I’ve given thought to how we Americans are programmed to do work. Its such a slippery slope for our lives. Work is a necessity and we’re basically socialized to expect a lifetime of 9 to 5 and then a few precarious years of wishing perhaps it was back. Can it be that there is more than just the 9 to 5 and then missing it? I’m at the point where I wonder what to do next. Do I just continue to do technology? I could see a point where its fundamental attraction leaves me. Where I would want another contribution. What would that be? I’m sure my wife wonders. She is dedicated to her career and I like seeing someone with that level of focus. For me, the whole work thing is good now; but I can see past it.

Perhaps my day dream is to have a thing which is more, less,different. Some thing which is a job but encompasses more. A dream? Of course. We’re americans and thus programmed to live those Thoreau “lives of quiet desperation”. There is nothing left for us as we reach those other years of ages. We’re locked in and locked down.

But our spirits and consciousnesses stream far away and into the clouds and sun and dimensions. I’m sure that our indomitable spirits see much more than even our day dreams show. Perhaps I’ll find that “other thing” that seems to hover forever right out of reach. Time will tell.

Yesterday a work colleague took me for Southern India cuisine for lunch and it was very good and spicy! I had tandoor lamb and rice last night cooked to perfection served with abundant beers.

Now I’m playing the waiting game to get on to Chennai Int’l Airport which can take as an hour to get to in traffic and then there is the waiting around for customs.

I’ll be back in Singapore for one night tonite and then I’m homeward bound. Catch you in Singapore for some final thoughts and perhaps a Chilli Crab or two

Tomorrow I go back to work and I’ve thought a deal about my last week traveling. I’ll be glad to get back home in a week or so. I miss the family unit and it’ll be good to see them. The little spats, arguments, family time is good when you don’t have them. But I also have enjoyed the “me time” on this trip. I’m on to Chennai India for a few days later this week and then back to Singapore for a evening and then on to home next Saturday. In the global sweep of time, I get in an hour after I leave from here. Its really kinda strange how that works but it all leads up to a few days of roaming, waking at strange hours, and trying to acclimate.

I’ll be blogging each day I think which is more than what I’ve been able to do when I’m just at home @ work. That seems good since I feel less blogstipated when I take the daily dose.

I built a manifesto for a emerging product we have which is based on Linux. I felt that the products were not understood, sold, managed at a few levels like our more entrenched windows products. Why? They need product management expertise at the basic level. Someone that could:

define their basic roadmaps, definitions, and goals
reach to a set of early stage companies that may have similar interests
build out a community based set of forums, bug reporting, and collaboration

What this does is align product management, engineering, sales, support into a common vision. You cannot sell something you don’t understand or grok or get. How do you sell something that is so foreign and different that even the people charged with support cannot manage supporting it. Its difficult. You need a product vision. I’m not saying I’m some visionary product manager. I struggle with basic premises of product management but I also know what I see. We cannot expect emerging products to suddenly be revenue generators. They take time to “sink in, become known, gain a following”. How does one do that?

Its damned difficult. But I’m committed to it above all else. I’ve seen many open source project like Open Office.org, Mozilla, The GIMP, reach critical mass. Why do they? Part of my so-called vision. They have a community behind them that sees and shares. I would argue that each of the products is “disruptive” in nature and to manage a disruptive product requires innovative and integrated thoughts, plans, roles.

Leaving Las Vegas (or SF…)

I’m leaving next Friday for Singapore to go to training on our products. I’m excited because I’ve never been there. I’m also going on to India to meet with our India development team. I’m flying out from SFO next Friday and I’m very thrilled that I work for a company with such a presence. I’m having fun at work and extending things to places I want to work while still supporting sales and SE activities.

All that being said, perhaps I’m lazier and need to just kick back on the weekends. I spent Friday glued to a Linux box or two; did meetings on how we can grow some customer confidence, and also started working on new projects. Celestix is very hands on with things while Visa seemed separated by a degree or two. All in all, the hands on part of things is nice and requires an every day sort of commitment.

Linuxworld Expo

I’ve given some thought to attending Linuxworld this year. I guess my main question is “why”. Why go? I don’t have the feeling that there is a lot left for me to find there. Its evolved or changed or lessened to something that I don’t recognize. Yet I have a few friends that will go. I’ve also organized little get togethers and this is the first year to not do one. I just don’t feel the need any longer. The guys are still important; but years have gone by and I’ve kinda left the whole Linux mainstream thing farther and farther behind.

