Bryan Mann's, Life or...'' It's life Jim, but not as we know it. ''

The end of summer rapidly approaches.  I am still searching for a job, any job.  My latest find, I could be a school bus driver.  I don't know why but it's sad to know that the best prospect I find in a summer of sending out emails and responding to web-help-wanted ads for software engineers and architects in my local paper's classifieds section is a $750.00 sign-on bonus for school bus drivers!!  I remember, fondly, the hey-day of the valley, Silicon, that is, when signing bonuses were in the 10s of thousands of shares of stock and dollars.  When some were given Porsche Carreras as sign-on bonuses and 'close in' parking spaces.  What a wonderful time to be a geek!  A time when we were stars, a time when knowing sendmail meant something, knowing X-Windows and C++ mattered, and if you had Java or Linux kernel development experience, name your price and then..., the bottom fell out.  From boom to bust in 3 easy pieces.  I remember the twinge of "we aren't going to make it", you know that feeling if you've ever done something really stupid like driving too fast on a snow covered road to discover too late that your brakes have no effect and your car really is going over the edge of the embankment, or when you threw the ball toward a playmate and as soon as it left your fingertips you knew it was headed straight for Mrs. Pickett's picture window and there was nothing you or anyone else could do about it, well I had that feeling strongly when the Hammster said in response to my question, "I notice that recently public Internet companies are taking a beating in the stock market these days, do you think we should be concerned about our positioning?"  And he said, "We aren't an Internet company."  Of course it did take him 8 minutes 45 seconds to say that but that's why we paid him the big bucks.  I wanted to get up, pack my office into the two storage boxes I kept behind my desk and tender my resignation.  But instead I felt the guilt of leaving co-workers in the middle of a new battle.  A battle for survival.  A battle to make a difference so I decided to stay and see if I could make a difference.  In the end it turned out ok.  We sold the company, our stock vested and some of us got to keep our jobs.

And again I wonder what would my ideal job be?  As it stands I most enjoyed my time at TSI tweaking a kernel into something that could run on multiple processors, after that I'd have to say the time I spent working on Whistle was the best time of my life, with the top of that being when we were working on implementing a set of services that could be switched on remotely, e-Utility computing.  That was fun.  A lot of hard work but fun.  And of course there was implementing a development process for IBM/Hitachi that I did single handedly on Linux using apache, CVS, and tcl/tk.  Essentially I implemented a miniature version of Vignette's flagship product.  I have an interest in embedded systems because I spent the early part of my college career enrolled in electrical engineering.  I really enjoyed assembly language programming and especially designing printed circuit boards.  But somewhere along the way I was seduced by the dark side, the polymorphic tendency of software.  I loved compiler and language design and operating systems and thought the whole world would benefit from 3d integrated circuit technology but the problems were too big for my undergraduate mind.

I believe then that my best job would be one that leverages my operating systems and server design experience, one that allows me to work un-impeded by the need for politics.  Of course Mr. Saikat urges me to forgo the job and get funding to build the next great open source based development company.  His statement, 'yeah you may be the millionaire maker, but now it's time to make yourself a millionaire.'  Hmmm.

Anyone interested in investing??  I have the business plan ready.

That is all.

Returned home to "Big beautiful Clayton," as my mom used to call it, during the last week of June to transact some business.  My father and mother died in the summer of 2003, dad in July, mom in August.  My father asked me to take care of his estate when he died.  I refused and told him to give the job to my sister.  As my luck would have it he died unexpectedly on my birthday.  My sister was busy taking care of my mom who was herself dying of terminal lung cancer.  This put me in the position of taking over and handling my father's estate.  This amounts to the settling any outstandind debts.  Closing out all the accounts that were active, menial things like cable TV etc.  As fortune would have it I have been waiting for the required year to go by to give creditors time to respond to requests for payment.  None came forward so I was in Clayton to file the final phase of paperwork.

Here are the interesting things that happened while I was there.  First myself and my two daughters ended up staying at Day's Inn for $79.95/night.  So, Clayton is an expensive place to stay when considering that there's not much to do save find some relative and sit on their porch drinking lemonade.  The Day's Inn is an excellent hotel and even has free wireless Internet service!  And amazingly, the Clayton Chamber of Commerce provides free 24x7 wireless Internet access.  The only problem is that you have to be sitting in front of the chamber office to use it.  Wouldn't it be nice if the whole town took it upon themselves to provide free wireless everywhere.  Maybe travelers would have a reason to stop rather than speeding through town at 45 miles per hour to get to either Amarillo, to the south or Denver to the north, or Albuquerque to the west.  Well, a reason beyond food and gas.

