The importance of defining business process reared its head last week as I sat in a training meeting with some of my new colleagues.

It’s easy to focus on the technology, but it’s the business process that drives the technology. Too many IT workers concentrate on technical issues. It’s imperative to remember that technology isn’t why we’re employed, though.

You have a choice. Do you want to be a technician or do you want to be part of the business team? I’ve worked with people who had more technical knowledge than I do. They could spout a number of problems and solutions to technical problems from memory. That’s handy, but where does it get them?

Anyone can research how to fix a problem these days. Ask those same technicians to define a business process and they’re suddenly out of their element. They expect those answers to be handed to them by the business experts.

Here’s the lesson those folks never could comprehend. We’re all supposed to be business experts.

The value that Information Technology experts bring to business isn’t just knowing how to configure a server or a router. That’s no more impressive than the skill of knowing how to type. It’s an expected skill, not one that helps you stand out. We’re expected to be part of the business team and that means doing more than being a technician.

Business Process Drives Information Technology

True value comes from knowing how your information technology can support and enhance your business processes. Sometimes that means helping your colleagues refine their ideas to develop that process.

How do you automate something if you don’t know what it’s going to do? Believe me, I’ve watched people try. The result wasn’t pretty. It’s like cranking up a chainsaw and leaving it unattended – chewing up data and anyone who gets in the way.

Making changes to information systems on the fly can have unintended consequences. Ultimately, these systems support a process or reveal the lack of one. The best IT workers know to start with a pen and a whiteboard or a piece of paper to map out the business process before they even touch a piece of technology.

Remember to put the emphasis on the Information before the Technology.

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I started a new job this year – once again taking on the title of Director of Information Technology. This seems like a good time to focus my attention and develop an IT blog.

This started as a consulting job last year. A former boss joined the new company, an educational provider with six schools and a corporate office. He needed an impartial evaluation of the information technology and I agreed to perform an audit of the school’s resources.

Quite bluntly, the resources are pathetically inadequate and out of date. Many of the computers acting as servers are hand-me-down desktop workstations from the 1990′s. The previous owners never considered IT to be business critical and everything was run on a cash basis. There was no three year depreciation of assets that lead to another rotation of current equipment. In fact, I’ve since learned that many of the existing assets were cast-off computers from other businesses that were obtained for free.

Although that sounds irresponsibly to many of us, the other side of the coin is that they ran a profitable business. They may have been cheap about it, but they weren’t in debt and the owners ran things their own way to make a profit.

The Down Side of Being Cheap

By focusing solely on the bottom line, they actually left themselves quite vulnerable. There is no evidence of data loss of access to confidential information, but the potential exists. Among the problems:

• Outdated servers are on the brink of failure
• No monitoring of network activity or system performance
• No private network separating users from the Internet
• Active Directory only used to support Exchange
• No file sharing resources
• No backups
• No documented IT policy to guide users
• No documentation of IT assets
• No documentation of IT servers, routers, software configuration
• No <insert anything you can imagine here>

I’m stunned that this place could operate as it exists. Actually, it can’t. The primary domain controller failed most of the days that I’ve worked here, and the Exchange server has gone down twice due to a plethora of problems and a lack of disk space. It’s not much of a stretch to say that the IT infrastructure is held together with spit and bailing wire.

The Impact on Users

If it sounds like I’m feeling sorry for my own position taking over this mess, I actually feel worse for our users. They don’t have the resources they need to do their job. Some have found ways around the system, using Google Docs or Dropbox to share files since the previous owners didn’t provide any file sharing resources. That brings up all sorts of issues surrounding the care of confidential information, though.

Many of the sites complain of poor network performance, yet they run streaming music from Pandora without any thought of the resources they’re consuming. One person told me she had the slowest computer in the world. That’s because she was running ten programs simultaneously on a machine with only 2GB of RAM. These resources could perform better, but nobody ever taught the users how to get the most from what they were given.

