I love to travel every chance I get. Growing up, my family would always take a summer vacation. We were just like the Griswalds, making our way across the country in a Station Wagon, driving hundreds of miles to go to a world famous theme park. I’ll admit, it would have been fun holding John Candy hostage with a pellet gun. Wherever we ended up going each year, we would always drive.

As an adult, I still enjoy going on vacations, but the thought of driving a great distance makes me nauseated. Anytime I make plans, I always check and see if I can fly there instead of driving. Some people do not enjoy flying. Some individuals don’t like to wait all day at the airport. Some folks are fearful of flying. But the thought of getting to my destination 95% faster than driving, has always appealed to me.

Being the frugal individual that I am, I usually won’t pay for a direct flight and as a result, will have a connecting flight in route to my destination. Trying to get to my connecting flight always seems to be an adventure. They always seem to be in another terminal, on the other side of the airport. When walking, or in most cases, running to the other terminal, I have noticed a few things about how people walk from one terminal to the next.

Most of your major airports have automatic, or moving sidewalks. These devices have always fascinated me. The usual layout in most terminals is two moving walkways on either side of the terminal, with a standard walkway in the middle. DFW International is set up this way. I have noticed three different ways that people walk through these terminals.

1. The First is Mr. Safe – he takes the middle path. He might not be in a hurry or maybe he is afraid of a moving floor beneath his feet.
2. The Second is Mr. Stationary – he is a little more adventurous, but not too risky. He rides the automatic walkway, but does not move from his standing position until he absolutely has to. You might consider this individual to be lazy, but perhaps he is saving his energy to deal with that screaming baby on the next flight.
3. The Third is Mr. Hurrysome – he is very energetic. Not only is he riding the automatic walkway, he is physically walking on the moving sidewalk to make faster time. This individual is ahead of the pack and in front of everyone else.

Web Hosting Companies like SoftLayer and their competitors usually fit into one of these three categories:

1. Mr. Safe – always taking the slow path, never doing anything innovative, always playing it safe, never leading the way.
2. Mr. Stationary – a little more adventurous, but not wanting to get in too much of a hurry. He could move a little faster, but why use all that energy when he can sit back and enjoy the ride.
3. Mr. Hurrysome – fastest walker, always a step ahead of everyone else, a leader with new technology services like CDN, Data Transfer Services, covering more ground per second than anyone around him, always the first to arrive.

If you sit back and think about it for a moment, you will see that SoftLayer is the only web hosting company that moves like traveler number three. Everyone else is left in the dust.

Each morning as I back my car of out the drive way, I ask myself, “I wonder how bad traffic will be this morning?” My commute through Dallas traffic is always a challenge making it to work on time. My 1997 Monte Carlo may not be much to look at, but it always gets me to work in one piece. My car has been through multiple wrecks and its biggest flaw is no air conditioning. Wow does it get hot in Texas! To quote that country song “she aint a Cadillac, and she ain’t a Rolls, but there ain’t nothin’ wrong with the radio.”

I finally decided to purchase a new vehicle . Any kind of an upgrade would be a vast improvement. I did not care what it looked like, my main concern was, “does it have air conditioning?” I stopped by a Toyota dealership on the way home one night after work. After getting the run around, I decided to make one last stop at the Ford dealership before they closed. As the salemen asked me what I was looking for, I told him “something reliable and economical.” He pointed out the Ford Fussion and then all of a sudden, something magical caught my eye.

Sitting there, calling out my name, was a 2011 Ford Mustang with a V6 3.7L and all 305 screaming horses. I just had to take it out for a test ride. After just a few moments, I knew I had found my upgrade. Not only did it look good, but it was very economical. With an estimated 31MPG and a reasonable sticker price, it was love at first sight.

The longer I thought about my upgrade, the more it reminded me of some SoftLayer customers. Some of our customers have a “monte carlo” server with only 1 proc, 2 gig of ram, and an older motherboard. It may have worked great at one time, but it is clearly time for an upgrade. For a while I had been content with my Monte Carlo, but there comes a time when we all have to upgrade.

• The Mustang spedometer shows a top speed of 160. What speed processor are you using?
• The Mustang has more interior room. What size ram are you using?
• The Mustang gets a lot of second glances. What type of performance is your server getting?

When people see my old vehicle compared to the 2011 Ford Mustang, they usually comment “wow what an upgrade.” Just think what type of response you will get after a long overdue upgrade!

