Jim Panttaja

Periodically I notice how many catalogs I receive in the mail. Recently I have had a weeks worth of mail forwarded to me at a time - and the stack of catalogs that I promptly throw in the recycling bin was staggering.

I found Catalog Choice. This web site let\’s you register your address(es), and names of recepients of catalogs. Then you can choose catalogs, choose the appropriate addresses and names, with the customer id. Catalog Choice will contact the sender and cancel the catalogs. They say it may take as much as 10 weeks - but if this works, it will be a huge savings in trees. So far, in three weeks of going though my mail and registering catalogs, I have requested that I be removed from 30 (count them) catalog lists. I had no idea the number would be that high. I wish I had done this ten weeks ago.

I blogged a couple of months ago about seeing a skunk in the city. I continue to see him (or her) once or twice a week on my morning bike ride. Many of the runners going up (or down) McDowell Grade near Fort Mason don’t even notice him - though a woman last week was quite startled to see him run across her path.

But this week - there were two - trotting along together - across the roadway.

This is a project that we have had an eye on for awhile: One Laptop Per Child. Their original goal was to create a computer that would cost under $100. But the real goal is summed up in this part of their mission statement:

OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.

So the computer is just a tool in this effort.

There is a special promotion starting on November 12th - their Give One, Get One program. For $400, you get one XO laptop, and donate one to a child in the developing world. You also receive a $200 tax deduction. And - yet - there’s more (from the letter we received from them):

Additionally, T-Mobile is offering donors one year of complimentary access to T-Mobile HotSpot locations throughout the United States, which can be used from any Wi-Fi-capable device, including the XO laptop.

It is worth getting one (perhaps to give to your child or grandchild) just to open your mind up to what it makes possible:

Mesh networks

Incredible power consumtion

Cool power generation devices

Python, Logo

An Rss reader

A Wiki

The capabilities are incredible - spend some time on the site - and then imagine what you can do with yours - and imagine what a child in the developing world can do with theirs. Maybe you need to buy two and give two…

[Update 12 November 2007]

Bob Zurek has also commented on this program.

One of my mentors passed away this week. He was my first manager - and one of the best that I have had. Dick was a Boy Scout. He was a Scouting Professional. I was very involved in Scouting in Barstow, then San Jose, and finally (at least finally as a boy member) in Sonoma Mendocino Area Council. Dick was the scout executive for Mendocino County at the time, and the Camp Director of Camp Navarro.

I didn’t think I was going to write about this - but today on my bike ride through San Francisco, I encounted not one, but two banana slugs. If you look for images of these guys on Google - they are not cute or cuddly. But they always make me smile.

Dick hired me for two summers to be the Camp Naturalist. Why he thought a math and computer science major should run the nature program at camp is something I never understood. But it was the job he picked for me. And in the redwoods, there are banana slugs. We always claimed that the orange ones (I will generously call it ‘umber’ - but the color almost demands a less attractive name) were vanilla, the dark brown ones chocolate, and the spotted ones were butterscotch. We had many a young camper convinced that this was true. So comig across two (vanilla) banana slugs today - in San Francisco - was enough of a sign that I should write a little bit about Mr. Hacke.

Dick knew how to motivate, and how to read the staff. We were paid almost nothing (I think I got $30/week), but there were people clamoring for jobs. We would work until we were tired - and then Dick would know it was time for a swim - or a game of football - or the best of all, a water fight.

Dick claimed that he only took a two week vacation each year (a claim I am pretty sure is accurate), and that two week vacation was spent taking whoever could make it on a two week backpacking trip in the Sierra. The year I went there were over 70 of us.

I also went snow camping with him, and tackled the Garcia, Gualala and Navarro rivers with him.

But it is the management insights that I carry with me. He really invented management by wondering  around (and a Boy Scout camp is a big place)[update - Mary points out that I probably meant “wandering around” - but wondering works too]. He would make sure that everyone knew that they were important to the operation of the Camp. He would find hidden talents (me - a naturalist - or a leader of songs at campfires?).

I still remember the day when I was riding with him on some task - to the scout office on Western Avenue in Petaluma. I addressed him as Mr. Hacke. He told me that I could call him Dick. And from that day forward he was Dick. What an honor and privilege to have spent quality time with Mr. Hacke, with Dick.

[If you knew Dick, a foundation has been set up in his name to support the camps that he loved]

I am currently trying to fill two positions. A friend sent me an invitation to Doostang. Doostang represents themselves as an online career community. It is invitation only at the moment, and so I used my invitation to sign up. I looked around and found that they have job listings - and that I could list my jobs.

So - I listed my two jobs, and saw a cool feature that let me add them to Facebook as well. Really cool. Then I received the following email:

Hi Jim,

All of us here at Doostang are excited at the opportunity of helping you find great talent. Due to us catering to the current membership base at Doostang, and the small team we have to develop a better product, we’d appreciate if you can please refrain from posting your software/designer/engineering positions for now. When we have better categorization over the next few months, we will be able to handle these positions. In the meantime, if we can help you with any product management/marketing/business/sales/finance/interns etc. positions, please feel free to post all of these on Doostang.

Please let me know whether you have any questions. I would be delighted to answer them.

Thank you for the opportunity to work with you and for bearing with us!

Nat

—–

Nat Chambers
Community Relations Manager
Doostang

This is my second web-based bait-and-switch in two days. They want my participation. They want me to add my friends to bolster their network. They want me to add jobs, unless it is the jobs I want to fill at the moment. What was particularly puzzling is that their are engineering jobs listed on the site. And one of their categories is a little weird - but says ‘Product Management and Engineering’. So it seems like they want my participation.

But as I told them in my email - its their football - they can bait-and-switch or make whatever rules they want. But I can be offended - and share that with other potential participants.

