QOTW: Humility

Yet it remains true that general progress needs peace and co-operation, and that it is greatly hindered by pettiness of mind. In face of others’ superiority, there is only one honorable attitude: to be glad of it, and then it becomes our own joy, our own good fortune.

Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

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Worth Reading: IWAN at Networking by Fish

IWAN stands for “Intelligent WAN” — bringing intelligence to the WAN edge. Intelligence like “Intelligent Path Control” which can help you with not only utilizing that backup link… but doing so with a level of intelligence that “begins with the end in mind”. via fish

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Micromanaging networks considered harmful: on (k)nerd knobs

Nerd Knobs (or as we used to call them in TAC, knerd knobs) are the bane of the support engineer’s life. Well, that and crashes. And customer who call in with a decoded stack trace. Or don’t know where to put the floppy disc that came with the router into the router. But, anyway…

What is it with nerd knobs? Ivan has a great piece up this week on the topic. I think this is the closest he gets to what I think of as the real root cause for nerd knobs —

Instead of using cookie-cutter designs, we prefer to carefully craft unique snowflakes that magically integrate the legacy stuff that should have been dead years ago with the next-generation technologies… and every unique snowflake needs at least a nerd knob or two to make it work.

Greg has a response to Ivan up; again, I think he gets close to the problem with these thoughts —

Most IT managers have lost the ability to recognise technical debt and its impacts … Nerd Knobs are symptoms of much deeper problems/technical debt in the networking market and treat the cause not the symptom.

A somewhat orthogonal article caught my eye, Continue reading

Worth Reading: Redefining SDN

Regarding state, introducing latency to network state is pretty insurmountable if performance is relevant in any way. The races conditions abound and eventually will cascade into failure. Dealing with state locally is hard enough, shipping it north is race condition central. via network static

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HL: The Problem with Peanuts

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Barcelona

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Worth Reading: Employees are Human Beings

Employees are human beings. They devote their lives to creating value for customers, shareholders, and colleagues. And, in return, at least in theory, they share in the rewards of the value created by their team. via linkedin

This is one of those places where I agree with the point the author is making, but I don’t really agree with the path they chose to get there… The bottom line problem is this—government, companies, and even individuals (yes, that means you and I) tend to slip into a mode of treating people as objects which either cost something, or produce something. From many perspectives, it’s easy to treat people as units of information, work, cost, etc.—but when you cross the line from using this as a useful abstraction to actually seeing people as an abstraction, then you’ve cross a line you shouldn’t be crossing.

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Worth Reading: Open Source

It can be argued that the biggest change — the change that has led to an explosion of open source software — isn’t the availability of open source software, nor the process of developing open source software, but the commercialization of open source software. We’ve always had an open source software community. What’s new is we have people who are commercializing the open source model. via network computing

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The Silo of Focus

How often, in our careers, are we told to focus on one thing at a time? I would guess I see some message about this, such as the image to the left in this post, at least once a week, if not once a day.

In general, I agree with the sentiment. If you really want to get something done, do it, rather than doing a lot of things at once. The reason for this, I think, is because multitasked work tends to result in half-work, which is something to be avoided at all costs.

Avoid half-work more than anything. Do not imitate those people who sit long at their desks but let their minds wander. It is better to shorten the time and use it intensely, to increase its value, which is all that counts. Do something, or do nothing at all. Do ardently whatever you decide to do; do it with your might; and let the whole of your activity be a series of vigorous fresh starts. Half-work, which is half-rest, is good neither for rest nor for work. via Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

But there is another side to focus we need to be wary of as Continue reading

Worth Reading: SD-WANS

SD-WANs promise to solve many of the thorny problems related to building and managing a large-scale wide-area network. This technology isn’t a panacea, however. This Report examines what an SD-WAN can and can’t do, and when it might be most effectively deployed. via channel partners

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QOTW: Height

Height is the measure of littleness. The man who has not the sense of true greatness is easily exultant or easily depressed, sometimes both together. It is because the ant does not consider the giant beetle that he looks down on the tiny gnat; and it is because the walker does not feel the wind from the heights that he lingers on the mountain slopes.
Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

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Sunrise on Oak Island

One of the neat things about Oak Island is it’s a south facing beach. You don’t get the sun over the beach in the morning, but along the beach, and both sunrise and sunset are over the water at some time in the year. Some days, the sunrise and the sunset are both over the ocean.

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Worth Reading: Open Source (Part 1)

How is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) broken? Can you count the ways? The process is too slow, the standards are often opaque, the results are often complex and difficult to deploy; any engineer who’s been in the networking field long enough most likely can recite a litany of complaints. via network computing

This is the first of a four part series on open source versus open standards.

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Worth Reading: Micromanaging Compute

In people management, it’s generally accepted that micromanaging a person is often a bad idea. Micromanagement removes the opportunity for the individual to find a better path than originally conceived. It also often focuses on the specific steps of a process, but unfortunately removes the context that would help someone understand how to improve the process. via infoworld

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HL: Freedom To

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Worth Learning: The Power Grid

Stop mulling over the latest (now dead) command line, and learn something useful. If you work in networking, you work with electricity. But how many people really know how the power grid works? Even though I have relatives and friends who’ve worked in the power industry all their lives, I’m still learning new things about the grid, and the way it works.

Four items of interest in this area for today.

A really short and simple video

A longer, boring video with lots of presentations and details

An interesting paper on coal to data

An article giving the other side of the renewable hype

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Worth Reading: Trading Shares in Milliseconds

Today’s stock market has become a world of automated transactions executed at lightning speed. This high-frequency trading could make the financial system more efficient, but it could also turn small mistakes into catastrophes. via technology review

Or as Thomas Sowell says — Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.

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Skipping the Hype Cycle

Sipping from the firehose is a big problem in the tech industries. Every time I turn around there’s yet another new technology to make everything better. If you can’t quote rule 11, you need to learn it by heart. Now. I’ll wait right here while you do the memorization thing.

So — why the hype cycle? Essentially, it comes down to this: we’re emotionally driven creatures. Advertisers have known this for years; to wit —

On average, consumers are exposed to more than 5000 advertisements per day. Among those 5000-plus advertisements, only about 12 will make an impression on the average consumer. How can your business stand out among the clutter? Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a recently funded startup, the best way for your business to stand out is by building emotional connections with your audience. Your business needs to acknowledge that selling a product is no longer enough. Now it’s all about the experience you provide with it. This experience is dependent on your ability to trigger the right emotions, from the right audience, at the right time. via entrepreneur

Mark the last words in that quote: it’s about selling an experience, rather than a Continue reading

Civilization

One of the most dangerous errors instilled into us by nineteenth-century progressive optimism is the idea that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost.
C.S. Lewis, Rehabilitations

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Barcelona

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