Benjamin just completed his last final for this trimester today and he's off for the summer. Unfortunately due to the outcome of a group project, the odds are very good that he will be making a B in one of his classes which mars his otherwise straight-A+ record. The amazingly frustrating part is that the issue with the group project was mostly beyond his control.

Benjamin was one of three people on this major class project. Lets call the other people X and Y. Each person was responsible for their own portion of the project. In addition, person X agreed to take the three parts and combine them together such they had consistent formatting. Benjamin was already doing the "gather it all together" work for another class project and X agreed to do it for this one. X would then send the final document to Benjamin who would print it out and have it bound at Kinkos. X got him the document and Benjamin did his part. Apparently X is an idiot and simply copy/pasted the parts into one document and did not do any of the formatting. X also used the words "bull crap" in one of their portions. This is annoying but not terrible and played only a minor role in the ensuing catastrophe.

Person Y, on the other hand, is a poor excuse for a human being. Instead of creating content for their own section of the project, Y plagiarized 6 pages worth of content from the web. When the professor got to the aforementioned 6 pages she stopped reading (never getting to Benjamin's part of the project) and called the three of them into her office. As with most universities, J&W has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. She could have had all three of them expelled. Instead she reamed them a new one and said that she would only give them, at most, 60% of the possible points and that was being generous.

I'm frustrated -- probably more so than Benjamin is at this point. It's easy to look back and say "Benjamin should have read the entire project before having it printed and bound" to which there is a point and something he himself has said. Given how overworked and stressed he was during the week that the project was due, I'm impressed that he pulled it off at all. He had no bandwidth to assume complete control for this project in addition to the other projects for which he was already doing so. In addition, that's not how group projects should work. Person Y (and to some degree person X) violated the trust that a group project assumes and as a result all three of them are suffering because of it. I, personally, still hope that person Y is expelled. I have no doubts that in a corporate setting Y would be fired and likely both Benjamin and X would be severely reprimanded if not fired as well. In this case I can see the correlation between academia and industry, but that doesn't mean I think it's fair.

So for those following The Denver Monthlies, don't be surprised if you read about his first B in the next edition.

I'm sure you already heard, but good news from CA today! Gay marriage is legal in California!

"In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," the court said in the 120-page ruling, "and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

Now there's two states that B and I can move to after he graduates from college!

I've forgotten how much I hate computer hardware.

Three weeks ago today I was working at my computer and heard a loud POP, loud enough that I remember ducking for cover. I wasn't able to figure out where the sound had come from and after a bit I dismissed it and continued working.

The next morning I was working away and my computer spontaneously rebooted. Now that's annoying. To make matters worse it continued to do so. There was nothing in the log files that might indicate what the problem was. I know that brown outs can often cause this and since we just moved into the new house I thought we might be having some minor electrical issues. Determined to get it resolved I head off to Best Buy and purchase a UPS ($130). Nope - UPS doesn't fix the problem, the machine is still rebooting. After literally hours of frustration I determined that the problem was my dual-head AGP video card. The loud sound that I had heard the night before was one of the capacitors exploding. I removed the card and was reduced to using the on-board video with just one monitor while I awaited for a new video card to arrive.

Early in the next week (two weeks ago) the new video card arrives ($40). I pop it in and as soon as it boots up into graphics mode it reboots. Damn. I'm guessing that when the capacitor exploded it screwed something up on the motherboard such that no AGP card will work. Reverting back to one 1600x1200 monitor is totally out of the picture and a thought that was not even entertained (I did mock the thought for just a bit, but didn't entertain it). As anyone who has ever used dual monitors before can attest (my mother being one of them) once you go dual-head you never go back.

Because my computer is a work computer and since it very clearly isn't functioning correctly I submitted for a replacement. This is where I was concerned about things getting tricky. IBM has a policy that desktop systems are only replaced once every 3.5 years -- and they're trying to push it to 4 -- to minimize expenses and prevent people from requesting a new one every year. My system at the time was 4 days less than 3 years old so it was almost to the 3.5 mark but note quite there. If your computer is nonfunctional they'll fix or replace it regardless of how old it is, but I wasn't certain that "I can't use both of my monitors" counted as broken. Luckily the person who approves all desktop replacements for Tivoli use to be on my team several years ago and after I explained what was wrong he said to just order a new one and he would approve it. And so I did.

