Esoteric Curio - Rambling

Seven things.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:18:12 -0500

Wez Furlong wrote an interesting piece on "seven thing" you may not know about him. He singled me out... (er... sevened me out)... as someone he'd like to know seven things about. I figured this would be a fun reflective journey down memory lane, so here goes...

My good friend Aaron gave me the nick-name Jesus in college -- it stuck. Though I've had many many hairstyles before and since (including the ever-popular flat top).
I studied electrical engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, but accidently satisfied the requirements for a Bachelor of Science in computer science and was graduated without my E.E. degree.
I finished each of middle school, high school, my undergraduate degree, and my graduate degree one year sooner than expected.
I married the love of my life at the age of twenty.
I created a MIG-29 flight game on Apple IIe when I was ten. And the went to run my own BBS on my Packard Bell 286.
I have bad circulation, so my feet are always cold... really, really cold.
I enjoy using my hands to create and change things. Mostly home construction like renovations, landscaping (before / after), etc. My next career will be carpentry or landscaping.

I'm supposed to chain seven people that I'd enjoying know seven things about. If figure that even if these people don't buy into this distraction, at least they'd be flattered that I thought of them.

Joshua Drake, a man on a mission not too different from my own
Bryan Cantrill, whose technology rocks my world
Chris Shiflett, who never speaks of himself
Lisa Schlossnagle, who keeps me balanced (I really want to see the seven people to whom she chains)
Paul Querna, hacker extraordinaire
David Reid, who manages to hold a real (interesting) job outside of technology
Sergey Ivanov, who seems to have more interesting stories than a library

and the rules:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Systems Operations and Fishing.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:19:29 -0500

There is a pleasant dream where the world is black and white, problems are discreet, and solutions are straightforward. People that live in this dream are an obstacle unto themselves. The harsh reality is that we struggle daily to simplify things because they tend to be so complex. Most choices lead to outcomes that have both positive and negative aspects. This includes the choice of inaction (wrongfully referred to as "not choosing"). When presented with options, by and large people tend to make decent choices. The conundrum is identifying good options when none are presented. This skill, in many people, just plain sucks.

There is an old proverb: "Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime." Perhaps I am oversimplifying fishing, but I struggle to adapt this proverb to systems operations. Perhaps it is due to the intangible nature of computing, but the one-step-closer proverb fits better (at least in my twisted brain): "Fix a man's car, and he can drive to the repair shop. Teach man to fix his car and he can go where he pleases." Why is this better? Perhaps it is just how my mind works. Perhaps it is because of the way symptoms present:

Dave: my car has issues.
Carl: what's wrong with it?
Dave: not sure.
Carl: why do you think it has issues?
Dave: It seems sluggish when pulling onto the interstate.
Carl: so it accelerates inadequately?
Dave: I guess.
Carl: What kind of car do you have again?
Dave: a brown one.
Carl: Uh, I mean make and model.
Dave: a Ronda Jackel.
Carl: is that carbureted or fuel injected?
Dave: um... um... it's got carbs.
Carl: really? what year?
Dave: oh, 2007.
Carl: okay, it's fuel injected.
Dave: oh, yeah.. That's right.. it's the Jackel GT, with the sports pack.
Carl: That has low-profile tires; are they properly inflated?
Dave: I think so, they look good.
Carl: when was the last time you checked?
Dave: last week, when I filled up. It costs like $58 to fill up. Gas prices are crazy!
Carl: *thinks*
Carl: Wow, where did you find high-test gas at that price?
Dave: Oh, I put 87 octane in that... that expensive stuff is a sham...
Carl: really? who told you that?
Dave: Alan
Carl: Who's Alan?
Dave: This great guy who taught me to fish.

Most people simply have no idea how their systems operate. They just know they are supposed to "go." Now, the purpose of this rant is really not to complain about car owners and their lack of knowledge (I'm one of them!), but rather to ask a wider audience about techniques to make the Carl's of the world better at their jobs.

