IT!! - Johnny Angel Wendell

Damn IT!! – Carmen's Right, Again.

Back in 6th grade, John Carmen taught me a hard lesson. Out on the playground of the Katherine Lee Bates School, John learned me some pain. No, he didn’t beat me up. I had 30 pounds on him, and stood a head taller. It wasn’t noses that got bloodied that bright cold September morning. The intended target of his punch was guts, hearts, maybe something deeper. The weapons weren’t fists or sticks.

Plain and simple, John taught me the power of words – mine, his - meant, mindless - stupid, hate filled, and heart-felt.

Schoolyards spawn hateful taunts the way school lavatories spawn flu viruses. Despite the antiseptic efforts of administrators, the germs of prejudice are well fertilized in the petri-dish of adolescent insecurity.

There’s always one or two schoolyard catchphrases in every generation – the put down of 1950’s elementary schools was ‘Kraut’. Anyone and anything could be disparaged with Kraut. “Bob is such a Kraut!” Politically incorrect? You bet. Wrong? Sure, but an expression you might hear at the movies or on popular war-story television shows at the time.

In the 2010s, the word “Gay” seems to have been adopted in a similar manner. Everything from clothes to cars to classes to curfews can be dismissed with, “That’s so gay!” Wrong? Wincingly, for sure. And thankfully not echoed in the media, but if you have teenagers, I bet dollars to donuts you’ve heard it.

In the sixties, the disparagement of choice, at least in our lily-white bread, Betty Crocker protestant suburb was “Jew”, and I am ashamed to say I used it. More than once. To put down John Carmen.

It’s pretty clear that kids today know what ‘Gay’ means, and they know it’s wrong to use it freely and disparagingly, though they seem to anyway. It would be disingenuous to say that I didn’t know calling someone a Jew in 1968 was wrong. We were isolated suburbanites, not idiots. But I honestly didn’t know that I had ever met a Jew, didn’t know a thing about the religion, or its history of oppression. When I called John Carmen a Jew, to me it was a mindless, empty-vessel of a word. To me. For all I knew or cared, it was just another putdown, like a million others that young boys throw at each other every day. I didn’t mean to hurt him. Hell, he was my friend. I could have been calling him a jerk. Except, of course, I wasn’t calling him a jerk. I was calling him a Jew and, of course, John Carmen was Jewish.  And I did hurt him.

And, of course, he told his dad. Who told Richard Barrone, the principal of Bates School. Who told my parents.

And the next morning, as soon as I walked into class, our 6th grade teacher silently and scornfully walked me to the principal’s office. I can still see the brass name plate, Richard A Barrone, Principal, bolted to his door mocking me. Inside the dark office, they all lay in wait. The thought of that intermediation still makes my knees ache. I had never seen a look in my father’s eyes quite like the distain he flashed me that morning. It took a minute or two for the reality to sink in. My arguments - that the words meant nothing to me, that I didn’t even know what I was saying, that I didn’t even know John was Jewish - all of my thick-headed defenses just made everyone even more angry.

I was frightened, cornered, and for the first time in my life, my parents were not coming to my rescue. I don’t remember the words she spoke, but I do remember the anger and sadness in my mother’s voice as she scolded me. A wave of shame, embarrassment, and true honest repentance swept over me, leaving me drooped on Mr. Barrone’s hard oak visitor chair, blubbering, and wet-faced.

My penance included taking classes at a local synagogue, meeting with John's family, and eventually attending his Bar Mitzvah. Thankfully, the lesson took. I can’t remember anything else I learned at Bates School, but no one has ever had cause to question my sensitivity to differences in beliefs, cultures, or actions since. I’m not, as friends will tell you, politically correct, but I am very, very sensitive to the power of words, intended or not.

For a while afterward, John and I tried to be friends. We tried to play guitar together. He didn’t play with a pick; he used all the fingers of his right hand to play complex jangly Aeolian solos ala Jeff Beck or Mark Knopler. I struggled to strum three chords in a row. John sold me his crappy Westwood imitation SG electric guitar for $75, probably more than it was worth at the time, and bought a real Gibson Les Paul. I kept the Westwood for years. It made my fingers bleed.  In college, a roommate’s bird – some god-awful white parrot-like creature – took a huge bite out of my beautiful Westwood’s red flame-burst body. I was mortified. Eventually, I sold the old girl to a grinning little kid at a flea market for five bucks. I was wistful. He was thrilled.

