Notes & Asides

Small items on various subjects

So you want Windows to show 24-hour time?

Originally published at https://medium.com/@betz.mark/so-you-want-windows-to-show-24-hour-time-eeac41062b73

I spend a large part of every day shelled into cloud servers, viewing logs, checking alerts in slack channels, looking at pages on my phone, glancing at the kitchen clock as I walk by to get coffee, and otherwise behaving like a typical engineer. These activities have something in common: they all involve timestamps of one form or another and most of them are different.

Yeah, I hate time zones, and you probably do too. Our servers are on UTC military time. Our slack channel shows 12-hour local time, as does the kitchen clock and my phone. My colleagues are often reporting timestamps in their own local time, which given that we’ve been a remote team for something like forever means those might be EST, EDT, CDT, CST, PDT, PST… you get the point… moreover you’ve probably lived it just like the rest of us. I’ve considered just changing everything in my life to UTC military time but I would irritate my wife and you can’t avoid hitting a disconnect somewhere. Still, I do want to make all the on-the-fly converting I have to do as easy as possible.

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Behind the front lines of the pandemic

Originally published at https://medium.com/@betz.mark/behind-the-front-lines-of-the-pandemic-dedaef9fcffd

I’m a software engineer and so I usually fill this space with software and systems engineering topics. It’s what I do and love, and I enjoy writing about it, but not today. Instead I’m going to talk about what my wife does, and loves doing, and how the times we are living through have affected her job and our lives together. In many ways we’re among the lucky ones: we both have incomes and health insurance, and I already worked from home. In other ways we’re not so fortunate. The current crisis facing the world is like nothing any of us have seen in a generation or more. It’s impacting every single segment of our population and economy, and everyone has a story. This is what ours looks like, almost four weeks into lock-down.

My wife is a registered nurse. She works at a regional hospital in northern New Jersey, about 30 miles from our home. She has been there more than a decade. Her current role is as clinical coordinator on a cardiac critical care unit. You can think of it as sort of the captain of the care team. Some weeks ago, in preparation for what was obviously coming, her unit was converted into a negative pressure floor for the care of Covid-19 cases. This means that a lot of work was done to seal the floor off and provide ventilation to lower the air pressure within to prevent the escape of infectious material. The same was done to one other unit in the hospital, and a lot of work was also done to prepare to provide intensive respiratory care for patients in those units.

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After my disk crashed

Originally published at https://medium.com/@betz.mark/after-my-disk-crashed-e4f6d1c29d93. Reposted here with minor edits.

A couple of years ago I lost all of what I would have considered, up to that point, my intellectual life, not to mention a lot of irreplaceable photos, in a hard drive failure. And while this post is not about the technical and behavioral missteps that allowed the loss to occur those things nonetheless make up a part of the story. How does it happen that an experienced software engineer, someone who is often responsible for corporate data and has managed to not get fired for losing any of it, suffers a hard drive failure and finds himself in possession of zero backups? Almost effortlessly, as it turned out.

Since the early 1980’s I’ve kept all my digital self in a single directory tree off the root of my system’s boot disk. Over the years this directory structure was faithfully copied every time I upgraded, travelling on floppies, zip drives, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, USB thumb drives, flash drives, from my first 8088 to my second and ridiculously expensive 80286 and so on through all of the machines I’ve bought or built in three decades. Along the way it grew, becoming the repository for all my software and writing work. The first VGA code I wrote was in there. The complete source code for my shareware backgammon game was in there. All the articles I wrote for Dr. Dobbs, Software Development and other journals were in there.

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Three new translations in the German documents archive

A couple of years ago my Dad and I began sifting through a treasure trove of family history that we had received, piecing together the story of our earliest ancestors in the U.S. Among these materials were many original documents in German, dating from the decades 1840 to 1870. These documents proved extremely difficult to translate, as documented elsewhere on this site. Nevertheless using various tools I was able to put together transcriptions and translations of many of the official Bavarian documents. I find these immensely interesting, and I hope they are useful not just to curious members of our sprawling family tree (Alois had ten children with two wives, the majority of whom survived into adulthood) but perhaps also to anyone interested in 19th century German writing and emigration stories.

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LittleBigMouse solved my LittleBigProblem

It’s been awhile since I’ve come across a small tool for Windows that solves an irritating problem in an effective and transparent way. In fact I rarely even think about Windows software anymore, unless I’m playing a game. So much of what I do these days is done in linux or out in the cloud (in linux) that I’ve pretty much degraded my Windows expertise from superuser down to somewhere above n00b. So when I recently built a new computer and finally upgraded to Windows 10 from 7 Pro I ran into something highly irritating that I had no idea how to solve.

The issue was that I replaced my aging and amazingly long-lived Dell 2405FPW monitor with a new Dell 4k P2715Q. Placed alongside my other Dell, a 24″ U2412m, it makes for a nice, big workspace, with my main work on the screen in front of me, and lots of other stuff parked on the smaller screen to the left. The problem was mouse movement between the two. The P2715Q is running at 3840 x 2160, and the U2412M is at 1920 x 1200. Windows handles scaling content for the displays quite nicely, but with the 24″ display logically placed in the center of the 27″ display’s left edge, anytime you tried to move the mouse across the top or bottom of the larger screen and over to the smaller you’d run into a wall, and have to move the pointer vertically to find the hidden opening in the fence. Meh.

A little googling and I came across this gem:

https://github.com/mgth/LittleBigMouse

LittleBigMouse is a lightweight windows service (14MB and negligible CPU) that handles adjusting the mouse position when you move between monitors with different resolutions. It’s small, it installs quickly, and it just works. It is still described as an alpha application by its author, so YMMV, but it has worked flawlessly for me. One thing I haven’t tried yet is gaming with it running. If I have any issues I’ll post an update, but since the app can be easily toggled on and off I don’t think that will be an issue regardless. Props to the author. You can download it at:

https://github.com/mgth/LittleBigMouse/releases

Three things to ask before you join a startup

Originally published at https://medium.com/@betz.mark/three-things-to-ask-before-you-join-a-startup-5bde4214035f

In the business of software development joining a hot startup company, playing XBox in the break room, eating free food and cashing out your options for big money is the career three-pointer everyone seems to be aiming for. Many are the balls chucked at the hoop, and few are the shots being made. Still, playing the game can be fun, even if you’re not going to get rich (and you’re very likely not going to get rich). Playing on the wrong team can be a lot less fun. A startup can be a great place to work, and it can be a damned miserable place to work. I’ve done three of them in my career, and based on that experience I can suggest a few questions you should ask yourself before taking to the court.

Is it a great idea?

Is it even a good idea? This is a question that you can only answer for yourself. The SVP who is recruiting you thinks it’s a great idea. The CEO is super-excited. Everyone else you meet in the process of interviewing will be similarly positive. They have to be, even if they really aren’t. You can’t expect a frozen smile and secret hand signals under the conference table telling you to run for the door. The ones who believe are bought in, and the ones who don’t are trying to pretend they do, because they wouldn’t still be there if they didn’t need the paycheck. So it’s up to you to decide whether the product will fly, and how much it matters to you. Obviously needing a paycheck is a valid reason to keep a job, assuming the job is legal. But if you’re shooting for the win then whether there is any chance of winning matters.

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Environment-specific settings for python 2 modules

A little trick we came up with for a recent project. When developing back-end software in python or any other language there is often a need to load different values for configuration settings based on environment. A typical case is a database connection address and port, for example, that would be different when working locally vs. test vs. production. There are lots of ways to do this, but this one worked well for us. The technique relies on setting an environment variable with the name of the environment, and then using that name to load a default settings file and an environment-specific settings file and merge them both into the global namespace.

Thought for the day

“Enterprise customers” are like the deserted island that software CEOs wash up on when their ship sinks. At first it seems like you’ve been rescued: it’s land, it’s dry and all the customers that were on the ship with you are there too. Could be fun! But in a short time it becomes clear that you’re stuck on the island, and the world is sailing away from you. Your customers call in their choppers and one by one they leave the island. Unfortunately none of them have room for another passenger, but they will send someone back for you. They promise.

Do I want Windows 10?

I sat down in my office this morning and found a new icon in the system tray notification area of my Windows 7 Enterprise desktop. Right-clicking it showed four options, none of which was “Exit.” Left-clicking it brought up this window…

windows10

I’m not sure when Microsoft installed this program, but it must have been last week when the Tuesday update batch hit. None of the actions in the window appealed to me this morning. I don’t know what it means to “reserve” my free upgrade, and I am still not sold on Windows 10. Since I couldn’t get rid of the program (at least not without hunting down the process and killing it, after which it would in all likelihood return on the next restart) I used the notifications manager to hide it.

It’s not that I’m uninterested in Windows 10. On the contrary I’ve been very interested in all of Microsoft’s most recent decisions with their ecosystem, including the move to open source .NET and make the CLR portable across systems. And the truth is that I was a Microsoft platform developer for twenty years. It’s safe to say I have never before been two whole versions behind the current release of the operating system. Why, then, am I still running Windows 7? Should I upgrade to Windows 10?

I’m still running Windows 7 because Windows 8 sucked hard, in my opinion. I installed it. I used it. My wife has it on her laptop and I tried to help her a bit during the acclimation phase, and I thought it was horrible. I’m a software developer and the interface of Windows 8 did nothing other than make everything I already knew how to do cumbersome and difficult, with no compensating benefit that I could detect. I don’t have two 24″ monitors so I can cover them with big tiles.

I felt pretty much the same way about Windows Vista, but for different and more technical reasons. Windows Vista just wasn’t ready. Windows 8 just didn’t make any sense, ready or not. However Windows Vista became Windows 7, easily the best version of the OS that I have used, and a pretty high bar which Windows 8 certainly did not manage to leap over, at least in my view. Now that Windows 8 is becoming Windows 10 is it time to switch?

Even without thinking too deeply about it I’m biased against. The main reason is the deprecation of Windows Media Center. Microsoft is giving up on the desktop entertainment functions of the PC, apparently. But for me WMC has long been my Netflix solution of choice. It looks and works great and my ten year-old Firefly RF remote works awesomely with it. I realize, unfortunately, that this technology is aging, so maybe I should just get over it. What else does Windows 10 offer me, other than correcting the things people saw as mistakes in Windows 8? Let’s have a look at their news release. What are the big features a professional developer like me should care about?

Cortana, the world’s first truly personal digital assistant helps you get things done. Cortana learns your preferences to provide relevant recommendations, fast access to information, and important reminders. Interaction is natural and easy via talking or typing. And the Cortana experience works not just on your PC, but can notify and help you on your smartphone too.

Awesome, a digital assistant. I don’t really need one on my desktop. It might be useful in a mobile context, but I don’t run Windows Phone and I am not likely to anytime soon. Then again my kids all have iPhones with Siri, and I don’t hear them talking to their phones. As far as I know they don’t use Siri for anything. Maybe if I went to San Jose I’d encounter lots of people asking their phones to do things, but I just don’t see it happening around here, at least not in public.

Microsoft Edge, is an all-new browser designed to get things done online in new ways, with built-in commenting on the web – via typing or inking — sharing comments, and a reading view that makes reading web sites much faster and easier. With Cortana integrated, Microsoft Edge offers quick results and content based on your interests and preferences. Fast, streamlined and personal, you can focus on just the content that matters to you and actively engage with the web.

Well, web apps are still a big part of what I do so I will be getting familiar with Edge whether I want to or not. Am I excited about getting Windows 10 so Edge can replace my current browser? Let’s see… it has Cortana integrated… w00t. See above. And a new “reading view!” I’ll be keeping an eye on Edge in terms of standards compliance and performance, of course, and I will be testing web apps on it, but if those are the big draw features I’ll continue to bounce back and forth between Chrome and Firefox as one or the other alternately pisses me off.

Office on Windows: In addition to the Office 2016 full featured desktop suite, Windows 10 users will be able to experience new universal Windows applications for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, all available separately. These offer a consistent, touch-first experience across a range of devices to increase you productivity …

I’m not even going to bother with that whole quote. I love Windows, but if there was ever a good reason to hate Windows it would have to be related to Office somehow. From a word processor so horribly complicated that no living human can enumerate more than 10% of the feature set to an email cum personal productivity tool that set a new standard for how long a legacy code base can continue to be crammed into ever more ill-fitting skin, there is literally nothing about Office that I like. Been using Google Docs for years and the words “touch-first experience” in the quote above certainly don’t give me any reason to rethink that choice. Yuck.

Xbox Live and the integrated Xbox App bring new game experiences to Windows 10. Xbox on Windows 10 brings the expansive Xbox Live gaming network to both Windows 10 PCs and tablets. Communicate with your friends on Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One – while playing any PC game.

