Disaster recover disaster recovery

If you’ve developed and tested your disaster recovery plan, congratulations!  A remarkable number of shops, especially AS/400 shops, ignore this important aspect of business continuity.

 Now, let me rain on your parade.

1. Do you have a DR plan for your DR plan?  Suppose your plan is to run a duplicate system at another Company location: you’ve tested the plan, it worked, and you came away with a long list of additional tasks.  Now, what do you do if your DR site goes down?  An air conditioner might break, the power might go out, or you may even experience a hardware (gasp) issue.  What’s your plan?  As soon as you went into DR mode, was the second call you made to your backup DR site to put them on notice?
2. So, you’re in DR mode.  You need a secure, functional location to monitor the DR operation and to determine the cause of the outage (assuming Mt. Rainier didn’t come sliding through the front door).  Where are you going to do this?  You can’t rely on communications being fully operational and there are huge logistical problems with staffers concerned about their families (always the first priority) and their personal safety (yes, consider safety training for the DR “go” team).  If you’re big enough to staff spread over multiple locations, and if it’s not a software disaster, you’ll want to bring staff from the East coast in to manage the DR for a West coast disaster.  The West coast staff can stay with their families and you’ve just addressed cross-training.  Very smart!
3. Who’s managing the processes for resumption of normal service?  In the case of a natural disaster, this might be moot.  You can use the command center location (noted above).

In order or priority, these are the key business functions that must be available.

1. Treasury/cash management: you need cash to operate a business.
2. Payroll: you need to pay your employees regardless.  They won’t be around if they’re not getting paid.
3. Cash application: depositing checks keeps the cash coming in.
4. Key vendors: make sure your DR vendors are at the top of the list!
5. Invoicing: get invoices out, if possible, for previously-provided services, so the cash cycle isn’t stretched to the point of illiquidity.
6. Order processing: keepng the business going proves the value of DR planning. 

Disaster recovery is required by every business sooner or later.  If you’re not prepared, it very well could mean the end of the business or financial hardship for the owners (if they have to pour money in to keep it afloat during the recovery).

Killing a dead satellite

Why is there so much fuss about shooting down L-21, the dead spy satellite?

We’ve been putting men on the moon for almost 40 years (until we stopped, anyway).  We’re landing all kinds of smart gadgets on Mars.  We can hit an asteroid from 80,000,000 miles away.  So what’s the BFD with hitting a school bus-sized derelict hunk of space trash from 150 miles away?  Give Dick Cheney a .410, point him at a dove, and wait for the hydrazine shower.

I mean, it’s not like we don’t understand orbital mechanics.  It’s not that we don’t understand missle targeting-after all, we’ve been targeting the Russians, and specific missle silos, with great accuracy for half a century, and that’s going through the atmosphere twice (up and down), whereas here we’re just going up.  What about all the money we’ve spent on SDI, otherwise known as “Star Wars”?  Didn’t we get anything back from that investment?  And I really find it hard to believe that the U.S. military hasn’t been running simulations for this exact exercise for decades.

No, this isn’t a trivial exercise.  Among other things, the closing speed of 20,000 MPH requires dead-on aim: a fraction of a degree off target means the SM-3 missle “warhead” will miss the L-21 by miles.   But a dual-core Itanium processor has 2,000,000,000 (yes, billion) transistors.  If we can manufacture with that level of precision, we can certainly guide a warhead into a narrow target window.

A long time ago, I had an alter ego known as ”Mr. Evil” (there’s a small story that I’m not going to share).  I sympathize with my homie Austin Powers-inspired character Dr. Evil, who groused, “You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!”

If the sharks with laser beams can’t shoot the damn thing down, we’ll send the fembots after it.

Suicide recipe # 101 (I can’t remember the first 100)

… is being out of the country on business and trying to manage a telephone installation with a wife (it’s a business line for her) and Qwest Communications.

For obvious reasons, I’ll just deal with Qwest.  It’s been my experience that a majority of customer service people want to do a good job (that leaves 49% doing a not-so-good job).  The problem 100% of CSR’s face is bone-header policies laid down by shit-for-brains management teams completely detached from the real world and with obvious contempt for the customers paying their excessive salaries.

