Category: Technology

A milestone reached: A MegaChuck of output!

Above: A peek behind the scenes...

Back in September of 2005, right after I came back from the Colorado Grand, I switched from building all my webpages by hand to running WordPress. Prior to that I had written all the HTML code one character at a time in Rich Siegel’s wonderful BBEdit and dropped them on my server (a shockingly underpowered machine!) located at digital.forest’s datacenter. It was honestly a huge pain in the ass, and I rarely updated the site because of this. Updates usually only happened in the midst of some important event, such as driving from NYC to LA with a bunch of other old cars, or a wonderful road trip with Nicholas as we brought the Jaguar home for the first time. I’d been using the “MoveableType” content management system (aka “blogging platform”) at work for our support website, so already had an idea of what I wanted. WP looked to be the one to use, so I set it up on one of the web severs at the office and started putting in content. Along the way I’ve picked up a nice group of folks to chat with… several hundred of you actually. Some knew me before I started, quite a few have found this place since. A lot of you have hung around and really participated. Thanks!

I noted today that I’ve reached something of a milestone with this post: the 1,024th one since I started using WP to publish my photos, thoughts, confessions, news, and occasional maniacal rants. One thousand and twenty four. That’s a magic number for us geeks at it is the nearest we get to counting to one thousand, though it only takes us twelve numbers to get there. I figured I’d celebrate the milestone by sharing a few thoughts I’ve had about what I do here. Just as I said from the outset, I’m not looking to be a well-known pundit, or a vaunted member of the “blogosphere” … I just want to develop and present good stuff that rattles around in my head and eyes. In random order, here are some thoughts:

  • Re-running old rally stories. The idea here is to repost some of my old (pre-blog, so 1998-2005) vintage rally stories, but this time with the ability to flesh out the tale a bit more. Often these were written in a summary style, late at night after a hard day’s driving, followed by dinner (with drinks!), lots of photo editing and uploading from dodgy hotel Internet connections, and written while my rally partner was snoring in the other bed. I’d re-write them and post them in a daily order.
  • Interviews with other “car guys.” I’d love to develop a series along this line of thought: Talk to people who self-identify as “car guys” (no matter their gender) and find the common threads as well as the differences. Get their stories, histories, etc. The origins of their love for the automobile, the cars that got away, etc. I already know so many people I could talk to… literally around the world.
  • Some more of the same. The tried and true: Rally & Road Trip stories in Real Time. Car Photo of the Day. Engine pR0n.
  • Some Whimsy in the Mix A bit of story telling. A sprinkle of time lapse photography (I think I can get uber-HD time lapse stuff from my new DSLR!) More antique computer stuff if I can find the time.
  • A new WP theme.That is, a change in the layout of the site. The content will remain, but the look will change. I always meant to move off the default “WP Classic” theme, as it is… dull. I never got around to it. I actually have another site where I’ve played with WP themes (don’t bother looking for that site… it is very anonymous and has nothing to do with me. It is just a place where I practice writing for writing’s sake) I think I’ve got a look worked out and if I can find the time I’ll implement it here. If you are some sort of Luddite and actually LIKE the way this site looks currently, let me know. 😉
  • Some behind the scenes stuff. This is mostly server-related. Most of my photos are still hosted and served from my shockingly underpowered machine (seriously, it is a 266MHz G3!) while the WP site runs from a d.f FreeBSD shared hosting box, and the database is running on yet another d.f shared hosting server. I plan to collapse all those back down to a single machine… this time only mildly underpowered. Having the db and the http on the same box will let me do a few whizzy back-end things. No change for you, except maybe it will be a tad faster.

Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Published: SNMP as Datacenter Facility Management Protocol

Just one of many ways of viewing SNMP data

This one slipped by me when it hit the inter tubes nearly a month ago. I wrote it back in February or so, shipped it off to my editor, and promptly forgot about it. My editor’s wife gave birth to their first kid, and my editor’s life changed far beyond his expectations (though in my defence I did warn him!) Anyway, after a delay it finally published early last month. TechTarget shuffles their site around so much that my RSS feed reader obviously has lost track, otherwise I should have been automatically notified. Oh well better late than never, here’s my take on what I considered to be the most important point of Datacenter Pulse’s “Top Ten” list for the industry (though they put it at #7, oh well):

Users demand SNMP standard-based monitoring for data center power and cooling equipment .

