I’m not a frequent flier, I usually fly about 5-10 times a year. Most of the time I’m travelling for extended trips, so I usually check my bags. This week I had a quick business trip to Pittsburgh.

You would think that the Philadelphia to Pittsburgh flight would be a very affordable ticket. There was a brief time when that was the case. A few years ago Southwest came in to Philly with great fanfare and had very affordable flights to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, a few months ago Southwest stopped the PHL -> PIT route, and US Airways subsequently jacked the ticket price to $700 round trip.

Fortunately this was a business trip, but regardless of the reason for air travel we all have to go through the TSA. Tonight was a slow night, so there was no line. I walked right up with my boarding pass and my ID. After getting through that checkpoint, I went through my bin ritual as well.

After I walked through the scanner, a TSA employee asked me if I had anything in my pockets. The scanner did not go off, but I had my wallet. He then told me that my wallet would need to go through the bag scanner. He also told me that my buttocks would need a pat down from where the wallet was removed. He then told me not to move, as he wanted to swap me for some sort of explosives test. He also told me to look away towards the scanner as he was swabbing my hands and clothing.

After going through all this nonsense, the bag scan operator flagged my suitcase. Another TSA agent had to hand search my bag. She opened it up and went straight for my toiletry bag. I usually check my bag, so I’ve never bothered with this plastic bag idiocy.

She informed me that all my toiletries were the correct size, but I needed to get a plastic bag from the information desk. She then informed that I needed to place the toiletries in the plastic bag, leave the secure area with a TSA escort, then re-enter the security line and go through the ENTIRE process again.

I wasn’t sure that I really understood her, so I echoed back what she wanted me to do. She then mentioned that it was the process, and if I wanted to I could speak to her manager. I usually never do such a thing, but I said that I would LOVE to speak to your manager. The manger repeated the same line, that it was standard process. I literally had to go through the entire process again.

I hope everyone feels safer knowing that my toiletry bag is now in ziplock bag.

Giant’s Despair

Giant’s Despair is the most severe gradient I’ve ever ridden. Don’t let the 6% fool you, there are long sections of 20% make this the toughest climb I’ve ever ridden in PA. I would highly recommend compact gearing and big cassette.

Red Rock Mountain
Red Rock is a tough climb because there is simply no place to rest. Its a straight climb with a headwall averaging 15% for at least a mile.

Plymouth Mountain
Plymouth mountain is a convenient climb since its easily accessible from the greater Wilkes Barre area. Coming from the valley is a challenging climb that averages 9%.

Bunker Hill
Close to Plymouth Mountain is Bunker Hill, which is not as severe as Plymouth but a very enjoyable climb.

Naturally, I immediately wiped the included Windows7 OS to install Ubuntu Linux 11.04. The install was actually painless, but I had one big problem. If I plugged a miniDisplayPort cable in, the GUI locked up completely.

Getting Displayport to work

The fix for getting a functional miniDisplayPort is simply to upgrade to the linux 3.0 RC kernel. This guide provides a quick HOWTO and links to the kernel repository. Once you reboot with the 3.0 kernel, simply plug in a miniDisplayPort cable and use the monitors app in Ubuntu. In many cases the screen will automatically adjust without configuration.

VMware Workstation

The downside with the 3.0 kernel is it breaks VMware workstation, which I use for my job on a daily basis. This fix will solve the issue with VMware not being able to install modules on a 3.x kernel.

General Observations with the X1

Overall, I’m very happy with the X1. The form factor is great, and the power is amazing considering the size. The keyboard is probably the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used, and I’ve had numerous Macbook Pros and previous Thinkpads. There are a few areas where I see room for improvement.

The battery life is pretty bad. Now this might be an issue related to Linux config, but I’m getting 2 hours of battery life. The glossy screen is highly annoying. Its almost unreadable on a sunny day. Finally, the X1 is loud. It might be related to Linux config and the I7 processor, but its way louder than any of my previous laptops.

Overall, I’m very happy with the X1.

