-- James Dillet Freeman, 1941
Sunday, April 28, 2002 10:17:18 PM Thursday the 18th at Bay LISA I had the privilege of watching Adam Sah of Addamark demonstrate his log analysis software. He started by reminding us system administrators of the general pains and roadblocks to analyzing most logs. The "logjam" most often appears in logs generated by high-volume applications, logs generated through network operations, and logs generated for network security. There are so many logs in system administrators' environments that they rarely get the full attention they deserve. The team at Addamark also recognized that there is usually too much and too varied data to fit in a single database. Their vision was to create a system that would involve no summaries, no samples, no data retirement, just the original logs. Their implementation has turned out to be a compromise, but a reasonable one that goes the route of several other log analysis systems I have seen. At least the demo showed that it's fast and compact. The original log is kept in gzipped format and may be left in place at the discretion of the system administrators. There are utilities to parse and load the logs into a Log Management System, which is essentially the database, although it is a collection of files organized in the Unix file system, in a proprietary format that allows rapid searching and analysis. Finally, there are querying and reporting utilities that can generate output suitable for desktop applications, including MS Excel, web-based applications, and browsers such as Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer. Adam demonstrated the utilities that took the gzip-formatted logs and extracted the data for analysis, and he demonstrated a simple command-line report generator. It appeared that the data extraction routines are essentially pattern recognition rules that rely on a utility like the GNU egrep command. The analysis routines are Perl scripts that contain embedded SQL commands, and the analysis engine is a proprietary utility that used the PostgreSQL query engine as its developmental starting point. It looks like the core development team at Addamark comes from U.C. Berkeley, although the company offices are in San Francisco. Larger issues for deployment include the infrastructure, which is currently envisioned to be Perl and SQL on Linux clusters. Adam discussed the concept of slice-based mirroring, or chain clustering, of the logging system, with auto-failover and capability for rolling upgrades. He also discussed the customization of the business rules that has been necessary for each major client, which has been a major stumbling block to the growth of many companies that have developed niche software in the past. Addamark is a little over a year old, has venture capital funding, and is hiring now. The company is looking for a sales engineer to deploy new sites, a performance engineer familiar with distributed parallel systems, and a release engineer who understands Perl and web services. The whole presentation struck me as an eye-opener, because while the press and many dot-com refugees have had the attitude that business was in the doldrums, Addamark is evidence that not every business is in the same boat as this thing called "business." While other companies were withering, this one was sprouting. Other companies were shutting their doors or retreating to the Rockies, while this one was expanding and moving into the old Multimedia Gulch. There is a lot to be said for ignoring the press, as the mass consciousness usually caters to fear, and for listening to your own intuition, as it usually knows what's best for you. I'm looking forward to more news of this company as its entrepreneurial spirit moves it upward in service to the Fortune 1000, and I'm expecting to see that news for the next five to ten years.
Monday, April 22, 2002 1:15:41 AM
-- James Dillet Freeman, 1941
Saturday, April 20, 2002 3:00:00 PM Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Let there be peace on earth, a peace that was meant to be. With God as our Father family all are we. Let us walk with each other in perfect harmony. Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now. With every step I take let this be my joyous vow: to take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me! -- Jill Jackson & Sy Miller, 1955Wednesday, April 17, 2002 11:47:43 PM The C++ programming language has a rich set of classes and functions that allow a simple syntax to get the most out of input/output in your programs. The I/O features are collected in the iostream library, part of the standard C++ library. Here is a summary of its functionality: Header files: iostream.h, iomanip.h, fstream.h Classes Objects Functions and flags ios istream cin >>, width, fill, precision, ostream cout, cerr, clog <<, dec, hex, oct, setfill, setw, setbase, setprecision, endl, ends, flush, ws, setiosflags, resetiosflags, ios::skipws, ios::left, ios::right, ios::internal, ios::dec, ios::oct, ios::hex, ios::showbase, ios::showpoint, ios::uppercase, ios::scientific, ios::fixed, ios::unitbuf iostream (you declare them ifstream or new them) open, close, ofstream fail, bad, good, fstream getline, read, write, eof, seekg, seekp, tellg, tellp, ios::app, ios::ate, ios::in, ios::out, ios::nocreate, ios::noreplace, ios::trunc, ios::binary A nice diagram of the relationships between the classes and the default objects can be found on the cplusplus.com reference pages, under the topic "iostream library." Nicely formatted tables of the functions and flags can be found in The Waite Group's C++ Primer Plus, by Stephen Prata.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 11:02:26 PM SCCS and RCS are two solutions for the same set of problems. SCCS is the AT&T Source Code Control System, and RCS is the Berkeley Revision Control System. Both are used to store a history of a file in an archive, with notes and expandable key strings, so that any version of the file can be recreated and identified. Both allow only one programmer to get the file from the history file for editing, and both allow any number of programmers to get the file from the history file for purposes other than editing. Both allow comments to be made in the history file that do not actually appear in the file being tracked, and both allow generation of reports about the changes. Here are some correspondences between the two: SCCS command RCS command Intended purpose admin -i ci log the original file in a new history file get co extract a version of the file from the history file get -e co -l extract a version of the file from the history file for editing unget rcs -u discard edits delta ci log changes to the history file rmdel rcs -o remove unwanted versions prs rlog report on the history what ident show key words in a binary or executable sccsdiff rcsdiff compare file versions sccs2rcs convert the history file from an SCCS archive to an RCS archive Applying RCS and SCCS, by Don Bolinger and Tan Bronson, will show you everything about these two systems, from the simplest basics up to professional-grade project management and release management techniques.