Omega

If you read my other blog (which is much drier than this one-- I suppose that's not saying much), you know that I have been working on the installation of a piece of software. The effort has lasted several months, and, from all appearances, will last more than a year more, or, to put it succinctly, way too long. The effort has been filled with much irritation and grief; straining mightily for the most minor of results. But every so often, something amazing happens.

Now this part is going to be really boring.

When a computer system monitor 'alerts' on an event, it at the minimum puts up a big bright message that the computer system operator will presumably see, and upon which the operator will act. The trigger for the alert is the occurance of the event; more sophisticated triggers involve the lack of the event, or the length of time that the event took to occur. No triggers that I know of take into account what time the event took place (along the lines of 'if it happens now, tell me, but if it happens then, don't tell me'), nor do they take into account levels and times (if its high any time, tell me; if its low when its normally high, tell me; but whatever it is, if its around what it normally is at that time, don't tell me).

Yesterday I had a discussion with two non-technical people, and one of them was telling me what he wanted to see from the monitor. I replied 'Not only do you want it to alert on a problem, but you want it to alert if something unusual is happening, even if whats unusual isn't in and of itself unusual. You want it to tell you when something abnormal is happening."

And he got it.

I was very impressed. I don't usually expect non-techies to get concepts like that.