Personal Blog of Ryan Gibbons

I started a new Job at the first of the year, and it was about that time, my blog post stopped. I’ve just been to busy. Yeah I could write about random things going on, but that takes time. Some might say , oh it only takes 5, maybe 10, minutes to write a blog post. But that isn’t accurate, because I would of spent 5 minutes before, thinking about writing it, which would interfere with my current task. Then I would have to pick back up where I left off. which would be another 5 – 10 minutes. So for that 5 minute blog post, I could of potentially wasted nearly 30 minutes of my day.

This same philosophy can be applied to just about anything. Those few 5 minute task can kill hours of your day if you aren’t careful. These task are inevitable, but they need to be manage better, instead of just ignored. One of these task is time entry, sure it take 5 or 10 minutes at the end of the day to enter in your task. But there was the 10 minutes spent throughout the day jotting down notes. Then you’ve got to remember to stop what you are doing, and put them into a system. Sure you can do this at the end of the week, and it can save you a bit of time.

Grouping things together and knocking them out in a large chunk is , almost safe to say, always faster then breaking the same process into task completed at individual times. What is killer, is at work, it is easy to be in a few meetings in the morning, entering time from the day before, and then for those that try to keep a bog updated, or needs a fix from news sources on the internet. It is easy to kill an entire morning with out being productive what-so-ever.

My mornings consist of getting in and updating time, check up on latest and greats Tech related news feeds (and only tech, not even getting into regional, country, or global news) Goto a general 30 minutes office meeting, get out, get coffee, site down and go through a few e-mails, then hope into another project focused meeting, that last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. ( Even though it was scheduled as a 15 min quick update :/ see rant above ). Get out, get more coffee, get updated on e-mails again, put out one or two fires … and now strangely it is 11 o’clock and I am thinking about what I want for lunch. And I haven’t even put together a todo list for my laundry list of things to do for the day. I just have the list assigned to me from those meetings, which are just the most visible things to the powers-that-be.

I know, the problem here is not unique to just me, or hell even our company. Meetings can kill any and all productivity, and they can get out of control. Some managers feels they help because they have a sense of being on top of everything. But isn’t that was project / task management utilities are for. Isn’t that why they are use MS Project, our monthly-subscription to basecamp, and quickbase … Yes, three utilities to manage one project …. another rant for another day.

I know this is turning into a rant, I don’t want that. Just want to bring clarity to issues surrounding ‘5 minute tasks’, while trying to get my blog moving again. As developers, technical resources, and the sort, we need to figure out what we can do to help our managers for this. While it isn’t our job to tell them what to do, we do, have to manage them in a sense. If not, these meetings and task get out of hand very quickly.

There are a lot of blogs and articles out there about SVN and NFS. You can search google and easily find a lot of information about them. But I never found anybody that felt like they found a definitive answer.

In my case I kept getting an error about not being able to find and available lock, the error looks something like svn: Can't get exclusive lock on file '/repo/db/write-lock': No locks available It turns out it is actually pretty easy to fix. And for those that don’t want to read further, all you have to do is add the nolock option to your nfs mount. My fstab entry now looks like this192.168.1.154:/volume1/svn /media/svn nfs rw,nfsvers=3,nolock 0 0. That’s all I use, and now my svn is working over nfs, safely I might add.

For those looking for a bit more explanation (which is what I couldn’t find). SVN dev’s prefer you not to use the Berkeley DB over NFS. So make sure you are running a new enough SVN so it uses the FSFS backend not the BDB. The next, it is my understanding that SVN uses file locks to protect the files during checkout and checkin, to prevent them from being over written. NFS uses NLM locking and it is used so that all clients of that nfs export no about the file lock. Apparently subversion is compatible with this locking mechanism. Adding the nolock option to the mount point as the client uses a more basic locking mechanism that only provides protection only form programs running on that machine.

What does all this mean, it means I am able to mount my svn share on a nfs export, but only that one machine can really access this export to guarantee consistency in our repository. You do lose some of the benefits of it being over an NFS share, you couldn’t do any type of load balancing over multiple SVN frontend servers, but it does allow our NAS to hold our repository and puts me one step closer to consolidating our storage.

While I didn’t provide a new answer, I am providing the reasoning behind the answer as I can see it. Something I couldn’t find out there on the Internet.

I’m really torn about what to use for my blogging software. I’ve gone through many different ones, and ended up on b2evo. I like, I really do, but it is falling behind times, themes are not being developed for it, and I don’t really have the time to write the things I want for it.