If I could to make one rule for investment firms, it would be this: you must use the products and services provided by your investments in reasonable proportion to the size of your investment.  In other words, if you own a big hunk of Yahoo, you’ll be using Yahoo e-mail and the Yahoo search engine.  If you own a big stinking hunk of Qwest, you’ll be dealing with their management’s cluelessness when you need to change your service, just like real customers.  I predict we’d see a lot of management turnover when responsible investing kicks in.  Clear-headed thinking about policies and procedures could drive billions of dollars out of the “expense” category and into the “profit” category.

Mild aside: Microsoft dogfoods.  That’s “Good” all around: operationally, tactically, and strategically.  Their people will understand your pain, even if they’re not able to do anything about it in the near term.  I wonder how many Qwest executives set up and change their own telephone service?

Full disclosure: I own Symantec, the investment’s done well, and their stuff sucks beyond words.  Symantec Professional not always easy to install, a resource hog,  damn hear impossible to get off your computer, and, after seven years, they still can’t get SpeedDisk to work right on large disks, even after I wrote to John Thompson to complain (I suspect the routine to sort and organize sectors can’t handle the large number of sectors on big disks).

Back to Qwest.  A good example is the “May we have your permission to access your records, Mr. Fritchman?” question.  Sure, I say.  But the little cloud over my head is saying, WTF?  You’re staring at my records already.  War criminal and failed assassin Dick Cheney probably has transcripts of my last 100 telephone conversations in the magazine rack in the VPP (Vice Presidential Pooper).  Hey-no flames here, ’cause Don Imus said it first: “Dick Cheney is a war criminal and Hillary Clinton is Satan”, and I’m just paraphrasing.  I’m just scared Cheney is taking over responsibility for shooting down L-21, the dead spy satellite.  With his aim, he’ll knock down the Space Needle and claim it was an Al Qaeda attack made possible because the American people have hampered his ability to fight terrorism by resisting warrantless wiretaps.

Meanwhile, Qwest won’t do anything until you provide your secret access code that apparently came with my installation package…from almost three years ago.  Sure, I lug that around on every business trip.  And unless I know the secret code, they won’t test me with the secret question!  Here’s their solution: they send me a voice mail-a VOICE MAIL-with my secret code.  Yeah-that’s secure.  Sweeeet.  You can’t make this up, and people are paying every month for this industrial-strength abuse.

The telco’s are violating our constitutional rights to keep us “safe” from everybody but the paying customer.  And then, once you break through the barrier, it’s a combination of 20 Questions and Truth Or Dare.  Yes, they wanted to know the dogs’ names, my inseam, my age when I did it the first time, if I believe in aliens (including Tom Cruise), and my annual income.  But in spite of my security violations, the 3rd line was finally cancelled (no faxes any more and I’m going to miss those mortgage offers). 

I’m having a hard time understanding why I have a land land at all.  Why I have two-well, I dunno.  One will vanish in a flash when I rejoin Corporate America.  The other will probably stay with a minimum level of service, primarily to support flat-rate long distance, to provide accurate location information for 9-1-1 calls, and to provide a hard connection for my home’s fire detection system.

As long as I don’t have to change the service on that one last line, nobody will get hurt.

Recent purchases

I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon.com.  You know, the destination web site.  I’m doing my self-directed Christmas spending now; I go into a funk if I don’t have a box on my front porch at least once a week.

Recent purchase #1: Motorola Global Q PDA.  I’m not a sophisticated user but so far everything works: phone, contacts, e-mail, ActiveSync.  It’s Windows Mobile 6 running Opera instead of IE…go figure?  When I have the time and an Internet connection…

Recent purchase #2: Nikon D80 digital camera.  This is my aloha present and it’s sweeeet.  I had an N90 and the associated lenses (all of which are worth essentially zero on the resale market), so there was an “economic” incentive to spend the dinero.  I looked at other comparable units but I prefer to spend a little more and get the best; quality is the best economy.  2,700 images on one battery charge-dang!  I like it.  There’s nothing not to love except the sticker.  The only open item is case providing some degree of rigidity so I can put the unit in my backpack. 

