Bill Strahm's Weblog

Friday August 27, 2004

Out with the Old - In with the New
Well today my manager at Sun is leaving. Goodbye John, you will be missed.

I will espouse on what a good manager means to me. I have suffered under a few bad managers in my time, and been blessed with a set of managers that make work a joy. I have decided that I won't suffer under a bad manager anymore - it is too easy to find a job, and my health and happiness is worth more than any money I might give up. (Don't worry Brian - I am not talking about you right now, just a couple of those managers in my past). I jokingly tell my managers that they are graded on two metrics - my blood pressure (120/80 - 1 point for each number bigger than this) and inversely with the average weekly status meeting (Works well for managers that only have a bi-weekly meeting). So there are two things that a manager can do to be a good manager in my eyes, keep my stress level down so I can be productive - and not waste my time.

Seriously though - what makes a good manager - I look for a few things from my manager
Help determine what my highest priorities are - I want to be working on important things
Help with contacts around the company with people that I have to work with (ie. networking)
Help with isolating me from "bad" politics - in otherwords, shield me from random stupidity
Teach me something
Let me teach something

I'll see how good my new manager is... I've worked with him as a peer since I have been at Sun, so at least I know he is a good person - and I fully expect him to become a good manager in my list. In management personality matters

(2004-08-27 12:58:32.0) Permalink

Wednesday August 25, 2004

The downfall of RIAA

So I was in the gym reading a buisinessweek mag while pedalling (see the plethora of cycling entries on why) - and an article came up that said that the music industry grew 7% - after a long downturn due to those EVIL filesharing people, and P2P piracy.

Well I have news for you RIAA - the reason that your sales have gone down is that your product sucks. Lets face it - how many bands are there that an adult will ALWAYS go out and buy the next album that comes out. I mean sure - kids will buy Britany, or Christina, or whoever the boy band of the day is, but we are adults - I want a new Rolling Stones, AeroSmith, Van Halen... Where are these bands (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, don't even get me started on Outkast) and why.

I have wondered if the way that the RIAA is operating has something to do with this. Instead of letting new bands nurture themselves and create themselves in the way that the band wants to, they are presured into putting too many albums out early in their carreers. I mean seriously - the first Beatles album basically sucked, so did U2 and many other bands... but they were able to train themselves to the point that they became excellent musicians and ruled for many years.What I am seeing is new bands are discovered and then put on an album a year contract until no one will buy what comes out (that infamous sophmore slump) - and then they are dropped. Can we let bands figure out their own schedule - giving us great music when they are ready.

Note that this isn't a problem in the independant scene nearly as much - and that is its benefit. If you haven't checked it out - look at CD Baby for a great site that supports independant artists... and if you like surf rock, make sure and check out Surf Guitar Villians - one of my prior managers
(2004-08-25 14:26:38.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Saturday August 21, 2004

How NOT to do customer support

So I need a new cell phone. Well gripe one - no I don't want a new cell phone, mine is great. The problem is that the battery life has dropped to under a day, and about 10 minutes of talk time. Getting a replacement battery is something like 50 dollars assuming you can still get one. You can get a new cell phone when you sign up for new cell service.

Why can't I just get a new battery with my new cell service

OK - So first thing a lead story on CNBC was that ATT Wireless has the worst service rating - red flag number 1. So I look at the ATT Wireless website to find out what the new phones will run me, and what the services are (I currently have ATT - so lets see what they can do for me). Found a nice Nokia phone that was "free" with 2 years of service. Time to go to the ATT Wireless service to look at the phone and go get the new service. Get to the store - the store has the SAME phone at $100 dollars - talked to the sales guy... The story is only for "New" customers, not "Existing" customers. Ok - well if you won't give me the phone, mind if I walk down to the Sprint store... Well he won't budge on giving me what is available on the web, or to "New" custommers. So time to become an "Old" customer so I might get a better deal in the future.

So went to the sprint store - found a phone that I wanted, got a very similar plan (plus a 20% discount for Sun Employees - Thanks Scott) so have a better phone, a better plan, and ATT Wireless ( Cingular now ???) looses another customer.

(2004-08-21 22:38:35.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday August 20, 2004

First attempt to post IETF Presentations I want to see how well this works before I go and update all 4 presentations to this blog. To see Hal's Presentation on IPoIB Implementation experiences of the OpenIB group. Please check out the pdf here Implementation Experiences

When I know that this is working - I will publish the other 3 presentations.

