Chain Smoking Blue Monkey

Here is a dirty little secret. The place that pays me to act as a chain smoking blue monkey doesn’t have a knowledge base. None at all. They think they do. They think the have provided the monkey a bucket to put his knowledge in. The monkey has inspected the bucket for quite some time now, and it turns out that it is a shit bucket and not a knowledge bucket. Now I know that sometimes those two are one in the same, but most of the time that’s not the case. The monkey isn’t stupid. He knows the differences between his buckets and he would appreciate his keepers not testing him about his bucket knowledge.

The monkey is curious, though, and he does wonder if you have what you know on hand. Do you have a bucket you put all your disparate knowledge into? Do you have a bucket that you put specific information into? And if so, what exactly ARE you using as a knowledge base bucket?

I have taken to using the free, small, fast, and flexible TiddlyWiki for collecting my own small knowledge bases. I have other buckets as well. Often just folders that I can drag things into based on my own little life categories.

The monkeys keepers don’t like wikis, though. I think there must be spirits in the wiki that scare them, although the spirits are not bad just free. Free spirits scare a lot of keepers. The monkey is using one at his pay day job anyway, though, and dumping all of his collected knowledge about day-to-day operations, cases that can impact large numbers of people, and just as a general point of collected information about the how, what and where of what the monkey does.

The monkey recently decided to make sure that the bucket gets smuggled out with him when he makes a break from the confines of the keeper built walls.

There are some simple rule in most professions and trades.  One of the most simple rules is this:

 Know the tools of your trade.

If your trade is being a doctor, you should know how to use the medical technology you use to treat patients.  If your trade is farrier then you should know how to mallets to create horse shoes.

If your trade is scientist, you should know how to use a computer.  As a scientist, as this point in time and history, your tools are no longer just your graduate student slaves, your charming personality and wit, and those piles of aging tools in your lab.  All of that is now secondary if you are a scientist.  Your tool of the trade is your computer.  Because what your profession is all about is information that you collect and then how you think about it.  If you don’t think about it differently than someone else, then you are not really a scientist then, are you?

Let me repeat this.  If you are a scientist, your tool of your trade is now your computer.  Because of that, you should know how to use the computer as well as you know how to use a telephone or a television or a door knob.  You should never have to call a desktop computer support person to ask how to map a network drive.  You should understand how your computer connects to networks.   I am not saying if you own a car you should know how to fix it.  I am saying that if you own a car you should know how to drive it.   You don’t hire a mechanic to drive your car, so you shouldn’t hire computer support technicians to do your most basic computing.  You don’t hire a mechanic to teach you to drive.  You shouldn’t hire a computer technician to teach you how to use your computer.  If you want to learn, then you take a few lessons and then you get in the car and you practice.  A lot.  You do not have to be a race car driver to get back and forth to work.  Similarly, you do not have to be a computer support technician to know how perform the essential functions of your computer.

If you don’t know when to double-click and click, then you may not know how to use the brake or gas.  If you push down on the brake when you meant to push down on the gas, then unexpected and jarring things begin to happen.  In some cases, very bad things may happen.