El Gato was amused to see that July 27 has been designated as System Administrator Appreciation Day. Web site sysadminday.com is taking the Rodney Dangerfield route, claiming administrators get no respect and would like this one day to be acknowledged. The Kitty couldnt help but think that everybody should get their own prefab, Hallmark-style holiday.
“How about a shirtless fat guy day at all sporting arenas,” mused the Mouser, “just to say thanks to the painted, topless men who throw pride to the wind and brave any climate for the home team.”
Spencer has heard rumors of a potential merger between Andersen Consulting and KPMG. According to a Katt crony, such a merger could be a perfect fit. Apparently, Andersens got the tax biz down pat, and KPMG is reportedly more adept on the auditing end.
The Furry One has also heard that Accentures IPO might happen sooner rather than later. Accenture, the IT consulting arm of Andersen Consulting that was separated last year through arbitration, hired Chief Financial Officer Harry You last month. You previously served as a managing director at Morgan Stanley, where he offered guidance to service providers during their public offerings.
“Anyone hear the other shoe dropping yet?” quipped the Kitty.
It looks like Blue Martini Software will be facing a restructuring charge this quarter of about $4 million to $6 million. His Hirsuteness hears the charge comes as a result of the e-CRM software provider cutting its work force by approximately 25 percent and consolidating operations.
Seems the domain registrar folks at Tucows.com are none too happy with Network Solutions. According to Tucows, NSI has made recent policy changes to domain name transfer authorization procedures that make transfers to competing registrars confusing. Apparently, competing registrars are claiming that NSI made the policy change last month without even alerting its own support staff. The assumption is that any attempted transfers last month may have been so frustrating that many domain name holders might have ended up reregistering with NSI just to avoid a lapse in ownership.
The Justice Department aside, Microsoft folks in Redmond still seem to be able to retain their evil empire image with their detractors. An interesting Microsoft conspiracy article has shown up on the Web that claims two “invisible” folders may be sitting on your computer. One supposedly has been keeping a log of every Web site youve ever visited, even after youve cleared your cache. The other folder is supposedly keeping a log of all correspondence, trashed or otherwise, in Outlook and Outlook Express. The author of the story, known as Riddler, claims Microsoft can create the “invisible” folders by using a text file called desktop.ini. Supposedly, the process renders the folders invisible to IE, DOS and the Find utility. “Paranoia or fact?” wondered El Gato as he examined his history and tossed his “visible” cookies.
Yet another nail in the Tivoli-as-an-independent-unit-of-IBM coffin: The newly appointed general manager of Tivoli, Robert LeBlanc, wont be moving to Austin, Texas, to lead the unit, according to a tattler. Spence hears hell stay in New York.