I don’t blame the users for what they don’t know. It’s also not entirely their fault for running streaming services or doing other actions that reduce their performance. It’s an IT fault for not implementing switches that can separate traffic, or packet shaping tools that give priority to business applications while limiting frivolous uses of the network. When I asked for the passwords to get into the routers and switches, the previous administrator honestly didn’t know. Once he set things up, he never bothered to write down the passwords or anything that could help him get access inside the network devices again.

Not that these are reliable devices in the first place. Instead of business switches and routers, the business gave each site a 5-port router designed for home office use. When user’s complained that “the Internet isn’t fast enough”, they bought a larger bandwidth service – never considering that the bottleneck was inside their equipment. All of that additional bandwidth was wasted because the systems in place were incapable of using it.

Starting My IT Blog with a Clean Slate

If this environment sounds like a disaster, there’s one good thing about it.  People clean up after disasters. That’s my job now. I get to analyze the business needs and implement IT systems that can actually work properly. Systems that can enhance user performance, protect confidential information and reduce the failures that rob everyone of productivity.

It means that I have the ability to look at modern resources and develop my own strategy. It also means I’ll have my hands in every piece of IT technology and strategy that affects a business with remote sites, but I’m blessed that I don’t have layers of corporate beauracracy  in my way. You know the types. The one who are more interested in protecting their little fiefdom than doing what’s best for the business. It also puts all of the responsibility for a cohesive strategy and operation right on my shoulders – as it should be.

This seemed like the perfect time to launch an IT blog as I re-invent this data center. I’ve been evaluating vendors and technologies. I’m looking at the existing Active Directory and realizing that its structure won’t fit our plans for future growth. I’m measuring the pros and cons of virtualization vs. off-site hosting. Although I can’t reduce cost beyond the limited budget of free server hardware of the past, I know that I can help develop new opportunities for the business to generate additional revenue. There’s money on the table if we only put the resources in place to get it.

I’ve let this blog languish for a long time without much of a purpose as I put most of my effort into my photography blogs. Now I’m looking forward to sharing my new adventure and the insights that come with it on my IT blog.  Stay tuned.

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Bethune Beach

I joined a group of friends last night to go photograph the last night launch of the space shuttle.  NASA being NASA, the launch got canceled due to changing weather.  We were left standing there on a freezing beach at 4:30 AM.  Some folks did some light painting.  I just turned the camera in the opposite direction and left the shutter open for five minutes.  Other people went home with no pictures at all.

Sometimes, what you get is what you make of it.

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After months (or was it years) of bitching about Movable Type, I’ve finally switched to WordPress.  I really wanted Movable Type to step up with the same ease of configuration as WordPress.  Themes & plugins just work.  You can code if you want, but you don’t have to do it.

Both platforms have a thriving community of users, but the WordPress community seems to work the way I want to work.  I think it’s a much more artistic community, given the plethora of themes I’ve reviewed.  I settled on a theme called ArtSee from Elegant Themes.  $20 for a year and access to all the themes on the site.  Changing or customizing a theme is as simple changing configurations on a panel; turning options on or off.  Doing the same on Movable Type would require changes in HTML & CSS.  Oh, sure, they tried to make a Style Library.  Take a look.  Ugly colors, but the same theme.  It’s pathetic.

Importing the old posts was fairly easy, but there are new features available with the theme I’m using.  I may go back and make some modifications to use those features, or maybe I’ll just move forward from this point.  It’s something for me to ponder.  I’m happy with my new toy.  Now it’s time to see what else I can make it do.

Hello, world.

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I recently created another blog specific to my interest in Photography. While I haven’t exactly been burning up the Internet with posts on this one, I think I’m about to make some changes. Part of the reason I’ve not written here quite so often is my frustration with Movable Type – just signing in pisses me off.
The new blog is under Word Press and I’m thinking it’s time to change everything to that platform. While MT is fine for corporate accounts & Britney Spears, who can hire developers to tinker around with it, it’s just a giant pain in the ass for a guy like me who only wants a decent configuration tool so he can get to the business of writing. MT’s online configuration tool is laughable.
Until I can make some changes here, please feel free to join me at http://williambeem.com if you have an interest in photography.