Now we wait another week and a half for processing and shipping and the machine arrives last Friday. In a box that looks like it would house a laptop and not a desktop. I open it up and there is indeed a desktop in the box, obviously designed by the creators of MicroMachines. This thing is microscopic. It does, however, already come with a video card that supports dual-monitors. Imagine my shock! So I sit down to plug in my keyboard and mice and - lo and behold, it has no PS/2 ports. Anyone who knows me will likely recall that I'm a stickler for my input devices. I am a passionate user of the Microsoft Natural keyboard (the original, not the Elite or the Media) and the Logitech TrackMan Marble trackball (the original, not the one with the scroll wheel). In fact, I'm so passionate about my input devices that I have a spare keyboard and two spare trackballs should some unforeseen event befall my existing ones. The spares are vital because they don't make either one of these input devices any more.

I get online to see if Best Buy has a PS/2-to-USB adapters and yes, they do but it has such horrible reviews on Amazon that I'm not going near it. Another brand has rave reviews but is not available in any stores we have here in Denver so I'm forced to order it from Amazon ($30). It gets ordered and I plug in a spare USB keyboard and USB mouse to get by and cross my fingers that the ordered device works as designed.

Meanwhile I work at getting the new computer set up. The video card is being very persnickety and I fight with it all day Saturday. Eventually through enough research I figure out that the supplied ATI video card will not support a dual-monitor set up at full resolution. And really, this doesn't overly upset me because I've come to absolutely hate the ATI card with a passion - their Linux support sucks so bad it could suck a monkey through a garden hose. Running two 1600x1200 monitors at 1024x768 resolution is unacceptable, end of discussion. You're thinking "so you just used the new video card you just bought, right?" Alas if it were only that simple. There are two problems with the new computer that prevent me from using the already-purchased video card 1) the new machine uses PCI Express (PCIe) and the already-purchased card is AGP and 2) because the MicroMachine case is so small, the video card must be a low profile card and the already-purchased card is full-height. So Saturday afternoon I get online to order a replacement video card. Finding an nVidia PCIe low-profile video card is more challenging that you might think but I did find one on Amazon ($60). Fed up at this point I order it for 2-day shipping.

While I'm waiting I'm also trying to figure out why the new computer seems so slow - slow like molasses in December. On Sunday after several hours of research I determine it is because the new machine has SATA drives but the BIOS is set to present them as IDE drives giving me a non-blazing 3MB/s transfer speed. I'm not a speed fanatic, really, I'm not, but the computer was virtually unusable at that speed. You can't just flip a switch in the BIOS, however, because 1) the initrd kernel image doesn't have the AHCI module to support SATA and thus won't recognize the drive and 2) the fstab file references /dev/hd* when the SATA drives are going to be presented to the kernel as /dev/sd* drives. All of this is determined by trial-and-error-and-research (rinse lather repeat) and involves many cycles of rebooting, adjusting BIOS settings, and editing configuration files. Finally I master the beast and my drive now transfers data at 61MB/s.

Monday and Tuesday I work entirely from my laptop as the new machine is unusable and yet I've already transferred everything to it from the old machine -- there's no point in going back to the old one. Today, Wednesday, both the PS/2-to-USB adapter and the video card show up. 10 minutes later the new machine is 100% operational with dual-screens supporting my full monitor resolution and working input devices.

Three weeks, $260 (out of my own pocket), and many frustrating hours later, I finally have a working computer again. This is why I hate computer hardware.

I'm way behind on my LJ posts so this update is past-due by at least two weeks.

I wasn't accepted for this round of the IBM Corporate Service Corp. According to the post on the intranet there were several thousand (~5,500) people that applied for just a few (100) slots.

That's ok though, this year may not have been the best time for me to go anyway. I do plan on reapplying for the next round.

Today I applied for IBM's Corporate Service Corps. Think Peace Corps but for computers instead. To quote the original IBM press release last year:

This program will provide leadership development experiences for IBMers, exposing participants to the 21st Century context for business – diverse cultures, policy environments and societal expectations. IBM will team with non-governmental organizations to place small groups of employees from different countries and business units together, outside of the office structure. They will build relationships and work on some of the world’s toughest problems, such as enhancing global economic opportunity and access to education resources. The Corporate Service Corps will be global from the outset: Approximately 600 IBM participants over the first three years will be drawn from all over the world. Project destinations will be in emerging and developing countries.

