No LL
It was hot and sticky this afternoon. We said to heck with chores and went to the beach. That's all I have to say.
Above is the new high tech air conditioned lifeguard stool at the Vero beach.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
To Heck With Chores
Vero Beach
No LL
It was hot and sticky this afternoon. We said to heck with chores and went to the beach. That's all I have to say.
Above is the new high tech air conditioned lifeguard stool at the Vero beach.
No LL
It was hot and sticky this afternoon. We said to heck with chores and went to the beach. That's all I have to say.
Above is the new high tech air conditioned lifeguard stool at the Vero beach.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Entertaining For Geeks Only
I blogged previously about how on the way to Alaska for Thanksgiving, we found the secondary IT infrastructure around travel had become so nearly perfected. On the way back, we found a marvelous counter example.
We boarded a Delta Airlines 757 in Seattle, bound for Atlanta. This was a very modern plane equipped with a personal video screen for each passenger embedded in the back of the seat in front of you. The screen could be used for movies, or TV, or games, or to track altitude and speed statistics for the trip.
I wasn't interested in any of that stuff, but I do like fiddling with computers, so I decided to try our the free trivia video game they offered. I selected the game and pushed the Play button. A message appeared saying, "Please wait while the game is loaded." I waited and waited for about a minute. Then, to my surprise, the computer rebooted and I found myself staring at the boot script log on an 80x24 text screen. I hadn't seen one of those things for years.
The reboot seemed to take forever, much longer than it takes my laptop to boot Windows XP. Then I tried again. Surprise: selecting that game crashed the computer again. This time I looked more closely at the boot log. To my surprise, it wasn't running Windows, it was a I386 Intel machine running Red Hat Linux. Like any geek, I became interested in this glaring error so I started to investigate. Timing with my stopwatch, I determined that it took this computer between 185 and 200 seconds to reboot -- that's much slower than Windows. I wondered if my repeated reboots would affect other passengers but that didn't seem to be the case. I tried a race. I selected the game on my screen and on my wife's screen in the next seat. I could see that the two machines had the same error and they rebooted in approximately, but not identically the same time.
Looking at the boot log, I could see that there were a dozen or more errors reported during booting. Mounts didn't work, shares could not be found, services failed to initialize. It really looked like garbage.
After many tries, I figured out that the play button had three outcomes. It might work correctly (2 times out of 64 tries), it might fail and return to the previous screen (about 30 times out of 64 tries) or it might cause a reboot (about 32 times out of 64 tries). Further, the reboots always occurred 55 seconds after pushing play. I think the culprit was a non responding file server someplace plus a watchdog timer set to reboot after 55 seconds of non response.
Several times, the reboots themselves failed, getting stuck at some point in the process for more than 55 seconds thus causing a new reboot. In the worst case the reboot failed 3 consecutive times, resulting in 11 minutes until a successful reboot. The other passengers walking by who saw my screen wondered what I was up to with the B&W text logs scrolling by. It felt like the old days with a minicomputer and an ADM3A dumb terminal.
I walked around the cabin peeking at the screens of other passengers. Many were happily watching movies without trouble. I did notice a half dozen of them playing the trivia game that crashed my machine. That means it was not the game, but my (and my wife's) computers that were at fault. Several others had a static error message on the screen with the word ERROR in big block letters. They might have been trying another game. I overheard one passenger complaining that he watched HBO but the screen wanted to charge him an additional $5 every time one program ended and another started. Other passengers did not have this problem, indicating that his software was different than others. There is no way to blame the lusers in these cases. These computers have no keyboards and only very limited touch screen selection options. There is little room for operator error.
What a piece of crap! It was incompetently administered. Evidently they also could not do a push install of software so that all seats had the same software. God only knows how this aircraft's software compared with other aircraft's copies.
I know that the open source community is fond of trashing Microsoft and Windows. They may be right that Linux at its best (or even at its average) are better than Windows. However, I think that both of them at their worst are worse than Windows at its worst. Windows at least gives one the option to reboot to DOS or to boot in Safe Mode if the primary reboot fails. Clearly, the intricacies of properly administering Linux are beyond the skills of even major players (I count a supplier to Delta Airlines a major player.)
To be fair, I've seen similar disasters happen with boot scripts on Macs and on the fabled VAX/VMS machines, but those happened nearly 20 years ago. It's shocking to see such bumbling in 2007.