John and I aren’t friends anymore. The last time I physically laid eyes on him was in 1979, at a Boston nightclub called Cantone’s. He had transmogrified into Johnny Angel, leather-bound lead guitar player for a band called, The Thrills, one of the seminal Boston Punk bands of the late seventies. (That's him on the right.) They put out a couple of modestly successful singles. Sounded sort of like an alien lovechild from the unholy union of The Bangles, The Ramones, and T-Bone Burnett. Later, he formed a band call The BlackJacks.  I always thought it was funny that Johnny Angel’s day job was working as a stockbroker for his dad’s firm.

Eventually, John ditched Wall Street, moved to LA, and got lost. We reconnected once in the nineties- before Facebook – and exchanged an email or two. In 1994, he sent me a copy of his album, Creeps in Exile, which I tried to listen to, couldn’t stand, still have, but have not listened to since. Talk about god-awful. Oy.

He went dark again on me until one day in the mid-2000s, when he friended me on Facebook. Whoa. He’d changed his name again – to Johnny Wendell – and was spewing his own version of nasty as an uber (and I mean UBER) left wing radio yakker on the left coast.

Most of you know, I am just a little bit to the right of Oliver North politically, so this was fun – I wish I had saved all the screaming you-are-such-an-idiot stream of consciousness emails we’ve exchanged over the years. Finally, before FB let you control which friends are allowed to post on your wall, I had to defriend my old friend so people wouldn’t think I believed his insane-clown-posse-on-Pelosi-steroid non-sense.

I think he was offended… Oy.

I was surprised to hear from him again last year. He wanted me to send him money. What? Yes, he had written twelve new songs he needed to record. If I gave him money now, through a website called Kickstarter.Com, he’d pay me back with a copy of the album later. The Kickstarter idea was sort of intriguing – so despite our checkered history, and the threat of another Creeps in Exile album on my CD shelf, I punched into PayPal and paid my old pal $15. And waited. And waited. An eventually forgot all about it, until a couple of weeks ago, when he pinged me for my home address.

Next thing I know, IT!! showed up in my mailbox.

IT!! is not Creeps in Exile. IT!! is actually excellent, and thankfully, there isn’t a drop of Johnny Wendell hate-spew anywhere near it.

John’s lyrics are insanely original, funny, and sweet. His tune-smithery is just as engaging. You’ve heard these melodies before – somewhere. The songs are an intricate array of smoothies, blended from a fruit orchard representing every influence, and every great hit song, between Peter Noone and Ozzie. If you can figure out which hook came from which, you’re better than me, but either way, you are bound to love this music.

The record starts off with the guitar hook laden, Crazy Eyes – a mashup of Richie Furay, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Conway Twitty, and Frank Zappa - that I simply cannot get out of my head. I mean “sing it out loud all day” cannot get out of my head.

This up-tempo country tune will not win a CMA award, but it deserves one. It’s a shame, but your local pickup truck and six pack country station doesn’t play songs with lyrics like:

She’s got a strange little giggle,
A wobble and a wiggle,
Like an itty-bitty baby palm tree.

They won't, but they should.

And I don’t think Kenny Chesney is going to cover the slow country swing of Your Sweet Baby Blues:

It’s not too late to make this work,
Don’t you wash me away,
Like a stain off a shirt.

He won't, but I think he should.

John seems to think Gypsy Boots – a signature twang-filled guitar hook-driven pop rocker – would be the single of the album, if there was to be one.

Gypsy boots and big round glasses,
You’ll still be hip when this trend passes.
It wasn’t kismet that we had to meet.
Gypsy boots and I was meant to be.

I love the song, but I’d make it the flip side of Crazy Eyes – if they still make flipsides, that is…

Perhaps the best all-around creation on the thing is She’s Someone Else’s Someone Now, where John channels a tongue in cheek Warren Zevon covering George Jones.

I make myself promises.
I stand resolute.
And then in one glimpse,
It all goes down the chute.
When I see her. Yes, I see her.

If John had a sweet side growing up, I never saw it, but he’s grown one and exposed it here with the sweeping and gorgeous Lullaby Arms, sung to his kids – guaranteed to pucker your chin. In the cigarette lighter ballad, September in New England, he simultaneously paints a visual omage to our old hometown, and memorializes his father, Dan Carmen.

Singing to a wandering lover, in the airy cha-cha (yes, as in Cha-Cha-Cha), As Long As You Always Love Me, he writes:

You could move to Topanga in a VW van,
Or take up Kabuki, relo to Japan,
I don’t care.
Baby, I don’t care.

My favorite refrains, and perhaps one of the more memorable set of lyrics in modern songwriting, comes in the Asbury Park Street Corner Rhumba (yes, as in Rhumba), Up in Her Room:

Get back in this bed right now.
Stop making me laugh.
Naked cartwheels cross my ragged floor,
Don’t want to hear it from the neighbors below.

See? You can’t help but smile. Right?

IT!! is filled with touching moments, gritty growls, soaring vocals (who knew?), tight harmonies, clean musicianship, great production quality, goofiness, catchy hooks, great riffs, a Celtic stomp?, and other oddities from this gifted guy with a huge heart, and even huger chip on his shoulder, who had the courage to stand up for himself at twelve, and who continues to stand up to the world 40 years later. In his odd way, I think John is still teaching us all an itty-bitty little lesson. Despite his political mental illness, the guy makes great music. It sort of makes me want argue with him again. Gee- I hope he accepts my friend request this time.
You won’t want to eat just one chip in this bag – but start by downloading Crazy Eyes.

Good luck getting IT!! out of your head.

Anatomy of a (successful) Marketing Campaign

Last fall, our marketing radar picked up signals of a powerful opportunity.

We began hearing from our field teams, product management/development, partners, and even from our own internal IT team about an impending market transition. The SSL keylength of the RSA public encryption key was doubling from 1024-bits to 2048-bits.

According to the experts at F5, SSL is a cryptographic protocol used to secure communications over the Internet. SSL ensures secure end-to-end transmission and every web browser and web site worth its salt uses it.

This doubling of the keylength was imperative, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued an edict driving conversion by January 2011.

Any website wishing to provide digital signing– anyone doing credit card transactions, for instance – would have to support the 2048 keylength.

(Hey, I am the marketing guy, OK? Learn more on the mechanics and requirements here.

The impact is huge. There is a significant increase in processing power required when you go from 1024-bit to 2048-bit, and webs sites performance takes a hit when key sizes increase, regardless of the platform or vendor.

Our product/solution teams had a solution.

Offloading encryption to the special purpose processors in BIG-IP helps reduce the performance impact of the conversion, and centralizing encryption across many application servers reduces the number of certificates required and thus cost. For more on the solution click here 

So, we were facing a marketers panacea – transitioning market conditions, obvious and understood customer pain point, straightforward proven solution, solid value proposition and powerful cost drivers. What’s not to like about this story?

Maggie's Last Christmas

Maggie doesn't know about Jesus being God or about tomorrow being his birthday.

She thinks we're nuts for dragging a tree in the house, and she doesn't get the point of hanging lights outside.

She sees fine in the dark.

If Jesus came by the house tomorrow, she'd bite his butt. She does that. She's bitten the drum teacher, most of Lily's friends, a few of David's, my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, the Zoots guy, and probably a few dozen others.

So I'm pretty sure if a bearded guy, with long hair, and a robe came to the door, she'd take a little chomp of His butt, too.

She can't help it.

Maggie likes big butts...I cannot lie...

and thighs, and the occasional ankle.

And it's not like she doesn't know better...she's been bitten a few times herself...by coyotes, the dog next door, a friend's dog at a field hockey game...she's literally covered in scars from nose to tail.

I suppose she has a right to be cranky. After all, she lives with just about every known health issue a Shar-pei can get - allergies, tiny ear canals that get infected, eye lids that roll under and scratch her corneas, skin infections, Shar-pei fever, kidney failure, and now incontinence.