For luddites, the question of necessity is always the first objection to any new technology. Necessity is always a relative thing. Luddites always question the value of a new technology by proclaiming that they don’t need it. But what technology do you actually need?

If you ask most people today, they will probably declare that they need a cellphone. Twenty years ago, if you asked the same people they would probably claim that a cellphone was completely unnecessary. The same is true of the computer, ATM cards, the automobile, electricity, running water, plumbing, etc, etc, etc. Back in the stone age I’m sure there people who claimed that horses were unnecessary.

Parents questioning the need for a child to have a smartphone reminds me of my own childhood experience. Way back in 1993, I was a 15 year old who wanted to have a pager. Back then pagers were only associated with doctors and drug dealers. A few of my friends had pagers, and I wanted to get one too. I scrounged up enough cash to buy a “used” pager down in Philly and brought it back up to my hometown to get activated.

My parents were not happy that I bought a pager. They associated pagers with drug dealers and didn’t understand why I needed a pager. As with any technology, the question of need was brought by those that oppose the new technology. After a heated discussion, I was able to keep my pager.

A few days later, I was out with friends and my parents needed to get ahold of me. They tried calling my friend’s house, but I wasn’t there. So what did they do? They paged me, and a few minutes later I called them from a pay phone. At that instant, my parents saw the value of the new technology and no longer objected to the pager. In fact, they loved the idea of the pager since they could reach me no matter where I happened to be.

Luddites are people who constantly object to new technologies by questioning the need, but really they are just people who don’t understand the value. There are always going to be people who irrationally object to new technologies, but for most people once you communicate the value, the question of need is no longer an objection.

One of the most basic features of the Edge 800 is the ability to give you turn by turn directions with a map card installed. Plot your course on mapmyride.com, export it to the Garmin, and you’re on your way. Amazingly, this feature is completely broken with the Edge 800. Turn by turn directions do not work without doing a laborious workaround.

Another basic use case that’s completely broken with the latest Edge 800 firmware update is plugging your device in to a computer. With the 2.1 firmware version, plugging the Edge 800 into a mac does not initiate USB drive mode. The workaround is to hold the reset button while plugging in the USB cable, then releasing the reset button.

How such a bug got through the most basic level of QA is beyond me. Many users are experiencing rides where suddenly the Edge 800 reports that they went 3000+ miles. I experienced this the bug the other day ruining the data from my ride.

I think the Edge 800 has a lot of potential, but the current firmware is just too buggy to actually recommend the device at this time. Garmin’s lack of timely updates to their flagship cycling device is simply inexcusable.

The Kindle is a Superior E-reader

This is still true to this day. The Ipad is not a good book reader. Most people I know with Ipads also own a Kindle. At the time of that post, there was no Kindle application, and no indication from Apple that competing e-reader applications would be allowed.

Why buy an Ipad when your smartphone already has the same functionality?

I made a really stupid assumption. The assumption was that human beings are logical when it comes to making purchasing decisions. The fact is, people buy things based on appeal and desire, not left brain analysis. The world economy is driven by illogical purchasing, and I’m just as guilty as anyone else.

Lack of multitasking and user profiles makes it a bad product

Apple fixed the multitasking issue for the most part, but the user profile concern is still valid. However; most people don’t care about such a feature and Apple sure as hell doesn’t want to promote people sharing Ipads. Steve wants to sell more Ipads.

There is no camera, there is no video out, there is no usb port

The camera issue is fixed with the Ipad2, and there is a video out adaptor. I prefer the built-in hdmi adaptor on the Xoom, but I’m not sure I have a use case for video out on my tablet. A USB port would be nice, but Apple doesn’t want to sell the Ipad as a computer and they don’t want expandability. I expect that to change as the competition from Android matures over the next two years.

There were several $50 purchases that use a feature called “Itunes allowances” which allow people to give others iTunes credit. The allowances were sent to a bunch of Yahoo! china e-mail addresses. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked. My password security is pretty good, and I’m very careful about what I do on the Internet.

