Technology marches on
Ten years ago I built a music player out of a PC and other stuff that was 4U big, cost thousands (if I used new parts) and could hold as many songs as my cigarette-pack sized iPod can store today for a few hundred bucks.
Thanks to Moore's Law, just about any thing you build today can be done on something the size of an iPod, you just have to wait long enough. What year will an entire SAP deployment be the size of an iPod? What year will an entire service like gmail be the size of an iPod? What year will a PeopleSoft installation be the size of an iPod? An entire Remedy helpdesk ticket system iPod?
In that year... will someone want to pay $millions for an equivalent PeopleSoft installation when it is on an iPod? I doubt it. Would PeopleSoft be able to stay in business selling an iPod-priced device? I doubt it. So will this kind of innovation come from an outside competitor? I'd assume so... just like phone companies couldn't make the leap to VoIP and were instead put out of business by the likes of Cisco.
I wonder if prior to complete (for example) PeopleSoft iPods, there will be a generation of single-function bricks that are connected via standard interfaces. You buy a database brick, a core IT services (DNS, authentication, ActiveDir/LDAP) brick, and a PeopleSoft app brick; and they provide the service together. Sort of like legos.
What app will be on your brick?
Disaster Recovery for our Loved Ones
I never thought I'd be recommending gifts for the holidays but I recently had a realization. The gift I can give everyone I love is the gift of making sure they have their PC or laptop backed up, and making sure that in a medical emergency I have the information that I need. In the digital age, there is no greater gift of love.
Neither is very difficult if you follow these tips.
Backups
In the last year I've helped more than a few people recover from destroyed harddrives and/or laptops. Most of the "help" I had to provid was a shoulder to cry on because they had no backups. As non-technical people they didn't see the need for backups ("It won't happen to me!"). As technical people, it is our job to educate them about the importance of backups and help them set up a solution.
The solutions used to be complicated, but now it's a lot easier: Buy an external USB or Firewire hard drive that is 2x larger than their computer's drive. Set up something like CMS's BounceBack Pro (which is extremely fast on a Mac. Incremental backups in less than 7 minutes on my system. Much slower on my Windows box, which I have to kick it off and let it run while I sleep). Give them an icon on their desktop that kicks off the backup. Better yet, configure it to activate when the button is pressed on the external hard disk. Explain to them that once a week they should press the pretty button. (If the external disk is big enough, split it in two and have two sets of backups.)
Personal backups are different than business backups. I feel off-site backups are less important for people. In my experience, personal data is lost not because backups were destoryed but because there were no backups in the first place. Anything that complicates the process of backing up data makes it more difficult to do, and therefore less likely that backups will be done. Focus on simplicity, not on fancy features or schemes.
Of course, you must test any configuration you set up. In fact, if you really love this person you will visit them a week later to make sure the configuration still works. Know what I mean? I knew that you would.
Having an external hard disk larger than my PC's drive can only be described as "liberating". Previously backing up my PC was a pain. I would spend an hour figuring out what not to back up, or how to cram what I wanted to back up onto a set of DVDs. I don't think I ever did it the same way twice, which means the backups I had done are most likely useless. With a disk bigger than your PC's disk everything is different: Just backup "all" and be done with it. Less thinking, less planning, less work.
A 300G external hard drive can be bought for about $200. They usually come with some kind of backup software, though upgrading to the full version is often worth it.
Medical information
In the last 10 years, I've had many loved ones that needed emergency medical service and in every case I felt powerless as medical personel asked us questions that I didn't know the answer to. For example: Do you know all the precriptions your partner is on? More specifically... If your girlfriend is on the pill, do you know which pill she's on? Sure, you could run to the medicine cabinet and check, but that doesn't help you when you are already in the emergency room.
The solution to this problem comes from a surprising place: ACM's "Queue" magazine! In the article Better Health Care Through Technology Mache Creeger explains
When they go to a physician for the first time, the doctor or nurse struggles to extract a viable medical history. Critical issues are often omitted or incorrectly captured. Extending health and subsequently life in the face of increasing complex illness requires efficient capture and management of medical information. To address this deficiency, I integrate all pertinent medical facts into a single set of summary documents. The patient walks in, hands the doctor the summary, and then waits for any questions. If the job is done right, the only questions will be about the patient's current health status.
The article details what information to maintain in these documents. Keep a copy in the car, on a hidden web page, or maybe on your PDA. But here's the interesting thing: He keeps the documents on a computer with a fax modem because, "(fax seems to be the lingua franca of the medical community). " I have an account with eFax that lets me fax PDFs from anywhere I can upload them to their site. He points out "although ERs have computers, e-mail accounts are usually not accessible, and staff is discouraged from using Internet browsers."
While there are privacy concerns, I would even consider putting such documents on a Google Writely page. At least then it is password protected but available from anywhere I can find a web browser. I can even bookmark it on my PDA's web browser.
Conclusion
When we think of "Disaster Recovery" it usually is in terms of spending thousands or millions of dollars at work. With these tips we can all mitigate or better manage the kinds of personal disasters that affect our loved ones.
Katrina and the waves
Hurricane Katrina is wrecking havoc and our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected.
While technical concerns are minicule compared to people's homes and families, reading this Slashdot article reminded me of the fact that I have done business with two different companies that have NOCs in Florida. In both cases I asked my contact, "Do you really think it's a good idea to have a NOC in a place that has so many environmental disasters?" and both times I was assured that this would never, could never, possibly ever be a problem.
In one of those cases involved my (then) own employer. It was a company large enough that I was in a different division and had no real influence on their decisions, and I was probably talking to the wrong person anyway. Alas, this seems to be my week for saying "I told you so."
For all of you that haven't yet built a data center, let me quote from Chapter 17 on building a data center:
Selecting a town and a building is typically out of the hands of the system administration staff. However, if the data center is to serve a worldwide or significant geographic area, and it will be located in an area that is prone to earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, lightning storms, tornados, ice storms or other natural disasters that may cause damage to the data center, or loss of power or communications, you must prepare for these eventualities.
And for those of you that are in Katrina's path, I hope you keep safe and dry!
An idea for the sequel to "Office Space"
Office Space is a "must see" movie for any IT worker. It's one of my favorite films.
I doubt anyone is working on a sequel, but if they are, they can use my suggestion for free:
After the events of the last movie, he finds himself in the position of being screwed over by a company with really bad customer service. How does he get revenge? He gets hired into the biggest make-or-break project at the company and screws it up. Though some comical device he finds himself in charge of the project and begins a campaign of telling management they're on or ahead of schedule, meanwhile letting his team do no work. They spend a lot of time making impressive demos but no real project work gets completed. In the big finale, he reveals that it's all been a hoax at the big press conference set up to make the big announcement. The company goes out of business. Justice is served.
What do you think?
