29 Aug 2007
My company is at the beginning of a what will end up being a fairly long, exhaustive migration process. Probably on the order of 12-16 months, migrating web sites from a set of servers on one side of the country to a set of servers on the other side. It's not your typical forklift migration (where you actually move the servers and plug them in at their new home); instead, it's literally moving files, mail, DNS, etc. to a new platform.
It's pretty daunting, pretty complicated, and can occasionally be pretty cool.
On the flip side, it's now 2:55AM Eastern in Boston (where I started my day), but I'm in Phoenix where it's actually only 11:55PM. That's a sign that maybe things didn't go quite as smoothly as one would have hoped.
The step we're on is a step where we take over DNS for folks. It's always somewhat difficult, because we'll get a big list of domains and have to figure out whose record (our nameserver's or the other nameserver's) is the "real" record. It's not generally too tough to figure it out (you can judge by the SOA of the records) and the number of domains is usually short of 100k, so as long as you're accurate to within 1-2%, it's not too bad. That's 1000 guys who might break, which is pretty easy to handle with a good support team and some quick script fixes.
Let me take a step back. The process is actually that our nameservers need to become the authoritative nameservers for the domains we're moving. This allows us to later change their DNS to point to their new home, and it all kinda works. We have to get the domains, merge them into our nameservers, become authoritative, and then fix what breaks.
We did that yesterday. Except it wasn't 100k domains. It was 1.2 million. And the domains weren't coming from a single, well-maintained nameserver. They domains came from three, somewhat munged together nameservers. There were internal conflicts, conflicts with our servers, missing zones. A host of issues. We thought we'd worked most of them out and gotten the problems down to, at most, 4-5k domains. That's a lot, but in reality, it's less than 0.5% of the total domains.
"Pretty good," you say.
"Not quite," I say.
For you see, there weren't just three nameservers. There were five. So there's a couple thousand domains we missed. And we also missed some of the conflicts (either by omission or by grabbing the wrong data). In the end, it was closer to 12k domains that were wonky.
That's still only 1%. Damn good, given all of the variables.
Except 12000 broken domains leads to a whole lot of phone calls and emails. And some angry customers. And some tired folks staying up to fix things that they weren't responsible for breaking. And one tired folk--me--staying up because he feels guilty for only being 99% good enough.
DNS is a fickle beast. Thankfully, it's pretty quickly fixable. Once we'd identified some global problems, we could fix them rapidly and put big chunks of the broken domains back in working order.
I often argue with people who think the "Chinese Market" is a valid business plan. You know, the folks who say "hey, if we can just get our product in front of 100 million people, and get 1% of those people to buy, we'll be rich!" Except, of course, it doesn't really work that way. It's hard to get a product in front of that many people who would be interested in buying, and it's hard to get 1% of any audience to buy anything.
Well, not in business plans, at least. It does work that way in technical issues. If you've got a huge enough base of users, the smallest mistakes can have a big impact on your company and team. In these cases, sometimes being 99% accurate isn't good enough.
Here's a graphical representation:
You see, with 100k domains, you never quite reach screwed. It's manageable.
With 1.2 million domains, you're pretty much totally screwed.
17 Jul 2007
For a while now, I've been looking for a good way to sync the calendar on my Macbook to Google Calendar to my Outlook at work. It'd be nice to be able to know what my next day at work looks like in Outlook, then to have my Calendar sync'd down to my laptop so that I can see and adjust things while offline, then sync it all back to the master calendar in Google Calendar.
It shouldn't be that tough, but so far, it has proven elusive. I've tried some of the free tools that are around to sync iCal with Google Calendar and Outlook with Google Calendar, but they've all proved a bit wonky.
Finally, Scoble mentioned that Plaxo had it's new beta that would do all of the syncing through a nifty web application. So, I headed over to Plaxo.com and tried it out. It seems pretty straight-forward. You add "sync points", which are places that Plaxo will sync your data to. I added Google Calendar, my Mac, and my work Outlook. The latter two required the installation of some software. Nothing too difficult. A couple of config tweaks later and I saw my work calendar in my Google Calendar and sync'd down to my Mac.
Perfect!
Except, over the following few days, I would constantly get duplicate calendars, lose the original calendar, get duplicate entries, continually have to tell Outlook which calendars I really wanted, which it would ignore and keep syncing other ones.