At the time I picked b2evo, there were some fundamental things I didn’t like with Wordpress. But those things have changed, and I am really thinking about moving to it. Which sucks, but I’ve started to use my blog, and I have a good handful of blog post I really don’t want to use. There are some conversion utilities out there, but I’ve read mixed things about it. I don’t care too much about the links, I just want the thing to work.

So no point really to do this post, just thinking out loud.

I have to admit, I am a fan. Ever since it came out, I was impressed with the user interface, things actually flowed and it become smart to use. I was finally able to install it at my new job. I am continue to enjoy using Outlook 2007, Excel 2007 and even Word 2007.

My only gripe, is I have to run Windows to use Office 2007. Even the Mac OS X 2008 isn’t the same. I wish Microsoft could look at they are doing and what they are losing and create a better compatibly layer to have their office products work inside Linux or any other Operating System.

I am such a huge fan, I would probably go out and buy the Office 2007 Enterprise just because I enjoy the interface that much. I have also been an advocate of OpenOffice, especially OpenOffice v3. While I still push OpenOffice for home users, I understand OpenOffice is still a distant 2nd in the Enterprise world, and that is because employees can’t be bothered with file compatibility issues. It’s a sad truth but the until document formats become more standardized Microsoft Office will dominate in this market simply because of their market share.

So I would like to challenge Microsoft to open it’s eyes. It doesn’t have to create a products for the OS only, they could expand into other markets. This would not only be better for everyone out there that doesn’t use Linux, but it would also help Microsoft rep. While they aren’t too worried about that right now, it is tarnished, and it is getting worse.

Our technology leaders in the world need to stop and and quite fighting with proprietary standards and doing things only their way. The world is change, we are becoming one, they need to follow suite and work together. It is okay to have competing products, but consumers should be able to move from one to the other without losing their data.

As many of you have noticed, I don’t have the best grammar, or even spelling, skills. They are actually not to bad if I slow down and take the time (Like for a report or some other ‘official’ documentation). But my blog post are normally spur of the moment thoughts, that I try to get out the door before they leave, and before anyone at work notices what I’ve done (like this one :/).

I am now looking for ideas that would help out with that. I know one is to just take my time and re-read what I write .. but I really hate doing that. So now I am looking for something else. Firefox does basic spell checking, but nothing in the grammar arena. Open Office as the ability to grammar check, but I don’t know if it is any good or not. And it doesn’t play nicely with b2evo, at least as far as I know.

I’ve been thinking of moving to Wordpress, just so I have that export capability, and I might just use it … but then again I might not. I am defiantly holding off until v2.7 is stabilized, it is pretty damn cool looking. I always try to use apps that are against the grain, even if they don’t carry the same feature load, I use them because they work and most of the time they have one or two things the other one doesn’t. With b2evo, that is about to past, with v2.7 of Wordpress the admin interface is cleaned up a lot, and I just might have to start using it, as it now provides other features that I am starting to require.

If anybody is out there reading this, do you have any ideas on how to better Spell / Grammar check my blog postings.

Linux defiantly doesn’t have a lack of choice when it comes to file systems to choose form. I’ve use most of the them for my main file systems, currently I am running ext2 on /boot ext3 on /home and /, and using ext4 for my portage tree and distfiles on /usr/portage. In the past I have use reiserfs, reiser v4, jfx and xfs. They have all had their pros and cons, and I’ve have used them all on my /usr/portage. Interestingly enough, the best experience of them all is ext4. The others would become fragmented over time, since I am a bit anal about running the latest software I normally sync my tree almost daily. Most of the time every other day.so there are a lot of re-writes and small files scattered all throughout that partition. I have nothing but great performance using ext4. So much so, with the release of 2.6.28 I am thinking of moving my / partition to it.

This would give me /boot as ext2, /home as ext3 and everything else as ext4. I’ve read good things about it, it seems to handle large and small files alike with ease. I am actually pretty excited with the though of moving to it.

Hopefully my experiences will continue to be on the good side of things as I move to ext4!

Lately I’ve been reading through Jeff Atwood’s blog and the blog he maintains with Joel Spolsky over at StackOverflow. I am not focusing on the programing related posts as much as I am about over management of not only people but information in general. Recently Jeff Atwood wrote a blog post about how email is basically dead to him. Sure he still uses it, but it describes where e-mail fails and how some of the more social forms of communications are a lot more efficient.

