Summer vacation

We have an office holiday coming up next week which is our company's scheduled Obon holiday. Unlike most national holidays, obon occurs "sometime in August" rather than on a specific day and each company picks its own window for time off. For us, it is Wednesday through Friday of next week. A lot of people are taking the full week off but I decided I'd stockpile my vacation instead so I'll be at work.

There are a variety of local holidays, festivals, and fireworks shows that are scattered throughout August because of variability of obon. You can actually plan on attending one almost every weekend in August if you wanted to. A lot of people use the August festivals as a good excuse to dress in traditional yukata. In the past, I remember only women wearing the traditional dress for summer festivals but this year, I've noticed a lot of 20-something and 30-something guys wearing traditional clothes, too. I guess the fashion cycle has come back around. It looks like colors and fabrics are bit different than the true traditional patterns, though. The ones in the stores are a bit more colorful or a bit more creative.

Chiho has a couple of yukata in the closet but she's not 100% sure that she knows how to wear one correctly. The couple of times she's worn them, she's had help putting it on and tying the obi. Overall, the yukata is relatively simple but you need to tie it correctly so that the yukata doesn't come loose or bunch funny as you walk around. Maybe I should talk her in to giving it a try this year and see if she can figure it out.

Of course, going outside in August in Japan is kind of difficult - it's so damn hot...

Build vs. Buy

Since my current company is a software development company, we seem to have one big problem: they always want to build a custom system instead of buying something off of the shelf. That is one additional difference in my current position compared to all of my clients back in Seattle. Most of them would be completely uninterested in building something - they probably wouldn't even know where to start.

"So what?" you might say. After all, the same people who create such nice, incredibly expensive, and incredibly popular software should be able to make internal tools that work well. Seems logical, but that does not reflect reality. After all, an internal tool is "overhead" so the large teams of people and careful QA testing are not available. Instead, you get this mess of home-brewed parts that no one really understands and can't update well. Our IT ticketing system runs this way, unfortunately, and has been offline 5 or six times in July and August. Since it is only maintained at the HQ, we have to wait for their business hours to get it fixed. And, if the one or two people that understand the system is on vacation....

From my current standpoint, the build vs. buy call goes like this:

• Payroll and Accounting Systems: Buy. Too many really good solutions available and making your own offers no advantage
• HR systems: Buy. You'll have to do a lot of customization with a large company but start with a real package
• Document Management: Buy.
• CRM/ERM: 1/2 and 1/2. there is so much customization that you're really doing both
• IT Management: Buy. Save yourself some pain and suffering

I think you should only build systems that actually give you competitive advantage. If you know that a SQL driven, distributed CRM system with offline synchronization will give you an advantage, then build one. If your 99.999% uptime is your main sales point, build a custom monitoring solution. Otherwise, buy it - you are buying someone else's QA, testing, and customer feedback experience instead of slogging through all the details yourself.

VMWare is the way to go

At my current company, about 80% of the servers are virtualized into VMWare's ESX system which has a ton of flexibility. We have Dell 2850s and 2950s with fiber channel cards connected to SAN and they live as clusters in the VSX infrastructure. As long as the SAN storage is visible to each server that makes up the cluster, virtual servers can be moved around at will. The management software can do it automatically or you can do it manually. That means if you have a hardware problem on one machine in the cluster, you can move all of the virtual servers to the other hosts, take the host off line, fix it, and bring it back up without any of the servers going down.

The ESX system does need at least one physical server to act as the control and management server and you need an available SQL server. After that, you can add and cluster hardware to hearts content. We have a pricey EMC SAN but you can get the same cluster support with iSCSI devices. As long as each host can see the shared storage, you're good.

There are a couple of servers types that just don't virualize well. Maybe I'm not spending enough effort to find out how to do this, but I would recommend against virtualizing:

• Active Directory domain controllers
• SQL servers
• Firewall / Routing devices (ISA or m0n0wall)
• Any server product that needs IPSEC support
• Servers that need really, really fast hard drive I/O

Almost all other servers are easy to virtualize. This way, you can actually have one dedicated web server per application, too.

Cost is a bit of a problem, I suppose. The VMWare pricing is fairly cheap compared to the feature set but the costs of the Windows licensing is not included. You have to do a lot of research and digging to make sure you are really buying what you need.

Ichikawa Citizens’ Fireworks Display

Over the weekend, we went to see the fireworks near Ichikawa (市川) station. It was about an hour or so from our condo by train and it was really, really, good. I found a clip on YouTube from the 2007 display http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=_RoQOU0ksqk that is pretty similar to what we saw over the weekend. The show was about an hour long and launched thousands of fireworks. I have no idea how much it would cost.

The fireworks are shot from a park that is along a river so you can watch it from either side. The river has pretty tall flood-control levees so you get pretty good seats from a lot of places. We didn't plan our trip out there quite so well and really didn't bring enough snacks and drinks for the couple of hours we waited for the show. We also forgot our camera... We'll just have to plan better next time.

They announced that the crowd was about 500,000 right at the start of the show. If that was accurate, then it was actually quite a bit smaller than previous years. Most of the websites said that crowds topped 1 million.

Found a good one

This blog: http://lovelylisting.blogspot.com/ posts "less than ideal" pictures from real estate listings. Some of the past history is pretty hilarious.

More Japanese Convenience

A couple of weeks back, I had posted about how things in Japan are designed at a better level for people. I found another good example in the plain, humble, everyday egg. When you buy a dozen eggs in America, the date of expiration is printed on the box. However, if you use the handy egg-basket tray that comes with the fridge, you probably through the box away, right? So, how do you know when the egg is past it's due date.

Most of the farms in Japan have come up with a simple solution: they print the expiration date right on the bottom of the egg. I am not really sure how they do this and the font looks like a dot matix style ink jet of some sort. Clever, isn't it?

Project management in IT companies

I've moved from a consulting company targeting smaller companies to a fairly large global company and it's interesting to watch the differences in IT management. There are a lot of similarities, too.

On the differences:

• Budget: Most of my clients in Seattle had to be convinced, cajoled, or outright pushed to by high quality hardware. In my current company, they are so paranoid about downtime that they through money at redudant hardware that they really, really don't need.
• Schedule: Right now, I was working on an "accelerated" project - I only had three months to plan and deploy it. I don't think I had three months to plan anything with my Seattle clients.
• Turf: There arent't enough people in a small company to really generate big turf wars whereas larger companies can't seem to function without them. There were definately some "I built it, you can't touch it" moments with my Seattle clients but the amount of time spent manging that was quite small compared to now.

Similarities:

• Dithering: When it comes to tech related issues, there are always "what if" dicussions - "what if we build a custom app instead of buying it?", "what if we outsource it", "what if they have a new version?", "what if we using an open source product?", and so on. The amount of time that it takes to explore options, discuss things with leadership, and get approvals for things seem to take the same amount time. Even though my current company is 700 times bigger than my largest Seattle client, they don't actually move noticably slower. I'm actually kind of suprised by that.
• Managing change: It seems that both small and large companies don't do a good job of actually preparing thier employees for major changes. Very few of my clients would send employees to training before pushing a new software (Office, timesheet tracking, or whatever was being deployed). I tried very hard to push for end-user training in my Groove project but it was delegated to local offices instead of being pushed from HQ. And that has devolved to "go read this website" rather than any structured training. And now, I am not surprised that most of the questions I get are "what is this thing and what can I do with it".
• ROI: Both my Seattle clients and current company seems to suffer from an odd approach to new technologies. They seem to start with some big plan that will have some big benefit (new communciation tool, smoother operations, time savings). Then, about half way through the planning process, the technical details take center stage. Whenever there is a hiccup, the project shifts towards ease-of-implementation rather than maxium-user-benefit. It seems that the big picture goal gets forgotten slightly - it's subtle but very noticable.

