Jason Schroeder's Blog

For all of those who thought I was kidding on my earlier blog entry rant concerning the laughable state of the airline industry.  It just so happens that this weekend my youngest boy is getting baptised this weekend, and for some strange reason - our family wanted to come to town.

Three lottery tickets please - one for nana, one for grandma, one for aunt Molly.  Would you believe that the anticipated arrival times in the destination city for all three, on different airlines is within one hour of each other?  Well, you know the lottery - gaming people on golden promises and dreams.

Drumroll ...

Nana: Airline #1 from Dothan to Charlotte lottery.  Ahh, sorry an early loser.  Flight from Dothan was delayed long enough to miss the second leg of the flight out of Atlanta.  Instead of staying in the Atlanta airport, she chose to restart from scratch in the morning from Dothan.

Grandma:  Airline #2 from Omaha to Charlotte lottery.  First leg of the trek a success.  Even pulled out from the gate exactly on time for the second leg...  only to rush out onto the runway and park for unknown reasons.  Been there for an hour and a half so far.  Thank goodness for the Internet so I can check for up to the minute 'newly' predicted destination arrival times in those 15 minute intervals ... {10:20 ... 10:25 ... 10:55 ... 10:25 ... 11:05 ... }.  Are you on the edge of your seat in anticipation?  I am. 

Aunt Molly:  Airline #3 from Omaha to Charlotte lottery.  Some history here.  This was a ticket purchased from Airline #3 - but the actual "flying" was to be done by Airline #2.  Now even though Grandma and Aunt Molly were both actually doing some "flying" on the same airline, they are on different flights.  Each flight leaving Omaha within 10 minutes of each other, stopping in two different layover cities, and "theoretically" arriving in Charlotte within 5 minutes of each other....   Well, I guess this was the right way to go, because it appears that Aunt Molly gets the win with a early arrival - in the right city none the less.

One out of three - not bad odds.

/jason

Today was a good mail day.  Got a refund from a company in which my family purchases a number of services.  A good company, we like them, happy with their services.  Yeah!  So, as is typical, this refund was distrubuted in a check form.  Turning over the check to endorse, I see the following:

    "This Notice Only Applies to Vendors and Service Providers:
    By endorsing this payment for your services, you agree not to
    use or disclose any personal customer information received from
    us unless necessary for the services we requested."

Well, isn't this interesting?  Back to that entertaining consumer privacy issue.  So, I am just your average consumer - who in today's world has to release certain information to this particular company to obtain services.  I want the service, so I give the data, I know who the company is.  So, as an average consumer participant, let me see if I can make sense of the above....

First, I am assuming technically as an individual consumer, in this context, I am not a Vendor or a Service Provider for this company.  So, doesn't apply to me right?  But, being a naturally curious person - I again throw caution to the wind and read on and draw the following points of interest:

    -Even though I am informed that this notice apparently does not apply to me; they seem to potentially reference my "personal information"
    -What if the Vendor decides that the personal customer information is worth more than the yet to be endorced payment received?
    -What if I don't have the same level of trust in the Vendor trusted by my directly trusted service provider? {...and the woodchuck could chuck wood...}
    -So the personal customer information received by the Vendor should not be disclosed unless it is necessary?
    -Define necessary?  {come on Clinton...}
    -So this means that the Vendor can disclose personal information as long as my trusted service provider gets its service?
    -As my personal information traverses this 'trust fork' process, disclosure enforcement rests on this?

See how much fun this is? 

/jason

Listen, if your "online registration" website includes a step to "print this registration form and fax ..."  it is NOT meeting the level of functionality to which it was billed.

<sigh>

/jason

When I was a bit younger, my sister always had pet hamsters.  Along with the cage, she had one of these soccer ball sized clear, plastic exercise balls that allowed the little varments to run around on the hardwood floors of our house.  Every once in a while, I would get one out, place them in the ball - and let our two cats have a little fun playing hamster ping-pong....

This past Saturday, I couldn't shake a mental vision that the hamster was wearing a Nebraska Cornhusker jersey....

Huskers, I'll always cheer and support you - but that was just absolutely painful.

/jason

I have to tell you that I find the topic of consumer privacy fascinating, and a little entertaining.  After all, I am an entertaining consumer and it just so happens that I work for a technology company.  Surprise for those who missed the memo. 

