the Duchy logo colors but fortunately Destiny has been give a waiver and doesn't have to match the logo. It's a different story for employers. The Duchy guarantees that all employees match the logo colors. Employees are always either scarlet with fury and frustration or have turned blue from holding their breath waiting for problems to be solved. What color are you currently? Are you holding your breath waiting for the new coordinator to be named? Remember you have to take a breath occasionally. The Duchy logo does not include Corpse Gray or Decomposition Green. Those colors would undoubtedly be a violation of your contract.
The Dots are trying to work out new terminology too. We no longer have the Grand Union. The new system is more of a collective, like the Borg Collective. We are Destiny. You have been assimilated. Silver is trying to figure out what kind of Destiny appliances she should order to better serve the collective. Perhaps a USB port in her left index finger?

The Black Queen and the Library Coordinator, cont.

Anonymous said...
You don't think the Black Queen -wants- a coordinator position? In the long run, wouldn't it help out the Black Queen?

I see what you mean. You realize that the Black Queen has many responsibilities and a competent underling to handle library matters could only help her. You obviously also understand the importance of libraries to education and to higher test scores. If the Black Queen has the best interests of the Duchy and the students in mind, of course she would want a library coordinator to help ensure the quality of the library programs. In addition, a competent, confident and ambitious administrator wants a large competent staff in order to increase their own power and prestige. Further, a library coordinator in between the Black Queen and the Librarians could keep her from making embarrassing faux pas's like attempting to turn all of the Dots "back" into village peasants without checking to see whether that was phyisically possibly ...or accusing the Dots of "skimming" and then having to beg the White Queen for extra money to pay the bills that the Black Queen had forgotten about.

On the other hand, I have observed that the Black Queen usually seems to get what she wants. She wanted SmartyPants Boards and got them. Then she wanted Boards With The Gift of Fire and she got them. She wanted to disband Dotland and it has gone from a staff of 8.75 to a staff of 3.25. She says that she wanted a Library Coordinator but the Gods were apparently just unalterably opposed and prevented this from happening for 8 whole months. I can't help but feel that someone in the Duchy hierarchy does not want a library coordinator. In case you have not seen an org chart recently, that hierarchy is: Black Queen to White Queen to Duke Phfffr. Which one do you think doesn't want a library coordinator?

The Black Queen and the Library Coordinator

I keep hearing that the Black Queen is very supportive of libraries. Really. The Library Coordinator was promised by the end of October - last year. Now, 8 and 1/2 months later and tomorrow there will be interviews for the Library Coordinator. The way the interviews were arranged is evidence of the Black Queen's great dedication to quality library programs. The candidates were notified about the interviews a good 40 hours in advance, plenty of time to rearrange schedules, get airline tickets, cancel appointments. Her Blackness is just bending over backwards to make sure that the very best candidates are available for the job. What if none of the candidates can make it to the interviews? What if not enough candidates can make it for the interview to make it a valid hiring process? Does that mean that they would then have to start all over and readvertise the job again? Am I wrong in thinking that this is a win-win for the Black Queen?

Destined to ?

