Stephen J Burke

I remember being 8 years old when all of the kids on the street got together to watch our first 3D movie. It was awesome. A pile of kids in one room with red and blue glasses on all to capture this cool technology. I don’t remember the movie. But what I do remember is that I didn’t get 3D at the time. It didn’t work well enough for me to know whether or not I was seeing something or I wasn’t.  3D has progressed over the years, the glasses have become polarized, but my entertainment value still remains.

I went and saw Avatar in 3D at an IMAX theater.  Yes it looked cool.  Yes you have to go see it. If you are going to see it, it should be done in 3D in IMAX.  Just to clarify, No, I don’t want that in my living room. We were there, in that environment, for that experience.  It was a moment, and now it has passed.

I might be the only one who doesn’t want 3D in my living room.  There were some large players announcing larger investments coming from CES this week. In case you weren’t paying attention here are the highlights to pay attention to.

The Discovery Channel, IMAX and Sony huddled together to deliver the first 3D channel. Press Release

ESPN will be delivering a 3D sports channel. This isn’t a stretch, as they have broadcast 3D events before, as they broadcast college football last year in 3D.

Sony is pushing the platform hard, bringing 3D televisions and throwing the 3D label on top of the rising BluRay name.

Intel had a demo of a 3D television without the glasses.  It’s a move in the right direction, but far from living-room ready.  Intel 3D Demo – Engaget

Panasonic makes a 3D camera you can buy for a mere $21K, if you don’t want to duct tape two normal cameras together.  Though it was not new to CES this year, it has been “officially announced for pre-order” making it still not available.

Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

What does all of this lead to with the innovation and adoption of 3D into my house?  Absolutely nothing. The industry is scrambling to create this false notion that 3D is the next evolving technology and that I need it.  On the list of things I need right now, 3D isn’t it.  You see, 3D has been around most of my life. Yes it has evolved from anaglyph systems to the polarized systems, but I don’t care.

It is depressing to hear that predominant trend for CES in 2010 is 3D.  It means the industry is in trouble so much that it is grasping for anything, falling back on this old friend they have been with for 30 years for support.  It isn’t a surprising move, only depressing. When Panasonic expects to sell one million sets in the first year alone, I almost feel bad for them.  Unless people buy the TV and it happens to have 3D in the feature list, I can’t imagine a flock of anybody stating that they now need 3D.

Will 3D ever capture my attention?  Ever since Princess Leia was able to project herself out from a little droid, I expected that next evolution of technology to show up. I don’t watch many sports now, but if I could fill my living room with the football game or put myself inside the car for a race, with the ability to look around me, you will have my attention.  The current definition of viewing the scene straight ahead and watching for objects to draw my eyes closer than normal “is not the 3D I am looking for”.

Until that day arrives, I wanted to give the industry a few pieces to help gain my attention again. Consider them requirements I will judge against when you bring us your next great 3D revelation.

1. I don’t need to wear apparel to make it happen.  I don’t have a pair of sunglasses that last more than a year, so buying in to some special polarized glasses in order for me to appreciate a show, isn’t going to happen.

2. Keep the cost jump to 3D under 15% of the cost of the hardware I was going to buy anyway.  It might allow you to sneak the hardware into my room if I have to buy the TV anyway.

3. I better be able to get up, walk to the fridge and have the same experience when I look back at the television than when I am in your perfectly measured optimal viewing position.   I don’t watch TV from a perfect “one seat” only position.

Considering my Avatar movie experience was the first time back to a theater in a long time, keep focused on making that 3D experience only get in a theater.  I don’t go to the theater any more, because it is better to watch everything in my living room.  I don’t have to wait long for movies to hit the shelves, so the only thing you can hope for is to offer something in the theater that I can’t get at home.

2010 is lining up to be the year of the PS3, at least for me. I bought in to the Playstation 3 when it first came out in 2006, and have been waiting for the egg to hatch. I finally feel the platform has reached the maturity level that it needs to be at in order to increase it’s adoption rate into the homes of America. At least I hope it does, since it makes it much more fun than playing alone.

Source: Seattle PI Blogs

XBox 360 Equation

Let’s get the Xbox 360 discussion over with. I am not comparing it to the PS3 for functionality, as they are both attractive platforms. I would like an Xbox 360 for the handful of propitiatory games, yet I can’t bring my wallet out to make it happen. For one, the subscription based, online playing bothers me. If I am going to pay a monthly fee to play online with your console, then why not subsidize the cost of the console? The other looming problem I have is paying good money for a piece of hardware that is going to break. Take the 54% failure rate of the console and that directly equates to a 10% chance I will use my money to buy one. Give me a 3 year 1 day replacement warranty and subsidize the monthly online gaming cost, and I will buy in.

