Telecom Amnesty

I'm so disappointed, maybe even a little scared.

Does the law mean nothing? Never mind the actual effectiveness of domestic spying -- that's a different debate.

If this was so important, why wasn't it made legal in the first place? Oh wait... it was. There was a system in place that provided the tools and (meager) oversight that allowed domestic wiretapping. There were even provisions for emergency warrant-less spying for time-sensitive operations. They had all they needed.

So why do they need immunity? Well, they clearly overstepped the generous boundaries that the law provided.

Now that they have their immunity, they (the Telecoms and associated governmental agencies) need to fess up to the full extent of their illegal activities. The American People deserve to know, now that we've granted immunity to these commercial entities, exactly what illegal activities they have participated in and enabled.

Then we can let capitalism work.

VMWare in trouble?

News around the web says that x86 virtualization pioneer VMWare is in trouble. A shakeup in leadership and a significant drop in share value beg questions about the future of VMWare and what it might mean for the entire virtualization industry.

I've used VMWare since the early days. Not the early, early days, but for many years now and I have to say that it is, far and away, the best virtualization product available at the moment. That being said... it is way too expensive.

VMWare's position is that the core virtualization component has become commodity technology at this point and that the real market is in the supporting technologies like virtual machine movement, replication, automated management, backups, etc. etc. etc. And they're right.

Given that, why is that core virtualization component so expensive? It costs a couple thousand dollars just to get into the game. Even the "Workstation" version is nearly $200.

Yes, they do have some free products that are available. But these products seem to be second-tier or last-rev versions and as such, don't give a good impression of the performance and reliablility of the current crop of VMWare products. Also, they kind of suck. Virtual Server is bloated and a hog, much more than Sun's VirtualBox or other competitors.

I want a VMWare player that can run multiple instances and create virtual machines. I don't want the extra cruft. I'm not going to run this "in production". I just need an excellent virtualization solution that I can run on my laptop or workstation that can be used as a "lab" environment that can give me an inkling of what the big-boy version is capable of.

The focus of the virtualization market is on the "big iron" x86 stuff, running hundreds of VMs on clustered servers with SAN attached storage with fault tolerant this-and-that and bells and whistles. Cool. The money and plenty of room for innovation is definitely in that space.

But, VMWare, please don't forget about us down here at the other end. There is need for easy and lightweight virtualization at the "prosumer" and workstation level as well. I'd pay (a bit) for an easy, lightweight, virtualization solution. Right now VirtualBox has that space, even though it's not yet feature-complete.

You need mind-share as much as market-share. If these "low-end" competitors gather more mind-share due to their accessibility by balancing cost, features, and usability, it will be harder for you to transform their low-end market success into your high-end product sales.

Netflix reverses on profiles

I know I'm a bit behind in writing this bit of news, but since I complained so loudly in this blog, I need to follow up.

Netflix has listened to its customers and reversed its decision to dump profiles.

Thank you, Netflix.

Netflix dumps profiles

Netflix announced yesterday evening that they are going to be eliminating profiles.

A Netflix profile is a very useful tool that allows one account to have multiple queues. Common uses of this tool includes families setting up multiple queues to cater to separate members of the family. For instance I want to have my queue filled up with Rambo, Transformers and the like and my wife can have her queue filled up with Notting Hill, Sense and Sensability and the like. With profiles, we each would have our own ratings and reccomendations.

But no more.

Now we will have one queue that we are constantly manipulating to make sure that I have something interesting to watch and she has something interesting to watch (and perhaps something interesting to watch together).

Exacerbating this problem is the fact that I consume my movies much more slowly than she does, leading to a situation where we could end up with three Guy Movies and no Chick Flicks at home on our 3-at-a-time plan.

Netflix: the competition from iTunes rentals and Amazon Unbox is too great for you to go and make this inconvienencing move. You are competing against the instant gratification that these other services provide and by messing with my queues and making me work harder to get what I want, you make me reconsider the value that you deliver for my money.

Bad move Netflix. Bad move. Your service is now less valuable and arguably more trouble than it is worth without profiles.

Cell phone contracts

Why do I have to sign a contract to get cell phone service? Why do cell phone companies "subsidize" the phones?

Why can't I go out and buy whatever device I want and get service for it?