So after finding out I was hacked, the first thing I wanted to do was call Apple. Want to actually call Apple about something? You’re shit out of luck. The only way to contact Apple about iTunes fraud is to send them an e-mail, and don’t expect a timely response. It took 12 hours to get a reply. Apple doesn’t really handle fraud at all. They tell you to contest the charge with your credit card issuer or Paypal. I was shocked at how poorly Apple handled the situation, which I guess is why scammers are using iTunes as a platform for exploitation.

My Apple account was tied to my Paypal account. Apple forces iPhone owners to have some form of billing setup, even if you don’t actually buy anything from Apple. I had my Apple account linked to my Paypal account. The eight $50 charges went to Paypal, so I contacted Paypal too.

I have to give Paypal some credit, someone called my cell within 10 minutes of me filing the fraud compliant. Paypal will be sending me a refund. However, the refund process takes 10-15 days! Paypal instantly withdrew $400 from my bank account, but it takes them over 10 days to issue me a refund. Oh, and here is the best part. The refund is sent to my Paypal balance! Then I need another 3-5 days to transfer the money back to my bank account.

How did my itunes account get hacked? I’m not sure. My computers are all secure, but I did reuse the Itunes password on several different other websites. It was a password that I used on quite a few Internet forums. My best guess is some forum site got hacked, and thats how my e-mail/password was grabbed. Thats my best guess. My security questions are too tough for anyone to guess, and while Apple is completely inept when it comes to security, I can’t imagine anyone brute forcing my iTunes password.

To solve my resource limitations, I decided to build a workstation that would function as a VMWare ESXI server. ESXi was the obvious choice since its the most widely used, and its completely compatible with the virtual machines I run on my Ubuntu laptop using VMware workstation. I wanted to get a pre-built whitebox that was supported by VMware. I selected the Supermicro 5036, which basically has server class hardware in a mid-tower form factor. I picked up a 3 ghz quad core i7 CPU and 12GB of ram. For storage I chose 4 1TB drives that I was planning on using in a RAID5 array.

When my hardware arrived, I burnt the latest ESXi iso (4.1) to a CD and began the install. I quickly discovered that ESXi does not support the on-board RAID capability of the motherboard. I naively assumed that when VMware said a device was supported, that all the functions of that device were supported. I really wanted to utilize RAID in my configuration, so I found a ESXi 4 supported 3ware RAID card on Ebay for a reasonable price. When the RAID card arrived, I installed the card and quickly discovered that VMware dropped support of the 3ware 9550sxu-4lp RAID card with version 4.1, so I would need to utilize 4.0 update 1 if I wanted to use RAID with my current card. The bottom line is VMware ESXi hardware support is very limited and subject to rapid changes.

So I downloaded and installed ESXi version 4.0 update 1 and the driver for 3ware RAID cards. I had 4 1TB drives setup in a RAID5 array, which seemed like a very basic configuration. However, when I logged in via the client I found out that ESXi cannot handle disk arrays over 2TB. My compromise configuration was to set up 2 drives as RAID 0 and 2 drives as RAID 1. One datastore for speed, and one datastore for data integrity.

With the installation complete, I was able to quickly move my existing VM’s to my new server using VMware converter. Besides the hardware compatibility issues, I’m really happy with the performance of the ESXi server. My only big gripe is that the Vsphere client used for accessing the ESXi server is Windows only, which is absolutely inexcusable.

Tipping

In France, tips are not expected, even at full service restaurants. In the United States, the tipping culture has gotten out of hand. Its gone way beyond wait staff at full service restaurants, today we see tip jars popping up all over the place. I’m a generous tipper, but things are out of control. Employees are getting underpaid, and consumers are expected to fill up the gap.

Driving

I was amazed how well motorists behave on the highway in France. First off, nobody clogs up the left lane. Everybody moves immediately to furthermost right lane when not executing a pass on the highway. Nobody passes on the right hand side.

Roads

After driving over 2500 miles, I was shocked how smooth the highways are in France. Literally, I did not hit a pothole of significance during the whole trip. I don’t know what the French are doing differently, but their roads are clearly superior, and I didn’t see much construction going on during our trip.

