September 27th, 2007 Rusty
I have grown quite tired of rebuilding machines but I sure do love the end result. My Vista machine, for example, became so corrupt that it would spin for minutes at a time. Not a minute but for as many as 5 minutes. It would just fade to grey and the blue spinner I’ve grown to hate would taunt me. An employee happened to fry her laptop the other day (HP crap) when she plugged the power cable in and it shorted out do to a very bad L-Shaped design. My boss offered to give her my Dell laptop and order me one that might withstand my aggressive installation practices better. I ordered an Lenovo (formerly IBM) thinkpad and proceded to wipe out my Dell. For the record, I do not know if the Dell Inspirion 6400 laptop with Vista Ultimate and 2G of ram sucks because Vista is unstable or because Dell has their thumbs up their… but it does. It stinks. So I reformatted the computer to OEM delivery state and proceeded to remove OEM garbage. Then I installed something I’ve been meaning to use for a long time. Virtual PC 2007. A friend whose opinion I very much respect (Eric Buckhalt) is a VMWare fan. Unfortunately, the free VMWare Server is not known to be vista host friendly and Workstation is not free. So I am starting with VPC.
I installed Windows Server 2003 R2 on VPV virtual drive and configured it for application service. As soon as I had my basic settings, however, I followed some basic Virtual PC instructions for using differencing disks. It was so easy I am not sure I did it correctly. We’ll soon see. I have now added my user and am about to install Skype. Then I’ll load Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 Express. See what I mean? I really have a habit of trashing a machine. No wonder my System Admins (sorry Mike G) hated me so.
A differencing disc allows you to install software and configure settings for a specific environment based on a parent configuration (like the basic OS). According to rumor, you can connect multiple differencing discs to the same parent. This allows you to have many configurations that apply to various scenarios and provides a rollback point should things get nasty. I have no idea what happens if you upgrade a parent after the differencing child is applied. Probably complete system meltdown…
I may consider purchasing the VMWare Workstation license as it is more than worth $190. From my recollection of using it at CSi, you can create snapshots with VMWare that allow you to roll back OR branch your VMWare instances.
I feel that it is time for Virtualization to reach the common application space. With the speed of processors increasing and memory getting cheaper, it only makes sense that a layer of abstraction between the hardware and the OS is worth the cost in CPU cycles. If it means you can branch and roll back to various points without a complete refresh, I am a huge fan…
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September 26th, 2007 Rusty
I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been busy with non-work. That’s the kind of work that takes exhorbinant amounts of time but doesn’t actually move you forward. Its much like pushing on a tree. It’ll make you sweat but the tree won’t move. I believe there was value in some of what I have been doing (sell the concepts) but I did, in the end, regret having taken the valuable time required to prepare the materials requested only to be told I’d not met expectations for commitments that I had to compromise to produce the required deliverables of the non-work. Basically, I wish I’d have found a way to communicate the strategy and need without having to produce a documented report. That report was tossed aside and filed with the last one.
Most who know me know that I am a obsessed agilist. I left a very waterfall organization, in fact, a very disfunctional corporate mess, to join a small, motivated company. At this small company, we are growing carefully into an efficient, small, productive team. We’ve been stabalizing and consolidating existing software and processes so that we can focus on our new and very powerful forward looking projects. We’ve built a core team that is second to none and just scored a third eager developer who promises to add significant energy and growth to our culture. Building a team is probably the most critical piece of a success proposition so I am entirely confident that we will blow the doors off the competition. Unfortunately, I am not presently clear on the best way to communicate the cultural and process requirements of a small, productive software development team. I failed to effectively secure support for what is necessary to reduce overhead and increase velocity and now I have to pull back on the reins in order to satisfy upline support for an agile process.
The simple way to state this is that I have been conceding to demands to follow a traditional business process. My hope was to satify the immediate need so that I could then enjoy the breathing room necessary to tighten the process. Instea, dealines slipped, process dissolved and the documents I begrudginly authored were tossed aside. Now I am on probation for failure to deliver though that is a direct result of having to abandon project direction to accomodate something I am opposed to: heavy documentation. I had changed my screen saver to an image engraved with the phrase, “balance advocacy with enquiry.” The reason is that I felt immensely frustrated at being asked to behave in a manner consistent with failure both in my own experience (having done that) and in company history. I needed to put myself in another’s shoes to try to understand why I was not being consulted for direction rather than being directed and, well, scolded. While I don’t like being treated like a subordinate, I am subordinate, professionally, and that is the hand I have to deal with. Thus, a swallow of Enquiry with each sip of Advocacy.