Well, I can... but only for the really high end phones and only on the GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile in these parts). Well, I guess there is a pretty healthy second-hand phone market for both GSM and CDMA (Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Altel, U.S. Cellular in these parts) if you're willing to risk eBay.

But why can't I just go find a $50 handset with a decent (but not over-inflated) feature set and get it up and running with whoever I want, so long as the tech is compatible with who I would choose as a provider?

There are a couple reasons that I'm complaining about this:
1. My phone is broken. It can't send picture messages (it crashes upon attempting to add a picture to a message) and it has a rather large crack in the outside housing. Beyond this, it's just a crappy phone. The interface is clunky, the volume is rarely good and it likes to chop up the audio even though there is sufficent signal strenght.

2. I want a new iPhone. But, according to the word on the street, as an existing AT&T customer, I'll have to pay "full retail price" for the new iPhone. They haven't said how much that will be...

There needs to be a healthy market for handset competition. Perhaps if this were true, we'd start getting some decent handsets at decent prices. Right now, the "retail" value of these things are over-inflated because the carriers use them as a ball and chain to keep you on their network. They can justify their two-year contracts as "payback periods" for subsidizing the cost of the cost-inflated phones.

Perhaps with some good competition we'll see some attention paid to the quality of the user experience: both in the effectiveness as a device and the usability of the features.

Trust: Comcast and Plaxo

I never really got into Plaxo, but I had an account and some data on the service. I didn't run there sync software on any of my computers, so I wasn't able to take full advantage of what they had available. I was able to make a few connections via the service, so it was all good.

I read today that Comcast has bought Plaxo, an online social network and address-book aggregator / sync tool.

I deleted my account.

Although Plaxo has had its trouble in the past, it's not about Plaxo. It's about Comcast.

I just don't trust Comcast.

With the news that Charter Communications (another large cable ISP) is working to implement incredibly invasive user profiling on its network and similar efforts underway at other ISPs, I believe it's only a matter of time before Comcast starts doing this too (if they haven't already and just not told us). Why should I just give them my social network data via Plaxo? They'll just scrape it up using the profiling technology and have all my info anyway.

Comcast has shown over and over that it has no problem being evil. I'm not going to trust my social network and contacts to a company that I fully expect to violate that trust.

Musings of an IT widow

Since moving to the big city of Chicago our family has faced challenges: moving, settling in, making friends, deciding where to shop. But no challenge has tested us like the IT jobs of the city.

My husband is a highly skilled Computer Administrator with many years and competency under his belt. But these are the not the values that are normed here. Oh no! Competency Shompetency! Give me passive aggressive double talk and procrastination. I'd wager a bet that if there was an Information Technology workers union this could be their slogan. Oh wait, they (the Chicago IT workers) would never be able to sustain that level of organization. So we, the forgotten IT workers family, are left wandering in the dark, tripping over our own work ethics.

When we were first married I wasn't always very good at expressing my opinion. My background and immaturity sometimes hindered the assertion of my opinions. At my husbands insisting, I grew up and became more assertive. I no longer confused my husband with my wish-washy-ho-hum-kind-of speeches. Now I feel I can give my opinion in a helpful and non-threatening way.

This morning my husband and I were trying to decide what to do for dinner. He was saying one thing and meaning another. I was so confused. Who was this? Where was my competent husband who had no time for passive aggressive poop?! The body snatchers (Corporate "Culture") have come to replace my husband with a less-than-articulate doppelgänger. *sigh*

Now my husband is job searching again and the sharks are beginning to circle. (Recruiters) What scares me the most: What if the crap he's dealing with at his current job doesn't necessarily going away when he finds a new one?

So frustrated

I've been very frustrated at work lately. More than usual, I guess. This morning, I did something to my workstation that completely hozed it up. I got it working again, but not 100%. The computer is just cheap crap and the drivers for that cheap junk don't work well.

Then one of the DBA guys emails me (and the usual gang of CC) asking, in a rather accusatory manner, a question that has been answered at least 3 times in the recent past. This sort of thing happens a lot. The group will make a decision about something, then someone will say something and the decision will be lost and the whole debate starts over. Even simple things take 3 or 4 times longer than they should because nobody can make a decision stick.

I try very hard to short-circuit this process where I can in my areas of responsibility, but too often other involved parties can't let things go and aren't willing to stick with a decision.

