I re-learned another lesson this evening. However, before I describe
it, I must provide some background information regarding the issue.
Also, some of my audience may not be interested in a seemingly
non-computer related story, but I will associate it into
computer-related thoughts by the end of it.

About 4 months ago my wife, my kids and I moved into a single family
dwelling for the first time in my married life of 5 years. We live in
the bay area, so this is no small feat given that my wife is a brave
stay-at-home mother of 2 little boys and a bigger, (and questionably)
grown-up boy. Regardless, we came into the house knowing only a little
bit about caring for a house, especially a 45 year-old house. The
previous tenant was aging and did not have the stamina to do some of
the larger maintenance tasks like patch walls that cracked from 15 or
20 years of clay soil ground movement, or replace aging kitchen
cabinets, or any number of other, smaller tasks.

Now, my father (thankfully) knows quite a bit about painting and
woodworking. He also knows a good hardware store that has intelligent
and knowledgeable people employed there. So, I was able to get all of
the major cracks in the wall patched up (until the next ones come along
in a couple of years ). I was also able to get the walls repainted.
I even installed a ceiling fan. With the help of my father, my wife, my
brother-in-law and my brothers, we even tore out most of the kitchen
and updated it with new cabinets and appliances. I installed a garbage
disposal, all by myself. I thought that was the coolest thing about all
of it.

Hold on… Hold on… I know, I’m being a bit long-winded, but I’m
getting to my point. About 3 weeks ago, my wife came to me during the
middle of the day and said “Honey, the garbage disposal is making funny
noises and isn’t draining normally.” Uh-oh… I went in and checked it
out. It was whirring, but you could tell the blades weren’t spinning.
This being the first time I actually had to troubleshoot a garbage
disposal, guess what I didn’t do… Well, I didn’t stop and find the
instructions. Nor did I call anybody to ask what to do. Instead, I
naively said to myself, “I’ll just turn it off and on a couple of times
to try and get whatever is lodged in there unstuck.” Right… I see you
nodding and laughing to yourselves… You know what happens. It just
stops making any noises or showing any signs of operation at all.

Over the next few days, I talked with some of my family members and
came to the conclusion that I had likely burnt out the motor and that I
should call the manufacturer for warranty repair. I got as far as
getting the serial number off of the disposal and getting the number to
call off of their website. Then I got busy. Then, I procrastinated.
That’s life… The next few days were spent thinking to myself (and
having my wife gently prod me occasionally by saying) “when are you
going to get that disposal fixed?”

This evening, I finally decided I would give troubleshooting another
try as my brother had mentioned twisting the motor manually by means of
an alan wrench (sp?). I did that, and it moved. Slowly at first, then
smoothly. It still did not turn on, however, so I was still a little
frustrated. Then, something stuck out at me as I looked at the bottom
of the disposal… There was a little red button sticking ever so
innocently out of the bottom of the device. “What’s a little red button
doing on the bottom of this stupid thing?” I said to myself… “I
wonder what would happen if I pushed the little red button… Maybe
it’s a reset button… No, that would be too easy…” I actually walked
away to go look up the manual online again to see if it referenced the
little button. But then, I decided I was too lazy and that I was just
going to give it a try.

Well, the little red button did exactly what I thought would have been
“too easy.” Once I pushed it in, I found out it was a little circuit
breaker built into the device. It had been tripped during the original
problems, and that is why the device had completely stopped working.
When I turned the disposal back on after reseting that button, there
was something inside that I could tell was probably a little more
“chunky” than should have been there. After a couple of seconds,
however, it was sufficiently ground up to continue on its way down the
drain pipe and all was back to normal.

So, what does this have to do with computers? Well, I suppose it just
has to do with life experience and the fact that each of us has
different levels of experience in any given area of our lives. Life
works best when people share (and receive) freely of experience and
wisdom from those that have been through it before.

In this case, I assumed that the motor had “burnt out” because I had
never seen a garbage disposal system act up before. Nor had I seen one
with a burnt out motor. Nor had I even bothered to check out all of the
little switches and gadgetry that the garbage disposal offered (I know,
I know… What kind of a techie am I…). So it wasn’t until I decided
to give it a real troubleshooting effort and talk to other people that
had experience in the matters of garbage disposal troubleshooting that
I actually made any progress. I also now recall many similar situations
in my technical career where I would have fixed a problem and gained
experience and knowledge a whole lot faster if I had relied on the help
of other, more knowledgeable experts.