Observed Adoption Rates

I have to ignore the online adoption statistics and tell you what I see. I see the PS3 making it into the homes of my friends and my family members, even if they don’t have a gamer in the house. This year alone, my PS3 friends list tripled, as neighbors, co-workers and friends found their way to the Playstation platform. That growth rate, while remaining un-published, will be come viral. It was the same generation that pushed the PS2 into the longest life selling console.

The Core of Gamers

I had one main requirement that the PS3 seems to fill. I want to be able to go online, connect with my friends, wherever they may be, and escape together into a game. I want to be able to team up with my friends once a week to and go in to shoot some 8 year old kids who have somehow made it into the M rated first person shooter world. I want to connect with my surrogate nephews across the country and help them make it through the mining level of Little Big Planet, laughing with them along the way. I want to be able to race the the tracks with my team for One Lap 2010, learning the turns of the tracks before I ever step foot on them. Oh, and I don’t want to pay extra to connect.

The Video

We have begun to amass a collection of BlueRay discs over the past couple of years. We are lucky to have a nice television, and the BlueRay format really makes a huge difference on the screen. I am now looking to buy another BlueRay player for the house, and it is really difficult to not buy a second PS3, given all of the additional functions it brings.

Netflix caught up with the PS3 console and delivered a disc that allows any netflix subscriber the ability to play their streaming movies through the console. I will predict that it won’t take long into 2010, before this gets built into the console itself.

PS3 Media Server

If you have a new PS3, you have a contractual obligation after reading this to check out PS3 Media Server. It is an open source project to deliver all of your content on your home computer, through your PS3. The most impressive part about it is, that it just works.

It can be a pain to play different videos on your computer, needing to download things like CODECs and drivers to make sure that the particular video clip will actually play right. The beautiful part about the PS3 media server is that it will transcode the files for you. Meaning it will take that DIVX media video, chew it up, and spit it back out to your PS3 in a format it will play, all over your network.

Now you have a console that can, play the hard drive of music you have, stream the video clips of the family vacation or create a slideshow of pictures on the screen, without moving a single file.

The Wii Factor

The Wii serves a purpose, which is to allow anybody who is not a gamer, introduce themselves to the world of video games. I have a Wii and bought it on release day. I have not turned it on in over a year. The lack of an immersive online experience combined with the sub-par graphics make the system unattractive to play when given my alternatives. I keep it around for the kids and visiting non-gamers to play.

2010 Predictions

It is that time of year where people put predictions on the table. The Wii will grow in sales, still adopting the non-gamer crowd. The growth rate of the PS3 will be exponential for the first time in 4 years. For Sony it will not surpass the other consoles, but it will stabilize, allowing the platform to reach some more longevity goals. What does Sony need to do to make that happen? Bring back the compatibility to the PS2 games in the PS3 console. All of your PS2 owners with new televisions will be ready to make the move, being able to still play the PS2 games will give them the push they need.

Today Ustream released an application that allows for live streaming of video for the iPhone. If you are not familiar with Ustream at all, the concept is rather simple.  You plug in a webcam to your computer, setup an account on Ustream and you are broadcasting live online, allowing any number of people to tune in.  Take that functionality, and put it into the pockets of over 30 million iPhone owners and you have just turned the planet into a live show itself.   Sort of…

The app will only work with the iPhone 3G and the 3Gs, which makes sense when it will not work at all over the EDGE network.

While this functionality in a smartphone is not ground breaking technology, nor is it the news. The news is that UStream was able to get Apple to allow the app into the iTunes store.  The larger news is that AT&T let it sneak by, the same week they were publicly denouncing the fact that there data network is in trouble, and urging customers to use data sparingly.

My advice if you have an iPhone, download this application as soon as possible.  I would not be surprised if the news brought an unexpected level of awareness and it would not be beyond Apple to yank the app out of the store.

Trials and Impressions

I heard that this application came out by listening to my podcast on the way to work.  While I was too excited to know that I could have this leve of connectivity in my pocket, I am afraid I would have to wait until I got home to try it out.  You see I work exactly 1.5 miles away from the invisible line that flips me over from a 3G network to an EDGE network on AT&T.  I have to tell you AT&T, it will be in your best interest to bring me a 3G network out to Newark, NY in the not too distant future.

The application itself is quick and slick.  My first test was over my home WiFi, just to see if the functionality was there. The video buffers in the phone, and even has the option to record locally and upload if you are not tied into a 3G signal or perhaps in need of a retake. While I didn’t wait around long enough to get anybody in the chat room, the interface even has the comments posting up on the screen from people chatting.

I did turn off the WiFi and record a quick video and the quality was equally as good.  This is a video walk around narration of our ridiculous Christmas Tree we have in the house. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the quality did not degrade, and will be excited to try it out when there is actual light around to do the camera justice.

While my videos are rather tame in comparison to what is possible, imagine the broadcast capabilities.  I am excited to think of how we can leverage this on One Lap of America 2010.  The largest negative of course being the AT&T network support around the country.

