Random Thoughts on Life

Rube Goldberg Programming

2011-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

So I was peer reviewing some code to create a BASE64 string from binary input (in PL1 where we can't just use someone's library.) This code takes a array of bytes to convert, and for each 3 bytes creates a 4 character BASE64 representation. The conversion of the 3 bytes is an impressive Rube Goldberg bit of coding. It first takes each input byte and converts it into an array of binary 1's and 0's. It then takes the binary array and converts it into a character array of 1's and 0's, while breaking the 3 bytes into a 4 sets of 6 1's and 0's. It takes each of the 4 character arrays and converts them into a character Hexadecimal representation. It then converts each of the Hexadecimal representations into a single BASE64 character. The conversion from BASE64 back to binary went through the same steps in reverse.

The conversion of the 3 bytes into 4 BASE64 characters can be done in a single loop. You overlay the 3 bytes with an array of 24 bits. Then for each of output character, you loop over the bits the character is going to represent, building the BASE64 value. You then convert the value into the BASE64 character. This is about 10 lines of code to do the encode and another 10 for the decode. This person took over 100 to do the encoding and another 100 for the decoding.

Gaaaaaaaaa!

You really are already retired...

2011-12-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting conversation the other night with the stray cat. On May 21st 2014 he turns 59 1/2 and will "consider" retiring "depending on the situation." I have news for you, you have already retired in place.

Another part of the conversation dealt with a situation we are having with one part of our system. We (very badly) support a remote duplication of our financial system for the purpose of failover in case the primary fails. We have numerous problems with this system, and 18 months ago there was a series of planning meetings to determine what areas we would work to improve it. I had pushed for enhancing the ability to stop and restart the system at known data points, increasing its flexibility and providing better recovery to network issues. The support people insisted this was not necessary, and we should switch the data transport over to a system know as NFS. My contention was that the current system was faulting out because of a bad network, and switching to NFS was not going to solve the underlying problem. The support people stated they had an example of a client running both the existing TCP and an NFS data mount they put in place, and the TCP solution faulted out their NFS based backup they kept on working. In the end we went with changing over to use a new NFS based solution. After 18 months of development, testing, and deployment, (over 1200 hours in total effort) the results are in. Indeed the NFS based solution stays up and running when there are network issues, however it quietly corrupts the data without reporting any issues.

What does this have to do with the stray cat? When we were discussing the issue, he thought that the NFS was the proper solution, because from an application level it was the easiest to implement. My thought is that it does not matter how 'easy' it is to implement, if the transport ends up corrupting the data it is worthless. My other thought is that we are now worse off in that with the TCP solution, the clients knew there was a problem because when it failed it announced the fact with an email and/or page. Now, the data is corrupted, and we don't know about it until we need it. He also brought up another issue with the software, not realizing that I had fixed it over 2 years ago. This is why I consider him retired in place, retired people bore you with stories about things that happened in the past, regardless of how applicable they are to today.

The moment when you know it is a disaster . . .

2011-08-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

Today I had one of those moments, when you realize management made a decision, and it is going to be a disaster. My department has been working on software for our 2012 (next years) application release. As part of that, we decided that now was the time to shift to Java 1.6 and require it for the 2012 release. Our company holds the hands of our clients, providing a single point to purchase both our application and the hardware to run it on, along with supplying them updates of IBM's AIX operating system. We added Java 1.6 to the AIX updates 2 years ago, and with this years application release, were going to require that the client either be on the first release with Java 1.6 or acquire an 'unlock' from us to install the application update. The plan was we were going to track the clients requiring the unlock, so our support group would know which clients to push to update their system before next years application release, when it will be required to run the application. Well today, in a "Internal Release" document (that had 3 factual errors, and was in the client's hands within 30 minutes) it was stated that we will not be requiring the unlock after all. I found out today that this decision was made 2 weeks ago, when the head of support stated that it was going to "cost too much overhead" to implement the unlock process. My director was in the room, but neither myself, nor the head of the System development team were. Both of us are the major stake holders in rolling out Java 1.6, and neither of us were informed of the decision to scrap the unlock process. After I got done pulling the 2 week old knife out of my back (thats is why it has been hurting) I realized that we are now invariable headed for a disaster. Our projects are running full speed ahead, requiring Java 1.6 to be available on all client systems. I have this dread that we are going to get to March or April of next year and support will be, "sorry, we can't roll out the AIX update to all of the clients in time because it will require too much work." At that point, I am going to be asked to (again) pull the company's bacon out of the fire. At this point, I don't know what I am going to do, but it is going to be interesting.

Why show up on time when you can delegate?

2011-08-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

My work environment and my direct supervisor are both supreme de-motivators. Case in point, we have a daily stand-up meeting at 9:30 in the morning with the "Small Projects" team. The problem is that my supervisor is rarely in on-time. We are the corporate head quarters of a software company located in San Diego California, which means most of our clients are 1 to 3 hours ahead of us. Most of support is in at 6:00 AM, and development (our department) at 7:30 with me being the lazy one arriving around 8:30. My supervisor is in on-time for the 9:30 meeting 1 day a week at most. The problem this causes is that the cleaning crew locks all of the office doors, which means we can't hold the meeting in his office. His solution to this? Not to show up on time, but instead have his office key duplicated and given to someone else who is here on time in the mornings. Yep, me. Gaaaaa!

Apple log message

2011-07-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

While updating my iPad's software, I noticed the following message in a log file:

7/19/11 11:35:14 PM iTunes[449] _MobileDeviceConnect_locked (thread 0xa02df540): This is not the droid you're looking for (is actually com.apple.mobile.restored). Move along, move along.

Me thinks someone needed a distraction.

Patterns emerge

2011-06-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

I work with 3 people who are designated 'Technical Designers'. This is not an accurate description of their jobs, as they do little design work and mostly oversee other's work. One of them is the stray cat, but the other two are no winners either. The other two consist of individuals I will now think of as a plagiarist and a luddite.

The plagiarist is just that, someone who claims someone else's work as their own. I have had him do it to me personally, I have seen him do it to a couple of other people, and yesterday I found out this is his pattern. I was having a discussion with him and the stray cat about some production code. The stray cat was upset because this code is something that the plagiarist had copied and had received a bonus for. Now, I knew this code was copied from another program in-house, but I didn't realize he had done it and didn't know he had received a bonus for it. So plagiarizing other peoples work is definitely this persons modus operandi.

The luddite's favorite saying is, "I don't want to do it that way because we haven't done it that way before." In the software development field this is a very unusual tack to take, but this is what she does repeatedly. If it is a new process or programming technique, she is opposed to it without having to hear anything other than 'new'.

Must Control Fist of Death . . .

2011-05-15T14:57:00.001-07:00

So Tuesday I was giving a demonstration of refactoring code to reduce cyclomatic complexity. This involves taking code segments, moving them into their own procedures, and replacing the code with a call to the new procedure. A question was asked about performance because, "procedure calls are one of the more expensive functions." I distinctly remember where I first heard this and who I heard it from, it was a favorite quote from the stray cat when doing code reviews from when I first joined the company (and before he was brought into our group) 4 years ago. Back then I challenged him on it, and he admitted it really was in reference to the Data General make of computers, which our customers haven't used in 20 years! The problem simply does not apply to modern machines and compilers, and especially does not apply to our software as we are disk bound and input bound rather than computationally bound, and have always been so. What just made me see red and nearly brought out the "Fist of Death", was the person who came up with the response. Yes, it was none other than the stray cat who was the original source of the incorrect information! Gaah!

A Matter of Trust

2011-02-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

Well the stray cat showed his ugly side in the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, we had a meeting about enhancing our multiple redundant system failover. Our application software can be configured so that if the primary system goes down, a backup system can be brought online to continue transaction processing. We have two methods of doing this, one where the backup system assumes the network identity (IP address, MAC address, system name) of the primary system, and one where the two systems simply swap system names and use DNS resolution to reroute the traffic. We are working on an enhancement to allow multiple backup systems to be employed for larger Credit Unions (when you have a Billion in assets, you can't go down) and the clients want to be able to mix the two modes of failover, which presents a number of issues. We were having a meeting to go over them, and my boss proposed a novel (to me) solution of using the network hardware to present a fixed IP within a network that the networking hardware will route to either the current active box at a different IP, and when failover occurs, update the networking hardware with the new destination address. (Networking is not my focus, I was there because I know the host software involved in the failover system.) Well within 5 minutes, not only had the stray cat stated that he "proposed using the network to route the traffic when failover was originally developed" he had almost claimed my bosses' idea as his own. It was so bad, his peer had to call him on it in the meeting.

Today it was even worse. I was asked to review someone's code, and they stated that a change they made was because of a statement about functionality of a language usage from him. In short, the statement was wrong. When I showed him the code and asked him about it, he stated that, "yes that is what I told her." When I pointed out that what he stated was wrong, he immediately flipped his statement and said, "yes she must have mis-understood me."

Both of these simply point out why I simply don't trust this guy.

Front seat at the implosion

2010-10-06T17:53:00.001-07:00

Today I had an interesting meeting. The CM responsibilities for our company had been given to my supervisor and had been my primary responsibility, until about 11 months ago. At that time, the CM improvements were put aside (we mostly do CM by hand - no kidding - no SCC software and perform hand merging of code) and I was tasked with cleaning up a mess that had been made in our Java development area. In the mean time, some of the old hands at the company were tasked with continuing on the CM improvements. These people are neither forward thinkers, technically savvy, nor familiar with best practices. Well today, we had a meeting with our department director, to determine how we are going to approach damage control in meeting next week. It was an hour long and in the end was simply a front row seat of the implosion. The person tasked with designing our new binary distribution process basically said that it was impossible to do, at which point a 'lively' discussion ensued. After a little while, I looked over and the director had literally put her head down and was just letting it roll on. I have to believe this was the moment that she realized that putting these people in charge of the CM improvements, the very people who hadn't changed a thing in 10+ years, was a mistake. From that perspective, it was a fun meeting to watch. Once she recovered, she put her foot down and dictated what our response was going to be. It will be fun to see what changes, if any, are made in the coming weeks.