There comes a time in one’s life and career that they have to step back
and say to themselves: “What am I doing and why?” For me, it seems that
this time has finally come. This is not to say that I don’t like what
it is that I do everyday, or that I don’t like where I’m going, but it
is more a matter of maturity and looking forward to how to best match
your own interests with those of your employer, your family and your
friends. Of course, I can hardly consider this my “mid-life” as I am
only in my late 20’s. So this is more of a “growing-up” personal
evaluation. Anyway, on to my thoughts.
I hear countless stories of people that say: “I hate my job”, “My
employer sucks”, and “Why anybody would want to choose this as a career
is beyond me” speaking of many different fields and many different
employers. Most times, it is not a matter of pay scale or anything like
that. Sometimes, it is a matter of people finding themselves in
situations where they don’t get the respect they feel they deserve.
Usually, though, I feel that it is more than likely that the person
found a job to start paying the bills, and did not truly and honestly
evaluate what field of work would provide the fundamentals of a happy
and successful career: 1) You must enjoy your work at some level, and
2) You must truly be good at what you do.
Now, before anybody goes flaming me and saying that it’s more important
to be employed and unhappy than unemployed and blissful, that’s not my
point. Too many people take their first job and make a career out of it
simply because they don’t care enough to get out of their comfort zone
and make their career what they truly want. This goes partly along with
one of my religion’s principles about workout out our own happiness.
This doesn’t mean something that will make you instantly happy, or
necessarily make you a lot of money. This means finding something that
you love to do, and do well, and making some kind of a living doing it.
Turning this back to myself, one might look at my career path and say
that I’ve jumped around too much, or that I haven’t really become
comfortable with my career yet. Partially, they’re right. Mostly,
however, and in the IT field especially, it can be a very enlightening
experience to work in many different environments, such as contractors
do. Many of my positions were as such and are explained so on my
resume, so I am not particularly worried about my past. One of the best
things I have seen out of my breadth of experience however, is a wide
variety of corporate environments and strategies. I have seen that
things can be done in many ways, both successfully and otherwise. I
have also seen that many diverse people can learn to work together
peacefully. I have also learned that even the people that would be
considered to be able to work best with each other can decide to work
against each other if not guided in the right directions.
Mostly, however, I am writing this remind people to step back from
their daily routines and look around them. Take stock in what you are
doing and why. A little bit of meditation and clear thinking can do
wonders for both morale and focus. It also helps you to re-evaluate
your priorities, ultimately deciding whether you are truly happy with
yourself in the larger view or not. I find lately, that I am truly
happy with what I have become and where I am going. So I am thankful to
those that have helped me as well as those that continue to do so. I am
truly one who enjoys my career in IT, something in which I don’t know
if it is all that common.

… then a detailed view of how that picture looked yesterday (and
why) is worth at least ten-thousand.
Sometimes I wonder how companies manage to get along with the constant
change in both technology and expertise that occurs in business these
days. With technology changing so rapidly, and customers demanding more
and more from their suppliers every day, the only constant in business
is constant change. Change is, generally, a good thing. It is even
better when managed appropriately with proper controls and planning.
Having seen both sides of the scale on proper management of change, I
can say that I believe appropriately applied technology itself is a
necessity in managing all but the most simple environments. Even in the
simple ones, technology could often be used to streamline the
environment, but nobody usually cares because the capacity of the
environments is so large when compared to their usage, that the
inefficiencies don’t actually hamper business processes. It is,
however, a dangerous venture to grow your environment without proper
management in place, no matter what the size or function.
It is for these reasons that organizations such as ITIL and CBIT exist,
and that legislation such as HIPPA, GLBA, SOX and others exist. These
organizations and laws exist to ensure that information, and the
environments that manage it, are controlled appropriately and various
types of risk are mitigated to the extent reasonable and possible.
Though many question the validity of such legislation stating that the
free market can and should be solely responsible for managing these
risks, I would state that prior to the enactment of these legal
measures, too often it was looked at as too expensive to care about
such risk mitigation practices. Even now, many organizations only
follow most of these procedures to the letter of the law, and not the
spirit of them, and do so only to satisfy the requirements of legal
authorities.
However, those organizations and individuals who take the time and
resources to follow the spirit of these laws and standards bodies
generally come to a realization that these rules and regulations are
meant to improve the overall quality of business and ensure a
continuing success in managing the various risks of doing business.
These organizations then use the functions provided by satisfying these
legal requirements to measurably improve business practices and cut
operational inefficiencies. These organizations quickly realize the
benefits of applying accurate business indicators and interpretations
of those indicators.
Now that I’ve written an essay, I will go on to my point. As a systems
engineer of almost 10 years now, I can’t count the number of times that
I have said “What JUST changed?” “What is different now that project X
is NOT working than when it WAS?” and “Who did WHAT and WHY?”
Sometimes, the blame falls straight on my shoulders. Other times, I
never can quite figure out what changed, due to complexity of
environments and the many concurrent projects that tend to run
concurrently in some networks. These questions are the very questions
that proper controls and indicators supply the answers to in a deeply
meaningful way.
Since it’s late, I will continue these thoughts in another entry…
Feel free to comment on any topics you might like covered…

