Category: General

TIME magazine’s latest issue features a cover story called ‘Code Red’ that describes how the Obamacare website was saved.  I read it with interest – after all, I have been on the inside of oh, a dozen or so large SAP implemenation project go-lives.  To be sure, with SAP as the core solution, one works with tried-and-tested and packaged software,  and not with program code that’s written from scratch.  Still, other things can go wrong : the hardware could be inadequate and not handle the onslaught of new users, or massive errors in the data migration could be discovered late, after go-live.

In the case of the healthcare.gov website though, after $300 million had been spent on the project through its Oct 1 go-live, the rescue team contemplated on Oct 17 if they should kill everything that had been done, and just start over.  There was no dashboard for the website, so it was impossible to track its performance, the number of concurrent users, and other critical parameters.  Frequently used parts of the enormous database had not been cached (copied and stored off-line), a fundamental design flaw that hit the performance of the server with every new user logging on.   They decided they could salvage most of it. Facing extreme time pressures, they had to do hot fixes (releasing new code while the web-site was up and running), and make software and hardware changes at the same time. (Under normal conditions a bad practice, since one then doesn’t know what the root cause of a new problem or error is).

Anyway, even though some challenges remain, the article says that the website now works. It ends with the fundamental long-term question, though ‘Will Obamacare work?’ (Will enough people sign up?  Will the healthcare industry players be able to adjust to the new law?)

So ’12 Years a Slave’ took best picture at the Oscars.  ‘Gravity’ won a slew of awards, a first for a science fiction genre type movie.  Here’s the selfie¹ of Oscars host Ellen Degeneres (in front, in white) and a cluster of stars that easily broke the previous record of 778k² for the most-retweeted³ picture.  At last count the picture had been re-tweeted more than 2.2m times.  The picture was taken by Bradley Cooper (in front) which is why Ellen notes in her tweet ‘If only Bradley’s arm was longer’.  Always a challenge when trying to take a selfie with a group of people around you!

Ellen also handed out pizza to the audience – with Brad Pitt’s help no less – and then borrowed singer Pharrell Williams’s hat to ‘collect money’ from the audience to ‘pay the pizza guy’.  Film studio executive Harvey Weinstein pitched in some money, as did Kevin Spacey.  (All for laughs, of course.  No doubt the pizza company jumped at the opportunity to serve pizza to an Oscar audience).

¹Self-picture.

²This was of a picture of Pres. Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle with the caption ‘Four more years’ after his 2012 re-election.

³Retweeting is the taking of a Twitter message (or picture) that someone else has posted, and rebroadcasting that same message to one’s Twitter followers.

So .. looks to me that President Putin waited (of course) until the public relations campaign of the Sochi Olympics was over, before turning his full attention to the unrest in the Ukraine.  I did not know the peninsula at the south of the Ukraine is called Crimea .. but I vaguely remember the Crimean War from school history.  The 1853-56 Crimean War had Russia lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. During the war, the British troops established their own base there, and then made their infamous (and suicidal) Charge of the Light Brigade against Russian forces.  Anyway, check out these maps from the NY Times and an article (written on Feb 23) from the Wall Street Journal that explains some of the recent events and geopolitics in the Ukraine.

 

A Quick Guide: What’s Happening in Ukraine (from the Wall Street Journal, Feb 23)