Well, I seem to get into these conversations with neighbors, family members, grandmas, etc every time some article appears talking about RFID embedded in clothing, some nitwit forgetting to renew their SSL cert <uh, never happend to us, right caz?> for DMV auto registration renewal or heaven forbid - some <gasp> targeted marketing conspiracy from the diaper company who somehow figured out that we have a five month old.  Heck, I didn't even know <just kidding, honey....>  "Well, you work for one of those Internet companies," grandma says, "be careful what you tell them."

So, let me boil it down for you.  Not only do I believe that consumer privacy doesn't exist today - it never has.  Get over it.  Don't believe me, bear with me for some examples.

• My grandma used to live in a small Nebraska town that my sister and I would visit in our younger years for weeks at a time over the summer.  One of our absolute favorite stops was at the Five and Dime store on main street.  We would walk down, open the door and look through all of the toy aisles while the soda jerk / owner, without a word being spoken, would whip up the best chocolate coke you have ever tasted and have it waiting for us at the counter.  My grandma would swing by and pick us up, <didn't have to pay - went on grandpa's tab> and as we walked home past the grocery store, the baker would often rush out with a fresh loaf of bread my family loved.
• My county launched a website about a year ago that lets anyone type in a street address.  Up pops a nice summary of information detailing the currently assessed tax value, the price I paid for the home and even some really cool zoomable aerial pictures. 
  
• Want my address?
  
• I absolutely hate random telemarketer calls.  I absolutely love the do not call list.  Frankly, I prefer to receive (e)mail concerning products and/or services in which I am keenly interested {ie: those diaper coupons were great by the way, thanks}.
• I have an aunt-in-law that absolutely refuses to email photos.  "Who knows who is going to see them..."
  

Ok, so?

• I would absolutely love to sit down with the soda jerk / owner and baker for an interview to find out just how much they have come to know about my Grandma, Grandpa and all their family over the years....  What a wealth of information they must have - what a great business opportunity to really know and understand their client base, deliver known desirable products, distinguish premium customers, uplevel the value of their targeted service. 
• How many people know what kind of home information is a part of public record?  I used to have to spend days at the government office searching through files to find out what my neighbors paid for their house <kidding>  now I can do it from the wireless coffee shop.
• How many people with some type of Internet access still opt to have a stack of phone books gathering dust in the garage?  Waisting valuable resources for an outdated service.
  
• Face it, we are consumers.  We want people to deliver us consumables.  It is desirable for me to only deal with consumables that I am interested in, or are applicable to my situation.  It is cheaper for creators of consumables to target those consumers whom are most likely to purchase, or add value to those who have already purchased. 
  
• My aunt-in-law never blinks an eye to drop off her film at any number of photo labs depending on the coupon she has to an attendant she doesn't know to be developed at some outsourced processing center.
  

So - what is fueling all of the increasing privacy debates?  Certainly not the type of information available.  Come on, say it with me volume, memory and access.  There is this amazingly incorrect sense of anonymity proliferated throughout our society.  Now, I would offer that each and every one of us would be able to sit down and have some opinion and sense of what pieces of data we would like to distribute.  Information is a business.  The more information I distribute, the increased potential of a correctly targeted service.  Today, we choose to interact in public, to walk around wearing certain types of clothing, in certain types of vehicles, at certain times of the day, to certain various places, looking at or purchasing certain types of things, with certain methods of payment, we visit certain websites, we communicate certain interests,...  Everything we do is a bit of this voluminous information that in some way, shape or form is a small piece of who we are.  Yesterday, the capacity to store this information was limited to the oft forgotten brain technology of keen observers.  Today, inevitable technology advances fueled by consumer and creator desire alike are increasingly making this readily available, already public volume of information accessible to those who seek it.

What is missing?  Fight technology with technology....  We have to come to grips with the fact that no-one, no-thing, no-opinion and no-action is anonymous.  The limit to which this information can be collected and acted upon is simply bound by the technology available to track and make use of it.  With this realization, we have to understand that responsibility for protection, classification and distribution of consumer data also falls in the hands of the very beings who create it.  The creation of an identity is absolutely critical to assigning, tracking and providing a platform for authorizing our very own bits of information.  A national identity card is a great start, Scott.  Quite frankly, I would prefer just one - I'd be happy to trade in the 20 or so off the top of my head that we have now {national vehicle privilege card, national tax number card, several national grocery preferred customer cards, national airline mile tracking card, national expense tab card, etc, etc, etc,}  but I guess that is another blog topic....

