Scott Miller

I love Clif Bars. They have lots of protein and nuts and stuff, all bound together with brown rice syrup, which is easier for me to digest than, say, Powerbar with it's High Fructose Corn Syrup. Peanut Toffee Buzz is one of my favorites.

And Clif Bars are "organic". At least they are supposed to be "organic". But it turns out that the peanuts and peanut butter in Clif Bars are the same crappy peanut products made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) that are salmonella warnings and criminal investigation. So now Clif Bars are recalled

Bad form, Clif Bar...

Oracle Support sucks. No two ways about it.

12/30, 2 PM.
I had to call Oracle Support because my Oracle Apps was hosed and not allowing me to create a Supply Chain Plan. Production is down.

Most of the time, the analyst will communicate via the Metalink TAR support ticket. So you have to frequently click update to see if they posted something new to the ticket. This is especially important as the support "follows the sun" through different time zones around the world.

Typical response, "you don't have the most up-to-date patches" (duh, but that is not what is causing this problem). "Run the plan, upload the logs".

A couple of hours go by...
"Change settings to generate debug info, rerun the plan, upload logs".

Now we get to the first hurdle. Every time that the support ticket was passed off to the next time zone they dropped the ball. And completely dropped off the radar. No response, no TAR postings. So I had to call and escalate the TAR.

Levels of Oracle support call escalation:
Customer->Regular Analyst->Escalation Manager

12/30 6 :30 PM
Now it is being handled in Australia. I escalated to a manager. Told them that Production is down. A very proper Australian woman with a hot voice chides me about escalating the call. She says rerun the plan and upload the logs again. This will take 90 minutes.

Uploaded the logs and an hour goes by. I have to escalate again. This time I get SE Asia. They don't even know what the escalation process is! I ask to be called at home. No such luck.

12/30 Around 11 PM
Another 90 minutes goes by. I escalate again. I ask to be called at home. They can't read the TAR, apparently, so they call my office and leave a voice mail message.

Finally I get someone in India, who is actually quite helpful after I completely explain and explain the whole thing over again.
Damn you Oracle, why can't your techs read the TAR notes up to this point?
"Send some query dumps and more logs".

12/31, somewhere around 2:30 AM
More settings, more dumps of logs.

12/31, 4:30 AM
The analyst in India is better than the others I have so far. He finally figures out it is a problem with a date calendar setting. But there are several places to setup the calendar. He chooses the wrong one.
We change the settings and rerun the plan and upload logs

Shift change and we lose that guy. Two or more hours go by and we are starting over again with someone else! "Why don't you have the current patches?"

Don't you idiots read the #$%@ TAR notes up this point?

It is past 8 AM. Production is still down. Oracle doesn't seem too worried. We have to escalate to the Division Manager. This requires my boss making the call.

Levels of Oracle support call escalation:
Customer->Regular Analyst->Escalation Manager->Division Manager

12/31, 10 AM
Now I have the original support guy that I started out with yesterday at 2 PM! Except for a few winks of sleep (like 20 minutes) here and there I have been up since yesterday at 5:30 AM.

The support guy finally gets me the right settings and the plan works. We are fixed.

12/31, 1 PM
The Division Manager calls me and tells me these following nuggets of wisdom to weave things through the Oracle support web:

• Ask for manager oversight when you escalate to a manager. This will require the manager to follow the progress, not just pass you to an analyst.
• Ask for a "warm handoff" when support moves to a new team and time zone. This requires the previous staff to help the transition instead of just assigning a new person in the support queue.

Try these yourself and see if they work.

BTW - this made for a pretty crappy New Years Eve

D'Arcy commented on a Inc magazine article by Joel Spolsky on rewarding employees. I like D'Arcy's comments, and, rather than replying to his comment, I have many ideas of my own.

How do you reward IT employees? And what do you reward them for? Joel has some interesting examples - do you reward the intern who brings a new million dollar business idea, or do you reward the rest of the team who is finishing a product that will double the regular revenue of the biz?

We have all heard the horror stories. "If you just get this delivered on-time, then you will all get a bonus/trip/whatever". The manager knows that the project won't be on-time, so there is no risk to him and only frustration for everyone else.

I worked for a small company and worked many hours on a project. When review time came I expected a raise. Maybe not for the hours worked and success, but I had gained and demonstrated many skills which could translate into future projects (this is a key idea that I will come back to shortly). My boss said that I had done a good job, but in his opinion the project and its timeline and workload were exceptions and not the rule. And that the next six months or year did not have extraordinary projects that would require longer hours, so why increase the pay? I protested about the long hours. Then he bragged that he basically got all that for the same price, which showed that he was shrewd business man (and a jackass).

