Today I'm not ranting about the grocery store...
Today, my bone is with the US Department of Energy. That's right, the same people who brought is weapons grade uranium and plutonium are screwing with us again.
With the passage of the Energy Policy act of 2005 the start and end dates for Daylight Savings Time have been moved three weeks ahead and one week back. Here in the IT sector that has made for a LOT of extra work.
Every server, computer, switch, router, and handheld device with a clock needs to be updated. What makes this more annoying is that most software vendors (RIM just announced their patches YESTERDAY, giving us a whole 14 days to get every single Blackberry in North America (excepting Indiana, Saskatchewan and a few other spots).
With Y2K we had years to get ready, teams with dozens of members and budgets. Also, we could simply check out hardware and software against a database... package A is compliant, package B is not. Check one PC from each model you have on site to confirm that they're compliant. That's one of the reasons that Y2K came off without a major failure. We had the luxury of time and consistency.
We have consistency with DST as well... it's consistently screwed up. We've been handed the problem at the 11th hour and told "when you have a minute make sure that you get this done too". Just add it to an already overworked IT person's plate. Plus with DST we KNOW that every machine will need to be updated. Can't test one and know that it's good for everything, EVERY SINGLE MACHINE NEEDS TO BE TOUCHED.
It's times like this that I want to disappear and go herd goats in Tierra del fuego...
2007/02/27
2007/02/20
My NEW local grocery store
So the files are still copying...
I've mentioned before that the grocery store seems to provoke a lot of these posts... here I go again.
I used to have a Loblaws a block from my house.
It was a strange store, shoved onto a too small lot. They worked hard to make it work though, building it on stilts above it's own parking lot. It was strange but it worked. The store was accessed via stairs, elevator or, if you had a cart (especially on the way out), via a long ramp which granted access to the store proper.
About 10 months ago it closed under the guise of renovations. It re-opened recently as a Fortinos (still in the Loblaw family). The renovations are very nice, but I don't like what they've done with the entrances.
Both the stairs and ramp are gone. They still have an elevator, but people are discouraged from using it. Now to get in you use the escalator and they have a special conveyance for carts (I think they call it a cart-veyor). It's kind of like a cross between an escalator and a roller coaster, there's a linkage a the bottom of the cart which drops into a track and the cart is pulled up or eased down. The actual shape of the device is such that the cart stays level at all times. It's very cool, but it's energy intensive.
The new entry/exit features of the store annoy me. I can't enter or exit without riding some electircal appliance. I have to take an escalator up and down. These escalators and cartveyors are running all the time, whether someone is on them or not. Continually sucking up power, be it from fossil fuels, uranium or falling water. Wherever it comes from it's energy we'll never see again. I don't like to see this kind of coddling continuing wherever you go these devices "make your life easier". Heaven forbid we might have to climb a flight of stairs, open a door or push a grocery cart up a gentle incline.
This has to be contributing to the epidemic levels of obesiety in Canada. Recent statisics show that 1/3 of Canadians are overweight or obese (I'm one of them). The fact that they don't have to exert themselves isn't helping.
I, for one, will continue to do most of my shopping elsewhere.
I've mentioned before that the grocery store seems to provoke a lot of these posts... here I go again.
I used to have a Loblaws a block from my house.
It was a strange store, shoved onto a too small lot. They worked hard to make it work though, building it on stilts above it's own parking lot. It was strange but it worked. The store was accessed via stairs, elevator or, if you had a cart (especially on the way out), via a long ramp which granted access to the store proper.
About 10 months ago it closed under the guise of renovations. It re-opened recently as a Fortinos (still in the Loblaw family). The renovations are very nice, but I don't like what they've done with the entrances.
Both the stairs and ramp are gone. They still have an elevator, but people are discouraged from using it. Now to get in you use the escalator and they have a special conveyance for carts (I think they call it a cart-veyor). It's kind of like a cross between an escalator and a roller coaster, there's a linkage a the bottom of the cart which drops into a track and the cart is pulled up or eased down. The actual shape of the device is such that the cart stays level at all times. It's very cool, but it's energy intensive.
The new entry/exit features of the store annoy me. I can't enter or exit without riding some electircal appliance. I have to take an escalator up and down. These escalators and cartveyors are running all the time, whether someone is on them or not. Continually sucking up power, be it from fossil fuels, uranium or falling water. Wherever it comes from it's energy we'll never see again. I don't like to see this kind of coddling continuing wherever you go these devices "make your life easier". Heaven forbid we might have to climb a flight of stairs, open a door or push a grocery cart up a gentle incline.
