Multitasking

Lately I have taken a look at how I try to do too much at the same time and how that can get me into trouble. The reason I started looking at this is because of a boat casualty this week. When I get done with my morning shower, I like to hang my towel out in the cockpit of the boat so it will dry. Before I head into the office, I bring the towel inside. This is because San Francisco has gotten a lot of rain lately and I don't want to come back to the boat and have a completely soaked towel. This can happen even though the day may start out sunny. Lately I have felt that I live in Seattle and not San Francisco.

Friday I must have had too much on my mind because I left the towel outside and forgot about it. I then headed to the airport after work and didn't get back to the boat until Monday evening. Naturally my towel was nowhere to be found. I assume that the wind blew it away. I did a look around the marina, but never found it.

How many other times have I left the lights on or forgotten something important because I was distracted? This week, I decided that it all boils down to multitasking. I start working on something, get interrupted and have to do something else. If I am lucky, I might actually get back to my original task, but more often than not, I am drawn to other tasks. Pretty soon, I am working on three or four tasks at the same time.

When computers multitask, they are about as inefficient as us humans. They work on a problem for a bit, save off all the information to someplace safe, then work on the next problem. When it comes time to work on the original problem, they copy all the saved information back to the working area and continue. The only advantage that computers have is that they are really good about remember what they are working on. In the case of the forgotten towel, I was packing up my dirty clothes, cleaning the boat, and brushing my teeth. When it came time to lock up the boat, I completely forgot about the towel.

In thinking about how I lost my towel, I have tried to come up with a way to keep that from happening again. One option is to just hang the towel inside the boat and forget about letting it dry outside. Unfortunately there is not enough air circulation in a boat and so nothing ever really dries. Mildew is a huge problem on boats. Borrowing a trick from my computer, I think I have devised a solution. My boat has a stainless-steel cable that runs around the outside called a lifeline. It is meant to keep all sailors in the boat when out on the water. It also works great as a drying line. Rather than hang my towel someplace out of the way on the lifeline, I now hang it right in my way so that I trip over it when I try to leave the boat. That way, I will never forget it again. In a way, that is what computers do. When they finish one task, they know what to work on next because it is right in front of them. So if you ever come to my house or boat and see things scattered on the ground, it is just my way of keeping track of what I am doing.

System Updates

Yesterday I was officially given a new database to administer at work. There are several things you can do to make sure your database runs smoothly. The first is to make sure you are running on the most current version. While you don't want to be on the bleeding edge of technology, it is important to make sure you have all of the security and bug patches installed. Otherwise you open yourself to a number of potential problems.

Upgrading some versions of PostgreSQL are as easy as shutting down the database, installing the new binary files, and restarting the database. Unfortunately my new database required a more lengthy process. As the database is used in a production application, I can't just shut it down on a whim. I have to wait for a regularly scheduled maintenance window. As luck would have it, the window fell at midnight this morning (or last night, depending on how you look at it).

When I was done at the office, I went home, ate some dinner, and did a few chores around the boat. Then I came back and started the database update. Everything ran smoothly and I was done relatively quickly. It helped to create a checklist earlier in the day while my mind was still fresh. Figuring things out after midnight can be a bit foggy if you aren't used to staying up that late.

The tough part about doing a late-night system update is the next morning. Even though I knew I could sleep in, I had trouble sleeping past my usual waking hour. Now I just hope I don't fall asleep at my desk this afternoon.

Online Video Games

Working away from home during the week can take its toll on your family life. While I have plenty of time to talk with my family, it just isn't the same as being there. Video conferencing with Skype helps a bit, but it is easy to miss that interaction you get by just hanging out together.

Several years ago, my extended family started a weekly game night. My Brothers, dad, and I would play an online video game on Thursdays with our sons. While some of us live close to each other, my older brother and his son are in San Diego. The game we started playing was SOCOM, which is a first-person-shooter game where you are a Navy SEAL that hunts terrorists (or visa versa). We originally started playing the game on Playstation 2's. Then it came out on the PSP. The PSP is nice because you can bring it on the road with you and don't have to lug around a larger console, nor do you have to worry about connecting it to a hotel TV.