We ate at the Eklund Hotel perhaps the town's only raison d'etre.  The time previous to this visit I swore that I would never eat at the Eklund again because it was one of the greasiest meals I've ever been served.  But the locals(read family) assured me that new management had taken over and the food was now excellent.  Perhaps we arrived on a bad day but my burrito grande was essentially, a flour tortilla filled with greasy hamburger meat with what amounts to a can of ranch style bean sauce dumped over the top of it.  Again another horrible meal!!  It's sad to experience what was once one of the best restaurants I've eaten at turn into one of the worst.  But it's a fair representation of what's happening in Clayton and I suppose most small towns across America.  The population of the town are dwindling and as it shirnks the services and the labor pool drys up and with it the economic base.  One of my relatives told me, "Anyone who can leave has already gone.  The rest of us are just trying to get by."

Of course it's easy to see what the town needs when you're from there.   Each time I visit I get all sorts of ideas for businesses that I'd open up.  And apparently, after giving them to my aunt she listens and opens them up.  She recently opened her fourth, known as Mary's Back Porch.  It's a sandwich shop serving a very large menu of choices at reasonably fair prices.

My obvious ideas for businesses:

1. Contract with a local rancher on whose property the great Santa Fe trail passes.  Install a ranch headquarters and charge tourists $20.00 a day for a hay ride and lunch to the trail, and extend it out to 2 weeks for those who might be really serious about learning what life was like on the great plains.  I remember, as a boy, being taken out to the Santa Fe trail and being shown the wagon track.  It was incredible to me that something I read about in history books and adventures and penny westerns went right through my backyard.  I distinctly remember squatting down and touching the ground there at the bottom of the track as if to feel the wagons that had gone by so many years ago, an action I repeated at Side, and other sites in Turkey, Portugal and India as an adult amazed at how mankind leaves it's mark, the mark of dreams, real and imagined on the land for others to see.  Of course there are other attractions too.  Plenty of "secret" native american ruins, campsites, burial sites, paintings and artifacts.
   
2. Open up an eBay drop off site.  With a high speed Internet connection I could easily research the old gas stove that stood in Grandma's house for 57 years and see that it was worth at least 600 times what Andy Cordoba was willing to pay for it.  And who knows that Navajo rug that sold for $20,000.00 might have really been like the guy on the antiques road show said, worth $320,000.00, and considered a national treasure.
   
3. Start a light manufacturing plant that builds solar powered refrigerated air units.
4. Start an Internet cafe.
5. Build another convenience store.
6. Buy some hardware, say an AS400 or a z9 from IBM, install some software and start a call center to support banking or medical software.
7. Buy a farm and start an alternative energy farmining operation.  Did you know that Britains are powering their diesels with cooking oil?
   

The possibilities are endless.

That's all for now.

Disaster strikes!  Finally!!  As my excellent luck would have it I had a recent site-wide power failure.  This failure caused a disk crash on my older laptop/workstation, locutus, a Sony PCG-XG18.  Bringing the workstation back on line caused the fsck to delete some shared libs required by Evolution.  Meaning I could no longer use locutus as my primary mail reader, at least without re-installing Evolution and gtk.  Luckily I've been testing my backup and recovery or disaster recovery script by running it out of a cron job on the machines on my local network.  My strategy is to backup my personal data and treat everything else as "upgradeable".  This means that anytime the system has a catastrophic failure I'll take that opportunity to upgrade to the latest version of the software, but do it system-wide rather than per application. 

A brief rsync to bubba, my Dell 600 laptop, running Linux FC2, from the backup server verde and I was back in business, at least as far as my email is concerned.  Now I need to face the facts of purchasing a new hard drive for locutus and re-installing it.  By my experience this will be about a half day effort.  I see no intrinsic value in scrapping locutus.  Which brings me to an intrinsic value discussion of Internet and other 'high tech' companies.  The discussion began with a question from an acquaintance.  "Why is [insert Internet stock] trading at [big dollar figure]?"  Well, that's a big subject, but let me share my thinking about it.  I know that one search engine stock is going through the roof right now.  You're welcome to google it if you know what I mean, "wink wink, nudge nudge".  But, really, what is a search engine.  For that matter what is the Internet? 

I had a conversation with a former VP of Engineering on one of our lunchtime walks.  The discussion centered around what is the Internet good for and where did I think it was headed.  I told him that I really only see the Internet as a big ftp site.  The most fun I have on the Internet is downloading cool new software that friends or friends of friends write and then use it as leverage in my own projects.  He glared at me, as I recall.  Obviously I hadn't heard that the browser wars were in full swing and that whoever won was likely to own the Internet and therefore all the intrinsic value of this bold new age of mass, point to point communication that Wall Street and James Clark, remember him, had sold to the folks, Ma and Pa Kettle of [insert Bible belt state here], also known as "small time investors", who wanted to "score" in the new Millinneum.

So, what, really, is the Internet?  It's technology at the lowest level, wires and routers in network operations centers, things no one except a very small number of individuals see on a daily basis, but to most it's amazon.com, ebay, google... are there any others, perhaps yahoo.  And what is each of these?  Well, amazon is a place you can go to get book recommendations before you take the time to climb in your car and cruise over to your local book seller.  In my case either Barnes and Noble, close to the house but has a crappy tech section, or Borders, near IBM but has an excellent tech section.  I occasionally am willing to pay the price to get something from amazon because my local bookstores don't have it and I'm not usually willing to have a human interaction to ask my local retailer to order it for me.  Part of the reality of being an engineer.

