Using 'Cisco Math' in billing wireless tiered services.

So I have been a network test engineer a long time. Typically data flows are asymmetrically biased and 'push' data downstream more than uploading content.

Any visit to Vegas in May for Networld Interop (N+I) yields a lesson in 'Cisco Math'. That is counting bi-directional traffic flows in aggregate instead of as expected. So a 1Gbps port is really 2 Gbps because 1 Gbps can go upstream and 1 Gbps can go downstream concurrently. Network element vendors love this method because it looks good on the marketing sheet. A 48 port 1 Gbps switch with four 10 Gbps uplink ports is usually used to move ~40 Gbps between servers in a rack unit. But on the marketing sheet I can say it has 176 Gbps of capacity (88 down and 88 up).

So this same routine is used to market data plans by wireless service providers. It's not lying. But it allows for users to assume 2 GB is just downstream when usually it is aggregate. That way they can use a bigger number and pitch the service in a way that makes it seem cheaper than it could end up being.

Just a reminder to consider caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). I am talking to you who upload videos and auto-upload g+ photos. If you have an unlimited plan, great. If not, then just be aware of what your service provider is offering and at what price...

TCP Option to Denote Packet Mood
For those who have not read my joke...

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5841.txt

In case you were wondering how IP packets get encapsulated over various physical layer media and the overhead associated per packet per technology. I need to add a good section comparing 10G LAN vs. 10G WAN Ethernet encapsulation.

I always associated Halabi as having written THE 'BGP' book (Internet Routing Architectures). And Moy for being the definitive source on 'OSPF' (RFC 2328 & OSPF: Anatomy of an Internet Routing Protocol)

I always wanted to be the "IP Overhead" guy, but I am convinced that maybe that niche focus area is perhaps too niche to support a book. Seriously 'Long Tail'.

Anyway, here is the beginning of a draft of the book I have been considering publishing in some form for 10 years. I keep thinking someone else will write this book, but then nobody does. Everyone just uses google to grab things like "ATM DS3 PLCP Framing" and you get a Cisco White paper.

Or you can get a subject matter expert to aggregate a lot of truisms about IP packet overhead deltas between technology A and technology B. If anyone cares. World is going IP ethernet anyway...

By the way, IP over Token Ring on 1500km HF radio waves @ 9 Kbps has got to be my favorite exotic IP over "fill in the blank exotic wireless thingee" ever...

http://www.tamos.net/~rhay/overhead/ip-packet-overhead.htm

The Story of Chris Mino

Amazing survival tale

USAFA graduate who liked to party. A regular heathen. But something happened in 1984 that changed all that. Mino was a veteran pilot of the RF-4 recon aircraft in West Germany. And he was on a routine flight one day. He climbed to 20,000 feet and inverted the aircraft as was SOP. This is done so that loose articles in the plane left on accident by the crew drift to the top of the canopy and can be collected and secured by the pilot. It is a safety measure.

Well on this day there was a wrench in the plane. But when Mino inverted it did not come to the canopy. Instead it found a crevice to jam itself in within the flight stick control assembly. This rendered the plane uncontrolable. Bad. As the plane started descending, the situation got worst. At 10K feet, he ordered the radar operator to eject and he did. He kept trying to recover control, but his efforts were fruitless. At 5,000 feet, he conceeded defeat and choose to eject. Only that when he pulled the ejection handle, nothing happened.

Chris Mino found God in that moment and he prayed. At 3,000 feet there was still no response from the ejection release. He knew without the shadow of doubt that there was a very real possibility that he was going to die. And he was afraid. He prayed again with conviction. And at 1,000 feet altitude he tried one last time. He pulled the release, and was ejected from the plane. But he was going over 1,000 mph and with the thickness of the atmosphere, his parachute was ripped to shreds as soon as it deployed (conditions exceeded design parameters). The small oxygen tank meant to provide air in high altitude ejections was activated. And he tore through some tree branches, but no trees in his descent, and then impacted in a well plowed field. Mino broke over 90 bones in his body, but survived. And the oxygen kept him alive as he was literally buried by the impact.

And the German farmer who saw the whole thing had time to dig him an airway in time to save him and then call in the paramedics. Amazingly, Mino was fully recovered and back flying within a year. And at least circa 1993 or so he was still briefing rookie fighter pilot trainees at Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, NM, as part of the safety lecture on why the lug half of the crap that goes with the flight gear around.