She also smells. Omg, she reeks! And leaks, and barks, and frankly, she is a major league pain in the ass.

She doesn't play - ok, she'll fetch her rag doll a couple times if she's in the mood before plopping back down to sleep, but that's it.

Come to think of it, she really doesn't do much of anything. She eats, drinks, poops, pees, bites butts, and guards her territory.

Wow...does she ever guard her territory. You don't want to be a squirrel, or a cat, or a UPS truck driver in our neighborhood.

Did I mention she bites?

So a lot of people told us we should put her down - our family, neighbors, insurance agent...they all said she's not adding anything to the family, so get rid of her. Why would you keep her?

There were some times we asked ourselves the same question...we used to joke about taking her on that long one-way trip to the vet. Especially after she bit, or leaked, or puked, or scared someone half to death.

We know the way to the vet with our eyes closed.  In addition to bites, she's had a bunch of skin tags removed. Another bump, another trip to Angell Memorial, another operation - thank goodness for pet health insurance.

We're so used to it, we didn't think a thing about having another one removed last month.

Until they called and said it was a mast cell tumor, stage 3, Incurable. A few weeks...maybe.

I haven't seem my son cry so hard in his entire life.

The odd thing is she seems totally fine, just great - happy-to-see-us waggy-tailed every morning, jumping-around-the-kitchen excited for supper, spinning-in-circles pysched when the postman throws her a cookie, four-feet-in-the-air wiggly for belly rubs. If anything, she's in a better mood than ever.

It's like she's trying to make up for all her years of petly suck-a-tude.

She hasn't even bit anyone since they started the chemo, but just to be sure we'll lock her in her crate tonight so she doesn't snag a toothful of Santa's butt when he slides down the chimney.

As for Jesus, if he does decide to stop by the house for his b-day party tomorrow, I hope she doesn't scare him away.

See, I'm hoping he'll perform one more miracle while he's here.

Today they found another tumor...we don't have much time left with her...so it would be awesome if he could lay hands on her and fix it so she wouldn't smell quite so bad...

SSP Failure to Cloud Storage Success - What a Difference a Decade Makes

Storability 10 year Reunion

Years ago, a few buddies and I started one of the first cloud storage providers. Of course, we didn’t call it cloud storage back then, but we merry band of brithers (and sisters), we first generation Storage Service Providers (1gSSPs) were cloud storage way before the cloud was cool.

All the 1gSSPs – StorageNetworks, ScaleEight, StorageWay, Sanrise, and others – failed. The core problem was and still is that renting raw capacity over the network is a lousy business model.

• 1gSSPs couldn’t sustainably buy their storage cheaper than their retail customers (although over a beer I can share some great stories of how the early 1gSSP robber-barron’s ‘negotiated’ with the storage vendors during the boom).
• SSPs couldn’t sustainably offer broad enough management efficiencies to generate profits.
• SSPs couldn’t overcome a host of logistic and cultural issues (network performance/cost, stigma/liability of releasing core data, etc).

After the bust, and the 911 attacks, the entire business simply collapsed. Some of us – my company, Storability and others like Arsenal Digital - managed to flip over to providing managed storage services – running NOCs, and doing backups and restores for our customers. Wasn’t a great business, but we survived long enough to eventually be sold off.

For those interested in an unbiased history of the 1gSSP market, there is a thorough and thoughtful analysis from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) posted here.

Ten years later, things look different, and the same.

A whole host of storage service providers – nee’ cloud storage providers – has arisen, not so much from the ashes of the 1gSSPs, but certainly with their dust in the new CSP DNA. These folks have it a little easier than we did back then, and I think more than a few of them are going to make an honest living this time.

In addition to the obvious improvements in network connectivity, bandwidth, and reliability, I see three critical changes that I believe will mark the difference between the past failure of 1gSSPs and the future success of today’s Cloud Storage Providers – file systems, file virtualization, and file storage gateways.

A quick, non-traditional, note of thanksgiving

My wife comes from a huge family – this Thursday there will be 30 people in various states of consciousness standing around staring at the oven waiting for the female-in-laws to pull the turkey(s).