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I’m not sure which of my three dogs is the dumbest. Today it’s the little one, Max. A few months ago he seemed to be at death’s door and could barely move. The vet wanted to operate on him, but his blood test revealed a liver problem. We figured he’d be dead in a month. I started giving him some wet food as a treat in the morning, and he recovered. It’s not like he was starving, he always ate his food the same as the other two dogs. It’s just that this food seems to excite him. What dog doesn’t like wet food over dry? Keep in mind this dog is about 17 years old, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if he were ready to pass away. He’s old, can’t see for cataracts, has cysts all around his body, and generally doesn’t have much of anything to do; except eat that wet food every morning. Now it’s something he demands. I get home from the gym about 9:00 am and let all the dogs inside. He immediately starts running into me, stepping on me, and doing everything he can to get his daily wet food treat. I can’t give it to him in front of the bigger dogs, since they’d just nudge him away and eat it. I have to get them back outside and then Max starts prancing. You’d almost think he was a 2 year-old dog again. He literally stands up on his hind legs, paddles his front paws, and then BOUNCES his way into the kitchen to eat. That’s what he was doing this morning, bouncing along and looking over his shoulder, when he bounced his furry ass into the water bowl for the big dogs. It’s almost big enough for him to sleep in it, but he doesn’t because, you know, it’s full of water.

Anyway, he hops full body into the bowl, jumps out, and splashes water all over my kitchen floor. It doesn’t matter to him, since he still wants that wet food, but you know he’s not going to clean up the mess he made. Max earns the award for Dumbest Dog of the Day.

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I’m going through my Google Reader, checking out my subscribed blogs, and it’s no surprise that most of them are wishing their readers to have a happy new year. It’s more than a wish, it’s almost a command. “Happy New Year” just shouts out at you, doesn’t it? People said the same thing a year ago, and look how that turned out.

I could join and wish you a happy new year, but I wonder if that carries any legal obligation. Suppose you don’t have a happy new year at all. Can you sue me? Have I become responsible for your happiness during the year? As much as I may want you all to have a happy new year, I’m afraid I don’t have enough power to ensure that it actually happens. It’s one of those things where you need to take responsibility for your own actions and hope that’s sufficient.

Let’s face it, the new year is really a contrived celebration. Many years ago, some old men decided to start counting the days until the Earth made enough revolutions around the Sun to get back to the same place. These old men didn’t even know the Earth was moving around the Sun at the time, but all the pieces fit and they could count so many days until we got back where we started. Oh, it took a while before they had the calendar figured out completely. Someone had to add the leap year. Let’s not forget that a lot of birthdays at the end of February got screwed when Roman Emperors decided to steal some days to make months named after them a day longer. People are always picking on February, so I presume that’s why we put the extra day in the Leap Year there.

So even though it was arbitrarily considered the start of a New Year, January 1st has some real psychological impact on people. For instance, it’s when they start their Resolutions for the new year. That means parking at my gym is going to be rough for the next month. Fortunately, most of those people burn out and leave by February. I don’t really think it’s the new year that inspires some attention to physical fitness, at least not by itself. Rather, it’s probably due to all the food & drink consumed from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, and maybe also during football games and parades on New Year’s Day. Once they get past that point, it seems like a good time to start working off that holiday fat. You can call it a resolution if you want, but I call it a lot of people who are too cheap or broke to buy new pants. Either that, or their vanity won’t allow them to admit they went up a size or more.

When you sit and think about it, there’s really nothing that’s changed as a result of the new year. The holiday season would be over even if we started the new year in March. People would feel just as much need to drop a few pounds or at least stop living to such excess. The New Year is a contrived holiday. What are we really celebrating, after all?

