My Latest In Storage Magazine

Can be found here - if you have a password that is.  I don't, so i'm not sure what i wrote about, but i'm sure it's damn good!  I understand the password thing, but i'm too lazy to keep up.  If the author isn't going to log in to see stuff, are regular people?  I think they might do better nuking the password stuff so the zillion folks who hit this link aren't all bummed out.  Don't shoot the messenger.

Ethics Before Breakfast?

My latest CW article on Greg Reyes, ethics, and helping your fellow IT person survive the lunacy.

Microsoft Competes With iPOD

Here we go again. Apple comes out with an innovative, perfectly good, cool looking, easy to use (kind of) computer gadget and Microsoft decides it wants a piece.

So what will happen?  Microsoft's gizmo will come out, will not be as good, will not be as easy to use, will cause factions to occur, and will ultimately own 95% of the market. In three years only those "artsy" folks will be walking around with iPOD's while everyone else will have their MicGizmo, bitching and moaning about how they have to reboot it every twenty minutes, but buying a new one every time the capacity gets bigger.

I started complaining about my Treo 700 phone three days before I even got it.  I was right of course, it completely stinks, and while I don't know if that's because of Palm or Microsoft, I do know that the guys who run the Palm OS version tend to be far less bitchy.

Maybe we are just acclimated to complaining about Microsoft because we've given up.  I know I'm buying Microsoft.  I have 5 iPOD's in my house, but read the Boston Globe today and discovered Microsoft is joining the game.  I have already mentally come to grips with the inevitable fact that shortly I'll have MicGizmo's all over the place, and will look at my defiant 14 year old daughter wearing her iPOD like she's some sort of 60's hippie tree hugging VW van driving anti-capitalist.  Of course, hers will most likely work......

Who Are The Best CEO's?

My latest in Computerworld.

Fancy Hotel Shower Story And Brocade

We've collapsed my two blogs into this one, so this is a previously released story that is back by popular demand.

I was recently speaking at a Brocade event in Manhattan, at Le Parker Meridien.  Any hotel in the U.S. that starts with "Le" should have tipped me off that something would happen.  Because I'm lazy and never get anywhere on time, I always get in the night before a speech, and always stay at the venue so I don't have to risk not making it on time.  I'm always on first it seems, which means I have to get up and ready early. 

Anyhow, the hotel is one of these expensive Euro'esque joints.  Sparce marble lobby.  Did I mention expensive?  Nicely situated.  They don't give Starwood points, which is a bummer, because I'm platinum, but they did upgrade me to a "Jr. Suite", which is expensive hotel speak for "100 square feet of uncomfortable but expensive luxury".  The TV spun around 360 degrees, not that anyone would ever use that since sitting in the harsh metal "industrial" looking chair at the harsh metal desk to watch TV would be an act of torture. The place is sort of an Ian Schrager knock off.

I didn't care, I was in town for a night to get up and do a speech.  All I needed was a bed and a shower - and it at least had a bed.  The shower part gets interesting.

At the crack of dawn, I get up to begin my day.  I brush my teeth and look for the fancy Euro soap/shampoo stuff.  The shower is a 10 foot glass walled alley behind me, with no door.  Fancy.  I don't care.  I need a shower.

You have to go all the way down the alley in order to turn it on.  Since the alley is only 3 feet wide, water direction matters.  I turned the shower head only to get a blast of freezing water from some hand held gizmo attached to the head instead.

The handheld gizmo was like a 8 inch wand with holes in it, that sprayed a lovely pattern of water out of it.  It sat in a holder on the wall, up near the shower head. 

I spent the first 12 minutes of the shower attempting to get the water to come out of the shower head, to no avail.  There was no knob or button.  Finally I gave up and committed myself to using the wand.

I spent the next 12 minutes trying to get the wand to stay positioned in its holder so that the water would spray at me, as opposed to automatically moving itself so it squirted directly on the rear wall.  That didn't work either.

I then had to face the inevitable - I would have to hold the wand in order to shower.

Have you ever tried to shower with one hand?  It's hard.  It's much harder than one might think.  In one hand I have the wand, trying in vain to not squirt water out the non-existent door.  In the other hand I have soap.  I must rub soap one handed on my not so thin body.  Since I can't reach all of myself with that hand, I have to switch.  During the switch I close my eyes and wash my face, with my other hand - essentially grinding a bar of "milkweed and cat urine" fancy soap into my eyes.  At that time, I apparently spray the wand directly out the non-existent door all over the bathroom and "foyer" (4x3 entrance way).  The wand moves a lot of water.  I soak my undies and socks, which I had placed on the (nicely sized) vanity (don't know why I do that, force of habit.  I am always freezing getting out of the shower and somehow figure if I put socks and undies on quickly, it will make me happier.  God knows walking all the way to the next room (7 feet) would be like trudging through the arctic.).  I also soak everything in my shaving kit.

I don't realize this because there is soap in my eyes, and at just the right time, the water turns up approximately 400 degrees.  Now I can't see, and have entered the gates of hell.  I blindly point the wand away from me - at first toward the rear wall, which doesn't work because the water is splashing off and hitting my skin, where surely it is causing instant blistering.  Then I duck under the wand, and point it back to the open room.  I fumble with the shower handle for 12 minutes to find a reasonable temperature to continue, while flooding the room below me at this point.

Opening the little bottle of shampoo with one hand, and then pouring it on your head is also a more challenging endeavor than I would have thought.

After about 4 hours, I was able to leave the room.  I might as well have packed my suitcase in the deep end of my pool.  My new bag, by the way, is the LL Bean carry on, rolling, garment bag, which is really well designed, for those of you who refuse to ever check a bag, as I do.

I took my 7 inch long hotel key (yes, the same thing as a normal hotel key - but in that "lets be different and weird"  sort of way) and went to check out.  I'm short, a 7 inch hotel key in your pants pocket looks wrong, under any conditions, but especially if you are short.  I actually had to remove it at dinner the previous evening, in order to sit.  If you keep it in your back pocket, you are simply inviting ridicule.  Who's idea was this?

On a positive note, I did see the old skinny guy who wears jeans all the time on 60 minutes.  Not the other old guy that looks like a dressed up Andy Rooney, the smaller, really thin guy with the wispy grey hair.  I didn't say hi because A: I couldn't remember his name and B: about 4 years ago in a men's room in Chicago, I stood at a urinal next to Mike Wallace.  At the time he looked approximately 1100 years old, but I was born and raised watching Mike Wallace with my dad every Sunday.  I was so excited, I called  him "Mr. Safer".  What a buffoon.  Turns out he was a real gentleman - kindly corrected me as to who he was and then started up a conversation.  He asked me where I was from, and low and behold, he actually knew where Franklin, MA was.  Apparently he's from Brookline, MA.  The only thing that saved me from dying right there from embarrassment, was a dope behind me saying "oh wow, Ed Bradley".

FYI, the Brocade events were good I thought.  They had good speakers and were smart enough to include their own CIO.  Brocade is an interesting company in an interesting time, and love them or hate them, they are doing interesting stuff.  I've completely reversed my position on them in the last 18 months - when I thought they would die on the vine.  I think they deserve credit for not believing all their own B.S. - and recognizing that it ain't about the port - it's all about the smarts.

Incipient Network Virtualization

Good article/blog on Incipient's NSP here.  Good comment also - and one that will polarize the industry soon - as soon as Incipient type stuff is out in earnest.  At the end of the day it's going to be about how to add high-value services into the network and get them off of the end points exclusively.

By the way, I'm on vacation.  I'm at the beach.  I have my 4 kids, niece, in-laws and wife.  I need a vacation from my vacation already.