Ok, that’s fine. I’m not a console gamer, and I don’t own an XBox, but this is still pretty cool and if I were a console gamer, or was willing to purchase an XBox to replace Windows Media Center, this might be exciting.

New Photos, Videos, Music, Maps, People, Mail & Calendar apps have updated designs that look and feel familiar from app to app and device to device.  You can start something on one device and continue it on another since your content is stored on and synched through OneDrive.

Wow, now this is what I was waiting for. Not. There are better services available now for all this stuff. Definitely will be meaningful to the thousands of people on Windows Phone, though. Next.

Windows Continuum enables today’s best laptops and 2-in-1 devices to elegantly transform from one form factor to the other, enabling smooth transitions of your tablet into a PC, and back. And new Windows phones with Continuum can be connected to a monitor, mouse and physical keyboard to make your phone work like a PC.

I’m not writing this off. Device convergence has been talked about for a long time, and I certainly hope somebody is able to make it happen. The vision of being able to use one device across different inputs and display form factors is compelling. But the problem Microsoft has is they don’t have the dynamic mobile ecosystem to pull this off and make it relevant to lots of people. Jury is out, but give them credit for the attempt anyway.

Windows Hello, greets you by name and with a smile, letting you log in without a password and providing instant, more secure access to your Windows 10 devices. With Windows Hello, biometric authentication is easy with your face, iris, or finger, providing instant recognition.

Same thing. Not writing it off, despite the ridiculous name. Also not relevant to me sitting here at my desk. So like the Continuum feature it is interesting, but provides no motivation to move me off 7 for my work system.

Windows Store, with easy install and uninstall of trusted applications, supported by the broadest range of global payment methods.

When lots of people are running Windows on their phones this will be a very compelling offering. Which is just a bit like saying that when I win the Powerball I will be living in a beachfront home in Santa Barbara. I understand Microsoft’s dilemma, and I don’t envy them. They have to be relevant to mobile, even though they are barely relevant to mobile. You can’t build the future of your business on desktop computing, even though most of the people who use your current product use it at a desktop, for work.

It’s a tough situation, but the reality for me is that reading through this feature list doesn’t make me wonder whether I should upgrade to Windows 10 on my desktop: it makes me wonder why I am still running Windows on my desktop at all. I also have an Ubuntu development box and switching would be pretty painless for me. The answer is: games and Steam, and to a lesser extent a huge file called outlook.pst. I play games like Battlefield 4 and Planetside 2, and I like a mouse and keyboard for that. And I have ten years of history in my outlook file. I never look at it, but for some reason I haven’t been able to just delete it. If I ever get to that point and also stop playing shooters (which I should do since I basically just get slaughtered by teenagers) that will probably be it for Windows.

So the answer to the original question I posed to myself in the title appears to still be “no.” I’ll be giving Windows 10 a look in a VM at some point, and at some other point, hopefully still well into the future, I am going to be faced with the fact that I just can’t continue running Windows 7. I suspect that what will happen then is my Ubuntu and Windows machines will switch roles. Instead of having Windows drive my two monitors and using NX to access Ubuntu in a window it will be the other way around, and I will be switching into Windows every now and then just to play a game, or to actually try and find something in that huge Outlook file.

IBM Research report on performance of Linux containers

At Knowledge In Practice we were pretty early adopters of Docker, and after more than six months of use nearly all of our production services are now deployed to Amazon’s EC2 as linux containers. While the lower overhead of containers was a draw,  as a small team the main benefits for us have been ease of deployment and increased environmental stability due to the use of Docker build files to declaratively specify the content of each service’s run-time environment. Launching a new instance of a service is literally as easy as adding one line to the cloudinit script for the instance, then running “docker pull” to get the image we want, and “docker run” to get the container going. Those steps could easily be automated as well. It’s a workflow that’s hard to beat.

Late last month IBM Research released a paper (PDF) comparing the performance of linux containers vs. traditional types of hardware and software virtualization. Not surprisingly containers fare quite well, although the paper notes that both VMs and containers need to be fine-tuned for high I/O workloads. Section 2.3 of the paper provides an excellent quick overview of how containers are implemented in linux using kernel namespaces and cgroups, and in fact I found that part of the document more valuable than the performance comparisons. Well worth a scan, at least, if you have an interest in this technology.