Sick as a sick dog

I caught some nasty chest cough and am running a fever, sleep has become more critical than blogging.....

Demographic data for Twitter

New Data Shows Over Half of Executives Under 40 Use Twitter
Glad to see that I am helping to address those poor middle aged fuddy-duddies in the 40-49 category, damn I feel like an old geek now.
I followed a link to an interesting report on how executives find their information, well worth a read if you are in the information business.

3 Tragedies

Of the three celebrity deaths this week I am personally most affected by the death of Farrah Fawcett, whose beauty, grace and honesty over her fight with cancer will be missed.

Lies damn lies and statistics

I was surfing the Reuters news site and saw an approval rating graph of the current US president. How should you document the findings? Nearly double the number of people now dissaprove? or that roughly the same number approve? I am sure both will get reported, you decided what the real answer is.....

Speaking of Twitter

This slipped by me: U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran

Apparently the US government has decided that Twitter is one of the few ways the Iranians are getting their message out since the clamp down on foreign journalists and so asked them to keep the service up instead of taking a scheduled outage during the Iranian daytime.

It brings an interesting question to light about "free" services and the SLA they offer, here is an example of a US based company with a global user base, and hence global responsibility, that is pandering to its US based customers to impact them the least, okay maybe I am being a little harsh, I would however like to see why down time was needed and why there was not an alternative approach to mitigate the down time and also; was the timing at the point in the week with the absolute lowest global usage?

Michael Jackson Dies and brings down Twitter

Twitter Blog: Up, Up, and Away
Intersting factoid I came across today in the LA Times:On Twitter, the volume of Jackson-related messages -- up to 5,000 per minute at its peak -- was so high that some users reported log-in trouble.Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged the performance lag. "We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke," Stone wrote in an e-mail. "This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election."

Video Blog #1

While the Cat is away...

....the mice play with a new version of Windows (V7 Release candidate), and simultaneously watch Quantum of Solace. Initial reactions are it is runing fast, I had it installed on a partition on my MacBook Air, I also have the latest Apple OS installed to try on another partition.
The WiFi client has been improved, the start up time seems to have shrunk and there are some further slick improvements in the UI.
The movie is awesome, Daniel Craig brings back the edge to the franchise and has re-energised my interest in Bond. The first scenes brutal destruction of an Aston Martin is just the start of a heart pumping adrenalin ride.

One less hypervisor?

Mike forwarded a link which linked to an article in The Register which claims that Oracle is in the process of killing Virtual Iron which they acquired recently, this would have the interesting consequence of making Oracle the #3 hyper visor in the marketplace.
With the purchase of Sun by Oracle comes yet another set of virtualization technologies, developing a coherent strategy leveraging the best of breed from all three could be the path they are taking, I hope that they provide a seamless migration path for all three existing user bases otherwise there will be a large exodus to VMware and Microsoft for sure.

Black ballons

Thanks to Frank Schilder, who Yammered (is that the right verb for using Yammer?) me this video link which shows visualizing environmental impact as balloons filled with green house gasses. The visualization or representation of the positive impact of Green IT initiatives is an area of interest to me, trees and Hummers have been my choice so far, but balloons is an interesting one.

Mobile phone cameras

Can you remember a time (maybe 5-10 years ago) when mobile phone cameras were not prolific and the possibility of having our every move captured and published on FaceBook or YouTube was not omnipresent?
This evening E and I went to the cabin to water the shrubs and ensure the sod was surviving the heat (98F) we set the sprinklers off and sat to watch the boats and water skiers play and apparently my phone snapped a picture as I was sitting down…. Now the machine is checking up on me ;)
Strangely slanting pictures aside, it is remarkable how public our private lives have now become, it would be unthinkable ten years ago for me to be writing this blog, it would be unthinkable that the cost of the space to store the digital image would be “free” it would be unthinkable that over a hundred people will read this post tomorrow.
But the explosion of content, the availability of information and the transformation of communication from verbal to digital is a juggernaut that is not stopping, it is going to be really interesting to watch how corporations respond to the groundswell of Facebook adoption, the proliferation of Tweets as the fastest way to stay informed, and see which corporations are able to adapt to a philosophy of complete transparency. The reality is already there though and any enterprise that attempts to fight open public communication is doomed to lose the battle.Earlier this year I gave my mangers copies (digitally of course to save the trees) of a book entitled “Transparency, how great Leaders Create a Culture of Candor” if you have not read it, I recommend going to the library and reading at least the first three chapters, it tells a tale worth noting.

