Pensieri di un lunatico minore
My ever-so-loving family has given me a Nintendo Wii for the holiday. The struggle now is whether to leave in its box for ease of shipment…
2 thoughts
Someone in the Texas Legislature wants to make it legal for blind people to hunt with guns:
“I’ve seen this on TV before, when they’re taking target practice,” Kuempel said. “When they aim the gun the guide tells them, aim two inches higher or two inches lower and you’re on the target, and you’re off and running.”
On second thought, would they really be any more dangerous than Dick Cheney has been?
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Radar has a great collection of the most dangerous toys of all time, and the ones my parents gave us in the late 70s/early 80s are at the top: lawn darts. Ah memories. What is fun is the fact that at one time, or another, there were 5 of the top 10 in my house growing up, and none of us died. Hell, I think some of them still are in boxes back in my mom’s house.
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I don’t know how often I’ve heard people talk about how important “availability” or “scalability” is in their systems, without the first ability to quantify or understand the implications of their statements. So, before we talk about availability, let’s put the nines on display, since so many people talk about them without knowing what the implications might be.
| Avail |
per Month |
per Year |
| 98% |
14.4h |
7.3d |
| 99% |
7.2h |
3.65d |
| 99.5% |
3.6h |
1.83d |
| 99.9% |
43.2m |
8.76h |
| 99.99% |
4.32m |
52.6m |
| 99.999% |
25.9s |
5.26m |
| 99.9999% |
2.59s |
31.5s |
So, the mythical five-nines reliability that is so often bandied about by clueless people allows for only 25.9s of downtime in a month. Is this achievable? Sure, but if you want to achieve it based on a measurement that matters, it’s a lot harder.
How do you measure availability? At the end of the day, the only availability that truly matters is the one seen by your end user. I’ve often called this holistic uptime, as it requires a holistic approach to problem solving. It includes the hardware, but also the operating system, application components, network and the client platform. Often that last component is your restriction. That and networks that are less reliable than you think they really are. 99.5% is a typical SLA in the ISP world, and 99.9% if you have redundant links. Surpassing that starts to cost serious money in many cases.
It’s important to understand that not all downtime is the same. Scheduled downtime is generally more acceptable than unscheduled downtime, and sometimes is excluded from the calculation (although both should be calculated). Downtime during primary user hours1 is more painful than in off hours. Whether you have any off hours, however, may be largely a result of who your user base is. If you are a global organization and a specific system is supporting all your users, then you might not have any quiet periods1 during the regular time-period. If you work with retail customers, then your work-day window is even larger, and includes weekends.
To cut to the chase, since this is an entire book to be written about managing availability, it is important to set goals realistically and with true business impact understanding. Very few organizations need five-nines availability, and many would be just fine with 99.5% or even lower for many systems. Heck, I’d be happy if our email was down more, as it would keep the distraction level down.
Money is also a major issue. I usually tell people that every additional nine costs 2x what the previous one cost, and sometimes that’s an understatement. Going from 3 to 4 is one thing, 5 to 6 is a totally different thing and might even be 5-6x increase in cost. You best be able to write a business case for that.
1 It’s important to understand that not every timezone has an equal distribution of people, and the number of people impacted is also a critical factor.
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It seems that Joss Whedon is writing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book. This should be interesting to see how he ties up things after all the TV series.
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Oy! In the process of removing the badging on my new mazda3, I discovered that the Mazda logo on the hatch is riveted, and not just glued on. That means that the standard hair-dryer + dental-floss + alcohol will not remove it. Otherwise, the 2.3 logos on the doors and the ‘3’ part of the Mazda logo are gone. Why would you just rivet that part? Odd.
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I have now had my Mazda3 for 2 weeks, and my overall impression is outstanding. In many ways, it’s a better thought-out car than the Infiniti was. Some general observations:
- Not only is there a pass-through between the upper and lower compartments in the arm-rest, but the plug protecting them is reversible to allow just a small cable through.
- The felt mat in the upper compartment needs a bit of glue so it doesn’t shift around constantly when opening it to change iPod settings.
- Tire-pressure warning system. No car this cheap that I know of has such a beast. I would have killed for it on my leak-prone G35.
- Seats are very comfortable for me. I’ve done some 4+ hour trips now, and they’re just fine.
- Seat heaters heat up very quickly; faster than anything else I’ve been in.
- I adjust the automatic climate-control much more infrequently in the mazda3 than the G35.
- The reconfiguration of the hatch compartment is brilliant. Re-using the floor panels (they have a plastic sub-tray under them) as dividers is excellent.
- The clutch and transmission are much less tiring in bumper-to-bumper traffic than those in the G35.
- I don’t miss the other 120HP, strangely.
- Putting in 87 octane gas and getting 28mpg is better than 91 octane and getting 20mpg.
There’s just a few things that need to be dealt with in the coming weeks:
- Window tint, because with a black-leather interior, it’s gonna be hot in the summer.
- Removing most of the badging. Out comes the hair-dryer and dental floss. The only thing that needs to stay is the Mazda logo.
