itworksonmylocal.com

How to break the internet

2012-02-12T21:02:00.001-05:00

If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen this post:

my wife just blows away her small business site and domain and thinks its no big deal,has no idea what she just did to the internet
— terrence pietrondi (@tepietrondi) February 10, 2012

Basically my wife broke the internet and I wanted to explain how.

She does her own site management for a small business via a microsoft service (office live small business or something). The service is transferring to something else and we took the opportunity to get off the platform due to personal preference. Honestly, for someone who knows nothing about making a site from a code perspective, I thought the microsoft product was just fine, so no knocks against them.

So in the transition, we demoed a few other similar services and chose intuit. Same style of making a site, some things better, others not. No big detail, she made the new site in the editor, added some pages, done.

Now the domain transfer...

For everyday people, this isn't so easy as making a web site without code. There are transfer codes, locking, name servers, etc. So I told her I would do this with her so we could maintain the same domain she had for the old site and reuse it for the new site. What happens? She closes the account with the old domain. The domain is locked and the contact email address on the whois is also deleted when she canceled the microsoft service.

So, what does she do? She buys a new domain and then updates the company facebook page and sends out an email to the mailing list. No big deal right? Everyone will get the new link and all is well.

Not in my eyes. That old domain is everywhere, its on business cards, menus, likely bookmarked and most of all, indexed in all major search engines and local map pages as the company URL. This cancellation effectively broke the internet. The URL is everything, if you've read my handwritten post, you'll see some links and where I explain responsibility of ownership of a URL. It's everything. If anything else, it needs to redirect to the new domain rather then just being a dead 404:

HTTP/1.1 404 
Connection: close
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:13:21 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices: 12.0.0.6043
X-DIP:202
MS-Author-Via: MS-FP/4.0,DAV
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Collab
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

So I am going through the labor now of submitting documentation to the registar of updated contact information for the domain owner to get back access and point the old URL to the new site at least for a year. For the company name which is somewhat common, it is first in google for that term based on organic results. Unless recovered the internet has a hole in it. The library of congress, google and whoever else downloads the internet for indexing won't know what happened. Machines won't understand.

Recipe for JSP / JSTL cross site scripting vulnerabilities

2012-02-07T17:10:00.000-05:00

I put this together to grep through JSPs looking for possible cross site scripting vulnerabilities.

grep -R \$\{*.\.*.\} --exclude="*\.svn*" --include=*.jsp* * | grep -v c\\:out | grep -v c\\:set | grep -v c\\:when | grep -v c\\:if | grep -v c\\:forEach | grep -v c\\:param | grep -v fmt\\: | grep -v c\\:import | grep -v jspStoreDir | grep -v pageContext | grep -v svn | less

It's not perfect, but it helped me fine some potentials outside of the security scans. The difference being I have access to the code, and the security scan doesn't. This was used on a Websphere Commerce implementation specific to the Stores directory.

You'll have to page through the results using your own experiences to actually locate the issue. This just helped me filter out some items. For example:

<input type='hidden' name='productId' value='${WCParam.productId}' />

This item is directly output to the page verses using the "c:out".

More examples of terrible recruitment practices

2012-02-06T17:54:00.000-05:00

Couple more terrible approached to recruitment...

Asking me for information on others you failed to connect with. No, I will not give away private information of my network.
Guessing my work email address and sending me opportunities. Clearly I don't list my current employeer email on my resume and profile for a reason, it's not my personal email box, it's work. Why are you guessing my email given my first and last name and expecting me to respond? My actual email is very easy to find.

Why your recruitment practices are terrible

2012-01-31T09:04:00.003-05:00

For some reason, my inbox and LinkedIn have blown up with messages from recruiters. In general, their attempts at getting my attention have been terrible, here is why:

