I discovered IBM Redbooks today. Boy, have I been missing out. These are great resources to keep any IT or software professional up to speed on the latest concepts, developments, and schools of thought. They are virtual encyclopedias for all geeks.

posted: 11:18:41 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Apache vs. IIS?. Interesting contrast between two sources. Port 80 Software just released a survey of "the Top 1000 Corporations'" web servers. It claims that Microsofts IIS is in use on at least 3x more sites than Apache. On the other hand, Netcraft's recent results are just the opposite, showing that Apache deployment exceeds that of IIS by nearly 3x when testing 42,807,275 sites worldwide. [Source: Robert Scoble and Sudhakar Sadasivuni] [Blogarithms]

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm."

posted: 11:10:02 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

This is a great article written by Jim Gary, a Distinguished Engineer in Microsoft's Scalable Servers Research Group, and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center (BARC). This article lays out a rule of thumb when evaluating if an application could benefit from a distributed computational paradigm. He argues that the break-even point between centralized and distributed applications is 10,000 instructions per byte of network traffic or about a minute of computation per megabyte of network traffic. This indicates that computationally intense applications benefit from the distributed model the most. There are very few widespread applications that require huge amounts of computational resources. As a matter of fact, none exist in the consumer world and very few in business.

posted: 10:53:42 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I was looking for a web-based time tracking system to track tickets, incidents, and general work. I ran across Double Choco Latte (DCL) today and it looks promising. This will form a foundational piece for the reporting and tracking platform I am pulling together for Data Center Cost Allocation Engine (DCCAE). I hope to be able to reuse the reporting engine in DCL to some degree, integrate the DCCAE as a separate module, and build XML-RPC interfaces to the data sources. Hmmm. This is getting interesting.

posted: 10:36:23 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Over the past couple of days I have realized that the amount of data I am dealing with on a daily basis is beginning to exceed my capacity to contain it. This may be due to impending fatherhood (t-59 days and counting), or it may just be due to disorganization. I have to dig up emails sent to me months ago, recall specific versions of files attached to emails, versions of documents on my hard drive, and data in an online project portal. I can't figure out a way to logically organize it all. My email and hard drive are very organized, but it is challenging reconciling the two some times. When files from my project portal and cc'd emails threads containing data I need to track are thrown into the mix, things get ugly. This is a personal scaling issue and I'm hitting a step function to the next level.

posted: 10:27:04 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

An interesting story from a couple of consultants I am working with. They were intercepted at the elevators this morning and asked to prove that their virus definitions were up to date. They work for a virtual consulting firm and use their own laptops. One of them had no anti-virus software on his computers, so the IT guy confiscated it, installed Norton Anti-Virus and removed his administration rights FROM HIS OWN COMPUTER!! The other consultant proved that his virus definitions had been updated, but couldn't get out to the Internet. Apparently, the IT staff had shut down every port on their switches until they verified that everyone had updated with virus definitions. My guys lost two hours today that I had to pay for because of this raid. I'm sure it was worse elsewhere.

posted: 12:04:09 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()