5 People Assigned to review a project

2010-09-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

1 Doesn’t know the language

1 Reviewed the wrong modules

1 Didn’t complete the review

1 Reviewed it, but most of his comments were based on an incorrect assumption

1 Reviewed it, but has done several consecutive reviews, and only had a few comments

Gaaaa!

An interesting memory allocation issue

2010-09-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last couple of weeks finding and fixing an interesting memory allocation issue. The system I am working on is primarily written in PL1 with some 'C' linking it to the Unix OS. This works surprisingly well all things considered. We are working to cut it over to Java, but in the meantime we still have to enhance the current system. One of those enhancements in the current release is to enable multiple concurrent posters of our external interface software to share state information between them. The key point, is that these parallel processes now need to have shared memory where previously each parallel poster had its own independent memory. Because we had never used shared memory in this way before, this required coding up a portion of the solution in the 'C' interface layer between the PL1 and Unix OS. I did not code the initial solution, but did review it. When I reviewed it, I was concerned about the possibility of the C routine being called in parallel and returning incorrect information, and I was right as this was exactly the issue that occurred in the field!

The routine I was concerned about is passed a file identifier and an amount of memory to allocate. It returns a pointer to the memory segment that is shared between the parallel processes for that file and a flag indicating if this call created the shared memory segment or merely attached to the existing segment. By design, it is the responsibility of the process that initially created the segment to properly delete it when the process completes. (Under no circumstances would I have ever designed this routine this way, this is a yet another rodent from the stray cat. Given the requirements, I probably would have put a usage counter into the design, and destroyed the memory when the last process detached.) The code that had the bug is as follows (the following is sudo code to protect the guilty):

createFlag=FALSE;

1 shmId = shmget(key, size, MemoryAccessFlag);

if (shmId == -1 )

{

2 shmId = shmget(key, size, IPC_CREAT | MemoryAccessFlag);

createFlag=TRUE;

}

This code first tries to attach to an existing shared memory segment, and if that fails it creates the segment and sets the flag to TRUE indicating that it did so. So what was the bug? In short, the routine did not properly take into account the possibility of it being called in parallel simultaneously. To understand the issue, you have to know that if two processes call the shmget routine at the same time, the first will start processing and the second will block until the first completes. The shmget routine uses a semaphore internally to prevent multiple processes from running at the same time. For this code block, if the shared memory block does not exist for a given key, and two processes start this code block simultaneously the following happens:

1) The first process calls shmget at line 1 above and starts processing

2) The second process calls shmget at line 1 above and blocks.

3) The first process completes the shmget call and receives a -1 because the block doesn't exist.

4) The second process unblocks, starts executing, completes, and receives a -1 because the block still doesn't exist.

5) The first process calls shmget at line 2 to create the memory block (or attach to an existing memory block.) This occurs either before the second process completes its line 1 call or after, it doesn't matter. If the first process calls before the second completes its line 1 call, the first will block waiting for the second to complete.

6) The second process also calls shmget at line 2 to create the memory block or attach to an existing block. It now blocks again waiting for process 1 to create the memory block.

7) The first process completes its line 2 call with the memory block created. The createFlag is correctly set to TRUE.

8) The second process unblocks, and also gets the id for the same memory block. In this case the createFlag is incorrectly set to TRUE.

It took 4 full days to find this issue (nothing like starting a complicated bug hunt with 2 incorrect pieces of information,) including a half a day to build a test program to positively identify it, 2 hours to code the solution, 2 days to stress test it using the test program, and 3 more to peer it and get it incorporated into the baseline. (I spent 5 hours on the issue during the last 5 days of resolving it.) The solution is to rework the allocation process so that the create call only succeeds if the memory block does not already exist, then loop around to attempt the get of the existing block if the create failed.

Yet another rodent ...

2010-09-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

So two weeks ago, I was assigned a urgent priority defect. This defect was in the external interface to our finance package. When it was being taken off-line, it would abnormally terminate resulting in a support call (it is not a user clearable issue.) For most of our clients taking this off-line is a weekly event, so this really was an urgent issue. After some digging around, I finally determined the root of the issue actually occurred when the software was being taken on-line. (I'll put up a separate post with the technical explanation.) The specific code was very familiar to me, I had peer reviewed it when it was first added to the system. My initial review was that the code had a potential timing issue, and should be re-worked to account for the potentiality of it being run in parallel. It turns out this defect was exactly that timing issue! When I went back to the summarized notes, it turns out the reason for not making the recommended change was stated as, "the process that utilizes this code runs serialized, not in parallel." Two weeks wasted to find, fix, validate, peer, QA test, and push out the the clients yet another rodent from the stray cat.

Why the department I am in is failing . . .

2010-07-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

If you have followed my blog, you know that I have seen a lot of failures, both in companies and in people. I watched AMS start its long fall, was laid off from a software development company when it made a huge development mistake, and left a medical claim processing company when it was clear it was going to die on the vine (which it did.) None of the systems I created or worked on prior to my current job is in use anymore. I have seen failures big and small, and have learned from hard experience when to worry. Now I'm working at a software company in the financial industry, and I get to watch my department fail on a daily basis. My boss simply doesn't understand that developing software remotely is a hard thing to do. Even before I read the post about it, I understood this instinctively. Our group has 3 developers (including myself) at our headquarters, and 4 working remotely. Of the group, I am the most experienced developer. The other two at headquarters both are brand new to Java (our primary development language) with one only bring procedural programming and one bring VB to the table. Of the remote people, only one brings object programming to the table and none with Java experience. This means, on a daily basis, we end up spending more time training them than actually developing. The problem is, we aren't just training them in Java, but in using objects, and in a couple of cases in simply thinking about a solution before coding. At least with the 2 in-house, I can touch base with them very easily, especially looking over their shoulder. For the remote people, even with MS communicator's shared desktop, it is a slow painful process. Of course, then I read this item and realized that my boss hasn't really brought anybody into the department who can actually do the job from day 1. Either he or I, and mostly I, have had to train them. Now that I've read these two posts, and the various ones they link to (FizzBuzz!) I think I'll just need to take the perspective that things are going to go the way they are, and I'll do my best, but mostly it is out of my control. I simply don't have the authority necessary to rectify the problem.

The Things that Get to Us . . .

2010-07-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning out my garage the other day, and found the first printer I purchased, an original version of the Hewlett Packard (aka HP) DeskWriter. This was the first generation of inkjet printers made for the consumer market, costing only $1,195.00 when introduced in 1989. Being a good techie, I unboxed it, purchased a new print cartridge, tested it, and have put it up on eBay for auction. As I packed it up for the last time, I found myslef verklempt by the moment. This is a 20 year old printer, and was among the first things I purchased when I got my first job out of college. Very little from my life back then remains, and it just got to me.

Oops

2010-04-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, after more 50+ hour weeks than I care to think about, the current release of my company's software package is finally closed for development. Of course, it will be very interesting to see how the testing goes. It closed a week late, with the central lending project the largest and last one submitted, with 18 known issues, and still unstable, but it is formally closed. But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that with the financial industry regulations being changed in the 1st week of March for a July 1st implementation, we are now officially up the creek. Because we chose to implement an intermediate solution for last year's release of the software, that release cannot be updated to handle the latest regulatory changes. This has now turned the first release of this years software into a mandatory install for all of our clients, preferably by the end of July. It will be a most interesting testing cycle to watch, and more interesting to watch management deal with this absurd situation. If the testing goes bad, we have no fall back strategy in place. With hindsight, it is now plain to see that instead of patching last years software with an intermediate solution (one that did not involve and database changes) we should have issued an extra regulatory release of last year's software, with the final version of the code changes including the database changes for the regulatory changes as we then knew them. If we had done that early in this year, then these very late changes could have been addressed in that release as a patch.

In any case, it will be fun to watch.

Well run project reviews

2010-03-06T15:39:00.001-08:00

I just love a well run technical project review. With this cast of participants, how could it not produce positive results:
o The senior manager sitting in the corner sulking
o The senior technical designer doing his nails
o One reviewer eating
o The reviewer with the most experience in the area not paying attention

At the end, the lead technical designer called the user interface ugly. The nature of the project was such that a business designer was not assigned, and he was the one assigned the user interface.

Fortunately, my participation was only for the low level interface, and that is working just fine.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-23T22:11:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas all!

Yes!

2009-08-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you really aren't surprised by someone's statement. A colleague was strutting his stuff (or at least trying to) to one of the junior programmers and stated, "Would you believe I was a self taught programmer?" My first thought was to shout YES BECAUSE YOU ARE A CRAPPY, SLOPPY, SLOB OF A PROGRAMMER!! But I wisely kept my mouth shut while he continued on, "Yea I went to school, and by the end I was teaching the professor stuff." This does not surprise me, that he thought he was teaching something to the professor, he has that high an opinion of himself. I had heard enough, and interrupted with work, interestingly enough to go over one of his 'improvements' that I needed to rebuild from scratch to extend the functionality of. To me, he will always be a stray cat and this was just another of his rodent's I was having to clean up.

When yoda speaks, listen, you should.

2009-08-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

Working in software, you time is valuable. In addition, your time is often billable to clients or capitalizable for your company. You track your time, what projects you are working on, defects, bug fixes, client calls, planning meetings - you track it all. You don't do this because its fun, you do it because it is necessary. You especially do it when times are tight, because if you bill your time to clients it makes the company money and when you capitalize your time, the expense is spread over time and both those things makes the bottom line better. Your company buys MS project organizing software that allows you to track it painfully. Oh, did I say that out-loud, of course what I meant is that they buy time tracking software that allows you to track it painlessly (or not in our case.) When you switch to a department where most of the time is on capitalizable projects, you beg endlessly for you manager to setup - oops that out-loud thing again - ask your manager to authorize you to log time against the department's projects which of course are already setup (or not in our case.) And so when you get to the end of the quarter, there your department is with 80% (or 0% in our case) of your time either billed or capitalized and the VP of the division is a happy camper. In our case, he isn't and my manager and his manager both got called out on their failure. All I have to say is, I TOLD YOU SO!