You work for a recruiting company verses an actual company, staffing firms are a major turn off, if you are working for someone else, get an email address with that company.
You have 500+ connections on LinkedIn. This basically says to me all you want is to extend your network and I don't want you bother my network the same way you are bothering me. I also see you've connected with someone else I know, I'll ask them how you've helped them, chances are, you haven't.
You company website is terrible, like 1990's terrible. If you are so good at hiring, hire a web developer for your own firm to get your site up to date.
Your connection emails are boring, where is the excitement and inspiration?
You are trying to hire me based on something I've already done. If I want the same job, I likely know people in my sector and will work for another opportunity through my own network of people I trust verses someone I've just met and is selling me so they can get the referral bonus. At least offer something new and exciting in the email, sell me.
You are trying to hire me given a dollar amount, I can ask for this myself and I am not leaving or coming for money.
You left the job details out of the initial note and made reference to the missing data in the communication. This shows you are not paying attention to detail and you've made me feel like I am one of 100 emails you've send today verses a great find. Google has solved the problem of reminding you to attach documents, remember to use it.
You haven't referenced my goals in your communication to me, this matters to me.
You're approaching hiring me as a staffing solution because I've been in consulting. I want to hear about exactly what I'd be working on. I've been down that path before.
If I've actually responded to you and I don't get an email back, then that's a winning conversation. Again, you likely are trying to just get access to my network on LinkedIn and is why I replied without accepting to add you to my network.

That's mostly it. If I've offended you as a recruiter, I am sorry, but you likely need to assess your practices at that point and think about why I haven't responded and try again.

See also:

HTTP caching in Google App Engine (Python)

2012-01-21T14:11:00.000-05:00

I wanted to add some HTTP caching in the browser on the Google App Engine, didn't see much for write ups, here is what I did

Static Content

Static content is straight forward, you can reference the following in the configuration documents: Static File Handlers. This will set the basic static content expiry, for example:

default_expiration: "1d"

This sets the default for all static content, and then per URL file handler:

- url: /static
  static_dir: static
  expiration: "1d"

This will define a per handler expiration. In my case, they are the same.

Response Caching

For any request to your application, you might want to cache that response in request handler implementation. To do so, you can add the response headers as follows:

self.response.headers["Expires"] = util.get_expiration_stamp(60)
self.response.headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
self.response.headers["Cache-Control: max-age"] = 60
self.response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "public"
self.response.out.write(template.render(_path, _template_values))

Note the expires implementation, this needs to be a valid date formatted string. The following is the implementation:

class GMT(datetime.tzinfo):
    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return datetime.timedelta(hours=10) # + self.dst(dt)
    def tzname(self, dt):
        return "GMT"
    def dst(self, dt):
        return datetime.timedelta(0) 

class Util(object):
    
    def get_expiration_stamp(self,seconds):
        gmt = GMT() 
        delta = datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds)
        expiration = self.get_current_time()
        expiration = expiration.replace(tzinfo=gmt) 
        expiration = expiration + delta
        EXPIRATION_MASK = "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z"
        
        return expiration.strftime(EXPIRATION_MASK)

gzip verses 7zip, 7zip wins

2012-01-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

Just had to compress a large file again. I asked was gzipping better than 7zip? So I did both.

The base file directory took up 34.37 GB.
I am running Mac OS X 10.6.8.
I installed p7zip (brew install p7zip).
Two commands:

7z a largefile.7z large_file_directory
tar czvf largfile.tar.gz large_file_directory

Resulting sizes:

7zip = 22.43 GB
gzip = 25.07 GB

I'm so tired... of disks

2012-01-14T13:39:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure when Lennon and McCartney wrote "I'm so tired" they were talking about disks, those things we store data on in computers. I agree with them, I am so tired of disks.

My first issue with them is I don't have disks that are larger than a terabyte. So a lot of my personal and work related archives are spread all over. I don't want to buy disks, that's what normal people do, I wait for second hand disks when people get ride of their computers and then make use of them. I have 3 personal USB drives, one machine with two drives in it with about 100GB each. Managing the files across each and rsyncing is getting too hard to remember what is where.
My second issue is my work machine is around 300GB in size. For work, there are a lot of large files. Data feeds, databases, virtual machines, huge source code repositories, etc. I can't keep it all on one drive, so I have to use many external drives, usually around 500GB to move data on an off of.
My third issue is dealing with disk inside of virtual machine. Not only am I limited on disk space on my local machine, on the virtual machine I need to manage disk space. I have to clean off data, resize partitions (which increases the image on the host machine).
My fourth issue is waiting on file transfers. I don't even know what a USB transfer rate is, but it sucks when you are moving 70GB of data. Oh, and it's awesome transferring from USB drive to USB drive. I hate network transfers too, waiting to upload something to S3 or even via torrent is slow (unless there are a lot of people involved which isn't usually my case, this share feature is cool though).
My fifth issue is compression computation time. It takes a long time to tar+gzip a 70GB file. Then the compressed file and the original file take up space. I am usually tar+gzipping to archive something large to roll back to. So I need to keep both for at least a little while.