This has to be contributing to the epidemic levels of obesiety in Canada. Recent statisics show that 1/3 of Canadians are overweight or obese (I'm one of them). The fact that they don't have to exert themselves isn't helping.
I, for one, will continue to do most of my shopping elsewhere.
Life in IT
So here I am again... it's 11:30 on a Tuesday night and I'm wandering around an empty office building while I wait for files to copy.
I've been here before.... too many times to remember let alone count. I figure I probably work 10-20 nights/weekends per year like this. It's a strange place to be...
For those of you who aren't in the IT biz here's a little taste. It's almost midnight and you're still at work. It's not your office though... it's the office of a client... you spend a fair bit of time there, but it's not your space... it's not completely comfortable. You've been working for a good 15 hours... most of the last 5 have been spent waiting... backing up data... restoring data... time consuming, dull as hell. You can't just go somewhere else though since something may go wrong and you'll need to take remedial action. You've passed the point of no return... if this doesn't work (usually by this time you're on method #4 since the first 3 just didn't pan out the way you had intended them to) you know you won't get the system online by the time the staff gets here... you really don't want to see their chipper faces in the morning. All you want to do at this point is to be done. All of your idealistic plans that you were finalizing at 3:00 are no longer important... working is all you really care about.
This is usually the time when I start to wonder why I went into this business... and why, after 15 years, I'm still doing it. I mean, really, what's the best result you can hope for? The absolute best result from a server upgrade is that NONE OF THE USERS REALIZE THAT ANYTHING HAPPENED. That's it... the best I can hope for is that my phone doesn't ring at 7:30 tomorrow morning with someone who wants to know if the Internet is down.
In case you haven't realized, I'm feeling tired and a little low at the moment... I know that when I walk out of here I'll be feeling good... very tired but good. The feeling you get when you know you've done a good job. There's no feeling like that one (especially at 4:00 AM).
I'll be better tomorrow... for now say a quick prayer to the Server Gods and, time permitting, sacrifice a chicken to them. My eternal thanks will be with you for that.
I've been here before.... too many times to remember let alone count. I figure I probably work 10-20 nights/weekends per year like this. It's a strange place to be...
For those of you who aren't in the IT biz here's a little taste. It's almost midnight and you're still at work. It's not your office though... it's the office of a client... you spend a fair bit of time there, but it's not your space... it's not completely comfortable. You've been working for a good 15 hours... most of the last 5 have been spent waiting... backing up data... restoring data... time consuming, dull as hell. You can't just go somewhere else though since something may go wrong and you'll need to take remedial action. You've passed the point of no return... if this doesn't work (usually by this time you're on method #4 since the first 3 just didn't pan out the way you had intended them to) you know you won't get the system online by the time the staff gets here... you really don't want to see their chipper faces in the morning. All you want to do at this point is to be done. All of your idealistic plans that you were finalizing at 3:00 are no longer important... working is all you really care about.
This is usually the time when I start to wonder why I went into this business... and why, after 15 years, I'm still doing it. I mean, really, what's the best result you can hope for? The absolute best result from a server upgrade is that NONE OF THE USERS REALIZE THAT ANYTHING HAPPENED. That's it... the best I can hope for is that my phone doesn't ring at 7:30 tomorrow morning with someone who wants to know if the Internet is down.
In case you haven't realized, I'm feeling tired and a little low at the moment... I know that when I walk out of here I'll be feeling good... very tired but good. The feeling you get when you know you've done a good job. There's no feeling like that one (especially at 4:00 AM).
I'll be better tomorrow... for now say a quick prayer to the Server Gods and, time permitting, sacrifice a chicken to them. My eternal thanks will be with you for that.
2007/02/10
Dole's plastic jars
It seems the grocery store is a good place for me to get agitated about things...
On a recent trip I took a closer look at Dole's "Fruit in plastic jars" (formerly canned fruit). Looking at the bottom I see that they are type 7 plastic, as seen in the recycling symbol.
For the uninitiated:
1 - Polyethylene Terephthalate (PETE): This is the easiest to recycle, cleanest and "safest" for food purposes. Used primarily for beverage containers and other food purposes.
2 - High Density Polyethylene (HDPE): Slightly more common than PETE, fairly east to recycle.
3 - Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC): One of the nastier plastics out there. Not easy to recycle (most recycling authorities landfill it), leeches toxic chemicals to contents. Used for detergents, piping, etc. I put products in PVC back on the shelf in favour of PETE or HDPE.
4 - Low Density Polyethelene (LDPE): Also common, mostly in bags and softer containers (margarine lids for example).