Reading through this, I think most people can relate. Trying to keep that Inbox clean is a time intensive task. I find myself doing just what Jeff describes, adding more content and detail then needs to be in the e-mails, and I get a lot of e-mails like that also. Even my family now is using e-mails to communicate news in the family, pictures and updates on their kids. While it is nice to have this information, being consumed with it is overwhelming. Using micro-blogging services is a why to help cut back on some of the e-mail chatter, while using IM’s is another way to handle those quick conversations. Jeff also suggest using a blog to answer questions in e-mails. Why answer 20 e-mails separately when one blog post can handle them all. A lot of people use e-mail, thinking it is private and safe. I’m sorry to tell you, it isn’t. Go search on Microsoft e-mail and lawsuit, and you will find out what is said in e-mails isn’t private. So why treat it that why?

I find myself wanting to get away from e-mails, and that form of communication, but I also don’t have to time to follow blogs all day. We live in a very information driven society. The internet has made us more involved with everyone. We have to be in the know. Most of us enjoy sharing our information. But we, as humans, only have so much capacity. Time, resources, memory; where does everything end. It is a on-going information share.

I think things like IM, blogs, migro-blogging and wiki’s are all in our future and really have a chance of replacing e-mail. But as long as there are people who have trouble moving to new technology, old technology will stay around, almost dragging us down as we the rest of us try to move on.

Every PC owner has this problem, most don’t realize it, but it is Software Management. I am talking about how one manages the software installations on their PC. This isn’t a Windows centric post, or a Linux centrix post, but every OS has this problem. Every OS and software package attacks this differently. Windows XP and Vista has this add / remove programs feature, which compared to what it used to be in Windows 98 , is awesome. But all this allows you to do is track already installed software. How do you now manage updates of this software. Some applications have built-in update checkers, and a few will go ahead and download and prompt you to start the install. Adobe Flash, Java, Mozilla Firefox, and even Open Office all do this to some extent. But what about the rest of your applications. Most just sit there, unchecked, unmodified, and in some cases vulnerable to malicious attacks. Some older Linux distributions had similar problems, but the community saw the problem and developed a solution. No Red Hat and the equivalent’s can not only update their system via rpm, but they have up2date which checks all installed packages for newer ones. Apt-Get has the same features. Gentoo has portage. FreeBSD has it’s Ports. But the two biggest OS distributions have nothing. Mac OS X and Windows. Since Mac is based on unix, people have ported over FreeBSD ports system, to help with the task, but it still doesn’t work with the native system. It is kind of ran along side the system.

I think one of the reasons for this, is that Linux distributions really take control of the PC Environment, which one could argue is why they provided a faster and more stable machine. But think about it, each Linux distribution is merely a way of combining the Linux Kernel and other open source software. They didn’t stop at just the software needed to boot up, but just about every imaginable piece that a user could want. This is what differs from Windows and Mac. With these two, Microsoft and Apple are busy developing a kernel that can run on all machines, all the support libraries, the API’s and then on top of that they provide a ‘bare’ minimal amount of software to create a usable desktop. They haven’t taken the time to think about the other software that a user might want.

Now, this is where it gets tricky. With OSS software, this is very little to worry about with the distribution of that software. When you start working with software you have to pay for, then it gets tricky. You have to consider, does this commercial piece of software allow updates, if so for how long, or how many versions. If you get a discount on upgrades, how do you pay, who handles the payment. It really gets tricky fast.

I think I can speak for a lot of geeks when I say, we like Linux of the no hassle software management. I don’t have to worry about a lot of things when I update my servers, desktops and laptops. On my single windows machine, it is a hassle, it is a completely manual process of checking websites, downloading updates and installing. And this brings up another point, Linux has just about always thrived because of the distribution of software over the Internet. Distribution of software for Windows as primarily been through retail stores, people buying the CD and installing. So updates weren’t something to think about. But now Windows and Macs are becoming a software distribution over the internet.

If you want to improve the User Experience, don’t worry about superficial effects of minimizing a window. Make managing the computer easier. Microsoft has started this with their new Microsoft Update, which patches the core windows system, along with any other Microsoft software that is installed. But Microsoft needs to take a bit of responsibility and check for other software that is installed and free updates that might be available for them. If Linux distributions can do this and provide this for free, why can’t Microsoft do this for an Operating System people pay hundreds of dollars for?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Be thankful for everything you have, no matter how much or little. It doesn’t matter what you believe in or where are at in the world, just be thankful to be here today!

The author of this list is unkown. His Blog has been deleted, most likely by him, but it could of been by wordpress. Either way, I found it over on The Java ME Blog. Pretty good list, pretty accurate.

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.