Some jobs are thankless ones, but when those people aren't there you really miss 'em. What would your organization do without its IT staff?

They give us what we need to do our jobs, fix the gremlins who sneak into our machines and often look the otherway when we've exceeded our iTunes limit on the server.

This weekend our IT team has a big job at hand cleaning up and upgrading our servers. Fingers crossed we'll see no casualties (lost folders).

I'm sure our office fouton will be heavily used as will the company card for pizzas during these late nights.

Today I only got a small taste of it when I volunteered to copy over files to one of our externals. Ugh! Let's talk about pain points waiting for files to get copied over.

Next time you see your IT guy, give em' a hug, cuz what would we do w/out these valuable people in our companies.

So big-ups to our Essential Security Software IT guy Kevin (pictured above at our Essentail Taceo (R) release party in a Go-Kart)

Yesterday I wen to the TRUSTe/IAPP KnowledgeNet: Seattle with our ESS Marketing Specialist Veronica Mun. The speaker, Randy Gainer, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP as he discussed “Concerns of European Regulators: Lessons Learned from the IAPP European Delegate Tour.”

You're in Marketing, why go? As a member of ESS, it's to our benefit to know how data is handled internationally. We write articles & whitepapers -- knowing how our EU customers need to handle the data helps us write better consumer collateral.

What was most surprising was privacy advocacy tied into many of the EU countries like France, Spain, Germany and the UK. The EU countries allow an "easy" means of correction on a person's records. Whereas in the the U.S. and Department of Homeland Security has that database under lock and key.

In anycase, as information flows fluidly online you really do have to watch where each of these records go. No one wants to be cited 30,000 Euros for an infraction of data protection.

I think the projects go smoothly in the implementation and building phase when the right amount of time is spent planning those projects.

We're in the process at Essential Security Software, Inc. ( http://www.essentialsecurity.com ) to re-design two major portions of our website. And 18 mos after the initial designs on our 2.0 site were approved -- we've found limitations and various areas for improvement.

But back to the planning... Sitemaps are essential for locking down site sections and how they'll relate to your designs. In our last 2 meetings we've had to move a number of bits around I'm starting to feel like I'm in the middle of a very complicated chess game *breathe.*

No I guess it's not that bad -- and like everyone I want to jump to design, but know all-too-well that you can't skip one step in the project. After all these years, I have to remind myself that even at work patience is a virtue.

One of the great things about working at ESS - http://www.essentialsecurity.com is getting to do work related training. This year I've gotten to do some refresher training via the UW Extension's Multimedia & Design Certificate program.

Our final for our Web/DW class was yesterday.

Those of you who create websites know that CSS has come a long way as has DreamWeaver. That said -- it can't account for human error.

My nicely planned site went amuck due to some styles I forgot to add and alignment.

There's a little screen shot of the planned (right) and actual (left) notice the big gap on the logo -- Ugh! Just glad I passed.

--Marilee V.