It's only been a short time, though, so I'll keep an eye on other interesting things as it develops.

Yup, it's hot

89-degree F and 79% humidity today and likely to stay that way all week: http://www.intellicast.com/local/weather.aspx?location=JAXX0085

Ouch...

It's pretty dang hot

We've had four or five days of over 30-degrees (Celisius) weather here in Tokyo. That means at or above 90-degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity is up in the tropical levels (~80%), too. Chiho and I haven't quite gotten used to that.

It's likely to get hotter over the next week or two. Kyoto and other cities south of Tokyo have been at 36 or 37 C (96-99 F) and the warmth is moving north. Oh well...... at least we have air conditioning.

Adding sites to Trusted or Internet zones

You can add sites to the Internet zones in Internet explorer by manipulating the registry directly. I normally do this via VBScript but that is starting to become an unsupported technology so I suppose I will have to learn to use PowerShell or something. The documentation for this is a bit scattered in the MS documentation, so here's a quick explanation:

The path in the registry related to the URL. The pattern is 2ndlevel.TLD\4thLevel.3rdLevel.

• http://share.domain.com/ = HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
  CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\domain.com\share
• http://audit.workspace.domain.com/ = HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
  CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains\domain.com\audit.workspace

You can also switch it to LOCAL_MACHINE instead of CURRENT_USER if you want to make this setting apply to Local Service and machine controlled access systems.

At each location, you then create DWORD values. The name of the DWORD is the protocol and then the value of the DWORD is set to match the zone you want to use. I find that I use these protocols the most:

• http
• https
• ftp
• file

The values are:

• 1 = Intranet Zone
• 2 = Trusted Zone
• 4 = Prohibited

If you enter 3, I don't think is does anything.

Minor note on Junction

I recently deployed a big VBScript that used the Junction software from Microsoft that I wrote about earlier. When you use Junction the first time, you get a EULA pop up. Since that would be very, very annoying as a logon script, I found a way around it.

The only thing that the EULA pop up does is set a particular registry key. If you set that key in advance, you won't get the pop up at all. The registry key is:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\Junction
• DWORD: EulaAccepted
• Value: 1

Once that is set, via VBScript, a REG file, or whatever, the user won't get a pop up.

List recovery model of all databases

I put together a quick SQL query this morning that can be run against an SQL database to retrieve the list of database names and thier recovery models. I only tested against an Microsoft SQL 2005 server but it should work against any SQL server.

The blog will wrap the text incorrectly, of course. when you copy and paste, the commands should work correctly.

USE master
GO

-- Declare a variable to store the value [database name] returned by FETCH.
DECLARE @dbname sysname, @mode varchar(1000)

-- Declare a cursor to iterate through the list of databases
DECLARE db_recovery_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT name from sysdatabases

-- Open the cursor
OPEN db_recovery_cursor

-- Perform the first fetch and store the value in a variable.
FETCH NEXT FROM db_recovery_cursor INTO @dbname

-- loop through cursor until no more records fetched
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN
Set @mode = CONVERT (varchar, DATABASEPROPERTYEX(@dbname,'RECOVERY') )
PRINT 'Database Name: ' + @dbname + ' Recovery Model: ' + @mode

FETCH NEXT FROM db_recovery_cursor INTO @dbname
END

-- close the cursor and deallocate memory used by cursor
CLOSE db_recovery_cursor
DEALLOCATE db_recovery_cursor

Mimi

A little bit of bad news from Japan today, Mimi, our lop-eared rabbit, passed away last night. Mimi had started to not eat and drink much in the last couple of days ad we had brought him to the vet to make sure it wasn’t an infection, abscessed tooth, or something that could be fixed. He seemed to have good energy and was cheerful all the time. According to the vet, it looks like it was just age. While she was packing, Chiho found the receipt from Jones & Co. pets and it showed that we bought Mimi in the summer of 1997 so that made him about 11 years old. That was really, really old for a typical rabbit so we just have to console ourselves that he lived a long life. We’re still going to miss him, though.

Groove Project going well

The Groove project that I've been working on is going well but it is really sucking up a lot of time and energy. The software itself it only medium complicated and the infrastructure was all rolled out weeks ago. I've been writing up documentation, an absolute ton of documentation, really. I've been writing deployment plans, backup and recovery plans, data retention plans, security policies, installation instructions, help manuals, FAQs, and more. I feel like I'm writing a damn novel or something. I've gotten some assistance in writing up this stuff but only one person seems to be actually completing things on a schedule. I try to coordinate and delegate but I'm not really thier boss so I don't have much control over thier work.

Honestly, the only really silly part of the whole software is how it forces the local workstation to put everything on the C:\ drive. I wrote about this before and I found a manual fix for it, but now I'm trying to come up with an automated solution for a 7,000+ desktop roll out. Really, what other software published in 2007/2008 requires you you create a VBScript hack to change where the data is stored? At a minimum, couldn't they have made it a sub-folder under My Documents so that if you already pointed My Documents somewhere with more room, Groove would just go with that?

Microsoft support is kind of clueless on Groove

During the run up to this big Groove project, I've had to open two different Microsoft support cases. Since we are a big Microsoft shop with a global contract, we have fairly easy access to high-level technical support.

Even though I'm dealing with developers right out of Microsoft HQ on these issues, people who really should know the software, the actually fix came from a Paris-based consultant that my boss found. These guys were able to get better answers and get back to us faster than Microsoft critical product support. It was kind of annoying that the peole who make the software couldn't troubleshoot the software correctly.

Of course, they did buy the software rather than build it in house but they bought it almost three years ago. Shouldn't they have learned it by now?

E-mail is really up, this time

I finally got my e-mail situation finalized and I have e-mail to my @SBWorks.com accounts up and running again. I have the @thedamps.com e-mails available, too, for those interested. I'm using e-mail hosting through Fat Cow and they are pretty cheap and simple. I haven't set up a website just yet. I have configured the website to redirect to this blog for a while. Maybe I'll use it for something else, soon.

Not entirely in love with Groove 2007

I've been working on this Groove Server 2007 project and work and there are alot of things I like but I'm not sure it is worth the hassle. The server side for large companies seems a little complicated but it isn't that bad, it's just that the client side software isn't that really that good.



Groove lets you keep things in sync no matter where you are or how you're connected to the internet. The synchronization works transparently across firewalls exactly as advertised. Considering how technically complicated that can be, that is a pretty slick software. But there are some usability things that are odd:

• If you want to use the most secure method to share files, you need to drag and drop them into the workspace. There's no right-click >> send to workspace option and your workspaces don't show up in any file save dialog box.
• Files that are in the workspace are not accessible from any "open file" dialog box. You have to access the file by double clicking it from the workspace.
• You can link to a document in a workspace (hyperlink or OLE embeddd object)
• You get a lot of pop ups when saving documents asking for confirmation and overwrite that you don't get from just storing it on the disk.