I did mention this technology was not new, only new to the iPhone.  Perhaps one of the larger mobile broadcasting applications is from Kyte, which has been around longer and may be more mature for anybody who has a phone compatible with that software.

It would be hard for me to ignore the topic of disaster recovery after these past two weeks. I was able to witness an organization react to their own disaster while I played the active role in a rather blind recovery process. It was a powerful perspective to be in, to help understand what really is needed from having a good disaster recovery plan.

I rarely find a company that has not confused the actual role of a disaster recovery plan. We know we need it, we think we know it what it is, yet most companies over-think the process, muddying the discussion with what really should be a business continuity strategy.   The disaster recovery plan should be a simple, yet focused outline of what keeps your organization running.  As the person yeilding the power to bring you back to a functional organization, I need to know where to focus my energy and how much energy to exert.  What departments make the organization run? (psst, trick question, it’s all of them) Identify the crucial resources of each department (psst, risk analysis model). How long can they operate without those resources? (psst, recovery prioritization model).

While you have toiled for hours to create what you consider to be the perfect plan for that perfect disaster, you missed one important step.  A disaster is something you can not plan for.  It wouldn’t be much of a disaster if you could, would it? Get your head out of “fire in the server room” or “plane in the building” scenarios and start with asking the important questions, like “what do we need to run this organization?”

Here are some easy signs to identify your disaster recovery plan needs revising.

You don’t have one. Don’t worry you are not alone. Many companies out there are still “really intending” to get to that disaster plan. The good news is, after the disaster, you will have all sorts of resources and attention put towards making one.  We are a reactionary culture and while the events of 9/11 were enough to shock most companies into putting attention towards a disaster recovery plan, we all react at different paces.  Give me a call after your disaster and we can talk because we all know you are too busy to sit down before hand.

You created the plan out of compliance. Mildly worse than not having one at all, is having one that isn’t really focused one what you need. Many companies don’t sit down to create a disaster recovery plan until some auditor tells them they need one.  Most resultant plans are structured to ensure compliance, not act as a usable resource when the disaster actually happens.  You will find yourself pulling out this document only confuses and delays an actually recovery process.

The auditing companies are either financial based or compliancy driven for some single objective. Come to the realization that you may be maintaining a surface level disaster recovery plan, along side of the one that will actually be useful in a disaster.

It goes unread. D day arrives, your disaster is upon you, and nobody reads the document.  Hopefully it is because you have been so involved with making such a solid plan, that you have it memorized.  Realistically you don’t look to the plan because it holds no pertinent information, it is outdated, or nobody knows how to find it anyway.

It is thick. Most people mis-apply the relevance to creating a disaster recovery plan. If you plan resembles the encyclopedia, then congratulations.  You have officially created a plan so detailed that nobody could actually follow it if they needed to.  Except for perhaps the one person who wrote it.

So you realize you may actually need to focus on a disaster recovery plan before the disaster.  Now the trick is to give you some easy tools to make it happen.  As I navigate my own organization through the following weeks of preparing a disaster recovery plan, I will publish up some very usable and basic guides for you to use in setting up your own plan. Consider it a usable guide to IT disaster recovery, apposed to the document you have creating dust now.

That is not to say there aren’t a lot of valid, powerful resources out there if you need a head start.

Disaster Recovery Journal

Guide to Rules and Regulations (compliance requirements)

NIST IT Contingency Planning

The resources available for how to create, modify, and optimize your resume seem to be growing exponentially with the unemployment rates.  During my “summer off” I took advantage of the resume workshop over at Rochester Works, thinking I would get a leg up on the new hot trends in resume building.  That particular class… was not for me.  Being the only person in the class with a resume was my first sign I was in trouble.

That workshop taught me that there are a lot of people worse off than I am.  Luckily I have been able to get a few very valuable tips through my communications with various positions, job recruitment agencies and the people who actually read your resume.

So I spent some time completely re-writing my resume, which oddly still doesn’t depict all of the things bouncing around in my head.  It does however give me a chance to add some  suggestions in how to trim up your resume, having gone through the process.  Add this to the Resume 101 class you can obtain on any corner unemployment line.

Titles – Your title is not your title. The title that you put on a resume should not the one bestowed upon you by your previous employer.  I had a lot of challenges explaining I was titled as supervisor, while my job responsibilities were above that of a manager or director.

URLs – The person reading your resume is going to read the name of the company, and probably type in the name of that company online to find out more about where you were.  Save them the step and put the URL in of the company.

Plain Text – Read your resume in plain text.  All of the formatting disappears when copy and paste it into some of the online job sites, so you may end up modifying the layout so it does not cause painful overlaps in the copy and paste process.

Dates – Under work experience, just list the year and not the month/year.  Overlaps and holes throw up flags and in an economy where everybody has been unemployed it is a flag everybody needs to avoid.

Things to Ditch (from the old school of resumes)

Get rid of the activities. If you get past the first round of eliminations these days, it won’t be because you are part of the local book club.