I know there are answers to all these problems, the problem is I am cheap and lazy. I don't want to pay for faster disks like SSD. I don't want a faster internet connection, remember, I am cheap. Hadoop has a distributed copy, that's sweet, but I don't have a distributed file system with my virtual machine image on it to distcp to another distributed file system (at least that is how I think it works).

My last big idea was to use the empty air space around us everywhere to store data. For example, you can store data in the space around you in a room. But, I was laughed out of the bar when I threw that out, and IBM is shrinking the bit size, so I can wait for that.

Recently returned HP 2000-350US due to wireless

2012-01-08T12:02:00.001-05:00

My dad bought two HP 2000-350US laptops for himself and my sister for christmas. Out of the box, the laptop wouldn't stay connected to his wireless at his house, so I told him to return them.

returning two laptops today, the wireless doesnt work out of the box and even with drive update fails, unacceptable
— terrence pietrondi (@tepietrondi) January 5, 2012

Before we did, I tried a wireless network signal extender because we though the issue was isolated to one area of the house, it wasn't, the laptops would lose connection when about 15 feet away from the router.

I also tried this homemade wireless signal extender, didn't help (but fun to make):

I updated the laptop wireless drives, no help. My sister sat on the phone with support, no help, they told her to reboot the router, please.

I have no idea what the root issue was, but I didn't care. There is no reason any device shouldn't "just work" out of the box when attaching to a router, it's 2012. When we returned the laptops, the looks I got from the salesman, the return guy and his manager were all the same, "what are you an idiot?". I wanted to punch everyone, but I didn't.

Regardless of my rant, I wanted to share the links and details in case anyone else was searching, I found a few threads online of people having similar issues with the same machine and wireless hardware.

Support threads:

Driver update:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-99068-1&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&os=4062&product=5185745&sw_lang

In summary, nothing worked. My dad got two Acer to replace the HP and so far so good.

See also:

I need a new computer, what should I buy?

Tablet and wireless keyboard

2012-01-03T09:12:00.000-05:00

I had the chance to use a tablet with a keyboard today. I found myself reaching for the mouse or touch pad, but instead i had to touch the screen to click or move the pointer. Not a bad experience but an experience at that. Ill also note this tablet + keyboard combo was on a samsung tablet not an ipad.

That said i wanted to try and blog from my ipad, so this post is sourced from that device. Its my first major typing attempt and honestly its not too hard to type fast on the on board keyboard.

Confession: I had to spell check this post on a normal computer because blogger didn't support the spellchecker on the ipad browser. The notes application on the ipad also didn't have a spellchecker. Maybe I disabled it, seemed odd.

Conversation with masseuse

2011-12-28T12:08:00.000-05:00

I recently got a massage for a holiday gift, here is the conversation points I had with the masseuse.

Masseuse: What's your stress level?
Me: Low.

45 minutes later toward the end of the massage...

Masseuse: What do you do for a living?
Me: Web consulting, e-commerce solutions, etc.
Masseuse: You have no knots in your body, I've never seen that. You weren't kidding when you said you had low stress.

Life's been good. Thank's internet.

Append / extend bug fix

2011-12-24T11:31:00.000-05:00

Ever realize the fix for a bug while doing the most random activity unrelated to the code, or bug? I was driving last night and realized a fix in the car talking to my wife about the holidays. In the back of my mind, I was debugging an issue.

Dumb bug as well, I am actually embarrassed, but look here:

https://github.com/twixmit/twixmit/commit/2a0d77fd32bece8237a44d2241e6eeb9db494cd3#diff-1

I was appending a result list as a value in the receiving list rather than extending it. This caused the results expected to not return and so the list extension wasn't working. I couldn't figure out why yesterday when I was looking at it. I tested, was going to add logging, all the while, I used the wrong operator.

Oh yea, I've been working on a Twitter application and this is where the bug was. The application is @ http://twix-mit.appspot.com/.

The user is more like me

2011-12-12T20:46:00.000-05:00

In usability and interaction examples, I remember being taught the extremes such as my mother and grandparents being used as candidates for testing. I was taught to always tell myself, "the user is not like me", meaning I can never understand something from someone else's perspective until I observe or ask it. Regardless, these groups of extremes are either dying or getting used to computing interfaces.