Cui Bono?

Always ask this question against any content on the Internet, on TV, radio, newspaper, in Congressional hearing, or whatever.

Who benefits?

Everyone is a partisan. There are no neutral 3rd party observers. Everyone has an agenda, and whose is being served by the position being advocated in the content you are consuming?

Sure, the Internet can be filtered per person, and seem like a echo chamber. Only speak with those you agree with. But your biases will only be magnified and the weaknesses in your positions amplified.

Food for thought.

From the "possibly an embellishment of an actually accurate account" department I bring you the story of "Daniel and the Lion's Den" (painting by Reubens now on display in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.)


Reubens painted the Lion's Den painting and traded it with England's Duke of Hamilton for some Venetian Sculptures he coveted. Anyhow, it was displayed in the Duke's estate for some 300 years until 1919. Now the Duke was long since dead by then. WWI was tough on the British Empire and the Hamilton estate was not spared from economic hardship.

So they sold all the art in the manor. An art collector bought the work, but neither he, nor the estate managers knew it was a Reubens. And in the course of human events, the collector died in the 1960's, leaving his entire collection to his grandson and heir. Now the youth was hardly the art lover that his grandfather had been, so he decided to sell the lot of it at auction in London. He had some appraisers look over the collection, and some of them knew the Reubens for what it really was immediately. They did not tell the art collector's grandson what he had however. Instead, they assembled a coalition of British museums to buy it for a mere 100,000 pounds or so. A pittance compared to the millions it was worth.

But one of the appraisers had been a clever American. He approached the owner the day before the auction, and weaved a tale of how he was going to be out of town on business on the day of the auction, but he knew a fellow in Chicago who loved the Lion's Den painting, and he offered 1,000 pounds in cash to buy it right then. Naturally the owner was delighted. Having no idea the value of the painting, he sold it for about the price of a car. The American then immediately exported the painting that night.

As it happens, the Brits actually have laws designed to prevent this exact scenario. They have rules that dictate that any artwork valued over 1,000 pounds must be inspected by the British Museum Authority before it can be exported. The cleverness of the art coup engineered by the American is all the more impressive because he picked exactly the amount that he needed to convince the owner to part with it, but not so much that it trigger the BMA to inspect the export.

So my favorite part of the story is thinking of the British appraisers at the auction the next day who had colluded to low ball the purchase of the Reubens painting. Probably a colorful day to be sure.

What's Next?

So I was reading this post and a few thoughts come to mind:

Jeff Jarvis:
We're not going to have a jobless recovery.
We're going to have a jobless future.
https://plus.google.com/105076678694475690385/posts/3U8yyTKfjUA

There is a popular saying that is often quoted about software developers:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/frustrations/374d/

"Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"

I think this is what is at the heart of fear about what the future holds. The efficiency of modern technologies, cloud services, and machines executing tasks previously performed by people.

The ability for companies to release products that explode with wide spread adoption and scale to the ends of the earth creates economic and political disruption. When your employee count is < 50,000 and you are disrupting business with employee counts > 300,000 then you start having political problems.

Especially when you are disrupting a number of competitors that have large employee counts. That means the congressmen in the districts in which those competitors operate become vocal opponents of your business model. And not just in the U.S. You could potentially be disrupting businesses in far away lands and creating enemies in those places as well.

So in a purist "one man, one vote" democracy (which no country has but as a hypothetical) your employee count of < 50,000 will lose to the rest of the population of the earth. Then your ability to execute is hindered by everything you try to do becoming illegal.

So this creates fear of the future. I look at my own career trek and I see the path I took is mostly barred from being followed by the youth of today or my children.

Some engineering students at Texas A&M asked me after a talk I gave in March how could they become engineers at Google. Well for me the answer was "work at six other companies, develop subject matter expertise, and they they come and recruit you". But also a key component of that career path was the opportunities at the six other companies. Facilitated by timing.

There was a time when there was a much smaller Internet. When every university maintained it's own separate network and server farms. When you could get hands on experience with computer hardware troubleshooting as a student worker and the guts of a TCP/IP stack and setting up routers and networking. With the passing of each year this kind of exposure becomes more and more "under the hood" of easy "automagic" software and hardware solutions. The earlier time with ease of exposure is becoming less and less.