10 year cut off.  Get rid of any work that you did over 10 years ago, unless it is directly pertinent to the position you are applying for. Yes, I was an IT Manager for an international manufacturing corporation, but let’s not forget that I used to blow up balloons at the local party supply store. (I did do that AND had to wear a bow tie)

32 Flavors of a resume

If you are a seasoned professional, you are going to have a completely different resume for every job you apply for, and here is why.  The person reading the resume picks it up and starts with the process of elimination.  The longer they have to hunt to see if you match the minimum requirements, the closer your resume gets to the trash.  You want to change your format of the resume to get those items on the “qualifications” list, front and center and allow that person to put you in the pile that does not get recycled.

One resume to rule them ALL

The resume you send out still has to conform to the one page rule.  For somebody just out of school, this is pretty easy.  Throw in some life experience, and the resume that you create for your  job hunting is going to be ridiculously long.  Start by making one long resume, multiple pages if needed and write down everything you did.  I mean everything.  When it comes time to send in the resume, save off the document as a new name, specific to this position, and start chopping out everything that does not apply to this position until you hit the one page rule.  It is the quickest way I have found to not suck away your entire life re-writing each resume.

Tracking and Patience

Keep track of the resume you send out, and keep a copy of the job description.  Download something like PDFCreator and make a new PDF for every resume/job description you can.  The average turn around time for a resume to become a call back was well over a month.  By the time I tried to find the original job advertisement it was gone, so having a copy of the original somewhere is important.

At least 3 times I received a letter from the employers HR department, saying that I did not qualify for the position.  The following week I would get a call for an interview.  I still have the letter from the place I am working at now, telling me that I didn’t make the cut.  Be sure to have patience and if in doubt, send them more than they ask for.   Job searching is a 3 month process, so don’t wait around for your perfect resume to be created.  It will evolve more and more as time goes on, but getting your name out there is more important.

It is hard to remember back before 10 years ago before I unlocked my secret powers.  Just like in a comic book, a balance had to be made. While my sister seemed to yield amazing levels of insomnia, I gained the power of Narcolepsy. I didn’t exactly know it was happening until much later in life, even though there were always signs.

Many people say they are always tired.  This is different, trust me.

Unlocking the Powers

A few years after I met my now wonderful wife, she convinced me to go to a sleep clinic.   Try to appreciate that she is a medical nerd, while I retain my more classic computer nerd mindset. In 2003 I went to the University of Rochester Sleep Center, for an evaluation on sleep apnea followed by a side order of narcolepsy.

I have known many people now who have gone through the sleep apnea study, where they hookup about a million and a half test leads all over your cranium and tell you to get comfortable for a good night sleep.  The narcolepsy test starts that following morning, after all of you apnea people get to go home.  The premise is simple, they wake you up at 7AM, give you some breakfast, make sure you stay awake for 2 hours, then ask you to go back to sleep.  This cycle repeats itself 4 times throughout the day, while they monitor how fast your fall asleep, enter REM sleep, and all sorts of things that only the medical nerds appreciate.

Needless to say I passed with flying colors.

Stephen: “How many people are taking the Narcolepsy test?”

Nurse: “Just you and one other person”

Stephen: “Well, am I winning?”

Nurse: “We will see after this next one.”

We are given 20 minutes to try and fall asleep, then the monitor things once they start happening.  I do my thing, and then the nurse returns.

Nurse: not actually saying anything but silent and staring at me.

Stephen: “Why are you looking at me weird”

Nurse: “How do you do that?”

Stephen: “Do what?”

Nurse: “Fall asleep so fast”

Stephen: “I thought that is what we are supposed to do”

Nurse: “You have 20 minutes to start to fall asleep.  Some people start to fall asleep during the first 20 minutes, but then it can take an hour before we see them reach REM sleep.”

Stephen: “Well how fast did I make it there”

Nurse: “2 and a half minutes”

Stephen: “Sweeet… I knew I would win.”

While the normal person goes through 5 stages of sleep before they actually reach REM sleep, I bypass them all and jump right to the good stuff.  Not knowing what is happening, the condition actually does suck.  Knowing how to control it however has become an amazing tool to be able to yield.

Before my powers

Before diagnosing that  I had narcolepsy I didn’t know what was happening.  Simply falling asleep at un-intended times was not the only downside.   When you take away somebody’s sleep and they become irritable.  I mean really irritable. I could create mood swings that would rival any pre-menstrual cycles, all within the course of an hour.  It didn’t help my relationships with people, especially with my own family.  I would turn from a normal communicative person into somebody ready to lash out at the world, or whomever was closest.  So, I would strain my body physically to stay awake, sometimes pulling muscles, all in the attempt to use pain to stay conscious. It rarely worked.