Gas Station Coffee

In the United States, if you want drinkable coffee you are forced to go do a dedicated coffee house. Gas stations and rest stops have horrible coffee. I’m sorry folks, but Wawa and Sheetz have shitty coffee. Donut shops have shitty coffee. In France, every rest stop has automated espresso machines that make decent coffee. Its not great, but its way better than anything in a gas station in the USA.

Food

There is great food in the USA, but its not the norm. You can easily have a bad food experience. Its hard to have a bad food experience in France, especially if you avoid the touristy sections.

Device Compatibility

Using Linux on the desktop in some form for over a decade, I’m simply shocked at the major strides Ubuntu has made on device compatibility. After the OS installation, every device on my Dell e6500 worked out of the box. The wireless networking and bluetooth worked right out of the box. The screen was at the optimal resolution. The power functionality of sleeping and hibernate worked with no issues going in and out of the dock. Some of these items may appear to be trivial, but 5 years ago Linux laptop users generally had to use custom kernel modules and various hacks to get things working right. Even on the Windows side, you generally have to spend a lot of time hunting down correct device drivers. With Lucid, I was 100% functional after the base OS install.

From a third party device perspective I was also blown away by Lucid. I have a wireless aircard from Verizon. Getting it to work on Windows and OSX requires me install third party software from Verizon. With Ubuntu, I simply plugged the device in, and a wizard came up asking me my country, and my wireless carrier. That’s it, it simply worked like any other integrated networking device. Printer configuration was a similar experience, I simply picked the device from a menu and it just worked. No bloated drivers from HP.

Virtualization

Because I’m running enterprise software demos inside VMware VM’s, naturally I have VM workstation installed. I also used the VMware converter to convert my previous laptop Windows installation to a VM so I can run my old corporate desktop image as needed. Having used VMware for quite some time, the biggest advantage for desktop use in the last few years has been “unity mode.” Unity mode displays virtualized applications as native applications, so in Ubuntu I run Outlook and Visio without having to move back and forth from the virtualized operating system.

Areas for Improvement

There are still some areas where corporate Ubuntu users still face major challenges. Exchange compatibility is still my number one issue. Evolution works great if you have direct MAPI access, but for road warriors we usually only have access to Exchange’s web interface. Outlook can connect to Exchange directly through OWA (Outlook Web Access), and Evolution supports OWA integration too, but only with Exchange 2003. Most corporations are running Exchange 2007. Corporate VPN connectivity still requires some manual configuration and hacking to get it working. Web presentation tools such as Webex have very limited support for Linux. If your forced to use Microsoft’s Netmeeting, then you must use Windows.

Cloud computing is really just an evolution of virtualization. Like virtualization, there are prerequisites that are required for a successful implementation. In the case of virtualization, a sound SAN strategy is needed. Having a hypervisor utilizing one local disk controller among 10-20 virtual machines is a recipe for disaster.

In the case of the cloud, whether it’s internal or external, full stack OS provisioning is a requirement for any true cloud computing initiative. What is full stack OS provisioning? It’s the ability to provision a production ready server (physical, virtual, or cloud) without requiring any manual software configuration handoffs before it is production ready.

When you look at most organizations, there is generally a large gap from the time a server is requested till the time that server is ready for business. Base OS installation is generally not the problem; it’s everything that goes on after the operating system is laid down: monitoring, backup, middleware, applications, and application configurations. Each one of those items usually requires human handoffs and manual configurations in order to finally get a server to a business ready state.

If your server OS provisioning process is not producing business ready compute nodes, then any cloud initiative is going to suffer from the same problems your organization already experiences with regular servers. Cloud computing and virtualization can rapidly speed up the ability to provision new compute nodes, but its only as fast as your provisioning process.

I had two goals for the Twitter diet:
1. Don’t gain any weight in the month of December
2. Lose 10lbs by the end of January

Amazingly, I managed to acheive goal #1, but I fell short of goal #2. I only managed to lose 5lbs during the twitter diet. The Twitter diet was unique because everybody around me was reminded that I was on a diet, which created a built-in weight loss support group. If somebody saw me eating junk food, I would be ridiculed.