There were a lot of cool features in Groove 3.5 that offered all kinds of customization opportunities that are missing from the new version. Since this is the first Microsoft version after purchasing the company so I guess they had to cut things out to get things integrated.

Overall, the software is a relatively small niche product. It works well for highly mobile people with high security requirements. They can accept the oddities of the user interface.

SBworks e-mail delayed a bit

Since my credit card info and contact info are not identical, it looks like my order for hosting services was flagged for additional information. My SBWorks e-mail is still down for the moment. I thought it would be up by now.

Convenience

There are a lot of different ways to describe Japan but one thing that I have seen lately is the convenience of things. There is a well-engineered, user-oriented outlook to everyday things. Let's take something really boring: ATMs. Here's a picture of one I pulled off of the Internet:

The phone to call the bank and the calculator on the right is kind of useful but I'm pointing out to the place were you put the ATM card into. It's hard to see but there is a small slot underneath the card. That is were the receipt prints out. Why is that useful? The card and the receipt are ejected right next each other and you can pick up both with a single motion.


That level of engineering is hardly of life-shattering importance but that is fairly common throughout Japan. Prepaid train pass cards that you don't even have to take out of your wallet, vending machines that lift the drinks to waist height you don't have to bend down, advanced barcodes that can be scanned by a cell phone camera - all of these things are really nice to use.


I'm not sure why these types of devices are so common in Japan and so rare in the states. Maybe it's an engineering attitude...

SBWorks e-mail should be back up soon

I signed up with an external hosting service so e-mail should be back up and running in about 12 hours.

Sloppy...

I screwed up and managed to loose the small wallet that contains my two train passes. I have two different passes, one for the JR line and one for the Yurikamome line and I had them in a separate mini-wallet since you have to pull them out at each train gate. Somehow, I had it when I left the last train station and headed to the office and I didn't have it at the end of the day when I started to head back home. I have no idea how, or where, I managed to loose it. Since I had only bought the three month passes on June 2nd, it was pretty irritating to loose something that costs 81,000 yen (~$800 US).

Chiho called the train station offices and filed the paperwork I needed to cancel and reissue the pass. The JR pass was on the new Suica system and I could get that reissued for 1,000 yen (~$10 US). I had purchased the classic style commuter pass (ていきけん) instead of the new PASMO cards so I couldn't get that reissued. That pass cost 31,800 yen so I'm out over $300 US thanks to me being sloppy.

Painful - I better not do that again.

Been a bit busy

As you've noticed, I've been a bit behind in updating this blog. I've been buried in this roll out of Groove at work and haven't had much time. My SBWorks server in Seattle died, too, and I haven't even had a chance to move my mail to alternate web host.

I'll try to fix that in the next couple of days...

Lucky 13...

It is our 13th anniversary today - measuring from the ceremony we had in Tokyo, anyway. Our Seattle anniversary is in July. I'm celebrating by working late on a phone call to the rest of the team in Paris and America. Oh what fun...

By the way, my mail server in Seattle went on the fritz and I hope to have an alternate set up shortly.

Actually, the security check was worse than I thought

Leaving the Bangalore airport actually had more silliness then I expected. Security checked my ticket, passport, and the stamps that were put on my luggage tags at the top of the jet way. And then, for some weird reason, there was a security guy at the bottom of the ramp that checked my ticket stub.

What possible security risk could occur between the top of the jet way and the bottom? Or is this just a jobs program for security companies?

Microsoft Junction v1.05

While I was getting Groove training, they mentioned that the Groove client puts all of the files on the C:\ drive by default. What the Hommes et Process guess recommended was an old SysInternals application that Microsoft maintains called Junction. The software allows you create a virtual folder or mount point that points the C:\...\Groove directory to another drive. Since Groove can’t let you change it, you can have the OS point all requests for the default directory into a different location. Windows Vista has this as a native option but you need the additional software for XP.

To use this on Groove, you need to:

• Logon to Groove and configure it for the current user
• Exit from all Groove applications, including the systems tray icon
• Move the %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Groove folder to a different location
• Download Junction
• Create a virtual folder called Groove at the Office level that points to the new locations
• The command will look like this: junction "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Groove" "D:\Groove"
• Junction does not currently support UNC paths
• Restart Groove

I think this trick would work for other programs that have hard-coded file paths. It is a pity that Groove doesn’t let you move all the data. The Groove workspaces could get pretty big over time.

Flying out of Bangalore

The trip to Bangalore is wrapped up and I’m sitting at the new airport here. It looks pretty nice but the airport is a long way out from downtown (and that is just the start of the problems). I left at 6pm (pretty much rush hour) and it took just over two hours to get here. Even when I arrived at midnight, it took over an hour to get here. One of the business people who talked at the regional meeting summed it up as “organized enough to build a new airport but not organized to build a good road to the airport”. It seems to be pretty accurate to me. There is a nice, broad highway that goes from the airport to the main highway out of Bangalore but they didn’t make any improvements to the highway for the airport traffic. For a Seattle comparison, it would be the same as if you put a new airport near Carnation and built a nice freeway to Monroe to hook up with Highway 2, don’t bother to do anything to any of the highways that feed Monroe, and assume that the Seattle-bound traffic will be fine.

As hard as it might be to believe, but the security check at the airport is worse than the TSA.

Here’s the flow:

• They check your ticket and passport to let you into the building.
• At check in, they check your passport.
• After you check in, you go through an outgoing immigration where they check your passport and collect an outgoing passenger form. They stamp the passport and the boarding pass
• After you leave the immigration, they check it again to make sure both were stamped
• At security, they check your boarding pass and passport again
• They let people through one at a time and perform an individual search for every person going though the hand pat-down and wand treatment
• The security people stamp your boarding pass
  

So, from door to the gate, you get your passport checked six times. I am sure that they will check my passport at the gate again, too. For extra irony, the security and immigration people are all within easy viewing distance of each other and the flow of traffic is controlled and guided. Even with almost no line, the process took almost 20 minutes. I can’t imagine how it works with a typical rush. Good thing I got here early…

Bangalore is an odd place - reminds me of parts of the Philippines and Malaysia in the dust, unruly traffic, and the odd combination of old and new buildings. Bangalore is high-tech boom town that rivals Silicon Valley for creativity and energy but the living conditions are no different than any other part of India or Southeast Asia. The regional office is in a really nice building that is only a couple of years old but it is immediately adjacent to building that could have been there since ‘50s and haven’t had and repairs since the ‘70s.

I didn’t have much of chance to look around but I did get to sample some good food. For the meals that we had earlier in the week with the large groups, they toned down the spiciness a little but later in the week I talked them into turning up the spice when it was just a couple of us. There was some good stuff to be had. Only one person out of the group of 12 visitors managed to get sick so it looks like the food was fairly trustworthy. They did take us out to some of the fancier restaurants, though, so I can’t say for sure that the food is completely safe. It tasted great, though.

On the ground in Bangalore

I did finally get to Bangalore (at midnight, local). I've been in the meeting all day so didn't get out and look around but it seems pretty chaotic around the city. Bangalore is definately a boom town - roads always underconstruction, every other building seems to be underconstruction, and everyone seems to be in a hurry.

