A Boolean argument was expected.

I’ve worked in IT for more than twenty years. Along the way, I have worked in a lot of different realms: academia, government, finance, publishing, manufacturing. What’s strange is how each of these very different fields—any field, really—is pretty much the same from an IT standpoint: provide user and systems support, manage improvement projects, and enable data flow. It almost doesn’t matter what the data is, as long as it flows quickly and smoothly, and as long as the users can do their work, what the work itself consists of is immaterial.

Much has changed in those twenty-plus years, yet some things don’t, and primary among those is the fact that IT, in particular the help desk, is all about customer service. It’s also an unfortunate fact, and an even more unfortunate stereotype, that many of the people who find themselves in IT due to their technical skills lack some of the all-too-essential people skills to maximize their potential in that role. I have therefore long striven to improve my own abilities in that respect, and have likewise tried to improve the people skills of the IT teams I have led.

At one point in my career I supported the law enforcement community, which was an interesting and eye-opening job—I could tell some stories. But one thing I came across during that gig has stayed with me more than anything else: Sir Robert Peel and his nine principles of community policing.

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, FRS

Sir Robert established London’s Metropolitan Police Force—hence the nickname for London cops, “bobbies”—and in the process created the concept of modern policing. The Peelian Principles are still essential to law enforcement today, more than 180 years later. (One can find the Peelian Principles in their original form many places online, such as here.)

Now, IT support techs are not cops, even those techs who act like they wish they could be issued a gun and badge. That said, IT support is much like law enforcement, in that both are essentially public service roles that strive to minimize the troubles of the community. Therefore I believe that the Peelian principles apply as well to the IT help desk as they do to a police force.

We can take the nine principles and in each case replace “police” with “help desk,” “public” with “users,” and “the law” with “good computing practices.” Replace “crime and disorder” with… well, with all the disorderliness of IT: bugs, errors, downtime, crashes, and yes, even user error. Lo and behold, at least on a conceptual if not strictly literal level, Peel’s principles suit IT very well.

Here they are, rephrased for IT:

• The basic mission for which the IT help desk exists is to prevent computer problems.
• The ability of the help desk to perform their duties is dependent upon user approval of IT actions.
• The help desk must secure the willing co-operation of the users in voluntary observance of good computing practices to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the users.
• The degree of co-operation of the users that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force. [Think of “physical force” as the more drastic (if not Draconian) methods of IT, such as user account lock-out, restrictive computing policies, and unscheduled shutdowns.]
• The help desk seeks and preserves user favour not by catering to user opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to good computing practices.
• The help desk uses physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of good computing practices or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
• The help desk, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the users that gives reality to the historic tradition that the help desk are the users and the users are the help desk; the help desk being only members of the users who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every user in the interests of community welfare and existence.
• IT help desk should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of upper management and corporate policy.
• The test of IT help desk efficiency is the absence of IT issues, not the visible evidence of help desk action in dealing with them.

I particularly like that last one. What it says to me is this: help desk efficiency is not about how many trouble tickets you can clear, nor how quickly. Efficiency is the result of actively working to improve the computing environment, not only with better and more reliable systems but also with user education and involvement: training, documentation, and open communication are all essential.

In fact, open communication may be the most important element of all. I often reiterate to my teams: communicate it first, fix it second. When something is broken, five minutes of radio silence from the help desk can seem like a catastrophe, but one well-timed and well-written email to the users, explaining that the help desk is aware of the issue and working on it, can buy untold amounts of leeway to work the issue and come up with a solution.

Watching Laura on TCM tonight… I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but… in the middle of the film, just before the big twist in the plot, Lieutenant McPherson (Dana Andrews) is in Laura’s apartment late at night, going through her personal items in what he wants to pretend is a search for clues to her murder, but really is an attempt to know more about the dead woman with whom he’s falling in love. He pours a glass of Pinch Scotch—the favorite brand of Hollywood propmasters for pretty much ever—and sits in the armchair beneath her luminous, magnetic portrait. Soon, he falls asleep.

At this moment, director Otto Preminger trucks in on a close-up of the bottle and Andrews’ sleeping face, pauses there for just one beat, then trucks out again to show Andrews, unmoved—though by now the glass has vanished from his hand. (Presumably, he has dropped it… or has he?)

He wakes up, and… well, you know… spoilers.

But here’s the thing: in cinematic shorthand, that kind of camera move, so obviously showing the director’s hand when no other shot in the film is quite so arch, opening out to a scene where everything is exactly the same except for a few minor, almost imperceptible details, could be used to indicate the passage of time—or it could be used to connote the start of a dream sequence.