For an infliction that revolves around forcing the body to sleep, it certainly didn’t like to stay asleep.  At best, I would make it four hours every night before waking up and needing to take an hour break from sleeping.  After that first cycle of sleep, I would hear everything in the room, able to wake up when a spider burped in the adjacent room.

College is the place for Narcolepsy

I slept through most of my education. Don’t worry, I learned more on my own than I ever did in a classroom. When I actually found a teacher that was stimulating my powers were not called upon, but throw me in a classroom talking about sociology, and I was a goner.   That being said, Narcolepsy was perfect in college. With spread out classes and time in between them, crashing and waking up for a class was easy. Stretch the powers a little and I could stay awake all night working on something, as long as I let my body crash on the books when the time came. I would wake back up in that same position later and keep studying.

I remember sitting in the front row of my college class, where the teacher was adamant about not sleeping. With the proper angle of a hat, and my pen in a writing position, I could come in and out of sleep throughout the class. To the front of the classroom I did not appear any less energetic than the rest of the lethargic class. I would be able to react to changes in tone in the class room and move in and out of sleep at will. I recall performing this maneuver one morning until I awoke a change in silence in the room, only to raise my head as the teacher launched an eraser to the person behind me, obviously not so skilled in the art. I remember the rest of the class looking at me, wondering why I didn’t get caught.  Sorry Mr Woughter, I was sleeping too.

Narcolepsy in the workplace

Sleeping before driving home after work.

While Narcolepsy may have fit into a perfect college model, it did not fair so well for corporate America. I found myself employed with different companies where my job was to be behind a desk on a computer. After 3 or 4 hours of the work day I was useless. I could not stay awake, period. I would need to put my head down and pass out, or suffer the entire afternoon, fighting to stay awake. I learned to drink coffee. It honestly has no effect, and still doesn’t to this day, but it gave me a nervous habit and a reason to get up from the desk.

So, I learned to adapt, somewhat. I would cram work into tighter deadlines that I invented, just to push my brain enough to not allow things to slow down. If I could keep busy and things were hustling, I would not feel the need to sleep. Throw in a meeting mid day however, and I might as well have brought a blanket and pillow along. I learned to stand up for meetings or to mix up activities for the day. Ideally, I would put my head down at lunch, needing to retreat to my car to avoid people waking me up for an entire 5 minutes.

The Super Power

Thank goodness I had this disease after the drug Provigil came around. Every day I take one pill, which fills that little switch in my brain, keeping it from shutting things down. That is not to say I can not take a good nap at will, but my body no longer shuts down at random times.  The drug itself does nothing to keep you awake like caffeine does.  Without provigil, my body tells me to sleep about every 3 to 4 hours. With the pill, I last through the day without my body shutting down. I try to entertain a reboot for 10 minutes at lunch, if I really want to be awake in the afternoon and into the night.

I reach REM sleep in 3 minutes. I sleep about 4-5 hours a night, realistically giving me more sound sleep in shorter amounts of time than most people. When morning comes, I wake up instantly, most of the time without an alarm. I feel no effects of waking up slow in the morning.

For road trips, I can drive those 3 or 4 hours then I start to get sleepy. If I am alone, I pull over, pass out for 10 minutes, wake up and keep driving, feeling more revived than most people have after 10 hours of sleep. Having somebody else in the car, I know to let them drive while I reboot.  It became very useful for our trip this year in One Lap of America, as I was able to stage my sleep in order to rotate the drivers seat when everybody else was getting tired.

The Kryptonite of Cataplexy

Every power has a negative side effect and for me it has been the occasional occurrence of cataplexy. Imagine listening to a conversation, ready to interject with a good joke that will bring a reaction, and upon delivery of the sentence alone, you feel like you stood up to fast and got light headed, almost blacking out.  Sound freakin weird, well it is, but that is cataplexy.  It only lasts for a second or two at most, but is enough to royally mess up a good punch line. Most people outside of myself never notice it.  You can take the Wikipedia definition as cataplexy is a sudden and transient episode of loss of muscle tone, often triggered by emotions.  That’s right, I want to shift emotional state and my whole body gives me a quick physical reboot.  Yeah that’s normal.

Awake

Now that I am awake more than the average human, with a condition that attempts to get me to sleep, I envy people who do sleep through a night.  That being said, I am grateful that I am already awake and moving, able to get more done before most people wake up in the morning.  Perhaps life will slow down enough some day where I can sleep every four hours, but for now I will enjoy the advantage I seem to have over the rest of the population.

A few beers at the Seneca Lodge Sunday night and the Monday morning wakeup came early.  The word for this entire trip will be COLD.  It could have been negative 20 for all I know, but I know it was cold.   Tires were cold, making my limited tread feel like grease, and I found myself huddled in the car instead of wandering the paddock.  The cold air however was like cat nip to the turbo, bringing it to a new heightened state of preparedness.  No worries of over heating and no heat saturation on intercoolers today.