Vacation Brain Mush - Reversed!

2009-06-22T22:19:00.001-07:00

Have you ever gone on vacation, and when you come back to work, you feel as if your brain has turned to mush because you just can't remember stuff? Well Monday was my first day back at work after a week off, and my brain was just fine today, but my co-worker's brains seem to have turned to mush in my absence. I am in the lowest position in my department, a Software Engineer 1. Before I left, I completed a project and submitted it for peer review. It is complex enough that an SE 2 and 2 SE 3's were asked to review it. The meeting was suppose to be today, but the SE 2 hadn't started the review as of this morning, one of the SE 3's is out of the office for the week and sent an e-mail stating he didn't get it reviewed before he left, and the other SE 3 started reviewing it on Friday and wasn't ready either. They were told to plan on the review taking 8-12 hours to complete, but all three blew it off. Also, the SE 2 coding to the my design on another project hit some problems last week and "couldn't solve them." So I spent the morning with him, and one of the problems was a one line coding error that took 15 minutes to find and the other was a pre-existing issue that he "thinks" he tested for last week, but one I was able to duplicate in the current software in 5 minutes. This stuff sat for 4 days for no good reason. Finally, I was asked to peer review someone else's code. After spending 3 hours on it, I found twice as many issues as the SE 2 and SE 3 combined who reviewed it last week. It is like all of their brains just turned to mush while I was gone. Again, I'm the lowest person on the totem pole, so there is no reason my vacation should turn them all into lazy idiots, but I guess it did.

Cleaning a tea mug

2009-06-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

I have a stainless steel mug for tea at work (the company has a reasonable rule, all drinking cups must be covered.) Anyway, I wanted to clean it and after some research found the recommendation was for baking soda and boiling water. Turns out, it works as advertised, and I have a nice shinny mug again.

Just a nice image

2009-06-05T22:05:00.000-07:00

I have been at my current job as a Software Engineer for a little over 2 years now. There are some people who have been in the department for over 10 years, which is a very long time for an IT person in a software company. We have one person who has been with the company for over 15 years, and has an 'interesting' history. (He is the person I referred to as toxic previously.) He was one of the last people hired by the founders (who have since departed) and was in the software development department for quite some time. Around 7 years ago, he was denied advancement into a position in the software development department that he wanted and basically quit in a huff. He was 'coaxed' back to work in the support department (we have 300+ employees). Even though he was in support, he was being consulted with by both employees and management in the development department. When I was hired in, he would routinely show up in meetings and say things that didn't seem to make sense, but I was new and didn't have the wherewithal nor the experience at the company to challenge him. He also would show up at code reviews at the end of coding a project and complain about the design of the project, something that should have been done at the start. In short he would who up and drop things in the meeting at leave smirking and carrying on about he blew-up some project years ago, when what he was really saying was that he had just done it again - aint it great. About 6 months after I was hired, the manager I report to was hired in, and about 6 months after that she informed us that she was bring this person back into the development department in a very senior position. I had a discussion that day with her and informed her in no uncertain terms that this person is a trouble maker and even though he causes us problems from outside our department, I believed we were better off without him than with him. She said she was aware of this, but felt it would be better to have him in the department and under her supervision. Well after a year working with this person almost daily, I have come to two conclusions: This person is retired in place and is a functioning alcoholic. All of this is lead in to the team meeting we had with all 30 people who are in our managers reporting structure. We were discussing the need to better document our standards, making them less tribal knowledge (I always called it corporate knowledge) and more documented practices and was getting good participation from several key people, when from the back comes this long loud groan from him. He then goes on to expound about how 'he' has been fighting that battle for 12 or 13 years and proceeds to completely dismiss the idea in a disingenuous and disheartening way, essentially shutting down and ending the positive discussion about it. (I mean really, in over 12 years he could have documented just what we were talking about by himself in just a couple of hours a week.) In over 20 years, I have never seen an employee be as disrespectful of a manager, coworkers, or a meeting as this person was with that groan and the "I couldn't do it, it can't be done, so don't even try" speech. Later in the day, I had a meeting with the manager and told her exactly that, and she didn't disagree with me. As she put it, he is just a stray cat, one who got encouraged by the previous management personnel and now we are stuck with him. I think it is a nice image for him, every once in while he shows up and drops a dead rodent into our meetings and the rest of us have to clean it up. What she said next gave me the only encouragement for the day, we are transitioning our development to a new platform and he will definitely be one of the persons working in the legacy support area - i.e. once we have completed the transition, he will be let go.

Setting an example - NOT!

2009-03-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

Last week the HR department introduced a mandatory on-line sexual harassment training session. As someone who was laid off because he complained about the quality of work of a peer to his supervisor, only to find out later that the two of them were having an affair, and because some people are, well, asses, I understand the need for this sort of training. However, my supervisor managed to undermine (and really reduce his credibility) of it by quite loudly complaining that he, "couldn't figure out a way to cheat the training to get it over quicker." Yes, he is someone who will take short-cuts, but I really don't think he understood that he was undercutting the value of the training to everyone within earshot of him, and anyone they repeated it to. Plus, you have to ask, he is a supervisor at the company and he feels it is ok to "cheat" (his word) on on-line training, what else is it ok to cheat on and is that how you get ahead in the company?

Boy does this hit home

2008-12-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

I was reading the TechRepublic article Five things your manager could be doing better and a couple hit home:

1. Dealing with personnel problems sooner rather than later. Yep, we have a problem person who is always late, toxic, and intimidating when peer reviewing your work, and hostile to reviews of his work. She brought him in from another department over the concerns of a couple of people, myself included . He is a long time employee and (as a Subject Matter Expert) would review projects late in the process, instead of early on as he was suppose to, causing all sorts of grief to our department. She insisted having him in the department would be less troublesome than having him in someone else's department and causing us problems with no accountability. Its not working out so far, as his sloppy approach to code design cost me 20 hours last week alone, and the department over a 100.
4. Be an advocate for the team. Oh boy, does this apply. Since the first day she walked in here, she has expanded the role of our department. We have taken over various support duties from other departments (we are suppose to be a development department) and now are taking on some QA roles as well. The last one is particularly galling as we have a well staffed QA group who do excellent work. But starting in January, we are going to take on 'Validation' testing of projects before they are submitted to QA. We are suppose to do this with no increase in personnel and with everyone fully scheduled with projects to the point any defects that come in, cause someone to be pulled from a project.

Moral killer

2008-11-22T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well I had a not fun week. By the end of the day on Tuesday, I suspected something was up. On Thursday morning it was announced that 16 positions had been eliminated, in the implementations area. Not surprising as we had gone from 5 installs a month to 2. The shock was at the end of the day when we were told 2 senior managers, one with 15 years and one with 22 had been laid off. This makes no sense, as both these people were good managers, were well liked, and had a broad understanding of the company. What is worse, is that my manager, whom they both reported to, apparently was not told of them being let go until after it had been done. This does not leave you with any type of secure feeling. My manager knows I do good work, and I get handed the toughest defect assignments (customer reported issues), which means I don't get a lot of them cleared. I also have been working on initial development efforts on new technology, also not something that is easily quantifiable. Between these two areas my time tracking looks bad at first glance. So if my manager is not being consulted before her people are let go, who do I see to ensure I have a job on Monday?

A fine Dilbert moment

2008-07-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

Today I had one of those 'Dilbert' moments. I was in a project review meeting, and a senior manager started complaining about how a part of the project is one that he had had conversations about in the past and he didn't understand why it hadn't been fixed previously. The Dilbert part of this is that it is his job to determine what is a priority to be fixed. In other words, he was criticizing his own past performance.

Ah to live the Dilbert life.

An extended warranty pays off

2008-02-03T17:14:00.000-08:00

If you have read my posts, you know I'm a Mac owner. I've also owned an iPod since late 2002. My latest I bought 2 years ago this week. How do I know this, because when the hard drive died last week and I bought it to the Apple store last Saturday, the Applecare Protection Plan had 7 days left! The person at the Genius bar confirmed it was dead, took one look at the APP paperwork and would have swapped it on the spot, but didn't have one in stock. So it took 4 days to get one shipped in, but I still got a new (refurbished) unit with no fuss. I paid $60 for the APP plan, which is the cheapest price I could find for a replacement hard drive for, but would have had to install it myself, so the plan paid off for me as I have a new unit not just a new hard drive.

Office 2007 - Where did my menus go?

2008-01-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

So this was the week my company made the Office 2007 update 'mandatory'. I came in Tuesday (got to love banker's holidays) and started the update. I start Exchange 2007 and . . oh my god, where did my menus go? Every office program has had its menus blown into little bits. I spend more time trying to find things than I think is reasonable. Of course, with a new office suite comes a new set of bugs and/or features. I have two favorites so far. In Exchange if you have a repeating to-do with a reminder time set for it, it now has been assigned a Due Date. If you create a new repeating to-do, it also gets a due-date assigned. The problem, is when the reminder pops up, the “Due in” time will be from now to the ‘End Time’ you set in the Calendar Options. If you have a to-do without a Due Date, the Due In time in the Reminder will be from now to the alert time. So now when I come back to my desk, and have a reminder or two with a due in of so many hours instead of 20 minutes late because it was due at 10:00, and it is now 10:20. What have I had to do, go to all the to-do's and put the time the to-do is due in the title. My second bug is that sometimes when you are typing a new message in Entourage, and you make a spelling error, and stop typing without typing a space or period, and right click on the error, the suggested spellings are not displayed. If you right click the word again, then the suggested spellings are displayed. My favorite inconsistency added in 2003 and still present in 2007 is that in Excel you have a master close/maximize/minimize set of boxes and a second row for the front-most spreadsheet. In Word you only have a set for the document you are on. In Excel if you close the last document, the program is still running. In Word if you close the last document, it shuts down until you open the next one. I don't know about you, but I go through 5 to 10 documents a day opening and closing them, and I hate closing the last one because of the noticeable pause as Word re-starts. My least favorite bug from 2003 still in 2007 is in Excel when you open a spreadsheet from a Web based application, Excel doesn't move to the front, you have to go and get it yourself. Word will move to the front when a document is opened from the same Web application.