How can they consider putting such overqalified, over complex stuff such as Linux in mass consumer items such as cell phones and GPS receivers. I have a Lowrance GPS/chart plotter in my boat and I use it (plus paper charts) for safety related navigation. I saw once a message box that indicates that it runs a version of Windows. It has never crashed, never misbehaved the way the Linux based TV screen did on that Delta flight.
I'll say it again, Windows at its worse is better than Linux at its worse or Macs at their worse.
We boarded a Delta Airlines 757 in Seattle, bound for Atlanta. This was a very modern plane equipped with a personal video screen for each passenger embedded in the back of the seat in front of you. The screen could be used for movies, or TV, or games, or to track altitude and speed statistics for the trip.
I wasn't interested in any of that stuff, but I do like fiddling with computers, so I decided to try our the free trivia video game they offered. I selected the game and pushed the Play button. A message appeared saying, "Please wait while the game is loaded." I waited and waited for about a minute. Then, to my surprise, the computer rebooted and I found myself staring at the boot script log on an 80x24 text screen. I hadn't seen one of those things for years.
The reboot seemed to take forever, much longer than it takes my laptop to boot Windows XP. Then I tried again. Surprise: selecting that game crashed the computer again. This time I looked more closely at the boot log. To my surprise, it wasn't running Windows, it was a I386 Intel machine running Red Hat Linux. Like any geek, I became interested in this glaring error so I started to investigate. Timing with my stopwatch, I determined that it took this computer between 185 and 200 seconds to reboot -- that's much slower than Windows. I wondered if my repeated reboots would affect other passengers but that didn't seem to be the case. I tried a race. I selected the game on my screen and on my wife's screen in the next seat. I could see that the two machines had the same error and they rebooted in approximately, but not identically the same time.
Looking at the boot log, I could see that there were a dozen or more errors reported during booting. Mounts didn't work, shares could not be found, services failed to initialize. It really looked like garbage.
After many tries, I figured out that the play button had three outcomes. It might work correctly (2 times out of 64 tries), it might fail and return to the previous screen (about 30 times out of 64 tries) or it might cause a reboot (about 32 times out of 64 tries). Further, the reboots always occurred 55 seconds after pushing play. I think the culprit was a non responding file server someplace plus a watchdog timer set to reboot after 55 seconds of non response.
Several times, the reboots themselves failed, getting stuck at some point in the process for more than 55 seconds thus causing a new reboot. In the worst case the reboot failed 3 consecutive times, resulting in 11 minutes until a successful reboot. The other passengers walking by who saw my screen wondered what I was up to with the B&W text logs scrolling by. It felt like the old days with a minicomputer and an ADM3A dumb terminal.
I walked around the cabin peeking at the screens of other passengers. Many were happily watching movies without trouble. I did notice a half dozen of them playing the trivia game that crashed my machine. That means it was not the game, but my (and my wife's) computers that were at fault. Several others had a static error message on the screen with the word ERROR in big block letters. They might have been trying another game. I overheard one passenger complaining that he watched HBO but the screen wanted to charge him an additional $5 every time one program ended and another started. Other passengers did not have this problem, indicating that his software was different than others. There is no way to blame the lusers in these cases. These computers have no keyboards and only very limited touch screen selection options. There is little room for operator error.
What a piece of crap! It was incompetently administered. Evidently they also could not do a push install of software so that all seats had the same software. God only knows how this aircraft's software compared with other aircraft's copies.
I know that the open source community is fond of trashing Microsoft and Windows. They may be right that Linux at its best (or even at its average) are better than Windows. However, I think that both of them at their worst are worse than Windows at its worst. Windows at least gives one the option to reboot to DOS or to boot in Safe Mode if the primary reboot fails. Clearly, the intricacies of properly administering Linux are beyond the skills of even major players (I count a supplier to Delta Airlines a major player.)
To be fair, I've seen similar disasters happen with boot scripts on Macs and on the fabled VAX/VMS machines, but those happened nearly 20 years ago. It's shocking to see such bumbling in 2007.
How can they consider putting such overqalified, over complex stuff such as Linux in mass consumer items such as cell phones and GPS receivers. I have a Lowrance GPS/chart plotter in my boat and I use it (plus paper charts) for safety related navigation. I saw once a message box that indicates that it runs a version of Windows. It has never crashed, never misbehaved the way the Linux based TV screen did on that Delta flight.