I must admit coming to work for SoftLayer made me a little nervous. I was hired as a receptionist and I assumed my computer skills, or lack thereof, would get me through just fine. I am not one of those people that you would consider computer savvy. Sure, I can use a computer to look up directions or make a PowerPoint but I knew I was rather limited for the times.

Before working here I thought the only kind of cookies out there were the kind you could bake with chocolate chips. I thought clouds only were up in the sky and was impressed when I heard someone mention they were customizable. When people said “I’m headed to the NOC” I just assumed they were going to knock on someone’s office door or maybe it was a hip new restaurant.

My first day I received calls about phishing and honeypots, I was beyond confused. I was sure Winnie the Pooh did not work here and these guys didn’t seem like the fishermen type. I decided it was time for me to get a little more current on the times. Everyone at SoftLayer has been accommodating and so generous with their time. I have been so impressed with everyone’s team work. I have learned so much in these first few weeks.

The SoftLayer Team has been so helpful showing me around the new building. It is absolutely stunning, it is a bit of a maze though. I’m afraid if I didn’t have someone walking me through, I might have to leave bread crumbs to find my way back.

In closing, I am glad to learn there are more cookie options but I still prefer the chocolate chip kind.

Here on the SoftLayer overnight shift (aka “team undead”), the technicians (aka “SLombies”) often find it difficult to get a full 8 hours of sleep.
Quick science lesson: the body produces melatonin when it is dark outside. This regulates the sleep cycle. So it’s only natural that it is hard to sleep during the day.

Initially I had been drinking a beer or five to go to bed every morning. Since I don’t want to have liver failure at age 43, I decided to check out some alternatives. I used Unisom Sleep Tabs for a while, but I have been looking for substitutes, since they are essentially the sleep inducing antihistamine contained in NyQuil. The warning on the box says not to consume any alcoholic beverage with these, and it doesn’t recommend long term usage of the drug.

The new alternative: relaxation beverages
A relaxation beverage is the polar opposite of an energy drink. It is designed to calm and slow you down. They have ingredients such as: kava kava, valerian root, and melatonin. I have tried two different brands: Drank and Sippin Syrup. These are both references to the “purple stuff” drug that is created by mixing codeine and sprite. There is also a Purple Stuff brand (codeine free, of course), but I have not had an opportunity to try this yet. You can get it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/16-Pack-Pro-Relaxation-Beverage-Classic/dp/B002SMZM92.

Drank
You’ll often find Drank at a 7-11, but sadly the 7-11 near me stopped carrying it. It has a grape soda flavor, and it certainly lacks the medicinal taste of most energy drinks. It is in a standard 16oz energy drink sized can. It will knock you out pretty easily. You can buy it by the case from the website: http://www.drankbeverage.com/

Sippin Syrup
This one is my favorite. It’s effectiveness is very similar to Drank. The best part about this one is that it comes in a resealable container, so you can have just half a dose if you are already tired. It comes in 3 flavors: Purple (grape), Kandy (cream soda), and Griptonite (grape apple flavor). There is also a low carb version called Sippin Syrup Zero, which doesn’t really interest me personally. They make a concentrated shot version called a Lil Sip. When I ordered, they were nice enough to send me a free T-shirt as well. You can order it by the case (12 or 24 packs) from their website: http://sippinsyrup.com/

I have been getting much better sleep these days! I highly recommend either of these products.

I remember when I got started in computing. For the morbidly curious it was officially “a long time ago” and I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to say other than to note that a major source of inspiration for me was the movie TRON, or more specifically the computer graphics in that movie (naturally I’m looking forward to the release of the new TRON movie!).

Computers have come a long way since then and what they’ve gained in power, they’ve also lost in simplicity. To draw an analogy, the kids of my father’s generation, who spent a lot of time in the garage tinkering with cars, would have to make a big technological leap before they could monkey with the guts of today’s newfangled automobiles. In a similar fashion the computers of my era, with built in Integer BASIC and simple graphics modes, have given way to mouse-driven, fully graphical user interfaces of today. Where I started programming by entering a few lines of text at a prompt and watching my code spit out streams of text in return, these days an aspiring programmer has to create a significant chunk of code to put up a window into which they can display their results, before they can write the code that generates those results.

In short, there’s a bit more of a learning curve to get started. While kids are a bit farther along when they start out, it doesn’t hurt to give them a push where you can.

Several months ago, the counselor at the local elementary school called to invite my daughter to join a newly-formed Engineering Club for the girls in the fifth grade. My daughter had scored well in her math and science tests and they wanted her to be a part of a pilot program to help foster an interest in science and engineering. For various reasons (most having to do with bureaucracy) the school was unable to get the program off the ground. My wife, not wanting the girls to miss out on an opportunity, took the program off-campus and created an informal club, divorced from the school, and driven by the parents. The Girls Engineering Club was born.

The club has a dozen or so young ladies as members and since they’re not tied to the school calendar, they have meet once or twice a month through the summer. In the club they explore applications of science, mathematics, and technology with a particular focus on experimentation. For example, the club formed shortly after the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The girls spent their first meeting talking about what the professional engineers were doing at the time, and then trying to find ways to separate motor oil from water using things like sand, soap, coffee filters and dish soap. When I got home that day, I saw the aftermath. I hope the girls learned a lot… it was certainly clear that they had made a big mess and had a lot of fun.

It became my turn to help when the club took up the subject of Software Engineering. I’d like to say that the club leadership took me on because I have degrees in Computer Science and I’m a professional Software Engineer by trade. In truth, however, I think it was just my wife who thought I needed something better to do with my weekend than play video games. For whatever reason, however, I was pressed into service to teach the girls about Software Engineering.

Naturally I wanted to teach the girls a little bit about how engineering principles apply to the creation of software. But I imagine that a group of pre-teen women would find an hour and a half exposition on the subject at best half as exciting as that last sentence makes it sound. Moreover, these girls were used to hands-on engineering club meetings. If the girls didn’t “get their hands dirty” with at least a little bit of programming, the meeting would be a bust. The problem was… How do you teach a dozen pre-teen girls about programming; and on a shoestring budget?

When I was taking computer science classes in school we had very expensive labs with carefully controlled software environments. For the club, each girl probably has a computer at their house, but I wasn’t anxious to ask parents to pull them out of place, drag them somewhere that we could set them up, and then slog through the nightmare of trying to get a semi-uniform environment on them.

Instead, I gathered up my veritable museum of computer hardware. Using those that were only a few years old, and still capable of running Mac OS X, I pulled together three that could be wirelessly networked together and have their screens shared. It was a bit of an ad-hoc arrangement, but functional.

Next came the question of subject matter. In my daily life I work with a programming language called Objective-C. Objective-C is a really fun language, but it requires a pretty hefty tool chain to use effectively. I didn’t want to burn a lot of my hour and a half with the girls teaching them about development tools… I wanted them writing code. Clearly Objective-C wasn’t the answer.

A while back I read about a book called Learn to Program by Chris Pine. Mr. Pine had created a web site dedicated helping people who had never programmed before learn enough to get started. After the web site had been around a while, and after a bunch of folks had offered their comments and suggestions to improve it, he collected the information from the web site into the book.

The book uses a programming language called Ruby as its teaching tool. Ruby is a fantastic language. It’s one of the so-called “fourth generation” scripting languages (along with Python, Perl, JavaScript, and others). The language was designed to scale from the needs of the novice programmer, up to the demands of the professional Software Engineer. For the girls in the club, however, the nice thing about Ruby is that it provides a “Run, Evaluate, Print, Loop” (REPL) tool called IRB (Interactive RuBy). Using IRB, you can type in a Ruby expression and see the results of executing that expression right away. This would provide the great hands-on experience I was looking for in a reasonably controlled environment. More importantly it would run (and run the same way) on my collection of rapidly-approaching-vintage hardware.

I wanted to get a copy of the book for the girls. The Pragmatic Programmers offers many of their books, including this one, in electronic formats (PDF and eBook). I contacted them about a volume or educational discount on a PDF copy of the book. A company representative was kind enough to donate the book for the girls in our club!! You could have knocked me over with a feather. That gift put the train on the track and the wheels in motion.

(In appreciation, let me mention that Learn To Program is available in its Second Edition from The Pragmatic Bookshelf today. This is not an official endorsement by SoftLayer, but it is an enthusiastic recommendation from your humble author who is very grateful for their generous gift).