As for ebay, well, it appears to me to be a catalog application where I can buy worn out used stuff.  Basically, an electronic garage sell.  The novelty being that I can look at the catalog on my computer and if I so desire I can add things that are collecting dust around my place into the catalog.  Remember the old days of Sears and Roebuck, and JC Penney's they'd send you a huge catalog, you'd look at the stuff you dreamt about buying and your parents would tell you no.  Well, that was what happened in my house in Clayton NM.  On the rare occasions when I'd actually get to "place an order", we'd go downtown to the local Sears, or JC Penny, usually, just a counter with small dept. store in front and place the order there.  They'd call us in a couple of weeks and we'd go down and pick up the items.

Now about yahoo, yes google is next in my list but yahoo first.  In the old days before they got funding yahoo was a website that people would visit to find stuff on the newly birthed Internet.  It wasn't new, the low level technology had been around for decades but Marc Andresen had a cool idea that people should see the stuff on the Internet without necessarily downloading and viewing in a local "disconnected" kind of way.  So a couple of students at Stanford started keeping a list, a directory, if you will, of cool things on the Internet.  Eventually they let people submit their sites and more and more people did and as time passed it was the directory that the people using the Internet built.  So we, you and I, built the early versions of yahoo by submitting our favorite websites.  Hmmm, I still haven't received my stock options or other payment for that work.  Now along comes web search.  This was not a novel concept.

IBM, as part of it's database scaling algorithms, storage, mining and other technologies started downloading and storing the "Internet" as soon as they wanted to study several different data related index, search, and mine technologies, as early as 1992 from my re-collection of my tour at Almaden labs.  Then there was google.  Another couple of smart guys who had a good idea.  Index the web.  Provide a search site.  After all, the data on all those interconnected computers is vast and people are going to want to get to things they're interested in quickly and ... well you know the rest right?  So, in it's simplest version google is simply a search algorithm against a large un-organized dataset.  One that IBM downloads and "plays with" every 2 weeks.  At least that was their interval the last time I knew anything about it.  Imagine downloading and storing the entire Internet, approximately 15TB(Terra bytes).   Cool.  Of course the dark side of that is the dark matter which as I recall is about 96% of what they're downloading and isn't included in that 15TB number!!  The dark matter being things that are connected to the Internet but require you to have a password and have paid to access.

So, google is a search algorithm.  Is there intrinsic value in searching?  I don't know.  When was the last time you wanted to buy a spell check program?  What, you say you never bought a spell check program.  Well, when was the last time you wanted to buy a sort routine, what about a data extraction transform and load algorithm?  Still never?  Well, how about an office suite.  Microsoft sells an excellent one, if you don't know about the completely free and as equally well supported stuff over at www.openoffice.org, that is.   More on open source later.  So why buy a search function, because that's what you do when you invest your money in these stocks?  I suppose your bet might be that you're going to keep needing to search more and more information.  But what if I told you there's a couple of kids implementing the NEXT BIG THING and it completely eliminates search as we know it today.  Would you be as eager to buy a search function?

And ultimately this brings me to the best way I've found to value Internet or high tech companies.  Do they provide any way for others to play in their space.  Do they allow others to consume what they produce.  The answer for amazon, ebay and google is yes.  Yahoo seems to be outside this value requirement.  Specifically, amazon, ebay and google provide an API.  This means that programmers or other companies can use these three to build their own related applications.  There is the real value in real world terms.  Try to name one company that was steadfast to keeping an entirely closed system that's still around and providing shareholder value.  The only one that comes to mind is one that Bill Gates propped up because he needed someone to generate good ideas for his next version of windows, Apple.

How did I answer to the "Where is the Internet headed," question.  A paraphrased version of this.  The Internet suffers from a situation where I can't prove who I am to you and you can't prove who you are to me.  We need some way to prove our identity.  Think of it as a digital "Internet" passport.  No one is implementing this technology, more like integrating existing technology to make digital passports possible.   Without this things like spam will continue to clog the network.  The other bits, XML is a big deal, ignore it at your own risk.   Why because it gives a way to glue applications together independently, loosely coupled.  And next it's all about communication.  The real value of the Internet is the speed with which it permits communication between people and computers.  Look for messaging and so called dark matter connections to exponentially increase.  Find companies that want to play in those spaces and join them or buy them all the way from the hardware required to setup connections to the applications managing and routing information.  Remember it was 1999 when I made these predictions.

And so it goes...