Carbon Reduction Commitment

Thanks to Jeremy for forwarding a link to a post about the implications to data centers buried within the UK Climate Change Act 2008:

The main purpose of the CRC is a mandatory carbon reduction and energy efficiency scheme aimed at changing energy use behaviors and further incent the adoption of technology and infrastructure. While not specifically aimed at Data Centers (its aimed at everyone) you can see that by its definition Data Centers will be significantly affected.

This is a UK government piece of legislation and the European legislature is clearly leagues ahead of the US but I anticipate that the current administration will be playing catchup......

First dinner on the deck

When we got the girls back from their respective camps today we decided that as J was travelling the rest of the week we would go and enjoy the evening on the lake instead of rushing around doing any chores. We headed over and took three of the kayaks out the double and two singles, J and K in the singles E and I in the double. Emma paddled for all of 5 minutes and then promptly put the paddle away and sat on the bow dipping her toes in. K managed to paddle all the way to the rivers mouth whereupon we practiced stopping and turning and then she too was tired so I towed her back to shore. We cooked dinner on the new grill while the girls played in the water and then after watering the plants headed home, finally having just gone to the cabin to enjoy it for the evening. it could not have been a better day to be there, 95F and blue sky...

Virtual Infrastructure upgrades

This weekend a (great) team of engineers from our x86 virtualization group upgraded two of our ESX farms to the latest service pack. Unremarkable in itself until you step back and look at what occurred and what did not.
In a physical world it is rare to be able to patch a BIOS without a hard or soft reboot, it is highly unlikely to accomplish this without some down time on a single instance server. In our VM world we were able to move load off the servers during the upgrade period, redistributing it across the farm, we then were able to apply the patches, update the server and bring them back on line with zero down time to the associated VMs. Okay so no big deal right we updated about a dozen physical servers in the two farms, but think about what occurred at the VM level, in excess of 200 servers received patches with no down time and no issues. This is a truly new experience for us; uninterrupted infrastructure upgrades, and one of the many unintended great consequences of server virtualization.

Center Stage Dance Recital

Last night we all went to K's dance recital, check out her pictures:

I want one - Terrafugia's Transition; flying car or driving plane?

Sorry about the Advertisment first, small price to pay for a cool gadget, and only $194k and two years to wait....

Speaking engagements

Last month I had two great opportunities to present the case study of our Virtualization and Storage projects, first at the MN convention center and second at Pebble Beach at a VMware customer event. Later this month I am speaking at Cisco Live in San Francisco. I will be getting the chance to meet John Chambers at a reception the night before. My presentations previously were 30-40 minutes. This time it needs to be a longer 55-ish minutes so I am going to expand the slides to discuss how we use the storage project to fund the server project. It is not rocket science but it is a compelling way to add value without additional expense to the business, a very important aspect in a year where the economy is so reluctant to smile.

Why is it...

..... that when J rests her head on my chest in the morning and dozes that it feels so good? Okay some times her hair tickles my nose. But why is it that human contact is so soothing, babies sleep best when they can hear a heart beating. I remember fondly E falling asleep while I lay on the sofa and she was curled up on my chest - good times.
E is back at Groves now, and K is at horse camp, the crazy schedule of camps has started for the summer, the next 6 weeks will be busy for us, we have after camp activities to contend with also, skating lessons tonight as an example. Somehow I also need to fit in continuing to water the grass and plants at the cabin..... I see lots of conference calls in the car in my immediate future.

My dad came across an article that suggests that it is not the chemicals that killed the fish (Crappies) directly, instead the chemicals kill the weeds, the weed dies, then decomposes in the water and robs the water of oxygen in the process, this then deprives the fish of needed oxygen and hence they die. This seems more a plausible explanation.

