Category Archives: Work

Sage Summit 2011

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The conference is nearly concluded and I have some highlights, some lowlights, and some lights that simply make me go “Huh?”. I really enjoyed the first part of the conference, when they unveiled the next edition of the database and revealed all the updates including the earnestness with which they are burying Java. This is something that I’m in great support of and think that the entire product will benefit from knocking the Java training wheels off of it. The middle of the conference was well presented, however the material was a touch dry. I can’t really say that I’m terribly rah-rah-rah about how things are done, if they really stray very far away from technology. The end of the conference was just as exciting as the start, getting to talk about systems and technology and at the end of it, the right way to upgrade to the latest and greatest database version.

And that starts us talking about the next big project. That is, upgrading our production database, which is at 7.6.1 all the way up to 7.8.3. It’s a rather steep hill to climb. At least I have accomplished it in the test system but there were some tips that I didn’t know and having that covered helped immensely.

Tomorrow there is breakfast and then I hit the road. I’ve arranged a shuttle to take me to DCA, where I will pick up my tickets, pass through the TSA, and then get on my flight to ORD, then from ORD, on to AZO. I should, weather willing, make it to Kalamazoo around 5pm or so. I have my iPhone and iPad on hand so I should have no problems entertaining myself.

My only regrets are the monument tour and the Green Lantern. I wasn’t able to really do both. The monument tour was kind of fluffy fake out. Sage was sold a tour package and we got about 2 miles down the Potomac River and we turned around. The only monuments we saw were the Washington Monument and a bit of the White House in the far distance. Not close enough to really enjoy or take pictures of. The other thing was I was pretty much bound in National Harbor the whole time and couldn’t make it out to visit the Green Lantern Bar. There is little I can do about that now. Maybe someday I can come back to Washington, D.C. and tour this city properly. I’d be able to get a drink in the Green Lantern Bar, I’d be able to visit all the monuments, and maybe I’d be able to visit the National Archives and the Smithsonian. I’m just not going to hold my breath.

I feel bad for Sage, they billed the event as a way to see the monuments and there really wasn’t any. Tomorrow will be it and I’m quite okay with that. My eyes are getting heavy and so, it’s time to call it a night. Maybe next time, D.C.

New York moves toward gay marriage, while Michigan finds new and costly ways to stick it to the gays | MLive.com

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New York moves toward gay marriage, while Michigan finds new and costly ways to stick it to the gays | MLive.com.

It’s almost as if forces are aligning to support my plan! When Western provided “DEI” support, which allows employees to cover one other person that they know with healthcare. When it was first offered I couldn’t help but laugh at it. What a way to go. To provide domestic partner benefits to homosexuals without saying you are doing so. I give this place extra credit on one hand and I laugh about the bullshit from the state on the other hand. That we need guerilla tactics to provide employees with equality, that really takes the cake. I didn’t opt to do it because the DEI package would have bankrupted me. I can’t afford the costs and the lower pay, I’m scrabbling by as it is, but I did appreciate what the University was doing, albeit underhanded and guerilla-fashion.

Now New York State is on the edge of approving Gay Marriage and Michigan is doing whatever it can to punish Universities that offer DEI either by outright persecution or, apparently in the most recent attack, attaching a 5% reduction in state aid to the Universities that dare offer equality protections like DEI. Here in Michigan it’s all being led by Representative David Agema from Grandville. He’s a republican, of course, and I have no idea where Grandville is nor do I care. In many ways I think of Rep. Agema of doing me a huge favor. I know my kind isn’t respected, wanted, or tolerated by the people of Michigan – I’ve made peace with that fact and life goes on.

Once I can afford a move, I will be going back to New York State. It is quite obvious that my time in Michigan is limited, people like me know when we aren’t wanted so all that matters is just getting out of debt, saving up, and making that move from a state that doesn’t care to one that does.

Gunnars

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I got my glasses today! Here’s a picture I posted on my posterous account showing them off:

They are light as a feather and I don’t even feel them while I’m wearing them. I don’t know if it’s helping my vision. The promotional materials claim that they do a lot, and I’d like to think I’m benefiting but I also can’t help but shake the idea that I like them and they are “working for me” because it’s something different and I am mixing up different for better. My eyes do feel better after a hard days work on the computer after wearing them, I will say that, but I can’t say that it’s anything particularly specific that the glasses are doing. I have faith that they are, but that’s all.

The glasses came in a microfiber sack to keep them in. I’m going to go out and get a glasses-case from an eyeglass shop to replace this microfiber sack so I can toss my new glasses in their case in my pocket without having to worry about them getting bent, broken, or scratched.

