colin dellow's bln

So it's been about two weeks since we switched the OARBS corporate and service websites over to LayeredTech hosting.

My opinion: Great technical service, bad support service.

The connection is impeccable: low latency in North America and consistently uncongested bandwidth.

The support leaves something to be desired. During system set up, LT blew a service commitment of deploying a KVM-over-IP system within 2 hours. How badly did they blow it? From the time my request was made to the time they set up the KVM, 52 hours passed. Not only this, but LayeredTech seemed to forget I even existed. Here's a timeline of events:

0 hours: I request KVM ($30 rental fee applies).
6 hours: LT tells me KVM is being deployed.
8 hours: I poke LT to ask for an update.
19 hours: I poke LT again.
22 hours: I poke LT again.
25 hours: I poke LT again.
50 hours: I open a new ticket and ask them to check into the situation.
50 hours: LT is "looking into the matter".
52 hours: LT deploys the KVM.

Not very professional. I am reassured (I guess?) that LT was responsive once I opened a new ticket - but why did they slip up in the first place? Why did they not respond to repeated inquiries on existing tickets?

If this teaches me anything, it's that the way to get action is to create new tickets. This seems counterproductive. Ah, well...

A 2-mile jaunt

So Google released Google Talk on Wednesday to a less than rapturous audience.

That's because those people are idiots.

Google Talk is a step in the direction that the Internet needs to be going. Sure, it's another offering in a crowded market (3 major protocols, at least 10 major clients). Sure, the Google Talk system doesn't offer nudges, emoticons, File Transfer, web cam or a whole slew of the other features offered by the major players.

What it offers is standards and interoperability. The two Google Talk protocols are going to be well-documented and open to the public. Want to make a phone call to someone on Google Talk? Want to write a program which aggregates conversations your company's employees have with each other while at work? It is this area, the area of what ifs and how abouts that Google Talk enables and proprietary protocols like Microsoft's stifle.

Oh...and you get voice transmission in a program that's 900KB, for crying out loud. Skype is almost an order of magnitude larger at 7200KB. Yahoo Messenger definitely is an order larger, at 10,066KB, as is Microsoft MSN at 8,900KB. The ability to make functional, compact programs is an art that seems to be lost on the world's developers -- Google Talk and Fog Creek Software's Copilot should be revered for their bucking of this unnecessary trend.

Not only is it light on hard drive usage, but it's better on CPU: Google Talk appears to use about 1/3 of the CPU that Skype does.

So, to the people who have turned Google Talk away without trying it, I challenge you: Use it for a week. Its clean design and "just works" nature will change your mindset, even if all of the politics behind it didn't.

A magical if phlegmy 3.14 mile run into the valley south of the house. (Almost over that cold!)

Take a look, especially if you don't usually - Google's got decent satellite coverage of Dawson Creek and area now. And actually, if you stray far past Dawson Creek or my house (places I've Google Mapped a number of times, from different IPs in different countries), the coverage gets markedly worse. I wonder if Google splurged and bought better quality maps of this specific area in response to historical use?

...produces a 217-page, 2.5MB log file when you install it.

That's fun to troubleshoot.

Courtesy of Speakeasy.

PRIS Wireless Internet: 1,906kbps down, 897kbps up
Bell Sympatico DSL in Ontario: 2,428kbps down, 591kbps up
LayeredTech Server: 5,550kbps down, 8,174kbps up

Yay LayeredTech. The upstream bandwidth is probably understated - Speakeasy is only rated for 8Mbps of upload testing.

Well, I've been out of it (in so many ways) for the last couple of days as a result of contracting some fairly fishy flu-like thing that's been terrorizing the Dellow household. Boo that.

Anyway, I am now sufficiently plugged up that snot and other fluids are oozing out of me at a sedate 3.14m³/hour and I can do sedentary tasks again!