Where I am left is feeling as though I may have been better with more advocacy. However, I did learn that it is communication and edication that I must deliver. I am accommodating the request to deliver a message of urgency to my team. However, I will not consider over-allocating my team to the point of burn out. A sustainable pace is a requirement of my employment and I will find a way to communicate how this works into the overall picture of a highly efficient and productive team.
First, I must protect my people with clear pictures of resource allocation (story cards placed in priority order on resource scheduling tempaltes). Next, I must manage the outside interuptions to project health (crisis). I feel as though a well organized story-centric iteration schedule presented on paper is a very difficult thing to argue with. I am still at libery to accommodate any requirement thrown at me though I can then demonstrate the impact by moviing a story on the board. This has been a very powerful mechanism for me in the past. If I have to produce one more 80 page document that gets tossed into a filing cabinet, I am going to light it on fire.
The lesson I have learned is that advocacy is important. I was often called the Agile Evangelist at my previous position. My team produced. My product performed. Our goals were met again and again. I have been on failing teams repeatedly and been through project failures more times than I’d even like to recall. It is only after I abandoned, with ferver, the behavior that was not effective that I began to turn the corner. I didn’t count on resistance in my new role. I was hired for my experience and knowledge. That was foolish of me. That would be like pushing on a tree and expecting it to fall. Consultants have it made. They are paid to give their opinion and their opinion is considered to be worth the line item on the invoice. If it doesn’t work, there is someone to blame. With me, I am providing my consult and my expert opinion. But, as an employee, I am there to support my superior in their vision and I am not on an hourly bill rate. I have a great team and an unmatched industry outlook. All I have to do now is get the vision from my head into a format that can be consumed by a non-agilist…. History repeats itself.
It will be a challenge to remember that advocacy of a principle is not war. I feel very much like a football player preparing for the turnover. This isn’t competition, but it is a challenge.
I have a favorite metaphor: Opportunity knocks and your say, “go away! I am too busy trying to get ahead to open that door.” So opportunity obediently goes away.
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September 12th, 2007 Rusty
A friend (Sandy) brought this to my attention yesterday at the Microsoft MSDN event in Atlanta. He had looked into it, hoping for an opportunity, but was disappointed to see only Java positions. I read this article from the AJC and thought I’d comment.
First, this is good. Period. Now, I don’t believe the hype that themove is because of rising Indian salaries. Really, are we that dumb? The move is because it is ineffective to use programmers whose timezone is opposite ours. It is not efficient to work while part of your team sleeps and vice versa. Project work, where the whole thing is outsourced, remains the same proposition. You’ll have to follow a waterfall project management approach but it is no different from working waterfall within the same organization. However, bring talented Indian programmers to Atlanta and they are now local, available and on the same circadian rhythm. It will cost a little more to live in the states but Indian programmers still require less compensation than american ones. That’s not necessarily goodfor American programmers but there aren’t enough American programmers to fill the positions we have. So we need this resource.
Its a global market and Iam interested in finding ways to empower growth. I think a move like this represents a positive step in the global marketplace. It tells me that Wilpro recognizes the value in colocation and that they are focused on an American technology industry. I also like the fact that Indian programmers can find opportunity to come to America and be real contributors to our global future. I like that they can live and invest here.
However, I do not think that Indian programmers have gotten too expensive to be competitive. That’s nonesense. It just isn;t a successful model to ship your work away from your decision makers. Leadership is critical.
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September 12th, 2007 Rusty
This Amd Knowledgebase Article acknowledges the problem as a known issue. Dell, on the other hand, gladly presents the driver upgrade to you when you enter your “service tag” number. Imayhave mentioned that Dell sucks in the past, but I thought I’d repeat it here. Dell sucks, mmkay?
I won’t go into too much detail here other than that the driver includes the Catalyst 7.3 suite which has a service installed that watches for a monitor attachment. This service causes a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when it starts up. You can turn off this service (disable) to avoid the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.
Of course, after using Vista for several months, a blue screen is not much of a surprise to me. Hey, Mcrosoft, I love you guys. Reallly, I do. I love you. Could you please fix Vista? thanks
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