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Rick Strahl blogs Nothing is Trivial:

I got a call from a customer last week who needed a small piece of work done that he defined as Trivial. Ok, trivial can be good – quickie in and out and youre done, but usually when I hear the word trivial I always cringe because it rarely is.

“How hard can it be?” or “we’ve got a straight-forward issue to resolve here” are also indications that the client with doesn’t understand the complexity of the problem, is trying to minimize his cost or is trying to avoid admitting they have no idea how to solve the problem. By the time most companies get around to calling in a consultant, they have probably tried every other alternative. I recall speaking with a fellow consultant about an assignment where he was just amazed at the complexity of the problem, the procedural mess the client had gotten themselves into, the political morass of any solution, the band-aids, baling wire and duct tape holding together the current solution. Why else would they be willing to pay his rates? If it was easy, they would have fixed it themselves.

“Cap’n, the dilithium crystals can’na take much more of this…” We’ve been getting battered by thunderstorms for days on end, a pretty unusual weather pattern for northern New England. Normally, we’ll get a line of showers through after a hot spell as cold air blows in. But we’ve been deluged since Sunday with oppressive clouds, lots of lightning and thunder, occasional downpours, ominous mid-day darkness and several blackouts. That’s a good reminder to make sure all your precious electronics are on surge suppressors or UPSes. The UPS on the iMac died an ugly death after a close lightening strike and power blink: it went off, beeped, kicked backed on, worked for a few seconds, beeped, went off,… I powered off the iMac quickly and disconnected the unit. Powering it up the next day, the UPS appeared to be okay, but once I put it under load again, it started showing the same symptoms.

Be careful out there. Power down everything and disconnect it from the walls when you see a storm coming in. Lightening crosses miles of open air to short-circuit the clouds to the ground; leaping across your surge suppressor isn’t even a challenge. And even if the manufacturer offers some cash coverage, it’s likely that having your machine working today, with your data and your applications up and running, is worth a lot more than the depreciated value of the hardware you might get reimbursed.