So the transformative movement to "Software as a Service" or "Who runs a better data center, me or [Google/Amazon/Yahoo/Facebook/Microsoft]?" The answer is almost always the large scale mega corporation. But this divorces most people from the real nuts and bolts of the underlying system. The opportunities to get "hands on experience" becomes an exercise of working at higher layers with Application layer user interfaces provided by the companies you are trusting with your information. And these interfaces can change at any time and months or years of effort can be laid waste in a day.

There are economies of scale to outsourcing the management of file servers, backup routines, raid5 arrays, email servers, and any number of other systems that used to be managed company by company but can now be aggregated into mega service providers. But the downside is the ability for individuals to learn how such systems work and how to build them to be robust, flexible, powerful, and fault tolerant is handed over to the service provider. So there are fewer opportunities.

Forces are at work between "brick and mortar" enterprises and ephemeral online businesses. In the movie the Social Network this was summed up by the Sean Parker character when he said "We lost. In court. When was the last time you bought a CD at a Tower Records?"

This shift has massive societal impact. I would compare it to an entire shift in economic structure of society. As when nations shifted from agrarian societies to manufacturing. From manufacturing to post-industrial. From that to a service economy. And now from a service economy to...what? Anybody got a name to a time when the most creative people who create the most exciting things are software developers?

The chinese have a saying "May you live in interesting times". Some call it a curse. But others see opportunities to shape things in a future whose structure is currently being developed.

It's fair to say that the U.S. model of the past 50 years of 4% of the world's population consuming 25% of the world's resources is unsustainable. And what do you call an economy based on whatever comes after the "Service Economy". Or when data centers and machines provide some services better than humans ever could. A future when people travel less but remain connected by digital communication. When people learn to be satisfied with less. And be more efficient themselves.

I work on the production Google network and sometimes I wonder if I am the one calling the shots or am I like another cog in the machine who gets engaged when my role is needed. Am I driving changes to it or is it dictating my daily routine to me? I would like to say the answer is always the former but sometimes it feels a lot like the latter.

So where would resources be best allocated to invest in the wisest development for future creative people to flourish in the world of tomorrow? Universal Broadband? Massive inter-city long haul networking interconnections similar to a digital version of the interstate highway system? Undersea cable plant? Huge public service enterprises with people proofreading computer scans to improve digital quality of transposing analog data inputs? Green energy solutions to increase sustainability of modern life? Who pays for these investments? How do you recover the costs of the massive up front CapEx demanded for any of them?

I do not have the vision to answer the questions (if I did I would buy stock in the winners). I am not a futurist who envisions the dystopian eventuality of morlocks and eloi. Nor do I think that the massive shifts are a panacea for everyone. In any massive shift there are winners and losers.

What's next? I cannot say. I do not even know if there is a name for the system of a flattened earth with super empowered individuals. Where nations become less powerful and individuals become more powerful. When great good and great evil can propagate at the speed of light.

I do know that I like the advice of Bob Barker when he visited Google and gave a talk about how he got his big break in show business that eventually led to his hosting the Price is Right for over 30 years. I am paraphrasing but in essence he said "Do your best. Don't mail it in. And seize your opportunities when they arise."

I may not know what the future holds but I am sure that what you study is as important as the grades you get. 80% of the job opportunities are for the 20% of the graduates that pick the hard road and major in mathematics, physics, genetics, chemistry, engineering, or computer science.

There will be jobs in caring for the elderly as the population pyramid inverts. But there will always be new possibilities in a changing economic dynamic. Threats as well. We are the architects of the future. And our children will have to live in the world that we create. In spite of the negatives, I remain optimistic in the ingenuity of necessity being the mother of invention and new enterprises emerging from the fertile pool of fallow resources disrupted by such shifts.

Good luck to us all...

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am 50, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things--including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown-up.

-- C. S. Lewis

Like what it looks like now...

My offering to trompe l'oeil or 'trick of the eye' examples...

This one is in Washington DC facing away from the direction of the one way street it is adjacent too (so driving you would only see it in th rear view as you passed and it passes a casual inspection.

I think you can only spot it as a pedestrian...

An article on trompe l'oeil from 2009. Now I have to find this pizza place in Los Gatos...

@ Trey Radcliffe talk: Artists and the Internet: Digitally Extending Your Natural Self

Trey Radcliffe quote of the talk (it will be on YouTube under the @Google talks shortly)

Q: Are you a perfectionist when it comes to post processing?
A: Not at all. Far from it. But I like things to be very good. I love post processing. And I am very fast. Like a Korean starcraft player.