What I’m saying is—and this is something left unmentioned in TCM’s “Essentials” discussion of the film—maybe everything that happens after Lieutenant McPherson falls asleep in Laura’s apartment is a dream. Certainly the film ends (bit of a spoiler) with what I’d say is McPherson’s version of a happy ending.

Maybe it’s all in his head?

“Get some sleep. Forget the whole thing like a bad dream.” –Mark McPherson to Laura Hunt

“They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for while, then closes
Within a dream.” –Waldo Lydecker, quoting Ernest Dowson

Well, sure enough. According to at least one source, the original script called for it to all have been a dream. And of course, that’s part of what elevates this film above its B-movie-noir source material. To flatly state “it’s all a dream” would be crude and obvious. To leave all those clues in—the many references to dreams, that dolly shot—and then never even mention that it might be a dream: brilliant.

I have of late become totally obsessed with the spy novels of John le Carré.

I started with his classic The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, a paragon of the genre, then went straight into Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—wanting to finish it before checking out the latest film adaptation starring Gary Oldman. That book was so riveting that I don’t think I’ll be able to stop at least until I finish the entire “Karla Trilogy,” and as such I am now well into The Honourable Schoolboy and have Smiley’s People waiting in the wings.

The thing that so fascinates me about these books—aside from the mere fact of their high literary quality—is this: I think we’ve all gotten used to the notion that a “spy thriller” is what we get from James Bond or Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan. To wit, a contiguous sequence of action set-pieces; squealing tires and machine gun staccato and elaborate fisticuffs and a massive explosion at the end. But le Carré uses almost none of these tropes. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is bookended with brief moments of violence, but that’s it for “action” as we’ve come to expect.

His actors aren’t supermen, nor indestructible forces of nature; they’re real people, human, fallible, prone to doubts and fears and errors. The stakes are high, so they tread carefully—and when a colleague dies, they feel the loss deeply. They don’t steel their jaws and move on in vengeful stoicism; they cry.

What happens in these novels is, for the most part, people sitting in rooms talking. Or walking together and talking. Or just… thinking about things. Much of the action takes place off-stage, while we learn of it through someone (usually George Smiley) sitting at a desk and reading the pages of an agent dossier or case report.

And yet—it’s all so gripping. There’s tension on every page, and the build-up to the climax (albeit often a quiet, sitting-in-rooms-talking kind of climax) keeps the pages turning. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is almost a mystery novel, rather than a spy novel, as Smiley gathers the clues that allow him to expose the mole within the Circus. As a protagonist, he’s closer to Jane Marple than James Bond. When, toward the end of the novel, he carries a gun, it’s almost shocking. You don’t want him to have to be so uncouth as to have to arm himself, let alone squeeze the trigger. But you root for him all the way nevertheless.

On top of that, there’s the fact that the author himself worked for the British intelligence services for many years. The sense of reality contained in his tales is so deep that I have to remind myself that these books are not historical non-fiction; that George Smiley didn’t really exist; that MI6 was not infiltrated by Soviet moles in the 1970s and very nearly brought to its knees (at least, so far as we know).

And it’s clear to me that the real world of spycraft is much more like the world of le Carré and George Smiley, all research and information-gathering and thinking, than it is like James Bond or Jason Bourne. And that makes these novels all the more interesting and exciting.

In Episode 45 of the ever-entertaining, always-informative podcast How To Do Everything, guest contributor McKay Marshall gave his technique on “How to make the perfect grilled cheese.”

I found his method to be dangerous and scary. Not saying it’s wrong, but it is for experts only. Grabbing ingredients on the fly, using a pan that’s “as hot as you can get it,” his inversion technique for flipping—these all need someone who knows what he or she is doing and can work at a short-order cook’s pace, not to mention a spatula that is shaped to allow you to invert a pan over it without the risk of burned fingers.

One of the How-To guys (Ian, I think) said this “high-action method” was “making [him] tense.” It did me, too. They likened it to mixing a drink à la Tom Cruise in Cocktail. But when you screw that up, you spill booze and break bottles. Screw up Marshall’s grilled cheese method, and you’re throwing around scalding hot oil and melted cheese. Next stop, burn unit.

My method takes only slightly longer, but anyone can do it with very little kitchen expertise. To paraphrase “The Tortoise and the Hare,” low and slow wins this race.

Start with your mise en place—a French chef’s way of saying “get your shit together.” Butter one side of bread, set it butter-side up on your work surface, then butter the next slice and set it on top of the first, buttered sides facing each other. This back-to-back layout keeps you from getting butter on everything, and now you have an open-faced area on which to put your cheese—grated cheese will melt better than slices—and any add-ons. (As an aside, my favorite addition is roasted green chiles from a can.)