/jason

This is awesome.  Got a package in the mail today - my mom went through some of the old things in her basement and sent me over our childhood ColecoVison!!  This is just too cool - has all the pieces, the add on Super Action Controllers, all the original owners and game manuals plus Rocky, Donkey Kong, Q-bert, Zaxxon, Cosmic Avenger, Gorf ....  I am chomping at the bit to get this hooked up.

Yeah, yeah I know - I am not a real video game nut, but we do have a Playstation 2 {I love the Hot Shots Golf and Crash Nitro Cart} and some of the Playstation 'museum' games are out there....  But I am getting old, and pretty soon, my boys are going to be old enough to kick my butt in pretty much any of these games as my reflexes and memory for all the darn button combinations goes bye-bye.  So, I figure my only shot at some redemption will be blowing the dust off this baby and leveling the playing field a bit - I better start practicing!

We never got the bolt on computer with our ColecoVision game console though...  what the heck was that thing called {see, that memory thing is popping up already...}  Couldn't convince my dad that we needed it - and our school had just gotten a new Apple IIc ....

Thanks MOM!  I promise that I will get my homework done first!

/jason

There are many advantages to the occasional work from home day.  Certainly in the top 5 is the fact that on a bright, sunshiny day - I can take a  quick break late morning to toss some lump charcoal into my Big Green Egg smoker, toss in some wood chunks, some hunk of meat, shut the lid and go back to work.

Now for me, I have had some serious trial and error to be able to create ribs the way I like them.  They must have a slightly spicy rub, a thick smokey sauce and they have to be falling off the bone, done.  Part of the trick for me after a couple of hours of indirect cooking is to open the Egg, and wrap the ribs in aluminum foil - toss back in and shut the lid once again for the next few hours.

So, today was no different.  Taking a quick break mid-afternoon from my office, I grabbed a soda, the foil and charged out to the patio.  Now the Egg is made up of a couple of fairly heavy pieces of ceramic with a thick metal, spring loaded hinge contraption.  A horizontal metal band surrounds both the top and the bottom pieces of the egg to assist in lifting and holding the Egg 'top' open to access the goodness inside.  Well, I am a relative Egg newbie {thanks to a good friend Ken who has shown me the right path} and I am still very much in the learning stage with this thing.

At any rate, it appears that over time, the metal hinge contraption tends to have some adverse effects to the elements....  Needless to say, after the ribs had been foil wrapped appropriately, as I pushed down the lid, the hinge didn't move quite as smooth as it should have, and off popped one of the metal bands holding the heavy ceramic lid to the base of the Egg.... 

Uh, oh.  Now here I am - about 5 minutes away from a con call, holding a half connected heavy piece of ceramic and metal that has been heated to about 230 degrees....  {Thankfully, I was not cooking steaks - which I cook on the egg at about 700 degrees...}   Now the lid is still sort of connected - but not connected enought to prevent it from crashing to the cement in pieces was I to let go.  The Egg has two vents, one at the bottom and one at the top, that control air flow over the lump charcoal and thus the temperature.  Lump charcoal can burn pretty hot and pretty fast if it has enough air, and it's always easier to get the egg to a high temperature, than it is to keep it at a low temperature.  Of course, here I stand literally watching the lump grow brighter and brighter while holding the lid in its questionable, yet clearly open state....

All that is going through my head at this point is how peeved I'm going to be if I screw up these ribs.

Out of the corner of my eye - I miraculously catch sight of that all too familiar blue and yellow can, just sitting there, source unknown, under my other fantastic and well loved grill.  Now, in reality, either I or some other family member recently grabbed the WD-40 out of the garage for some other purpose and simply forgot to put it back.  But, part of me wants to believe that the 'grilling spirits' were just watching over me today and decided to help me out of a pickle - who's to argue?  I stretched over, grabbed that can, and a short couple of sprays later, the Egg lid was safely back as intended.

Rest assured that I made it to my con call in time...  and yes, the ribs are fantastic - if I do say so myself.

/jason

I have been keeping an eye out for the SunRay Server 3.0 beta release for a couple of months now for several projects that I am working on.  I didn't see this well publicized, so here we are....  The link will take you to the Sun Download Center where a login / free registration will be required as should be familiar to those downloading any other piece of software from Sun {ok <mostly> - and don't ask me why this is not released/marketed under the Software Express program}. 

As you will note from the above link, there are several new key features
    -Linux and Solaris versions
    -Low client - server bandwidth requirements {300kb/s}
       *this enables some interesting things... 
    -Regional Hot Desking

Of course, you need to have access to some Sun thin client devices to play around...  and looks like the link to the docs has not been updated yet.