Over the next few days I’ll be using these while I’m using my various devices and I’ll be sure to post more information as I get along with them. I paid for them out of my own pocket, so I don’t have to feel guilty about using them outside of work, they are mine. Although if I like them a lot and they do help, then I can make a professional recommendation to work and maybe help some of my coworkers cope with eyestrain and headaches while at work. Only time will tell.

Joli OS and Jolicloud

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I finally got all my ducks in a row and got around to burning a copy of Joli OS to a CD-R at work. I started grunging around for a machine to use it with and got sidetracked by several UPS units which needed to have their lead-acid batteries removed so that I could eventually recycle them. When I got the batteries removed and pitched the UPS units and cleaned up the space I realized that I had run out of time to do what I originally was going to do with Joli OS. So instead of using the CD-R that I burned I just set up Joli OS in a new VirtualBox container and watched it chug along.

Joli OS really impressed me. It was mostly successful in keeping the CLI hidden from the user and I quite liked all the integration with Google Docs and Dropbox that was available. I started to muse about how one could use this new “OS”. I thought it would be a great use for a computer without a hard drive. I’m always looking for a competent operating system that can be run live off a CD-R, and mount Dropbox or Box.net as its primary user-space filesystem and run like that forever. I will have to do some more tinkering to see if I can coax Joli OS into doing just that.

So far I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen and I’m looking forward to exploring more about Joli OS and Joli Cloud.

Not going to pay a lot for that muffler!

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When I first brought Verizon networks to my workplace and selected them for our mobile technology carrier (remember, I care for the carrier about as much as I care for a particular rib of celery) we discovered pretty early on that we were getting hosed on MMS messaging. There is a difference between MMS and SMS. Of course nobody knows what either of these are and so we have to melt this all down into obnoxiously simple terms like “photo-texting” and “texting”. People would prefer “texting” to “Short Message Service”… whatever.

So we had MMS on these phones on accident. Sending any MMS traffic with Verizon unless you have a plan for it (bullshit carrier moneymaking cash-grab) costs about a dollar a shot. MMS can do a lot, including a pretty nifty “Multiple SMS MMS Message” format so you can address one SMS message to many targets and they’ll all get the message at the same time. In order to keep our Verizon bill from becoming poisoned with MMS bullshit we had to turn on MMS Block on each line. This blocks MMS traffic as well as this pretty neat multiple-destination SMS feature, which I find rather stupid, that it should be tossed out with MMS. Of course, like most things that irritate me in my life, I found a way around my bullshit carriers issues and filthy money-grubbing ways with an app and one single change to my iPhones options.

First, you download an app called “Groups” which allows you to manipulate address book groups in your iPhone, it also allows you to select multiple people for inclusion on an SMS message. Then on your iPhone, you go to Settings, then Messages, and turn off MMS Messaging. When you do this, and use Groups, and send one SMS to multiple people the phone behaves as it should. It makes a duplicate of your message and sends the message out one-at-a-time queue-like to all your SMS targets. Because SMS with our particular plan is complimentary (makes you wonder why they used to charge for it, filthy cash-grubbers) this path is a snap. It takes a bit longer to send out your messages, but at least they do get sent out to people en-masse. So you can get your lost MMS feature back without having to spend more money on the black hole that is your carrier.

If I could whack all the carriers with a shovel and bury them in shallow unmarked graves I would. I’m not particular, I hate them all. It’s not a customer relationship, it’s a battle of wills against a filthy tentacled monster bent on doing whatever it takes to ruin your day and your life. They are all the same, it’s just the flavor of bullshit changes from one to the other. I quite enjoy it when I find an option that lets me stick it to them, at least in a little way.

P.S. If you work for a carrier, I heartily recommend that you not read my blog, not follow me on twitter, or on facebook. And if you do, I invite you to stop. Your absence from my life will not make me unhappy. All of these relationships are unpleasant ones. Lets save each other the agony, okay?

This Friday

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Today was brought to you by these lines from Airplane!

00:24:46 – Flight 209er – clear for takeoff. – Roger.

00:24:50 – LA departure frequency 123.9er. – Roger.

00:24:54 – Request vector. Over. – What?

00:24:57 Flight 209er, clear for vector 324.

00:24:59 – We have clearance, Clarence. – Roger, Roger.

00:25:01 What’s our vector, Victor?

00:25:03 – l want radio clearance. Over. – That’s Clarence Oveur. Over.

00:25:07 – Roger. – Huh?

00:25:09 – Roger. Over. – Huh? Who?