I'll say it again, Windows at its worse is better than Linux at its worse or Macs at their worse.
The Thanksgiving Trip
The airport, Atlanta, Georgia
No LL
Well, we still have one more flight leg to go, so it may be premature, but I'd like to declare this trip as wonderfully simple and snag free. Despite all the scary news about travel on Thanksgiving week, everything went of as planned.
We were also terribly spoiled by the wonderful hospitality of our son David and his family, Cathy and Bobby. They baked and cooked, and planned activities and otherwise spoiled us for a whole week. We had a great time. Thank you all three; you were great.
The weather was also OK. It was zero F when we first arrived, but the rest of the time the temperature was in the 30s most of the time. That was about the same as it was back in New York that week.
Fooling with fireworks after Thanksgiving Dinner (Hint, nobody does fireworks on the 4th of July in Alaska because it doesn't get dark then.)
Dave is victorious over Bobby on the new Nintendo Wii video game.
Walking The Dogs at Creamer's Field
Winter Wonderland, the Mills residence in Fairbanks
No LL
Well, we still have one more flight leg to go, so it may be premature, but I'd like to declare this trip as wonderfully simple and snag free. Despite all the scary news about travel on Thanksgiving week, everything went of as planned.
We were also terribly spoiled by the wonderful hospitality of our son David and his family, Cathy and Bobby. They baked and cooked, and planned activities and otherwise spoiled us for a whole week. We had a great time. Thank you all three; you were great.
The weather was also OK. It was zero F when we first arrived, but the rest of the time the temperature was in the 30s most of the time. That was about the same as it was back in New York that week.
Fooling with fireworks after Thanksgiving Dinner (Hint, nobody does fireworks on the 4th of July in Alaska because it doesn't get dark then.)
Dave is victorious over Bobby on the new Nintendo Wii video game.
Walking The Dogs at Creamer's Field
Winter Wonderland, the Mills residence in FairbanksTuesday, November 20, 2007
Alaskan Welcome
Fairbanks, Alaska
Well I lied. I said that I wouldn't be blogging from Alaska, but I just can't resist it.
We had a great tip up here. Everything was nominal, no problems, no delays, no lost baggage. I had been a bit apprehensive about holiday mobs based on the news reports over the weekend, but we didn't encounter any of that.
We arrived in Alaska with an appropriate greeting. We saw a brilliant aurora before descending through the clouds. We saw our first snow in more than three years. Dave was waiting for us at the terminal with jackets, gloves and hats. When we emerged in to the parking lot, the temperature was exactly zero F (-18C). It felt brisk, not bitter. Since we got here at about 01:00, we haven't had much time yet for the family reunion.
Having not traveled for a while, I was struck by how refined the computer automation has become. On the way up, our cell phone gave us flight status updates. When we dropped off the rental car, the lady attendant greeted me as Mr Mills as soon as I opened the door, then she handed my my receipt for the final bill as I stepped out. At the curb, the skycap not only checked our bags, but he handed us our three boarding passes each for the trip. Those boarding passes included information on the gate assignments in the remote cities. At the gate, the attendant scanned the bar codes on the boarding passes and her machine flashed our names to her.
Of course none of that stuff is entirely new. It has been coming for a very long time. The part that struck me was how ubiquitous and how so seemingly effortless the IT automation has become. If not perfected, it is highly refined.
What contributed to this IT success after so many decades of failures and compromise systems, of which I had participated? It seems now that we have achieved the benefits of automation foreseen in the 1950s that I studied in college. I wish I knew what the fraction of the GDP is spent on IT today compared to 10, 20, or 30 years ago. I wager that it is lower than before, yet we get much more out of it.
So what's the secret? I think, no secret at all. Software technology benefits from the cumulative effect of incremental improvements, year by year. There are better tools, better methods (i.e. Objects), plus data base architectures refined over years of use. I imagine that the incremental improvements will continue indifinitely.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Word For The Day
JAX, airport
No LL
I must share this great word I read in a magazine.
Q: What is the word to best describe the gyrations one must go through to trigger the motion sensor for the paper towel dispenser in the airport rest room?
A: drykwando
No LL
I must share this great word I read in a magazine.
Q: What is the word to best describe the gyrations one must go through to trigger the motion sensor for the paper towel dispenser in the airport rest room?
A: drykwando
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