Meanwhile, heat up your pan at a setting only one or two notches above simmer at most. I highly recommend a cast-iron pan, which does the best job of grilling and also avoids the health risk of dry-heating a non-stick pan. If you must use a non-stick pan, either put the sandwich into a cold pan, or use Marshall’s butter-in-the-pan-not-on-the-bread method.

When everything’s ready, and the pan is hot but not searing, pick up the entire back-to-back sandwich and place it into the pan as if you’re cutting a deck of cards: take the top slice with its cheese and put it on the bottom, and the bottom slice and put it on top, so your sandwich is now fully assembled as it starts to grill.

Cover the pan very loosely with a lid—enough to trap some heat and speed the cheese-melting, but not enough to trap steam and make the bread soggy. By the time the bread is nicely grilled, which will only take a few minutes, the cheese will have begun to melt—this will allow you to flip the sandwich normally. Grill the second side uncovered. While this is happening, you’ll have time to clean up without risk of overcooking the sandwich.

Ten minutes, start to finish, and with any luck no calls to the fire department.

Like many Star Wars fans, when I first saw Episode I – The Phantom Menace, I hated it. For all the usual reasons, of course. But there was one plot point that bugged the hell out of me, made me feel like the newer films were horribly anachronistic and non-canon with respect to the original trilogy. In Episode I, Obi-Wan Kenobi meets up with Artoo Detoo. Later, particularly in Episodes II and III, they go into battle together.

I was appalled. “If they have such a long history together,” I asked no one in particular, “why the heck doesn’t Obi-Wan recognize Artoo when the droid arrives on Tatooine in Episode IV?”

Turns out I was wrong about this. The simple answer: he does.

Imagine it from Obi-Wan’s perspective. He’s been in exile on Tatooine for years, hiding from the Empire and keeping watch over young Skywalker, acting as Luke’s mostly unseen guardian and protector. Some day, he hopes, the Rebel Alliance will gain enough strength for the remaining Jedi to resurface, join the fight and, with any luck, defeat the Empire. Until that time, he’s going to lay low.

Then one day, he hears a ruckus: a landspeeder roaring through the Jundland Wastes, and Tusken Raiders coming after it to attack the driver and loot the speeder. Obi-Wan might already be on his toes, if he spotted the unlikely sight of a space battle just beyond Tatooine’s atmosphere a day or two before. He arrives on the scene to find his unwitting protégé—and his longtime comrade, companion, and fellow Hero of the Clone Wars, Artoo Detoo.

What’s Obi-Wan to do? Right away he knows the cat’s out of the bag, but he doesn’t yet know just how far out it is. He doesn’t know if Luke knows anything more than Uncle Owen’s lies, and he certainly doesn’t know (though probably suspects) why Artoo is there.

So he plays it cool.

He keeps a straight face, feigning zero recognition of the droid. When he hears Luke say his real name—Obi-Wan, not Ben—he’s a little shocked, and resigns himself to telling Luke that he’s Obi-Wan… and soon Obi-Wan is giving Luke his father’s old light saber, cluing him in on the existence of the Force, and admitting to having fought in the Clone Wars. He takes it as a given that Luke will accompany him to Alderaan. The cat is well and truly out of the bag.

Even his denial of Artoo is not, in itself, a lie. Obi-Wan speaks quite truthfully when he states, “I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” As far as I can tell from extensive online biographies, Obi-Wan Kenobi never did own a droid—and he definitely never owned Artoo Detoo. (I’d also like to think that Obi-Wan considers droid “ownership” to be slavery, and owning a droid to be antithetical to both his nature and theirs.)

So yes, I believe that Obi-Wan recognizes Artoo instantly, and it’s only the fact that we don’t understand what Artoo is saying that this is not revealed in the scene. Of course, it’s not that I’m saying the scene was written that way at the time, because it probably was not, but the way Alec Guinness plays Obi-Wan with such inscrutable mannerisms definitely could be interpreted as such.

Now, had Artoo managed to reach Obi-Wan’s home without Luke catching up to him, the reception might have been different:

Obi-Wan: (Opens the door, looks only slightly surprised, as if he’d been expecting this) Hello there, my little friend. It’s been a long time. Come in, come in! What brings you to this quiet corner of the galaxy?
R2-D2: (Beeps once or twice, then rolls Leia’s distress message)
Obi-Wan: (Frowns) Looks like we’re headed to Alderaan.
(Scene.)

(Some time later…)
Luke arrives at Obi-Wan’s home, finds the door locked and no one home.
Luke: Well, we might as well go to Anchorhead and get your memory wiped.
C-3PO: Oh, very good, sir.