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Found on My Managers Desk

10th August 2010 by 9 Comments

In a recent podcast, Dan Hughes pointed out the classic “manager with old text books on desk” that say, I used to be a techy and one day I just might go back.

Oh, how we laughed.

I noticed these on my Managers desk yesterday. Honestly, I’m not sure whether to laugh for cry but I had to take a photo.


Caption Text.

Caption Text.(Click for a full size image)

Decoder Ring

Exhibit A – the plastic ruler thing is what we used to draw flowcharts for programming before Visio existed. It has the same shapes that we use today, and you used a pen to draw around those shapes on paper.

Exhibit B – an 8″ Floppy Disk with 360KB capacity.

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://twitter.com/avalonhawk Ed

    Having just listened to the podcast, I almost snarfed yogurt out my nose while pulling this post up.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      A great image for me to imagine.

  • Randy Pope

    It would be even better if he had the drive on his desk!!

  • Alex S

    Ahhaa so that’s how analog Visio looks like! And for different sizes you need to buy and install different version I guess.

  • Jared

    I was having this same sort of discussion with someone. All of the network staff in my office have way outdated books they display proudly in their cubicle. So what if its server 2000, or an 11 year old Cisco textbook. Nothing has changed right? The books never cover what we have in service.

    • http://security-planet.de Karsten

      Well, I still keep my CCNA-Study-Guides from 1999. They have been valuable and it doesn’t matter if there are two or two and a half meter of Cisco-Books on my shelf …
      But, just yesterday I found three Exchange 5.5-Books in my depot and decided to dump them. That are things I don’t like to remember.

  • John_M

    I laughed at that statement also…. until I realized we have a number of Win 2000 servers, and a NT4 Server still in production…

  • O Nonymous

    Okay my manager’s turn… he has an official Cisco print copy of the complete IOS 12.0 command reference and configuration guides along one wall. You read that right… 12 point zero. Maybe there’s someone noisy in the next office and it’s doubling for good insulation?

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      That was the last manuals that Cisco printed, I remember them well.

      I read them all as part of my study (this was before there were preparation materials)