Enjoy. 🙂


Which Eyeglass Style Looks The Best

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I’ve thought about possibly getting some eyeglasses for myself at work since I spend so much time in front of a computer. I don’t need correction, but the glasses I’m looking at, from Gunnar, claim to help relieve eyestrain, cut glare, and generally improve eye health especially when using modern display equipment. To that end, if I do spring for these glasses, there is a question of style. For those of you that know me and know what I look like, I have created a polldaddy poll with the models that I think would look the best on me. I’d like all my readers to please vote on what they think the best style is.

[polldaddy poll=5107799]

Thanks for everyone who votes!

Cleverness is Punishable

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Chock one up in the oops column. This whole past week I’ve been yarking at OIT to put my Savin Copier on an access control list for our plain-jane SMTP server here on campus. Through a labyrinth of miscommunication it turns out the task was done in December 2009, but I didn’t learn of that fact until a week ago, somewhat through 2011! Oh well, bygones. So now I have my copier set up to send email and yesterday I started to clean my office.

Let me repeat that bit. I. CLEANED. MY. OFFICE.

Yes, that’s right. God help us all. So I started putting order into the bitter waters of the chaotic sea. Mostly it was sorting wheat and chaff. There is only a bit of wheat (the mac stuff) in comparison to the chaff (everything else). Mostly it was sorting legacy bullshit into legacy bullshit containers, so everything with a PS/2 connector, bullshit. Everything that was vogue pre-2005, bullshit. The blizzard of little Blackberry devices? Utter bullshit. So all of it went into boxes, marked with a Sharpie and stacked neat as ya please. I even got a chance to move Frankenserver into the machine room. For those that don’t know, Frankenserver is the nickname I gave to a Mac Mini that is running OS X Snow Leopard, then that runs VirtualBox, which has a Windows 2003 Server image loaded on that. In there is SQL Server 2000 SP4, IIS 6 (or 7, don’t care which) and a copy of our production database’s sample database for training. It’s slow, but it works and I got it done without having to buy a single G-D thing.

Along with all of this meandering malarkey, I also had a giant pile of dead paper that was in a Z-filer on a platform that now supports a rather viney plant. The paper mocks me. It just sits there, dead and cryptic. Yes I could leaf through it, but the minute I do I feel this odd laziness come over me. It would be so much better if all of it was in PDF format and up on Evernote. Frankly my dear, everything ends up in Evernote. I drank the kool-aid, and I liked it. So I got it in my head to pull all the staples out of this paperwork and try out my copier’s new handy-dandy Scan-to-Email which is set to my Evernote Email Address. I loaded up the giant stack and let the ADF chew through it. Voop veep voop veep. I then gathered it all up and threw it in our fancy new “Security Level 4” crosscut shredder. Done and done.

I felt quite satisfied that I had tamed a bit of the paper tiger in my office and confident that what I had scanned was safely stuffed away in my Evernote archive. This morning I opened Evernote and looked through the results. This is where my punishment reigns supreme. A list of files, “FILE 1/5” and when I looked into them, they weren’t PDF’s but 2MB chunks of text! Hells Bells. What had happened was I had scanned so much that the scanner in the copier converted all my PDF files into base64 text files and then split them up into 2MB segments and mailed them out. So there they were, all my files, in a funky format and not very handy to have. I extracted the files, one at a time, renamed them, then used the ‘cat’ command to join them all together in the right order, stripped off the SMTP wrapper at the beginning and fed them all into this neat little command:

openssl base64 -d -in-out

Thanks for this little gem goes to Mac OSX Hints and a fellow named Chris Janton. I knew that openssl did a lot of heavy-lifting in OSX, but not this far! I should have assumed it did. So passing my stupid base64 text chunk into openssl, spit out my hefty PDF files and then I cleaned up Evernote, re-added the hefty PDF files and alls-well-that-ends-well.

Discovering this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my morning, but at least I wasn’t lost on how to fix it. I spent only a bit of time considering what your “average computer user” would have done, and they would have likely just deleted the Evernote bits and declared the entire thing a loss. It’s rather a shame that my estimation for other people’s cleverness with computers is so abysmally low. But that’s another blog post altogether. 🙂

Overcast

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While talking to several of my coworkers about the ways I organize my digital life it struck me that I have never detailed the what, the how, and the why. To me organization has set me free. There are only a few places where information is kept and so finding it is just a matter of checking a few places and almost always I can find, or remember, what I need.