My grandparents are mostly gone, or have no real interest in computing interfaces. I showed my grandpa my iPad once and he liked it because he could play hearts and various other card games. He got it, but his figures were really big even for the iPad.

My mom uses facebook via her computer and a mobile device. She she reads emails. She still doesn't understand file management, and computer organization, but I understand that. My dad would be a good candidate, he is still off the grid.

My sister has kids, so my mom is now a grandma. My sister's oldest knows how to go online and find what she is looking for. Mostly games, YouTube videos, etc, kid stuff. She knows how to peck the keyboard to form words, but not formal learning yet for typing.

These users are certainly not like me, but the issue is that I see them becoming more like me verses the extremes I first learned about. Kids expect touch interaction with magazines and TV screens these days. My niece has been on a computer since about three, not writing software, but clicking and using. She now has a tablet. The extremes used for comparisons in interaction are reducing. The best candidates for studies and observation will be more natural at putting up with and tolerating bad design.

From the time I though up this post to wrapping it up, I see remote tribes in the rain forest on the travel channel. I guess if all the normal extremes die off, interviews can be conduced with them.

Outdated

2011-11-23T12:29:00.000-05:00

Recently there was a conversation on twitter about by cousin abandoning his voicemail usage.

He believes it's outdated and shouldn't be used and therefore he never answers a voicemail, which led to his box becoming full disabling the use of his voicemail as a means to contact him.

This frustrated me at first, and I assume others, it's a bit extreme, but it makes sense. Either call and he will see your missed call, text him, Facebook him, tweet at him, voice is not needed. You can talk to him when he calls you back, or when you call him again. Whenever I get a voicemail from someone and the content is, "call me back", I think about my cousin's decision.

We also spoke about class reunions being outdated due to Facebook. At least the classic version of the reunion it outdated, but I believe reuniting with old friends is never a let down, but reuniting with acquaintances, nah.

Here are some others I think are outdated:

Home phone and answering machines. A straight dial to my home phone will get you endless rings. No answering machine. I have a phone because my cable provided bundled it. My parents don't even know the number. Therefore I don't answer it when it rings because I know it's nonsense.
Ringing my doorbell. I don't answer my door usually if there is a knock or or a door bell ring. I don't like unannounced visitors, again it's likely junk. Some kids selling something, some utility competitor trying to sell me on their services. Sorry, but we have the Internet now, I am not going to make an uninformed decision on my door step. I also do not like exposing the inside of my home to a stranger. Maybe if I had a storm door as a barrier it would help.

I need a new computer, what should I buy?

2011-11-21T21:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, I write software, I don't build machines. I'll be honest, I don't follow much hardware news. To me, hardware is all about numbers and keeping that increasing number cold. Sure there are some cool things going on, I don't mean to knock the field of electronic engineering, but it just doesn't light my fire. I get excited when something new happens in quantum computing for example, a drastic change in how bits are represented and transmitted.

So when someone tells me they need a new computer and then ask me what to get, my response is likely compared to boring coming from someone that "does computers".

Are you writing software, analyzing data, processing images / videos or playing games (real games, not solitaire)?

No. Then anything from $400 to $1200 is likely where you need to be. You don't need fast disks, memory and CPU to write papers, use Facebook and shop. You'll start paying for thin cases and screen size more than speed. This is why the tablet is so popular. Only thing separating the tablet decision from a machine is if you are generating content and organizing your personal data. Regardless of machine, get a large disk, anything less than 500Gb is a waste. Stick with a laptop, if you get a desktop, go all out for power and speed and keep it stationary in a cool space with a huge monitor. This is where you get complex with imaging, video, software, or whatever.

Brands? I like HP and Dell for Windows machines. I never liked Sony and Toshiba, but that is just personal, I am sure they are fine. For Apple, please do not buy these machines to be stylish. They are great, but I really hate the middle age dude going through a crisis with his red convertible sitting in the Starbucks.

On a budget? Then just get something that fits your dollar amount range. Back up your data and prepare to only have your machine last 3 years and throw it away. It's not worth fixing a stock low end machine.

Why post such a simple post? My dad asked, and black friday / holiday is coming up, so why not?

An object oriented moment

2011-11-16T22:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but I think back on this a lot. Back in college I took a theory of object oriented programming course in java. In this class I experienced a break through that I account for most of my understanding of object oriented design and implementation. When I think about it now, it's such a simple concept, but at the time it was so difficult.

