JDPFu.com 2010

Below are a few incidents that I’m personally aware of which impacted a few different projects. Some are from my personal desktop to production dispatching systems with 20K+ users to some that impacted a space shuttle launch data.

People like Top 10 Lists, but I could think of only 9 near disasters. Perhaps something interesting will happen this week? ;)

Ooops – beep, beep, beep ….

How to Ask a Smart Question.

After reading a 2 pg rant from a new Linux user complaining that his questions were not being answered, I did a little googling and found a post on how to ask a smart question. I added a link here mainly so I could review it later, when I needed to ask a smart question.

In a BBC article about the Space Shuttle Atlantis landing the author mentioned a few statistics.

A Few Statistics

*First flight: 3 October 1985
*Total number of flights: 32
*Distance traveled: 195 million km
*Total number of days in orbit: 294
*Total number of orbits: 4,648

Cost Estimates

So if we assume that each shuttle launch and mission costs NASA about $450M on average, that leads to a few other operational cost numbers.

• $14,400M for 32 flights
• $48.98M for each day in orbit
• $3.1M for each orbit

These are just the costs for Atlantis while on mission. These numbers make my next vacation plans seem tiny. ;)

Disclosure: I was employed by the space shuttle program for 5 yrs and by both the shuttle and space station programs for 3 years. I worked at NASA-JSC in Houston, Tx for both of those jobs.

This morning an email was waiting from a travel friend. It was this link – http://www.galeriaelcuartito.com.ar/ – lot’s of FLASH, sorry.

I think that this week is 2 years since we visited this fantastic pizzeria in Buenos Aires. We enjoyed it enough to eat there twice – including the last night in town.

Since returning from that trip, I’ve had pizza, but only about 5 times. I’ve been ruined because I thought that I knew good pizza. I was wrong all these years. None of them compare. To me, El Cuartito has THE BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD …. so far. It is cheap too. Primera buenos!

The story is a little old, but it was new to me and I figured many people here would also be interested.

The presentation is by Mr. Rutan, famous aviator and aerospace engineer. Here’s an overview. The full PPT presentation isn’t without flaws, but using longer term temperature and CO2 data, it shows how the presentation that Vice President Gore and other we’re all gonna die people has been selected for effect.

Today the roofers are here putting up a new roof. I had a leak, but only when it rained REALLY hard – perhaps once a year. The old roof was 16+ yrs old, so it was about time. About half the neighborhood homes already have new roofs.

The guys were all here before 7:30a and ready to go. The weather today is going to be a perfect day for this – clear, sunny, highs in the lower 80s. No rain expected until after midnight. Perfect.

I’ll try to take a few photos during the day to capture some of the progress. As the day goes on, I’m learning about more leaks and bad design than I already knew. The leader is explaining how and why they happened. I trust him. I’ll explain below.

Let’s assume you are middle class and would like to retire as middle class. How much money do you need to support that lifestyle? What is the annual amount of that lifestyle today? $40K, $60K, $80K per year? Let’s assume $60K/yr buys you the middle class retired life. You won’t be jetting around the world every year, but you can afford to eat out and have a few hobbies.

I hope the tables turn out readable.

I have a TiVo connected to a digital box from the company and a Windows7 Media Center PC with a Hauppauge ClearQAM tuner. Today I planned on catching up on a little TV that should have been recorded last night, but wasn’t.

See, now that my VCRs are worthless since Comcast went 95% digital and requires a tuner box to get all but 5 network channels (ok, they also give 15 shopping channels and 8 community access channels too – great huh?), I use the 7MC PC to record programs when there’s a conflict with another or when I really don’t want to miss a specific show due to a screw up with the channel changing on TiVo or QAM tuner.

Be certain to check the comments for updates as I learn them.

I read lots of news every day. This morning, this story was found and after reading the headline, my first thought was …

I don’t claim to understand how US government agencies determine what a reasonable fine is for companies found of wrong doing or impeding solutions, but is $53 per incident enough? Serious? I’ve never been impressed with fines from the government. They aren’t even enough to remove profits from the infraction, IMHO.

According to this BBC article, Toyota is fined $16.4M for something that impacted at least 2.3 million vehicles. So, $16.4/2.3 = $53. Nice. I don’t think that is much of a deterrent to prevent the behavior for Toyota OR any other manufacturer in the future. Is my math wrong?

I’d think somewhere between $500 and $1500 per vehicle would be a more appropriate penalty to correct future behavior. It needs to hurt a little. I’ve worked in large corporations and know that while $16M is a bunch of money, it isn’t really that much. Heck, I’ve worked a laptop replacement project that was $25M.

I also understand that Toyota is an excellent automobile company and we don’t want to unjustly penalize them, their workers, or future customers. Like many of us, the managers involved didn’t know how serious the problem was and down played it for as long as they could. Being completely open concerning any issue with a consumer product isn’t part of any corporate culture that I’m aware. I’m reasonably certain if more than a few actual incidents happened and anyone were hurt, then Toyota would have been up front. When I worked on public impacting systems, I always pictured how my family would be impacted if there were any issue with the work. I believe the Toyota engineers do the same with their issues and fixes. Doing the right thing is easiest when you are close to the issue. The spin team is what concerns me – both the government AND the company spinners.

We all know that companies don’t pay any taxes OR fines with internal money, right? The fine paid will probably become part of the cost of every vehicle going forward when pricing is determined. I would add that to my checklist if I were on the accounting team and marketing team setting prices.

Another way to choose the fine amount may be to base it off the CEO + President complete annual pay packages including bonuses. Just a thought, I dunno. I read that the Toyota CEO earns less than $1M annually, while the GM CEO earned over $14M, so perhaps that isn’t a good idea for underpaid CEOs. Of course, my data was just found with a google search, so it could be wrong.