The dramatic collapse of Ukraine’s government in recent days comes after months of political turmoil and social unrest. Demonstrators have been rallying against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Here’s a look at what’s happening in Ukraine and why:
What initially set off the protests?
Antigovernment demonstrations kicked off late last year after President Yanukovych, under pressure from the Kremlin, turned away from a European trade and political deal and sealed a $15 billion bailout from Russia. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. In the weeks that followed, the protests transformed into a broader outcry against official corruption and police violence.
What’s going on now?
After months of protests, Mr. Yanukovych left the capital Saturday, and protesters took control of the city center. Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove Mr. Yanukovych and set new presidential elections for May 25. Ukraine opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was released from prison. Mr. Yanukovych has vowed to remain in power.
Who is Yulia Tymoshenko?
Ms. Tymoshenko, known for her sharp tongue and peasant-style braid, was a leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution that thwarted Mr. Yanukovych’s first run at the presidency. He staged a stunning comeback in 2010 to defeat her after a bitter campaign. She was then jailed in October 2011 for abuse of office for allegedly ordering a subordinate to sign a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009, which prosecutors said led to huge losses for Ukraine. She has denied any wrongdoing, calling the case part of a political witch-hunt.
What is at stake for the EU and Russia?
Ukraine, a country of 46 million, straddles Western and Eastern Europe and has become a battleground for political and economic influence from the European Union and Russia. Having Ukraine as a clear political ally is critical for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s quest to integrate and regain influence over ex-Soviet states. Ukraine has been an important target for an EU program aimed at encouraging democratic change in the region in return for free-trade agreements.
Why is what’s happening important?
Ukraine hosts a number of key pipelines that funnel Russian natural gas to Europe. Russian state-owned gas company OAO Gazprom meets a quarter of the EU’s gas needs, the bulk of which flows via Ukraine. Ukraine itself receives the bulk of its natural-gas supplies from Russia, and Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of using its control over gas pipelines that lead into Ukraine as a political bargaining chip. Payment disputes led Gazprom to cut flows to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, which also interrupted the flows of gas to other European countries.
How is Ukraine’s economy faring during this turmoil?
Ukraine is currently in recession, and it suffers from a wide current-account deficit, which means it buys more goods from abroad than it sells. The Ukrainian government said one reason it turned down the EU deal was that it needed to fix relations with its former Soviet master to avoid significant economic hardship. The political turmoil has put markets in Ukraine under pressure.
Is Ukraine divided?
Mr. Yanukovych fled to Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east Saturday, where heavy industry fueled by Russian gas dominates the economy. In the west, where some regions were once part of Poland and Austria’s empire, most people speak Ukrainian and feel closer to Europe, where many have jobs. Despite these differences, there are few signs the country is in danger of a split.

My Friday was no fun. At first I thought I could get away with not going to the doctor.  My doctor was out for the day, anyway.  Not so. By late Friday I had a fever of 102 °F, and I thought ‘That’s it. Off you go, right now, go find some help.

The doc at the after-hours clinic prescribed Tylenol for the fever and an antibiotic for what looked like a sinus or middle-ear infection.

As I read up on the antibiotic on line, I also read that so far, the only diseases completely eradicated by humankind are smallpox [in 1979], and rinderpest [in 2010].   Polio is one of only two diseases currently the subject of a global eradication program, the other being Guinea worm disease. Pakistan is one of just three nations where polio remains endemic and along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, huge efforts are being made to tackle the disease. India, which once suffered the most from polio, recently celebrated being three years without a confirmed case.

An article in the Wall Street Journal of Tuesday about hydrogen fuel cell cars caught my eye.   The article notes that interest in this technology seem to wax and wane with government and state regulations that are issued, and with the fortunes of car companies.

Currently Toyota, Honda and Hyundai are pursuing the technology the hardest, due to their interest in meeting the California regulators’ requirements for zero emission vehicles. They depend on the California market for 10% of their total car sales.  Toyota chairman has expressed doubt that electric cars (not to be confused with hybrid vehicles, of which the Prius is one; even the Volt is a plug-in hybrid) will make it due to their limited range, high cost and long recharging times.  Of new cars on the road, these currently make up 0.5% of vehicles.

Fuel cell skeptics point out that the USA has already invested $5 billion in infrastructure for electric cars and that hydrogen fuel cell cars with require another big investment. (My note : $5 billion is a in a drop in a $15 trillion GDP economy bucket).   And what does Tesla CEO Elon Musk think of hydrogen fuel cell cars?  He says they are bulls— !

Hmm.  I see the Canadians beat the Americans in the women’s ice hockey final, and then today beat the USA men’s team as well.  I guess that gives them bragging rights.  So!  No reason to be rude to me the next time I stop over in one of their airports. (The customs officials seem to be rude to me almost every time I arrive there and show my US passport).

P.S.  I sat next to a young woman last night on the way in from Denver.  She had a cake that she was bringing to Seattle to celebrate her grandmother’s 96th birthday with her.  Wow! That’s good going, I said.  And she made a trip to Ghana and South Africa last year.  They went to the Kruger National Park and saw all big the ‘big five’ game animals : lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros.

My colleagues and I are shocked by Facebook’s US$16 billion acquisition of the text message application WhatsApp, announced on Wednesday. The little application sells for $0.99 in the USA. It’s used on smart phones for free text, voice, video and picture messaging, and works over wi-fi connections.