Once upon a midnight dreary I watched X-Men.  Captain Picard kept whispering into victim's minds and it reminded me that when I worked at Hitachi on a large data gathering/data mining and reporting engagement that I read about some technology that could transmit sound using very sophisticated mathematics.  The math applied to the sound waves make you perceive the sound as emanating from inside your head.  This had nothing to do with the data mining project, the purpose of which was to collect data on two ends of the manufacturing process, except that it reminds me of some other technology I invented that could listen to a song and identify it based on it's "digital fingerprint".  I tried like hell to get ASCAP and BMI interested in the technology and start "fingerprinting" music in 1993 but they were convinced that digital music was a LONG way off.  The beauty of it was that as a songwriter you get a percentage of payment each time your song is played on the radio.  Additionally, various charts depend on reporting by radio stations to count what qualifies as a number one with a bullet.  My technology would have shown with hard data each time your song was played.  And then of course there is that whole Internet thing and a wish to have a low level ID code embedded in the content.  I wonder how history would have been different if my technology had been deployed.  I guess the boys in Metallica wouldn't have gotten all up in arms.  But I diverge.

The point is that it would be cool to design a vending machine that could use computer vision and targeting to find the "digital signature" of a customer's head, perhaps the whole system might be able to "talk" to 5 different prospects simultaneously.  The robot would sense the prospects proximity to the vending machine, apply relevant atmospheric and environmental data, then fire the appropriate sound bytes at the prospect.  For example, suppose it's a warm sunny day and the vending machine, in this instance belonging to or licensed by Coca Cola sitting near the restrooms in Zilker Park in Austin TX, senses that a customer entered it's target radius.  The distance at which the machine can effectively transmit the affected sound waves.  The machine locates the customer's head using a heat sensing, pattern matching algorithm, notes that the outside temperature is 98 degrees farenheit, aims at the customer's head, calculates a projection of sound to emanate from around the corner, performs the necessary calculations and says in an appropriately accented deep, aka sexy female voice, "I'm so thirsty ."  As the prospect looks around to see who said that.  The machine deftly switches modes and whispers in a voice appropriate to the sex of the prospect, if you're a man it's a male voice, otherwise  a female voice, "you want something, something to drink, cold."  Then the machine very quietly plays the Coca Cola theme song into the head of the unsuspecting consumer, then whispers, "bigger, is a better deal."  At this point the prospect drops $2.00 into the machine and buys the 20oz. cola.  Mission accomplished!  Now this is just a wild guess but I'd think that we could build such a system for a hardware cost of about $2500.00 in volume.  I'd further estimate that a minimum of 10,000 machines might be easily upgraded, with plans to manufacture new machines of 4,000 per month giving this idea  a potential of approximately $40 million in 5 years with an exit strategy to license technology to any vendor who may have shelf space for "rent"  Wal-Mart are you listening?  I have most of these parts and pieces lying about but time and space constraints don't permit me to solve them for the interested reader at this time.  Anyone interested in further work on this idea?  Email me.

TTFN

P.S.  The technology we used for the Hitachi job located in San Jose was IBM Websphere, DB2, Datasweep, Linux RH9.  And what does Hitachi's slogan mean, "Inspire the Next"  Next what?  It pretty much leaves an open loop doesn't it?  The data we were collecting were related to run rates of disc drive manufacture and field failure rates and associated data.  The mining was to determine how best to save money and get better margins on product lines.

I continue to work on my backup script.  It's becoming more of a synchronization script.  Basically, it's a disaster recovery solution.  How many times have people wished that they had really taken the advice of their doctors, their lawyers, their accountants?  In this case, like those others you don't have to take the advice, but you should.  It's easy and free for you too.  Well almost free.  You see that's the problem with open source solutions.  They usually aren't shrink wrapped.  Meaning you'll have to do some of the work yourself.  And I suppose that's what annoys me most about the new trend I'm seeing in retail.  More on that later.

For example, once I am finished with the backup script, or sync up script, you'll have to configure your machines to use it.  Even more important you'll have to have machines to use it.  It depends on you having at least a client and a server.  And you'll need to be fairly Unix command line capable to use it.  I don't say Linux because the software could be used on FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX or any other flavor of Unix, even cygwin.  But I digress.  The point is that even when I have completed the software and given it to you you'll still need a large degree of technical capability to use it.  And that's the major difference I see between open source and closed source.  Closed source usually costs more.  But to my mind, not because it has higher value, but rather because it saved you the expense of having to learn something.  In this case how to setup a network with a client and server, configure ssh, install software, and configure cron to run the scripts at appropriate times.  Now being a professional software developer I could of course 'finish' the software so that you wouldn't have to learn anything.  The trouble is that even once I finish the software you'll still have to be technically capable enough to install the pieces on the various machines.

And the real question is, because it costs, in terms of time to complete the project, almost twice as much as, here's the script throw it on your machine solution,  will I recoupe my investment of time and money as a software developer?  The typical answer is no.  Simply because there are companys already in the disaster recovery space that have some product that can be wedged into my particular use model.  So, does it make sense for me to bring a new shrink wrapped product to market.  Doubtful.

This brings to mind a fond memory of Doug Brent asking to borrow several of my books.  As I recall he borrowed my sendmail, unix security, unix system administration and one of Archie's books.  He took these to a meeting with venture capitalists and the press( a photo of the stack of books and the Interjet appeared in the San Jose Mercury News).  He placed an InterJet on the conference room table and next to it he placed the equal sized pile of books.  And then said something along the lines of,  "What we've done is take all the knowledge in these books, things you'd have to learn on your own, placed it inside this box," pointing to the InterJet, "and made it so easy to use that your admin can set it up for your whole company.  You no longer need a degree in rocket science to put your business on the Internet in a meaningful way."  And so I remember thinking, 'It's so cool to have taken something that was never designed for being "hands off" to being a device that needs no human interaction.  We've created a simple kind of self sustaining robot.'  Because, for the most part all Internet servers expect a human to be an integral part of the loop.  Remember, if you can, that computers started out being housed in big rooms and maintained by the high priests of knowledge, who understood the ream of messages spewing forth from the console in the corner.  And at Whistle we created something that could manage itself.  How cool is that?

Now I know that others have come along and started to do the same.  As the total cost of ownership, or TCO, was identified by pundits as being a big deal for small companies, technical people responded by adding auto upgrade buttons to everything.  The idea being that if the machine could automatically upgrade then the TCO would go down.  The trouble is that's only part of the overall complexity of computers.  What about cascade failures, what about flexibly responding to changes in the environment, what about enterprise resource planning, when do we really HAVE to upgrade.  Simple answer, no one is doing that work.  IBM is trying.  And they'll happily do an assessment and install Tivoli to assist you in doing those very things but I'd say that the problems are deeper still.

Microsoft has created a world where autonomic computing is required.  I suppose this is a good thing as it forces some things I'd like to see in the world come into existence earlier than later.  Which brings me to a good idea.  At IBM we had a self help website that I worked on for IBM's world wide employee base.  We had about 395,000 users.  My part of the solution included a self-help agent that ran on the client machine.  It could "diagnose" problems and automatically install fixes.  This is especially useful when you think about being a company interested in fighting off viruses and the like.  Another thing to mention.  It's possible to create a computer operating system that isn't susceptible to infection, that would be Linux(Unix) but Microsoft just wouldn't listen and so we now have a whole industry built around patching up a fundamental technical flaw brought to us by none other than Bill Gates himself.

My good idea, build an appliance, a small network connected server, that can manage security upgrades and patches for businesses.  Of course at IBM each of the 'health checks' has to be written and tested and then distributed to possibly 100s of thousands of computers.  Why not found a 'health check' bundle writing company.  Each health check, according to my calculations cost a minimum of $100K to build and test.  These range from installing security related patches to device driver upgrades.   Of course the risk to the company is that Microsoft will be replaced with Linux.  Something IBM succeeds at doing more and more with each passing year.  As an IBM employee you can now call their help desk and ask Linux desktop related questions.  Could it be that 395,000 users will be running Linux as their desktops in the very near future.  Can IBM use the information gathered there to present white paper facts and figures to argue for Linux to it's customers. 

And that is all...

He's tall, at least 6'4", lean, muscular, dark tan, and bald.  Cell phone perpetually at the ready.  Gold pinkie ring flashing in the fluorescent lights whenever he takes a call.  He lifts heavy, but he cheats.  She's perfectly coiffed.  We've all seen the type, perfect Dallas Cowboy cheerleader's body, 36-26-36, aging as gracefully as saline and tanning booths allow.  Every mann's head turns when she enters the room.  Large doe-like eyes, a quick, bright smile, and always a brief 'hello.'  Always wearing a thong beneath Her tights, abs reveal the tan.  Purple is her favorite color.  She wears it almost every day in some aspect of her Pierre Cardin uniform.  Everyone likes her.

I'm sitting, as usual, on the dumbbell press chair.  Lifting heavy again, shoulders screaming in pain.  She takes up the area to my right.  We trade knowing glances at each other in the mirror.  "Hi."  Big trainer and his trainee, a pleasantly plump housewife, working out to my left.  I see He's behind me near the column.  He's working chest today.  Taking a break to enjoy the view of her.  I start another set.  He's still staring.  She sees him in the mirror, gawking as she moves through repetition after repetition.  Caught, He looks away.  I rest.  She rests.  He starts his set.  Big notices the oogling.  Big is obviously perturbed by it.  She starts again, sweat coming easily now.  She glistens.  I finish my set, weights back on the rack.  He's staring again, one long look head-to-toe and back again.  His cell phone rings, he starts the long walk to the door talking,  'Hey what's up....'

Big steps over and in one grand chivalrous move:

Wonders never cease.

A microcosm of humanity, to those about to lift, we salute you!!  Ok, 2 months to go on the "I will be the Statue of David by my next birthday goal."  Or re-stated,  'I want to gain 30lbs of muscle by my next birthday.'  At this point I weighed in at 196lbs this morning.  Now I need to change up my eating so that I can reduce my bodyfat percentage to 6-7% for my upcoming swimsuit spread in [popular women's magazine].