Yes, it is way off the beaten path my blog readers are accustomed to, but I do use some analogies you can understand!

And no John, I didn’t specify SNMP v3, if only to keep it simple. These are HVAC & Electrical guys, so I have to ease them into a new way of thinking first before I can get specific. 😉

“They are not too big to die, they are too big to survive”

Insightful comments, as always, from the man known as “Bob Cringely“.

I’ve been reading Stephens‘ work for well over 15 years, and have always enjoyed his style, his insight, and his humor. I appreciate his willingness to admit when he’s wrong (which, oftentimes he is) and his accessibility to his audience. We’ve exchanged emails a few times, usually with me calling him a “dipstick” (a legacy term from an old column of his) and correcting an error he’s made on some detail of our industry. He’s always acknowledged the corrections politely and the mistakes rarely, if ever, get repeated.

I like his optimism and his outlook, and really appreciate his comments here about allowing nature to take its course with regard to dying industries, be they financial, or automotive, you’ll note he doesn’t specify.

Intersections of Interest

Occasionally several of my personal and professional interests converge at one point. I enjoy making images. I enjoy telling stories. I enjoy technology. I make my living in the datacenter industry. I enjoy sharing all of these with others.

This week at work is the culmination of over a year’s efforts by my employer, and one of our clients. A medium-scale project is coming to fruition, involving the client, several contractors (Engineers, Mechanical, and Electrical contractors) our Sales & Operations teams, and mostly our Facilities Manager, who as always is able to make things happen timely and with a smile. My job? Capture it all, and present it as yet another example of what we can accomplish for potential clients: We’re flexible. We’re available. We’re here to serve the client’s needs, even if they are “off the price sheet” so to speak.

You can follow along on our Support Blog. First post is here. The second one is here. I’ll be posting again tomorrow with an update, and a wrap up later.

Worst. Presentation. Ever.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Inter-Cloud

As you may know I’m a skeptic about “Cloud Computing”. I’m not skeptical about the technology, I’m mostly skeptical about how the concept is being seized by the marketers and bent to define anything and everything. It is as if the term is suddenly a magical spell that can make all your economic woes be cured. Cloud Computing, as it is practiced by Google for example, makes a ton of sense. But it seems as if the entire industry has decided that cloudiness is the next big thing and they have to jump on the bandwagon, even if they have no idea what the bandwagon is, or where it is going.

I saw this presentation posted on Rich Miller’s excellent blog, DatacenterKnowledge, entitled “What the heck is the InterCloud anyway?” (perhaps Rich shares my skepticism?) and I as I generally respect what Cisco does, I watched it.

My first thought: Douglas Adams is in his grave, launched into perpetual rotation.

I have said many times that I’d rather spend an hour in a dentist’s chair being drilled upon than sit through 30 minutes of a PowerPoint presentation. Steaming piles of presentational crap such as this is the reason why. I would hope that an organization with the resources of Cisco could produce something that is not only aesthetically reasonable, but also clearly communicates complex concepts. This presentation appears that its creator swallowed a giant bowl of industry buzzwords & clipart, downed an ipecac chaser, and then barfed them up onto the screen. Just about every rule of thumb concerning effective presentation is broken here, on damn near every slide.

If he’s trying to convince me to lose my skepticism about cloud computing, it isn’t working.

So what about the actual content, not just the poor use of media? I would hope it makes more sense when accompanied by a speaker, who can lay out their ideas verbally to try and make sense of the jumbled mess on-screen. In reality I see a lot of hand-waving, assumptions, and glossing over of details. I guess if you call something a cloud because it runs virtualized in a datacenter, then you can make the logical leap to multi-tenant clouds, and then “InterClouds”. But seriously, why would say a Fortune 500 company, who is subject to all sorts of external scrutiny concerning the integrity of their data, want to have that data just out there drifting about on who knows whose hardware? A virtualized OS with virtualized storage, in a virtualized cloud spread over multiple sites in an Enterprise or InterCloud… sounds great if you are the guy selling the hardware to make it happen [cough]Cisco[/cough] but how about the guy who is writing the Purchase Orders to buy it? To them it should sound terrifying, especially to their auditors, and probably does. There are a whole lot of buzzwords being thrown around here, but very little hard and useful data.

This is yet another product marketer hitching themselves onto a buzzword bandwagon, and creating new buzzwords in the process, while punting the hard work of actually defining, building, and operating buzzword-compliance to others.