Winning the War at HomeGoBigNetwork posted the question Thursday “Are you Winning the War at Home?”. I think they said it best with
I consider this a key question to startups, especially early stage startups where the employee count is low. While all of the points in the post are dead on, I think they missed a key point. The CEO should be genuine, and genuinely concerned with the employees familyI’ve seen a couple of situations where the CEO, or members of the management team had tough messages to deliver to the employees, and were able to do that because they were genuinely concerned about the families of the employees. While the employees get a dose of Kool-Aid daily, the spouses are generally more immune to spin, and are more skeptical. Genuine concern tastes much different than spin, and will keep key employees out of the dog house for a significant amount of time.
Under Uncategorized
Go by Bike – You can do itI’ve been biking to work since 28-May-2008, nearly every day. I procrastinated for several weeks before that, giving excuse after excuse about why I couldn’t bike to work. Here are some of the most popular:
Best Buy offers Linux on laptopsWhile browsing the blog of a fellow penguin lover, I noticed his latest post. Apparently Best Buy is offering Linux on laptops now. Links and images are posted over on Vincent’s post. Installing Adobe Flex Builder Linux Public Alpha on Fedora 8I’m embarking on a little Flex development, but I ran into a snag installing the Flex Builder into my *very* stock Fedora 8 system. I found a link to some comments here in follow up comment to the author of the post. Apparently (and I’m not an Eclipse expert), the problem stems from Fedora’s choice of “Eclipse Europa”, rather than “Eclipse Classic”. Problems:
The installation proceeds fine from that point, but the Flex project isn’t available in Eclipse. As it turns out, you need to copy some files by hand: And that’s all there is to it – you’ll have access to the Flex Projects in Eclipse. I’ll update this post if I find any problems with this method of patching the installation Update: 13-Apr-2008 The above works great for *creating* a flex application, but it will not compile. There is an error generated that says:
I struggled and struggled to find the elusive “moxie” plugin. Alas, It was not found on my computer, or in any of the jar files. It turns out you need to download the “Adobe Flex SDK” from the “Stable Builds” section of (Adobe Wiki link):
I hope this helps someone
Spidey Sense 101 – Predicting and Preparing for LayoffsHow to predict and prepare for layoffs What?This post deals with identifying the organizational behaviors that *may* lead to layoffs. This post may be a wake up call for some. Hopefully, most in the audience will breath a sigh of relief that their current employer doesn’t have these traits. These traits were observed from within the development / IT arm of various companies, so that is the point of view expressed. Many of the items below are valid regardless of the size or ownership of the company. I’ve just observed them in these contexts. One Server Per Child = BadDeveloped countries, and corporate America specifically, are pushing mountains of electronic waste (E-Waste) on developing countries. As the push for better and better performance, newer hardware with higher capacities continues, the discarded machines are being illegally unloaded on developing countries. In 1989, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in Basel, Switzerland (the Basel Convention). The Basel Convention originally banned only hazardous waste exports to Antarctica, but has since (in 1992) succeeded in a ban of hazardous waste exports from developed countries to developing countries. In 1992, the amount of electronic waste, while significant, wasn’t nearly at the level that it is today. Prestigious news organizations have covered the trend. This BBC article from 1996 lists some staggering numbers: “50 million tonnes of old PCs are thrown away each year” – “500 tonnes coming in daily” (to Nigeria) – “Children risk their health stripping components from the old PCs”. So, if it’s illegal to export hazardous waste to developing countries, how does all of this “junk” get out of the developed countries? Apparently, there are unscrupulous agents who list the hardware as “used computers”. This guise of “used computers”, which implies that the hardware is useful, gives them a convenient loophole to dump the junk on developing countries. There’s no infrastructure in place in the USA, and probably not in Europe either, to *really* classify each and every system as past it’s useful life or not. E-Cycling events are happening all over the USA. Many of these events yield multiple truckloads of castoff hardware – CPUs, monitors, disk drives, keyboards, etc – mostly from individuals. The volunteers in these events typically try to cherry pick the useful systems for non-profit and charity organizations before they make it onto the truck. While this recycling of useful systems helps the non-profits and charities, it insures that the percentage of useful systems on the truck is diminished. Nearly all of these systems will find there way onto a cargo ship to a developing country. As the IT infrastructure turnover in America fuels “Web 2.0″, ERP and large database deployments, the same loading docks that accept the new hardware usher the old hardware out the door. The trucks take the castoff equipment away, not to new, green recycling centers that capture the raw materials and protect the environment, but to waiting cargo containers with destinations like Africa and Asia. The cocktail of toxins contained in this cargo will most likely remain there, contaminating ground water and food supplies for years to come. Corporate America is generally careful to remove storage devices from the computers to protect their precious data, but seldom does anyone ever consider the deadly toxins that still remain in the box. When the hardware arrives at it’s destination, it’s sometimes scavenged for useful parts. But, this scavenging is not overseen by the EPA, it’s done by children and the poor, who need the $2 a day to pay for basic necessities. This $2 a day is a high price to pay for the increased risk of cancer and heavy metal poisoning that the toxins in these machine will cause. The list of toxins associated with old computers is long, and contains substances that have long since been controlled in America:
We won’t allow these toxins in our landfills, but don’t mind at all sending them to a developing country. The next time you think about upgrading your computer, think about keeping it around for a few more months. Odds are, you just need web browsing and office applications. Avoid the “CPU envy” feeling when your friends upgrade. *Don’t* upgrade just because your Windows installation is hopelessly infected – find a local Linux enthusiast and have her load one of the more user friendly distributions. You’ll have similar applications, a more robust operating system, and you’ll be keeping a machine out of the landfill. When you do decide to upgrade, check out ecycling.com for information on how to responsibly discard your old computer.