I made it through registration to find out that Tim was my instructor, a position he got without even requesting.  It is hard being in the driver seat with Tim instructing.  Tim knows how I drive and some of my areas I need help on, so like an annoying personal trainer, he makes me work harder into those areas and easily finds my faults.  Where I have a passive approach in a lot of areas, Tim will get me to drive the car in harder than I normally would, watching how I handle the situations.

There is one piece missing however, and that is Tim hasn’t driven this car.  This is where I would “monolog” for about 30 minutes praising the engineers at Mitsubishi.  I will summarize however by saying that I am not even close to pushing this car.  For the early sessions I sandbagged the brakes, mostly because I was on questionable tires and it was cold.  That leads into the highlight, which was making Tim cringe.   We received the late pass signal going into turn 1 after we had some healthy speed out of the front stretch.  Appreciating the late pass, I wanted to make sure it was not in vein, so dove the car towards the corner and hit the gas.  Tim moves into a position that resembles a cat, trying claw for traction before heading into the water.  A tight squeeze of the brakes and the car drops into the corner effortlessly, I reset angles for exit and nail the gas.

The brakes bring a tear to the eye.  No really, you lay into those things and you almost loose consciousness.  It is freakin sweet.   I can’t convey how much more braking I have to the guy sitting in the passenger seat, so it takes a longer time to gain their confidence in the car.

With some great sessions, I get the sign off to solo for the last session of the day and tick off some great laps.

The Track Walk

At the end of the first day of the Fall PCA event at Watkins Glen, they setup a track walk. It really was a drive to each turn, hop out and talk about it, more than a walk.  There was no way we were going to survive the cold weather walk, so it was a great alternative.

After seeing the option to jump in the back of a cold pickup truck, I asked if I could just take some people out in the car.  Brilliant move on my part, I must say.  Besides rifling off pictures of the car on the track, it had a heater that was blessed by the turbo gods that day, making the trip out there a little less painful.

The angles of the track are so drastic, yet you never recognize them behind the wheel at 140.  The surfaces of the track are deadly to understand.  They must have had a sale on sealer for some of the pavement areas.  Being able to see the textures of the different surfaces put some better understanding in how to approach some of the lines and offered some alternatives for the wet weather.

While Jim talked about each turn, I was glad to hear he agreed that a lot of the “suggestion” cones were mis-placed on the track.  I have found myself moving the turn in points to get later into the turns going both into the laces and out of the off camber.

The Reliability Factor

I had some lofty goals this summer to make the car faster, most of which turned into dust with some financial strains.  While the car received a clean $10 air filter and a boost gauge which I already had in the garage, it was relatively stock.  The car did not miss a beat and was an absolute blast to drive.  The cold air helped the turbo coming out of “the boot” and it had enough to overtake most everything in the white group, with the exception of the Z06 running slicks.

The other two teammates however were not so lucky.  Chris had some turbo  problems into the second day, indicating that the larger turbo on the car was shot.  While we mocked that he received car number 13, it certainly was unexpected for what is a relatively new turbo setup.  He had to call off the last sessions of the second day, but got to drive the car home with no boost pressure.

The Galant VR4 has this tendency to remind everybody that it is an 18 year old car.  If it had a foot, you could almost visualize it kicking Tim square in the family jewels on a regular basis. While the rest of the paddock looks organized, the VR4 needs a constant barrage of work after every run, turning the area into a trama center.

The car has a blown head gasket.  While the temperatures remained cool, the pressure would add air to the system, pushing the coolant to the overflow bottle, causing Tim into a routine of dumping the overflow back into the radiator between sessions.  He ran low boost and made relatively tame laps.  It was a good thing because the water injection wasn’t working right anyway.

Tim cracked a rotor on the second session of the first day, and spent the lunch hour replacing the front rotors and putting things back together.  So that Tim could take a minute to eat the sandwhich we grabbed for him, I went to take the car out for a spin to bed the brakes in.  I made it 10 feet, the car died and wouldn’t start.  Long story short, the MPI fuse was blowing, a result of the O2 sensor wire melting and shorting out on the manifold.

The almost final straw is the throttle body breaking on the last session before we go home.  The bar that crosses the throttle body and mounts the throttle plate corroded through and snapped.  It looks like one screw was missing for a while, and it fatigued it’s way out with a little corrosion help over time. Through a miracle of DSM availability, the Archer Racing built Talon was on site with Greg Sterman becoming the savior of the day.  After the last run of the day and the talon in the trailer, Greg let Tim take his throttle body off, so that he could drive the car home.

After surviving that beating, we got on the road a few hours late for home, being the last to leave the paddock.  A few miles down the road, I told Tim to pull over because his chains were dragging on the trailer.  They were dragging because the trailer hitch assembly had let go, breaking the welds that held it to the rusted bumper.  This would be another kick in the jewels area, especially after surviving the throttle body incident.  After emptying the entire trailer on the side of the road and shoving it back into cars, an extension cord acted as a torsion bar to keep the hitch in place for the trip home.