Update on the Crappies

Thanks to Mike Jones for sending me the link to this journal entry which suggests that it is herbicide usage that has been killing the fish, ery disturbing if this is the case...
"According to a permit filed with Department of Natural Resources, Lake Restoration of Rogers was contracted by 33 lakeshore owners to treat the areas in front of their properties with chemicals to kill curlyleaf pondweed and algae. Under the permit, about 5 acres of the 700-acre lake were treated"

Ouch

I spent Sunday constructing a triangle platform to the side of the new deck area and then building a set of steps on the angle created by the longest side. I liked the outcome, it makes great use of a useless area on the patio and really helps direct traffic down the center now both sides of the patio can be used for chairs and a swing which was the plan all along. Whilst I was working on the steps J finished painting the polka-dots in K's room and the girls played in the sprinklers and then swam in the lake for the first time, it was great to see them doing exactly what we had bought the place for...

Later in the afternoon I decided to mow the grass and smarten the lawn up, it transformed the shaggy mass into a half decent look yard now. I put the lawn mower away and as I was closing the door (heavy galvanized steel garage door if you remember from earlier posts) I managed to place my finger between one of the horizontal gaps where the hinges are, the door closed and locked completely with my fingers still in the hinge. I unlocked the door with one hand, swore bloody murder and saw the bright white of the cartilage where the door had severed my finger down to the joint, I ran to the house and bandaged the finger up, aided by J who I thought was about the feint at the sight of the blood dripping from my finger. 6 x-rays later the Doctors told me its fractured but no nerve or tendon damage, I have little to no movement in it yet and it is still bleeding occasionally but at least the intense pain has gone, except when I bang it on or with something. This evening Emma and I visited the cabin to water part of the lawn that the timed sprinklers don't reach and we took the canoe out for a short paddle, Emma loved it we saw several large fish jump and she managed to stay upright, it bought back memories of when Emma and I would paddle around Pretty Boy Reservoir in Maryland in the height of the summer..... As I closed the boat shed door tonight I paid close attention to where my fingers were, no where near the hinges....

Cabin Progress

Why are all the Crappie dying?

Lack of oxygen? a virus or bacteria? The DNR gave me no good explanation.
Update: I have been doing some online reseach and discovered that this might be a seasonal phenomina, either caused by the stress of spawning, or alternatively that there is insufficient food for the population and this is nature cleaning up the over population. Either way it is a cruel world.

A lay persons guide to data centers

Thanks to Matt Wells from our marketing analytics team who forwarded me this link to a New York Times article on Data Center expansion.

It is very easy to blame (I have done it) the explosive growth of data centers on the general public expectations to response times, coupled with the explosion in digital information available on the Internet, causing massive (horizontal) growth in search engine foot prints and similar data retrieval systems. We need to find a better answer, if data continues to grow at its current rate and if we make an assumption that index size and the corresponding search engine compute resource needs scale linearly then we are going to be in an appalling situation soon with search engines alone contributing massively to climate change. The amount of digital information increased by 73 per cent in 2008 to an estimated 487 billion gigabytes, according to the latest figures from IDC. If you believe this article Google already has deployed over one Million severs and is growing at rates of 100,000 servers every three months.
In the end it is not going to mater what improvements we make in server and data center efficiency if the application design requires this massive horizontal scale out to match the data growth, I think the only answer will be a radical rethink in the way we search/retrieve information, maybe text indexes need to be thrown out replaced with an alternative algorithm? got any suggestions?

Almost half over

This morning I arrived to discover my office "dressed" up for the occasion, the Big 40 is this week. The best gag was the electronic annoying noise machine taped behind the post in my office second only to the inflatable cake sitting on my table.
The tape blocking my optical mouse had me stumped for at least two minutes....
Thank you Jane....

French open

Not the usual scene at the French Open where a spectator broke through security to taunt Roger Federer who is now probably the greatest male tennis player ever having won 14 grand slams with victories on all surfaces, he now has equaled Pete Sampras's record.

My recent trip to California afforded me the chance to watch a little of the Open and I was fortunate enough to be sitting in SFO airport and was able to catch the second set of Day 13 where Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Serena Williams in three tough sets.

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot

Today the girls worked hard painting Polka-Dots on K's bedroom walls to match her bedclothes, green blue purple and pink. I spent most my day in the kitchen, first wiring, plumbing and fitting the dishwasher, secondly fitting the microwave and wiring it in, third plumbing in the ice maker and water filter/chiller for the refrigerator. The ice maker plumbing required that I redo some previous work as the pipe appeared to far out from the wall and prevented the refrigerator from going back against the wall, this caused me to revisit my least favorite part of the crawlspace under the floor where there is barely enough room to fit under the duct work and you have to pull yourself through the dirt lying on your chest with your nose an inch from the stinky dust. The upside was though that I was able to use shark bight fittings (my new best friends) including a new stopcock which allowed me to downsize to quarter inch copper which is the standard for ice makers. After lunch I moved onto the bathroom, grouting the floor tiles, fitting the new sink faucets and fixing the drain so it flows freely. It did not rain at the cabin today but it seemed prudent to stay off the dirt as it was very soft from the 24 hours of rain from Saturday. I took a short break mid afternoon and raked the beach getting the new sand to settle down a little.

Party burn out

Ben, J's eldest nephew graduated yesterday from High School, today we went to his celebration, eight pieces of fried chicken and four pieces of cake later I took a nap on the sofa, Ben's brother J J did not survive all the excitement either. After we left the party we drove to the cabin so the girls could see the work on the planting and mulching. It had rained all day which could not have been better for all the new plants..... hopefully though it will break tomorrow so I can complete the outdoor work I need to do. But that said I have a ton of indoor work left in the bathroom and kitchen, now that the appliances have arrived.

Thankfully rotten eggs smell bad

Today we had some folks helping out at the cabin – digging holes to plant trees and adding soil to the front yard in preparation for laying sod on Monday. We had previously called 811 and had all the appropriate companies mark out their subterranean pipes and wires. Gas lines etc. should be buried a minimum of 24 inches below the surface……
Woops….one quick kick on a shovel blade a high pitched squeal and an awful smell later….. I arrived at the cabin to fire trucks, police cars and people scurrying everywhere to deal with a shovel that went through the gas main just two inches below the surface. It was a lot of drama, but I have to say I was very impressed with the speed and efficiency with which the team from Center Point Energy fixed the leak. And then buried the pipe two feet down!
BTW if you are in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area and do break the gas main ever call 911 or 612-372-5050 for the Center Point Energy emergency response line.

Trellis

This evening I needed to clear my head of some shenanigans at the office and so I decided to do a fun non-priority job – building the trellis for the climbing plants next to the new mini deck.
We had discovered a style we liked and I attempted as best as I could to remember what it looked like and invented the rest on the fly. I got the main structure built (out of cedar which will eventually turn gray and last a very long time with no maintenance) and managed one and a half of the six vertical waves that I am fitting to finish the entire structure – I like the look and am eagerly waiting for the weather to be dry on Sunday so I can fix it.
Looking now at the ribbon trellis photograph it would appear I should add a bunch of horizontal thin beams to provide addition places for the plants to wrap around.

Data Domain (NetApp v EMC)

"NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) and Data Domain (NASDAQ:DDUP) today announced that they have entered into a revised acquisition agreement under which NetApp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Data Domain common stock for $30 per share in cash and stock in a transaction valued at approximately $1.9B, net of Data Domain's cash."

It will be interesting to see if EMC now backs down or re-ups their previous offer. The inclusion of Data Domain deduplication technologies into the NetApp product suite is an elegant complementary solution that will push NetApp even deeper into the enterprise information lifecycle management space.

Why Virtualize?

I thought I would share my favorite slide from my recent presentation:



I find this rather compelling.

Point Lobos

On Wednesday morning I had the great pleasure of hiking through Point Lobos State Reserve, if you ever get the chance I recommend it as a place of great beauty where the land and sea meet, and the flora and fauna flourish. I went with a guide Gael Gallagher a wonderful lady with a wealth of knowledge and tremendous energy.
Along the way we saw Sea Otters, Sea Lions, Cormorants and massive Jelly Fish, as well as majestic Cyprus trees and a host of other natural wonders.

2009 InfoWorld Award

“The diversity of challenges that a CTO faces was very evident in this year's InfoWold CTO 25 entries. But what was common across the 25 CTOs we chose as the year's top CTOs was a combination of management savvy, technological insight, and the ability to lead a team to success even in difficult circumstances. This year's honorees reinvented untenable legacies, provided game-changing insight, and managed both their own teams and key organization stakeholders to make their businesses succeed through the use of technology. Our honorees did much more than implement technology well; they brought its use to a new level.”
Galen Gruman, Executive Editor/News and Features, InfoWorld

Foot note: Despite the awards title it does not require you to be a CTO to be awarded the honor, and for the record I am not a CTO nor are many others honored this year.