Scott Miller

I have been following the stage by stage simulcasting on We Choose the Moon.

The videos I have watched this week still choke me up. And Gene Kranz, mission control genius, and the person who said "Failure is Not an Option", is speaking here in November. I am excited.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins have said in numerous speeches all week, "We need to go to Mars".

But today at the White House, Obama says nothing about the Moon, nothing about Mars, and nothing about the 2020 goal of going back to the Moon.

Yahoo News - Obama Meets Astronauts - no promise on Moon or Mars

"So with Armstrong standing next to him and nodding, Obama said those magic words: 'Keep the goal by 2020.'

But he wasn't finished. 'Keep the goal by 2020 of having the highest college graduation rates of any country on Earth, especially in the math and science fields.' "

WHAT??!!

This should be no surprise. Cancel the Moon and Mars and you will have more money for social programs like government subsidized healthcare for all.

Heaven help us, we have lost what it means to be Americans...We are now, or soon will be, some clone of the prissy French.

12/30, 2 PM.
I had to call Oracle Support because my Oracle Apps was hosed and not allowing me to create a Supply Chain Plan. Production is down.

Most of the time, the analyst will communicate via the Metalink TAR support ticket. So you have to frequently click update to see if they posted something new to the ticket. This is especially important as the support "follows the sun" through different time zones around the world.

Typical response, "you don't have the most up-to-date patches" (duh, but that is not what is causing this problem). "Run the plan, upload the logs".

A couple of hours go by...
"Change settings to generate debug info, rerun the plan, upload logs".

Now we get to the first hurdle. Every time that the support ticket was passed off to the next time zone they dropped the ball. And completely dropped off the radar. No response, no TAR postings. So I had to call and escalate the TAR.

Levels of Oracle support call escalation:
Customer->Regular Analyst->Escalation Manager

12/30 6 :30 PM
Now it is being handled in Australia. I escalated to a manager. Told them that Production is down. A very proper Australian woman with a hot voice chides me about escalating the call. She says rerun the plan and upload the logs again. This will take 90 minutes.

Uploaded the logs and an hour goes by. I have to escalate again. This time I get SE Asia. They don't even know what the escalation process is! I ask to be called at home. No such luck.

12/30 Around 11 PM
Another 90 minutes goes by. I escalate again. I ask to be called at home. They can't read the TAR, apparently, so they call my office and leave a voice mail message.

Finally I get someone in India, who is actually quite helpful after I completely explain and explain the whole thing over again.
Damn you Oracle, why can't your techs read the TAR notes up to this point?
"Send some query dumps and more logs".

12/31, somewhere around 2:30 AM
More settings, more dumps of logs.

12/31, 4:30 AM
The analyst in India is better than the others I have so far. He finally figures out it is a problem with a date calendar setting. But there are several places to setup the calendar. He chooses the wrong one.
We change the settings and rerun the plan and upload logs

Shift change and we lose that guy. Two or more hours go by and we are starting over again with someone else! "Why don't you have the current patches?"

Don't you idiots read the #$%@ TAR notes up this point?

It is past 8 AM. Production is still down. Oracle doesn't seem too worried. We have to escalate to the Division Manager. This requires my boss making the call.

Levels of Oracle support call escalation:
Customer->Regular Analyst->Escalation Manager->Division Manager

12/31, 10 AM
Now I have the original support guy that I started out with yesterday at 2 PM! Except for a few winks of sleep (like 20 minutes) here and there I have been up since yesterday at 5:30 AM.

The support guy finally gets me the right settings and the plan works. We are fixed.

12/31, 1 PM
The Division Manager calls me and tells me these following nuggets of wisdom to weave things through the Oracle support web:

• Ask for manager oversight when you escalate to a manager. This will require the manager to follow the progress, not just pass you to an analyst.
• Ask for a "warm handoff" when support moves to a new team and time zone. This requires the previous staff to help the transition instead of just assigning a new person in the support queue.

Try these yourself and see if they work.

BTW - this made for a pretty crappy New Years Eve

How do you reward IT employees? And what do you reward them for? Joel has some interesting examples - do you reward the intern who brings a new million dollar business idea, or do you reward the rest of the team who is finishing a product that will double the regular revenue of the biz?