In Bangkok for a couple hours

I've landed in Bangkok for a couple hours and I think I've found the real advantage of traveling business class. Sure, the seats are wider and the food is better but I think the real advantage is the business class lounges. Here I am, stuck on the ground with nothing to do for 5 hours and instead of hanging out at a coffee shop or those little uncomfortable chairs at the gate, I can sit on a sofa with a near by juice and snack bar and get free internet.

The Bangkok airport is seriously confusing. It's a sprawling building that really needs an outside archictect or interior desginer to overhaul the signage. I started down a long consourse base on one sign that said "international transfers" and didn't see another sign for 10 minutes or so of walking. I was starting to wonder if I'd gone the wrong way. At least I have plenty of time to get lost.

I'll have even more time in Bangkok on my way back from India. The flight with the best connection (2 hours in Bangkok) is full so I'm on standby. I have a confirmed seat on the next flight but that is 10 hours later. If I get the standby seat, I will land in Tokyo at 4pm Saturday but the other flight gets me there at 6am sunday so the difference is acceptable. I don't get much sightseeing time but that's okay. I'm traveling for a specific business meeting, not for pleasure, after all.

95% Unpacked and Moved-in

Chiho's been busy unpacking things while I've been out of town and it looks like most of our stuff in unpacked and usable. My office stuff and computer stuff is only partially set up and I think that is all that is left. Chiho found out that the basic internet access service is free (included in the rent, I assume) so we don't actually have to pay a seperate bill for 100Mbs internet access. Sure, the internet is shared amongst the whole building but that is still 60-70 times faster than Comcast's real throughput back in Seattle and they charge about $50 a month for that.

I am going to India after all

After some last minute heroics by our travel agency, I finally got my visa to India at 5:00pm last night. I'm sitting at the airport now, waiting for my flight to board. I guess it's good news from a business perspective but now I have to go give 8+ hours of training lectures over the next three days. Somehow, I think I'm going to be drinking a lot of coffee...

Visa silliness continues

Well, my trip to Bangalore is hanging the breeze again. The Indian embassy has outsourced their visa process and it's pretty obvious that they really don't want people to visit the country.

• Two weeks ago, I dropped off my application.
• The paperwork says to return in a week
• One part of the paperwork says to come by in the morning, another says to stop by in the afternoon.
• I went to the visa processing office for India this morning
• They sent me to the main embassy to drop off my passport
• I got to the office to find it closed. (It was about 11:50 so I am hoping it is just closed for lunch)
• I called the visa processing center to find out the hours but they only accept phone calls between 3pm and 4pm

So, I am sitting at a Tullys having a coffee and I'll go check on the embassy office at 1pm and see if it is open again. If it isn't open, then I guess I'm not going. I love this kind of back and forth - doesn't everyone? I'm supposed to fly out tomorrow at 11am and we haven't been able to buy my tickets yet. I bet all of this screwing around is going to cost the company a couple thousand in extra airfare at this rate.

Also, I'm supposed to be giving about 8 hours of technical training over the next three days. I guess everyone is going to just sit around and waste time. And DS flew people from all over the world to Bangalore to get this training, too...

I was In Paris this week

The business trip for Paris finally went through and got scheduled and I am just wrapping up a 5-day training seminar for Groove. Things were pretty busy while I was here so I wasn’t able to update this blog or even really sightsee. The trip was tied tightly to my work week – arriving late on Sunday and leaving Friday afternoon. After this Paris trip, I have to fly to Bangalore for an IT regional summit. I was originally planning of flying straight from Paris to India but there was a delay in getting my visa for India. I have to fly back to Tokyo instead of flying straight to India so I couldn’t stay in Paris like I originally planned. I couldn’t come early, either, because our household goods shipment arrived on the Friday before and I needed to be there for the unpacking. So, I got out to a couple of Paris restaurants but absolutely no other side trips at all.

The Dassault Systemes HQ is located in Suresnes near La Defense and it seems to be a pretty nice area. My jet lag woke me up a little early the first day so I decided to walk around the area a bit before I went to work. The area is full of classic, two story row houses and single homes that are in excellent shape. A lot of them have very nice yards, nice cars parked out front, and other hints that you’re in a very well to do area.

The hotel I’m staying, however, is not so nice. It’s not that bad but it really isn’t that good, either. I’m staying in the Best Western Atrium Hotel Suresnes and it is a reasonably priced business hotel but it seems to have some issues. The biggest drawback as a business hotel is that the wireless internet access doesn’t cover the entire building. You need to go to the atrium area to get a reliable connection. At least they have plenty of couches and tables to work at.
The smaller annoyances are the fact that that it doesn’t have air conditioning, the elevator is amazingly slow, and the rooms are pretty noisy. Since May isn’t that warm, I guess I don’t care about the a/c but Paris can get pretty uncomfortable in summer. And, the hotel fronts a busy street so you can’t leave the windows open.

I’m writing this on my way back but I won’t be able to post it until I get back. I’m at Charles de Gaul airport right now and the price for wireless access is a little high for just a blog post. I’m at Terminal 2E at CDG airport and it looks like they are 2/3rds of the way through a very nice looking remodel. However, that also meant that the security lines were incredibly long because they only had a couple of scanning machines running and all of the stores are closed up. There is one little coffee stand open but that is it.

For this trip, I flew business class on Korean Air from CDG to the new(ish) Inchon airport near Seoul to Narita. They are flying a fairly old 747 type but they have done some recent upgrades so it fairly comfortable. The business class seats are definitely a better way to travel then coach but they aren’t that comfortable. I still had trouble sleeping and it is still a 16 hour flight. However, the short check in lines, nicer food, first off the plane, first through immigration, and first at baggage pick up is definitely worth it. My trip to India will be by coach, thanks to the last minute change of schedule, so I guess I should enjoy my trip now as much as possible.

Default behavior of Outlook Auto Archive might be different than users expect

If you are relying on Auto Archive to help our users stay below the a mailbox limit, there is something important that all end users need to be aware of:


If you create new folders in your mailbox, those new folders are not automatically archived. This may cause problems for people who think that all folders in their mailbox are covered. Any new folder will need to have the archiving option set manually during creation by selecting the properties of the subfolder. You can also reset the folders for the entire current mailbox from the Tools >> Options >> Other >> Auto Archive >> Apply these settings to all folders now.



There appears to be no way for us to change this default behavior without creating a custom Outlook plug in from scratch. Programming for Outlook is incredibly difficult so it is highly unlikely to be worth the effort. If you know of any existing plug in, please let me know.

Getting settled

We’ve got keys for the new condo and have started to get appliances and stuff. We had refrigerator a combo washer/dryer delivered on Thursday. Almost no one uses a real dryer in Japan because the cost of electricity is so high. The vast majority of people line-dry their clothes so as you travel around Japan you will see a lot of clotheslines – even in the fancy parts of town.

Japanese retail stores have a different spin on the “90-days same as cash” financing scheme that American retailers do. The majority of salaried positions in Japan have a twice-a-year bonus, one in summer and one at new-years, so the retailers offer delayed billing. They will not charge your bank account or credit card until your bonus is scheduled to arrive. It’s a lot simpler than the “open an account” process that you get at American retailers.