End rant. I feel better now.

Backups are you friend . . .

2008-01-05T18:42:00.001-08:00

Well, for the first time in since I originally bought my computer, it crashed with a disk error. I own a somewhat abused PowerMac G5. Aside from problems when it was first purchased (and repaired by Apple), it has been a trouble free system. Last weekend, I updated it to the current OS 10.5.1 with no problems. However, on Wednesday it crashed very hard with a disk error that is not recoverable (invalid key length) and required the partition to be erased and the os re-installed. The only saving grace is that I frequently (every couple of days) backup the 'Users' portion of my computer which contains all of my data and preference settings. The bad news is that the last full backup I had was just prior to the upgrade. In retrospect, I should have started with that full backup, then applied all of the data backups and moved on. Instead, I started fresh with a new 10.5.1 install, restored all of my user data, and have been slowly installing each of my applications. After about 20 hours of working on this, it is now Saturday night and I am about half way done. I have no idea what caused the disk error, but I know I had older software on that system and my guess is one of those programs or underlying system installs caused my issue.

The end is here . . .

2007-11-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

This was in Saturday's Union Tribune and is online at signonsandiego.com:

Advanced Marketing's liquidation plan OK'd

Advanced Marketing Services, the bankrupt San Diego book distributor for warehouse retailers, won court approval of its bankruptcy liquidation plan. The move allowed the company to pay creditors, including publishers Random House and Simon & Schuster, from 29 cents to 100 cents on the dollar on about $100 million in debt.

AMS and its Publishers Group and Publishers Group West filed for bankruptcy protection Dec. 29, three years after the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission began probing its financial reporting and advertising. The company has resolved all pending shareholder suits.

Bloomberg News

Sunroad's building

2007-08-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

As a longtime resident of San Diego, I have been following the Sunroad saga here with interest. In short Sunroad Enterprises built a building that is too tall in the flight path of the busiest municipal airport in San Diego county. The local paper had a good two part (one two) investigation into how the building was built. Now that an internal investigation has been completed and show to be questionable, two city officials have either resigned or been terminated. Now in all of this, the paper has only published one adequate shot of the tower, it is the arial shot in part one of the two part story. I was in Kearny Mesa today, and took a number of photos. If a photo is worth a thousand words, here are about seven thousand from me.

This first one is from about a mile away looking east/north-east.

These two are from about a 3/4 mile looking North/North-West. They were shot from the top of a 3 story parking garage. For reference both the building immediately in the foreground and the white one behind it are two stories tall. The third building that only the very top of can be seen (white with vertical black stripes), is now owned by Sharp and is about 500 feet from the Sunroad building. I believe it is a 4 story building, and know it was originally part of the General Dynamics plant.

These two are looking South from about a half mile away, along the interstate the building is next to. Again, the Sharp building can be seen in the background. You can use the power line for a very accurate comparison as to how much taller the Sunroad building is compared to the Sharp building, previously the tallest in the area.

These final two are looking West, about down the flight path an airplane making a missed bad weather approach will fly. Small planes will fly to the left of the building, and large planes to the right.

In all of the pictures, it is obvious how out of place the Sunroad building is for the area it is built in. The building is 7 stories taller than the next tallest building in the area, plus it has a 10-12 foot structure on the roof in addition. The master plan for the area calls for low-rise industrial/residential buildings of not more than 4 stories. I doubt we have heard the end of this, however this building will be another blot on San Diego's skyline for many years to come.

Think Baker & Taylor is happy?

2007-08-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm behind, but I saw this a couple of days back. Short of it is, AMS is now launched an investigation of the 1.76 Million B&T wants in expenses and fees for the acquisition. Just two greedy companies slugging it out, and only the lawyers winning.

And the reverberations continue . . .

2007-06-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Just saw this article in salon with a glimpse of the fallout from the AMS/PGW bankruptcy.

The real reason why a job hunt is so frustrating

2007-06-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have been at my current job just a little while (Since Feb 26th), and my job search was a nightmare. I went to 3 interviews where I relly thought they were just asking questions to see why NOT to hire me. I couldn't understand what was going on, and really thougth I was reading people wrong and imagining things. Now I have watched this video and understand.

Why pilots get paid the big bucks

2007-06-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

Check this video of a bird strike on a 757 engine during takeoff.

Thoughts on Network Programming for NBC

2007-05-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Hey NBC, here's a real winner of an idea. Now that you have dropped Studio 60, blown off the Black Donnely's, and had a real Wedding crash, here is what you can do to fill in the 10 PM slot on Monday. Take one of your lagging shows, say one with a "real expensive" cast that you are not thrilled with, and instead of showing one night a week at 10 PM (following another show cut from the same cloth, just cheaper) run it 2 nights a week! Hey and on the first night trim out 2 minutes so, you know, people will watch it both nights to see what they missed!! Of couse, not everyone will do that, so some people are going to stop watching it on Tuesday and it will fall in the ratings. But of course, if you add the two showings together, it should be good. Now of course, you have to remember that Neilsen wont be adding that up and will list the 2 showings independent of each other, and most journalists will report that the show fell in the raitings. Just giving you a heads up on that point.

I don't know, I think sarcasam comes across just fine over the internet.

Why 30 Rock and not Studio 60

2007-04-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

It is really simple, NBC doesn't own Studio 60 and since they don't own it they won't let it be a success. See this TVSquad article for all the details. This is the classic boneheaded management maneuver that I will never understand. Studio's know that the 10 PM time slot is tough, yet Studio 60 consistently outscored 30 Rock when 30 Rock was in the very 9 PM time slot that Studio 60 was supposed to occupy.

When will they get it??

2007-03-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

I just have to ask, when will the TV executives get it? They take really good shows that have a broad appeal, then schedule them at 10 PM at night. I am a well paid intelligent person, and I get into bed around 10:15 at night so I can get up in the morning and earn my living. I can't fudge my way through the day on 6 hours of sleep. I'm not alone. Really good shows, and I'll use Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip as a case in point, get clobbered time and again in the 10 PM slot. Yet if you look at the ratings, you will find Studio 60 always did better in the Chicago market (as a percentage of viewers) as opposed to NY or LA. Why, because in Chicago, it airs at 9PM Central Time. Hey NBC WAKE UP!! Why not schedule this on Monday: 8:00 Deal or No Deal, 9:00 Studio 60, 10:00 The Black Donnellys. What do they do instead: 8:00 Deal or No Deal (Repeat), 9:00 Deal or No Deal (1st airing), 10:00 The Black Donnellys. I'll bet there is a good overlap between Deal and Studio 60, and a fair overlap between Studio 60 and Donnellys, but I know there is NO overlap between Deal and Donnelley's. But I'm just an average computer programmer, not a studio executive pulling in 6 or 7 figures.

Uh what?

2007-03-10T16:27:00.000-08:00

Also in Saturday's UnionTribune was a short item in the Nation Update section. I can not get a link, but it is an update about, "three girls were suspended after they used the word "vagina" while reciting the play." The quote is a direct one from the paper, and to me it reads that they recited the whole play. What was the title of the play you ask, the next paragraph reads, "Eve Ensler, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues" has accepted . . . " and my mind just plain old locked up. Then I started laughing, hard! I have (and I am a Man) experienced (or maybe been subjected to) the live play. Trust me, the least offensive word (taken out of context) in the play is "vagina". I was sitting there trying to figure out how someone could only object to the word vagina, when just for starters there is an entire section for other names for a coochie. So I really couldn't understand this short update, it is maybe 4 column inches total and is credited to the Associated Press. Proving context is everything, the Journal News has a much better description, in which it states they were only reading a section of the play, and one of the mildest ones at that. After reading the Journal article it made more sense, but what jack-ass of a school administrator objected to the word. I can see not wanting it to be used out of context, but they read straight from the script. The play is definitely in your face feminism, and has some VERY adult sections, but the one section that they read what word would that stupid school administrator like to have seen used? Beyond that, we get into the whole censorship question and what is appropriate for minors, which is something I'll let others tackle. But I still have this vision of three girls going through the monologs and afterward someone (with a bow tie, nasal voice, and wagging a finger) saying, "you shouldn't have used the word "vagina". I am going to have to suspend you now." Finally, I just have to ask, is Bob really that unusual these days?

An unhappy ending - BUT WHY?

2007-03-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

So there was an article in Saturday's UnionTribune about then end of AMS. In it is the now rote line about how in 2003, "it was revealed that several of AMS' advertising executives were sharply overchaging publishers" and later, "As a result, the company has not produced a quarterly or annual financial staement in three years," blah blah blah. Maybe I'm seeing a conspiracy where none exists (I do belive Lee Harvy Oswald did it alone, and I will NEVER EVER watch another Oliver Stone movie) but I can not believe that one vice president and 2 mid level execuitves (along with one accountant who turned everyone else in) can crash a company with 1 Billion in sales. A short re-cap, the company declared bankruptcy because their secured line of credit was called. It was called because they did not produce audited financial reports. However they put press releases in November '05 and March '06 with financial results they expected to be audited. If they had simply gotten one year's audited results out by July 31st (when their last loan extension ended) I am sure Wells Fargo would have extended it at whatever interest rate they were charging. In the November release they stated the restated and delayed 10K and 10Q's were comming. So what happened? If you know and want to spill the beans, email me at popmansplace at google.com or contact Dean Calbreath at uniontrib.com. (Put a dot between his first and last name.)

