Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher Early computer users existed in a world of DOS character-based screens replete with C:\ prompts, command lines and a wide variety of keyboard key combinations to navigate the system. All that started to change in 1985 when Microsoft released Windows 1.0. The first version of...
1. I-9 Form Retention Policy The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has updated the familiar I-9 form to a two page form. They've made the job of filling out the form easier, and provided employers with ample excuse to review our I-9's. Here at ColumbiaSoft, it also means reviewing our automated retention policy. If you haven’t updated your forms yet...
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.” --Niels Bohr - Danish Physicist On the eve of the Year 2000 Millennium I ventured to the Kingdom of Tonga, a remote South Pacific archipelago comprising 176 islands scattered over 270,000 square miles at the edge of the International Dateline. The idea was to be one of the first to celebrate the...
We heard from Ed Fry (Chevron) this morning. He talked about the challenges of managing the development and operation of large, long-lived capital projects. Here are some interesting numbers to think about: Chevron currently has 5-10 petabytes of information stored for their existing capital projects. Because of the high current rate of capital development and development...
Random notes: Lots of talk today about ISO 15926, which is the data integration standard initiative for FIATECH. Here’s how FIATECH describes the standard: “ISO 15926 is an International Standard for the representation of lifecycle information for process plants, including oil and gas production facility. This is specified by a generic, conceptual data model that is...
Day 1 at FIATECH, and I thought the most interesting session was by Barry LePatner, who focused on “How to fix America’s broken construction industry.” As you can tell, LePatner argues that Construction is uniquely broken among U.S. industries, and is essentially continuing to do business the same way and with the same technology as 100 years ago. Here are...
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