My youngest son is 14 and really needs his Dad around. Since I can't be there, I try to talk to him on the phone. Unfortunately he is a boy and doesn't really like to talk on the phone (unlike his older sisters, who can talk for hours about nothing). Lately we have pulled out the PSP's and started playing online together. It may only be for a half-hour or so, but we are doing something together. I have the headset game in one ear and the cell-phone headset in the other. We are in constant contact the whole time. While we aren't in the same room, I think that this is as close as it gets to being home even though I am out of town. Now I just have to get better so he stops complaining how lousy I am.

Internet Recipes

Living alone 4 nights a week means I either eat out a lot or I have to eat my own cooking. Past experience has taught me that eating out a lot is the best way to gain weight and so I try to cook my own meals as often as possible. Unfortunately I haven't had to cook for myself in almost 20 years (thanks to my wonderful wife) and so my cooking skills are somewhat rusty. Oh sure, I am good at putting together meals for camping trips, but there are only so many ways to spice up a tin-foil dinner.

Before leaving the office last night, I spent a couple of minutes on the Internet looking for recipes that I could easily make. I only have a single pot and a single frying pan in my bachelor kitchen and so I searched for one-pot meals. I found a great site with 20 wonderful looking recipes. The only problem was that they all required a number of ingredients I just don't stock on my boat. Not only is my kitchen small, but there isn't a lot of storage space to keep even the most basic staples. There was one meal that looked like it didn't require too many ingredients: Thai Green Chicken Curry. So before heading home, I stopped by the store and picked up what was needed.

I got back to the boat and spent the next hour cooking dinner. Naturally I would have preferred to eat 5 minutes after I started cooking, but there wasn't anything else to do but watch TV and I already do too much of that. The instructions were easy to follow and I was proud of myself when I sat down to eat. Now I have one more recipe to add to my really short list of things I can cook. Just don't tell my wife, she might expect me to cook more when I am home.

Learning Python

One of the nice things about my new job is that I get time set aside each day to learn a new skill. Most of the developers I work with here are using Python and so I figured I would learn this computer programming language. What better way to learn than to work on an actual project. One of my coworkers was more than happy to volunteer a project and after a week, I am mostly finished. There is still some clean-up work to do, but the program works.

I do have to confess that I am not any better at knowing Python now than when I started the project. My program interacts with so many other pieces of the system that I feel like I am working with Lego blocks. When I need to figure out how to interact with one system, I do a search on the Internet, find some sample code, and work it into my program. I know just enough to make changes so that it works. When I get errors, I search the Internet and get an immediate fix.

Today I have a code review and I have to explain how my code works and why I wrote it the way I did. The only problem is that I have no idea what I did. The program just works and does what it is supposed to do. Oh well, maybe I will learn Python next week.

Moving Files to My New Computer

So far, I have not run into any problems because I left my MacBook at home. Of course it helps that I am not working on any old projects. Last night I did some volunteer work and didn't get back home until very late. This evening I will have some spare time and it will be a better test of how well I did transferring files from the MacBook to my new laptop.

Previously I listed 7 steps that I use to transfer old files to a new laptop. Step 3 is: Move all important files to the new computer. With my MacBook, that was easy. Any time I create a new file, I make sure it ends up in the "Documents" directory. Linux, Windows, and the Mac all have a directory called "Documents" and so the advise is valid on all 3 operating systems.

When I create a new word processing document, it ends up in "Documents". When I start a new spreadsheet, it ends up in "Documents". Now it may sound like my documents directory is full of files. It isn't. One of the beauties of computer file systems is that folders can contain other folders or directories. This means that I have a number of folders in "Documents" and those folders contain other folders. When I got to step 3 of my list for transferring information, I just copied the Documents folder to my new computer and I didn't have to go searching for all my important files.

Truth be told, I have yet to complete the process of transferring all of my old files to my new computer. I started the process by copying them to a 16 GB flash drive and was amazed that it took up 3.5 GB of space. Now I just keep that flash drive with me and when I need a file from my old computer, I copy it from the flash drive to my new computer. That helps me figure out what I really need from my MacBook. After all, who wants to fill up their new computer with old stuff that never got used on the old one?