To that end I've been reading some alarming details about HFCS and transfats.  First, and I paraphrase.  HFCS are the worst scourge of modern living and might actually be the cause of the new "epidemic" of over eating.  I'd recommend that you check your labels and anything that has High Fructose Corn Syrup mentioned as one of the first three ingredients, throw it away now and write a letter to FDA demanding that food companys discontinue use of this sweetener.  BTW you do know that the ingredient label list contents in order of proportion right?  As for the transfats, look for the words hydrogenated, or partially hydrogenated.  It turns out that food manufacturers, wow we live in an age when food is manufactured, aren't yet required to mention that transfats are part of the content so you'll have to do the math.  For example:


So, to get ripped I'm reducing the size of portions while focusing on increasing the amount of intensity of my workouts.  I've started doing interval training on the bike, riding as hard as possible for 90 - 120 seconds then backing off to about 75% of my original pace.  Example, my bike has resistance settings from 1 - 8.  I spend 2 minutes on 2, 4 minutes on 4, pedaling at about 20 miles per hour.  From there I spend 90 seconds on 5 pedaling at 24-26 miles per hour, then back off to 20 miles per hour for 4 minutes then 25-27 for 120 seconds then back off to 21  mph for 4 minutes and finally 90 seconds of 24 mph, and finish it off with 2-4 minutes of 2 at 20 mph.

In the gym I've switched to less rest and lighter weight.  Whatever size I'm going to get I've gotten.  Now it's a matter of getting pumped.  I put on a fairly heavy weight that I can do for 8-10 reps, pump those out, rest 10-20 seconds and repeat.  If I'm feeling tired that day I do only 3 sets, feeling like a super hero, 4 sets.

I'm continuing to work on my backup article and related software.  In addition I've surfed a few webpage articles sent me by Mr. Saikat.  It seems that someone out there is discovering Linux, or is it that the Internet, or those on the Internet are discovering Linux? 

I don't know if any of the kind souls at the gym know anything about Linux.  I can imagine that one person I've met there has any idea what Linux is and he's a pre-sales engineer.  I imagine that if I asked them to guess what Linux is they'd say, "Oh you mean the heating and air conditioner manufacturer, sure I know them."  Lennox is not Linux.

I have decided to start doing my part for the environment.  I recently purchased an exercise bicycle to ride on my cardio/flAbs days.  I usually ride the bike or use the treadmill at the gym on those days.  But due to my current funding shortfall I find a need to conserve and so not making 3 of a usual 6 trips to the gym each week saves me quite a bit of gas money.  I expect that if my funding shortfall continues I can re-coupe my costs in about 1 month.  Addtionally, I've decided to fix up a rusting mountain bike and start riding it to the Post Office to check the mail.  More time doing cardio can't hurt.  I figure the worst that can happen is one of these fine drivers around here will plow into me and I'll die on my way to the ER.  All problems solved.  I recently read that the intersection of 1431, and 183, near my house is the worst in central Texas.

My gym time has been reduced of late anyway, since finding, or looking for a job, in addition to other activities takes up a lot of time.  In the interest of helping fellow gym rats I thought I'd mention my kit, the nutritional supplements I take as a part of my eating regime.

1. creatine
2. l-glutamine
3. l-arginine, really kills libido
   
4. zma
   
5. 100% whey protein
6. high quality carb powder
7. electrolytes
8. flax seed oil
   

As part of the austerity program at www.bmann.com  and saving even more I've started doing my own meal preparation.  For example, yesterday for luncheon(the 4th meal of the day), I had baby spinach salad, with salmon, and walnut raspberry dressing, followed by 1/2 blueberry muffin and iced tea.  Mmm mmm good!!

Finally, Brian Lawley of www.280group.com has reminded me that I must pursue that which I am passionate about.

And that's the way it is...

Today, still at work on the backup scripts and process.  I have decided to write a brief article describing the steps to take and put the code I develop on this website that others might have an equal amount of fun if they are so inspired to 'steal this code'.  In addition my frustration at getting LAMP up and running has made me decide that's the next task after backups.  Of course CVS is in there somewhere.  More on that later.

I spent part of the day yesterday playing with some website hit counter software and have decided upon urging of one of my three readers to put the hit counter on the main page.  I am told that a blog is a valuable thing.  I even saw a headline at Business2.0 that a teenager in Florida is earning $55,000.00 per year for about 3 hours of work per day.  Sounds like good work if you can get it.  I'd be happy to earn that much seeing's how I'm still jobless.  I was told by my former VP of engineering, Doug Brent, that people appreciate and value my opinions and ideas ( time for a paypal donate button? ;-).  BTW if you decide to implement my smart phone idea, see entry dated May 5, 2005, please send money, small bills say upwards of $100K and award me some shares of stock :-).