In the end, the club meeting was on a very rainy day. We struggled to keep the computer equipment dry as we hauled it to the home of one of the club members. Their poor kitchen table became a tangle of cords carrying power and video signals. Using shared screens, and my iPad as a presentation controller, I walked the girls through a Keynote presentation about some of the of the basic concepts of Software Engineering. Then we fired up Ruby in IRB and I showed the girls how to work with numbers, variables, and simple control structures in Ruby. They had to sit three to a computer, but that also let them help one another out. They learned to use loops to print out silly things about me (for example, I had my computer print out “Mr. Thompson rocks!”, the girls felt that they absolutely must get their computer to print “Mr. Thompson most certainly does not rock!” 1000 times). There was an awful lot of giggling, but as the teacher I was proud to see them pick up the basic concepts and apply them to their own goals. My favorite exclamation was “Wow! I could use this to help me with my homework.”

As a Software Engineer, I spend an awful lot of my time sitting in front of a screen watching text scroll by. My colleges and I have meetings where we work together on hard problems and come up with creative solutions, but just as the computing environments of the day have become more complex, I’ve become a bit jaded to the discovery and wonder I enjoyed when I poked away at my computer keyboard all those years ago. One of the benefits of volunteering is not what you do for others, but what they can do for you. With the Girls Engineering Club, I got to experience a little of that joy of discovery once again. The price was a little elbow grease, some careful thought, and a bit of my time. It was absolutely a bargain.

RAS Syndrome. It’s a condition that plagues not only SoftLayer, but the entire tech industry. Of course, it’s not even limited to that – it just happens to hit the tech industry the hardest because of the high amount of acronyms. RAS stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome, so RAS Syndrome stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome. See the problem here?

Here are some of my favorite examples:

• ATM Machine
• PIN Number
• DVD Disc

Protocol gets abused a lot:

• TCP/IP Protocol
• HTTP Protocol
• FTP Protocol
• SIP Protocol
• GUI interface

And of course the list goes on. Sometimes we can get very redundant. Let’s start with this example:

• Battery Backup Unit (BBU)

We can make this redundant:

• BBU Unit

Continuing the trend, we can add “Battery” to this without sounding too out of place:

• Battery BBU Unit

You need to be careful because you may use a synonym and still be redundant:

• BBU Module

Since “unit” and “module” refer to basically the same thing, this is also redundant.

I’m sure this is enough to get you started thinking about it. In time, I’m sure you’ll start discovering new redundant RAS acronyms.

I recently was able to get ahold of a 32GB iPhone 4. It is the first iPhone I have owned, and seems like a good model to start my 2 year AT&T contract with. I can say that it lives up to all of the hype (positive and negative), so I will not bore you with yet another review that repeats what is already out there.

Instead, I would like to share my case-quest story.

Shortly after getting my new iPhone 4, I inadvertently dropped it in a parking lot. I am happy to report that the front and back panels are truly scratch resistant. After falling on asphalt, amazingly, there were no scratches or marks on either the front or back panels. Because of this, I feel comfortable forgoing the screen protector I was considering buying.

However, the corners of the phone were another matter. After the drop, the corners got slightly chipped, but not badly. No one besides my fellow webby colleague Steven Rogers has been able to notice them, but they bug me nonetheless.

Sadly, these corner chips could have been avoided if I was able to buy a case at the same time as my phone, but unfortunately, there were none to be found at the time of purchase. The iPhone 4 compatible cases seem to be more scarce than the actual phones!

After my un-paid stress test for Apple, I began looking around for an iPhone 4 Case that I like. At one place, I saw an Apple bumper case that a fellow iPhone 4 owner had, and that seemed like an ideal match. It protects the corners, and looks like an extension of the device.

I began my case-quest by going around to several Apple Stores, but it was the same story at each one I went to: “Sorry, we had some earlier today, but we sold out.” These bumper cases have been flying off the shelves of Apple Stores and seem to be gone moments after they are put on the racks. I heard reports that some customers were so eager to get one, they even got it in a color they didn’t care for.

I also tried going to a couple of different Best Buy mobile stores, but the types of cases they had were not appealing to me, and were in low supply as well.

After looking around at many stores, I was able to get a “temporary” case at a mall kiosk shop. It is a decent gel-type case, but has a closed back, so you can’t see the beautiful glass-back with the Apple logo on it.

The gel case protects my corners, but I still wasn’t satisfied with it completely, so I renewed my bumper case quest.