I grew up as the only kid in the house, so I get a kick out of hanging out with a gang of revelers on holidays. One of the best parts of the day is going around the table asking what everyone is thankful for this year – we get a lot of the usual; family members, school, friends, the dog, passing grades.

This year I am going to offer thanks for something a little non-traditional.

Sit down, shut up, and fly

Last night I tweeted, "Move it, Get out of aisle, let ppl by, dont smash in2 ppl alrdy seatd, dont grab seatback getng 2/frm seat. Is that so freakin hard ppl?"

Got a load of holier than tho feedback. ooo - dont be part of the problem kirby...oooo

Listen - I live up here.  I spend more time at 30K ft than 99% of the world.  More than they legally let Stews and Pilots.  I was reading the sign on the new X-ray scanners at BOS which tells you that the machine emits the equivalent radiation you'd receive from 2 mins at 39K ft.  My blood ran cold.  I need lead underwear.
.
Point is, I watch what the Stews go through - 4 times a day most of them.  Load 'em in - give them the 'please share overhead space, please step out of the aisle, please put smaller items under the seat' speech.  Last week I heard one frustrated stew muttering under her breath, "this is the worst 15 minutes of my day..."

I had an idea - why don't they make a video for everyone to watch before they load the plane.  Like when everyone is jockeying for position in front of the entrance gate.  Sorta like they do at some airports during the TSA line - but instead of 'take off your shoes, put liquids in the bin' this would be about how to get on an airplane quickly without pissing off everyone else in the process.

The Knothole Conundrum

In marketing – especially product marketing - we every now and again run into a conflict between what is and what should be when it comes to product releases.

Perhaps it happens when development slips the schedule on a specific feature, or perhaps Marketing wants to pull in the announcement to hit a specific date coinciding with a trade show or other event. Maybe you’ve just got wind of a competitor planning to pull the rug out from under you…whatever the cause, occasionally someone will say, “Well, we can still launch on time as long as we clearly document this ‘temporary’ constraint.”

I call this classic release challenge the Knothole Conundrum.

Jeffrey Taylor Wadsworth Graduation Speech

Thank you all for joining us here today to recognize Jeffrey’s achievements and to celebrate his graduation from Babson College. If you haven’t yet experienced a classic Kirby kid-speech, be forewarned. You may want to grab a napkin…this usually gets a little messy…

Angels over Arizona

She calls herself SkyAngel, btw, which is perfect don’t you think? She is what Seth Godin describes as a lynchpin. I see her as a model for what the word ‘work’ means. In a thoughtful New York Times write-up, Adam Cohen vamps on Studs Terkle’s reflections on Working, “Even for the lowliest laborers, Mr. Terkel found, work was a search, sometimes successful, sometimes not, "for daily meaning as well as daily bread."

A fine stew...

It’s a lousy job.

Get ‘em on, get ‘em off. Hussle up the newbies and –in-frequent fliers. “Stow your gear, and get the heck out of the way, you dopes. Move it, we got schedules to meet, and you got a hundred people waitin’ on the jetway for you to step out of the aisle.” You know the poor things just want to scream by the time the doors close and the seatbelt/life vest demonstration starts.

It’s a really lousy job, getting worse by the day.

Tough hours, away from home half the time, crappy airport hotels, crappy airport restaurants. Company bustin’ your chops to cut costs and reduce service levels at every turn. Smaller, more crowded planes. Longer flights. Shorter turnarounds. Crankier customers. Now they even want them to help clean the airplane.

Coffee, Tea, or Me? Not hardly, no more. The days of Sinatra’s magical Starry Eyed, Rarified Air are long gone. Ya, maybe the Southwest crews try to inject some humor, but even they know the whole experience of air travel just plain stinks – for passengers, crews, everyone.

But in the midst of this lousy, grating, fingernails-on-a-chaulkboard, if-you-kick-my-seat-again-some-overhead-luggage-is-going-to-shift-unexpectedly-on-your-freaking-head, world...OCCASSIONALLY a light shines, a bright surprise burst on the vast gray mediocrity of air travel. OCCASIONALLY, someone actually still gives a hoot.