It became a royal mess.
So, I decided to uninstall things, get back to square one, and at least retain my Google Calendar the way it was. Except Plaxo ate my two calendars (because they no longer existed in Outlook ... lesson: kill your sync points before killing your calendars). That kinda pissed me off. Thankfully, my Mac still had my calendar, so I was able to dump the ICS entries and upload them to Google (import of ICS files is a nice feature of Google Calendar, by the way!). I lost my music calendar, but it was mostly older stuff at this point, so I started that one over.
Plaxo just didn't work for me, though it seems like it could be useful if they work the kinks out. It didn't sync to Google Calendar fast enough, which was always a bit annoying. The apps for the Mac and PC were kind of clunky, but they worked ok. But borking the calendar syncing was just a bit too much to deal with at this point.
So, I'm back to just subscribing to my Google Calendar feeds through iCal. I'm going to try gSync for about the 4th time and hope that the final release version is finally good enough to maybe think about using full time.
It'd be cool if Google solved this problem themselves (maybe opening up the GCal API), but I'm not holding my breath.
26 Jun 2007
I'd noticed a couple of problems with my Evite to Google Calendar script, so when I got an Evite today, I took some time to figure out how to fix it. I fixed everything I could find, and made the script a bit more robust at handling future Evite changes. So, if you've been having problems, give it another shot and hopefully it'll work for you now.
Install Evite to Google Calendar Greasemonkey Script v1.3
You can also install it from UserScripts, like 387 other people.
25 Jun 2007
Almost exactly one month ago (maybe closer to five weeks), I started feeling just a little ill. Back pain and general overall soreness, just enough to make me feel uncomfortable. About a week after the pain started, I added a ~101 degree fever to the mix. It's Memorial Day weekend, and I'm laying on my couch trying to figure out what's going on and if I need to hit the hospital. I'm pounding ibuprofen like they're candy (and I'm not big on taking any sort of medicine), just trying to keep the fever down and the back pain from causing me to want to punch walls.
After about 3 days of the fever, I got into the urgent care clinic to see a doctor who did some quick work, ran a couple of tests and diagnosed me with a kidney infection. It explained all of my symptoms. So, he prescribed some antibiotics and sent me on my way. Things seemed to work. Within a few days (all of which I spent at home, as I was unable to head into the office), my fever was generally gone, I had almost no back pain, and generally felt ok.
Except for a sore throat. My throat started to feel, for lack of a more scientific term, "icky" pretty much as I finished the antibiotic run. It started to swell, and I could see the trademark white spots that indicate strep throat.
Perfect.
So, on a follow-up visit, my doctor checked my throat. Could be strep, but it seemed unlikely. Could be thrush, my body's reaction to the antibiotics. Or, very unlikely, it could be mono.
Mono would explain everything, but I hadn't been tired and the symptoms had come serially, not at the same time. It would, at least, be an odd case of mono.
A day later I found out it was an odd case of mono.
So, for another 8 days or so, I dealt with the sore throat. There's nothing they could prescribe. I probably took somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 ibuprofen and two full bottles of NyQuil/Tylenol stuff (to soothe my throat and keep a cough down) over that week or so.
Finally, I had a few days of being tired, sleeping 10 hours of night and waking up wanting to sleep some more. But, I was able to rejoin normal life -- playing a little softball, going out a few times, even taking in a concert (Dear Leader, yay!).
So, that's why I've been MIA from my wonderful blog. I've been getting my ass kicked by mono. But, given all the research I've done, I've held my own. Most mono cases seem to be a bit more ass-kicking than mine was, and generally last a bit longer. It's been just about a month, maybe a week longer, from start to finish. I'd say, at this point, I'm at almost 100%. The last two days have seen the last remnants of my cough go away, and I've been able to exercise and even run without feeling too bad. Later this week, I'll have an ultrasound to make sure my spleen is normal size. If it is, I'm good. If not, well, who knows. I'm betting that I'm given the all clear.
Hopefully, I'll settle back into a more regular writing schedule. Being sick, combined with work, combined with some other "real life" stuff has taken up some time that I'd normally devote to blogging. But, hopefully I'll get energized to write again and be a bit more prolific. I've got some interesting work stuff, some tech stuff, and hopefully some music stuff to write about.