The major appliance stores are willing to negotiate a little, too. The one that we finally bought from was willing to go lower in price after Chiho found some advertised prices online for the same products. It’s not quite a match-or-beat-the-price guarantee but it functions in a similar fashion. Chiho shaved about $150 (USD) off the price of everything with a half-hour worth of online searching.

Paris and Bangalore

It looks like I’ve got a business trip coming up at the end of May that could get kind of long. There is a training session for the Groove software in Paris the week of May 19th and it will be followed by an IT Regional Meeting in Bangalore from the 25th to the 29th. I might actually end up flying direct from Paris to Bangalore. Not all of the details have been worked out, yet. I sure hope all of our household goods arrive before I have to leave. I think Chiho would kill me if I wasn’t in town when it came time to unpack.

I’ll try to take pictures and send gifts if I do go on these trips. I’ve been to Paris but I’ve never been to India at all so this should be interesting.

Major typo in SQL article

In my SQL 2005 article for changing the model database, I made a big typo: second section, step #4. The real settings are:

4. Enter ;-c;-T 3608 at the end of the current string. As a side note, the Microsoft documentation for this does not mention the semi-colons

The space is really important and placing at the end of the string is more likely to work (post SP2). You will need the semi-colon in front of the -c, too.

Default location for SQL Backups

In an earlier post, I showed how to change the "model" database to have new databases created in the correct location. In tandem with that, I've found out how to change the default backup location. This one is a little easier:

• The setting is contained in the registry on a per-instance basis. First, find the MSSQL.[Number] directory for the instance you are working with. 95% of the time, it will be MSSQL.1
• Open REGEDIT and find the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer
• Change the DefaultBackupLocation key to whatever path you would prefer.

This change effects the wizards related to the maintenance plans and the one-off special backups.

Removing Groove Indentities from a workstation

I've been learning a lot about the Groove software over the last couple of weeks and one of things I've learned is that Microsoft's documentation is HORRIBLE.

I know, that's not very surprising but this has been worse that usual. Even the client-side help documentation is bad and Microsoft does a better job than most at client-facing documenation. From an end-user prespective there is acouple of important items to note

Groove Identities

Groove ties very hard to be network OS neutral so it uses special terminology for itself. Instead of a Groove user account, the logon process is through a Groove identity. These identities are very tightly bound to the management server and have a fairly paranoid built-in security system. Each identity is tightly bound to a workstation and you allow or deny privledges based on that identity. The logon process is sepereate from any other logon process and the username and password are unique.

Because of this tight binding, you have to remove the identity from the local workstation. You have to options:

If I can still login to this identity:

• Logon to the Groove client software.
• From the toolbar, select Tool >> Preferences
• Select the Identity tab
• Select Delete

There will be a couple of prompts to warn you that you can't undo this action and that all data will be deleted.

If you can no longer logon to an identity

If you can't logon to this identity, you will get annoying pop ups about how it can't logon and will will always see the user name in the list. There is no real way to delete the identity from inside the Groove software. The only way to do it is to purge all the identities from your computer.

• Backup, archive, or export any existing workspaces that you want to keep. Remember, this process will delete all Groove data from the local workstation so you have to backup anything you want to keep.
• Close out of all Groove software (including the system tray icon)
• Run the following command: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\GrooveClean.exe -all. This will delete all of the cached data.
• Go to the current user's profile at %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Groove\User and delete all files and all sub-folders
• Restart Groove. You should be presented with the first time user wizard.
• Configure the user account and import the workspaces that you archived.

Major Japanese Holiday

Over the next two weeks, there are four national holidays in a tight grouping, normally referred to as Golden Week. The vast majority of offices are closed during this week and most Japanese take a major vacation. This year, several of the days occur over the weekend so it kind of warps the traditional tight cluster of days. It looks like about half of my office took this week off and half will take next week off. I'm actually going to come in for a couple of these holidays so that I can take comp-time for whenever our household goods arrive from the states.

Speaking of that, the moving company seemed to get us on a pretty fast boat. The truck was packed on April 18th (in about 4" of snow, too) and it looks like the container ship is expected to dock on May 1st (as scheduled). We don't know how long the customs process will take and the Golden Week holiday will probably slow it down a bit. I'm guessing that the move-in date will be the week of May 12th. We'll see...

Fully packed out of Seattle

Chiho wrapped up the house move, the moving company stopped by last week, and Chiho arrived in Tokyo yesterday. That wraps up the first half of the home move... well, except for all the stuff my mom and dad are taking care of for us this weekend.

The flight over for Chiho was pretty uneventful. The plane was almost completely empty which seemed pretty surprising. We've flown at this time of year before and it was normally pretty full. However, we normally flew on Thursday or Friday so maybe it's the day of the week. So if you have to fly to Japan, try to do it on Wednesday.

Mimi (our lop-eared rabbit) seemed to survive the flight without too much trouble. He seemed to be in a very grumpy mood when Chiho dropped him off at the airport quarantine. We'll be picking him up on Saturday from the airport.

Hardcore flashback time

I saw an advertisement on the train today that really, really, shocked me. It was for a live concert from these guys. What the heck are these guys doing staging a global reunion tour - they weren't that good in the '80s...

Found a new domain-naming wrinkle

Several of my clients in the past had not followed Microsoft's domain naming recommendations and made thier internal domain name match thier external domain name. This always caused problems connecting from the outside, screwing up routing, and other irritations but I've actually found something that is worse - incredibly worse, actually - the Single Label Domain (SLD)

In a single label domain, instead of domain.local or something.domain.com, you actually make your domain without a dot-anything like INT or LOCAL. This makes your internal domain names kind of simple, server.int, web.int, or whatever but you be amazed as to how much breaks when you do you this:

• Live Communicator breaks


• Kerberos authentication between Active Directory and any other kerberos based service brakes


• Windows authentication to an SQL server breaks


• Domain trust become extremely difficult


• Groove Server Active Directory Integration breaks

Trust me on this one, you never want to do a single label domain. And, guess what we have at my new company....

Address in Japan

We've picked our preferred place and have it pretty much locked in. The new address will be:

Beach Terrace #111
3-1-1 Mihama-ku Utase
Chiba-shi 261-0013
Japan

〒261-0013
千葉市美浜区打瀬３－１－１　
幕張ビーチテラス１１１号
JAPAN

We will get keys on the 26th or 27th of April. I got a chance to look at it last weekend and here are some pictures:

• From the front entry way
• The big windows out the back yard area (note how tall the windows are - we had no idea the condo had such high ceilings)
• The back patio and fence
• Kitchen (with dishwasher, very important)
• Looking from the main living area towards the kitchen

It's hard to take good interior shots so I don't have much. Hopefully, I can get some more in a couple of weeks.