I’ve never liked the big telecommunications companies. I mean, they DID
help pay my father’s paychecks for years, but I still have always come
off as offended whenever I deal with them.
For example, consider AT&T’s latest round of advertising spots. I
like the one about the Yellow Pages the best… They talk about how
good the SBC Yellow Pages were. Then they talk about this “other” book,
but that it’s not the same as the SBC Yellow Pages. But get this, they
finish it off by saying, we’re working on the new AT&T Yellow
Pages, but for now… just wait. The punch line: “Anticipation
delivered” What in the world is that? I mean, you’re telling me that I
should be happy to be waiting longer than expected for a product that,
for years, has come out like clockwork? I mean, why on Earth would you
ADVERTISE that you’re big and slow?
I don’t know, I guess there are probably some reasons, but it just
doesn’t make me warm and fuzzy.
The other one of theirs that I just don’t identify with is their
billboard stating: “Your World Delivered”, only it doesn’t say the
“World” part, it replaces the “O” in YOUR with a picture of the Earth.
Every time I see it it screams to me: “Your ___ delivered”… Your what
delivered? Your NOTHING delivered… okay, that speaks to me. You’re
going to give me NOTHING of value… haha… okay, I’ll take my
business to somebody who cares…
Maybe my IQ is just higher than their target audience. Maybe it’s cause
I have a brother who does marketing and advertising for a living. Maybe
I’m just biased against huge companies that just doing seem to care
about anything but making a stupid profit.
Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox now. Still, the ad’s just don’t seem
right.

So I was sitting there watching “Nacho Libre” and I was noticing quite
a resemblence between Jack Black and my older brother who was sitting
three seats down. Near the end of the movie there was a shot of some
ancient ruins near the village and a curious thought entered my head:
We are truly standing on the shoulders of giants in just about every
way possible. Don’t roll your eyes at me, I know this topic is
overdiscussed, but I just wanted to pay some respect to the countless
people involved in creating not only the technical landscape I now find
myself, but the religious and social landscapes as well.
Sometimes we forget all of the intelligence, the inginuity and, most
importantly, the effort that has prepared the world around us for what
we have today. We should all stop every now and then and remember what
got us to the point we are. It is only in analyzing both the good and
the not-so-good of where we’ve been, that we can then use a little
inginuity of our own to advance into the future, and not just repeat
our past mistakes.

The beauty of the information age and of entrepreneurialism is that, if
you can’t find something that suits your needs and you can find
somebody to fund the project, build it yourself; you could even make
some money at it if it has enough general demand.
One of the things that I am finding difficult to find a good solution
for is an affordable and powerful configuration management package.
Now, I know that what I feel is affordable and what others may say is
affordable is something that could be debated back and forth. However,
my view is in the small business view where every dollar matters, so
you must keep this in mind when reading my entries. Of course, you must
also consider that every man-hour counts that much more to the overall
business as well, so each employee must be that much more careful about
their productivity.
Anyway, in my experience, I have only been exposed to one or two
systems that I would consider to fit my needs for wikipedia!”change
control”. Even these, however, only applied to parts of what I now view
as an entire data center change control system. The first application
that fit was a custom Lotus Notes database used to provide peer review
and change tracking. However, as far as I know, it didn’t have a direct
tie to an automated change tracking system to detect when the actual
configurations changed. The second application is Tripwire ™, which monitors various system files and parameters for changes and logs the differences. Another is NetPro
but I couldn’t seem to find any pricing structure AND it looks like
it’s only Windows based.
Now, I could probably implement Tripwire and it would do most of what I
wanted. However, and this may be a sign that I am too inventive for my
own good, the fact that the open source version has stagnated for years
now, and the “for purchase” version seems to be the only one I can find
that will even give me a price estimate. This just screams the need for
some competition. Who’s to say that I’m not the one that should give it
to them. I just need to get my design together and not try to design
the super, all-inclusive network management application that I’ve been
dreaming of for a few years now. I’ll just design each of the pieces
where needed and then put them all together