If it were a horse, the car would have been put down a few times over.  Even Tim, who finds his pride in squeezing out the most bang for his buck, looked tired after this weekend.  That man needs an Evo for Christmas.

The PCA

The more I attend the events, the more I am impressed with how well they run the group.  Everything from coordinating food on the site to getting TSX Sports to make everybody a quality looking event shirt, it really is a bargain to get onto Watkins Glen.  While I don’t own a Porsche and probably don’t intend to in my lifetime, the group makes you feel like family.

They had a driving simulator company come out and show off a motion based simulator driving none other that Watkins Glen.  They should have picked a different track, because it felt off in some of the dimensions and I couldn’t drive it worth a crap.

Late Passing Drills

The PCA has adopted a more progressive, say it realistic, approach to track driving. The early run groups (white, green) were put through 10 minutes of “late passing” drills, in which it enforced slower cars to give late pass signals into turns and faster cars to learn to adapt to a different turn approach and exit.   In the fall, this didn’t exactly go smooth.  With some feedback from last time and some clear instruction in what was expected, this turned out to really progress things along.

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It's all about the pens

Every year Dox Electronics puts on a good sized trade show in the Rochester area called Hackerfest.  Although it is perhaps the worst name possible for what amounts to be a trade show of Dox security vendors, the name is what draws in the attention of area companies to attend.   The name is so bad, they even had a contest this year for people to pick a different name. Unfortunately this would ultimately destroy the marketing angle they have by using Hackerfest, as it sounds more like an open gathering of security professionals, which in reality it is not.

I have been to many of the Hackerfest events over the years, for one simple reason.  There is little going on in the area that gets me out of the office for a valid reason.  I sort of dissolved that reason this year, by being the wild card attendee without a company name on my badge.  I owe Maggie and the group at Dox for putting me in the attendance list, while I transition between companies.  It did however give me the chance to assess really who does come out to the event and what can be taken away from it.

The people who go to Hackerfest are not the people who need to be there.  The majority of people there are in the IT department by chance, have accepted their position of out inheritance or perhaps were absent that day when they drew names.  Among the crowd are a handful of actual IT professionals, not necessarily identified by title, but already know what they are doing. Whom everybody knows should be there are the layers of upper management of small businesses.  These would be the decision makers don’t have the time to hear that their laptop is a walking lawsuit, that they should just leave the door open and still find all of this security talk rather cumbersome if their password isn’t the name of their kid.  Without their understanding that security isn’t a single focus item or that the entire organization needs to be involved, even the best laid plan will fail.

The Good Talks

This year they had Chris Nickerson return to the stage by demand. He relates to that small piece of the audience that already knows what is going on and provides entertainment for the rest of the people who live with their heads in the sand. Give him a google search and watch some of the Tiger Team videos to get the idea.  Chris is easy to spot, as he looks like the guy who does not belong and has a permanent case of jet lag.  I caught him in the hallway, shook his hand with a thank you for showing up, and let the Dox officials take him away before he hit the stage.

So what is the large change in security and keeping the business safe?  I will have to agree with Chris’s keynote speech and say “nothing”.  I have always attested that security is like a large strategy game, with multiple layers in place to protect your key assets.  It is the companies who throw all their money into a technology to secure one door, yet leave another open that don’t quite get the game.

Schedule of Events

After the keynote, you must choose from 8 different presentations with 4 slots.  Sometimes you choose well and sometimes you don’t.  I met Todd Wilson from Cisco in the hall, and after knowing more about VOIP than most humans should be subjected too, I opted not to go to his seminar.  I know that was a good one to go to, without even walking in the room.  I have also known Todd since the lab days at RIT, making the conversations go beyond just a sales pitch into the technology behind the magic.  I would recommend if you ever want to talk about VoIP to insist to get Todd to sit down for the conversation.  Just remember he only wears a Cisco hat.

Over Capacity Seating

The second seminar was saved by Sophos after a song and dance by Blue Coat. For some reason, Blue Coat and Sophos shared a booth, and we ended up seated in the room which turned into standing room only for the presentation.  The Blue Coat presenter was good, but danced around a myriad of higher

concepts that nobody really cared to hear.  The Sophos guys were a little more in line with the presentation, but were tight on time.  Offering some visibility of the methods to step through a website attack, with actually demonstration, it was a welcome glimpse at defining what the industry really needs to see.

The last presentation of the day, I sat in on the WhiteHat seminar, which turned out to be really good. While scripted with virtual servers running to do the background work, we were presented with a step by step sql injection attack, and the methodology behind making it happen.   I think I fell asleep after he handed it over to the sales guy, but he did a good job helping visualize how easy it really is.