A New Laptop

Recently I received a new laptop at work. It isn't nearly as nice as my old black MacBook, but it means I have yet another computer. For a while I was leaving my work laptop in San Francisco and carrying my MacBook back and forth to Salt Lake. This week I decided to leave it at home and utilize the laptop the company gave me. So far, it has turned out to be a good decision, but the week is still young.

One nice thing about my MacBook is that it has a built-in camera to use with Skype. My new computer has the same setup. None of the computers we have at home have a camera and so it was kind of nice to talk to my son. He logged into my MacBook while I was on my new laptop and we were able to see each other as we talked. It didn't take long before everyone in the family was down in my office crowding behind the laptop screen to get a look at Dad.

Working 600 miles away from home can be a little lonely sometimes. While I spend quite a bit of time on the phone with member of my family, it will be nice to enjoy seeing them as well as talking to them.

The Death of OpenOffice.org

Two days ago, I received an e-mail about how OpenOffice is dead because of the new release of Microsoft Office 2010. The author comments about the quality of online office suites like Google Docs. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the online office suites are no replacement for a full fetaured office suite like OpenOffice or Microsoft Office.

The author then goes on to talk about all the new features of Microsoft Office 2010 and how it is so much better than OpenOffice that everyone should switch to Microsoft Office. His justification is that if you can't afford to pay for software, use Google Docs. That is like someone who has just had his first ride in a Ferrari saying that you should never own a Toyota and if you can't afford a Ferrari, you should take the bus.

I like Microsoft Office on the Mac and think it is a great product. I like OpenOffice on Linux and think it is a great product. Recently I have started using Microsoft Office on Windows and have to say that I hate it. In Office 2007 on Windows, they completely redesigned the user interface and it is difficult to find anything. I will probably replace it with OpenOffice and only use Microsoft Office on the Mac. As for Google Docs, it has its place, but anybody that thinks it will replace a full-featured office suite has had a bit too much of the Google Kool-Aid and needs to give it a rest.

Is OpenOffice dead? Not at all. There are lots of people that will continue to use OpenOffice, myself included. I think the real issue is that the person who wrote the article about the demise of OpenOffice works for ZDnet and ZDnet sells advertising space. Companies like Microsoft pay for advertising. OpenOffice doesn't. I'll let you do the math.

My Poor Wife, Part II

Yesterday I started the story about how great my wife is but how she has had to deal with technical issues at home while I am gone. The first issue was about pulling video from our camera and putting it on the computer so my youngest son can edit it for a school project. She was able to get that problem solved only to wake up yesterday and have another computer glitch to solve.

One of the companies I was involved with over the past couple of years is in the process of being sold. They have a demo server running in my basement. This allows them to do sales presentations and testing without having to have an expensive machine in a co-location facility (where most web-based businesses keep their production servers). Yesterday was supposed to be another demo for the purchasing company and it was scheduled for 6:00 am PDT. That sounds early for me, but they are on the East coast and we had to include someone from India. 6:00 am turns out to be an optimal time for such calls.

At about 10 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start, I got a call from the person doing the demo, who said he couldn't get to the server. I was just turning on my computer and so I began looking into the problem. The first thing I did was call my wife to see if the server was still running. It wasn't. There was a power flicker the previous night and it shut down all of the computers in the house. Having the server on an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) would have alleviated the problem, but the one I have needs the battery replaced. I guess I had better add that to my list of things to do.

The demo server has been running so long without any problems, I could not remember the process to restart everything. The first thing I had my wife do, was to turn the machine on. While it was booting, I had her go through my office looking for my notebook associated with that computer. She then looked through my notes until she found the right page with the restart instructions. It was one line of cryptic code that was nearly impossible to read. Fortunately it was enough to jog my memory and we had everything running a minute later.

I logged into the conference call and WebEx demo, which was the sign to the presenter that the machine was back up and he could safely move into the live-demo portion of the meeting. Everything went well and my wife saved the day once again. Now I just hope nothing else goes wrong.

My Poor Wife, Part I

My wife is great! She loves to ski and lets me ski as much as I am able. She loves to sail and lets me live on a sailboat during the week. She is a great cook and wonderful mother. Her only flaw is that she married me, someone that spends a bit too much time with computers.

Over the past 24 hours, she has had to take care of several computer related problems at home because I am not there. She has done a great job, but I imagine her patience is wearing thin and I can only hope that something else doesn't go wrong.