(2004-08-20 15:45:00.0) Permalink

Monday August 16, 2004

I love the coast
Had a great bike ride - Started from Santa Cruz... Had coffee in a nice cup of coffee and a pumpkin muffin in a little coffee shop. Went up the Swanton road loop, up and then back down. Started to head north on the coast again. A nice headwind made me change my mind, so I turned around and did 40.

Made a stop to get some fresh cherries on the roadside before finishing off at a little Mexican resturant.
(2004-08-16 09:31:19.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Thursday August 12, 2004

Helping a worthy cause, and finally getting some miles in
Well, I am finally spending a weekend in the Bay Area - it has been quite a while.

So I am planning on doing a few things

Helping with a Team in Training training ride on Saturday. Team in Training is the organization that helped train me for my Tahoe Century, and I am more than happy to help other people achieve their goals

Getting a long ride in myself. I was thinking about a ride up/down the peninsula - maybe a trip over the range to the coast - but then the ride I am helping on Saturday turns out to be the favorite training ride I did. Starting outside Santa Cruz - head up the coast to Pescadero, then back down 1. It was a gorgeous ride - even saw a whale... I'd like to do it again on my own on Sunday.

Well one of my friends may have a better idea - so I can go with them as well
(2004-08-12 16:18:08.0) Permalink

Saturday August 07, 2004

Running IP over Infiniband Well, for those that don't know me - I am the co-chair of the IETF's IP over Infiniband working group. This is an interesting pair. IP is the industry standard way to do layer 4 networking (OK - throw TCP on top of it for layer 4). Infiniband is a hardware accellerated Layer 4 protocol suite.

So now we want to run a layer 3 protocol on top of Layer 4 infiniband. Plus there are some issues around not having a broadcast address in Infiniband so we have to create a multicast group in Infiniband to "broadcast" ARP traffic over. There are also interesting issues involving what is a Layer 2 address, and how to turn a long lived Infiniband Layer 2 address (GID, QPN) into something that you can put into an infiniband packet (LID)

How did the working group meeting go. Pretty well. I think we will have the final Encapsulation Draft into the IESG's hands by the end of the month - and make progress on DHCP (need to work with the DHCP WG chairs to have someone look it over their) and the SNMP MIB drafts. I will make it a personal goal to get the Encapsulation and DHCP drafts into the IESGs hands by the November IETF, and the first 3 MIB drafts ready for the IESG as well.

(2004-08-07 13:40:00.0) Permalink

The IETF in action Working in several standards bodies - I have discovered how unique the IETF actually is. I believe that it starts with their unique membership requirements. To belong to the IETF just takes joining the appropriate mailing list and participating. This is unique in that most standards bodies require members to pay large (sometimes into the 5 figure annually) membership dues. This means that effectively only companies can join - allowing their workers to participate.

The other unique feature is how decisions are made. For good or bad - decisions in the IETF are consensus based. Each member (remember anyone can join) has a say into how the standard ends up. Rather than other standards bodies where there are specified ballots (each member - read company) gets a vote - each vote counts as one, whoever has the most votes wins the election. In the IETF there is consensus that is determined by a Working Group chair. This means that everyone can be for something, but a strong minority dissenting view gets listened too, and addressed. This can be good if you have a single expert on a technology that should be listened too - it is bad when someone has an agenda to slow the progress of a working group.

I would like to talk some more in the coming days on the good and bad trends in the IETF, and especially some of the ramifications of their membership model on the future of the IETF.

(2004-08-07 13:23:36.0) Permalink

Thursday July 29, 2004

What are we listening to today Well right now we have Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits) playing in the office.

I fought getting an MP3 player for years, finally broke down a couple of months ago and have no idea why I put it off. These things are great. I went and got myself a RIO Chiba, a nice Flash based MP3 player, and now have a good pair of Sony Earbuds to go along with it.

I have to ask, why does every music player out there come with the cheapest piece of crap headphones - Want to know why my player sounds so much better than yours, it is the headphones...

(2004-07-29 10:49:53.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Wednesday July 28, 2004

Time to get started Well - we have a blog now.

So what to talk about

Software Development
Current Projects
Music
Interesting Process thoughts

Tune in for more information as it becomes available
(2004-07-28 14:46:33.0) Permalink