On campus @ Stanford

Photo walk

+Brian Rose The photo walk was an amazing experience. Who knew there were actually people named Stanford whose Egyptian themed tomb is on campus?

I also learned:

Trey Radcliffe and Thomas Hawk can only see out of one eye.
Trey's mom makes fudge.
Andy Goldsworthy made a sculpture that looks like a river snake of rubble from the 1906 earthquake called "Stone River"
The documentary "River and Tides" about Andy Goldsworthy was cited by +Trey Ratcliff as one of the best art documentaries he had ever seen (high praise and raises at least my interest in checking it out)
http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Goldsworthys-Rivers-Tides-Goldsworthy/dp/B0002JL9N6

Looking forward to what +Lisa Bettany has to say about the photo walk on TWiT Photo...

We've never been licked...

A 1940's view of Texas A&M frozen in time.

For a clip of the movie (which follows a cadet through the travails of College Station life, graduation, and eventually fighting as a soldier in WWII).

18,000 Aggies served in WWII, 13,000 as officers. More than any other school, including the United States Military Academies.

"Give me an army of West Point graduates, I'll win a battle. Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war!"
- General George S. Patton
(p.s. - could be an urban myth and Patton did go to West Point)

@work

I am working on an informal "Buildings of Google" Album, but I wanted to point out this house. 1024 Alta, Mountain View, CA 94043.

The reason is that this house is surrounded by commercial buildings that mostly are part of the Google Campus. It is on a large plot. So my belief is that the area used to be residential. As commercial developers started buying plots and erecting office buildings, this guy refused to sell.

And so now, I have no idea if the original owner still lives here or if he sold out for the price of one of the islands in the Bahamas. But if it is a Google Employee, they have no commute at all. Literally it is, roll out of bed, walk to your office a block away. You would not even need a car, though clearly they have at least a suburban.

The back story must be great, if anyone knows it I am all ears.

Buildings of Google (a few of them anyway)

Building 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 (android bldg), 45, and 46.

Traditional heart of the GooglePlex

Buildings 40-43 designed & built to be SGI HQ and transferred to Google

When I get discouraged at whether people are 'inherently good' or 'sinful by nature' I watch Matt Harding's homage to the something fundamentally human than spans cultural, racial, political, and language barriers. In his simple video < 5 min there is no "I and the other". There is a connection that says for all our differences, there are basic links that make us all the same. Love it.

Watch "Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)" on YouTube
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

If you like Matt's video of him taking his little jig on the road, you may enjoy the hour long tech talk he gave @Google in a tech talk. I especially enjoyed the bit about cultural festivals in Bhutan and how they composed the song for the video (it is a 58 min commitment however)

Watch "Where the Hell is Matt?" on YouTube
Where the Hell is Matt?

West Texas Cowboy Christmas

Now as a disclaimer this story is not politically correct, so if you are easily offended feel free to skip this post.

So the year was 1993. One of my classmates invited us to spend a week as hands at a 26000 acre cattle ranch outside of Lubbock in Crosbyton TX.

There were numerous misadventures, but the main work involved carrying feed to automated feed stations that dispense food at intervals to the cows. The cows are spread out so there was a good bit of riding around to get to the stations.

Another thing we did at the stations was use grease guns to lubricate the feeder arm that distributes the feed into troughs. Now one of my classmates, John, had a grease gun that resembled an artifact recovered from the Titanic it was so crusted with caked corrossion.
Flakes were falling into the feeder arm joint everytime he used the grease gun. There was no threat that this would contaminate the feed, but there was a threat that the main goal of preventing the feeder arm from jamming mechanically with added lubricant was being subverted.

We tried pointing out that he should consider cleaning the gun and that he could be doing more harm than good, but he was not to be swayed.

Finally, another classmate (I swear it was not me), confronted John.

"John, would you put sand in your wife's KY Jelly?"

Seconds passed. A tumbleweed rolled by.

"Well for one thing, I don't even eat KY Jelly."

So the metaphor was lost ...

God bless his innocence (we were 22 years old at the time)

Watched the Love Bug with my twins...

Google manhole covers. Super useful.

This just blows...

Draw your own conclusions.

http://earth.google.com/outreach -10.210,-63.701

So as an open question that does not mean anything whatsoever I pose the following query. Which one of my desktop knickknacks is the best?