Here is the problem:

"How do you get a sequence to order the elements in reverse of their natural ordering? Write a program to demonstrate your technique. " - page 171, programming assignment 6, Java with Object-Oriented Programming, Second Edition, Paul S. Wang, Kent State University, ISBN 0-534-39276-8

The trick was not to implement a sort, not to iterate the items, just change the natural ordering of a sequence. I struggled with this for days, even visiting Professor Wang after class do work through it on the chalk board. "Can't I just output the list in reverse order?". Nope.

After while, for whatever reason, nobody told me, I didn't cheat, it simply dawned on me. Here is the summarized solution:

ArraySequence<SimpleDate> myseq = 
   new ArraySequence<SimpleDate>(new Comparator<SimpleDate>(){
      public int compare(SimpleDate d1, SimpleDate d2)
         { return d2.compareTo(d1); }
   }, 256);

See it? The comparator passed returns d2 compared to d1 verses d1 compared to d2. That's it.

Well not completely. The ArraySequence object implements a quick sort. Within the partition, the compare will by default compare left to right. The reversal above switches the sort ordering. My solution is still live on the Kent State Computer Science department website here: sequence. All files were given except TestSequence.java (again, we are not implementing the sort, just changing the ordering).

Such a powerful learning experience for me in terms of object oriented software. Interfaces, type parameters, plug compatibility, collections, sorting, etc. You don't rewrite the whole sort, you design the ordering to be pluggable. I don't know why, but I remember this moment often.

Special thanks to the Professor for not giving away the solution and letting me learn. If the links ever die here in this post, simply email me and I can pass along.

DB2 GUI installer issues and resolution on windows xp

2011-11-09T22:14:00.000-05:00

I was recently trying to install DB2 on Windows XP version 2002 service pack 3 and it was failing. I was trying to install Express-C. The installer logs were reporting:

DEBUG: Error 2836: The control image_noJava on the dialog SetupInitialization can not take focus
Internal Error 2836. SetupInitialization, image_noJava
...
Action start 9:56:23: SetPropertiesForConditionsCA.
Action ended 9:56:24: SetPropertiesForConditionsCA. Return value 3.
Action 9:56:24: SetupCompleteError.
Action start 9:56:24: SetupCompleteError.
Action 9:56:24: SetupCompleteError. Dialog created
Action 9:59:59: CleanUpGUISequenceCA.
Action start 9:59:59: CleanUpGUISequenceCA.
Action ended 9:59:59: CleanUpGUISequenceCA. Return value 1.
Action ended 9:59:59: SetupCompleteError. Return value 2.
Action ended 9:59:59: INSTALL. Return value 3.

I was just running the setup.exe from the extracted EXE file provided by IBM (db2exc_974_WIN_x86.exe). The installer would start up, fail, and the installer dialog would then close.

The issue I was having was I needed to run the installer with a response file. I used an example file that was provided in the extracted installer assets, simply search for "db2expc.rsp" in the extracted asset directory. This file was then modified to accept the license agreement, and to add a username and password for the database admin account.

The following command was then issued to run a silent install with the response file:

setup.exe /u db2expc.rsp /m

Eventually the control center icon appeared in the system tray and all was well for the installation.

See also:

JR25842: DB2 UDB V8 FIXPAK GUI INSTALLATION FAILS ON WINDOWS

Remember the days of America Online (AOL)?

2011-10-24T09:06:00.001-04:00

Remember the days of America Online (AOL)? I do.

I had a computer young like most nerds, but there were DOS programs and Windows 3.1. No Internet to start, just games like Hoyle, typing programs, etc. Best game was Quest for Glory by the way:

Then America Online came, oh boy the Internet. I was young, say 13 or so. There were web sites, chat rooms, instant messaging. There were internal areas on AOL for special interests. All great things, but I found my way to the dark side for a bit.

The chat rooms were private, people had short alias screen names (this is a bid deal, a 4 to 5 character screen name was awesome) and talked with a special vocabulary. PeOpLe TyPeD lIkE tHiS. You had to know someone that knew someone to find out where to meet. Accounts were hacked, the first round of phishing attempts were design, password crackers, dictionary data sets and visual basic was the language. Computers were so slow you could kick someone offline with a structured IM. Admin accounts were broken (over head accounts I think they were called) allowing special area access, user data access, unlimited scrolling. When done with the account you would leave your mark on the hacked user's profile.

I learned how to program before I ever took a class from a stranger. I had an alias. My account was closed several times due to violation of the terms of service (my mom and dad had to call to explain and have AOL reactivate). I had a web site with spinning animated gif skulls and flicking fire. I made my own graphics in Photoshop, Cool3D and Rhino3D (I assure you I paid for all this software). Remember the bevel and shadows? AltaVista was the search engine. All over a dial up connection. I remember when Juno came along and offered free dial up, this was awesome because it allowed an external connection to make password attempts more quickly on AOL connecting over an existing TCP/IP connection.

Then is all stopped. I had a family emergency that kept me from a computer for a few months. When I got back everything changed. My contacts were gone, the sites changes, and the usual chat rooms were no longer occupied. There was also a account login attempt limit in place, and computer's were faster so you couldn't freeze up a user via IM.

Then it was time for Napster and music and everyone else I knew was starting to get online. Turned into a medium to be friends with people you weren't friends with in real life. Say things to people you wouldn't say in real life. You listed your age/sex/location on entry to a chat room (that didn't fly in the evil private rooms). The web was social now.

See Also:

Where it All Started. (1993-1995)

Recently learned Javascript (dynamic variables and jQuery objects vs. HTML DOM objects)

2011-10-19T11:00:00.001-04:00

I recently learned two things in Javascript recently. Simple stuff really, but nobody told me and I didn't read it anywhere and had to go looking. Luckily I found some good references on stack overflow.

Dynamic variable names

Say for instance you generate some Javascript via your server side page language, whatever it may be:

var dynamic_1 = "1";
var dynamic_2 = "2";

Given these variables how to access them dynamically? I learned that you can access global variables like this via the window like this:

var get_dynamic_1 =  window["dynamic_" + "1"];
var get_dynamic_1 =  window["dynamic_" + "2"];

Now, of course, the string concatenation would be dynamic in a loop or something. I had to do it inside a change event call back function in jQuery:

$('input[name="formField"]').change(function(e){
   var localValue = window["dynamic_" + $(this).val()];
});

In this example, the variable is fetched using the form field value.

See also: Javascript dynamic variable name

jQuery objects verses HTML DOM objects

I was frustrated recently with jQuery when I was selecting a form object that I didn't have the same access to the HTML DOM object as I did in the jQuery object. I later found out that I did have access. For example:

var htmlDomFormObj = document.getElementById("user-input-form");
var jqueryObj = $("#user-input-form");

On the HTML DOM object I can do this:

htmlDomFormObj.formField.value = "something";

Then on the jQuery object, I thought I could only do this:

jqueryObj.children('input[name="formField"]').val("something");

It turns out, I can do the following:

jqueryObj[0].formField.value = "something";

The jQuery object provides access to the underlying HTML DOM object, the base object is simply wrapped.

See also: document.getElementById vs jQuery

My first official on call rotation (sucked)

2011-10-16T21:09:00.000-04:00

This week (Monday 12AM to Sunday 11:59PM) was my first official on call rotation of my career and at my new job. If you don't know what this means, basically my company supports client sites, those sites have issues, monitors pick it up, we get alerts. For severe alerts, the on call resource (me) is contacted directly by phone to investigate. Once determined the issue is real, the actual project team resources are involved, otherwise, the worst is that the on call resource is called and it was a false alarm.

I had a lot of false positives and some actuals. The night phone calls were very disruptive to my normal habits, and honestly, very stressful. First, the shock of being woken at any hour of the night and having to have a conversation with the answering service is a lot. I usually sleep heavy with no sounds. The phone ringing at high in my ear is a jolt. Then I rush out of bed to my laptop, get the alert details, validate. So not only is the phone ringing, I have to get out of bed, then get blinded by the brightness of my laptop screen, punch in my machine login password, check email, click through to the alert details, and validate the alert.

In the best case, all is fine and I go back to bed or resume my normal work day. Worst case, I have to wait and watch the site, then call someone else to get involved. Then usually when the site is still down the answering service calls again due to the alerts continuing.

Once it's over, I go back to sleep, well, sort of. I now am half asleep wondering if I managed the alert correctly, or if I am going to miss another call. Then I dream about the alerts, the site, the call, gah.

A mistake I made through the beginning of the week was leaving my Google Voice settings on to ring all my phones ("all" is just my cell and my house phone). My wife loved this as the house phone is on her side of the bed. Pro tip, try to only negatively impact your own sleep and not anyone else you might live with, let alone are married to.

Then after being woken up in the middle of the night, I have to wake up at a normal hour for my actual work day. I felt like I was up for hours, but I was only up for at most thirty minutes. I usually ignore my alarm, so this time, I was sleeping in until 9 or 9:30AM. At 9:30AM I have a daily call on my one project, so I was cutting it close. My whole day is pushed back.

Another issue was being attached to my machine and connectivity the whole time. My laptop went with me to dinner, and shopping. I turned down plans because I was home and couldn't get out much. I had to exercise close to home in order to be able to respond. My cell phone had to be with me at all times, in the bathroom, in the shower, next to my bed, in my pocket while I work out, in my yard. I couldn't respond simply on my phone because (1) it's dumb and (2) I could have used my iPad, but clicking through the links and validating would have taken too long. So I was dependent on my laptop and a wireless connection. I like to disconnect somewhat, or at least if I do it accidentally, I don't want to worry about it. Very heavy weight on my mind making sure I make the right decisions to be available on demand.

Funny thing is, I've done this before, but without any direct responsibility, and only for direct clients, not every client for the company I work for. I've been through the storms, the all nighters, the emergencies, the site launches, and this was just "on-call".

I think I might have gone soft actually, lost the edge, lost the eye or the tiger or something. This is my first late round of nights at my new job (since March, it's now October, so a good run), or things are finally normal, I don't know which. Or I am getting old.

Whatever it may be, this week sucked, and I cannot wait for 12:00AM Monday.

See Also:

What I've learned from consulting (so far)

Confessions about coffee

2011-10-12T09:45:00.000-04:00

I have confessions about my coffee consumption that I wanted to share. Mainly to defend them, otherwise, I wanted to write something non-technical related, although I believe coffee makes me a better technical person.

First off, not so bad, I drink coffee from a straw when I can. Why? I think it leaves less room for error. Tilting a cup to my mouth is prone to spillage leaving my desk and clothes... ruined. Also, on the go, say in a car, tilting back the head is not safe. You lose focus on the road or even where you are walking. I learned this from a guy that drove a truck most of the day.

Second, I drink stale, old, left over coffee. I brew a pot in the morning, the heat clicks off about 2 hours later, and I don't re-warm it up. Sometimes, the same coffee is left there until the next day and I drink it. I leave cups sitting around, half full (positive thinking), few hours later I see it has coffee and I hit it. I once did this overnight in the office and a co-worker brought to my attention that likely a cleaning lady sprayed chemicals near by or in the drink... I didn't care. I enjoy room temperature coffee, I feel like I can taste it better. Room temperature coffee while eating or after eating is especially good. If I am lucky, I take the left over and put it in the refrigerator to chill in order to make iced coffee the next day.

Big thinking

2011-10-01T10:46:00.000-04:00

I'm continuously amazed by those who think bigger than me. Even in the sense of transportation and power lines I am amazed. Who in their right might would think it's reasonable to connect cities with miles of concrete and asphalt? What idiot would want to physically run lines across a country and continents to supply electricity and internet? These are massive projects that are physically connected, not wireless.

Why do I mention it? This concept blows my mind on the web as well. I draw the comparison to realize there are users and builders in the world. Those that wait on others are the users. They may build on top or innovate using something else. Builders will take it upon themselves to invent their own path. They will break ground and lead.

Is your company, group, community, inner circle changing building or using? Are they following trends, trying keep up and taking advice from the community, or ignoring the news?

Conversations on what's the latest and who is doing what are beginning to bore me. I read a lot of threads. Likely 500 some tweets a day, 100 or so articles in my reader, scanned, maybe 10% actually read. For what? So I can keep up on everyone else? So I can leverage what someone else did? So I can stay current to talk tech? Eh...

I'd rather talk idea's verses leverage. I'd rather understand people verses machines. I'd rather drink beer than be at my desk.

Big thinking is what I am getting at, verses small time thinking. Blah, blah, blah version control system, blah, blah, blah language. It doesn't matter. What matters is how it's applied verse what it is alone.

Settling in on a Monday

2011-09-12T22:50:00.000-04:00

Every time I see someone I haven't seen in awhile, I am asked "how's working from home?". I seem to fail to mention how nice it's been settling in for work on a Monday when you work from home.

Usually it was a drag pulling myself out of bed at some early hour, getting dressed and commuting to the office. Let alone getting fired up over road rage on the way in. Weekend's during this summer have been busy and days are long, which is all you can ever hope for in Cleveland during nice weather.

Now rather then hating the Monday start, I now look forward to it as it's more relaxed verse another hassle. The busy weekend finally gets to me on Sunday and I've usually had enough of running around and I just want to relax. Working from home allows me to sleep in, calmly roll out of bed and start my morning in an easier way.

I make my juice, read the news, brew the coffee, clear my inbox, check my tickets and go. It's quiet, no music, no TV, window open, some breeze. No more speeding in and out of traffic, no more 6:00am wake ups, no more picking out an outfit, no more immediate conversation when I enter the office, no more managers on my back the instant they seem me.

This makes a huge difference in my attitude toward work and the way I deliver. My outlook on the day is positive, and the week as well. My hobby work as a developer is very similar to my professional work as a developer in the sense that I do it in the same physical way in my home, whether it be in my office, the kitchen table, or at a coffee shop. It almost removes the "work" from working. I don't feel like I am giving away so much to my employer just to get to work, so I am prone to actually do more without complaint or negativity.

My dream had a developer console

2011-09-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

So I dreamt that my dream had a developer console... yeah like in Chrome and Firebug for Firefox. In the dream I was only selecting elements and inspecting them. I couldn't read the actual element structure, nor do I remember what the "rendered" dream was in the "browser".

Got me to thinking if I could somehow build on this recent extension install in my subconscience. Add more extensions, or even see what the source code is, then I could finally figure out what dream are made of. But I don't think it's actually possible to read in a full dream.

Wonder if all dreams are made of is browser rendered content that we use every day? I guess the Matrix isn't that complex if so.

I wonder what browsers are installed in my subconscience, or how the ones that are installed are chosen for a given dream? Like if a dream is remember poorly, was it just bad design? Or a browser CSS error (there are some good Internet Explorer jokes here, but I'll resist)?

Funny, I never dreamt of an Eclipse debugger, unit tests or console logging as a tool for figuring out dreams.

In reality, I think it's because I wrote my last post before bed and it was all about... inspecting the Twitter page for my numeric user ID, but some interesting "what if's". I wasn't on any drugs either, sober night with the family.

How I found my Twitter RSS feed

2011-09-04T22:26:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, it was easy to add a Twitter user to your RSS feeder by just adding their page to your reader. For example, mine would have been:

https://twitter.com/#!/tepietrondi

This isn't the case anymore:

I already had some users in my reader, and I wanted to add my own to see what it looked like. Looking at the link structure, the Twitter accounts have a numeric ID:

https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/numeric-user-id-here.rss

So, what's my user ID. I figured it would be in the Twitter page somewhere in the source and it was. I found it on a unique Twitter post page:

https://twitter.com/#!/tepietrondi/status/110382214335836162 (yeah, my yahoo account got hacked somehow)

Open up the console and run the the follow jQuery selector to return the user ID:

$(".tweet-user-block-name").children("a").attr("data-user-id")

Turns out my RSS feed is:

https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/207119481.rss

What's the point right? Well I like RSS and I use it a lot, it also makes writing application to access data more easily rather than using an API. I also don't think Twitter and Facebook are going to kill RSS. They might hide it, or remove it, but the web will hold onto it for a bit longer I think.

Site outages are like roller coaster outages

2011-08-30T20:54:00.000-04:00

I was just at CedarPoint and a few of the coasters had some outages. The Dragster was out of commission for 30 minutes while I waited for front seat (could have gotten in the middle, but who does that). The Millenium shutdown for the whole day (I was in line for about an hour, it shut down, I waited 45 minutes and then exited the line). The Maverick ran empty test cars while I was in line for about 10 minutes, then went back on. The Windseeker was down all day because it was too windy (ironic).

As I waited in these lines, I was reminded how similar the outages are to web site outages for customers. There was terrible communication, the rides were in strange states (the Millenium car was stuck on the incline for about 25 minutes, then they pushed it over), and all the other people waiting in line were speculating on the problem thinking the worst.

Only difference in the outages between a site and a coaster is that those waiting in line can observe the actual failure happening to someone else (the stuck cars). The socialization was the same as if people were using Twitter to complain. We could see the technicians working, which is a bit different, you never get a live webcast of the developers and engineers on the technical teams for a site working to resolve the problem (that would be cool though, expose the conference line to customers and give video of the WAR room).

No additional thought, just that. Oh yeah, I had a great time.