Maybe that’s why the climax of the celebration is really so short. I once spent New Year’s Eve in Times Square with some friends. Basically, that entails going down there 12 hours before midnight so the cops can put you in a pen without food, water, shelter, or any toilet facilities. You can get out if you want, but then you can’t get back in your same pen. You have to go further back down the street to get in another pen if you still want to celebrate. Of course, that means you’re separated from your friends if they don’t all go pee with you.
The street party is for the cheap folks, though. The real party happens in the Marriott Marquis on Times Square, but it’s not cheap at all. People spend BIG bucks for a room with a view, and then more money for the party happening inside the hotel. I suppose it’s worth it, though. For a fee, you don’t freeze to death, you get food, drink, and access to bathrooms without losing your place.

All of this is just a prelude to the big moment, though. You know, where a big ball of flashing lights gradually lowers itself down a poll. Really, I’m not kidding. That’s it. A million people gather to watch that damn ball lower itself, a bunch of confetti shoots all over the crowd and THEN…nothing happens. It’s the new year. Whatever was happening before is still happening, except mail delivery stops and banks close for a day.

So it’s 2009. I don’t want to be a social outcast for not going along with the party spirit. Therefore, I wish you a Happy New Year*.

[* - This statement is in no way a binding agreement or guarantee that you will actually have a happy new year.]

The post Obligatory New Year Post appeared first on William Beem.

Koi Toy

Model Ashley Simone displays the art of 2007 World Body Painting Champion Carolyn Roper during the FABAIC in Orlando. I wanted to post this as a contrast to yesterday’s black and white image. Most body art that I’ve viewed seem to use similarly vibrant colors. In my opinion, this piece was one of the stand-out works during the show. That’s not to say that other artists didn’t create jaw dropping work; they did. This one just happens to be my favorite.

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Old Skool Nymph

Sometimes you see an image in color and it just screams out for black and white. That was the case, for me anyway, with this image I shot of Abby Trent at the Face and Body Art International Conference this past week in Orlando.

In most cases, body art is so vibrant in color that it’s a shame to either desaturate it or change to black and white. To be fair, I thought the original color image was charming. However, I began to feel more inclined to show the lines here instead of the colors.

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Attorney Rick Helmuth harassed me for years on the Las Vegas Advisor forum using the alias “Buick Riviera.”  I discovered his true identity.

There are a lot of things to love about the Internet. You can find people with similar interests and shrink the geographic boundaries between you, allowing people from around the world to communicate. On the other hand, you can also find an amazing amount of information about people if you give it a thought. That’s why many people fear providing their real name online. Some worry about identity theft, others worry about protecting secrets. A select few like to use pseudonymity in order to attack others. This tactic was fairly common in the founding days of the United States. Publishers would print scathing attacks on politicians hidden behind pseudonyms. Some of our founding fathers engaged in the practice, from Ben Franklin to John Adams. George Washington lamented the lies printed by these “infamous scribblers.”

I’m no George Washington, but for about the past two years, I’ve had my own little online nemesis who’s delighted in provoking and stalking me while hiding behind a veil of pseudonymity. He’s gone so far as to post satellite images of my house on web forums, offered my home address to anyone who requested it, and gleefully posted about invading my privacy. I was annoyed more by his mocking and provocative attitude than by the information he offered. After all, everything he found was publicly available.

I’m not afraid to share my identity on the Internet for a few reasons. First, I believe that the best way to protect your identity is to assert it. Second, obscurity is not security. There’s no point in feeling a sense of comfort from hiding your identity with the assumption that it’s impossible for anyone to find out the secret of your true identity. Google follows you everywhere. Even if you’re very careful, you’re bound to leave clues.

Rick Helmuth aka Buick Riviera

That’s how I discovered that my tormenter, a person who posts online under the alias Buick Riviera, was actually a 58 year-old husband, father, grandfather, senior partner in a law firm, chairman of a Civil Service Commission,and member of his county’s Board of Health. His name is Ricky Jay Helmuth of Orrville, OH.