5 - Polypropylene (PP): I don't know too much about this one. I see it a fair bit and I know that none of my local recycling authorities can/will recycle it.
6 - Polystyrene (PS): A hard, usually clear plastic. Also often used as foam (Styrofoam - a registered trademark of Dow Chemical). Not commonly recycled.
7 - Other: Plastics other than what is listed above. If they don't tell you what it is, good luck recycling it.
Back to our original topic... Dole fruit.
It really irked me that they switched (admittedly, a couple of years ago...) from metal cans to these plastic ones. The old steel/aluminum cans were one of the most recyclable substances on the planet, the new jars are not.
I will continue to not purchase them...
On a recent trip I took a closer look at Dole's "Fruit in plastic jars" (formerly canned fruit). Looking at the bottom I see that they are type 7 plastic, as seen in the recycling symbol.
For the uninitiated:
1 - Polyethylene Terephthalate (PETE): This is the easiest to recycle, cleanest and "safest" for food purposes. Used primarily for beverage containers and other food purposes.
2 - High Density Polyethylene (HDPE): Slightly more common than PETE, fairly east to recycle.
3 - Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC): One of the nastier plastics out there. Not easy to recycle (most recycling authorities landfill it), leeches toxic chemicals to contents. Used for detergents, piping, etc. I put products in PVC back on the shelf in favour of PETE or HDPE.
4 - Low Density Polyethelene (LDPE): Also common, mostly in bags and softer containers (margarine lids for example).
5 - Polypropylene (PP): I don't know too much about this one. I see it a fair bit and I know that none of my local recycling authorities can/will recycle it.
6 - Polystyrene (PS): A hard, usually clear plastic. Also often used as foam (Styrofoam - a registered trademark of Dow Chemical). Not commonly recycled.
7 - Other: Plastics other than what is listed above. If they don't tell you what it is, good luck recycling it.
Back to our original topic... Dole fruit.
It really irked me that they switched (admittedly, a couple of years ago...) from metal cans to these plastic ones. The old steel/aluminum cans were one of the most recyclable substances on the planet, the new jars are not.
I will continue to not purchase them...
2007/02/06
Buddha's hand citron
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -- William Shakespeare
This seems to apply to the grocery store as well.
I had thought I was well read, experienced, maybe even jaded. I thought the produce section had no real surprises left for me. Then I found a fruit that reminded me of nightmares I've had.
The Buddha's Hand Citron aka: Buddha's Hand, Fingered Citron. Like nothing I've even seen in real 3D space. Smells and feels a lot like a lemon, looks like Cthulhu. It's something I'd consider trying but didn't feel like spending $7 for one piece of fruit though.
This world is getting stranger...
This seems to apply to the grocery store as well.
I had thought I was well read, experienced, maybe even jaded. I thought the produce section had no real surprises left for me. Then I found a fruit that reminded me of nightmares I've had.
The Buddha's Hand Citron aka: Buddha's Hand, Fingered Citron. Like nothing I've even seen in real 3D space. Smells and feels a lot like a lemon, looks like Cthulhu. It's something I'd consider trying but didn't feel like spending $7 for one piece of fruit though.
This world is getting stranger...
2007/02/01
This bloatware it getting ridiculous!
This is getting crazy...
My 1st computer was a 486 back in 1992. At the time it had a largish hard drive (120MB). That was a lot of disk space. A basic install of MS Office could be squeezed into under 10MB (while still maintaining most of the features in the current version which can consume up to a gig). I worked quite nicely with 9MB of free disk space.
Today, I needed to download a new driver for my Logitech mouse. Just a driver (my 1st mouse driver took less than 100k). How much did it want? 42MB!
How much lazier are these programmers going to get? There is no reason why we can't have small, fast code being written. But hey, disk is cheap, RAM is cheap, processors are cheap... why bother doing it well? Just throw more power at it.
Just imagine where MS Vista will take us!
My 1st computer was a 486 back in 1992. At the time it had a largish hard drive (120MB). That was a lot of disk space. A basic install of MS Office could be squeezed into under 10MB (while still maintaining most of the features in the current version which can consume up to a gig). I worked quite nicely with 9MB of free disk space.
Today, I needed to download a new driver for my Logitech mouse. Just a driver (my 1st mouse driver took less than 100k). How much did it want? 42MB!
How much lazier are these programmers going to get? There is no reason why we can't have small, fast code being written. But hey, disk is cheap, RAM is cheap, processors are cheap... why bother doing it well? Just throw more power at it.
Just imagine where MS Vista will take us!
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