Yesterday my youngest son came home with some friends from school to work on a project for his German class. The idea was to make a video or DVD. As we have a great camera capable of shooting true high-definition (HD) video, this shouldn't have been a problem. My son and his classmates created the various pieces of footage and were ready to edit everything together. That is where the first problem began.

I never realized that computers and video cameras could be monogamous. My laptop that I have with me in San Francisco is the computer that is set up to work with my video camera. All I have to do is attach the USB cable between them and the two devices know how to talk to each other. Once I get the footage on my machine, it is a simple matter of editing it with iMovie and then using iDVD to create a disk that will work in most DVD players. Yesterday, my camera did not want to talk to any other computers. My oldest son tried to get the camera to work with the family Mac without any luck. My wife, being the wise woman that she is, took the camera up to my dad's who tried to get it to talk with his Mac. Again, no luck.

Normally I wouldn't suggest anyone's parents for computer help. Generally your best bet is to go with someone younger, like one of your children. However, My dad has been working with computers for the last 40 years and is generally a good backup when I am out of town. After searching the Internet, they were able to come up with a workaround solution and were able to get the video off the camera. Currently that video is stored on a flash-drive and will be edited after school today. We will see how that process goes.

I went to sleep last night happy to know that my son's project was well on its way to being done. Considering it isn't due until Friday, I applaud my son for starting early. When I woke up, a second and completely unrelated computer problem arose and it was up to my trusty wife to solve yet another issue . . .

Public Transportation

I was complaining to a good friend about how it is difficult to get around the San Francisco Bay Area without an automobile. I currently have my car here, but would like to drive it back to Salt Lake so my wife can use it to replace one of our dying vehicles. My friend only has one working car and suggested that he does quite well with the help of public transportation.

I have my bike that I can use to get to and from work, which is less than four miles away. Next to my office is a grocery store and so I can easily stock up on food (with the help of a backpack). The only problem I need to solve is how to get to and from the airport each week.

With the help of the Internet, I looked into taking a shuttle bus. While San Francisco airport is only a few miles from my office, Oakland is less expensive to fly in and out of. Unfortunately that means a round-trip $100 shuttle ride each week. It is only $25 to keep my car at the airport each weekend and so the shuttle bus is more expensive than just keeping my car here.

Thinking back to my good friend's comment about public transportation, there is the option of Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART. BART runs between Oakland and San Francisco Airports at a cost of about $9. My office has a shuttle bus to the BART station and so it is just a matter of looking up times and figuring out schedules. Once again, it is the Internet to the rescue. Looking at the BART website, the ride takes about an hour. I think I may have solved the problem. Now if I could figure out how to keep it from raining when I am on my bike . . .

Not So Fast

Two days ago I was so happy that I could get rid of a $60/month bill because I no longer needed my broadband Internet device. Then I got back to my boat last night and discovered my free Internet connection no longer worked. I'm sure someone will come in over the weekend and figure out the problem. Then it will be working again on Monday. However, I need something a bit more reliable and so it looks like I am going to have to keep my broadband device.

When I was at the Verizon store looking at Internet solutions for my boat, I had two possible choices: a device that plugged into my USB port and worked with a single computer or their MiFi product that can connect up to 5 WiFi-enabled devices. In the commercials on TV, they show five guys sitting around a campfire playing video games on PSPs and Nintendos. My justification for getting the device was so I could simultaneously connect my laptop and a future Playstation 3 that I plan to get. After all, I do work for a video game company. As luck would have it, my new work laptop arrived this week and so I already have two devices that can use my broadband Internet connection.

The MiFi product works pretty good and is fairly easy to set up. The only reason to connect it to your computer is for setup and if you want to charge its battery. It also comes with a dedicated stand-alone charger. I like not having it tethered to my computer all the time. If I want to get better reception, I can stick it on the roof of my boat and signal strength increases. That can come in handy sometimes.

AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all sell MiFi devices. I was originally going to go with Sprint because their 4G coverage seems to be so much faster than simple 3G. Then I did a bit of research. There are only a handful of states with 4G coverage and neither Utah nor California are on the list. Then I thought about AT&T, but I already have an iPhone. I figure that between Verizon and AT&T, I will have more data area coverage than with just AT&T alone.