Test Me If You Can

Ever see a headline on a press release like this?

“According to the widely respected OhGosh Group, OUR Product Performs Better Than THEIR Product!”

or

“New Report from World-Renowned Acme Consulting Proves XYZ Technology’s New Stamflatz 10000 delivers More Gigaflux Capacity than ABC Technology’s Burgpultz 500!”

Or how about my personal favorite?

“Industry Leading Analyst Firm Ranks XYZ Technology’s New Stamflatz 10000 the Clear Leader in Customer Satisfaction!”

Oh, and the tweets are even worse:

“Great News! We absolutely blow away Burgpultz! But, don’t take our word for it.. check out HTTP.BS.B.LY”

You know the type – usually sounds all hyperventilated and squealy. Ugh.

My good friend and colleage, Lori MacVittie just wrote a blog on this subject, For Thirty Pieces of Silver My Product Can Beat Your Product, that got my 'marketing professional' dander dandying.

Now a word about the relevancy of File Virtualization

Having just discussed the ninny-ness of calling something relevant, now you can call me, Old Storage Ninny (OSN).

First, let's establish my cred before I start jumping up and down screaming that File Virtualization is relevant.

I am speaking for myself here – not my employer. While acknowledging that I work for a company that sells file virtualization technology, I want to be clear that my position here is mine – it’s personal this time. Sure, I want my employer to succeed, but I am speaking now from the heart, and from my 30 years of storage industry experience.

Irrelevant is the hardest word

"What do I do to make you love me?  What have I got to do to be heard?”
© 1976 Big Pig Music Limited

In ’76, Elton John tried to convince us “Sorry” was the hardest word. He was wrong.

If you want to hurt someone or something – the 2010 attack of choice is to declare him or it ‘Irrelevant’.

Two months after a stunning win that rocked the entire USA, Scott Brown was declared irrelevant by the media yesterday.

ir•rel•e•vant (ĭ-rěl'ə-vənt) adj. Unrelated to the matter being considered. having no bearing on or connection with the subject at issue

Super Duper Deduper (for iTunes on Windows7)

I made the mistake of turning on Home Sharing in the iTunes version 9.1.3 (don't do this...).

The OSG family has about 10 computers lying around the home network, just waiting to pounce.  In no time, my poor iTunes library was flooded with multiple copies of musical bilge - seriously what in heaven's name are those kids listening, too?  (and Watching!!! - but that's another blog for another day...).

I found I had 12 versions of Dream On, , and Paperback Writer was written is 18 places on my drowning disk drive - I was Suddenly Numb (17 versions/copies).

I started to manually remove them - ever tried that in iTunes?  About every 3rd delete it makes you confirm that you really, yes, really, I said REALLY, gd it!!, want to move the file to the recycle bin.  Who wrote that damn feature?  After 10 minutes I gave up - seriously considered deleting the whole thing and starting over...

Before pulling the red cord, I checked around online for an iTunes friendly deduper.  Not an easy task if you run W7.  A superstar named Doug Adams wrote some brilliant shareware script for this - "Corral iTunes Dupes AppleScript 7" - but it only runs on Apple.  Molesoft will let you download a free version of  Duplicate File Finder, but that only tells you the baby's ugly - it doesn't actually DO anything.  You have to pay up if you want to actualy fix your problem.  I have no problem paying for software - but it isn't worth $$ to me to dedupe iTunes.  I am irritated, but not incapacitated.

Finally tripped over a duper-souper, wicked-pissa FREE (well, voluntary contribution model) deduper that works fine with Windows7 iTunes, called  Meta-iPod.  Actually it does much more than dedupe.  It analyzes your library, determines ratings, checks and fixes mismatched metadata (more on this in a minute), finds lost tracks, locates album artwork, and dedupes.  It is really coolio, awesome - seriously.

The artwork search is extensive - this thing searches all over the world for album art and gives you a dozen choices for each album.  If the metadata's right, it will automagically add artwork for each song on the album at once - which saves you doing it individually. Its still a hump if you have lots of albums - and each person will have to determine how much work its worth, but its definitely fun to mess around.