Computing systems, like cars, can be immensely complex systems. When things go wrong, as they so often do, I feel you need someone who knows every single part. Not only should they know the part, they should know who built the part, why they built the part, when it was introduced into the system, what component it obsoleted, and what general advantages (and disadvantages) the newer part has over the older part. In car-speak, you should know who invented fuel-injection and when the industry transitioned, what advantages (and disadvantages) FI has over carburetor-based design. That should extend to every other part of the car down to the rubber on the tires and the stitching method used on the seat upholstery.

Note that I said "I feel you need someone..." I know a few people that can walk into a room with systems engineers and (knowing nothing about systems operations) assess a situation, ask a handful of high-level questions that results in at least two engineers slamming their heads into their desks. I call these people "Critical Thinkers." Critical Thinkers have the ability to critically think (surprise surprise), as well as understand other people's thought processes and deduce where they did not think critically.

Critical Thinkers are hard to come by, but they are out there. People with experience in computer science and operations are a little less hard to come by. It would make sense to take a Critical Thinker and teach them systems. However, to be really good at operations work, it takes years (probably five to ten). What is more challenging is finding a good Critical Thinker that actually wants to work in systems operations. What I constantly strive to do is mold people with solid technical skills and knowledge into critical thinkers. This brings us to the heart of this post.

I can hardly articulate my method of teaching critical thinking skills. Much of it is teach-by-example, but that has serious shortcomings in critical thinking scenarios. I could really use some breadth in my teaching/mentoring techniques. Does anyone have any good training materials that could be used to develop critical thinking skills? How do you cultivate and improve intuition?

There is nothing quite like a shorn scrot^H^H^Halp...

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:39:44 -0500

My daughter Gianna has Alopecia Areata (more particularly Alopecia totalis). She's bald -- completely. She's three and just now she is beginning to become a bit self-conscious about her different appearance. It's understandable... kids are cruel, no one (young) really likes to be different. Lisa and I are exploring getting Gianna a nice wig to make her feel more like she fits. For now, I shaved my head so she's not the only one bald in the house. People have told me that they think what I did was awesome. I thank you all for your encouragement, but it is very little sacrifice. I really don't care what I look like -- I'm anything but vain when it comes to my appearance. Thank Lisa, she's the one that has to look at me all the time!

Sweat Investment

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:29:07 -0500

A lot of people know I started OmniTI 10 years ago and many ask, "how did you do that without investiment?" The answer is always the same: "sweat... and several ulcers." Recently, I reminded myself of how gratifying sweat investment can be.

Five years ago, Lisa and I moved from Germantown, MD to Laurel, MD. We moved into the house in which I grew up. So, there is a lot of nostalgia as well as age. We're not talking about the "100 years old" age, but rather the "20 years old" type that results in the rather long schedule of replacements (like roof, kitchen, windows, etc.). We renovated the kitchen soon after moving in, and soon after made the sun room on the back of the house and integral edition. Both of those things we lived through, but did not do ourselves.

Landscaping, on the other hand, is something that Lisa and I are much more comfortable tackling ourselves because no matter how big of a mess we make, we can always walk away from it at the end of the day and go inside to peace and order (as much as one can get with three little girls in the house).

I am notorious for taking a rather simple project and slightly complicating it. I look at it as taking the time to make sure that the proposed effort will truly be worthwhile. I'm pretty sure Lisa thinks it is a mental disorder.

The desire: a chimenea.

Continue reading "Sweat Investment"

SQiLz℠... mad SQiLz℠

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:18:28 -0400

So, every once in a while I go on a T-shirt kick. Lisa hates it because I have 10 drawers full of T-shirts at home and then there are those that are in the hamper and in the wash and staged to to be re-drawered. I have a lot of shirts. Some are over 15 years old. Many are from conferences. They are my little bit of nostalgia.

A couple of us were sitting around listing out the various PostgreSQL services that OmniTI provides. This list is long and needs to go through a bit of marketing massage. But at the end, I decided it really was just that we have mad SQiLz℠.

Of course, one cannot reasonably put "Mad SQiLz℠" on a piece of marketing literature and expect it to go over well. There is the world of Guerrilla Marketing and it will fit right in there!

Result? T-shirts and someone said I should copyright or trademark SQiLz℠, However, it better fits as a service mark. After all, it is what we do.

Awesome T-shirts design, I'm totally stoked. I'll be sure to wear mine at OSCON this year -- look for it.

Tori has arrived.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:58:22 -0400

We're all very excited to announce the newest addition to clan Schlossnagle.

Tori Eowyn Schlossnagle was born via Cesarean on May 15th at 12:35pm. At birth she weighed 8 pounds 4.8 ounces and stretched to 21 inches. Hospital stays are always exhausting, but the whole familary is back at home resting now.

Some pictures of our beautiful third daughter.

Happiness Reserve Temperature (HRT)

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:08:01 -0400

Recently, my operations team spent about four weeks undertaking the grueling task of updating every production system we manage to reflect the new daylight savings time schedule introduced by Congress. As much as I've complained about it (knowing it will do absolutely no good), I've actually been told that I'm short-sighted. The goal of this shift is to make better use of daylight and while all is fine with that and most Americans can just given into "the man" and say "we shift 'cause we always have." However, this year, they decided that we must shift at a different time -- this time to save energy. Every time I comment negatively, I'm told that its a good thing. So, I decided to embrace this concept and use what I've learned to help others.

Misdiagnosed Unhappiness

What I had assumed during this endeavor is that my operations team was unhappy dealing with a stupid shift in time and even more unhappy in hacking the time zone files on hundreds of machines running open and closed source OS versions that are no longer supported and applying patches to hundreds of OSs that are supported by their respective vendors. But, I shall recall, it could not have been the time shift as that is a "good thing." So, I went digging for a reason and found a paper relating happiness to climate.

Now, while I did not find this paper very compelling, I decided that this was the time to drink the Kool-Aid for the greater good.

What I have come to realize is that our operations team was not unhappy about nonsensical timezone adjustments. No... they were instead unhappy due to the unusually cold temperatures in the Maryland area during that time.

Making Sense from Nonsense

So, learning from the daylight savings time lesson... Does shifting the clock actually make more sunshine? No -- I refuse to drink that sort of Kool-Aid. What it does is allow people to enjoy the sunshine at 7pm, because the sun just isn't the same when it is 6pm outside... er... Well it is the same if you didn't change the time, but you get my point. Instead of telling people to work from 8am to 4pm during the summer instead of 9am to 5pm, we lie to them and tell them it's actually 9pm GMT instead of 9pm GMT... er... 5pm EDT instead of 4pm EST... you get my point.

It is clear to me now that without being lied to is the key. People simply can't comprehend that adjusting the clock doesn't actually manufacture new sunlight. So... we should lie about the temperature to bolster average happiness. It's not really a lie, right? It's just an "adjustment" to make better use of "heat". It doesn't actually produce more heat, but hey, if it works for time, why not for temperature?

Introducing Happiness Standard Tempterature (HST) and Happiness Reserve Temperature (HRT)

Henceforce, during the Fall time shift, all thermometers will be "set forward" 10 degrees Celcius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). You'll know you did it right if your water boils at 110 (or 230F). During the Spring time shift, thermometers will be set back to "normal" (water boils at 100 / 212F). With this adjustment, you'll be cracking ice of your car, watching your breath freeze into ice crystals and be thinking, "It's only 50F outisde, that's not so cold."

With the introduction of HRT during the winter months, I predict happier populace across the United States (and Canada, because they just do what we do anyway).

Glendalough

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:57:19 -0400

On the 30th of June, I went to Gelndalough with some friends. Took some pictures and thought I'd try to share the beauty.

See the whole roll.

Prophetic error messages.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:50:08 -0400

An interesting SQLite error handed back to me via a web app:

The first umbrella that repels water!