2007-02-16T23:07:00.000-08:00

I was watching a show I recorded (I love my ReplayTV) called "Really Really Big Things" and they were back stage at Cirque Du Soleil's "KA". Among other things they had introduced the host to working on the vertical wall. You don't realize how good the artists are until you see someone who is not. Take a look:

Can you say "abs of steel"?

Acing a job interview

2007-02-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

So two weeks ago I had a job interview with a software company here in town. This was not the one I had the little rant about ("Great job interview - lousy wait) previously. When their recruiter called early in that week to setup the interview, I was surprised to hear back from him as I had met with him very briefly at a local job fair and he didn't seem very interested in talking to me. So I went in to a 3 on one interview, with two managers and one director, and thought I did very well. Apparently I did, because Monday I received a job offer and today I signed the written one. I haven't said a thing to anyone about this nor posted anything as I didn't want to jinx it, because I really want to work there. The company is a well established specialized software firm with over 400 clients in a business area that is in a steady growth phase. I haven't stated their name or particulars and I wont due to the confidentiality agreement I have signed with them. Best of all, because of the position I will be in, for the first time in 20 years I will not be on-call for support. Of all the things I am looking forward to that is the biggest. I have been paged in every conceivable circumstance (for those of you whose mind is in the gutter, yes even while doing it.) So yea for me! And we got a West Wing Fantasy 8 episode this week so it was a winner all the way around!

Oh for those of you who are starting a job search, try reading "The Ultimate Job Search" by Richard H Beatty. It helped in focusing my efforts and I ended up doing 5 interviews in the last 4 weeks, mostly because of the book. Now I'm a programmer, so its techniques worked for me but may not for you. I also had my resume reviewed by a number of different technical recruiters to get it formatted with the information they want to see readily available. The interviewing chapters of the book also definitely worked for me, and I always left them feeling that I had put my best foot forward. If you read it and don't think it is appropriate for your job search, read different job search book(s) until you find one that works for you.

Is AMS worth only $76 million?

2007-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

So what is B&T up to with their offer? Well from my reading of the offer, it is more important what they are walking away from, the leases for the Dallas TX DC, Baltimore MD DC, Indianapolis IN DC, and San Diego CA corporate offices. (BTW any AMS employee reading this take note, you will not have an office to work in once this deal closes. If you get a written offer to move to North Carolina, good for you. For the rest, oh well it was fun while it lasted.) They are retaining the rights to the Sacramento CA DC, Indianapolis IN returns center, Ashland OR office, and the Bentonville AK office. Beyond that they are asking for their choice of APG inventory at 75 cents on the dollar, the A/R at 77.5 cents on the dollar, and everything not bolted down (and a lot of things that are) in all facilities they are abandoning, and everything in those they want to keep. To me this feels more like a first stab at a liquidation offer more than anything else. Keeping only the Sacramento DC is an expansion move by them (they have no DC west of the rockies, only one in Reno NV) to service CostCo. The Bentonville office is for local Sam's/Walmart represenatives, but I have no idea what the Ashland office is for. The Indy returns center has a brand new processing machine for stripping book covers and pulping books, so they could turn that into a central processing center for hurt books (it makes no sense to ship good books there only to ship them back to a DC.) The rest of it is simply them acquiring assets. Is all of it worth only $76 million? To B&T it is a good starting point for an offer. Either they think it is high enough to discourage other offers, or low enough to encourage one allowing them to collect their $2.4 million "Stalking Horse" protections and walk away from their work with something.

I had a plan . . .

2007-02-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

You know I had a nice Sunday planned. I got up, posted my thing on AMS, made it to the gym, came back and took a shower. I turned off the water and heard this faint spraying sound. The bad news is I had a water leak from a bad solder joint in the wall. It took the entire day to fix (open wall behind shower, blow out the pipe, cut-out/de-solder the bad joint, solder in a replacement) and left me with the requisite scraped knuckles. Today, of course, I had a job interview for a mid-level programmers position today. Of course the interviewer noticed my knuckles and commented on them. When I told him what happened, he commented that he would never "do it himself". For some reason, the rest of the interview didn't go very well, with him attacking everything I said. Not a lot of fun. Oh well, I probably wouldn't have liked working for him anyway.

Day before decision day

2007-02-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

Ok, I woke up this morning at 6 AM and starting thinking about job hunting, Putin's comments on US foreign policy, and what is going to happen to Advanced Marketing Services (AMS) and Publishers Group West (PGW) tomorrow.

For AMS & PGW, tomorrow may be a historic day. At this point it is best to consider the options for both companies separately. I'll do the hard one first.

PGW:

1) Judge Sontchi could simply delay making any rulings. He could consider the NBN offer for PGW too recent to make a decision. This would depend on how many publishers have signed the NBN letter.
2) He could agree to the NBN buyout. Again depends on the number of signers.
3) He could agree to the Perseus buyout. Ditto.
4) He could throw PGW into chapter 7. This is extremely unlikely with 2 companies putting forward offers.

As part of the PGW resolution, one thing he could also do would be to order that PGW's inventory be physically separated out from AMS' in the Indy DC. Now the huge hitch in this would be be the secured loan agreement. I am not a lawyer, but my reading of it leads me to believe that both AMS' and PGW's inventory is being used to secure the loan. Remember, this is "Senior" loan, so the lender is first in line for all assets. At least there are parties actively interested in taking over PGW. Not so much (so far) with AMS.

AMS:

1) Someone could step up tomorrow and formally put an offer in for AMS. My feeling is this would be the VERY last day to do this.
2) Judge Sontchi could throw AMS into chapter 7.
3) He could throw AMS into chapter 7 pending resolution of the PGW sale.
4) He could simply delay a decision to throw AMS into chapter 7 until PGW's assets (its inventory) is physically separated out from the Indy DC.

Obviously I am not hopeful for AMS. The reasons for this are pretty simple. I have not seen one document in the various filings that state, here is how we can make AMS start making money. Remember, AMS' March 20th '06 press release was very coy about it, but they stated they lost money operationally (before legal and accounting costs) of about 1% on net sales in FY '05 and would lose between .5% and .8% in FY '06. In other words, they are not making money shipping books. This, more than any other reason, is why the creditors are pushing for liquidation. They recognize that AMS has no visible means to dig itself out of the hole it is in.

Ok, I'm off to the gym. I'll pontificate on the rest of my laundry list later.

Great job interview - lousy wait

2007-02-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

So I had this fantastic job interview yesterday. I'd be a good fit for the position, they are making money, have a large customer base, and all 3 of the people who interviewed me had over 15 years at the company. One problem, this is the first day the requisition is open, and they haven't done their internal interviews yet. It will be 2 weeks before I hear anything, and going by what I was told they like to fill internally first. So I really have to ask (out hear in cyberspace), "WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME INTERVIEWING ME FIRST IF YOU PREFER TO FILL INTERNALLY!!!" Ah, I fell much better now. Back to the job hunt.

Was that really the plan?

2007-02-03T01:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, when I first read Radio Free PGW's Slime of it all post, my first thought was no way would someone pre-plan a bankruptcy for Advanced Marketing Services. It would chew up any remaining good will the retailers and publishers might have towards them. Well, then I saw this Publishers Weely article. Check the last sentence quoting Well Fargo Foothill, "Indeed, prior to the filing, Foothill expected that a sale motion would be filed simultaneously with the [Chapter 11] petitions." Well, um, ok, um, yea. Don't know what else to do with that, but you know, there it is.

Oh, and poking around the Smith Declaration, I came across this tidbit. On July 31st, 2006 AMS defaulted on its line of credit with Wells Fargo due to not filing audited financial reports. So this was an absolute drop-dead deadline for filing those reports. Remember, on November 8th 2005, AMS released updated financial results for FY '00 through '03. The release makes it sound like they knew what the audited results were going to be, so why didn't they have Deloitte & Touche finish the audit? Well on March 20th 2006 AMS released revised updated financial results. The '06 update revised downward the results for '00, '01, and '03. It also included results for '04, and estimates for '05 and '06. The '06 update also states that "the Company believes [the audit] is nearing completion." So what happened in the following 4 months that caused them to not complete auditing the results? Of course Bruce Myers departed on May 6, 2006, but Curt Smith continued on as CFO. Or was it all a smoke screen? As stated in the Smith Declaration, the company had "been seeking to recapitalize their through a strategic transaction ... for eighteen months prior to the Petition Date" of December 29 2006. In other words since July or August 2005, they had been looking for either an investor or purchaser for the company. I can't imagine that went very well, a company with former executives pleading guilty to fraud, unable to produce revised audited financial reports for the prior 4 to 5 years, and wanting a cash infusion in the tens of millions of dollars. The DIP financing is for $75 million, so you have to figure that is in the neighborhood of the amount AMS was seeking. I have worked at companies going through an acquisition. The thing the executives on both sides of the transaction were always trying to confirm with their due diligence was that the financial reports were a true reflection of reality. This is an even better reasons for completing the audit. So again, why didn't it happen? What was the plan?

I'm famous!

2007-01-26T22:13:00.000-08:00

Ha, someone finally linked to me! Edward Champion has a large list of links on the AMS bankruptcy and potential sale of PGW to Perseus. He seems to be keeping it current.

I told you so part 3 - What do you mean it doesn't add up?!?!