Configuring SQL 2005 so new database put files on different drives

Microsoft's SQL 2005 best practice recommendations include splitting binary, database files, and transaction logs onto different drives. When you install SQL 2005, you can used the advanced options to change the default data directory but this will put the MDF and LDF files in on the same drive. This really doesn't matter for the system databases but you don't want that to be true for all database that get created later. You actually need to do two different processes to ensure that new databases get configured correctly:

Change the defaults for manually created databases

1. Use SQL Management Studio and connect to the database
2. Right click the server name at the top of the hierarchy and select options
3. Go to Database Settings
4. Change the Default Database location

Change the model database

Databases that are created by scripts or software installers do not grab the settings we just changed. They copy the settings from the model database. Since the model database defaults to putting the MDF and LDF files in the same folder you need to modify it. This gets a little tricky, though:

1. Open SQL Configuration Manager
2. Find the service that defines you database, right click it, and select properties
3. Go to Advanced and find the start up parameters section
4. Enter ;-c;-T 3608 at the end of the current string. As a side note, the Microsoft documentation for this does not mention the semi-colons
5. Restart the SQL service. The parameters that we put in will let you modify the temp database. Without those tags, the database is "locked".
6. Use SQL Management Studio to connect to the database
7. Open a new query and make sure the current database is set to master
8. Run the following query: sp_detach_db 'model'
9. Move the modellog.ldf file to the path you want logs to be
10. Run the following query:sp_attach_db 'model','[Path to Data Files]\model.mdf','[Path to log files]\modellog.ldf'
11. Use SQL Configuration Manager to remove the parameters we added.
12. Restart the SQL service

That should make your SQL server create new databases the way you want them to.

Groove Server 2007

I've been placed in charge of world wide roll out of the Groove Server 2007 infrastructure. I've played with the software and a couple of Seattle clients had asked me to look into it so I'm kind of familiar with the concept. Now that I've had a chance to really dig into it, the system is kind of fascinating.

The main core of the software is amazingly simple - (1) create a way for end-users to setup their own shared storage systems, (2) copy the files to whoever is working on it, and (3) keep the various copies up to date wherever someone happens to be working. Simple in concept but tricky to actually pull off. SharePoint's web-accessible document front end can make the files easy to share and ensure that people have access to the latest version but it only works while you're connected to the Internet.

Groove is kind of confusing because there is a client software and server software and you don't always need the server versions. The software needs access to a management server but your company doesn't need to have one of its own. For small offices, Microsoft has a free, public support infrastructure that you can register your client software with. You can be set up and running within a minute or two of starting the software. The Groove Server infrastructure is really only needed if you want more control. In Microsoft's documentation, offices with fewer than 100 users shouldn't even bother setting up an Groove Server installation at all.

From all of my reading and research, it looks like it should be an easy setup. I'm going to be creating a test network over the next couple of weeks and I'll try to write about what I find out. Well, I have a budget of only 40,000 euros to pull this off so I guess I'll just have to make do... :-)

...Did I mention that I'm still having difficulty with the scale of my new company? 40,000 euros is over $60,000 US and that was one of the smallest budget items on the list this year...

Gold’s Gym Makuhari幕張

When Chiho was back in Japan last time, we signed up for the local Gold’s Gym in Makuhari. There are actually two gyms across the street from each other that are the “main gym” and “annex”. Gyms are kind of expensive in Japan, we found, probably because the cost of keeping employees in Japan is kind of expensive. I rented a locker at the annex gym so I can leave my shoes and a change of clothes there. It should really help for trying to go to the gym after work. Chiho joined the gym, too, so we got a family discount but it still ended up at about $100 per month, about three times the cost of Gold’s in Mukilteo.

Rented out the Mukilteo house

We decided to take our house off of the market and rent it out. As it turns out, one of Chiho’s ex-coworkers was looking for a new rental so we rented it to them for a year. We’ll test the waters for a sale next year. Of course, since the dollar took its big plunge against the yen, maybe waiting is a good idea.

Furniture for sale (3)

One more time, here's another list of what we have for sale:

• Glass angel table - $125
• Vanity table with mirror - $150 SOLD
  
• White bench with storage - $135
• Blue china hutch or curio cabinet - $135
• Off-white end table/cabinet - $50
• 48" round center post table - $500
• Magnavox 27" TV - $25
• Black oval free-standing mirror - $40

Our spot in Japan

We’re 99% sure that we’re going to take the rental condo that is the same building as Chiho’s parents. It’s a different floor plan than theirs and is slightly bigger. The apartment will be 100 square meters (or about 1,000 sq. ft.). That’s less than half the size of the Mukilteo house which is why we’re trying to sell so much of it. Here's the floor plan:

Standalone image: http://www.sbworks.com/images/apartment.jpg. I color coded and labeled the floor plan if you follow the link. The rooms that are "missing" doors actually have sliding doors.

It’s on the first floor of a fairly tall (14 story) building. It faces the ocean side of the complex but that’s not as good as it might sound. There’s a busy road right in front of the condo there. On the dining room & living room side of the house, there is a small yard, probably 30’ x 20’ that is fenced. Then there is a small berm with landscaping on it between our little yard and the street. The noise will probably be quite noticeable when the windows are open but we talked to the current renters and they say that the rooms are very quiet with the windows shut. Since the apartment has air conditioning, that will probably be workable. For the size of the apartment, there is a fair amount of storage. The kitchen is a little small (quite small in comparison to American kitchens) and that will take some real effort to get used to.

Right now, the company that owns and rents the condo is in the middle of refurbishing it after the previous renters moved out. I should be able to see the inside of it in a week or two and I’ll make sure to post pictures.

One month in...

I’ve now been living in Japan for one month and I’m still enjoying myself. Where we’re going to live, Makuhari (幕張), does feel like it’s a long way from downtown but I think I can handle that. The commute, if I really hurry and hit the trains perfectly, is 75 minutes (one hour and fifteen minutes) and that’s quite a bit longer than my old trip to downtown. However, I do break up the morning commute with a stop for coffee and Japanese practice.

One thing that I am really enjoying is that there has been almost no weekend work and everyone in the office says that weekend work is extremely rare. At ISOutsource, evening and weekend work was billed at a higher rate and, since you got a percentage, it was pretty common to do it. I guess I never noticed how much energy that evening and weekend work took. My weekends in Japan end up as quite relaxing and recharging.

As another plus, the office is a business-casual office so I don’t have to wear a suit and tie. That was the one thing from my Seattle lifestyle that I figured I would have to give up. Since the Japanese summer can be pretty brutal, I’m glad that short sleeve shirts are okay and suit jackets can be left in the closet.

I guess I’m still in the early part of “cultural adjustment”, though. I’ll have to write again in a couple of months to be sure.

EMC SAN - Nice hardware but...

At the new office, we have several really big EMC fiber channel SANs. We have it configured in a fairly complicated, high-availability way. Each server has two HBA controller cards and each HBA is connected to redundant storage controllers over Cisco fiber channel switch. This installation is expensive but the performance is excellent. The hardware is top notch and it's automated failover features are really solid. The EMC hardware engineers seem to to have their head screwed on straight.

But... but... but... What moron wrote their software?

To run an EMC SAN, you need to configure settings on the storage controller, use a client side software to mount the volumes, and then manage the backups with another software suite. That doesn't sound to bad, right?

The storage manager software is a Java based website that using LDAP authentication (yea... you don't need another password). To use the SAN, you create RAID groups by selecting the disks that should be included, then you define LUNs inside the RAID group, then assign the RAID group to a storage group, and then assign the storage group to a client. Then you turn clockwise three times, throw salt over shoulder, and (if all goes well) the LUN is available to the client.

I've actually simplified the steps, believe it or not. At the end of this, you get a LUN that acts like a disk to the server side operating system. It has a really useful name like LUN138 but you can assign something more human readable like "ExchangeServer01-StorageGroup1" or whatever. That will make your SAN Management easier (you would assume).