Here at Western we have changed our email infrastructure to what is called “WebMail Plus” and I affectionately refer to by the initialism WMP. WMP runs on Zimbra servers out of our ISP in Ann Arbor Michigan and ever since the changeover I’ve never been very comfortable in the new system. I don’t like the web-based interface and I don’t like my email to stay in Ann Arbor for very long if I can help it. It’s purely a personal thing and I don’t expect everyone to have the same resistance to WMP as I have. There is a significant amount of history between me and WMP that goes quite a bit back.To that end, I store my email somewhere else and I store some files in other places as well, depending on where I’ll use them most of all.

Tools

I use these tools in order to better organize my digital world:

  1. Mail.app
    1. The native Mac Mail.app is set to pull in my WMP Mail over the IMAP protocol. This protocol allows me to select the Mail.app interface and bolt it on, covering up the less liked WMP Native website interface. Several key benefits to this are how I can configure all the aspects of Mail.app’s fonts to suit me and make it easier for me to read text. Mail.app also has a Bayesian Filter for identifying Junk Mail. I teach it what is and what isn’t Junk mail and it does a pretty kickass job identifying future Junk and getting it out of my way. The other feature of Mail.app that I have come to rely on is the “Redirect” command. This command allows me to effectively ‘resend’ an incoming email somewhere else as if it was always destined for that other address. This feature is a ‘killer feature’ when combined with other cloud services that I’ll write about further along in this post.
  2. iCal.app
    1. Just as much as I don’t like WMP when it comes to email, I also do not like it when it comes to Calendaring. I prefer to use iCal for my calendaring needs. Thanks to Zimbra’s adherence to standards I can have my cake and eat it too. WMP provides a CalDAV service which I can subscribe to using iCal. Not only can I have my local calendars off my home server subscribed on my iCal, but I can also have my WMP calendars as well.
  3. AddressBook.app
    1. As with iCal, the AddressBook.app application can subscribe to CardDAV Services that WMP provides. With all three in concert I have effectively replaced my need to use the native WMP interface and instead replaced it with a far more friendly Mac-based interface.
  4. Evernote
    1. Evernote is a cloud service that “remembers everything” and is only limited by the amount of information you send to your Evernote system, but not how much material you store there. Each free Evernote account comes with an “Evernote Email Address” that is private to the user and can be the destination of emails and when you do send an email to that address it is just like you have clipped the text directly into Evernote with a client. In this regard, the “Redirect” command and the “Evernote Email Address” are a match made in heaven.
  5. Toodledo
    1. Toodledo is an online cloud-based To Do List manager. There is a website that manages the Toodledo system very well and Toodledo provides a CalDAV compliant feed so I can subscribe my iCal client to my Toodledo task calendar and see everything, including my tasks, on one central iCal calendar. Toodledo also has its own “Toodledo Email Address” that inserts Redirected email into my task list. I can use a shorthand notation in the subject line to enrich the task so that when it is added to my Toodledo system it gets the appropriate context, date, time, and folder. Within Toodledo I have three contexts, Home, Work, and None. I have a gaggle of Folders such as “Email” and “Millennium” and “Personal” and the date system is very flexible. I can write an email to my Toodledo Email Address, set the subject as “Add Files to Folder @work #tomorrow =5pm *email” and the task is created with the body of the incoming email being the attached note of the task and the context is set to Work, the due-date set for 5/6/2011 (tomorrow), the due-time set to 5:00pm and the folder set for Email.
  6. Instapaper
    1. Instapaper also has a “Instapaper Email Address” and anything you send to that address gets queued up in your Instapaper queue. It’s really quite useful if you get a link in your Inbox and want to read it eventually, but not now.
  7. Dropbox
    1. Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage system that synchronizes a folder on every computer or device you use and a central folder stored in the cloud.

Tackling the Email Monster

I’m quite fond of achieving what I like to call Inbox Zero at least once a week, and usually on Friday afternoons. For me, email comes in and usually falls into a few neat categories. There are purely informational emails, such as notices from OIT and advisories about the University Trustees and other WMU news, then there are requests for me to do some sort of task, and then there are email discussions about some sort of running topic. I tackle an inbox that has gone out of control by starting with “low-hanging fruit”. I identify and pitch all the informational emails that I don’t need to note or keep storing. Some of this mail is merely meant to expose me to some news item or some event and after I appreciate the contents, they lose all durable value. For these messages I’ll either mark them as Junk or just delete them. The next level is to identify all the tasks-in-email and redirect them to my Toodledo account. Once they are redirected I delete those from my WMP account as well. All that is left, usually are discussions and “durable value” emails that contain something I really should remember. For the latter I redirect those to Evernote and delete them out of my Inbox. The rest are conversations and usually I won’t keep a lot of these floating around anyways. Once I send a reply the entire conversation is pretty well “backed up” in my Sent Items and so there is little point to keep old conversational emails that I don’t need anymore. Any emails that remain I look at and decide if they are conversations, tasks, or something I need to remember. I keep on whittling down on the pile until I run out of Inbox messages. Some people will note that I’m just playing a cup-game with my emails in Evernote. On Sunday I start organizing my Evernote into folders and let all that information build up there. Because Evernote is bottomless I don’t really care how much information I stuff into it since I can pretty much search text and folders to find anything I might need later on. Another hidden gem is that all of these services, Instapaper, Evernote, and Toodledo all have really great iOS apps for both iPhone and iPad, so I can manage everything on any device I like any time I like. I’ve been known to knock several emails out while waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting for a movie to start at the cinema. Every bit helps and if you are vigilant you can whittle all your Inbox down to size and then get into a habit of keeping it that way.