2007-01-22T21:43:00.000-08:00

What I am about to relate, I do with some sense of bewilderment. I had a conversation with a former employee of AMS several months ago and we discussed AMS's continued inability to release audited financial reports. (This was when Robert Robotti was in a proxy fight in part over the unreleased financial reports.) This person's perspective (I'll call him Tom) was that, they might never release fully audited financial reports for FY '03 onward! Over 2 years ago, when AMS was struggling with their new systems and before the accounting scandle broke, Tom was approached (as a former employee) to review the new systems and possibly recomend ways to improve them. Tom spent a week reviewing the list of open issues and talking with individuals. At the end of the week, Tom informed the person who approached him that Tom would be "unable to devote the time necessary to fully investigate their issues and determine appropriate solutions." In fact, they were the only potential consulting contract Tom had at the time, and Tom walked away without submitting a single bill for his time nor anything in writing. In Tom's opinion at that point, AMS had dug their own grave (with their new systems), placed one foot firmly in it, had the other on a banana peel and he wanted nothing to do with them. It is my opinion, that the accounting misdeeds turned out to be the shove that ended them up in bankruptcy, not the central reason for it.

Now so you understand his background, Tom is a degreed IT professional, who has extensively supported finance departments. When Tom was brought in AMS was having several problems, including processing delays causing special ships, a higher level of manpower required to complete the same amount of shipping compared to the legacy systems, and interface issues between PkMS, Oracle order processing, and the Oracle accounting systems. Tom was asked to look into the interface issues. What Tom found astonished him and caused him to back out of the deal. In simple terms, the PkMS system (specifically the custom modifications) was generating unbalanced accounting transactions that were being loaded into Oracle and adversely affecting the profit and loss statements for AMS. Because of assorted issues, there was no programatic way to correct the errors, they were all going to have to be found and fixed by hand. The really bad news, was that there were thousands being generated on a monthly basis and when Borders was an active customer there were tens of thousands being generated monthly.

The detail of these transactions is as follows. AMS' inventory exists in several states and one title will be stored in multiple locations. A single title can have a status of active, inactive or stored (don't ask) and depending on the state can be in one or more of the bulk pack, piece pick, case pick, low steel, high steel, receiving dock, temporary, rework, returns, or storage locations. It is the responsibility of PkMS to manage the movement of inventory through these locations and the order processing. Obviously anytime a pallet or case is moved or a case or piece picked for shipment, PkMS needs to be updated so it knows where the inventory is, what pallet locations are occupied or available, what quantities are available in the case and piece pick locations, and which orders have been filled and which have yet to be. It is a very large and complex process to manage with AMS moving 40-50 Million books a year through its operations. As some of these movements occur, PkMS needs to generate accounting transactions to update the financial reports. As PkMS is updated with inventory movements within a DC, it generates accounting transactions for the Oracle financial systems. (I do not understand for the most part why these transactions are generated, Tom is the expert.) An example would be 4 cases are pulled from case pick to be broken down into singles for the piece pick area. The cases would be scanned when picked, then again when placed in the piece pick area. At the end of the shift, or on the next shift, one of the cases is still unopened and the decision is made to place it back in case pick. Again, the case is scanned when pulled from piece pick and when placed back in case pick. At each scan a transaction would be generated for the financial systems. Where the wheels came off the rail is that at each scan, the person doing the scanning would be queried by the system as to why they were scanning the case, and their answer would determine which financial account would be credited or debited with the inventory value. In our example the one case that was returned back to case pick should credit the value in the account that was debited when the 4 were pulled for a net change of (the value of) 3 cases. However, in our example, the person putting the case back would have no way to know what reason the person who pulled it told PkMS (in this case there is a correct choice, but for other cases multiple answers were valid) for the pull so would simply use their best judgment on which code to use. In theory only two accounts should have been touched in our example, but in fact sometimes four accounts would be affected. Now, to be honest, as Tom described this I entered a state I can only describe as "on Tilt", having been given information that I could not come up with any reasonable explanation for. The jobs at the DC are, for the most part, one step up from fast food positions and attract a wide variety of people with different work ethics, some of whom when asked by a system why the just picked or placed a case of books will select the first choice every time. My opinion is that asking these people (regardless of the work ethic) why they just performed something they were asked to do is a totally inappropriate behavior for a software package, and one that is guaranteed to generate errors. Unfortunately for AMS, these errors were directly loaded into the GL, AP, and AR accounting areas. At the time Tom looked into it, he estimated there were between 100,000 and 500,000 unbalanced transactions that needed to be fixed, all by hand. As a side note, I do know PkMS was originally designed for a high value low volume warehouse operation, not the low value high volume distribution center operation of AMS. Maybe asking these questions in the environment PkMS was designed for made sense, however it does not for AMS. As I said in Part 2, PkMS was not a reasonable software package for AMS to select.

It is my personal speculation that these transactions are why AMS is still unable to restate their FY '03 (the first FY with PkMS in production) financial reports nor state their FY '04 and beyond. Now you might ask, they put some numbers out for FY '03, how did they do that. My answer is that, I don't know. What I do know is that Arthur Andersen LLP was the independent auditor for AMS and AMS stuck with them until long past the indictment in '01. Deloitte & Touche took over late in the FY '02 audit, and when they audited the FY '03 reports it was their first full pass through them. The FY closes for AMS on March 31st, with the results announced toward the end of May. It was the end of July when the first search warrants were executed. You can speculate all you want as to what happened between March '03 and July '03, I have no idea. As for not releasing the revised reports, my guess is that with the intense scrutiny involved, no one will certify the audit until the unbalanced transactions are rectified. Like I said, quite possibly the real reason why AMS has not restated its FY '03 nor filed its FY '04 financial reports.

Update 1/27/06 16:37 PT: Ok, after hearing from other sources, it turns out Tom's departure from AMS was not amicable. At the time I put this post together I was under the impression that Tom had originally left AMS due to the general unpleasantness going on. It turns out there was a bit of shoving done by the then CIO (BB). Do I think he totally snowed me on this, no I don't. I believe the unbalanced transactions are a problem (I have other sources on that.) Did he possibly exaggerate the scope, possibly. Understand, I worked with this person before I left and trusted him implicitly. When we met last year, he stated to me that I got out at the right time before the implementation got really ugly and he regretted the time wasted battling management before he left. Turns out BB encouraged him to move on using motivating techniques such as removing all direct reports from Tom and having him report to one of his prior subordinates. From personal experience, that leaves a mark. So take the scope of the problem with a grain of salt. Until someone else can supply some information on the scope of the issue, I am going to stand with what I said, in general. The interface problems between PkMS and the Oracle financial systems have left AMS with issues that prevent it from filing fully audited financial results for FY '03 and beyond.

I told you so part 2 - How not to do a software implementation!

2007-01-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

All of the information I am about to impart I have received 2nd hand. The names have been removed to protect the individuals involved. When last we left our company the decision had been made to implement purchased applications to replace the custom ones the company had been using. Sometime after I left the company in '98 both the VP of IS and the Manager of Application support also left and/or were let go (I have heard both) over differences with senior management involving the software implementation. These were both very long term (> 10 year) employees who's input to the process was basically ignored. After their departure a third party consulting company was brought in to implement the applications. They basically did it the way they were instructed to do. Between the exit of the 2 senior managers, the consulting company, the hiring of a VP of IS and his promotion to CIO, and the promotion of the most junior analyst (< 2 yr seniority) to Manager of Application support by the new CIO, this killed the morale of the remaining IT people. They all understood that it was do it the way you were told or hit the road. This mindset is a really bad one to exist going into the very critical software selection for the distribution centers. This software drives the way the DC's work, and the DC's is where the company makes its money. Some extra overhead in the accounting systems is not a big deal. A little bit of extra overhead dealing with the product can eliminate the company's profits. The role of the in-house IT department in a software selection process is to understand both how the company works now and see how a potential software product will support those process' and how they will have to change to fit the product. In the specific case of AMS, the major evaluation of a software product needed to be how efficiently it implemented the specialized shipping procedures for dealing with case packs of items. From my point of view, the selection of the PkMS product is a black box, I do not know how AMS ended up with this product and have not been told anything I believe. What I do know, is that in its standard implementation PkMS was not capable of implementing AMS' core business, shipping cases of books to customers. Let me state that again, in its standard implementation PkMS was not capable of implementing the central money making process of AMS, the primary reason for its purchase! Just so you understand, PkMS in its standard form, was not capable of processing the 20% of AMS' orders that represent 80% of its volume and profits. Any selection process that produces this kind of result is invalid. So to work for AMS, PkMS had to be extensively modified to meet AMS' needs, an expensive, time consuming, and bug creating process.

I do not know the details of the project, but in total AMS spent $26 Million to purchase PkMS, customize it extensively to support processing by the case, implement customized order processing in Oracle, implement customized interfaces from PkMS to Oracle financial applications, implement customized interfaces from PkMS to and from AMS' legacy applications, test, and implement the setup. The implementation for this was scheduled for summer of '02 during FY '03. The cutover process was setup based on the way the customers ordered with small quantity singles customers first, larger quantity singles customers next, and finally the case pack ordering club customers. Due to the way the cutover process was designed, it had to occur at the fiscal month end. (If someone wants to email some details, I would personally be interested in why this was an issue.) The schedule was initially for the first customer to be cutover in June with the last in August. However, the schedule badly slipped, and during '02 only the customers ordering singles were converted to PkMS, with the club customers remaining being shipped from the legacy systems. Between the missed conversions causing AMS to continue using its legacy system for case customers, issues with the custom interfaces, a large contingent of outside consultants 'tuning' the new systems, and a generally poor holiday season for retail, AMS had a disastrous fall in '02. One item of importance was the close to $2 million in special ship charges in the fall quarter. (An AMS special shipment is when books are shipped late from the DC by fast freight or air to arrive on time at the retailer.) One of these charges can be the difference for AMS between making a profit for the month or not. The reason for these charges is that the system interfaces were not processing the data quickly enough to meet AMS' schedule. This was not found during the testing, because the interfaces were not volume tested they were only tested for functionality (did they do it right.) At no point in the testing was the expected volume of transactions pushed through the interfaces to see if they would complete their processing in time. It turns out a number of systems were simply not capable of processing the volume of transactions necessary. Starting in early '03, all of the new systems were expanded dramatically, most doubling in size. This was a large unexpected capital expense, requiring AMS to tap its credit line further to the point it had to be increased. But in the meantime AMS was forced to special ship during its busiest quarter to ensure the Retailers received books on time.