This morning I was so frustrated that I had to leave the office for a while to calm down.

I don't like being this frustrated.

Searching

So, as a matter of serendipity I talked to a recruiter a week or so ago. I wasn't expecting to talk to him, but it came up and the conversation was good. Following that conversation, I contacted several other people whom I had talked to back when I was doing my last job search. These conversations have gone quite good as well.

Coming out of these conversations I have concluded that I am indeed underpaid and oversubscribed in my current job.

This has all come after a particularly trying time at my current job. Unrealistic time tables and expectations have pushed my frustration level very high. On one hand, I feel compelled to meet expectations (just because that's the type of person that I am). At the same time, I know that there's no way I can actually meet these expectations. This leaves me feeling that I need to escape.

Mentally prepared

I've started looking at job sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com. I think I've overcome any mental barriers to finding a new job. Now I just need to wait out my "obligation" to $EMPLOYER.

I learned a lot going through this process (finding a job) again, so I think I know better what too look for in a job and in an employer. I've found several job postings already that look appealing.

Feeling Free

$EMPLOYER laid off several people yesterday. They say that it was a strategic realignment, but when I look at the list of people laid off, there isn't any apparent strategy.

Somehow this makes me feel more free. I now feel absolutely no loyalty to this company. When the day comes for me to move on, I will not feel any guilt or angst.

$EMPLOYER is shooting itself in the foot every day. I won't feel bad about walking away.

Goals

Having goals makes me feel better. I have set these goals for myself (among many others):

1. Finish my Masters Degree
2. Find a job that matches my culture and skills better than my current job.

I actually feel much better after setting these goals. The simple act of telling myself that I am going to do these things has lifted some weight off my shoulders.

Too scared to act

In an organizational setting, it's often referred to "analysis paralysis".

Last week we had a database server crash twice. This server provides the company's most critical information system. Two-thirds of the company relies on this server to do its daily tasks. Because it was so critical to the daily grind of the company, the previous caretakers decided that a "hands off" approach was most appropriate for this system.

It crashed Monday evening of last week. We spent Tuesday doing a postmortem and identified the likely culprit of the crash. We spent the rest of the week "discussing" what to do about the problem. It crashed again on Friday evening. Both crashes seemed to have been caused by the same problem. So, while we were arguing about how to solve the problem, the problem reached up and bit us again.

The major complicating factor is that this machine is woefully behind on patches. The OS is 5 years old with very few patches installed (and no "service packs"). The database is at least 8 revs behind current and the application framework was old when it was installed 4 years ago.

Trying to bring all of this up to date will most likely break the application that the server runs.

We now have telemetry coming from the server that we think will tell us when the error condition is getting close. This will help us limp along on this machine until we can get a replacement up and running.

But this brings up some good questions:
1. Why isn't this business-critical system running in a more robust architecture?
2. Why was this system neglected for so long?
3. Why hasn't there been a major effort to stabilize this system?
4. Why doesn't the company have dedicated team of DBAs, developers, and sys-admins to keep this system running smooth?

Yeah, the company can come up with reasonable sounding answers to rationalize away these questions, but it still leaves us with a fragile mission critical info system.

Frustrating.

Pride in work

I've been at the new job now for around half a year. I'm still having trouble finding some way of expressing some level of personal pride and personal accomplishment in what I'm doing there.

I want things to be done well. I want things to be done right. Why is that so hard for people to embrace? I seem to get shot down every time I want to take extra time to get something done correctly. This problem is especially bad if doing things right means spending extra money, even if it's not all that much extra.

The quality of the IT systems that professional Systems Administrators create and or enable for our companies reflect on our professional skills and abilities. Why don't more people understand that and act accordingly?

What do I have to complain about?

I mean really?

I'm successful by most measures. I have a lovely wife and loving son. I make good money (in the grand scale of things). I'm well fed, well clothed and I have a warm bed to sleep in at night.

I just feel... like my effort in life isn't adding up to anything.

Work takes me away from my family more than I would like. I can't be everything I want to be for my family.

I can't get enough done at work to satisfy my inner geek. And working my butt off to make someone else rich (while not getting rich myself) is really starting to rub me the wrong way.

Anyway, that's my opening rant. I'm sure I'll complain more about a lot more stuff as time goes on.