Growing up in a galaxy far, far away in the USAF, we worked with dBASE, Enable, WordStar, Lotus, and the trusty old 8088. When Windows 1.0 came out, it quickly became the operating system of choice for the government. (Do you recall insert a floppy to get a C:\ or DOS)

I volunteered to set up toolboxes for the flight line, which meant creating an inventory of every single item in each box so everything could be accounted for during check-in and check-out. The purpose was simple but critical: prevent a tool from being left behind in an aircraft, which could potentially cause a downed jet.

That is when I built my first database in dBASE. I proudly showed it to leadership, and their response was, "No, it has to be done in Lotus." Their thinking was that the database was too difficult to work with. To this day, I think many people still see computers as nothing more than a way to add a line and print a page, and honestly, much of the government still seems to think that way.

I joke that the government gave us a Ferrari, then put a governor on it, slowed it down, and turned it into a Volkswagen. Then they turn around and say we need to be more productive and do more with what we have. The joke is on them, because they disabled many of the best features in the Office package.

Still, in fairness, a lot of those restrictions come from legitimate security concerns. Unfortunately, there are always a few people out there who just cannot play nice in the sandbox.