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002 10:16:41 PM I spent an evening with Dick Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute? last night. He's a very charming man, with a lot of insight. He's been revising the book for 22 years, and this year he rewrote it from scratch. He has a web site: http://www.jobhuntersbible.com On it you can email a career counselor for free! Dick likened finding the right job with pitching practice: you can only hit the target when you can see it clearly. He noted that the job skills that you most highly prize may not be the ones your friends would guess. He also noted that the best job for you will be one that combines your most enjoyable skills with the industries you find most interesting. The book is full of exercises designed to help you figure out what these are. Dick pointed out that companies usually have had a vacancy quite a long time when an advertisement for the vacancy comes out. Cold-calling a company actually interrupts the advertising cycle, and can get you a job that nobody outside the company knows exists. He also pointed out that cold-calling is not a process of asking for a job, per se. He noted several times that the people you should talk with are not the hiring managers, but people who are actually doing the jobs. The interviews you set up should not be the hiring interviews, but should be information interviews. The four questions to ask in information interviews are: 1. How did you get into this? 2. What do you like the most about it? 3. What do you like least about it? This question could be met with some resistance; couch the question as "If you had another set of hands to help you, what would you have them do for you?" 4. Who else should I be talking with? Dick says that the left brain represents that "safekeeping self," and the right brain represents the "experimental self." For a successful job hunt and career change, both are necessary. His book lists the worst and best job hunting techniques, statistically. The five worst techniques and their success rates are: 1. Using the Internet 5% 2. Mailing out resumes to employers at random 7% 3. Answering ads in professional or trade journals, appropriate to your field 7% 4. Answering local newspaper ads 5-24% 5. Going to private employment agencies or search firms for help 5-28% The five best techniques and their success rates are: 1. Asking for job leads from: family members, friends, people in the community, staff at career centers -- especially at your local community college or the high school or college where you graduated. 33% 2. Knocking on the door of any employer, factory, or office that interests you, whether they are known to have a vacancy or not. 47% 3. By yourself, using the phone book's Yellow Pages to identify subjects or fields of interest to you in the town or city where you are, and then calling up the employers listed in that field, to ask if they are hiring for the type of position you can do, and do well. 69% 4. In a group with other job hunters, using the phone book's Yellow Pages to identify subjects or fields of interest to you in the town or city where you are, and then calling up the employers listed in that field, to ask if they are hiring for the type of position you can do, and do well. 84% 5. Doing a Life-Changing Job Hunt 86% Studies have found that the greater number of job-hunting techniques you use, the higher will be your success rate.
Friday, April 12, 2002 8:34:53 PM Economy update: California unemployment weighed in at 6.4% in March. U.S. unemployment weighed in at 5.7%. Venezuelan unemployment is rumored to be over 30%. Blast from the past: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? "For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Here's another one, short but to the point: "Upon the actions of each depends the fate of all." -- Alexander the Great (known to his troops as Alexander the Invincible) Finally, my favorite quote of all time: "There was famine, pestilence, disease, and war. It was a good time for mercenaries." -- Sir Kenneth Clark
Monday, April 01, 2002 11:35:54 AM Today San Francisco State University observes Cesar Chavez Day. Who was this man? Why does he hold such regard at SFSU, where the Student Center is named after him? All I remembered about him was that I was supposed to, over a good part of my life, boycott grapes and iceberg lettuce. I decided, since the day is in his honor, to check him out. I found, through Encyclopedia Britannica, an excellent resource: the Cesar Chavez Museum at the University of California, Riverside. What I discovered was fascinating. Cesar Chavez was born in Arizona in 1927, and lived until 1993, helping shape a good part of America's 20th Century history. He did his time as a migrant farm worker. He was a World War II veteran of the U.S. Navy. He was a proponent of peaceful social change, a leader the like of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson, and John and Robert Kennedy. He studied St. Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, and papal encyclicals on labor. He was an advocate of equality and justice. He was an activist. The United Farm Workers is one of his legacies. He worked tirelessly in California, in Arizona, and throughout the U.S. to obtain decent working conditions, decent wages, and voting rights for a significant percentage of U.S. citizens. Among his accomplishments in obtaining decent working conditions he managed to outlaw the short hoe, an inhumane tool of agriculture, and to raise the national consciousness of the dangers of using pesticides. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a programmer and a Caucasian, should I be concerned about Cesar Chavez and his causes? Yes, I should. Programmers are not organized. We are viewed as management by the labor unions, and as labor by the management. We also encounter unhealthy working conditions from place to place, although the public usually does not find our situation as serious as the working conditions of migratory farm labor. Have you ever heard of Repetitive Stress Injury or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? Have you wondered why so many programmers and system administrators are just downright fat? They're working sixty-hour weeks, in house, without breaks, that's why. Morally bolted to their desks, working around the clock to beat arbitrary production deadlines, trying to drive their high-end graphical workstations with cheap, wrist-torturing mice. Sending out for pizza and Coca Cola, making furtive trips to the vending machines to appease their hunger with Lays potato chips and Baby Ruth candy bars. Our great-grandfathers fought for the 40-hour week in the 1920s and the 1930s. Today American business has rescinded that privilege. Under the threat of moving our jobs offshore to places where programmers will work for $200 a month, managers try to chip our wages down. Moreover, minorities are horribly underrepresented in the high-tech industry, especially in the white-collar job sector. Some of them are not minorities any more. Hispanics constitute the majority of the California population. Women constitute the majority of the U.S. population. Yet the vast majority of programmers and system administrators are white men like me. I am a graduate of SFSU. It is an alma mater for me. It is worth my while to reflect on a day that means something to the school. To reflect on how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go. To rededicate myself to social justice, equality, fair labor, and the simple respect of one person for another in all business relations.
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