The daily reporting of my weight caused me to really think twice about what I was eating. For the first time in my life, I experimented with various diets. I went veggie for a few weeks, I tried the the low-carb thing too. There is no way I would have been motivated to diet if it wasn’t for the Withings scale.

Overall, I think the twitter diet has a lot of potential. I’m actually going to keep the scale sending tweets, but on a weekly basis instead of daily. The weekly reporting should be enough to get me embarrassed if I start to creep back up, and thats the real benefit. The public reporting of weight, gets people who would otherwise not care to really think about how much they weight, what they are eating, and what they are doing.

I thought Apple’s device would be a really strong e-reader, but sadly the Kindle is far superior. A backlight display is not preferable for reading, so Apple’s choice of an OLED screen makes the device a substandard e-reader. With the Kindle, there are no data fees, and there is infinitely more content, and to top it off, the books are cheaper too. So I have to have a monthly network access fee, to buy more expensive books, in a store with less selection, and I must read those books on screen that will strain my eyes? No thanks!

Photos, videos, and music all look very nice on the ipad, but why would I buy an iPad when the iphone/ipod already has all that functionality? The video display is better, but what is the actual use case for the iPad video? An airplane trip? If I’m in an airplane, I already have my laptop, so why bother with an iPad? Again, the more I think about it, the more the iPad doesn’t make much sense.

Finally, the one solid use case I had for an iPad is a living room computer. Something I could share with others in the house to check e-mail, browse the Internet, and carry on the road when I’m on the go. The lack of multiple user profiles makes the iPad a horrible option as a living room computer. Multitasking has existed on personal computers for 16 years, but the iPad wants to party like its 1989? There is no camera, there is no standard video out, and there is no usb port. No sane person would buy a computer that requires you to purchase a bunch of proprietary junk to have basic connectivity.

I’m the type of personal who can rationalize just about any technology purchase. I’m the guy in line to buy the new gadget the day it goes on sale. There is no way to rationalize purchasing an iPad in its current form. The device makes zero sense. It reminds me of the Macbook Air, a device for people who have more money than brains.

For the next two months, I’m going to report my daily weight measurements via twitter. December is probably the absolute worst time to start a diet, but I need to get an early start. I have a very challenging cycling “vacation” at the end of March, and my current weight is the cycling equivalent of morbid obesity.

The most common example is Facebook, which introduced a “like” button, which was really just a ripoff from Friendfeed. While Facebook is the most widely known case, I find the lack of moderating down comments on Yelp even more annoying.

On Yelp people will write reviews that are completely idiotic. A negative review because the restaurant was busy, or because the weather was bad, or because it was a chain. Yelp only gives people the ability to “compliment” a review, so moronic reviews never get put in their place.

Has our society become so insecure, that we cannot take honest feedback when it comes to our online contributions? Does every child get a medal? Life is a two-way street; online moderation should be the same way.

In the mid to late 90′s “it” was any business plan that involved e-commerce. You could write a business plan to sell dogshit online, and “it” would probably get funded. The Napster phenomenon caused a funding frenzy towards P2P startups, even though their potential for revenue was mediocre at best. The success of Myspace caused a funding boom for anything to do with social networking, even though that business model is extremely questionable. Today, the “it” trend is probably cloud computing.

Venture capitalists are like hipsters looking for the next “it” nightclub, but most of the time they end up with a bunch of “me too” companies that go nowhere, but get funded with buzzword laden business plans. Some of the most successful startups in the history of technology are boring companies in established markets.

Was there really anything exciting about Google? Search was already being done by 20 different players in the late 90′s. Search was boring. I’m surprised they didn’t get passed over in order for a VC to fund the next Pointcast screensaver.

The point is that some of the best startups are boring companies, that do boring things, in already proven boring marketplaces.

In addition to replacing 7.2 million lost jobs, the economy needs an additional 100,000 a month to keep up with population growth. If the job market returns to the rapid pace of the 1990s — adding 2.15 million private-sector jobs a year, double the 2001-2007 pace — the U.S. wouldn’t get back to a 5% unemployment rate until late 2017, Rutgers University economist Joseph Seneca estimated. And that assumes no recession between now and then. “Even with some very optimistic assumptions, it’s a long road back,” Mr. Seneca said.