In the meantime, here's my mea culpa for having been MIA. Won't happen again. Promise.
28 May 2007
Around Wednesday I started feeling sore -- an achy back and neck. It got progessively worse (from handleable to requiring a few Advil every couple of hours) until Saturday when I had a fever, headache, and even worse back pain. It was a fantastic way to start a long weekend.
So, given that I was going to be spending a majority of my time on the couch or in bed, most of it was going to be consuming a bunch of the media that had been collecting over the past few weeks. 10 or 12 podcasts, 3 Netflix DVDs, and a whole bunch of season finales on my DVR (Heroes, Lost, Veronica Mars). With work and the generally nicer weather, a variety of things have been building up across my network.
It's an odd feeling to be anxious about the things building up on your "convenience" devices (DVRs, iPods, DVDs-by-mail). The whole point of these tools is to make life more convenient (which they do!), but the downside is that from time to time, when you've been really enjoying the convenience, you get to a point where you're not sure how you're going to get through all of the media you've saved up. It's an oddly daunting feeling.
It's the downside (if you can call it that) of the "digital-content-at-your-convenience-era". Media overload.
After spending a whole bunch of time on the couch, I've made it through most of the TV on my DVR. I've still got 7 or 8 hours of podcasts to get through, but I'll make up that time at work (just one of the benefits of working at a computer). Hopefully, I'll get through one more DVD, too, which would make this little bout with what seems to be the flu about as successful as it could be (minus the night sweats, fever, and inability to sleep).
08 May 2007
Thanks to the GigaOM/NewTeeVee folks, I snagged myself a copy of Joost and started playing with it. First, for those who don't know, Joost is basically TV over the internet. They've got a big peer-to-peer network setup (the guys behind Joost stared Kazaa), and your client lets you basically flip through channels and pick out shows to watch on demand.
It's very much like the on demand video you might get through your cable company. Except the quality is crappier, the selection is crappier, and the delivery is crappier. Otherwise, it's just like your local cable on demand.
That's probably too harsh an assessment of Joost, which is very much in a beta/technology preview mode right now. They're signing up new content providers on a near-weekly basis, so the content will likely get better very quickly. I just don't imagine that I'll ever have a major use for Joost, except as an occasional time-killer.
For example, if I'm at home, I've got a 46" HDTV hooked up to Comcast cable and an HD DVR. If I'm lying on the couch, I can inevitably find something on the DVR or on live to watch, particularly if its in HD. If I'm really bored, I've got Netflix, as well as Comcast OnDemand (where I can stream HD movies, if so desired).
If I really can't find anything to watch, I've got Netflix "Watch Now" which streams at better quality than Joost. And, for that matter, has a much better selection.
The other advantage all of these other mediums/models have over Joost? No commercials. Granted, I'm paying up front for them, but (unless I'm stealing someone's wireless) I'm paying for the network connection that Joost is coming over too. If I really wanted to cut my bills, I could drop everything but Netflix, and probably still have more to watch, at higher quality, on my HDTV, than Joost can offer right now.
Putting another bullet into Joost is the fact that the major networks are offering a bunch of their shows online in pretty decent quality video, with minimal commercials. I've watched the entire runs of Raines and Andy Barker, P.I. on NBC.com. The quality is not noticeably different than Joost's quality and it's through a web browser, rather than a specialized client.
Now, I'd argue that Joost is dead today, but isn't dead for the future. If they can beef up the network delivery to deliver even near DVD quality video, that'd be a nice step up. Taking it one step further, if they could make deals with the major content providers to deliver the shows I'm interested in, then you could even make the argument that it might start to encroach on cable's on demand services. If they can deliver live (or near-live) sporting events, so that I could watch the Sox or Celtics from a hotel room far away, that would be probably the killer app for this technology. Or, if a show like Scrubs got cancelled, but lived on in a Joost delivery mechanism, that'd also go a long way towards helping Joost make it's mark.
For now, Joost is a second rate on demand service, with a bit of a wonky interface and a crappy selection of content.
(I didn't touch on some of the community type features that Joost offers because I don't really care about them. Why would I want to chat with random people watching the same show? Rarely, for me at least, is TV an interactive endeavor.)