Cloud Data Storage: Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

Another need I’ve found is to store data in an easily accessible way between many devices. I have an iPhone, and iPad, a MacBook, a iMac and a Mac Mini. There is always a need for me to keep a certain set of files available on each device. It makes life easier to have them conveniently located and every single machine having the right set of files no matter what. Dropbox suits this need very well. For run-of-the-mill data Dropbox can’t be beat for convenience sake. There is however a problem when it comes to security. Dropbox is secure, but they are vulnerable to search and seizure orders from the government and so they *can* break security on your files in order to comply with a government action. There are some files that I really would like to have available, but I really don’t want to risk having these files exposed. If I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of compatibility (really secure use of Dropbox precludes iOS devices) I have a way to secure files even from Dropbox itself, while still making use of their syncing services. Here’s how you do it. Dropbox is a free service and they kick in 2 gigabytes worth of storage. On a Mac open up Disk Utility, create an AES-256 encrypted sparsebundle disk image file and save it to your Dropbox. Put a nice long password on it and don’t save that password to your Mac’s Keychain system (that makes it really secure, because the password is just in your head) and then you can have your cake and eat it too. The disk image file can be mounted by any Mac computer, you have to type in your access password to mount it. Even if Dropbox were to ship the file to a third-party for analysis the file’s AES-256 encryption (at the moment) ensures that the data within the file is safe. The neat thing about a sparsebundle with Mac computers is that a sparsebundle can be assigned a maximum size, say one gigabyte, and if you only fill it with say 200 megabytes worth of data then the disk image itself isn’t one gigabyte, but instead right around 200 megabytes. The sparsebundle is a lot like a bellows, it expands to contain only the data it needs to. It has a capacity of whatever high-water-mark you’ve set it up for, but it’s efficient in that it only takes up what it’s contents need versus a standard disk image which is a monolithic file. Another neat part of sparsebundle images is that you can issue a rather straightforward CLI command to compact them if you’ve removed data from them. That command is:

“hdiutil compact image.sparsebundle”

So even if a sparsebundle were temporarily carrying a big bulge of data, you can get the storage back out of it by running this command. It’s quite neat and tidy. The only thing that would seal the deal is if the sparsebundles would automatically compact themselves on-the-fly, but even with this command you can still quite enjoy having your cake and eating it too. As it turns out, every removable device I own has an encrypted sparsebundle file stored on it. This is the best way that I know how to have the convenience of this sort of technology and the peace of mind to know that if you lose it, nobody but you can make sense of the contents.

I hope that this makes sense to you all. I’ve found this entire procedure to be quite effective and useful and makes organizing my life much simpler and less burdensome. Perhaps it can do the same for you! 🙂

Class Act

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Only rarely am I impressed with vendors and companies in general. They serve no interest but their own and it’s almost always thoroughly spiritually corrupt. I just received an email from our database vendor, Sage, and it made me do a triple-take:

“I hope this message finds you safe and unaffected by the recent severe weather and storms.  We are very concerned about the damage you may have experienced.  We know you may have lost infrastructure and connectivity at your office or have employees that are scattered around the region who cannot return for a while to help you resume business operations.If you have been affected by the severe weather and storms, we’d like to offer some assistance. 

We are willing to help get you on our hosted systems and operational at no charge to your organization until you are able to resume normal operations.  We do have capabilities to host Millennium on our secure platform.  However, a backup of your Millennium database will be needed to restore your operations. Please contact us at ***-***-**** so we can discuss and determine your needs.

It is my sincere hope that you are unaffected by these storms.  In the event that you are, Sage would like to help. “

Jaw slack. Eyes goggling. Surety that vendor is inherently malevolent, shaken to the core. Bravo Sage, Bravo. I am impressed.