It seems to me that going through the whole bootstrap process might be at once illustrative and educational so I suppose I'll talk and write through all the steps I require to do professional level development.  After all I really do want yahoo or google or even amazon or ebay to buy my technology so that I might live comfortably to my silver and golden years and tell my grand kids that I invented a car once, that could run on water and rubber bands and they'd be driving one right now but alas I sold the plans to GM with a promise that they were going to develop it but to my chagrin they mothballed the idea until all the world's oil reserves run out.  Because after all they are a majority stake owner in 4 of the 6 major oil companys.  It seems that it's part of their plan that dovetails in with Drug Co., you know the one to keep us all sick but alive enough to continue to work and buy drugs.  We are the GymHadar ( see Deep Space 9).

And now that I've made you read this far I want to ask a question...

What if it was possible for you to never receive another piece of SPAM email.  What if for a small monthly fee, say added on to your ISP bill you could have an Internet connection free of SPAM?  Think of something similar to advertising free satellite radio.  My idea is that you'd pay an additional $4.95 to your service provider, or to me if you wish.  This would connect you to my meta net, a network running on top of today's Internet with plan to transition to Internet2 when it becomes available.  The beauty of the meta net is that you would have recourse against SPAM.  And fines would be stiff.  If someone sent you an un-solicited email you could collect a fine of $10,000.00 levied against the perpetrator.  Another excellent way to make money.  I have all the technology in place today, to, as Captain Picard would say, "Make it sew." but one server, talking to itself, like one fax machine is pretty useless.  Remember fax machines?  Do you still have one?  When was the last time you received a fax??  Anyway, if you have an interest in solving a myriad of email related problems contact me because at www.whistle.com I was the email guy!!

That is all.

I have decided to openSource my life and run my own reality series streamed right from my website.  Hey if Farrah can be worth viewing Bryan should be even better!  I'll need to decide on a name for the show of course.  I wonder if the "TrueMannShow" has been taken?  It begins with identification and install of video cameras and microphones in all of the rooms of my house and all of my vehicles.  The house, armed with a rack, installed in a space in the garage.  The rack holds a media server, a 1U, Linux FC3 with TV extensions, a backup server, a development server, a bastion host, and milu(top secret, off world technology).  Each room has an appropriate set of cameras installed.  Bedrooms include infra-red so that viewers are sure to catch all the action that strong, sleeping, buddhist monks can have during the night.   (Must be careful not to get cameras with blinking red lights as that's a dead giveaway that we're recording.)

Each of my vehicles, the roadster motorcycle, the dualie, the monster truck and my hot rod will each need their own DVR to record audio and video whenever anyone sits in any of the seats.   I believe that hardware from www.openbrick.org will do nicely since it already has the TV outs.  I'm not sure about video capture on Linux though.  Maybe my USB camera will work.

This is going to be cool.  I can build my wireless network in such a way that whenever one of my vehicles pulls into the driveway it will automagically get a DHCP lease.  If it has new media it can upload to the server.   The server of course must insert the media into the right day and time to account for 'quiet' times at the house.  And I'll need to coordinate my video with GPS data.  After all this is a business venture and I should be able to write off every single trip to the store, the gym or whereever. (Note to self:  find a good accountant and an even better attorney.)  Additionally I'll need some sort of mobile setup for those times when I go for a bicycle ride, or visit the mall, or go to a coffee shop for coffee and a brownie.  It would be cool to record a few interchanges from the gym.  Hmm.  I wonder what the budget is going to be for this production?  Oh well who cares, I'll be NetFamous by noon.

In other news I have been busy getting my net backup strategy in place.  I have decided to take the easier road and use rsync and gpg along with cron and find to do the dirty repetitive work.  And of course total world domination requires a development platform.  In the interest of being cost concious I have decided to use LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), much to my former employer's dismay.  I don't know why, precisely, but Java just ain't doing it for me anymore.  I guess because it's a bit too corporate.  Even though I love the language.  Perhaps I'll straddle the fence and use gjc from gcc.   The biggest reason to use LAMP at this point is that it's technology that hosting providers provide.  It's commodity, unlike J2EE.  I can find hosting providers who'll give me a LAMP platform for a mere $7.95 per month.  The nearest competitive J2EE provider is $145 per month, more than 10 times as expensive.  That's just wrong.

Finally, I saw HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday.  A great and obvious, to me at least, idea, is to have all theatres implement a new cell phone protocol.  Bascially, when you enter a "quiet zone" your cell phone rings and gives you an automated message to set your phone to vibrate mode, if you do it manually then you control how it behaves.  If you don't set your phone to vibrate mode, the 'local cell phone attendant' puts your phone in air travel mode, basically turns it off with a scheduled wake up time equal to whatever the runtime of the movie plus 2 minutes is.  In addtion since it did this it automatically incoming calls are routed to the attendant that  informs callers that you are currently watching [Insert name of movie here(yet another way to advertise)] and you'll be out in [time remaining], and would they please leave you a message, if they leave you a message the attendant routes the message to your phone when it wakes up.  How cool would that be?

And so in parting it leaves me with just one thing left to say in this entry.  "So long and thanks for all the fish."

