So we’re going to be moving offices next week. Moving to a much better building, about half a mile away. Almost everything about the new digs is sweet- we’ve got the top floor with an incredible view of the county, free indoor parking, close to all kinds of great places to eat, right by a Whole Foods, and the biggest kicker, we’re going to be right next to The Westchester, arguably the best mall in NY. So I was getting pretty psyched about it all until I started getting into the technical details of the migration. Apparently the new network is buttoned down like Fort Knox. All web traffic goes thru a tightly restricted proxy, and there is no ftp or ssh proxy whatsoever. That’s right folks, all we can do is use a browser. I’m really quite amazed that somehow in this day an age an information business like this can somehow be run where the only interaction with the outside world is done via email, phone, fax, or browser. From an operations standpoint, it’s pretty damn good security-wise. From a practicality standpoint, it’s nothing short of remarkable that they were able to implement a corporate network security policy like this. There’s many different business units riding this internal network. Given all the company politics that must have been involved thru the years prior to their acquiring us, having a network policy like this stick is quite a feat. Ok, but that’s just my Ops & Tech roots making me give props to their network team. But my current reality is that I’m not in the operations game anymore, I’m one of the guys trying to run a business while handcuffed by these restrictions! Oh the irony of it all. If my guys can’t ftp or ssh next week, they cannot do any work. They would be better off working from home. I spoke to the network guys yesterdays, and they are fashioning an oddball way for us to get the access we need, details of which I can’t write about in a publicly accessible blog like this, but all I can say is it is not elegant. The network guys sound like sharp people, so I’m guessing that they could very easily grant me a more direct path, but since we’re the new kids on the block, they are doing things strictly by the book for now. So I guess until I can get on their good side, or until I discover some back doors, I’ll just have to suffer the inconveniences. Inconveniences which are byproducts of exactly the sort of policies I endorsed back in the day. Dammit!