Wireless Internet
Yay for PRIS offering wireless internet. It's a 3-mile jumpshot to the tower on Briar Ridge, but it gives us an impressive 2.5Mbps (both ways!) connection.

Remote Desktop
Yay for Remote Desktop. This is just unreal... I can work on my development machine (serverus) in Toronto with zero lag and on the OARBS server (oilrig) in Austin, Texas with total ease from any computer. If the person who has loaned me their computer needs it back, I can switch computers without losing my session. This is crazy. I can even do a little bit of graphics work - anything too fancy and the lag becomes noticeable, though.

UDP Multicast
Boo for UDP multicast. Did you know that not all routers support it? Does this mean that to write a distributed application for a LAN you have to use shotgun TCP/IP portscanning? Cos... that sucks.

Yay for being home - everyone knows your name and ground beef is $2/lb (!!!).

Around the home

An under-sized plate of funky-tasting nachos at McGinnis Front Row will set you back $17. Stay away! Their glasses also reminded me of the formaldehyde-like solution used for preserving animals in Bio 11 and 12. Stay far away!

Finding Boxes
Ask your local Wendy's or McDonald's.

Filling Boxes
...books. Cascading stacks of books. Glorious shelves full in multiple rooms. We have so many books. We are so lucky!

Boom Boxes
Bob and Doug McKenzie - Great White North
Carole King - Jazzman
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Alabama 3 - Woke Up This Morning

1) The new OARBS web design is up.
2) I recently bought The Essential Drucker, Secrets of Power Presentations [or read it online] and SPIN Selling.
3) I really need to go for a run. I've been slacking due to exams, heat, moving planning and UTTER PROCRASTINATION. I swear I'll remedy this tonight.

Clean-Shaven Software, damn it.

My last post, Oh the Hypocrisy, just got its (and mine) first comment spam!

I'm moving up in the world!

Google this.

The first hit is my SE 240 Algorithms course; the second is an Algorithms course offered at a Danish university.

From the SE 240 written assignment guidelines:

Acknowledge your sources. If you used books or other materials to help you in your solutions, list them. In case you find the whole solution somewhere, you must explain the solution in your own words, making it clear that you understand it, and you must acknowledge your source.

From the UW Policy 71, plagiarism, as defined below, is an academic offense.

Plagiarism, which is the act of presenting the ideas, words or other intellectual property of another as one's own.

Now perhaps these lectures are simply re-used with permission. Or, perhaps both professors are re-using the textbook's instructor's material. But allow me to dissect these two cases:

1. Re-used with permission from Danish professor

   Lose, she should have cited he was the original source.

2. Re-using textbook instructor's material

   Lose, she would be in contradiction of the publisher's requirement that instructors not publish solutions to the book's exercises.

I mean, what is this crap? Professors can crib all they want, but students can't?

This is what $700 per course buys an Engineering student at the University of Waterloo?

Midwood's LAN is being FAAF. Flaky as all fazoli. Which means no music for me as I study. :(

Speaking of network stability (but at a more abstract level), I discovered Tor recently. It anonymizes Internet connections by routing traffic through several randomly selected Tor servers around the world. While it doesn't solve the so-called China problem, it does do great things for anonymity in the western world.

Sidenote: Yay RentACoder.

Nth sidenote: Boo Softeng. I should elaborate on this at some point.

1. I'm sniffling. I hate sniffling. I detest sniffling. Especially when it's 35 with the humidity.
2. Can reading 40 books replace an MBA education? Josh Kaufman thinks it can. I've read 7 of them; 33 more to go, I guess. :>
3. WorkHappy.net is a good site for entrepreneurs - it reviews free and inexpensive services/products that Make Life Happy(tm)

Did you know that the Dooly's pool-hall has a 50% discount coupon on their website, free to be printed off? You do now.

I've been spending the last two days finalizing the OARBS logo [seen here] and working on a site redesign for OARBS which should be up by midnight tonight. Yay prettiness factors!