If you live and work in corporate IT-land this may be quite different than if you work for an IT-only business or service. Corporate culture may have a specific reward structure (or no reward structure).

Tim Harford's book The Logic of Life - the Rational Economics of an Irrational World, (a book I recommend), is all about incentives in daily life. The book has a chapter on the rationality of a manager pitting all workers against each other for that larger raise. This behavior has built-in incentives for the manager. The idea is that raises are given out based on comparitive performance. If someone works 60 hours a week, he is most likely to get that top raise, while the rest get decreasingly less, with some in the department getting nothing. I worked in a place like that where the people who worked those long hours got 3% and everyone else got less. Pretty soon people don't care anymore, especially for a measly 3%.

At one place I worked, there were quarterly IT awards - a certificate and some cash reward. Almost all of the things rewarded were based on an IT person putting in long hours to fix something or to bail out the business. And, almost without fail, these instances actually involved some emergency that could have been avoided by better business practices, better IT practices (like documenting something before someone leaves, fixing bugs a little better before go-live, or avoiding obvious risk in the first place). What they were rewarding was a cowboy-coder, hero culture, where someone saves the day in the middle of the night. And, similar to Joel's examples, people grumbled because they compared their project to the other guy's project. Or a person got a $20 certificate to the company store and a resulting lime green company-logo'd shirt (because that was the only one available) for his efforts.

And what about pay? Are performance reviews focusing on past performance or on traits, responsibilities, and gained and demonstrated skills which can translate into future performance? I think that they should have a balance of both, but definitely stress the latter. And stressing skills which will likely translate into future performance should be the focus of increases in pay.

What do you think?

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar

A new picture every day for the first 25 days of December. Some pretty amazing pictures.

Google released their new browser, Google Chrome, this week. They actually call it a "release" rather than their usual practice of calling a product "beta" forever and ever.

I downloaded it and installed it and it has a couple of interesting features. Instead of history it shows a page of screen shots of your most visited sites.

They also have Incognito mode, which supposedly allows you to surf anonymously, without your traffic being saved in the History. But a dialog box comes up and says that you may not be truly anonymous to servers, systems, etc. So what is the use.

And lastly, doesn't this Google Chrome icon look like a Pokeball?

I just got done reading Strategic IT Portfolio Management by Jeffrey Kaplan.

Governance is something that doesn't get talked about very much, and certainly not in a positive way. Many companies do governance during the project charter and approval process, to fiigure out what projects to approve, but do very little governance after go-live. Most project requests or project charters have exaggerated expected return on investment numbers, and how much savings or revenue the project implementation will bring. And, in my experience, many of these project requests are sales driven and are nothing more than fiction.

Who does governance after the project goes live? What metrics exist to see whether the project did realize these savings or increased revenue ROI numbers? This book focuses on asking these questions - to ask "are we allocating our IT resources adequately to get the most value for the business (internal) or customer (external)?" This is not for downsizing or outsourcing. Sometimes the on-going costs of support and licensing are not offset by a compensatory value in the business; maybe the project is not even paying for the upkeep costs after go-live. Perhaps the line of sales or market did not materialize. Often the process improvement and savings are not realized because the stakeholders' department didn't really embrace the process change or found a work-around to keep doing the same old bad practices. Or perhaps the scope of the project was cut because of deadlines or all of the project features were not implemented.

This book shows how to ask these questions in the organization, and propel the conversation in a positive direction, so that IT resources are spent on the best value for the business. I highlighted alot of the first two chapters, and I found the book to be very useful. It also shows how to structure the IT portfolio so that governance has real goals and expectations when projects deal with new markets and R&D so that those projects that will bring future value are not hit.

My pics from the Venus, Jupiter, Moon conjunction. Venus moved significantly over the last few days, as much as two full moon widths a night. It was joined by the crscent moon on Dec 1.

11/26/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus on the bottom

11/26/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus on the bottom

11/29/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus still on the bottom

12/01/2008 - Just after sunset. Big change in two nights. Crescent moon on left, Venus on bottom, Jupiter on right.

12/01/2008 - Starting to see some Earthshine on the dark side of the moon.

12/01/2008 - With the sunset

12/01/2008 - A little darker

12/01/2008 - Final pic of the night. Moon on the left, Venus on the bottom, Jupiter to the right.

Back in the past (circa May 2006) I entered the GWB Game Contest. Six weeks of design and programming in Visual C#.Net 2005, pre-XNA days. I created a post-apocalyptic arena card game, similar to Magic, where patrons fight their champions (or slaves) in an arena. It included anime game art created by my daughter Mindy.