1. A 1940s Navy Telegraph Key (I only have to click it 10 billion times a second to send the same amount of data as a single 10Gbps Ethernet interface - want to see it again?)
2. A NATO Lanyard from the 2005 Combined Endeavor Exercise at Lager Aulenbach in Baumholder, Germany (with pins from Poland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Croatia, Slovakia, South Africa, UK, Sweden, and Norway, among others)
3. A 24" R2-D2 droid
4. A Chinese Foo Dog Lion procured in Beijing (adorned with senior spurs that are currently acting as my profile photo - It also has a female partner on the other side of the desk. The male has a ball under the paw, while the female has a baby lion)
5. The ubiquitous Android figurine
6. The wooden hexahedron puzzle (which a certain developer that shall remain unnamed is bugging me by leaving it disassembled each time he visits my desk)
7. The Go Gopher - a riveting mascot for our "GO" Programming language http://golang.org/

Well?

I will "repost" my query about desktop accessories and add a request that maybe someone else can share their coolest desktop knickknacks

https://plus.google.com/114963335823650717178/posts/U1XvY5ACQPw

So I missed St. Stephens Day (the biggest public holiday in Hungary) that went down on August 20th. But you can be sure the open air baths in Budapest were hopping a few days ago...

http://maps.google.com

47.519,19.082

GoogleStore

No comment on "wand cleaning"

RESHARE:
Awesome story and homage to Steve Jobs

Reshared text:
Icon Ambulance

One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said "Caller ID unknown". I choose to ignore.

After services, as I was walking to my car with my family, I checked my cell phone messages. The message left was from Steve Jobs. "Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss" it said.

Before I even reached my car, I called Steve Jobs back. I was responsible for all mobile applications at Google, and in that role, had regular dealings with Steve. It was one of the perks of the job.

"Hey Steve - this is Vic", I said. "I'm sorry I didn't answer your call earlier. I was in religious services, and the caller ID said unknown, so I didn't pick up".

Steve laughed. He said, "Vic, unless the Caller ID said 'GOD', you should never pick up during services".

I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.

"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.

But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

To one of the greatest leaders I've ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.

-Vic

Okay so a few thoughts on the painting my daughter did of her and I taking a walk yesterday.

1. I wish I were this svelte.
2. I have the big hair in the painting, like was popular in the 80s, when in truth my hair is a bit bushy but not like this.
3. I totally look like a girl
4. On the other hand it was drawn by a six year old girl so that could just be perspective and world view...

So today I would like to salute the USS Miantonomoh for her contribution to America.

This ship had a massive impact on America's role in the world without ever firing a single shot in anger.

The ship was the followup to the more famous USS Monitor which was one of the first 'ironclad' ships that battled to a draw vs. the CSA Merrimack during the Civil War.

She sailed to Europe in 1866 as the most powerful warship on the face of the Earth. It scared the British into paying the USA for damage inflicted by a warship the Brits had built for the CSA. Also the Brits responded by redesigning their own battleships to be ironclad and came out with their "Dreadnought' class warships as a response.

But more importantly she carried Gustavus Vasa Fox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Fox), the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and representative of Secretary of State William Seward, to the Baltic, where he negotiated with Tsar Alexander II for the sale of Alaska for 7.2 million dollars.

Russia had lost the Crimean War recently and was financially struggling so American Cash was welcome as an alternative to a territory they felt they could not defend in a conflict.

And the USS Miantonomoh was a symbol that the USA had 'arrived' as a world power. As Alfred Thayer Mahan would later opine in his book "The Influence of seapower upon history" in 1894 (http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=90QSAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PP1) sea power was where it was at in those days.

The official treaty selling Alaska to the USA (as opposed to Gustavus and Alexander chatting over cocktails) was finalized on March 30, 1867. Feel free to read the original document online at the National Archives in English and French (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=015/llsl015.db&recNum=572). No Russian. Facinating.

Anyway, a bit obscure, but significant nonetheless. So I salute the USS Miantonomoh for her impacting and historic victory lap. And for giving us glacier bay.

Figured I would use an actual picture of myself for a change

So technically the building is catty corner to Huff street (which becomes Google Drive when it hits the Googleplex)

So this sign is about 3 blocks away, but I am using it in my check in anyway.