We met on the Las Vegas Advisor forums. Rick Helmuth had been there for a while as Buick Riviera, and already had a reputation for stirring up some heated discussions. His political views lean strongly to the left and he doesn’t hide his hatred for George W. Bush at all. I think of myself as a moderate Republican, so we clashed on political issues. Helmuth likes Downtown Las Vegas instead of the Strip or other areas. I actually visited downtown for the first time based upon recommendations from folks on the forum. Unfortunately, I found next to nothing charming about it. The place stunk of smoke and urine, and that was inside the casinos there. The folks who visit Downtown just aren’t on the same wavelength as I am. It seems that Helmuth also took this as a personal insult.

Due to our disagreements, Rick Helmuth decided to start off with insults. He called me “lowbeem”, “beemshit”, “beemslime”, and probably others that I’ve since forgotten. I have to admit, he pissed me off and I most certainly said some unkind things in response. I’ve never had anyone speak to me in person the way Rick Helmuth did online behind his persona, Buick Riviera. It bugged me.

Should someone ever insult me in person, I’d look them straight in the eye and confront them. That’s not possible online with a person hiding behind a pseudonym. The fact that I couldn’t reach a person who was blatantly mocking me had a tremendous impact, and I just got more upset. That played right into Helmuth’s joy and he continued to do everything he could to push my buttons. For example, when he learned that I hated tattoos, he posted photos of some (I thought) really gross examples of body art. I was more upset by the notion of being mocked by a coward than the actual content he used.

However, that wasn’t enough for Helmuth. He decided to escalate things by invading my privacy. He looked up my home address and offered it to anyone who wanted it, kicking things off with this post on the Las Vegas Advisor:

Last night I found out how unsafe the internet can be. After a little exchange with lowbeem (you’ll have to read the last page or so of the Ellis Island thread) I set out to learn the address of our Resident Pontificator to take him up on his invitation to “sue me”.

Anyhow, thanks to his big mouth and inability to use one word when 125 will do, I now know his address, what his house looks like, that his avatar is a fraud, that he does not live in a water front property, that behind his house is a dry pond (in Ohio we would call it a big mud puddle), what certifications he holds, what his training is in, the name of his former employer (he was “let go”), what technical papers he has written (he mentioned on here he is in the area of IT), how many dogs he has, I know that 7 is two of the digits of his address and the names of his neighbors. I’m pretty sure I know the name and address of his parents (but I got tired and went to bed).

If I was a thief, I’d also know when to ransack his house because he has told us all when he is going on vacation, where he will be, how far he will be from home, the dates of deparature and that he will be 442 miles from LV coming and going with his visit sandwiched in between.

Of course this all took about 30 minutes because I didn’t know what I was doing and I was unwilling to pay $20 to the various vendors out there who would do it for me.

My point is simply this. You aren’t safe, your families are not safe and your possessions aren’t safe when you decide to be an egotist on the internet. You open yourself up to the whole world, including the fruits and nuts.

What befalls lowbeem, I could care less. But for the rest of you (as they used to say on Hill Street Blues) be careful out there.

Your resident nut,
Buick

Of course, it didn’t stop there. He decided to post a satellite photo of my house with a diagonal slash through it on the site, and as part of his signature line on every post (since removed by LVA moderators). As he stated, his purpose was to violate my privacy as much as possible:

Cool site [referencing Zillow.com]. It was a lot faster than my gumshoe tactics. I got lowbeem’s house (the correct one, not the one Google Earth gives you) in 6 seconds. All you need is the address (which you can easily find) to invade his privacy and peel away the fraud.

Buick

Helmuth continued to taunt and insult for nearly two years. The only interruptions occurred when he was occasionally banned from the Las Vegas Advisor forum by its moderators. Not once, not twice, but three times. After each of his first two times being banned from the forum, Helmuth changed his attitude when allowed to return. He seemed more humble and less troublesome to me. Unfortunately, it never lasted. He received his third (and permanent) ban from Las Vegas Advisor a few weeks ago when he was once again displaying a satellite photo of my house in his signature line.