Notes on the 2008 Presidential candidates

Preface: none of them excite me.  Several have admirable backgrounds and are (so far) without public sin.

Hillary: your ad quoting Barack Obama out of context (on the Republicans as the party of ideas) is the reason you have such high negatives.  How on earth could approve such a bald-face distortion?  Every news show on the planet showed your ad and then Obama’s full quote, thereby making you into “Slick Hillie”.  Where’s the change?  You have been, by all accounts, an effective senator willing to cross the aisle.  You’re able to lead, although we don’t need to hear you telling us  every five minutes; the question is, where would you lead us?  You’d make a terrific Vice-President.

Mike: you’re another glib Arkansas politician.  If I know any more about your faith than your denomination, you’re off my list.  Yes, the words “under God” permeate our political history; I note the founding fathers didn’t have anything to say about Jesus.  It never fails to amaze me that so many Christians hear God whispering in their ears telling them to hate.  We have plenty of secular problems-let’s get them fixed first, and then the voters will decide if America should become a theocracy.

Barack: you have a message of hope and you speak of change.  Your record, while distinguished to date, doesn’t give us much to extrapolate from.  How about naming (with their consent) individuals you’d bring into your administration?  Everybody thought W was terrific until he started naming his runnin’ buddies (or his father’s runnin’ buddies) to key positions.  Prove to us that you have better taste and more smarts.  No, I’m not setting a high bar here.

John M: you are the real deal, a war hero with a long family history of service to America, and we thank you for your sacrifice.  100 years in the Middle East?  Don’t know much about economics?  Sheesh-read the Teleprompter for a change.  “Agents of intolerance”…boy, did you hit that one out of the park!  Make nice to the Right if you must, but no ass-kissing.  Dr. James Dobson: he’s a creep and a hatemonger; make a point of blowing him off.  Here’s the bottom line: you’ll never be conservative enough to win all the wingnuts, so don’t waste your time on them.  Go moderate: you’ll pick up more independents and conservative Democrats.

Mitt: we can’t argue with your success in business.  But you’re a political empath: you change yourself into whatever is most attractive to your audience.  If you can change yourself into an Episcopalian, you’ll do better next time.  Otherwise, the “Christian” right will tear into your faith and mock many LDS practices generally unknown to all but Saints and Evangelicals.

Rudy: too much 9-11.  I like you social positions and your candor with the wingnuts but we needed to see you in a bigger context.  You’ll make more money and not have to deal with press scrutiny of your personal life if you stay where you are (which looks like it’s pretty freakin’ comfortable).

Ron: I saw you with Tim Russert, and if you can’t answer his questions with rational explanations, you’re toast.  You’re toast.

Dennis: you have some interesting ideas but negative charisma.  Better luck next time.

John E: this isn’t the year for populists.  Elizabeth is something special-I wish you many long and happy years with her; your family has already suffered enough.

 Republicans and Democrats: the sooner we have a meaningful 3rd party, the better off the U.S. will be.

It’s too bad Arnold isn’t available.  I wonder if Dave Chappelle is interested?

MSFT and YHOO: I’m in the 2nd percentile, not the 98th

Look-I’m a Microsoft fan.  As a company, they’ve developed an incredible amount of software.  And, as a collection of individuals, you won’t find a smarter group anywhere: just read some of the MSDN blogs.  I’m in Mensa and I feel like a moron after reading the daily postings.  Several times in my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a team made up of smart, hard-working, ambitious, and fun-loving people.  That experience is the most addictive drug I know, and that’s why I admire Microsoft as a company and as a collection of employees.

You think Microsoft is the Evil Empire?  Grow up, get a clue, and go back to your open-source playware: it’s a company with a large proportion of driven, ambitious people committed to the fact that if version 1.0 of product “x” isn’t the greatest, version 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0 will be the greatest.  Microsoft won’t give up, and that attitude (call it their “Flight 93 syndrome”, and I use that phrase with the deepest respect) is a part of the Company’s culture.  So, I’m not piling on with the bash-Redmond crowd.