Now I have been converting it to XNA. In addition, I want to significantly tweak the gameplay, and add lots more cards. Mindy is unavailable for game art, so I was stumped for card art. Then I found that the charas PRGMaker art site has a faceset creator engine. So I have been using it to design card art.

Plugging the card art into the old Bloodletting game engine looks like this:

While converting this to XNA, I also want to add armor, and a "cost" to each card. Then one cannot play a card without enough money, with money being like mana in Magic.

That is Phase 1 plan. Phase 2 plan is to add multiple characters fighting at one time.

Venus and Jupiter Conjunction

Venus and Jupiter will move closer (conjunction) over the next few nights until they are very close to each other, along with the crescent moon on December 1st.

Venus and Jupiter are seen in the southwest sky just after sunset. Venus will move almost two full moon widths in distance closer to Jupiter each night this week.

Thank you veterans! That includes everyone, in war-time and peace-time, that has served our country, whether overseas or in Wichita, KS. There are many who only think of war-time vets on Veteran's Day. But everyone who served is important and worthy of our deepest respect.

I served in the Air Force 20 years ago, from 1984 to 1987. I was an x-ray tech and was stationed at Lackland AFB in San Antonio for basic training, Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, TX, and Wichita, KS. Not exactly exotic ports of call. I didn't consider myself a hero for joining the military - I joined because my girlfriend/new wife was pregnant. And I don't recall thinking that it was a great sacrifice, until toward the end when I was put on mobility and could be called up any time, day or night, to get shipped out - maybe when we got on that plane we were just flying around as a preparedness exercise, or maybe it was to fly to the other side of the world to setup a MASH unit. We didn't know. Imagine kissing your wife goodbye and not knowing where you were going...

That is the beauty of the sacrifice of military service. People dedicate their lives for four years to go wherever they are told to go, and to defend the country and the Constitution. Heady stuff that I didn't fully consider on that cold day in January 1984. I had never even been on a plane before!

Looking back, I historically have not really considered myself a veteran, except for checking the box on the employment application, if necessary. And no one has ever thanked me for my service. Until last year. I work at Cargill, and last year they invited me to a Veteran's celebration. At first, I said, "well I didn't fight in a war", and I wasn't in the Army, and I didn't lose a friend, or an arm or a leg. But it didn't matter, they invited me anyway. And they invited me again this year and I won a prize in the drawing. And they thanked me for my service. And that meant alot to me.

In the current wars (and in Desert Storm), the Air Force has played a larger role, with logistics, air support, and medical treatment. And logistics means alot when you are a fighting force of 300K+ in two theaters of war.

So, if you are a veteran, if you served, no matter if you were in peace-time or war-time, in a fighting unit or in a support role, I thank you today for your service and your sacrifice.

I voted early the other day. I am so thankful for early voting. I could not have tolerated standing in line on Tuesday, with the high turnout expected for Election Day.

But enough of the election already! This has been going on for two years. A non-stop barrage of ads on TV. My phone has at least two recordings per day saying that world as we know it is going to come to an end if you don't vote for "our candidate".

I got a handful of ads in the mail, all of the candidates claiming to be pro-family. Well, who runs on the anti-family ticket? Ridiculous. And the House Rep for my section of Kansas is perpetually campaigning all the time.

The two party system sucks. I know that there are other parties, and I lean Libertarian, but there is really no chance in Hell of a third party getting elected. And in most of these races, especially local, there is only a choice between "dumb and dumber". Example: Senator Pat Roberts and Jim Slattery. Both run attack ads. Pat Roberts supposedly saved a defense department bid on a refuelling tanker that was bid to Airbus instead of Boeing. But at the same time his son was a lobbyist in Washington for Airbus??!! And Slattery is a Washington lobbyist, and just as slippery. Is this what our nation has come down to?

And what about (without starting a flame war) the Presidential race? Everyone asks me what I think. My friends look at me funny, question my integrity, my faith, and my sanity for my opinions because I don't support "XYZ", while the other half of my friends think just the same way about the other guy. People in the newspaper and TV frame either candidate as a binary choice, a patently obvious game changer or the savior of all mankind. I don't like either one of them!

Our Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves. They setup a representative form of government, a Constitutional Republic - not a Democracy - where we don't directly elect a President by the popular vote. Why? So that we don't run off and treat the President like a King over us. And like stupid sheep we are doing just that! So Hail to the King!

And, on the other hand, the Electoral College, while making it so that we don't directly elect a King, forces a majority, winner-take-all result in the state, making all the other votes not count. It also effectively eliminates any chance for a third party, and resulting in only two choices.

Well, remember that in the early years of our country that the winner became President and the second place person became VP. And the Senators were elected by the State Legislatures. How's that for a reality check?

WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes...
ARTHUR: Oh shut up!

I love to watch TED videos.

Yesterday I watched the TED video where Johnny Lee does his Wiimote Hacks:

He was a PhD student who figured out how the Wii remote video game controller worked and used it to create a digital whiteboard, and a virtual reality device. Here is his Projects page. Then, instead of presenting them in a paper, he put the video on YouTube and it is consistently in the top 10 of videos.

Now he works for Microsoft. He is interviewed in the NYT today, and says some interesting things about innovation.

"He chooses his personal projects based on what he calls their 'work-to-wow' ratio. 'I want to get the biggest wow for the smallest amount of work,' he explains, adding that for him, wow is synonymous with impact. Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, 'Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?' If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls 'surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially.'”

My attempt at a "I'm a Geek with a Blog" video.

And the link to the (unfinished) song - Slough of Despond

It has been a wild week, hearing the gloom and doom on Wall Street with the credit crisis.

All That Money You've Lost - Where Did It Go?

I found this article to be helpful. Realistically, all that "gain" or "loss" that we see in the market, whether the stock market or the housing market, is all on paper. It only makes a difference if you are looking to buy or sell soon. Otherwise, you just keep the asset, whether on paper (stocks) or the real asset of your house, until later. And most likely it will go back up later in the future.

Many people have treated houses as short term investments over the last few years rather than the longer term assets that they are. Interest rates were low. People borrowed from equity. This demand increased the value on paper, governments greedily reacted by raising the appraised value, which fed more into the value increase. My home doubled in value from 1994 to 2005. I didn't do that much to it to deserve that increased valuation. And my taxes seriously increased also. No one screamed bloody murder that their house was rising so fast in value.

My 401K went down 6% in the first week of October. And that is before the bigger drops in the next few days. I moved some of it into bonds. If everyone did that, it would bring the stock market down lower as well. Realistically, if you are greater than 5 years from retirement, it doesn't make much difference. Sure, you won't make 10+% ROI in the next year, but you are not going to make that much more anywhere else. And most of us have limitations of what we can do with the money. We can't really touch it until retirement anyway.

So did I really lose the money? I lost the potential, but in a good market I could have gainjed more potential. That's why I like the article linked to above. It puts it in perspective.

OK, I have blogged about Spore a couple of times so far. Now I will look at it from a different point of view.

In my last posting I admitted that it is a toy. But, it claims to have an evolutionary model. So, two questions:

1) Will the game cause more kids to be interested in science? I think the first stage, the Cell Stage, is really the only part of the game that has scientific value. The graphics, with water particulates and the slightly out-of-focus background, are reminiscent of looking at the beasties in a sample of pond water in a microscope. I fondly recall High School Biology class, looking at paramecium through the 'scope. Therefore, I think that the first stage of Spore could be used in Science class, perhaps playing Spore and then looking at real creatures in the microscope.

In addition, Spore could be used to show how adding different characteristics to the creature adds a variety of different results. As you add flagella, or spikes, you see a definite change in the behavior of the creature and the advantage or disadvantage it brings in the environment. Add a spike on the back or sides of your beastie and you will die less. Add extra flagella and you can swim faster. It is crude, but it is interesting and can provoke some conversation about microevolution. It is also very helpful to introduce the difference between a herbivore and carnivore and the behaviors of each. (although the game significantly favors carnivores and I can't imagine how to progress in the game as a herbivore).

2) That said, is the game an evolutionary model? (well, at least the Cell Stage). Would Richard Dawkins agree? Thinking of Spore in this way is interesting, for the aforementioned reasons, but it poses some problems also. Spore shows very quick changes and variations. You eat three or four big pieces of food and you exponentially grow in size. Spore is, after all, a game/toy. But evolution is really small variations over a very long period of time. There are also no evolutionary dead ends in the game.

Spore also stresses choices. You choose what parts you want on your cell. This underscores the popular misconception that evolution is fast, that it is always progressive, and that it is deterministic. Stephen Jay Gould probably would have had a slight problem with this, especially since he wrote extensively against this misconception, especially determinism, in The Mismeasure of Man and Full House. Gould favored chance in evolution, and also pointed out the frequency of evolutionary dead ends.

Finally, Spore allows you to make choices and design your Creature. It is, after all, a god-game, and you are the Creator. It could just as easily be used to teach Intelligent Design - "this extra flagella allows the creature to swim better than its predators". Dawkins may bristle at the suggestion.

All this may be too heady for a "game", but with all the hype surrounding Spore in the last month, claiming it to be everything to everybody, I think it is appropriate to ponder these questions. What would have happened if the game included chance? What if it included the possibility for crazy, unexpected mutation?