I thought it would be over by that time. Helmuth couldn’t post on that forum and I didn’t visit the other Las Vegas message boards where he was still posting. At least, that’s what I thought until I joined some friends and former members of Las Vegas Advisor on a forum at the VegasRex.com site. Once again, Helmuth started taunting folks on the forum, including myself and others, starting posts like this one:

Ohio State Kicks Michigan’s Ass Again!
by Buick Riviera on Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:25 pm
So fuck you LIR. You too Nesalk.
Wise decision Big.
Buick

..and this one:

Here’s What’s Really Cool About This Forum
by Buick Riviera on Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:15 am
You can see how ugly the beautiful people really are.
Buick

…or adding this video (which I presume he intended as a snipe against me) to an existing thread:

Re: Funny Video’s Thread
by Buick Riviera on Fri Nov 16, 2007 8:40 pm
One of our own?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEWcGHvGi1c

I finally had enough. This person I only knew as Buick Riviera simply didn’t seem to have anything better to do with his life than toss insults from behind a shield of obscurity. I was determined to put us on equal footing. He knew who I was and I intended to find out who he was.

Over the past couple of years, Helmuth left clues that I fed into Google. His avatar was always a graphic encouraging others to adopt greyhounds. He’d mentioned that his dogs were named Jake and Abby. He stated that he lived in Northeast Ohio. He is a big supporter of Ohio State sports. He loves fishing, and even posted photographs of his gear to make fishing rods in his home. He previously mentioned that he was a senior partner in his business.

Helmuth uses a Photobucket.com account with the user name JakeGrey; something easily discovered by right-clicking on one of the photos he posted on the Las Vegas Advisor forum and examining the properties. That added another clue to my search. All of this was good enough for a start.

Using Google, I searched for “Buick Riviera” + Ohio, “Buick Riviera”+fishing, “Buick Riviera”+greyhound, and “jakegrey” in my queries. I found a few hits. For example, “jakegrey” hit on Half.com for a user selling books, which shipped from Orrville, OH. A quick check of the map confirmed that Orrville was in the right region to be “Buick’s” home, and gave me a bit more fuel for my searches.

Another hit was on a forum for OhioGameFishing.com. I got a hit on a thread about members posting pictures of their boats, and there was this entry from a user named Buick Riviera:

Not only did this poster have the same Adopt a Greyhound avatar, but the man in the photo was the same person who I’d seen in photographs posted on the Las Vegas Advisor of Buick Riviera. It was the same guy.

While I knew his face and his home town, I still didn’t know his true name. I scanned every post Helmuth made on OhioGameFishing.com as Buick Riviera until I came across a thread discussing some engine problems he had with the Evinrude engine on his 2004 Ranger 175 VS bass boat. Someone referred him to another forum – BassBoat Central – to discuss his problem. Helmuth signed up on that forum and dutifully hid his e-mail address. However, location or age. Once again, I saw the familiar greyhound avatar, his location was in Ohio, and his age of 58 matched information he previously posted on Las Vegas Advisor. He also failed to conceal his Full Name:

From here, everything clicked. My tormentor was actually Rick Helmuth of Orrville, Ohio. More quick searches revealed his full name was Ricky Jay Helmuth. He is a senior partner in the law firm of Johnson and Helmuth:

Rick Helmuth is a member of the Wayne County, OH Board of Health:

Rick Helmuth is a the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission for the City of Orrville, OH:

There’s more information, such as his e-mail address, his 1300 square foot home from an aerial point of view, and even photographs of his dogs. Now I know the same things about the man who so happily tormented me for about two years as he knows about me. All it took was some searches on Google and other public databases to bring it all out. I haven’t uncovered anything that wasn’t already provided by Helmuth. I simply used the power of search engines to correlate the information that he laid out in public.

My recommendation for Rick Helmuth is simple. Behave online as you would in person. Perhaps he thought he could taunt and tease people on the Internet behind a pseudonym and no one would ever connect it to him. If that’s the case, he was wrong. From what I’ve gathered, Helmuth behaved this way simply because he didn’t like me. It’s fine if someone doesn’t like another person. How one behaves is the issue. Rick Helmuth’s behavior was quite simply appalling and inappropriate. You would think a 58 year-old man could find better ways to deal with his personal issues than to become an infamous scribbler.

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