Monday, March 12, 2007
Hammers and nails
Before I started at The Company, Smirk used a spread sheet to keep track of IP address allocations. It was easy to set up and edit and it worked for him. Besides, he has it running anyway to help manage the finances of The Company. So why not use it?
Then I took on the job of allocating IP addresses. I used (and still use) text files (one for each Class-C block we use). It was easy to set up and edit and it works for me. In fact, I use text files extensively to keep track of all sorts of things at The Office, from firewalls to managed power strips.
When P started, he set up Twiki as the company knowledge base. I don't know how easy it was to set up, but P seems to find it adequate to use and is currently a bit upset that he's the only one who bothers to update it. I personally don't find it that easy to use and consequently, I don't use it.
Personally, I'm picky about editors, and while I can't say I love joe, I am comfortable using it. But heck, I'd rather use Emacs to edit than the crap editor you get in your web browser du jour (and yes, that includes Firefox). That partly explains why I dislike the Twiki (there are other reasons), and don't even use my own web interface to post entries here (it's almost exclusively the email interface).
The problem here is, all three of us use different tools to manage certain types of information about The Company, and because of that, we don't have a true company wide information base that we can rely upon.
And no one has an idea of what we should use, because of how we all work.