Now, let's more the client side. On the HBA fiber card, there is a world wide name (similar to the MAC address) and there is a way to assign a human-readable name like ExhchangeServer01-HBA1 instead of long hexadecimal string (which should make things easier, you assume). Once you have everything set there you flip back the the SAN manager to register the HBA card. And, of course, you can't read the human-readable name. All you get is the world wide name and you have to flip back and forth to figure out which 20+ character hexadecimal number belongs to which card.

After you get registered on the SAN, you load software on the client to mount the volumes. This client side software does not use LDAP. Instead, it uses a locally controlled password. Once you find out the password and load the software, it scans the storage groups available to the client and displays the LUN "ExchangeServer01-StorageGroup1"...... Well, no - it displays this long 20+ character hexadecimal number that you've never seen before. If you're only mounting one ore two that's not a big deal, but if you are putting in five or six that can be kind of annoying. To make it worse, these LUNs show up in Computer Management as Disk1, Disk2, Disk3, etc. and there is no other useful information as to which disk is which LUN.

So here's a scenario: you create four LUNS for four Exchange storage groups on one Enterprise server and you would like to mount the LUNs in a particular pattern. To make the LUNs match a pattern, you will need to flip between three different windows comparing hexadecimal strings to decide which disk in the computer management window belongs to which LUN. Wouldn't it be nice if the EMC software could read the EMC created human readable tags in the EMC storage system?

We haven't even gotten to the backup system. If your are rolling out a couple of servers with 5 or 6 mounted LUNs per server, you head is already hurting so make sure you take a long break before starting the next step.

Coffee would probably be a good idea.

EMC Replication manager uses cluster-by-cluster snapshotting to create a backup very quickly. You can snapshot a dozen 200 gigabyte LUNs simultaneously and it will take about a hour / hour and a half. Pretty slick, I suppose but (again) the software experience leaves something to be desired.

But, before you frustrate yourself with Replication Manager, you have to dive back into the storage manager. To make a replica, you need a backup LUN that has an identical cluster count and cluster size. And, of course, there is no "Create new LUN with these settings" or "Make replication LUN" option so you have to do it manually. If you are one cluster off, the replication will fail so you better write and type carefully. Go ahead, make a human readable name for the LUN - it won't do any good but it will make you feel better.

After you put the LUN in the storage group assigned to the Replication manager, you can then move to the Replication Manager software. You'll need another password for this, too. Another local password, of course. Oh, and you might as well make a service account with domain administrator access now, you'll need it later. Also, don't ever (never, ever) change the password on that account.

So, you logon the Replication manager, add the new LUNs to a storage group (no, not the storage manager storage group, a replication storage group) , assign it at name (no, it won't pick up the other name you already gave it), create an application group that defines the source LUN and give it a name (no, of course it won't pick up the name you already gave it), and then create a job (and, yes, you need to give the job a name). After you jump through all these hoops, it will create a Windows Scheduled Task to run the replication job.

Yep, you read that right. This expensive, complicated, high end software uses the incredibly unreliable Windows task service.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. The replication service uses a high-numbered TCP port (up around 65000) to manage the service. Ports in that range are not reserved and get dynamically assigned by a variety of programs on temporary basis. Since these high numbered ports are a free-for-all, most programmers make allowances conflicts. You saw this coming, didn't you - EMC's programmers did not make allowances for conflict. For example, an MMC console open in one session of one server that gathers information from another server (Exchange System Manager, for example) and that MMC decided to use the EMC replication manager port. This will make the snapshot fail completely. To top it off, failed snapshots are not written over so if you have some sort of overwrite pattern going, that pattern will probably fail the next time it's run, too.

And, you'll love EMC's fix - make a registry edit on every single server that blocks other programs from using that port. They aren't even offering us a script to make the change.

Are all of the EMC programs written by their summer interns or something? It's amazingly bad. These guys need to read The Inmates are Running the Asylum or Joel on Software to learn how to program useful stuff....

Finally sold the PT Cruiser

My brother-in-law Clay managed to sell the PT Cruiser for me just yesterday and got a good price. That took way longer than I thought it would considering how popular PT Cruisers are in general. I figured that would only take a couple of weeks but it took almost two months to sell.

I hope it's easier to sell the Jetta...

Noise pollution in Tokyo

On thing I've noticed in the Tokyo area, there seems to be a LOT of unnecessary noise. There are pre-recorded warnings, beeping trucks, and even silly recorded bird song at rail stations. Every escalator has a "please watch your step" warning and many trucks have "Be careful, this truck is turning right(or left)" messages that play when they turn on their turn signal. I don't remember as much of it when I was in Japan in the '90s. It must have come later.

Furniture for sale (2)

We've reposted the items we didn't sell

• Daipason 6ft baby grand - $5900
  
• Angel Table - $135
• Vanity Table with Mirror - $150
• White wood bench with storage - $135
• Blue china hutch - $135
• Very large black mirror - $200
• Magnavox 27" TV - $40
• Antique-finished white cabinet - $60
• Aluminum outdoor furniture set (tables, four padded chairs, and umbrella) - $175
• 48" round, center-post table - $500

We have a bunch of other stuff, too...

Lost some weight

I managed to loose four kilos (nine pounds) since I arrived in Japan. It's kind of surprising since Chiho's parents seem intent on stuffing me full of food every day. I think it's all of the walking you just have to do in Tokyo.

... of course, I still need to loose another fifteen kilos or so to get even vaguely close to the weight I was when I got out of the Navy. Wish me luck...

Packout date: April 17th

We've picked the pack-out date for the move. The moving company will show up on April 17th to pack all of our stuff and then load it on to the containers on the 18th. Chiho will need some help the week before but probably more the weekend after. We'll have lots of things that we aren't bringing that will need to be organized and taken care of. Volunteers welcome...

Train delayed this morning

On my way into work this morning the train was delayed about 15 minutes because a big tarp from a construction site blew onto the tracks. Since the express trains are about 10 minutes apart and there are locals scattered in between, that 15 minute delay is going to cause a lot of pain for the train company.

I bet there are some irritated JR officials that are going to have a harsh word with the construction company this morning.

Japanese class at work

There is a nice benefit at the new office - free Japanese classes. There are five levels of the classes and each of them is one hour/twice a week. I'm taking an fairly advanced class (4th level out of 5) and it is really tough. The teach thought I was too advanced for the level below so I'm taking the next one up.

I hope I can keep up...

外人は日本語を話すできない?

I've been finding an interesting gai-jin (foreigner) effect today. It seems that Japanese people automatically assume that foreigners don't speak much Japanese. At restaurants or stores, when I start to speak in Japanese, they seem to have a lot of trouble understanding me, even though I am quite sure that I'm pronoucing things correctly. It seems that they are expecting me speak English or something.

Forging a global team

Now that I've been working for a couple of weeks, it's interesting to see the group dynamics of a global team. Since the key players in my group are on Tokyo time, Paris time, and East Coast US time, the communication problems are interesting. We currently have a weekly telephone meeting on Wednesdays and the only time that works is 9:30pm Tokyo which ends up late in the afternoon in Paris, and early in the morning in America. That's kind of annoying for us, especially since these staff meeting run about two and half hours.