We have all heard the horror stories. "If you just get this delivered on-time, then you will all get a bonus/trip/whatever". The manager knows that the project won't be on-time, so there is no risk to him and only frustration for everyone else.

I worked for a small company and worked many hours on a project. When review time came I expected a raise. Maybe not for the hours worked and success, but I had gained and demonstrated many skills which could translate into future projects (this is a key idea that I will come back to shortly). My boss said that I had done a good job, but in his opinion the project and its timeline and workload were exceptions and not the rule. And that the next six months or year did not have extraordinary projects that would require longer hours, so why increase the pay? I protested about the long hours. Then he bragged that he basically got all that for the same price, which showed that he was shrewd business man (and a jackass).

If you live and work in corporate IT-land this may be quite different than if you work for an IT-only business or service. Corporate culture may have a specific reward structure (or no reward structure).

Tim Harford's book The Logic of Life - the Rational Economics of an Irrational World, (a book I recommend), is all about incentives in daily life. The book has a chapter on the rationality of a manager pitting all workers against each other for that larger raise. This behavior has built-in incentives for the manager. The idea is that raises are given out based on comparitive performance. If someone works 60 hours a week, he is most likely to get that top raise, while the rest get decreasingly less, with some in the department getting nothing. I worked in a place like that where the people who worked those long hours got 3% and everyone else got less. Pretty soon people don't care anymore, especially for a measly 3%.

At one place I worked, there were quarterly IT awards - a certificate and some cash reward. Almost all of the things rewarded were based on an IT person putting in long hours to fix something or to bail out the business. And, almost without fail, these instances actually involved some emergency that could have been avoided by better business practices, better IT practices (like documenting something before someone leaves, fixing bugs a little better before go-live, or avoiding obvious risk in the first place). What they were rewarding was a cowboy-coder, hero culture, where someone saves the day in the middle of the night. And, similar to Joel's examples, people grumbled because they compared their project to the other guy's project. Or a person got a $20 certificate to the company store and a resulting lime green company-logo'd shirt (because that was the only one available) for his efforts.

And what about pay? Are performance reviews focusing on past performance or on traits, responsibilities, and gained and demonstrated skills which can translate into future performance? I think that they should have a balance of both, but definitely stress the latter. And stressing skills which will likely translate into future performance should be the focus of increases in pay.

What do you think?

A new picture every day for the first 25 days of December. Some pretty amazing pictures.

I just got done reading Strategic IT Portfolio Management by Jeffrey Kaplan.

Governance is something that doesn't get talked about very much, and certainly not in a positive way. Many companies do governance during the project charter and approval process, to fiigure out what projects to approve, but do very little governance after go-live. Most project requests or project charters have exaggerated expected return on investment numbers, and how much savings or revenue the project implementation will bring. And, in my experience, many of these project requests are sales driven and are nothing more than fiction.

Who does governance after the project goes live? What metrics exist to see whether the project did realize these savings or increased revenue ROI numbers? This book focuses on asking these questions - to ask "are we allocating our IT resources adequately to get the most value for the business (internal) or customer (external)?" This is not for downsizing or outsourcing. Sometimes the on-going costs of support and licensing are not offset by a compensatory value in the business; maybe the project is not even paying for the upkeep costs after go-live. Perhaps the line of sales or market did not materialize. Often the process improvement and savings are not realized because the stakeholders' department didn't really embrace the process change or found a work-around to keep doing the same old bad practices. Or perhaps the scope of the project was cut because of deadlines or all of the project features were not implemented.

This book shows how to ask these questions in the organization, and propel the conversation in a positive direction, so that IT resources are spent on the best value for the business. I highlighted alot of the first two chapters, and I found the book to be very useful. It also shows how to structure the IT portfolio so that governance has real goals and expectations when projects deal with new markets and R&D so that those projects that will bring future value are not hit.

11/26/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus on the bottom

11/26/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus on the bottom

11/29/2008 - Jupiter on top, Venus still on the bottom

12/01/2008 - Just after sunset. Big change in two nights. Crescent moon on left, Venus on bottom, Jupiter on right.

12/01/2008 - Starting to see some Earthshine on the dark side of the moon.

12/01/2008 - With the sunset

12/01/2008 - A little darker

12/01/2008 - Final pic of the night. Moon on the left, Venus on the bottom, Jupiter to the right.

Venus and Jupiter will move closer (conjunction) over the next few nights until they are very close to each other, along with the crescent moon on December 1st.