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:58:04 -0500

So, the $DAYJOB is in the email business. We build and sell a high-performance, highly extensible MTA. I'm an engineer, but as the company started small, I have been involved with marketing direction from the very beginning. Part of that involvment is understanding who the competition is and what they can do.

Everywhere I look, every competitor we have has the first enterprise MTA. The first email application server. The first email server supporting virtual hosts (the ability to source different mails from different IPs). The first extensibility system. How can they all be the first?

I was visiting a site today and learned that they have the first email application server. I really need to rethink our system. Our product has been around longer (since 1999), but they have the first one... So perhaps our product isn't really an application server? I mean if it is, then that would mean they are lying through their teeth and have false advertising claims in their marketing materials. But, I suppose it doesn't matter much because everyone in the email space seems to be the first one to do everything despite the fact that all the purported features across the products are identical.

It's all utter bullshit. It's quite tiring because it means the first 5 things you read on any site are complete and utter crap. Our marketing guys want us to put stuff up like that too. I can't say that I blame them -- after all, every competitor has done so and thus the approach has clearly been pre-validated. However, I continue to resist.

The bottom line is that very rarely is the person who claims to have done something "first" the first one to do it (or the best one who does it) -- specifically in technology. Often times it is some dude just implementing something to scratch an itch and doesn't think to capitalize on it. At the end of the day, chances are you aren't doing something new. All you can do is do it better, smarter, faster, more efficient and more robustly than the competition. There's just no place for the first in software, because in the end what you need to be is the best -- that's what matters.

At OmniTI, we're pretty open with our ideas. After all, if I share our ideas with you and you adopt them, then tomorrow you will be where we were yesterday... good for you. The value we have is the combination of our roadmap, the ideas that aren't yet formalized yet that will continue to keep us ahead of the competition, and the crew of phenomenal engineers that make our ideas into reality.

I honestly believe that Ecelerity is the first to market with a plethora of its features. But at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter. What matters is that they are implemented better and that they meet the end-users' needs perfectly.

iPod nano

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:26:39 -0400

I just bought an iPod nano for Lisa. The is, hands-down, the sexiest electronic device I've ever seen. It makes my (not so old) iPod 40GB look like an anchor. The thing is just gorgeous. Very few technologies make me show my O-face. For software, it's dtrace. For hardware, it's the Apple iPod nano.

Off to the Cape

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:22:39 -0400

Every year my in-laws go to the Cape (Cape Cod, MA). They manage to pull my wife who manages to pull me along for the ride.

It was pretty miserable until I finally convinced the clan that air conditioning wasn't a privilege but a requirement. Now I kinda look forward to it every year, though not nearly as much as my wife.

11 hours in the car tomorrow with four adults and two children under the age of 3. Yikes! I hope it's worth it.

My Zoe

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 22:18:06 -0400

Occasionally I manage to shoot some good photos with my Sony T1. I love the camera because of its portabliity, but the lack extensive optics make it hard to take spectacular pictures. However, when the lighting is just right...

Zoe's 21 months old now and talking up a storm now -- every once in a while we here a structured sentence. She clearly knows what she wants and what she wants to say. It is quite interesting to see her struggle with oration.

Zoe is beginning to understand that her future sibling is en-womb and that Lisa will continue to get bigger. I think Zoe will be very excited once she understands what being a big sister is all about.

Spam me please.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:22:12 -0400

I setup two new email accounts just to see what comes into them:

crazyhorse@emailpipeline.com
jason.havard@emailpipeline.com

Starting a new blog.

nospam@example.com (Theo Schlossnagle) — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 20:56:33 -0400

In the unlikely event that I can actually focus enough to write in my blog, I have started a new blog with new software. I don't much like Moveable Type and thought I'd give Serendipity a whirl.

It is so hard to separate work from life. Those parts of life that are clearly not work are hard to find time to write about... I hardly have time to live them.

Regardless, I thought it would be remiss to not make an attempt.