But I’m confused about this Yahoo deal.  It’s expensive now and it’s likely to get more expensive when YHOO’s board rejects the deal, as they’re likely to do on principle and as a negotiating counter-move.  The rate of return on the merger ain’t great, and the calculations offered by MSFT fail to consider one-time costs.  MSFT’s stock price has been unimpressive for several years and it’s taken another hit with this announcement.  Can somebody explain to me why this deal is good for me, an infinitesimally small MST stockholder?

My conclusion is that this bid is plain crazy-maybe a desperate attempt to catch up to GOOG.  But Microsoft, with its building full of antitrust lawyers, must have a damn good idea that the competitive effect of this acquisition will generate worldwide, and generally unfavorable, attention.  For crying out loud-the E.U. does nothing except snipe at Microsoft, thinking that hobbling MSFT will somehow make European business more competitive.  Well, I have news: there’s nothing stopping anybody from inventing the Next Great Thing, with or without Microsoft in the market.  Example #1: Google.

My corollary conclusion is that MSFT is making a tactical move, possibly to turn the E.U.’s lights on Google’s market position.  MSFT might gain if GOOG is reined in: the question to the E.U. is why GOOG, with such a commanding market share, operates freely while MSFT operates under a regulatory microscope.

My advice to MSFT is to focus on developing software and buying back stock.  Spin off the weird businesses.  Develop killer apps that support on-line advertising.  Get lean and rich again.  Let’s get that P/E ration moving up again and boost the dividend.  Incubate, incubate, incubate, bring the winners into the fold, and dump the losers wherever they are.  If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to dump the losers before the Board accepts the offer.

Synonymous with “inept”: “Prometric”

Prometric, the testing-and-certification-delivery company that, through their testing, controls thousands of careers in business, IT, and medicine, is one of the worst operations I’ve come across.  This outfit ranks right up (down) there with Bank of America and United Airlines.

In March 2007, one of their local testing centers flooded on a Saturday night.  It wasn’t Prometric’s fault; the upstairs tenant had a plumbing issue and the staff walked in on Monday morning to find newly water-cooled PC’s covered by wet ceiling tile sitting on waterlogged carpet.  Shift happens and getting cranked up doesn’t solve the problem.  But I have deep sympathy for the single moms who took a day off, scheduled babysitters and fought with the bus schedules so they could test for a beautician’s license.  “Not fair” doesn’t say enough.

It is a problem walking into this facility on the following Thursday, expecting to take an exam, and seeing complete disarray.  WTF?  Over three days, Prometric couldn’t blast out an e-mail with a cancellation notice?  Apparently their IT department (probably not capable of passing any IT certification exam and certainly never passing the PMP exam) couldn’t figure this one out.  Even their east coast call center could have put in a little OT to call us west coast folks…if management had a clue.

Prometric’s corporate malfeasance in failing to have a contingency plan is inexcusable.  If my test had been scheduled for 8 AM Monday, two hours after the problem was discovered, I’d understand.  But this outfit had three full days to inform the scheduled test-takers that their tests were cancelled.  What do they do for bad weather, a power failure, a break-in, a landslide, an earthquake, or a network problem? 

“Air Prometric”…it has a nice ring to it. Like an airline, they failed to make any kind of apology.  Like an airline, they assume their operations will never be disrupted by an external event.  And, like an airline, their facilities were one step above dumpy (it’s hard to value a class “A” certification when you’re tested in a strip mall).  Unlike an airline, they didn’t offered compensation for a cancellation or delay caused by the airline’s failure.  Not even a bag of lousy peanuts!

In a surprising turn of events, the local Prometric staff was very helpful and extremely apologetic.  The Customer Service group was also helpful and very professional, even as they fought against the IT morons (who, five days later, still hadn’t removed the out-of-service location from the reservations system).  And in a first for me, one of the local people (Rhyon) called me up to advise me that I had been rescheduled in the dead facility: without asking, he checked, acted on his own, and provided professional service.