It seems to me before Wednesday that most technology analysts believed with 450 million users world-wide that WhatsApp was worth oh, somewhere north of US$ ONE billion.

And who are the founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton that struck it so rich?  Here is what I gleaned from Wikipedia and Forbes magazine :   Jan Koum is Jewish and grew up in a village outside Kiev in Ukraine. He moved to California with his mother and grandmother in 1992.  Brian Acton was the 44th employee at  Yahoo. In 1997 Jan Koum was hired by Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer, shortly after he met Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Over the next nine years, they worked at Yahoo. Acton invested in the dotcom boom, and lost millions in the dot-com of 2000. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, traveling around South America and playing ultimate frisbee. Both applied, and failed, to work at Facebook.  “We’re part of the Facebook reject club,” Acton says. Koum was eating into his $400,000 in savings from Yahoo, and drifting. Then in January 2009, he bought an iPhone and realized that the seven-month old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited the home of Alex Fishman, a Russian friend who would invite the local Russian community to his place in West San Jose for weekly pizza and movie nights. Up to 40 people sometimes showed up. The two of them stood for hours talking about Koum’s idea for an app over tea at Fishman’s kitchen counter.

.. depends on what you know down there, says the home page picture of one of the oil well data management systems that we are working with.

It is important to get the surface data (oil wells, attached equipment, makes and models) accurate in one’s systems.  But it is even more critical  to get the sub-surface data correct and complete as the equipment and infrastructure goes in during construction.  For the stuff above ground, one can usually make corrections and additions with an audit.  But once equipment and pipelines are buried, and that oil well starts gushing all kinds of hydrocarbons, it will be near-impossible to know what’s down there.  Or to go in and find out !

My Monday started out early and rainy, but later in Denver it was a gorgeous, mild weather day. It was so nice outside that it was hard for us to go back to the office after lunch.  It went up all the way to 67 °F /19 °C.  Denver boasts around 300 sunny days per year on average, compared to Seattle’s 71.  (Source : Wikipedia’s entries for the two cities).

My headline of the day from Sochi :

I-Pod¹ used the YOLO² to claim the half-pipe³ gold⁴ over Shaun White⁵.

¹Apple’s music player, or the nickname of Russian-born, now Swiss, competitor Iouri Podladtchikov (yes, that is definitely not a Swiss name).

²Stands for ‘You Only Live Once’, I-Pod’s signature flip

³Snow-boarding event, done in a half-pipe of iced surface.

⁴Olympic gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Games

⁵American professional snowboarder and two-time Olympic gold medalist.

I watched the Games’ opening ceremony that ran on NBC here in the USA on Friday night, and I have to admit I liked the artistry and cultural images and pageantry.

So .. the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is under way.  Will gay athletes get in trouble talking about gay rights? (In July 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors”.   ‘Propaganda’ being open to interpretation by police and vigilante citizens, of course, and encouraging violence against gay people).  Assurances have been given by Russian officials that the law will not be enforced on athletes at the Games.

And what does the Olympic Charter have to say anyway?  Well, nothing specific about sexual orientation (this falls under the phrase ‘other discrimination’ in Principle 6 of the Charter). It’s just disappointing that the International Olympic Committee did not take a stronger position, or made much about it publicly (at least not that I’m aware of).

 

 

We threw in the towel this morning, and took a shuttle van that the hotel provided for us, to work.  It was -13 °F/ -25°C outside.  I see the Wall Street Journal reports that we all are ‘obsessed with the weather’ and ‘reveling in winter’ .. hmm.  I’m not so sure about ‘reveling’!

And then at work, it was a very unsettled day.  Our Basis team set up the SAP systems that we use, and then the Functional teams configure its functions.  So these two parties had a disagreement which almost got out of control. But we found a solution, and set up the SAP access and controls in a way which was acceptable to both parties.

*SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products and is the world’s most popular system for the finances, supply chain logistics, work management and human resources of large companies.

We are at zero here in Denver (that’s 0 °F/ -17°C), but my colleague and I were up to it to walk the few blocks back to the hotel.  We brought wool sweaters to pull over our dress shirts (with a stuffed overcoat), and heavy wool hats to pull over our heads and ears.   I covered the rest of my face with my gloves as I walked. Yikes! You have to!  The cold is stinging. The real hazards to watch for though, are the slippery sidewalks and street crossings.   Watch for cars at the intersection.  You may have permission to ‘Walk’ from the green man on the traffic light, but incoming cars may not be able to stop!