All of this comes back to the morale and mind set of the original IS staff. When the outside CIO was brought in, he made it clear through his actions that you did things his way or you were out. No one who understood how AMS processed orders and understood software selection would have reasonably selected PkMS. Those were the longtime IS employees who were cut out of the selection process. When the Oracle/PkMS project implementation moved into high gear not one of them was directly involved with the implementation. None of those people would have had anything to do with selecting PkMS in the first place nor would they have assume the processing would work in a timely manner. However, they had neither the mind set nor approval to disagree with the projects path. Like I said, how not to do a software implementation

Do you see the foundation for Part 3 "it doesn't add up"??

Coming soon!

2007-01-16T19:57:00.000-08:00

Coming soon - I told you so Part 2 and Part 3. Oh, I was sooooo right!

Part 2: How not to do a software implementation - aka - how to blow $26 Million.
Part 3: What do you mean, it doesn't add up - quite possibly the REAL reason why AMS has not re-filed its FY 03 nor filed its FY 04 financials.

Anyone else who wants to email me information, please feel free to do so (see the link in my profile). I've been sent some of the pertinent facts, but not all of them. Of special interest is a first hand account of how they got hooked up with Manhattan Associates and when the accounting department realized the issues they are still struggling with.

Advanced Marketing Services Links

2007-01-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

Here are assorted links to the AMS information:

An author's perspective.
A former PGW employee's perspective.
Some really dark humor from a very disgruntaled person.
Another view from an author.

I will add more links as I find them.

I TOLD YOU SO!

2007-01-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

Ah, at last I can say it, I TOLD YOU SO! Many years ago I worked at Advanced Marketing Services (ticker MKTS.PK ). On Friday December 29th, they filed for bankruptcy. The reasons for this are many, all ultimately caused by inept senior management. Sometime this year you will find your local Costco or Sam's club with a limited book selection. AMS is the primary supplier for them. For most people, that will be the extent of the effect on their daily lives. If you read specialty books from Publisher Group West (PGW) you may be in for a very rough ride as PGW is wholly owned by AMS and will undoubtedly be negatively affected by this. As for me, I am long gone from them. My stock options are worthless and have been for some time. The reasons for these grants are a whole other story. As to why I knew this was going to happen, and have been expecting it for years, it starts with decisions made in 1998.

Back in '98 AMS was solely a book distributor purchasing pallets from publishers, tagging books individually for retailers, and shipping case lots to them. All of their software (distribution management, ordering, EDI, AP, AR, GL) was custom built for them. The decision was made to start implementing purchased applications capable of supporting a wider range of customers and general business diversification, starting with the financial systems: GL, AP, and AR, using Oracle financial software. Implementing purchased software as a replacement for custom, in theory, was a good idea. In practice it was a disaster from the start. The core problem was the lack of a project lead with both the responsibility and authority needed to complete a successful implementation. The IT department was being held responsible for the implementation, but was not given the authority necessary. Typical example, any one for any reason at any time could walk out of any meeting or simply not attend as they saw fit. When we tried to explain to management (from line managers up to and including the CEO) that the decisions made in these meetings would have a daily impact on the operations and profitability of the company for many years to come, we were (to be blunt) ignored. The reason this was allowed to happen (and this is hearsay) is that the CEO stated that daily operations were more important than the software implementation project. Anyone with any project experience will tell you that yes daily operations can be more critical than an implementation project but they are not more important. The other huge issue with the implementation was that the design of the accounting system done in Oracle closely followed the custom system that had been implemented. Basically, people took a look at how they were performing tasks with the current system and modified the Oracle systems to match them. When implementing purchased software, you always need to look at each process, and determine what needs to be accomplished and then modify the business procedures to suit the software. This fundamental software implementation error and the resulting management philosophy of telling IS to "do it the way we tell you to" was the start of the very long fall from grace of AMS. It was at this point that I left the company, feeling that their next project, to implement a purchased system for the management of the distribution process, was going to ultimately lead to the company's failure. This is what I stated to the CIO when I left. It took 7 years, but it did finally happen.

Thoughts on James Kim's death

2006-12-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

Like most tech people, I follow cNet and was aware early on about James Kim being missing. Now that the tragedy has unfolded, my first thoughts on this were how a small mistake, bad decisions, and one piece of bad luck lead to this tragedy. My background on this is that I went to college in northern California (CSU Sonoma) and made several weekend trips to the California/Oregon border. I don't know the area where all of this occurred, but if it is anything like where I was, the roads are mostly one lane affairs, with 60-100+ foot trees on both sides of the road. Unless you have a very detailed map, getting lost on a clear day is an easy thing to do. I don’t know what type of maps or mapping system he used or had available, but I have to assume that he used something to find this alternate route either in real time or before leaving on the trip. I have put a number of links to Yahoo maps in this so you can follow my thoughts.

On reading the report in today's paper my thought was, ok he missed his turn off from I-5 to route 42 and made his first bad decision to "take an alternate route" instead of back tracking to 42 and following the plan. I first checked a straight run from Seattle WA to the Tu Tu Tun Lodge and found it is a 471 mile trip of 8 and 3/4 hours for an average speed of 54 MPH, a long day by itself with 2 young children in a car. Add in a stop at a friends house in Portland (guess an hour minimum), and a dinner stop and you now have at least a 10 hour travel day, long but doable. But I noticed that Yahoo recommended OR-38 as the cutover from I-5 to 101, not 42. I checked Google maps and Mapquest and neither recommended OR-42. So I added a stop in Denny’s in Rodeburg and ended up with a 487 mile trip in just over 8 and 3/4 hours, so OR-38 and OR-42 are probably comparable in quality. The article also mentioned they were leaving the Denny’s at 8 PM, yet the mapping shows they still had over 137 miles and 3 and a half hours to go, so they would have arrived at the hotel at close to midnight. I have to wonder if they planned on arriving this late or if the day had gotten away from them (if someone asks, I’ll do a short explanation how this was the first issue in the chain that caused JFK jr’s death) and had they been paying attention to the weather and factored this into their plans. You have to ask yourself, do you really want to take your wife and two children out on a 3 and a half hour trip listed as 40 MPH in good weather when it is after sundown and raining/sleeting/snowing?? For me this is really their first bad decision because the trip would have been at least 4 and a half hours with the weather and they would be arriving well after 1 in the morning. Now I am assuming that they new the travel times involved, but I know when I’m traveling with children I know the length of time they can stand at a stretch and the travel times involved. This is one of those times when hindsight really is easy, and their are a number of questions I don’t have the answers to. Among them are, what was the weather like in Roseburg after their dinner (it is in a valley to the east of the hills and the weather was moving west to east, so it could be snowing on the west side of the mountains and simply overcast in Roseburg). If the weather was bad, how tight was their travel schedule and did they think they had the spare time to stay the night in Roseburg then travel over the mountains the next morning or did they feel they needed to "push" to keep to the schedule. I am assuming here that they wanted to finish their drive down the coast on 101 to San Francisco as it is very beautiful. I doubt we will ever know the answers to most of these questions.

From here, their mistake is repoted as “missing the turnoff onto OR-42”. But on checking this out as reported, it does not make any sense to me because he missed his turnout by about 58 miles! The exit for 42 was probably 4 miles south of where they had dinner, yet “[j]ust north of Grants Pass, they decided to try an alternate route”. This route starts 58 miles south of the OR-42 exit, so you have to ask is this bad reporting, sympathetic reporting (just another name for bad), or a deliberate decision to take a back route. I can not believe they went a full hour past their turnout before realizing it and turning back. Why they would deliberately choose this route is beyond me, it saves no time and no miles. The only thing that sort of makes sense is that it does lead to the road that the lodge is on. This would be they type of decision a navigation system with a poor quality of data (not recommending the better road) might make. It could also be a decision someone would make based on a map showing the back roads who was not fully aware of how bad they can be and also not cognizant of the weather. Either way, this is the road the ended up on. From there, the bad decisions continued. It has been stated that they saw the signs that the road may be blocked due to snow, but ignored them. Again, you have to ask how much time pressure they were under at this point (figure an hour and a half to back track to Roseburg then 4+ to the lodge). Also, could they have overnighted in one of the small towns on I-5 then made for the coast in the morning? At some point it is reported that James had to “stick his head out the window to see where they were going”. Again, when do you make the decision to turn back? Then they hit their spot of bad luck, with the gate being open on the entrance to the BLM road. This gate should have been shut and padlocked closed for the winter, but the padlock had been cut and the gate opened. This was done by either “vandals” as reported or someone incredibly stupid, because if you wanted access to the road and did not want to be disturbed, you would close the gate behind you. Either way they ended up lost on a twisty warren of roads that the authorities though access had been closed to. The next to last bad decision was to stop in a spot they “thought” could be seen from the air. At night in the back country with rain falling, there is no clear way to know how visible a spot is from the air. Also James “who had outdoor experience” should have known that the snow level continues to fall all night and what is rain at 2 am could well be snow before morning. In the morning they awoke to find their car snowed in. At this point, they had lost control of their own destiny and their survival became dependent on other people. It is reported that they had cell phones, which (even without a running engine) should have been chargeable with a car charger. Their best option at this point was to bring help to themselves by following the roads up hill until a cell signal could be found. Unfortunatly, Kim’s final bad decision was to leave the roads and cut cross country without a complete certainty in his current location and destination. It is a simple fact that even a cell phone’s radio signal can go much farther than a person can walk given their clothing and the weather conditions.