RESHARE:
Gotta love NY

Reshared text:
Brilliant.

via @theNYCmonster

#foodporn

FOUNDRY
Petaluma Chicken Thighs with Herb Vinaigrette  
Chicken Thighs, Garden Herbs, Garlic, Olive Oil, Golden Balsamic Vinegar
Cooking Method: Roast

White Bean Casoulet   
Cannellini Bean, Diced Tomato, All Natural, Red Bell Pepper, Spanish Onion, Jacob's Farm Baby Fennel, Pasilla Chili, Garlic Confit, Lemon Juice, Thyme, Sage, Parsley, Kosher Salt, Cracked Black Pepper

**Wok'd Vegetable Medley
Blue Lake Beans, Toybox Squash, Broccoli, Nantes Carrots, Romano Beans, Red Cabbage, Onion, Garlic, Shallot, Olive Oil, Kosher Salt, Cracked Black Pepper

**Herb Roasted Potato
Baby Red Potato, Yukon Gold Potato, Olive Oil, Kosher Salt, Green Onion

This was the cover image for Texas Monthly in February of 1993.

Its a metaphor for world view...

Interesting discussion on the dynamics of tcp slow start

Ben Strong's Blog: Google and Microsoft Cheat on Slow-Start. Should You?
http://blog.benstrong.com/2010/11/google-and-microsoft-cheat-on-slow.html?m=1

Daughter's are getting artistic again (I was going to say artsy but I felt artistic was more respectful)

Which ceramic should my daughter's paint for the petraglyph ceramic lounge birthday party?

8/27/11

So they ended up picking the Unicorn rider and dolphin to paint...

Would I take my kids to a pizza place with a playground so they can expend energy so they actually go to sleep, get some rest, ans are ready to go when we go to the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk tomorrow (checkin forthcoming)

August 28, 2011

Some shots @ the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

Now I work for Google, but I have ZERO knowledge of the G+ roadmap. The translate integration seems like a no brainer though. Imagine a friend in Mumbai reading and writing in Hindi with someone in South Carolina who is reading and writing in English.

It would not be perfect, but at least it would offer the potential to break down some barriers instead of everyone building silos of friends who all have the same interests and similar experiences. That sort of social media seems like parroting and not much different than posting to an echo chamber. Some people love that, but it would be nice for those who want to reach out beyond that to have a feature like that.

I think anyway.

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/08/heres_how_googl_1.php

A milli-helen is the amount of beauty it takes to launch 1 ship.

Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice...

Downtown San Francisco

So I was concerned when I saw the "Parking Compliance" Prius driving down the Cul-du-dac I had parked on to drop off my daughter at school.

I kept thinking 'Was there a no parking sign I did not see?', 'Is there a requirement for residency permit to park on that street?', and 'Will there be $100 ticket waiting on my windshield when I return?'

But no. He parked in front of me (I left plenty of room) so he could go write tickets for other people parked illegally elsewhere.

Still kind of like the tow truck vultures, but California is out of money so what do you expect?

Whew...

I always loved this animation

Watch "Warriors of The .Net" on YouTube
Warriors of The .Net

Adding to my "Buildings of Google" series, I bring you the Crittendon Campus. This campus has the cluster of buildings 1200, 1300, 1400, and 1500.

The majority of our account reps, ad reps, marketing, and public relations work and operate in these buildings (i.e. the beautiful people). They also have some of the best cafes.

These photos are not of the people but the buildings they come work in daily.

They used to have a fake duck in the pond in the concourse but they took it out. It added character. Some people thought it was silly, but I miss the duck.

http://maps.google.com/ 37.426401, -122.071525

A Google Maps view of the same buildings as a group.

http://maps.google.com 37.426401, -122.071525

I checked and this is 1.3 miles from my building

Electric Vehicle free charging stations

So I was able to successfully donate the netcom systems et-100 to the computer history museum.

It represents the first commercial Ethernet packet generator / analyzer device. I gave a talk on the history of packet generators at Stanford for a network seminar on June 2.

http://netseminar.stanford.edu/

I have a whole paper on IP packet Overhead @ http://www.tamos.net/~rhay/overhead/ip-packet-overhead.htm

Of course this stuff is precisely the reason why I have to constantly fight to control the number of people who are dying to circle me. Me and +Robert Scoble are like this. Except not.