07 May 2007
Today I have turned Old -1. But, so far, so good. All body parts still in place. Some really sweet birthday wishes from my friends.
I guess next year, when I turn Old, it's kind of a bigger deal.
22 Apr 2007
I got my first Evite in a while, and I noticed that my little Greasemonkey script wasn't working for it. That lead me to go back and check out the entry at Userscripts and find out that people were getting bit by the fact I had to hard code the timezone info, which isn't very friendly.
So, I opened it up again and hacked around and fixed both bugs. Took me about 30 minutes, and got my mind off of recent events.
Evite2GoogleCal at Userscripts
Now with:
- the ability to use it for invites that happened on the 1-9th of the month (yeah, that was a dumb bug)!
- automagically detecting your timezone and setting the entry to the right time!
Be the 191st person to install it!
18 Apr 2007
17 Apr 2007
I'm still a little numb, but I think I've begun to wrap my brain around yesterday. It's amazing to me how much Virginia Tech still affects me, but I really did love my time there and love the people I met there. I've often said that Blacksburg is one of the few places in this country outside of the Northeast that I could live, and nothing will ever change that.
Inevitably, in times like this, people's minds run to the negatives. What could have been done? (Nothing, really, in an open society a deranged nutbag will do damage if he wants.) How could this happen? Why here? Why now?
I'm not going to wallow.
Positives.
What happened yesterday isn't Virginia Tech.
THIS is Virginia Tech.
That's how I remember campus. A gorgeous day in late February, as I wondered around campus taking pictures, realizing that in just a few months I would leave the Blue Ridge Mountains and head back north. Campus is a gorgeous place, and I'm awe-struck every time I go back and find the nestled buildings of Hokie Stone set in a small town in the mountains.
Virginia Tech is, obviously, a tech school. And a damn good one. It's where I got my learn on, and I'm doing ok. It's students understand how to leverage the internet. Which is why I'm proud of the 22000+ students, alumni, and friends who've joined a Facebook group in rememberance.
Virginia Tech is home to an awesome sports program, and a cozy basketball arena that Bob Ryan mentioned as being the best kept secret in college basketball:
Virginia Tech's Cassell Coliseum. Why no one ever talks about this place, I don't know. The 10,000 seats all feel as if they are breathing down the back of every player. This is an electrifying atmosphere.
Virginia Tech is the type of place that a national correspondent goes on TV and talks about her love for her campus, even while all of her peers are focused on second guessing and stirring the pot.
Virginia Tech creates the type of people who engender such good will and leave such a mark on the world that people who don't know them write hundreds of posts about them. When all they shared was a love of the Detroit Tigers. VT creates the type of person who leaves such an indelible mark that someone like Curtis Granderson of the Detroit Tigers will make a really nice gesture and make a Hokie his #1 fan on MySpace. (By the way, this is just one reason Curtis Granderson might be my favorite non-Red Sox player.)
Virginia Tech is the type of school, the type of community, that causes a 22 year old student, on the verge of graduating, to recall how he ended up at Virginia Tech, from a small town in Central Massachusetts, and what it meant to him:
As my days at Tech come to a close, I just wanted to say some things about how this university, and this website, have influenced me. Parts of this will probably ramble, some may be incoherent, and some may be offensive. I really don't know what's going to come out; this is just an outlet for the myriad of feelings that have been going around in my head as I get closer to the last moment of my college life.
It was about 4 years ago, late August 1996 that I first set foot in Blacksburg as a Hokie. Tech hadn't really been a school I was considering, it was an afterthought. To this day, I'm still not sure what compelled me to apply here. I had never visited the campus, knew the school mostly through A-10 Basketball (growing up in Massachusetts, I was a UMass fan). I had applied to Tufts University, Oberlin College, and WPI. I had my heart set on Tufts, and it seemed to everyone around me that it was a lock. I wanted to apply to a 4th school, CalTech was promising, as was Carnegie Mellon, but neither was really in an area of the country I wanted to be in. For some reason, Tech had sent me an application .... so I filled it in.