I read about Imgur (say ‘imager’) in today’s issue of BloombergBusinessweek. The company only has 11 employees, but the start-up is already profitable thanks to a stream of display ads from movie studios and video game makers.  It gets more than 120 million unique visitors a month posting images and searching for jolts of humor and insight.  About 1/4 of the user-submitted images feature cats or dogs.

 

The project team went to dinner tonight at Willie G’s here in downtown Denver.  Some of the dinner conversation : ‘we should not eat any fish from the Pacific’ (dangerous due to Fukushima radiation). Well, that’s nonsense.  And do we know of Indian superstar Shahrukh Khan? (No).  Well, his arrival at Vancouver airport almost shut the place down due to security and fans, something that would never happen with a Hollywood star.  Which is your favorite James Bond? Do you like Daniel Craig?  Some of us did, some did not. I have no opinion on the matter!  And did we know of the Hungarian wedding tradition of the ‘money dance’?  The father or best man announces that the ‘bride is for sale’ while Hungarian wedding music plays in the background.  Guests then pay, and twirl the bride around, usually just for a few seconds, and this provides the newlyweds money for their honeymoon and start of their new life.

‘Let’s see if your numbers add up’ .. ‘but let’s not have another 40 something votes’ on the health care law, was the challenge from the President to the Republicans in the State of the Union speech tonight.   And the Huffington Post reported that the award for the first GOP congressman to call Pres. Obama a ‘socialistic dictator’ goes to Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas).  (Who would do well to stop using big words he does not know the meaning of). The longest ovation went to war hero, the Army Sergeant Cory Remsburg.  Pres. Obama met him at Omaha Beach in France, at a D-Day commemoration.   Cory was later injured by a roadside bomb during his 10th deployment (in the Iraq war, I think), in a coma for three months and emerged partially paralyzed.

We made it in fine this morning from Seattle.  We landed early even though there was light snow falling at Denver airport.  But the snow persisted all day long, and had not stopped by the time we closed up shop at the office.  So my colleague and I walked two blocks in the snow to a restaurant, had our dinner .. but then called a taxi to take us the eight blocks to the hotel.

It looks like the sun will come out tomorrow, but then there’s more snow in the forecast for Thursday and Friday.

I love the Tintin series of comic books (from Belgium), and know it very well.  It turns out there is also a more recent French comic book series, with a heroine called Adèle Blanc Sec.  I only learned all of this after picking up the French-made film Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec/The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec (2010) at the DVD store.  (And watched it Saturday night with Bryan and Gary).  The title character was played by French actress Louise Bourgoin. The plot of the film is developed nicely. The film opens with an Indiana Jones-esque tomb-raiding scene and plays out in 1912 in Paris after that.  Some of the main characters (men) have large ears, others have large noses or flamboyant moustaches, and of course they wear clothing true to the period.    The adventures also feature a pterodactyl and a ladies’ tennis match, one that could very well have been inspired by 1920s French tennis legend Suzanne Lenglen (her Wikipedia entry here).

The Apple McIntosh is 30 years old, and Apple is celebrating it with a timeline on their website, here.  (Click on Mac timeline). In 1987 when I was a student, I did use the university’s Apple Mac II. (The basic system with its 20 MB drive and monitor cost more than $5,000).  Today we carry hundreds of times more powerful computing power and storage capacity in our pockets, of course .. AND we are connected to the internet, back then barely in existence and certainly not available outside research and military institutions.

So what do I use today? Well, an IBM Thinkcentre desktop with Windows 8 at home, a Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows 7 for work, and then my Apple iPad and Apple iPhone.  Each has its own area of strength, and they are somewhat connected, but not fully.   For example, I back up my digital media onto the W8 desktop with Apple’s iTunes, and the rest to an attached external drive. Everything does not always work nicely together.  Just this morning the lastest iTunes software update turned out to be incompatible with Windows 8.  I took awhile to fix it, grr.  1. Rebooting everything did not help.  2. Reinstalling iTunes did not work.  Of course, no earlier iTunes version to download, either. 3.  Forget Windows Troubleshooter to find the problem.  4. Now it is war. Uninstall everything Apple, including a software app called Bonjour.  Good day and good-bye, since I don’t even know what you do monsieur!  5. Reinstall iTunes with Internet Explorer’s download, in case using Google Chrome for downloading did something different.    6. Try again .. voila!  It works.