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.