I recently purchased some casters for a couple of office chairs from a company called Home Office Solutions. The product worked as advertised, though they did send the wrong product the first time. But that isn’t the point.

After receiving my order (the first time - with the wrong stuff), I received an email asking me to fillout a survey:

We continually strive to provide outstanding service to our customers and would appreciate any feedback you can provide about your shopping experience with us. In return for your valuable time, we would like to offer you a $50 coupon toward your next purchase!

Since I hadn’t received the right product, I decided to wait until the order was properly fulfilled. Today, I filled out the very brief survey. I then was sent to a web page that said:

Thank you for filling out our Customer Comment Form.
As our way of expressing “thank you”, please accept a special coupon code for your next purchase:
“XXXXX“*

*totaling $699 or more. Not valid with any other offer, including sale items. One time use per customer (at the same shipping address).

I have XXed out the code they offered me - but have reflected the font sizes as presented.

Of course the original offer never mentioned a $699 minimum order size. I can only assume that this represents their standard business ethics. As I told them via email, what a stupid way for them to lose a customer.

This week we got closer to the opera - no longer AT&T Park with a hot dog and a beer - but in the Opera House with Appomattox the new Philip Glass opera.

The ambiance is different - we had walked to AT&T Park, but arrived at the Opera House by cab (the driver didn’t know where the opera house was - but fortunately, we did). We didn’t have a hot dog, but there was coffee. The opera started at the civilized time of 7:30 (we aren’t night people).

As in Samson and Delilah, the presentation of this opera is often about textures, and Philip Glass’ music added to those textures. There are layers in his music - sometimes repetitive, sometimes supporting the lyrics, other times across the lyrics. The sets added texture, and the chorus added texture. The fall of Richmond was a great ensemble scene with subtle jestures and vignettes - it was one of the strongest scenes. And many of the other vignettes - the late scene with Edgar Ray Killen, the civil rights marchers scene, and many of the chorus scenes were strong. They couldn’t stand by themselves - but added to the texture of the evening.

Our seats were great - but we didn’t have a good view of the orchestra - I did watch the basses who had some great sections where they in unison did a repetive motion to the top frets - and then back down on the neck of the bass. It was a great dance. And the sounds of the bass saxophone (I assume that is what it was) were incredible - deep - almost human sounds.

As with all composers, Philip Glass has a vocabulary that he uses - and you could recognize snippets that were familiar from having heard Kundun, The Hours, and having played his Melodies for Saxophone - and listened to other music from this album.

We are getting more comfortable at getting around San Francisco

Brady Forrest noted today that Amazon has published an SLA for their S3 Service.

In particular it establishes a target of 99.9% uptime.

This is progress - but the SLA does reference section 7.1 of the Amazon Web Servicesâ„¢ Customer Agreement. And this includes the following clause: “your access to and use of the Services may be suspended for the duration of any unanticipated or unscheduled downtime or unavailability of any portion or all of the Services for any reason, including as a result of power outages, system failures or other interruptions”.

In keeping with my ’see it live’ theme (Live Performances, Live Performers), we saw the San Francisco Opera performance of Samson and Delilah last friday - at AT&T Park. It was live - but the performers were across town at the Opera House.

It was great. A different ambiance than the Opera House to be sure. There was the good (a hot dog, a beer and popcorn) and the bad (four adults pirouetting around the base paths during a beautiful aria). We will be able to contrast this next week when we attend the new Opera by Phillip Glass: Appomattox, at the Opera House.

This opera was more about texture than story. Several scenes are all chorus - with texture in the voices - texture in the acting - texture in the scenery and costumes. The visual aspect was better presented on the big screen in the ball park.

Yahoo has a web site on Exceptional Performance and Steve Souder, Chief Performance Yahoo! has recently authored a book (O’Reilly) called High Performance Web Sites.

Yahoo also makes available a tool, YSlow, that helps you to assess how you measure up against the Yahoo guidelines.

The advice is clearly focused on sites like Yahoo - and as a number of blogs have suggested, you need to take the advice with a grain of salt. But it is a good starting list - especially if you look at some of the follow on blog entries (many of which are referenced from the Yahoo site).

Phil Haack’s blog describes his experience using Coral Distribution Network (it slowed down his site).

Jeff Atwood’s blog entry in Coding Horror is called YSlow: Yahoo’s Problems Are Not Your Problems.

Look especially at the follow on discussions on Jeff Atwood’s blog.

I now live in two places - one with a 40 megabit connection, the other is much slower (and I am now in my car - and seeing about 800 kbps). It is worth making sure that your engineers are not always running on the the high speed connection - with the servers next door. Sometimes performance problems are masked by really high speed links, or small development databases. You need to simulate the real world when you are evaluating your system. And it may be worth simulating something even worse than the real world. Several years ago, I was running an application that was developed with a development environment. I was trying it on a dial-up line (remember those), and noticed that the application always repainted the screen twice. It was a serious bug in the tool that no one had ever noticed - because on high speed networks, you couldn’t see the repaint.

Use other people’s advice (with a grain of salt), and do your own ‘real world’ evaluations.

Update:

A couple of my colleagues pointed me at some tools to facilitate load testing:

• JMeter
• Grinder
• Netem

Update:

The comments keep coming in. There is a post today on O’Reilly Radar  pointing to A Great Performance and Operations Blog called High Scalability by Todd Hoff. Lot’s of posts about Amazon, Twitter, Hadoop, etc.

And my friend and former colleague Jeff Dao comments:

Some of the suggestions I know of, and some I don’t – like get servers closer to the users, and order you load scripts matter, respectively. Bottom line is, distance and data size matter.

When thinking about this, I always think of water delivery system – pipe size, water volume and water pressure (bandwidth, data size and latency).