The Lime Green Project Manager has struck again. He used to be the Lime Green Knight but apparently got tired of jousts and horses and whatnot and promoted himself to Project Manager. Yesterday he arranged a conference call to with Follay to "get answers to our questions." At least that's what the Dots thought. However, instead of arranging a call with someone who actually had answers, LGPM called the Follay collective. "We are Follay. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." The Dots managed to escape without being assimilated. They weren't sure about the LGPM. Maybe he's already been assimilated. Today the LGPM had arranged a "training" for the Dots. It probably would have been more like a real training if LGPM had made sure all of the equipment worked beforehand and had forwarded the training workbook to the trainees, like he was supposed to. Methinks the LGPM needs to go back to being a Knight. After all, Knights have Squires to take care of the horses, polish armor, print out workbooks, make sure the equipment works. When the Dots do training, they make sure the equipment works the day before the training. Of course, they also have a contingency plan because in the Duchy equipment that worked perfectly yesterday doesn't always work today. When Gold and Silver did training they always made copies of the training workbook ahead of time. Maybe LGPM was assimilated long ago.
The Dots did learn something really useful today. With Destiny and the Z39.50 magic ray, you can search the Duchy records and the Library of Congress, all at the same time. And when you find the record you want, you can just save it, instead of the usual sequence of download, count to 100 while Windows hides the file, hunt for the file, and if you can find the file, you get to import it. With Destiny it's just one mouseclick. Wow. That is, in the Wild World it's one mouseclick; in the Duchy, the laws of physicks (and magicks) are different. In the Duchy, electrons don't travel at the speed of light, they travel at the speed of dark. (In case you don't know the speed of dark, it's very slow and falls over things a lot.) In the Duchy, the Z39.50 magic ray can't go through the Duchy walls. Why does the Duchy keep buying technology that they won't allow to operate? We didn't have to pay nearly 1 million dollars for software that the Duchy doesn't want to work. You can buy really cheap library systems that don't have Z39.50. (Actually, you can't. Even free library systems do Z39.50 these days!) Bureaucracies never seem to understand that if you don't want the system to work, you don't have to pay money for it. Since it's not working, you can just pretend that you bought it. A system that doesn't work can be absolutely free, require no power, no floor space, and completely invisible. That would be so much more efficient than paying a lot of money and then having to spend all that time trying to keep the system from working.

All quiet on the Dotland front

Things are still quiet in Dotland, possibly a little too quiet? The Lime Green Knight had a meeting to discuss Dynasty or Destiny or the Destiny of Dynasty or maybe the Dynasty of Destiny. Sage and Silver and Purple and Indigo and Cornflower were there. Makes a nice color scheme, doesn't it? The Lime Green Knight is worried about color schemes. He's afraid that the Destiny colors, dark teal, purple, and dark green, don't match the Duchy colors of blue and red. The Duchy now insists that all colors match. The Duchy is writing a School Bored policy about matching colors. Is part of the Duchy's bid for achieving Unitary Status? Does Unitary mean that all colors are united into one color? If all the colors are united is the Unitary color black or white? Either way isn't it going to be hard to read? Perhaps we should wait for the Bored policy to find out what colors we can have. Maybe this issue should have been part of the Destiny RFP? Silver finally agreed to look into the issue of colors. The rest of the meeting was devoted to scheduling the next meeting which will be Monday or Tuesday or maybe Thursday but probably not Wednesday or Friday.
Since not much is happening in Dotland, maybe this is a good time to do some cooking all of the great Dotland recipes are at http://dotland.pbwiki.com/Food
Enjoy!

The Doldrums

Dotland seems to be in the depths of the doldrums. Blue is gone. The White Tornado is gone. The remaining Dots worked furiously moving from Follay to Destiny until the wind from the desert blew through and shut everything down. Which desert? Gobi? Kalahari? Sonora? No. Mojave. That's it. The great voice from the desert spoke and said "Thou shalt not touch a school server until we've finished rolling them over." So the Dots turned to learning more about Destiny. Their first realization was that the images used to advertise Destiny are really unfortunate. What was their designer thinking? The bridge is sort of twisted and it looks like the last span has already fallen down. It looks like a good image for a story beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." Follay thinks this is an image of the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess that's what happens when you live in Illinois and have never been to San Francisco. The Dots think that Destiny should have a much more hopeful and positive image. For example, here's one from a Tucson High student. Doesn't the golden castle on the hill look more inviting than the falling down bridge to nowhere? Of course, maybe the falling down bridge is more accurate. Leaving aside the unfortunate choice of design (what

WERE they thinking!) the Dots have found lots of good things about Destiny. Unfortunately, several of the good things don't work because of the Duchy's continual campaign to protect us from information. Save files? Look at images? Search the internet? That might result in the transfer of knowledge from the outside world and that would rock the Duchy on its very foundations.