Anyway, my original plan was
1. procure one of the first packet generator devices circa 1992 on ebay (it still works even)
2. Use it as a visual aid for the Stanford talk (sort of "living history" if you will)
3. Donate the device (which is practically instantly garage sale material at the house)

check, check, check ...

Cow eating a pumpkin at Arata Farm Pumpkin Patch just south of Half Moon Bay

Attractions include Giant King Kong Statue, Hay Bale Amphitheatre, Maze of the Minotaur, Haunted House, Petting Zoo, Pony Rides, kids playground, and, of course, pumpkins. Opens in October...

http://www.aratapumpkinfarm.com/

Cow eating Pumpkin

So if you are going to wipe out your Nexus One, why not drop it in the street and have cars run over it?

Taken to the tech stop after since it held the OTP crypto access software, the tech looked at it and said, "That will buff right out"

My Nexus One has also been destroyed, but my wife picked the more elegant "drop it in the pool" option. She did get some photos of my kids before the big kerplunk. I only regret she wasn't shooting video when she dropped it so we could watch the phone fall in the water and die...

That is not because I disliked this phone. Quite the contrary. At the least the GPS receiver was always spot on. Rather if you have to die anyway, at least have the decency to film your demise so I can post the youtube video...

This is so not my car. I have a beater Lexus (yes there is such a thing)

"I simply cannot tell which one of my multiple smart phones, tablets or computers just went 'ding'."

Seriously?

Coming to the tower now

Cal

Cal

Cal

Cal

I am actually at building 2081 on Sterling Court but that was not a check in known location. But here is a pic of the fountain in front.

RESHARE:
Amazing use of Black and White

Reshared text:

Cal

Cal

Cal

It is amazing where you can go when you are with the police...

Blissdance.com

Lunchtime

Carousel

I was musing about the artistic expression embodied in tromp de l'oeil works.

This is a work by John Pugh in Los Gatos, CA that is about 8 minutes from my house at 40 E Main St. I included a shot I took yesterday so you can compare it to a digital photo of the work in all its glory.

It is entitled Siete punto uno (7.1) and was inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Here is an article from 2006 documenting how Pugh is sad that his work is fading and the sealant he used was failing after only six years.

http://mytown.mercurynews.com/archives/lgwt/20060208/lg-at1.shtml

Now I would like to mark two points here. For all the negatives of digital photography, it has the power to preserve his work for as long as we have computers and hard drives and power (which may not be forever, but hopefully for the foreseeable future)

Also I would encourage him that his work is amazing and think of the monks who build a sand mandala placing sometimes more than a million individual grains of sand for a week and then destroy it as a symbol of the transience of beauty. It is a metaphor for "It's the journey, not the destination, that is often the true adventure."

Also chalk art is very transient. But all these art forms, however transient, can live on through photographs. And that is encouraging.

Overlook from splash garden

Fixin to cut out

Solar panels
Bloom energy fuel cells
Diesel backup generator
And of course grid power from PG&E

And that's 101 behind us...

mtv-44

A visual graphic artist at the California Acamdy of Sciences.

http://www.jenniferhennesy.com/

Googe Plus Searching Tip.

Ever tried to bring back up a great post from a couple months ago from someone who posts every day multiple times? I tried today and finally gave up on hitting the "More" link over a dozen times and only going back 10 days or so when the post I was seeking was from July 24.

In this case it was a post by Thomas Hawk of the street car in San Francisco shot he took from the rail entitled "I walk the line"
https://plus.google.com/104987932455782713675/posts/Rr6GkWreaim

So I figured out a way to use Google search to find the post. At first I tried "Thomas Hawk streetcar" and variants of that. If I had remembered the title and searched for "Thomas Hawk I walk the line" it pops up as the 4th result on the first page. But I did not remember the title.

So I found it another way. I typed in "site:plus.google.com Thomas Hawk"

Then I adjusted the timeline to reflect 7/17/2011 to 7/31/2011 and "I Walk the Line" was result #1.

Now this will not be a panacea and search will improve, but for now it helped me find the post I was looking for. And it beats hitting "More" A LOT.

Ok so I know this means bathrooms are this way, but...

Today I would like to give a shout out to Xerox PARC for its contributions to the Internet and computing in general.

Many technologies that are central to modern computing activities were pioneered at PARC. GUI, laser printing, ethernet. All invented in these buildings in Palo Alto.