Venus and Jupiter are seen in the southwest sky just after sunset. Venus will move almost two full moon widths in distance closer to Jupiter each night this week.

Yesterday I watched the TED video where Johnny Lee does his Wiimote Hacks:

He was a PhD student who figured out how the Wii remote video game controller worked and used it to create a digital whiteboard, and a virtual reality device. Here is his Projects page. Then, instead of presenting them in a paper, he put the video on YouTube and it is consistently in the top 10 of videos.

Now he works for Microsoft. He is interviewed in the NYT today, and says some interesting things about innovation.

"He chooses his personal projects based on what he calls their 'work-to-wow' ratio. 'I want to get the biggest wow for the smallest amount of work,' he explains, adding that for him, wow is synonymous with impact. Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, 'Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?' If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls 'surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially.'”

And the link to the (unfinished) song - Slough of Despond

All That Money You've Lost - Where Did It Go?

I found this article to be helpful. Realistically, all that "gain" or "loss" that we see in the market, whether the stock market or the housing market, is all on paper. It only makes a difference if you are looking to buy or sell soon. Otherwise, you just keep the asset, whether on paper (stocks) or the real asset of your house, until later. And most likely it will go back up later in the future.

Many people have treated houses as short term investments over the last few years rather than the longer term assets that they are. Interest rates were low. People borrowed from equity. This demand increased the value on paper, governments greedily reacted by raising the appraised value, which fed more into the value increase. My home doubled in value from 1994 to 2005. I didn't do that much to it to deserve that increased valuation. And my taxes seriously increased also. No one screamed bloody murder that their house was rising so fast in value.

My 401K went down 6% in the first week of October. And that is before the bigger drops in the next few days. I moved some of it into bonds. If everyone did that, it would bring the stock market down lower as well. Realistically, if you are greater than 5 years from retirement, it doesn't make much difference. Sure, you won't make 10+% ROI in the next year, but you are not going to make that much more anywhere else. And most of us have limitations of what we can do with the money. We can't really touch it until retirement anyway.

So did I really lose the money? I lost the potential, but in a good market I could have gainjed more potential. That's why I like the article linked to above. It puts it in perspective.

In my last posting I admitted that it is a toy. But, it claims to have an evolutionary model. So, two questions:

1) Will the game cause more kids to be interested in science? I think the first stage, the Cell Stage, is really the only part of the game that has scientific value. The graphics, with water particulates and the slightly out-of-focus background, are reminiscent of looking at the beasties in a sample of pond water in a microscope. I fondly recall High School Biology class, looking at paramecium through the 'scope. Therefore, I think that the first stage of Spore could be used in Science class, perhaps playing Spore and then looking at real creatures in the microscope.

In addition, Spore could be used to show how adding different characteristics to the creature adds a variety of different results. As you add flagella, or spikes, you see a definite change in the behavior of the creature and the advantage or disadvantage it brings in the environment. Add a spike on the back or sides of your beastie and you will die less. Add extra flagella and you can swim faster. It is crude, but it is interesting and can provoke some conversation about microevolution. It is also very helpful to introduce the difference between a herbivore and carnivore and the behaviors of each. (although the game significantly favors carnivores and I can't imagine how to progress in the game as a herbivore).

2) That said, is the game an evolutionary model? (well, at least the Cell Stage). Would Richard Dawkins agree? Thinking of Spore in this way is interesting, for the aforementioned reasons, but it poses some problems also. Spore shows very quick changes and variations. You eat three or four big pieces of food and you exponentially grow in size. Spore is, after all, a game/toy. But evolution is really small variations over a very long period of time. There are also no evolutionary dead ends in the game.

Spore also stresses choices. You choose what parts you want on your cell. This underscores the popular misconception that evolution is fast, that it is always progressive, and that it is deterministic. Stephen Jay Gould probably would have had a slight problem with this, especially since he wrote extensively against this misconception, especially determinism, in The Mismeasure of Man and Full House. Gould favored chance in evolution, and also pointed out the frequency of evolutionary dead ends.

Finally, Spore allows you to make choices and design your Creature. It is, after all, a god-game, and you are the Creator. It could just as easily be used to teach Intelligent Design - "this extra flagella allows the creature to swim better than its predators". Dawkins may bristle at the suggestion.