Other Bloggables

I like writing combination posts that sum up the things I’ve done or not. I reached my own milestones here with the blog and I wanted to just say thanks to a few tools like Apache, PHP, mysql, and wordpress. I’ve managed to keep this site online now for a few years with a few hundred posts or more. I’ve evolved my own blogging away from some belief its the social thing to do. Its more like its the “me thing to do”. I don’t believe there is a future any longer in it but there is a now. The social institutions we may cherish or hate or even ignore may not have a future either; but we all as writers, cataloguers, definers do. As much as the prehistoric rock art blogger told us an incomplete story; our blogs do the same. We are all evolving that story day by day. But lets just put them where they belong in our lives. Is it really about links and authority or about beliefs and ideas?

I don’t know if I blogged this before, but I hit my weight goal. Its been a year. I started last May 20th or so I believe. I topped the scales then at 275 pounds of happy beer guzzling and burger swallowing me. But I had back aches, strained this and that. High blood pressure which was really bad. I’ll just say a word for going to see a Doctor if you are the usual American Male. Go. If you are over 40, Go. There are too many things which can happen. My friend DaveR; with every reason to live did not. Go seek out the physician and listen if she tells you that the time has come to look whatyou are inserting into thy stomach. Bad things cause bad things.

I’m probably doing about 1700 cals a day now but its not so much the cals but its what I eat. Only a little meat and not even every day. More salads and lots of fruit. Veggies once a day or so. Now I am at 181.5 and I feel pretty good. Definitely better than a year ago. I’ll just try to get my friend Ed to move forward. Ed you owe it to you, kids, wife, world.

The job thing has inserted stress; but one funny thing at Visa is the classic level of most people’s computing experience. People I talk with complain bitterly about Windows and its virii, malware, spyware, bad things. I tell them “why not try something else?” Get a Knoppix or a Live Ubuntu CD. But its too hard. Its easier to just be miserable. After all, Linux does not work on desktops or laptops and its only really meant for servers. The last time I booted a Windows desktop here was a Virtual One and since Amazon was kind enough to release the Linux MP3 client with easy dependencies to satisfy for the most part; iTunes and its silly “all or nothing” thing does not befuddle me any longer. Now I buy music, sync music with rsync. Yes… I don’t even use the original iPod firmware. Thanks to Rockbox. My iPod has signed its declaration of independence away from iTunes and Windows as well. But I am speaking to those that choose to be deaf. Its far easier to just bitterly complain than to try something else.

So, I’ll just go away into my corner with my Linux systems that don’t work.

I happened to find the little Shuttle above on sale at NewEgg and grabbed it up. I’ve been playing around with NAS solutions for awhile and wanted to take one of these, put in a AMD64 5300+ chip, 4g of memory, and make it into something a bit more memorable. Lets face it; these things are cheap these days folks. But what can you do with one? Well, Ubuntu Gutsy goes on one nice. The external eSATA ports all work. I plugged in an external cabinet with two 500g SATA drives smashed into a raid array and whammo! This can be more than just a server if you want. I’m considering replacing my aging mail server with one of these too. Size, heat, noise.

The ad says recertified but I had purchased a separate AMD64 chip and 4g of memory. Pretty good deal for a smal form factor PC that’s whisper quiet and that can do good duty as a variety of things. I used it for file server, desktop, NFS, Samba, Firefly, internal web server. Its the guts of the world-class infrastructure here

Best of all it all works with Linux very well. I got the networking, RAID/eSATA, wired network, USB all working first attempt.

Very nice.

Then work came along for me. It came down to me stating to my boss, “give me more to do, this work on building out requirements and planning for new datacenter environments and I’ll do it justice”. I found it difficult to then qualify that and say “but not this week”. Perhaps its my own need to make a statement at work that I provided something of value and a service. I still have about 7 months left on my contract there and I want to stay around. Visa is an interesting place to work and the people seem to like me.

Its not a small company; but I did interview at one about a week ago after they requested it. Let me just say that I am not impressed and I won’t link to them because they don’t need that. Here are my rules for the road when interviewing going forward:

1. If you decide to hire me, great! I’ll be a resource and I’ll be there through thick and thin.
2. If you decide not to decide, great! How about calling me and letting me know? Perhaps its just me, but these techno-recruiters and talent people seem to have no real ethics and principles and we are all but meat on the shelf.
3. If you decide I am not your cup of tea, great! How about a call? Its common decency and its part of communication.