I do wish to express my condolences to the Kim family, they have lost a husband and father and must now continue on without him. I know their pain well.

Frustration

2006-10-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well to keep sharp I'm working on this on again project to monitor and respond to certain real time events. This is basically a way for me to learn programming in the Macintosh OS environment. Well it turns out I started the project partly down the wrong path (dumb bo bo) and am having to retrench. This is involving adding things at a root level of my project and is a long tedious process involving I/O code for objects. Some of that very necessary tedious coding that has to be done correctly or else nothing works. I'm down to the end of my night and its not done yet. The I remembered that yes it is Wednesday and we get the next installment The West Wing Fantasy Season 8, except its already 10 PM PT and it hasn't been posted yet on the Josh/Donna West Wing fanfiction group.

Blowing a job interview

2006-10-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I screwed the pooch on this one. This was a single company "Job Fair" with the company trying to fill a number of positions, including 9 Software Engineer positions I am interested in. I sit down with the first guy and we are going through my experience and he states that they are looking for stronger Oracle candidates and people who can start working immediately without a training process. When he said this, I really should have come back at him with something along the lines of good luck because Qualcomm sucked all those people up years ago and the ones they didn't aren't worth hiring. What I did say at that point doesn't matter, I just ended up trying to sell myself which is what you can't do in an interview.

A run of luck . . .

2006-10-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my week ends last week with my ReplayTV loosing all of my recordings then not being able to complete a recording and my Epson printer breaking down also, both on Thursday. On Friday, I traced the ReplayTV problem to a failed hard drive, replaced it (3 hours to install an Ethernet card in an old PC to d/l a clean image file, 30 minutes to load the image onto a new HD and replace it in the ReplayTV. The HD was one I had sitting around to upgrade the unit with, so no money out of my pocket, just the time involved to get the PC working. My Epson had ran out of black Ink, so I installed a new cartridge and then it stopped printing black entirely. The online help ended with a please send us an email and we will get back to you. This was early Saturday morning and on Monday I did get an email back of basically, call us and we will help you. I do that and after giving them my serial number the told me the unit was out of warranty and they wanted $9.95 to answer my questions. Well, I bought this printer for $80, I had just spent another $80 on Ink (it needed black and all 3 colors due to running the cleaning cycles to try and fix the problem) and now they want $9.99 to answer my question. Pass, since my best guess is that it would need service (on my dime). After another fun day of calling people job hunting, I'm off to Fry's to buy a printer. As I'm pulling in, I have the top down and hear that click-click-click of something stuck in my tire (hint convertibles have expensive tires). As I'm get out of the car I hear the hiss of air leaking out of a rear tire. No problem, I have run flat tires (expensive) and I'll limp home and get it looked at tomorrow. Sure enough in the morning it is flat, so I pump it up and take the car in. Since these are low profile (expensive) run flat (expensive) performance (very expensive) tires (for you gear heads 225/25 ZR 18) they are not stocked in San Diego and my car wont be available until Thursday at the earliest. Oh and I need 2 because of the tread wear after 30 K of my driving (corners are fun!) All told, a quick $1K with an alignment. So much for limiting my expenditures while I'm unemployed.

It's back - almost

2006-09-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

So last Friday I received my replacement motherboard from Beta Computers for my PowerMac 9600. I open the box and what do I find, a PowerMac 9500 (Five!) motherboard not the Mach V I ordered, and unfortunately they are not interchangeable between cases. A phone call and email later and they admitted shipping the wrong part. So I ship that back and today (Friday) I did receive the correct board. An hour of work to swap it out, a press of the power button, it started, chimed, the video came up (it didn't do this before), it sat for a few minutes checking memory, and booted! The first thing I did was run an intensive memory check, which promptly bombed, so now I'm doing the pull some DIMMs, run the check, pull more if it fails, get a good check, move the good modules to the high and low banks to allow testing of the old high and low banks, add them back one pair at a time until it fails, throw the last added set out, repeat until all spare DIMMs are exhausted, process.

but - it's alive! Yes!

Still not working

2006-09-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

Well, fully disassembling the 9600, cleaning it out, and reassembling it did nothing. (I really didn't expect it to.) I now have a replacement motherboard on its way to me from Beta Computers and I'm going to hope that is the problem because replacment G3/500 CPU cards are not reasonably priced.

And the luck just continues . . .

2006-09-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well my luck seems consistent recently. On Monday I finished up everything I needed and wanted to get done. So I sit down at my play computer (a PowerMac 9600) press the keyboard power button and nothing happens. I poke around and find the Belkin UPS has shut itself off and wont turn on. So I plugged the computer into a surge suppressor, pressed the power button and those nice startup chimes sounded, then nothing else happened. The hard drives spin up and calibrate but are not accessed, pressing Ctl-Cmd-Pwr causes a reboot, the screen briefly receives a video signal on boot/reboot but nothing is displayed. After 2 days the computer is still dead. I've tried the things I know (new PRAM battery, PMU reset, pull battery for an hour, reseating the CPU card, and pulling memory) all with no change. I'll pull the motherboard tonight and clean it and go from there. Since I'm job hunting right now, I don't have time for this and I could use a little interactive relaxation (Descent or Tomb Raider custom levels in OS 9) to release the stress on.

At least my cleaned G5 has had no issues from its recent encounter with soda.

Driving in Southern California

2006-09-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

I live in San Diego California and love it, except the traffic. I spent the day with a friend in Colton about 100 miles north on I-15. I left just before 8 and got home a little before nine thirty. Now most of you are thinking, 100 miles in 90 minutes - what traffic? [begin rant] Well in this case the "traffic" was mostly caused by the - how should I say this - occasional clueless dolt driving in the fast lane while pacing someone in the slower lane. Please folks, get a hint! If you are in the fast lane and it is open in front of you and there are cars behind you, it is time to pull one lane over. A good chunk of the drive I did (about half) is posted for 70 MPH, however almost all of it is a constantly undulating up and down affair with very little flat. This means that if you are driving a small SUV stuffed to the gills and with stuff on the roof rack you probably shouldn't be driving in the fast lane because you are holding up traffic going up hill and are going too fast downhill to control and brake your vehicle in an emergency. Another safety tip, if you are driving an SUV and towing a trailer that is weaving from side to side, it probably is a good time to put two hands on the steering wheel instead of using one on the top of it. (That was a scary site and one I was glad to put behind me.) Another little tip, an H2 may feel like a safe vehicle, but when you try and throw it around like a sports car (attempt to weave through traffic) it simply becomes an accident waiting to happen. Oh, and for the 10 minutes I watched that performance, I didn't change lanes and the H2 "overtook" me 4 or 5 times before finally exiting the freeway. However the scariest thing I saw coming back was where the highway is 3 lanes wide. I was following a couple of cars in the fast lane when we suddenly slowed down. After a few minutes this became a solid mass of cars doing about 65 in a 70 zone. I could see cars up ahead jostling around (changing lanes, accelerating, breaking) but nobody seeming to get ahead. You could just watch the tension build in people as we drove along by the way they were driving. As the pack slowly filtered out and I moved up I found, yes an SUV in the fast lane sitting pacing a car slightly in front of it in the #2 lane and cars having to under take them both (pass on the right). When I finally snuck by them, in front was nothing but relatively empty freeway, while behind them was at least 50 cars trying do the same. [end rant]

Thanks for letting me let off some steam.

What not to do

2006-08-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's something not to do. Thursday night I was going into my spare bedroom, with the computer in it, carrying a cup of soda. For some reason I decided to switch the hand it was in, missed the pass, and managed to drop the full cup onto the floor. I did this heading for the computer, so naturally the liquid splashed toward the computer. I thought I checked it and only found dome droplets on the front and cleaned those up. WRONG! I own a Power Macintosh G5, the one with the cheese grater front. I looked at the computer this morning (Saturday) and realized that yes there was a lot of liquid that had splashed inside, so I spent most of the morning cleaning the front facing fans, the DIMM memory modules and the motherboard of dried on soda. First I cleaned it with paper towels that I applied window cleaner to, then I cleaned the window cleaner residue off with isopropyl alcohol. By some miracle (so far) the computer seems ok.

Floyd, how could you?

2006-08-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

If you follow sports or cycling, you know what I'm talking about here. If not, you aren't interested. I have found a good detailed post on the testing of Testosterone from July 27th and its follow-up from August 1st. For now, I am going to assume the testing process was legitimate and Floyd did in fact use something. In all of that has been said about this, very few have asked "Why Testosterone?" As has been pointed out, using it for a single day's boost makes no sense. So, assuming it is true, then Floyd has been using it all along and had been masking it, possibly by boosting his levels of epitestosterone to put the ratio of the two into balance. Unfortunately, for Floyd, on the day he made his breakaway and won the stage his ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was off. Since he won the stage he was tested, along with the wearer of the maillot jaune and three random riders. He just got unlucky the day he won the stage, but did manage to get it right the 5 or 6 days he was in yellow.

Makes perfect sense.

Right?

Smiling on Thursday

2006-08-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

So why was I smiling while being escorted out of the building on Thursday morning? Yes, I was just laid off, and I was smiling! The reason is pretty simple, I was tired of working nights, I have been job hunting anyway, and now I get all my accumulated vacation, a severance payment, and outplacement support. The total money works out to about 10 weeks pay which is good for me. But mostly I realized I was looking forward to sleeping nights and being up days. And for the last few days, that is what I’ve enjoyed doing. Until today, I hadn’t realized just how tired and wrung out I have been for the last few months. I setup this Blog with the intent of just occasionally commenting on goings on in the world. I haven’t posted because I simply haven’t had the enthusiasm to do it. Too bad, you missed a couple of good ones along the way. At some point I might go back to those thoughts and share them. Going forward, my one thought is ‘Floyd, how could you?”

Hi All

2006-05-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well this will be my place to post my random thoughts on life.