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I don’t normally link to YouTube stuff, but this video of Stephen Wiltshire, an art savant from London is jaw dropping. He was given a 45 minute helicopter ride over Rome—where he had never been before—and then 5 days to reproduce it. He did it as close to perfect as any human can imagine, only making 1 tiny mistake in the entire 5 yard panorama. Unbelievable.
It reminds me of what the human mind is capable in raw power, and how untapped it is for most of us. I do wonder if “normal” people are given some percentage of their possible capabilities to work with, which is then distributed across all the various centers of functionality. In Mr. Wiltshire’s case, it was heavily concentrated in certain areas, and so it lacks in others. No less brilliant, simply different.
I have always said that the bigger differentiator between genius and simply smart is our ability to use what we have most effectively. People like Richard Feynman, who I consider perhaps the single most brilliant person alive in the 20th century, are perhaps blessed with a little more raw capability, but what they truly have is the ability to leverage everything at once.
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If there is one thing that I have always dreaded, it is shopping for clothes. Whenever I find something I like, it is rarely available in a size appropriate for me. Today though, I found a few things, and even more importantly, in a slightly smaller size.
2 thoughts
I ordered a new monitor, as I mentioned before. It was shipped via UPS (I had no choice in the matter). Since nobody was ever going to be able to sign for it, and I wasn’t about to let it sit out on the front porch, I called them to have them just hold it and I’d pick it up.
After a long struggle to just get access to a human (keep saying ‘agent’ over and over, even after it tells you they won’t actually help you), they told me that they can’t hold the package until after they’ve failed a delivery attempt. So basically, I’m telling them not to waste resources on delivering, offering to save them money, and they’re telling me that they can’t do that. They must fail. It is imperative to their business model, apparently.
So now, it’s failed delivery, and now I can have them hold it. But, not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I can go pick it up, but not tonight. This kind of thing is annoying, and I have experienced it for 3-4 years now with UPS. I can’t imagine I’m the only one, and the only answer is that they simply don’t give a damn about their customer’s experience at the end of the day. Pulling a package off before it goes onto the truck can’t be that hard. If it is, they’ve got a broken system.
2 thoughts
The time is 1976, I’m 4 years old, and Ricardo Montalban hasn’t even started Fantasy Island yet, but he has started shilling for an archetypical car of the late ‘70s: The Chrysler Cordoba. With it’s “rich Corinthian leather,” it epitomized luxury, as defined by Detroit in that era. In many ways, it was the last of a generation, and soon, the Japanese and Europeans would begin to steal more and more market-share from a trio of car companies incapable of seeing their folly.
If you click on the picture, you can watch the fine commercial for the Cordoba as well.
Kaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!
1 thought
Yankovic is an auteur—yeah, you read that right—with a vision that extends beyond bologna jokes and fat suits, though it also includes both. If you’re lucky enough to have seen his 1989 film UHF, you know what I’m talking about.
So covers an interesting article in The Village Voice by Jonathan Zwickel. I don’t know where to begin, but Weird Al’s latest album Straight Out of Lynwood is just as brilliant as anything else he’s done, and I think it requires and understanding of a huge range of music to see how funny and accurate it is. To hear him put 50 Cent’s atrociously heinous creation, “Candy Shop” put to a barber-shop quartet with an accordian-driven polka beat is more fun than anything else I’ve heard recently.
What can I say, I’m white and nerdy.
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Let me put this out there, before I make my comment: Every major US air carrier sucks unbelievably, unless you are one of their top members. All of them. The question is how they suck, and in what way do they annoy you this time, as opposed to the way another carrier annoyed you last time.
So I am flying to SF tomorrow for business. My R/T ticket to SF and back is approximately $1200, for a non-refundable coach seat. When I went to check in this afternoon, United wanted to charge me $46/one-way to sit in “Economy Plus.” $46 on top of the $1200 they’ve already gotten out of us. 4% more money for a little more legroom.
Now, I understand charging that for the el-cheapo $250/RT fares, and that doesn’t bother me. But at $1200, I think they can splurge and give me somewhere to put all my legs, and not just half of them. Maybe they can even splurge for a seat cushion that isn’t designed by the Marquis de Sade, but that might be asking too much.
I know this is one of the “benefits” of their frequent-flyer “elite” program, but I think at a certain point, they should simply wave that for those of us who have to pay the absurd last-minute fares because a customer can’t commit to dates. It’s just a thought. Oh, and I’m sure they’ll want $4 for a “snack” on the plane.
2 thoughts
Today is one of those nearly-perfect days of the year. The heat and opressive heat of the summer has passed, and the cold has yet to descend on the city. For lunch, I sat out on our patio, and had lunch with a co-worker and caught up on some pending projects that are hanging there for next year. There’s a few pictures on Flickr.
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Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I am able to track packages throughout the UPS and FedEx system with amazing accuracy. This has been a great boon to business and personal use alike.
It’s just damned annoying when you’re waiting for that package that says “OUT FOR DELIVERY”. Refresh! Refresh!
1 thought
Why am I not surprised that a large number of the top 100 pages in Wikipedia are about sex in some way? Oh right, because the Internet is for porn.