You know the saying “That guy can’t see the forest for the trees…”?
Well, I’ve got a related one that says “There’s too many trees in the
way for me to plant the forest!”
Okay, now that I’m done with that little outburst, I’ll go on to
explain. Sometimes, at least in technology positions, but I’m sure it
applies elsewhere, you get so busy fixing today’s problems that, even
if you’ve planned for tomorrow’s, you never quite got around to
avoiding them in the first place. Technology-wise, I can see this
applying in many small businesses that just don’t have the manpower in
many cases to implement the larger, more organized projects that will
keep the small, but pestering problems under control.
So how do you design for tomorrow whilst repairing today? It’s a
careful balancing act of putting up with smaller problems until you can
solve them with your longer-term project. However, you need to be
careful not to “put up” with too many of the smaller ones and have your
current architecture become neglected. Artful design combined with
careful project management and constructive “load sharing” can, in many
cases, keep this delicate balancing act in place and allow you to
achieve success.
Well, back to walking the tight rope while balancing multiple spinning
plates above my head… At least, I think they’re still spinning…

I think I have just rediscovered my “Madsen’s Rules of
Troubleshooting”… Every once in a while you should go back to your
basics and remember the first principles you learned in your career.
Anyway, the following are my basic troubleshooting tactics that I use
to efficiently determine solutions to the problems I face with
technology.
Rule #1: Check the cables… I would put a conservative estimate at
roughly 50% of the problems I face are related to some cable being
loose or disconnected.
Rule #2: Analyze what just changed… After rule #1, usually problems
are caused by a change in the environment.
Rule #3: Know your resources… Have a couple of good online
communities and a couple of good personal gurus you can go to in times
of need. Why spend 4 hours researching a problem if it’s likely that
one of your resources has the answer and can explain it to you in 5
minutes?
Rule #4: Let your troubleshooting brain rest every now and then… I
can’t count the number of times where I have spent 2 to 4 hours
troubleshooting some problem, only to get up and switch my brain focus
and have the answer come to me 5 minutes later.
I probably have more, but these are the ones that bring me back to my
core efficiencies. Please feel to suggest your own and we’ll come up
with a good set of “Network Goalie Rules of Troubleshooting.”

Well, since I’m on a Java kick as of late, I thought I’d try out one of
the more popular blogger’s running in Java. I have it online using Java
5 running on JBoss 4.0.4, but don’t get me started on whether or not
that’s an appropriate choice. I’ll go into more details in the future,
but let’s just say that I’m tired of trying application server after
application server only to find various major quirks in each of them.
They’re probably just related to my relative lack of experience in the
field of Java application servers, so I’m starting with one of the more
popular open source ones in JBoss’s Application Server.
As a network engineer and systems architect of close to 10 years, I
have recently realized that my job is much like that of a goalie on a
soccer or water polo team. I basically keep the network safe from being
scored on. Things like network failures, system outages,
misconfigurations and security breaches all are similar to the opposing
team scoring points against my employer (and my reputation ). So, I
decided to coin myself a new term (to my knowledge), a “Network
Goalie”. Who knows if it’ll really take off, but I think its cool, so
I’m going to use it.
Anyway, I’ll be posting reviews of projects here, usually open source
as that is my preference. Hopefully, in sharing my experiences with my
peers and exposing them to criticism and review, it will benefit the
entire community of network goalies like myself. There are many great
communities, but there are also many projects, both proprietary and
open source, that could benefit from a little bit more broad of a
vision.