As a specific example I would like to point to the visit of Bob Metcalfe to the Computer History Museum on Ethernet (he invented Ethernet)
Bob Metcalfe - Internet Pioneer / Entrepreneur

Particularly amusing is the 1970s era Xerox commercial for the Xerox Wire (Xerox's name for Ethernet before they decided to open the spec and share the technology with DEC and IBM) - at 5:30 into the video.

They all decided to release the specs to avoid antitrust collusion claims. But IBM and DEC were damned if it would be called Xerox Wire. Ethernet was a pet name they had at PARC that was adopted as the "official" name for the shared spec. Metcalfe also founded 3com so he did fine.

He also brought out an important point about "what is ethernet"? (@ 21 minutes into the video)
- Is it the CSMA/CD on Coaxial based solution he developed at PARC to allow Alto workstations to communicate with PDP11 mainframes?
- Is it specifications embodied in IEEE documents labelled as 802.3?
- Is it a packet format that trancends physical media that everyone agrees to support when they develop a faster networking technology?
- A business model that is a de jour standard?

He points out on May 22, 1973 he called it Ethernet in his notebook.

Xerox PARC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)

http://maps.google.com/ 37.405167,-122.149574

If you are in networking then you almost certainly work with Ethernet. And this talk speaks to the history of PARC and Ethernet.

So to the pioneers of the 1970s, giants upon whose shoulders we now stand, I salute you.

GoogleTaipei

GoogleTaipei

The good old deutsche mark
Currency from last millennium

So I was supposed to do my Network Seminar at Stanford in May, but they bumped me to June 2 for Van Jacobson.

So I emailed them and pushed back. You bumped me for van Jacobson. The infamous Richard Hay? I did not send that email because the truth, of course, is that I am honored to even be on the same speaker list as Van Jacobson.

http://netseminar.stanford.edu/

Anyway he did come to Google in 2006 and gave a great talk on packet networking that is at the heart of the Internet. He details a great "history of the internet" overview and the reason that 99.999% uptime switches are no longer required with the new model (though they were critical for dedicated circuit telephony networks)

It is a great talk for anyone interested in network engineering.

A New Way to look at Networking

RESHARE:
This is just cool

Reshared text:
It's like a crop circle made of people.

The Shoreline Amphitheatre at the bottom of San Francisco Bay (Google is about a km west of the venue)

Authors@Google from May, 2009

Bob Barker. He is very charming and says some interesting things about his big breaks in life and promoting his memoir "Priceless Memories". Worth Watching.

Also as a general tip you can visit:
http://www.youtube.com/atgoogletalks

To find many celebrities, authors, and computers scientists who have made their way to the GooglePlex to see some of the people that "make it happen", pitch for an NGO, or just come as a technophile or sheer curiosity.

Authors@Google: Bob Barker

6.4 magnitude earthquake hits Vancouver

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/09/bc-earthquake-vancouver-island.html

RESHARE:
Cute. And it makes light of the fact that we won't even bother with dotted decimal translation with IPv6 (pure hex baby)

Reshared text:
In most cases IPv6 prefixes are allocated as a /56, allowing the organization to control the lower 8 bits. Sadly, many people are using 0:0:: or the tired old c0ed:babe::. This is our chance people! Its a brave new world, with huge swaths of IP address space available, and we should make the most of it.
a110:c8ed I allocated an address, just for you.
defa:ced I hate web designers.
bad:deed Thank you for visiting my site. Really.
be:fa11 As in "what has befallen yon dead server?"
d00:bee Network debugging probably qualifies as "medicinal purposes."
5ca1:ab1e Ignore what you see elsewhere, the secret to scalability is in using clever IP addresses.
ca:b0b yummy
fa1:afe1 even more yummy!
b1ab:bed We might need to tighten up our HTML a bit.
bab:b1e We might need to recompress our images a bit.
ba:b00 My sweet baboo!
10ad:ed I bet it has an itchy trigger finger, too.
ba:11ad The entire site is set in iambic pentameter.
acc0:1ade Network admins rarely, if ever, hear praise of their work.
aff:ab1e An address for a social networking site if ever I heard one.
ba:ff1e I'm confused too.
5caf:f01d This load balancing tier was intended to be temporary. That was four years ago. Such is the way of things.
(Originally published at http://codingrelic.geekhold.com/2011/04/ipv6-addresses-for-fun-and-profit.html)

CMS Museum