Within a week, I had heard back from Tech. A few weeks later, Tufts decided to break my heart, as they accepted only *9* freshman into the engineering program. Of course, they said, if I reapplied for general admission, I would probably be accepted. Fortunately for me, I'm spiteful and told them to shove their application. With acceptances to Tech, Oberlin, and WPI in hand, I had a decision to make. Stay close to home, go to Ohio, or go to Virginia. Right about this same time, I believe there was a bowl game on TV ... the Sugar Bowl I believe. I caught one part of the game, a Brian Still punt return. A few days later, Tech had my parents money.
Back to that fateful day in 1996. Here I was, a young 18 year old, 750 miles away from home, setting foot on a campus that I had been on for a total of 16 hours previously (orientation). Tech was a large, scary place, and somewhere I wasn't sure I wanted to be. My, how things change. Four years later, Blacksburg is my home, and my heart doesn't want to leave.
Over the last 4 years, VT grew to be my home. I've learned it's history, explored it's campus and surroundings, and been educated by some of the best (and worst) people in the world. Saturday, I get my degree in Computer Engineering ... the product of hard work, no sleep, and many hours on HokieCentral. HC has been a huge part of my life at Tech. I'm a die hard sports fan (you have to be if you are a fan of the Red Sox and Cubs!), and I'm a diehard Tech fan. Whether it was football games versus Akron, basketball versus Coastal Carolina, or baseball versus Rhode Island, I was there. Of course, that's probably a big reason my grades weren't what they should have been.
I discovered HC my freshman year. I don't think I started posting until my sophomore year, but it was that year I started posting basketball game reports. I don't know if anyone read them, but it was good to be involved in a community that cared about Tech sports as much as I did. Over time, I've never met any of you. But I feel as though I know you all. We've disagreed and agreed, argued and concurred ... but through it all, we share a thread, the love for Virginia Tech, and the love for Virginia Tech sports.
I can't tell you the nights that I sat at my computer, constantly refreshing the screen to see about a new recruit, or waiting for the next message in a particularly heated thread. They say that college is all about experience - HokieCentral, and all of you, were a large part of my college experience. Tomorrow, I become an alumni, like many of you already are. I hope I can make you all proud.
I'm incredibly proud of this school. I've developed such a deep found love for this place that I find myself spouting it's virtue to all that will listen. I'm so grateful to have been here when I was. The last 4 years will probably go down as 4 of the most importand in Tech history. When I was accepted here, and people asked didn't know what Tech was all about. 4 years later, thanks to people like Pres. Torgersen, Ace Custis, Frank Beamer, Corey Moore, and Michael Vick, everyone knows the name of Virginia Tech. Even more thanks go to the faculty, staff, and administration who've worked incredibly hard to pin a label of outstanding academics along with our athletic prowess.
That's it I guess. I'm of such mixed emotions heading into tomorrow, but I felt I would share this New Englander's thoughts and feelings with some of the people who've been a part of my life over the last years. I'm moving back to Massachusetts Sunday, to work in Woburn, MA. I'm going to miss Blacksburg more than I ever anticipated. I'm going to miss the friends that I've made here. But, you won't be getting rid of me. I won't be at the games, but I'll be watching. And posting. And someday, I'll make a HC tailgate, and meet all of you. And you can all laugh at me for being a northerner.
Thinking back, one thought sticks with me ....
Tufts not accepting me was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Thanks VT
That was something I posted in the wee hours of a May morning in 2000, just a few days before I graduated. It was posted to a website called HokieCentral, which has since become TechSideline.com, and has been an invaluable resource for me in keeping true to my Hokie roots, following the athletic side of my school. The community at TechSideline was invaluable yesterday, yet another wonderful feather in the cap of the Virginia Tech community.
I got so many phone calls, text messages, and emails yesterday. Messages from people who I haven't talked to in months, or longer. Messages from people who've only met me recently. It made me wonder a bit about why exactly everyone felt so compelled to talk to me about it. And, of course, it dawned on me: I talk about my damn school all the time. I really love the place. I still wear my VT gear. I talk about Blacksburg like I lived there all my life.
I still use my vt.edu email address. Every time someone asks me for my email, I make sure they know I went to Virginia Tech and that I'm still proud of that.
It's going to be a trying few months for the Virginia Tech community. Realistically, it will probably be a trying few years. But we will survive. This will not be our defining moment. Clarity will come with the passage of time, but the negativity of yesterday will surely be drowned out by the strength, faith, service, and humanity of the Virginia Tech community.
Positives.