I sure would have liked to give up a monthly bill but it is worth it to have reliable Internet coverage. However if you think you want a MiFi device so you can sit around a campfire playing video games with your kids, you need to get out more.

Oops!

I know it may sound hard to believe, but yesterday I made a mistake. It wasn't a little mistake either. Then again, it wasn't a tragic mistake. I was working on one of the servers at the office and noticed we are keeping around a bunch of nightly database backups. I was cleaning them out and managed to delete every last one.

If I had been working on Windows or the Mac, restoring the files would have been as easy as going to the trash and pulling the ones I was trying to save. On Linux, a delete (or rm) really is a delete and it is nearly impossible to recover the removed files. Instead I will be forced to restore from a tape backup. That shouldn't be too much of a problem because the backup directory is copied to tape regularly and so the files still exist somewhere. It will just take a bit of work this morning.

I don't often make mistakes like this and will definitely be more careful with the "rm" command in the future. However my mistake now gives us a chance to make sure our backups really are working. If not, then I hope nobody ever needs to go back and look at what is in those old database files.

Internet on a Boat

Living on a boat a couple of days a week has some advantages. Take last night. There was a lot of wind and so I was gently rocked to sleep. It also has some disadvantages. Take last night. There was a lot of wind and the halyards (ropes used to raise and lower the sails) kept slapping against the mast all night making a lot of noise.

When people find out I stay on a boat, they ask about my living conditions. I actually have most of the comforts of home. There is a bathroom on board as well as a kitchen and two bedrooms. I also have running water and electricity. I even have high definition television (HDTV) that gets great reception with the help of a powered antenna. The boat is situated so I get about 75 different stations and don't pay any monthly fees for it.

The only thing missing is an Internet connection. When I first started staying on the boat down in Marina Del Rey, near Los Angeles, there was no free public Wi-Fi Internet connection. I didn't mind because I was working for a slave-driver and spent all of my time at the office. My new marina up near the San Francisco airport is much more rustic. I have a golf course in my back yard and the front yard is literally on the San Francisco Bay. I expected that there would be no Internet connection and was correct when I first started staying on the boat up here.

Since I didn't have any Internet connection, I decided to go get one of those mobile broadband cards for my computer. Rather than just get a card that works with a single computer, I decided to get one that works with five wireless devices. That way I could connect multiple computers on the boat to the Internet without having to resort to fancy networking. It took a while to get working but is a magnificent device.

Yesterday I came home from the office and started working on my computer. I noticed that there was a strong Internet Wi-Fi signal from the yacht club nearby. I gave it a shot and it works pretty good. Now I don't need the mobile broadband device. It is a good thing I have 30 days to return it. More importantly I can save myself $60/month. Now if I had my family with me and didn't have to eat my own cooking, life on the boat would be nearly perfect.

A Good Seat on Southwest

In my post from last week, I mentioned that I live in Salt Lake but work in the San Francisco area. That means I do a lot of flying. I have traveled my whole career and so this is no big deal. The way to make it bearable is to know a few travel tricks. Things like wearing slip-on shoes to the airport so you don't have to do a lot of shoe tying at the security line.

However, the most important trick is to know how to get a good seat on Southwest airlines. I buy my plane tickets several weeks in advance and Southwest generally has the best prices. That means I don't get a seat when I make my reservation. Yes, I have the option of paying an extra fee that allows me to board before everyone, but I found a less expensive solution that helps to be in the first boarding group.

Southwest allows you to check-in, 24 hours before your flight. The order you check in, is the order that you get to board the plane (behind those that paid the extra fee). When I make my flight reservation, I also make an entry in the calendar on my phone. I then set the reminder on my phone so that exactly 24 hours before my flight I can start the check-in process. Since I have an iPhone, I also have the Southwest application which allows me to check in from anywhere. Last week I was at the car wash when the alarm went off. I silenced the alarm and was checked in before the wash cycle completed.

Now that I figured out how to use my calendar to help me remember to check in for flights, I should probably throw in some important dates, like my anniversary and wife's birthday. That reminds me, Mother's Day is just around the corner. Now if I only knew what to get the mother of my children . . .