I believe employees want to do the best job they can.  And I believe they’re often Dilbert’ed.  I wonder if Prometric’s management wear red noses, makeup, and floppy shoes?  They don’t have to practice falling all over each other, that’s for sure.

No, this is not moonbounce.  Today has been a Prometric day: that means the Prometric web site doesn’t work, you can’t find the right contact telephone number, you wade through a thicket of voice-mail prompts, and you end up holding for ten minutes.  Then, the first couple of people you speak with give you the wrong answer (“There’s no such thing as a Prometric student ID”) until somebody mentions, “Oh, the PMI testing is on a different system from the IT tests.”  Since then web site isn’t working, you have to spent another 30 minutes working with Customer Service while they get you set up.

It’s hard to believe that Microsoft, the Project Management Institute, IBM, and others have been hornswoggled into using Prometric.  Apparently none of these sold-gold outfits bothered to review incident logs or run some black-box (anonymous) test cases through Prometric’s support system.  “Inspect what you expect“, right?

The only thing harder than passing some of the certifications I have planned will be holding my nose while paying Prometric for the privilege.

The AS/400: the platform

The AS/400 product line has been maligned for poor product management by IBM.  A simple test involves nothing more than asking yourself, “Have I ever seen an AS/400 commercial?”  If you read the WSJ, you may have stumbled across one or two (over 15 years).

 However, IBM’s “VIP” (vertical industry program) is an attempt to reengage application-directed marketing (sell the application first and the hardware will sell itself) and to get IBM’ers back into direct selling.  Yes, it’s true: IBM’ers used to sell applications!  The bottom line is that the program is pretty good if you’re able to deal with the IBM bureaucracy (which really isn’t that bad; it’s just a lot of administration).  I applaud IBM for [at long last] listening to AS/400 software vendors.

These days, the AS/400 hardware is great and competitively priced.  IBM is moving in the right direction for recapturing the SMB market, the market, in case you’ve forgotten, that IBM invented in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  But the BIG problem for the platform is IBM’s WebSphere/Java solution and IBM’s failure to provide a satisfactory conversion path for green-screen customers.  WebSphere is hugely expensive when deployed in a production environment: it takes a lot of middleware and a lot of hardware to drive a WebSphere enterprise system.  And the lack of training and qualified human resources is problematic when compared to what’s available for ASP.NET: the ASP.NET ecosystem includes msdn.Microsoft.com, www.CodePlex.com, www.asp.net, extensive vocational and 3rd-party education programs, and a comprehensive certification program.

IBM is a hardware company that buys software companies: IBM is not a software company; it’s a hardware company forced into software.  I think it’s clear IBM is working hard to get out of the software business (except for MVS, which is hugely expensive and therefore very profitable), and i5/OS, as good as it is, will eventually be an option on a pSeries box.  The net result of these forces is that IBM is pushing the AS/400 out of business (many customers will go to a packaged Windows application rather than rewrite to WebSphere/Java), and that will result in reduced hardware sales.  But there’s a solution.

If IBM wants to sell some hardware, they’d release a 64-bit Wintel (let’s call it the “wSeries”) platform based on current hardware technology and support for Windows Server, IIS, Exchange Server, SQL Server 2005, and the rest of the Microsoft product stack. 

It’s probably sitting on a shelf somewhere in Rochester.  Anybody remember the closing scene in “Raiders of The Lost Ark”?

You don’t have to like R&B…

to love “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”, a big hit for Jimmy Ruffin in 1966.  William Weatherspoon and Paul Riser wrote the music and James Dean delivered simple and moving lyrics.  Weatherspoon and Dean were a well-known and prolific Motown writing and production team during the Berry Gordy era.

 But if you don’t like R&B, I highly recommend finding the cover by Joan Osborne, a rising star with eclectic music and lifestyle tastes.  She was featured in an award-winning 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown where she, backed by the legendary Funk Brothers, delivered a stand-up performance of this memorable song.  Her live studio performance was spectacular-I’m telling you, that white girl has soul!