Perhaps one bright spot of note is the constant change of employment. Many of the jobs that exist now, did not even exist a decade ago.

In 2003, Treasury Department chief economist Alan Krueger, then at Princeton, calculated that a quarter of U.S. workers at the time were in jobs the Census Bureau didn’t even list as occupations in 1967.

25% of all jobs in this country did not exist a few decades ago. On a personal note, what I do for living did not exist a decade ago. There were very few IT people focusing on datacenter automation, and the commercial use of Linux was in it’s infancy. Time will tell if positions like mine exist twenty years now. However; if there is one positive note about the volatility of the job market, its the fact that five years from now there will be plenty of new positions that do not exist today.

The “bailout” seems to be a common complaint among the protesters, which seems really strange to me considering the bailout has worked to perfection. These people have no idea how bad it could have been.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the teabaggers, is the overwhelming irony that many of them benefit from government employment and/or programs. Some of the most ardent neoconservatives I know have government jobs, benefit from government programs, or are on some form of government assistance.

Its going to be very interesting to see how this affects the political landscape in the short and long term. None of the whackjobs out on the street voted for Obama, but they do vote. The handful of moderate republicans have to be worried. Conservative democrats will definitely have problems too. It will be very interesting to see how this fear affects voting for issues like healthcare or immigration reform.

Obama might have trouble getting help from moderates, who would be rightly afraid of reprisals come election day. From a national standpoint, a more conservative shift in the Republican party will only benefit the Democrats in the long term.

Opponents of health care reform seem to like the current system. They refer to public health care plans as “socialized” health care. It recently occurred to me that there are lot of other “socialized” government services in the USA that should be reformed, using the brilliant HMO model. Here are few suggestions:

Education
The “socialized” public education system is out of control. People without kids get taxed for education. We need to privatize education immediately, and auction off all the public schools to private companies. People with good jobs will get employer subsidized EMO (Education Management Organization) plans that pay for their kids to go school. People will not get to choose their school regardless of where they live. Participants must choose an “in-network” school, even if it means traveling far away from their homes.

Millions of kids will be unable to go to school, because their parents are unemployed or work at companies that don’t provide an EMO plan. Mental retardation and other developmental disabilities will be considered “preexisting” conditions, that will exclude coverage under all EMO plans. Sorry kids, but you can always get a job at Taco Bell.

Transportation
The “socialized” road system is killing America. We should privatize all roads immediately. Under the new plan, all roads will be toll roads. Your employer will sign you up with an EZ-PASS system through your TMO (Transportation Management Organization) plan. You will only be able drive on roads covered by your TMO plan, so make sure you pick an employer with good coverage area. If you lose your job, you will lose the ability to drive on roads.

Police
The “socialized” police system we have today is straight out of Soviet Russia. Effective immediately, all police services will be paid for via your CMO (Crime Management Organization) plans. When you’re the victim of a crime, the police will charge all investigative costs to your CMO plan. Your CMO plan will determine the amount of money paid for specific investigations. Pricey investigations like rape might not be covered under your CMO plan. When a criminal is put in jail, the cost of incarceration will be covered under the CMO plan. The time a criminal spends in jail will be determined by the quality of the victim’s CMO coverage.

Fire
Your employer’s FMO plan (Fire Management Organization) will cover the expenses of fire services. If you do not have FMO coverage, the fire department will let your house burn down, unless you pay in full upfront while your house is burning. The FMO system does away with the previous “socialized” firefighting system.

National Defense
Its hard to believe that the Republican party has been supporting nearly unlimited funding for socialized national defense. The entire armed forces should be privatized immediately, and citizens should be billed appropriately. You employer might have a DMO plan that will cover some of the costs. People who live in high risk areas, will be charged more, similar to how an insurance company manages risk. People who are unemployed and can’t afford DMO coverage will be expelled from the country immediately. We can’t have free-riders ruing the system.