The program would be 6 months in total but only a month of that would be out of the US and in the destination country. The other 5 months would be part-time work in preparation for leaving and for debriefing once the in-country assignment is over.

The pre-reqs were reasonably high and they aren't accepting that many people so we'll see if I get selected. Preferential treatment will be given to folks who are already involved in volunteer work and while I listed DP and my sign language interpreting for Gateway the last several years I'm not certain if that's what they're looking for.

For the initial phase only three locations were listed as options and you were to rank them in your order of preference. My order was: Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa. Who knows, maybe my non-existent Russian will get some use?

The application deadline is February 15 and the coordinators are hoping to let folks know a month after that who has been accepted. Nothing to do but wait!

The counter-offer was more than reasonable so we accepted it -- we're buying a townhouse!

The only thing that Benjamin and I don't absolutely love about this unit is the outside color. It appears that Gargamel finally got the upper hand and made a line of paint. Yes, the condos are Smurf blue. Luckily the units around it aren't so you can't see the color from the inside :)

Check out realtor-provided pictures at 8351e29th.com.

The plan is to close on February 15th, lease back the unit to the current owners until March 31st, and take possession of it on April 1st. The lease-back helps the current owners who are in the process of building another home and gets us closer to the end of our lease at the lofts on April 14th.

This unit is vastly different from the unit we first started looking at but has the benefit of much more square footage, much nicer finishes, and a better possible resale value while only being slightly more expensive.

Earlier today we submitted an offer on a house in Denver. The sellers have countered. Stay tuned...

As mentioned previously, ITIM was released to manufacturing (RTMed) last week and yesterday was made electronically generally available (eGA). Yay!

Several news reports have been released. None of them mention the better performance with V5.0 (probably because we don't give out specifics without a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they'd have no data they could share to back that up).

Tags: work

Well, specifically for this comparison: We're not in Austin anymore.

It's cold. Butt-freezing, teeth-chattering, toe-curling cold. The current temperature is 19 degrees with today's high being 23. The low tonight is 8. Yes eight. Temperature-wise that's been about par for the past week or more. It's currently snowing and has been off and on for several days. The snow actually isn't that bad (particularly since I can commute in house-shoes) but the cold is cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we weren't living in a 100-year-old building with original windows and 14' ceilings. The building is heated by steam and apparently there isn't enough steam to go around to warm up our loft to above 60 degrees on average (sometimes it gets up to 65 and we rejoice). Or, maybe, it does get above 60 degrees but you'd have to be 10' tall to feel it given the high ceilings. And did I mention we don't have ceiling fans to help circulate the warm air?

On the flip side I bought a pair of all-purpose boots on Sunday evening that have come in particularly handy for my treks outside (to the gym, library, bank, post office, etc).

But yes - it's cold.

I realize that subject line makes very little sense to non-IBMers, let me translate:

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager version 5.0 released to manufacturing last night just before midnight EST!

That may still not make much sense to some folks, so let me break it down further:

The project that I've been working on for almost 2-years was finally released last night on schedule!

This is a huge thing due to the size of the project, the size of the team, the aggressive schedule, and that few of us are still sane after the two years :)

This release has a lot of "firsts" that I was directly involved in that will positively impact our customers:

• First time to have team members in all four US time zones. The joke is that I moved to Denver specifically for this reason. [Ok, this one doesn't impact our customers but it's a fun fact.]
• First time to have a hardware sizing tool available at release instead of 90 days after release. This is vital as without a sizing tool our customers just have to guess what kind of hardware they need for their deployments.
• First time to have a Performance Tuning Guide available at GA (general availability - about 5 days after RTM) instead of 90 days after release. This is important for customers with medium to large environments as well as the IBM Service team who is helping them deploy the version. [Well, technically we aren't going to hit GA but rather 1.5 weeks after GA. Still that's better than 12 weeks!]
• First time to release an internal-only document for Support and Services highlighting some known rough spots in the product so they can guide customers around them.
• And best of all: it's the first time that product performance and scalability have been an integral focus of a release from the design phase. In all past releases performance and scalability have been, literally, the very last thing looked at just before we release. I'm unable to say in a public forum just how much faster the product is without all of you signing an NDA. Just trust me that It's Faster and It Scales Better and that's a Very Good Thing for our customers and for me!

Please excuse me while I do the engineer's happy dance for about a week.

Tags: work