The Bad Talks

Some of the vendors that they send in are not prepared to sit in front of a room of technical people and give a presentation they usually show off to corporate slugs.   My first seminar I sat in with was ZixCorp who were covering email encryption.  Before my unplanned exit from Rotork, I was working with the DOD to setup certificate based email encryption.  I am pretty sure nobody finished that after I left, but it opened a perspective into what I would need out an email encryption solution.

Unfortunately the presentation would lead you to believe that this is the only natural step other than establishing point to point network connections between corporations. Their client does not approach a complete client to client encryption model, does not integrate with native corporate servers, there is no client for groupwise.  It does however lock you into this “elite” group of 17 million clients (read users) who were bought into the proprietary solution like a bad time share scheme.  So the only reason you will be looking at this will be because the guy you are doing business with demands it.  They certainly threw out the HIPAA buzzwords enough to understand who does buy in. In fairness ZixCorp might have a better product than expected, but they sent the wrong team to deliver the message to a technically savy group.

News Coverage at VMWare

The third seminar of the day I headed into VMWare.  I had a great experience talking to the VMWare experts years ago, and was ready to see them sit down and tear apart the new desktop virtualization approaches.  So was half of the attendance of the entire conference, as they packed the seats in tight.

Unfortunately what I received was less than what I could have obtained on the website, delivered not by VMWare, but from a Dox employee.  The attendance was so large, that it drew in the news crew, and all I could think of was out out of his league the presenter was.  Too much time was spent on the why, what and perhaps who could use desktop virtualization that it never dug far enough into the “how” section.  It instead brushed off the top of the topic.  I spent my time taking random pictures of my neighbors taking pictures.

The Show Items

DOX Team handing out Prizes

People need to understand that this is a one vendor show, as competition to Dox in the area is not really invited. I like Dox as a vendor, although I am not sure I have actually bought anything yet.  Ken Michaels is a terrible presenter, but gets the concepts and roles of IT in the organizations and is genuine about his infatuation with the technology.  He walks around with a pocket full of lock picks and has more of a firm grasp on where corporations needs to be than most of the vendors I have spoken with. He also has a loyal team behind him, making it a positive experience to do business with Dox.

Dox and the subsequent vendors offered up a huge list of door prizes.  Ken broke tradition by handing out the XBox 360 first, which I really could have used.  I did walk away with a $50 price from McAfee, so I can’t complain.  All of the give aways are at the end of the event, compelling most people to stay.  I still think it would be more effective to have drawings throughout the day on the hour, saving the large drawings for the end.

My Suggestions

I would pay to sit down with Chris for a beer.  Have a limited sign up security round table, with Chris spending more than 5 minutes in town, offsetting the cost to bring him in by having a buy in to have that time with him.

Have round tables for lunches based off of discussion topics, perhaps planned ahead.  Sitting with my “appropriate Dox representative”, which didn’t actually sit with, felt pushed.

Accept submissions for seminars from non-vendors. I realize the Dox interest to keep other vendors out, so pay some of the professors from RIT to come in and talk, or involve the area user groups.  After sitting through the ZixCorp presentation, I was ready to offer a presentation on Email encryption options.

Keep the name.  I am afraid it is a curse, but also the only marketing hope you have of keeping the momentum you have.

I have accepted a new position as the IT Coordinator for Wayne ARC.  While I do not take the helm until October 19th, I wanted to let people know I was going back to work.  After 12 years of growing with Rotork, I wanted to make sure I found a place that I not only wanted to work but needed my help.   The number of people who have been helping me to find a job has been overwhelming, even though I have ensured everybody that I don’t mind staying at home.

Wayne ARC is one of  57 NYSARC chapters in NY state, assisting people with developmental disabilities get help with job training, medical support, education, and a list of services related to community support.  From a technical scope viewpoint, Wayne ARC employes over 500 employees spread over multiple locations around Wayne County to bring their services to businesses and individuals. While they have been operating and supporting the community for many years, they have grown significantly in recent years.

I am excited about this position for many reasons.  For one, the thought of working for an organization whose premise helping people is such a positive feeling walking into the door.  I have always stated that I only want to help people understand how they can use technology to improve their lives. Having an organization that is open and focused on helping peoples lives already, makes my job easier.

There is a strong sense of community about Wayne ARC, making this strange welcoming feeling within the halls.  People are smiling and actually like being there, making it a little different than mainstream corporate America.

In a much lighter reason, the commute is awesome.  For those of you who know my automotive life, a good drive is pretty important for me. Having a good commute sets the pace for the entire day and being able to unwind in a nice drive home makes for a perfect drive.  I get to drive 30 minutes headed east through back roads and along the erie canal where there is no traffic.

I definitely did not mind the summer off, still have more projects at home than I can consider feasible, but proud to be back to work for a place that needs my help.

This weekend we headed up to the Adirondack Museum and on to Lake Placid for a weekend away trip. The hardest part about the trip is turning around and trying to figure out why we don’t live up there.  While they leaves are not quite in peak color yet, they are getting pretty vibrant and will be ideal in another week.

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