But the time zones aren't really that bad. We seem to have the usual collection of highly-opinionated techie types that gather in any large IT group, though. There seems to be "territories" of responsibilities (i.e. "my data center is mine", "all the MOM servers are his problem", etc.). That was a bit of problem at ISOutsource, I suppose, but it seemed to be pretty minor. Unfortunately, it seems to be interfering with smooth operations. We have enough people in enough places to do a true follow-the-sun model (I can work on things at 10am that is the middle of the night in Paris) but we can't pull that off if people don't want others working on "their" servers.

It will be interesting to see how things will work out. The managers have been kind of disconnected from things because they have been working on a big reorganization. That process is pretty much done so we'll see what changes in the next couple of weeks.

VMWare limitations

The new office uses VMWare's ESX infrastructure for the vast majority of their servers and there are a lot of cool features about the product. We have a fiber channel SAN at the data center and all four VMWare ESX host computers can view and see the same volumes. This allows you to move the VMs on the fly from host to host if one of the VMs needs more processor power or something. you can use the same trick, called VMotion, for maintenance. You can slide the VMs off of one host, patch and reboot, and the move them back without any downtime.

However, I am firmly convinced that there are a couple of limitations:

• Domain Controllers do not work well as virtual machines. All DCs should be actual servers.
• SQL 2000, SQL 2005, and other databases should only be run on actual servers.

The company a whole has also decided that all back-end Exchange servers should be actual servers instead of virtual ones. I haven't experimented with that to decide if I agree.

We have two Microsoft MOM 2005 database servers and a couple of other databases for web-apps, all of which are virtual servers. They have been nothing but trouble. We have been adjusting virtual CPU and RAM settings, changing the ESX host settings, and have been trying every trick that VMWare recommends to us and they all run like crap. At low loads, everything is fine but as soon as the SQL load increases, the performance gets very bad, very quickly.

So, save yourself some pain and make sure every DC and every database server is running on real hardware.

No crackberries at the office

At ISOutsource, we all had Blackberries as our primary e-mail tool and that always-on, always-ready access to e-mail got really addicting. My new company does not use Blackberries but they do support Windows Mobile devices. I was curious about why they only did Windows Mobile and it turns out the Blackberry support in Asia is pretty limited. The low-pixel count screens that the Blackberry uses (which give it such a good battery life) do such a horrible job of displaying Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters that they just aren't popular. Also, the company wants to only have one set of infrastructure.

But Windows Mobile hasn't caught on much in Japan and was only really just available last year. The various cell phone providers don't seem very interested in them and the phones are kind of expensive. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to the Blackjack that is available in the states. The phone they gave me is from a hardware manufacturer called HTC. It's a slider style where the keyboard slides out the side. I snagged this picture from the HTC site:

It works fairly well but there is one irritation that you can't tell from the photo. The brick is amost 3/4" of inch thick. So the face plate is quit a bit narrower than a blackberry but that thickness makes it really awkward to carry around. for all intents and purposes, you can't put it in a coat pocket. The belt clip/pouch thing that comes with it is pretty bad, too - almost unusable. I leave it by my laptop bag, instead, but that doesn't work for the weekend.

The screen is really good, though. I've installed Microsoft Reader and copied over a bunch of free e-books from the Baen Free Library and read them on the way to work. That nice, bright screen comes with a price, though. I rarely can go more than 24 hours on a battery charge. I do have a spare battery but that is something else to carry.

Access to e-mail is pretty smooth, though. The screen is wide enough to read and write a reasonable e-mail. The full access to the company e-mail is pretty nice, of course, so that satisfies my crackberry addiction.

What I actually do

Both Chiho and Chiho's mom have been asking for some sort of short description of what it is I actually do at work. When someone asks them "so, what kind of job did Matt take in Tokyo" they can't actually answer. All technology workers have probably come across this problem because it doesn't distill into a single word like "lawyer" or "architect". I suppose if I was a programmer, I could come a lot closer to a single word description.

My group is called the Collaboration Engineering Group (CEG) and we make sure that e-mail, chat, and SharePoint systems are up and running. What I do is broken into these parts:

• Respond to problems that people are having with e-mail, chat, or SharePoint
• Maintain, backup, test, and patch the 30+ servers that run those systems
• Plan for improvements and major changes in these systems

It is probably a 20%/30%/50% split at the moment between those parts.

I thought I would be able to write more often...

I am definately not posting enough on this thing. I'll try to get better at posting but I'm still not completely adjusted to the fact that I don't get home from work until 7:30 or 8:00pm and basically go immediately to sleep. It's odd how long it takes for your body and mind to get back in rythm.

Chiho's flying out to Japan today and will be staying for about ten days. We should be able to finalize the apartment arrangements on this trip and she's already scheduled a couple of evenings out with old friends. There is also a national holiday in Japan next Thursday so we can goof off somewhere then, too. She annouced to the office that she's leaving the company on April 4th and we've picked April 17th as the day to start the official pack-out. Still lots of stuff to deal with before the pack out. After the pack out, too. I have a feeling that we'll still have things left after the final move that we'll need help dealing with.

We haven't got much traffic on selling the house so it's out on the rental market now. We're using the RPM/RPA guys and if you know anyone who wants to rent, pass around this website address: http://www.rentseattle.com/RentDetail.aspx?ID=1009

I'll try to write more in the morning about the job and other stuff but I'm starting to zone out for now...

Furniture for sale

Prior to leaving Seattle, we have a bunch of stuff to sell. Most of it is posted on Craig's List and I'll be putting the rest up when I get pictures:

• Angel table $135
• Small angel side table $15
• Small vanity table with mirror $150
• White storage Bench $135
• Blue china hutch $135
• Blue, tall, skinny chest of drawer $175
• Very large black mirror $200
• Dark wood hall table/sofa-table $70
• Green padded bench $40 - we sold this one
• Magnavox 27" TV $40
• Stereo Sony $60
• Antique-finished white cabinet $60
• Aluminum outdoor furniture set (tables, four padded chairs, and umbrella) $175
• Outdoor chaise lounge $150
• 48" round, center-post table $500
• White curio cabinet $175 - we sold this one

Two weeks in and things are going well

I just wrapped up the second week of the new job and things are going well. I'm pretty much up to speed on current systems and procedures and am starting to get going on things. They are doing a really big Microsoft Office SharePoint Server roll out for the organization and I think I can help out there the soonest. I'm still getting use to the differences in size, though. Also, the office tends to be start-late/run-late kind of office where most of the work happens late into the evening and I've been an early morning person for a while. It seems unusual to get to the office 9am and only 10% of the office is in. I think it's a natural reaction to coordinating things with the Paris HQ since they only overlap Tokyo in the late afternoon.

The commute to work isn't bad. I experimented with a couple of different routes and I picked the one that is a little slower but less crowded. Part of the trip is on the Yurikamome ゆりかもめ line that most people think of as a "toy" train to get to the Odaiba お台場 area. It's a little slow but I can sit the whole time. Door to door, the trip takes about an hour if I hurry, but most of time I sit at Toyosu 豊洲 for coffee and take some time to study Japanese.

The company offers free Japanese lessons so I've started taking a Tuesday & Thursday class at lunch time. My current skill is in between their current classes so I'm taking the higher level one which is really, really, tough.

Simple photo that describes the limit of the Mac AIR

Check on the picture at http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/03/airlegance.html. That is probably the simplest description of the one big limitation of the Air...