I am a Stay-at-Home Failure

The OSG family Wife/Homemaker/Mom is on vacation this week. Visiting her mom and grandmom down in FLA. Sleeping late, sunning at the pool, maybe taking a stroll, living large, taking it easy.

Meanwhile, the rest of the OSG family is teetering dangerously close to derailing.

There is no food in the house. Someone clogged and overflowed a toilet upstairs. Sister needs rides to cheerleading at the same time Brother needs rides to the hockey banquet. Dad has saddle sores from driving errands and shuttling teenagers. The dog is still at the kennel from last week’s trip because no one has the time or inclination to go retrieve her. One of the cars is stuck in the garage with a dead battery. We missed the weekly trash pickup. Everyone is running low on underwear and sox. First spawn needs help packing for his school trip to Russia. Somebody’s girlfriend is coming over this afternoon, and we were just informed there is a middle school party here this weekend??

Calendar is showing 7 work-related conference calls today – silly season looms, couple of very pressing issues, some routine stuff, and about a dozen live projects on the burner.

Friend of ours is a homemaker/dad – wife’s a mucky-muck in perfumes or something. I love the guy, seems so relaxed, funny. Whenever we get together, I chuckle and tease Mrs. OSG about his ‘arrangement’ – ‘gee, I wish my wife would take care of me like that…I’d love to stay home, get my nails done, and watch some Soaps’…

OK, God – I get the message.

Final errand before she gets home will be a stop at the Jewelry store.

But first I gotta get the dog.

O curlers, come, we're brithers a' (and good luck to you)

Every four winters, the population of the world with televisions gets the notion that it can compete in the Olympics.  Very few think, "Hey, I can just sit on those big fat skis, slide down that 300' foot jump, stand up at the end, and get a gold medal.  Even fewer - especially this year - think to themselves, "I can ride a sled! I'll just lie down on that thing and slide to victory, nothing to it..."

But, every four years people sitting in their living rooms, eating pretzels and drinking beer, think, "Hey, that curling is silly, it's shuffleboard on ice, any idiot can do that.  Heck, I am going to the Olympics and do some curling..."

Tiering, ILM, HSM and WGAF

In 2004, SNIA defined Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) as comprising the policies, processes, practices, and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost effective IT infrastructure (I would have added 'for its placement' but the ILMers at SNIA are wicked fussy about inferring that ILM has ANYTHING to do with storage. –Ed.) from the time information is conceived through its final disposition. Information is aligned with business processes through management policies and service levels associated with applications, metadata, information, and data.

The Character of Clouds: Ethics Matter More for Service Providers

Here's an important reminder for cloud service providers: character counts.
Ethics, Values, and Trust are table stakes – for anyone who wants to succeed in business long term – but especially for cloud service providers.

As a cloud customer, I am not simply buying/renting your hardware and software. I am grafting my company onto yours. We are intermingling our corporate DNA. I am loading my databases on your disk drives. I am modifying my internal processes to map to your services.

Rule 1: OSG is always right

Rule #2 - if you think right is wrong, you're not paying attention.

Regardless of who pays for it, healthcare is a set of goods and services that must be delivered by others to you.

Like if or not, there is not enough 'healthcare' to go around. Everyone cannot and will not get all the 'healthcare' they need or want.

This is just a reality, not a political statement.

When you let the government pay - the government has to decide who will get how much. Since government represent everyone equally, government payment systems requires 'fairness'. This means the government has to decide who gets treatment and who doesn't.

Some form of the following:

Life expectancy (age) X quality of life (defined how exactly??) X effectiveness of treatment / Cost of treatment

is used to determine whether you (or your kids or your parents) get the treatment.

Save a Socialist, Ride a Cowboy

I rejected your comment because I found it insulting, and it's my blog, so tough noogies. But, here's my attempt to respond objectively.

Your 'right' cannot ever be granted by taking property away from others. Rights are just that, rights - you have the right to life (I can't kill you), liberty (I can't enslave you), the pursuit of happiness (whatever that means). You don't - in western society anyway - have the right to take my stuff.

You don't have a right to eat my food. You have a right to earn your own darn food.

The blanket statement - "in western society, health care is a right not a good" is intellectually dishonest.