Now I need to go borrow some hardware....

/jason

Working with quite a few external customers, I am surprised how many sys admins don't know about the Sun System Handbook website.  For those who have been with us for some time may remember those old tree eating dictionary handbooks with all the part numbers, descriptions, pricing, etc, etc.  Welcome to the online version.

Well, this site has been around for over three years and has over 100 fully documented systems.

• All angle color pictures of systems
  
• Full component lists and part numbers
• Links to component diagrams and pricing
• Full specs
• Links to documentation
• Minimum OS requirements, etc

For example, the full component view of our V20z server.

Check it out.  Great reference site.

/jason

What a sad state the airlines are in today. Now I am all for a minimal government, but enough is enough - the feds certainly couldn't do any worse. I will take part of the blame, about 10 years ago I moved my family across country. Now, with two boys added to my household, I have a grandma, aunt and uncle-in-law who dearly miss them. We do our very best to work out time on both sides several times a year, plop down some serious $$ for some airline lottery tickets and see if we are lucky enough to traverse the monumental abyss that appears to be Omaha <--> Charlotte.

Now, one side of the abyss happens to be a hub city, garnering those lucky souls with direct flights to other bustling hub cities and city bragging rights in return for a steep premium for the masses. Of course, our desired route has no direct flights, unless you purchase one of the cheaper tickets for flying into a city close to your destination, say a short two or three hour drive away. Rolling caution to the wind, aunt and uncle-in-law socked over some $$ for the lottery ticket about four months ago. Cashed in some of their sparse vacation time and packed for the trip. Only, they got the dreaded 12 hour advance call... sorry to inform you, your flight has been canceled because of weather predictions, slow sales and bad hair. Unfortunately, all of the surrounding flights are full of other passengers holding lottery tickets, so because we care we have a flight for you that only gets you to your destination 12 hours past your arranged/paid for time {but you have to fly for two hours in the wrong direction to your new connecting hub city}. Yea! That is just great, they will be there early - good thing they have the day off already.

Sadly, the first cancelation was so much fun, that after their first leg, real weather in another, unrelated hub city tossed havoc into the system. Planes with stranded pilots, pilots with stranded planes, stranded passengers {in italics because at this point all you have are potential passengers - passengers in my opinion are actually on a plane in the air going where they paid to go}. Thank goodness they are stranded in a hub, so much more exciting and just think of all the direct flights we could take to anywhere except the city in which we are trying to go. Great weather in the hub city even, can't go anywhere though, because instead we need to sit and watch our flight, sorry potential flight, get delayed 15 minute increments at a time. My guess is we will see them at some point tomorrow, only a day late. Not bad for a lottery.

This is certainly nothing new for frequent business travelers. Part of the process, part of the routine. Company paid for the ticket, delays and overnight extentions in the airport hotels really add up to company time anyway, right? Well, I have issues with the business side impact of this as well, but what really chaps my behind is when all this nonsense happens on individual, personal, family time. The aunt and uncle-in-law will worst case have their hard earned, hard planned long weekend cut by a 1/4 and potentially by a 1/3. Who makes that up? Not the airline - out of their control. Does their workplace grant them back a vacation day for the time spent in the airport? Does the hub city give them a key for the unexpected stay? Of course not. Expected to sit back and take it.We fly alot - this scenerio happens frequently! One out of every 4 flights. Not that much bad weather in the country to go around. Out of control. I'm off to buy a minivan I guess, would have been quicker..../jason

I have been a bit under the weather the last day or so. Came home and went up into my sudo 'home office' {ok, a corner of our junk room that the rest of the family allows me to have ;-) }. My wife went to pick up my oldest boy, now 2 1/2, from daycare and apparently on the way home told him that 'daddy has a head owie'. So, upstairs he marched to come see for himself. Scooped him up and as he sat on my lap he expressed the greatest small child concerned look I have ever seen. Searching for anything that would resemble a child's version of an 'owie', visible scrapes, hole in the head {no comments please ;-) }, etc with his brow tightly compressed. Finally after a few minutes of searching, he reached up with both hands, planted them on each side of my head and pulled in to lay a big SMACK of a kiss on my forehead proclaiming 'daddy owie all gone, come play choo choos.' You know, it worked.... /jason

Anyone who finds themselves near or through Omaha, NE at this time of year should do their very best to stop by and enjoy a game at the College World Series. Great college baseball games, great food and great fans. http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=528&u_xid=365

Let's start with the fact that the Nebraska Cornhuskers are the greatest football team of all time. /jks