Its funny because I was asked what I thought leadership qualities were for a project manager. I’m used to this question after being asked it a doodlezillion times. We both agreed on the answers. Me and their big guy. But it comes down to communication. And what is communication? Its not one person speaking and the other listening folks. Each person has to have a vested interest in the dialogue. But after agreeing with this, it dawned on me that they have no qualms about violating what they feel is the necessity of a good manager. So, its not me for them. I won’t mention their name or linkage; but here’s a clue. If you get invited to work for an up and coming open source company, run to the hills folks. I’ve been there and done it for years. Its the path of eternal hell and damnation but it sounds so good that you anticipate the trip. Tip to the grand communicator there. Practice what you preach; bub.

I’ll go chew my gum and stick it on another bedpost, ok?

I send email to support@ and ask them a thing. They respond with something not even close to what I asked and then they tell me if I send a response it goes to the bottom of the support queue. I say… What? But my ticket was open earlier. I ask to close the account. They send me 5 emails asking for the same information but under different help desk queue items. No wonder they are all screwed up. Advice for LunarPages — Hire someone that understands support! You are judged by the support you give. How do I know? Because that is what I’ve built for a large financial institution.  At the end of it all you are not only judged by the great technical service offering; but people will resonate (or not) on how you treat them. LunarPages simply does not treat people any which way.

Multiple gigs of storage space does not make up for wishy washy service and Site5 was actually better. I don’t have really bad things to say about them.  I think they all over-sell, over-hype, and over-promote.

On to the one I have chosen which is a small piece of citrus fruit. They don’t give you multiple tb’s of disk space; but they also don’t cut any support corners. They offer a service and a delivery. My approach has been now to create two web pages including my primary blog and a fun site here that will be my stopping place. My goal is to centralize email and services at a single place. Email is gmail.  They even rhyme. Web services I got tired of providing for myself. It does not work for me to have things scattered to Yahoo, Hotmail, my mail. Bring it all together. I also chose OSA for their integration offerings. Email, parked domains, forwarding are all bread and butter of hosting companies. But I want one that actually values me and I am not only known as the recipient of numerous different support emails that when I respond go to the very bottom.

LunarPages, my advice for you is to smarten up. Learn something from the legions of people I bet that are leaving. They want more; or perhaps even less. But do some customer service along with your technical service.

I have about 4 different email accounts. They’re scattered to Yahoo, Hotmail, various domains. I want a email presence like a web presence though. It should be the same but able to deal with change. Ideally, I want a hosted environment where I can add, subtract, and even adopt more. A hosting solution provider would appear to represent the best. You can park domains, add those domains perhaps at register.com or godaddy or wherever. Then write email addresses for the parked domains. Each cPanel allows one to park domains. Think of a parked domain as one that has long-term parking enabled but you can still move the car around, make it turn its lights on. Change its status. I’ve been to a few hosting providers in search of the grail. I’ve found one that I think works and the price is decent and I like their minimal approach. But here is the list of features I think you will want:

• You want a central email address that will be yours no matter what. ISPs can come and go. Their domains may crash and burn. Have a place over and above that still lives. Data centers call this redundancy. Lets call it human redundancy.
• You want to have a central place that will collect email. Pick a place you can reach, that provides rules and filters, multiple identities and allows a measure of freedom. Hint: This is gmail for me. Gmail offers that freedom.
• Analyze how you want to use gmail. Do you want a single point of focus for the many places you have out there? Learn how to write forwarding rules. As an example, on my FreeBSD hosted ISP shell system, I need to learn the glories of procmail if I really want things good. If not, I can use a .forward file. On a cPanel hosted site, I have a set of tools. The tools can create email addresses from the many parked domains. Create forwarding rulesets. Allow me a flexible point of presence on the wild and wooly ‘net.
• Finally, understand the limitations and uses of what you are aiming toward. You want a single identity; but its flexible. It can be added to and subtracted from; but email can always reach you there.

For me, these forces and factors coalesce to gmail. Gmail is grand and glorious and not fully baked.  Google tells me its still beta. Yet it far outshines whatever it is that Yahoo! mail brings to me. It does IMAP. IMAP is the grail also folks. It lets you see and share the mail. The use of the hosting solutions provider is not to provide IMAP but instead to provide a focus point that you can reach independently. The goal is a centralized ‘net identity for work, play, research.

You can get there too. Chart out the many places you use on the internet. Web, mail, webmail. They can be brought together. For me, its gmail. For you, it may be a Linux virtual slice from a slicehost or someone.

Finally, go play. Find the force and let your skywalker revel in it. But be aware that the force is malleable and changeable. Adopt and adapt. Be good habilis.