All this may be too heady for a "game", but with all the hype surrounding Spore in the last month, claiming it to be everything to everybody, I think it is appropriate to ponder these questions. What would have happened if the game included chance? What if it included the possibility for crazy, unexpected mutation?

Or, is it a game? As Theo Moore states, it is "more of a toy than a game".

Indeed, Stephen Totilo says in a widely cross-linked review: "Do you want to play this thing or look at this thing?"

And that is the core beef that I have with the game. Don't get me wrong - the Creature Creator and building creator are nothing less than spectacular, and definitely raise the bar on what should be done in every MMORPG from here on out.

I like the building editor alot. I don't care much for the vehicle editor. But still, these are TOYS! I still want to see them work in a real game. The problem is that this is not a very engaging game.

A couple of weeks ago, in the hype leading up to the game release, a site had Will Wright's Top 5 Favorite Games. One was Civilization. I don't remember the other two.

The problem with this game is that Levels 2 - 4 (Creature, Tribal, Civilization) are like poorly made rip offs of other games! Level 2 is like a weak MMORPG world that my creature can run around in, complete with the dancing and singing with other creatures. I played this stage again when I created a new creature and I was bored. Tribal stage is like a simple RTS, and Civilization stage is like a RTS Command and Conquer. Very weak gameplay (although I haven't beat the Civ level yet, mainly because I was bored).

The only two things Spore has going for in these stages is that my creations are running/driving around, and the game imports creatures and vehicles that other people have shared with the world (which is admittedly a nice touch).

I wanted a little bit more of an Evolution simulation. Perhaps like a Live SimEarth. Maybe Stage 5 - Space will be more like that, but from what I understand it is a planet-painting stage.

I really like the initial Cell stage. The graphics and gameplay are fresh, I can play it casually and relax while playing it. And the creator software is simply amazing.

To sum up : If I want to use Spore as an artistic device/toy then that is fine. Because it really isn't a game.

On Amazon there are 1700+ people who are complaining about the DRM and are refusing to buy the game. (I don't know why Amazon lets people review a product that hasn't even come out yet, or a product that the person hasn't bought through Amazon). Overall, the setup and online registration is no different than a MMORPG. The game uploads and shares your creature creations, so it is not much different at all.

The first phase is the Cell phase, floating around in the primordial ooze. I like this phase the best. Nice ambient music, and graphics that look as if you are looking at this in a microscope, with different layers of the slide out of focus. Nice touch.

After you harvest some parts from other creatures, you can "evolve" your creature. You do a mating call, another creature like you shows up and does a mating dance and the program goes into Creature Creator mode.

At higher levels in the Cell stage, it becomes a "cell eat cell" world, and I was dying alot (luckily dying doesn't take anything away from you). I found that the best way to survive is to make a hideous creature with flagella, fins, two mouths, and spikes for protection.

Ater climbing out of the ooze, I enter the Creature stage. I added legs and changed my creature to what is seen above.

When you get to higher levels of the creature stage, you need to form a pack. This requires making allies with your nest mates or other creatures. You do this by imitating them in a "Simon says" way, by singing, dancing, posing, or charming (the four green buttons). This is a lot like many MMORPG's. Whether you can do these things and at what level of effectiveness is dependent on what body parts that you add to your creature. That is why I added a bunch of crazy stuff to this earlier creature, like horns, and wings, and nubs, as seen below:

Overall, I like this game. It has good game design and it is a casual, relaxing game, especially the Cell stage, which I like the best. The biggest issue that I have is that the game and game controls completely change between Cell, Creature, and Tribal level. It took me some getting used to the Tribal level, because the camera and control buttons changed drastically.

The game comes with stand-alone Creature, Tribe, Civilization creators where you can save your creations and share them with the world. I haven't tried these in great depth, but they are very fully featured and detailed, almost in an over the top sort of way.

I spent about an hour watching the shadow of a Jovian moon traverse across the face of Jupiter. A moon will look like a star next to Jupiter until it crosses in front of it, whereas you can see the shadow on the face of Jupiter.

According to this Javascript utility on Sky and Telescope's website (with a good article), what I saw was the moon Europa. I couldn't see the moon itself against the disk of Jupiter, but I could see its trailing shadow:

I also used this ancient Java-web-based Jupiter moon calculator from 1997: