The Occasional Blog

Wow, that was an experience I’d like to avoid in the future. Yesterday, I was able to successfully connect our router to the new DSL circuit and get the house fully transitioned over. That makes the final count of ‘days without broadband’ 10. Granted, I was able to utilize a borrowed MiFi but that provided what was essentially minimal connectivity. Things would have been quite ugly if that wasn’t available.

The two heros to come out of the experience are Xochitl who is a customer service supervisor for DSL Extreme. And Mike, a field technician for Verizon. Both of them were genuinely interested in working through the problem and each were essential in getting to a resolution.

Now I need to figure out what to do with a considerable amount of Verizon FiOS equipment (router, UPS, Optical Network Terminal, etc.). I wonder if there’s an aftermarket for it? I’ll likely just leave it all in place. Hey, maybe there’s a chance I’ll be able to go back to FiOS?

I’ve been a DSL Extreme customer for years starting back in the modem days. When they made FiOS-based service available in my area, I was quite excited about moving from 3000/768 to 20000/20000 and jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately, Verizon changed their policies and decided to no longer allow independent ISPs access to their circuits. As a result, I was given a choice; move my FiOS service directly to Verizon (become a Verizon customer) or drop FiOS. Fortunately, when the fibre optic cable was run to my house they did so without removing my copper-pair phone line (they usually do) so I am able to go back to DSL. That is the direction I chose to take due to my desire to continue to host my server (the one you’re reading this on) which would be a violation of their terms of service. An order was placed for 7100/768 DSL last week and I confirmed that both circuits would be up for me to transition.

Then this past Tuesday, a Verizon service worker came by to install a dry-loop circuit for the new DSL service. Since I only have a single pair providing the phone service, we both agreed that disconnecting that to install the new circuit would be bad and canceled the work order so that it could be re-submitted correctly. The problem was, it still somehow got communicated/interpreted by DSL Extreme as a success so they requested the disconnect of FiOS (which they said they weren’t going to do, btw).

Now, I’m 5-7 days out from having DSL, have FiOS that is dark and cannot be re-instated without a request for new service which doesn’t fly (I was moving away from them, remember?). My only viable fall-back was to borrow a MiFi and get minimal functionality working so that essential services are available. That’s why the site is slow as you read this.

Next step, talk to DSL Extreme customer support management to let them know their business practice is busted. Oh, a credit to the account would be appropriate, too.

While there have been a few quick launch programs for the Mac (Quicksilver is the most notable), I’ve generally not bothered with them as I was satisfied with OS X’s built-in Spotlight function (the magnifying glass in the top right of the screen). With Apple’s App Store being released for OS X 10.6.6 recently, I was poking around looking for the cream among the collection and ran across Alfred by Running with Crayons, Ltd. My position has changed.

First, Alfred is a well-designed piece of software that displays a nice big dialog when activated by pressing the pre-defined hot-key (the default is opt-space):

That dialog is where you can perform application and file lookups like you do with Spotlight but the real power is the fact that pre-defined functions allow you to not only do searches of other websites (e.g., Amazon, eBay, WikiPedia, Google, Facebook, etc.) but the ability to add search for any other site that uses a URL-based search method. That is what has sold me. In only a few minutes I added search strings for many internal websites I use at work which will be most convenient.

The application is free but a ‘Powerpack’ add-on is available which adds even more functionality (iTunes control, file manipulation, terminal shortcuts, and others). I’ll be getting that but will wait for it to be available in the App Store. If you ever use Spotlight, give it a try. Plus, the developer’s a LittleBigPlanet fan which gives me even more reason to like it. ;-)

Tomorrow I’m going on a business trip to Tokyo for the week. It’s kinda exciting since it’s my first time but it is always tough to be away from my family (they don’t like it much either).

Two things come to mind about the trip. First, I’ve been taking Japanese lessons for almost a year. My confidence is rather low on my language abilities, though. I’ll have to force myself to use what I know when I can. If nothing else, I’ll keep my ears open in the hopes that immersion solidifies a lot of the vocabulary that I’m having trouble learning.

The other thing is what happened the last time I travelled internationally. Like with London, I wouldn’t mind an extra week in Japan, but coming back when expected is my preference.

With our oldest cat, Mocha, dying on Monday, there was much talk about getting a new cat (mostly from my son, Brian). Previously, we had said that there would be no new pets and that we would consider a cat at some point in the future. After re-evaluating that decision, I realized that the kids never really had that “new pet” experience and so didn’t resist the “investigation” (surfing rescue websites, reading about different breeds, etc.) that they began.

Not surprisingly, a trip to the local rescue “just to look” resulted in a new member being added to the family. May I please introduce Alexander the Great (Alex, for short):

We’re trying to get him aclimated as easily as possible. He’s been spending almost all of his time in my daughter’s room but has been exposed to the other cat (Bella) and the dog (Patrick). Patrick is the problem, though. He’s big (~100 lbs) with his head roughly the size of Alex himself and at only 8 weeks, Alex isn’t sure how to handle that. The current set-up is Patrick kept downstairs and Alex having free reign though, so far, only staying upstairs. There shouldn’t be a problem, but may take some time for Alex realize that he won’t be a chew toy. There’s actually no risk of that but he doesn’t know that.

While discussing the potential cost of a gift:

Kaelyn: $20 is the generic cost for many gifts

Becky: $20 is the magic number.

Me: I thought 3 was the magic number?

Becky: That was the 70′s. Inflation, baby.

I’ve been doing the GTD things for a few years and am a major fan of OmniFocus by the Omni Group (they got my money for my Mac, my iPhone, and iPad). A similar concept pertains to email and that is of Inbox Zero. The concept is basically keeping your email inbox empty by dealing with or deleting each message.

I’ve longed wanted to get down to an empty inbox. About a year ago, I went from a few hundred down to about 100 but getting past was more difficult than I would have imagined.

The last few weeks, I’ve renewed the effort and today successfully got both my personal and work mailboxes down to zero.

The trick, of course, is keeping it empty. I get enough mail both personally and professionally so I will continue to leverage the power of OmniFocus to capture anything I need to deal with but can’t at that moment.

I like finishing the year with nothing. Merry Christmas.

Two years ago, my daughter spent her own saved money to purchase a Nintendo DS. This past Friday (the Black one), my son similarly used his own hard-earned savings to give money to the competition and purchased a Xbox 360 4G.

Where did I go wrong?

The family came to a decision this week and we have removed our son from his elementary school and will be homeschooling him along with his older sister.  I wrote about how we came to the decision to bring our daughter home earlier this year and while this situation had many similarities, many aspects were different and the decision had much deliberation and prayer.

Our daughter was failed by the system which no longer actively supports students that aren’t a liability to their precious standardized test scores. In our son’s situation, honestly, he was let down by the other parents. His grade-level, for some unexplained reason, has had discipline and behavior problems since kindergarten. Attempts to correct problems were generally met with disbelieving and ultimately uncommitted parents and by the time the kids go to 5th grade, behaviors were well-solidified. Like our daughter, the problem went on for years but was tolerated until it reached the point it couldn’t be any further.

Brian’s teacher this year, Mr. ‘P’, was excellent which made this decision quite difficult. As we got reports from our son how his class got in trouble again or lectured to again over the dinner table, I couldn’t help but think Mr. P was not being a strong enough disciplinarian (my manager hat must have still been on). Last week, I had the opportunity to volunteer at Brian’s school* and spend some time in his class. Not only did I see first-hand how good Mr. P was but also how frustrating the behavior problem was. The majority of the class was ‘just’ bad enough to be a problem but without clear troublemakers to single out and reprimand though he did several times in the single hour I was there. He simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to discipline a class and try to teach them at the same time.

Brian is also the more social of our kids and the thought of ‘loosing’ his friends was difficult for him but his countenance was clear every day he came home from school. There was a problem that had to be addressed. We decided to do a dry run and kept him home on Tuesday for him to get a taste of what it’s like to be taught by your mother. Of course, she didn’t have all the texts or a full lesson plan but was able to give him a good idea. He liked it but still agonized.

The debate that had gone on for weeks hit high gear. It wasn’t easy, but, thankfully, the Lord did guide us. The decision was made, the dis-enrollment form filled out, and personal belongings collected. Interestingly, there was no resistance and instead complete understanding. There were also many ‘off the record’ comments made about ‘all the good ones are leaving.’ That part really pains me in all of this. The school system is really breaking down both within (testing obsessed admins) and without (nobody ‘parenting’ anymore) and I don’t see that turning around. We’d fight, and we did, but we ultimately need to do right by our kids and not let them loose even if there may be a greater good. That’s why Brian’s new school desk is now five steps from the kitchen.

* If you’re a father of a kid in school, please do yourself a favor and ask if they have a WatchD.O.G.S. program. It’s an awesome way to support your kid and their school.

UPDATED: Fixed a few typos. Maybe I shouldn’t blog at 6 AM.

Friday was the last day for one of the members of the team I manage at work. It was under good circumstances as he’s relocating and moving on to a new opportunity with new challenges to solve. Jokingly, I tweeted about the team now being in a degraded state as one ‘drive’ has been removed. That idea has kept percolating in my head and I’ve realized that rather than just a cute way to refer to an IT team, it really is accurate.

For the uninitiated, RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a way to combining multiple disks into a larger collection to present one or more larger volumes, increase the performance, and improve the resiliency should one of the drives fail. Here’s an overview of the three primary RAID levels:

RAID 0 combines two or more disks into a larger volume splitting the contents evenly between them. The benefits are increasing the performance to much more than a single drive as well as increasing the overall capacity. The down-side is that if any single drive fails, all of the data is effectively lost.

RAID 1 combines two disks into a pair where data is written to both drives simultaneously. Capacity is no more than a single drive, but you can lose either drive and still have a complete copy of your data.

RAID 5 combines three or more disks where the data is split between the disks but parity data is calculated and also written to the disk. Performance is good as you can interleave reads between the disks. Resiliency is also good as if any single drive fails, the parity data from the remaining disks can be used to compute the data that is missing.

In any IT shop, you have a collection of skills and backgrounds provided by the members of the team as well as the collection of procedures, resources, and responsibilities that the team must manage. If your team is set up in a RAID 0 configuration, the responsibilities are divided between the members. Each member becomes more and more experienced in the skills they cover but can become more of a liability in the ones they do not. Like in RAID 0, if any one is not available, those responsibilities are gone.

Sure, you could have a team more akin to RAID 1 but I can’t think of any manager that would request (or director that would approve) having two people for every task with one acting as a ‘mirror.’

Personally, I try to strike a balance. Dividing the responsibilities between members, playing on their strengths, but ensuring that everyone is familiar enough with the other things the group-as-a-whole does allows for continuity. Sure, documentation can act as your ‘parity’ but it is exceedingly challenging to maintain complete, accurate, and current documentation.

The group is indeed in a degraded state at the moment, but I am happy to say that nothing should get dropped and it hopefully won’t last long. I’m truly fortunate to manage a group of guys skilled enough to take on almost anything thrown at them.