1 thought
There are a lot of strange things available, but watching the Science channel just a few minutes ago, I saw an add for the Quiktop, which apparently turns your soda can into a bottle. The best line from the ad: “Drinking out of a can is sometimes tricky.” Really?
This joins the totally pointless Pasta Express that makes every ounce of my Italian heritage cringe.
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Hat tip to Jenny for letting me know about a new movie coming out: The Oh in Ohio. Maybe vaguely not safe for work, I dunno, but looks racously funny. I do adore Parker Posey.
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I think we can all agree that the CAPS LOCK key is evil. Not that quiet kind of evil that we can tacitly tolerate, but that mendacious evil that gets in and destroys entire civilizations. Finally, someone is doing something about it.
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There are many reasons to love the Alamo Cinema Drafthouse in Austin, TX, but I have just discovered yet another one. They are having a contest: Blanks on a Blank for amateur film-makers in the area to submit their own animal on a vehicle films. Go look, they’re brilliant.
So far my favorite1 is “Fox on a Kayak,” but I have to ask: where’s the eels on a hovercraft?
1 Favorite based on how amusing I find the title.
3 thoughts
So, in my never-ending search for a new job, I am forced to work with recruiters who are listing jobs for various companies I’m interested in working for. Recently, I found a very interesting job that was listed on a major job site, here is what happened:
- Click on “Apply for this job” link on the major job site
- Fill out some additional information, e.g., cover letter, and submit
- Wait
- 2 days later, receive an email from the listing agent that they don’t accept applications from any other job site, so I need to go fill it out on their web site
- Get yet another freaking account I’ll never use on this company’s web site
- Fill out the form and upload my resume
- Receive an email saying “thank you” and including a text-based survey they want me to fill out
- Fill out survey and email to the provided address
- Email bounces
- Bang head on table
Really, how hard is this? This company has a “flashy” web site, but they can’t be bothered to put this survey up as a couple of TEXTAREA elements? I am not impressed.
3 thoughts
This just can’t be a good thing:
Oil company BP has indefinitely shut down the nation’s biggest oilfield after finding a pipeline leak, removing about 8 percent of U.S. oil production and stoking fears that already high gas prices will shoot up further. [...] Once the field is shut down, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That’s close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Given oil prices are still climbing, I imagine this will cause them to shoot up even more. A 10% increase is easy to imagine, which will put light-crude over $80/barrel, and potentially send gas-pump prices up to $4/gallon.
It’s obvious, to me at least, that gas-pump prices have nothing to do with crude-oil prices, but instead, simply use crude-oil increases to push up the pump prices faster. Sky-rocketing profits by all the oil companies demonstrate that they are making more money on approximately the same amount of production, so the margins must be getting bigger.
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Previously, I talked about alternative data organization options that do not use a relational database. Before I move onto partitioning options for non-relational data organization, it’s probably helpful to look at how one might do this with an RDBMS.
Read the rest
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Watching all the hooplah around Floyd Landis’ testing after the Tour, I wondered how all the testing regimes work. Derek Lowe lays all the science out. If only the media might take the time to explain how/why this stuff is so reliable.
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The Internet, circa 1996. I remember it in all it’s “glory,” and don’t miss it one bit.
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Tonight, I went to a Resident Associates program with Alton Brown where he discussed the making of his new program “Feasting on Asphalt.” It was quite entertaining, and I am looking forward to the series that premiers this coming weekend.
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I don’t make any appologies: I am a food snob. Now, that’s not to say that I only eat “fancy food,” or that I haven’t had cravings for all sorts of bizarre travesties in the cullinary world1. I am passionate about hamburgers, and all sorts of other basic foods. There’s simply no time for bad food in this world, and certainly no calories for it.
Witness the “KFC Famous Bowls.” From a review in the LA Times (this may or may not require registration, depending on your browser, oddly):
And there it sits on my desk, a steaming, sweating pound of food goo that I purchased at a drive-in window (more anonymous that way) for $3.99. Let me tell you, it’s one thing to muse upon the Famous Bowls in a detached, ne’er-shall-pass-my-lips sort of way. Quite another to address the product, spork in hand.
And now, in the interests of participatory journalism, I take a bite. Hmmm. Uh-huh. OK. It’s like throwing up in reverse.
Just checking out the pictures makes me ill. Really, I mean, what can possibly be the point other than trying to stuff the maximum number of calories and cheap crap into the cheapest mechanism possible. It’s not food, it’s just slop.
1 I dated someone who introduced me to the bizarre “scramble” of french fries, eggs, cheese and some onions in a skillet. Odd, but yummy.
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From Eddie Izzard’s one-transvestite show, Circle:
So in the Christian faith, God created Adam in his own image, so that was good, yeah? But 65 millions years before that, he created the dinosaurs using the image of his cousin Ted.
Indeed.
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Charlie Rose interviews Warren Buffett. The amount of wisdom about business, and just life, is amazing. He is also one of the most humble people I’ve ever seen. The things he shares seem so obvious, but “common sense” simply isn’t very common.
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