I recently attended a remote viewing seminar with former StarGate operative,  Dr. David Morehouse.  While I find much of what he had to say rather  (yawn)  passe .  I have, however used the techniques with much success.  Alas, this was before I realized that a seminar existed to teach me the proper way to 'remote view' my subject.  It was interesting to see all those who attended and talk to them during the breaks.  So, if you are wondering whether I have been remote viewing you as you read these pages... I have not.    Lately I'm too busy working on world wide domination, just as the real aliens are too busy working on universal domination to bother with yet another anal cavity search of a random homo sapiens sapiens. 

But remoting for work or work related activities is something I do everyday.  Sit in one location and project my thoughts into some other remote location.  When asked what I do I once responded, I project my thoughts onto computers, in precise and neatly written instructions, that they may do my bidding, long after I no longer see them, perhaps even after my human life has expired.  Ala the Matrix, I am the architect.

I've been doing it for decades.  Some of the rest of you may have been so lucky too.  Remember the good old days of 75, 110, 300, and ultra-fast 9600 baud?  I skipped over 4800 for some odd reason.  There's something special about hearing the clicking of pin-wheels or dot-matrix rat-a-tat-tat'ing your characters into images on paper.  Not only were you typing locally, onto the paper, the mini or main frame computer miles away was receiving your input.  As I think about it I used, write, or talk, to IM others on the computer, to ask to load a tape, bring up my printout, re-boot my server etc.  This was way back in the early '80's.  And this causes me to spiral into thoughts about what has changed in 25 years of computing.

When I first heard of ebay I thought, what moron would re-invent usenet?   And even more what idiot would give him $5 million to do it!!  We've been buying and selling world wide on usenet for years.  E-mail over TCP/IP was a novelty.  Personally, I thought uucp was the coolest thing.  For those too young or too new to know, uucp stands for unix-to-unix copy.  In fact it was so inspired that at TSI we actually ran a file system protocol over a 9600 baud telephone wire stretched between buildings in the desert just outside Las Cruces NM.  This was circa 1985, '86.  Talk about networking and file sharing the hard way. 

One of my first jobs at ICL, then CCI, was to debug some problems one of our customers was having with uucp on a Power-5.  This was my first introduction to the guts of a 'work-file'.  The idea behind a work file is that you define the work that you want the computer to do in a file, the computer then, at some later time, picks up the work file and does it's best effort to make the work disappear.  Think to-do list.  I re-used this idea later in the design of my raison-d-etre, the services delivery platform or SDP, known at IBM as e-Utility computing or e-Business on demand.  In the SDP each computer contains a software agent that periodically contacts a local peer or remote parent/mother ship to retrieve a work file.  If the file has work-to-do the agent hibernates, like the best parasitic or viral agents, and then at it's own pre-determined, pseudo-random, time begins the work specified in the work-file.  In the case of a modern computer this work might be downloading a new data file, updating a license key, upgrading itself to achieve it's ultimate perfection or updating your BattleStar Gallactica scores on a central server.

These days however remoting is mundane.  At least for some of us.  I've been remoting for decades so I tend to take it for granted.  Several friends of mine have asked, so, what's it like to be remote?  The first thing I have to say about remoting is that it's main difference is in the effort required by you to be local.  You have to really work, in some organizations, to stay in the hearts and minds of your teammates and management.  To the programmers I say, commit everyday.  You should be doing that anyway.  Why keep work hanging out on your workstation.  If you can't commit it because your changes are too big and far reaching, or you need more time to unit test then at least upload to your remote server.  Create a batch job, run it out of your own $HOME/bin at the end of the day so that your code isn't just on your workstation.  Yes you should be backing up your workstation too, but then you should do a lot of things.

The second main difference in remoting is the problem of dealing with time zones.  I find that the best way to cope with this is to arrange my life into the time zone of the majority of the team.  If lunch time turns out to be 2:00pm in my time zone then I eat lunch at 2:00pm and plan to end my days somewhere around 8:00pm.  What can I say, it's just easier that way.

Finally, cultivate a close relationship with your team members.  Get your manager on the phone or skype, www.skype.com, at least once per week.  Be available via IM.  It doesn't mean you have to trade face time with IM time.  One organization I worked at was so concerned that their remote employees might be out having fun during work hours that they actually forced you to report your 'whereabouts' via your IM status, as busy, programming, out-to-lunch, doctor's appointment, or worst of all suppose you're in the bathroom or reading documentation and you're IDLE.  Needless to say, programmers being problem solvers it wasn't long before someone, no names mentioned to protect the guilty, wrote a 'look busy' plug-in.

And that is the ultimate issue with remoting.  Your management must trust that you will get the job done.  They must have confidence that when you commit to hitting your deadlines you'll hit them.  I guess most people are wired to believe that if I can't see you busy then you ain't workin' but remote employees never look busy.  So your management must have faith.  Why it requires more faith I don't know.  I've been on plenty of in-office teams where one or two people never pulled their weight and they may have even sat in the cube next to their manager.  Proximity to management doesn't equal work output.