Re: tap tap...this list still live?

My favorite sign in the local bike shop always comes to mind

   Repairs
     $25 an hour.
     $50 an hour if you watch.
     $100 an hour if you help.

I've always treated situations like this similarly and I charge extra 
for using their workstations
under the assumption that they are gaining additional knowledge 
transfer by the use of monitoring
software. (not a problem, it just falls into the "if you watch" category above)

At 15:23 -0400 8/10/05, Jon Lewis wrote:
>I'm doing a consulting job on behalf of my employer and am wondering 
>if the following is unusual/standard.
>
>Nearly all the consulting work I've done, either on my own or for 
>work, has been for businesses hundreds or thousands of miles away, 
>so working remotely was a given.
>
>This current client is local and insists that I come to their 
>location and use a desktop PC (running windows...ick) that they've 
>designated for my use.  They (several of them) also like to hang 
>over my shoulder and watch everything I do.  This is slightly 
>annoying, but also somewhat helpful in that when I have questions 
>("Why the hell is this like this?") I can just turn my head and ask 
>one of them.  Unfortunately, the most frequent answer is "I don't 
>know.  Should it be done differently?".
>
>Being used to working in X, with a large virtual desktop capable of 
>displaying a few terms and a browser simultaneously, I find a small 
>desktop on windows pretty constraining and inefficient.
>
>The onsite part is also annoying/limiting in that I'm out of the 
>office (cut off from email, the phone, and generally unavailable if 
>anything but a major disaster comes up), and unable/(really just 
>unwilling) to ssh out to other systems in order to rely on work done 
>elsewhere to see how things might be done.  i.e. they're a good 
>candidate for some 3rd party software I've installed for other 
>customers on systems we (work) manage for those customers. 
>Normally, from my desk, I might log into one of those systems and 
>simply copy&paste sections of config rather than write a new one 
>from scratch.  Maybe that's being lazy...but to me it just seems 
>more efficient.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Jon Lewis                   |  I route
>  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
>  Atlantic Net                | _________ 
>http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
>For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]