Under E-Waste
Are your systems helping?A couple of weeks ago, I had occasion to buy an industry specific reference book. In typical impulse mode, I called my local bookstore Books-A-Million, and inquired about the book. I’m a big fan of Books-A-Million, mainly because they’re an Alabama company, and I live in Alabama. I like spending my money close to home, and have as much of it stay in the local economy as possible. Here’s the paraphrased dialog:
This exchange was repeated 5 times that day, with various Books-A-Million stores, with the same results until one of the stores found the book on the shelf. In the midst of this search, I dialed the local Barnes and Noble, looking for the same book. This exchange was much shorter, since the inventory system showed they didn’t have the book. Total time: less than 1 minute. Which store has systems that help? Obviously Barnes and Noble. Books-A-Million has an inventory system that is very ineffective, and is probably a harbinger of ill times ahead. Consider the following points:
In any case, Books-A-Million has a potentially serious problem with their inventory system, and needs to have it checked. This system isn’t helping at all, and is causing harm. It’s most likely causing employee problems, since the employees can’t rely on it. It’s certainly costing them money. I appreciate the willingness of the store personnel to check the shelves for me, but I’d rather them save us both time by having an effective and reliable inventory system. Once they have that, they can provide the information online, and I can find the closest book to my house and go pick it up, without bothering anyone.
Under Uncategorized
Drive By Resume Harvesting, Compliments of GoogleMy resume is on the web. Most of the time, however, I’ve asked the ‘bots to leave it out of the index. Recently, though, I’ve allowed the ‘bots to index my resume, and it’s generated a bit of harvesting action. Here’s the snippet from the weblog Actual Link Here:
Which translated means:
So, as you can see, the headhunters (at least the Vietnamese ones), are very proficient in Google searches. If you want to type in the text to the Google search box, here’s the text you’ll need:
Enjoy, and now you’ll recognize the resume harvesters when they drive by your site.
Under Internet Technology
Free Unix resources for Administrators and Developers
I’m a member of a local Linux users group. Most of the members have Linux installed at home, and are happily learning how to use it, develop for it, or deploy it in a corporate environment. The reality of today’s computing environment is that there are still many Unix (AIX/HPUX/Solaris, etc) machines installed or scheduled to be installed, that require administration. Unix big iron pays the bills in may enterprise shops, and while Linux may get you in the door, Unix will keep the paychecks coming. The barrier to entry for large Unix environments has the potential to be very high. Contemporary hardware is expensive, and the operating system and software are equally expensive. New System Administrators need access to the Unix OS to at least gain some knowledge about it’s quirks and capabilities. HPUX admins need to know SAM, AIX admins need to know SMIT. Everyone needs to know how to partition logical and physical volumes on their Unix systems. Luckily, most of the large Unix vendors have test drive programs that allow access to many of their products over the internet, or even in the comfort of your own home. These are usually just a registration form away, and can provide access to OS, compilers, configuration, web servers and a host of other software. Below find links and capabilities of the programs offered by the large Unix vendors.
Under Internet Technology, Unix
Video Advertisements responsible for global warming?Think about it – when I navigate over to Digg and my processor utilization jumps to 100% because of the video advertisement, I’m burning more electricity than if there were a discreet text advertisement. In addition to “lap warming”, this must be contributing to global warming as much as anything else (due to electricity usage). Flash advertisements seem to be the worst CPU offenders, especially those that have animated cursor tracking like the Sony advertisement on digg.com Maybe it’s because I’m using Linux or maybe it’s Firefox – either way I’ll be looking around for a flash video / flash advertisement blocker later today.
Under Uncategorized
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