Fortunately, I was able to get one from an Apple Store during a week day and so finally fulfilled my quest. I really like my new case. It has metal buttons for the volume buttons, and the sleep/wake button, and it has an extra thick enclosure around the mute switch so you don’t accidentally bump it.

So, the moral of this story is that if you are planning to get an iPhone 4 and want a case, try to line up a case that you like ahead of time as well.

Oh, and one more thing, if you haven’t done so already, check out the SoftLayer iPhone Mobile Client app that I helped make.

We are about to move, and in my new home, it turns out to be cheaper to get my daughter a cell phone than it is to add a home phone… That wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, except that she just turned 7 — this year! That got me to thinking: I am part of the generation during which computers went from curiosities to appliances… That is, I remember a time during which the only thing at home comparable to today’s PCs was an IBM Selectric typewriter my mother used. So, yeah, I am old.

I would guess that the first piece of technology a child uses is still the TV. Sure, we use phones around them and some use baby monitors, but I think most parents have used the one-eyed baby-sitter at one time or another. And with the familiarity with a TV, is it that much of a leap to viewing a computer monitor? Is the leap from remote control to a keyboard that huge?

And as our children get more and more familiar with technology at younger and younger ages, I’m thinking this is putting us more and more into an “On Demand” society. Through the past decade or two I have watched that concept evolve from pure marketing to reality; you can get non-programmed TV at the touch of a remote button, you can order pizza online, and, thanks to the innovation of Softlayer, you can create a turn-key server solution in a matter of hours.

As much as I worry about how my daughter will adapt to the technological leaps she is going to face in her lifetime, I am also curious about the wonders she will get to experience and build upon. This is one of the many reasons I am proud to work for Softlayer—we will create more of those wonders before I am done. And who knows? Some day she may be writing here about how it used to take a few hours to create a turn-key server solution and that her father must be really old to have ever lived in a world without computers…

Security Myth #4: A hardware firewall will stop the evil hackers from the internet. They also stop viruses and spam emails.

The Facts: A hardware firewall will filter your traffic based on a set of rules. If properly configured, this will certainly harden your system from certain types of attacks. However, if you want to stop intrusion attempts on your server, you probably want to implement brute force protection or intrusion detection (IDS). Most operating systems nowadays include brute force protection in one form or another (although it may not be turned on by default). If you want an IDS, there are several options available. Here at SoftLayer, we offer McAfee Host Intrusion Protection System (or HIPS for short) for Windows systems. This will offer you some additional protection against intrusion attempts, but it is no substitute for a well patched system with strong passwords. This is especially important to know if you contract with an outside agency to configure your firewall for you. It’s easy to delude yourself into a “set it and forget it” attitude toward security. I can’t tell you how many administrators I’ve talked to that have asked “how did I get hacked? I had a firewall!”

The Side Effects:

• Having a hardware firewall means an additional step to allow access to ports. Can be time consuming.
• Having a hardware firewall can potentially mean an additional point of failure.
• Too many rules can mean degraded performance.

Security Myth #5: I run a Unix/Linux based system, so I can’t get hacked.

The Facts: I have seen a fair share of Unix based systems get hacked, simply because the user is unfamiliar with the OS. Running everything from within a control panel is convenient, but make sure you or one of your administrators is familiar with command line access.

The Side Effects:

• Running a control panel can cause more security holes

Security Myth #6: I have my Wordpress (or other web application) patched to the latest version, so I should be fine.

The Facts: WordPress is a piece of cake to install. You don’t even need to know how to code in HTML. This means you can install it and have it working properly, and still forget to correct your filesystem permissions. You need to make sure that you read the installation documentation and complete all steps. If you just stop reading once the application starts working, you could potentially forget to correct your permissions and someone could gain access as an administrative user. I ran into a situation one time where a user was utilizing a web interface to manage an online marketplace. I was shocked to find out that the link he sent me allowed me in without the use of a password! Make sure that your application doesn’t use the default password or a blank password.

The Side Effects:

• Having the latest version is great, but make sure you take a 360 degree look around to make sure nothing is out of place

Security Myth #7: I am getting SPAM messages, but I have a firewall.

The Facts: A firewall does not filter SPAM messages. You might look into the free SpamAssassin software that will filter email for potential SPAM. http://spamassassin.apache.org/

Any place you spend hours upon hours every week, you tend to get to know people pretty well. During my time on my shift, I’ve gotten to know my fellow SLayers quite well. You learn their favorite foods (I’ll tell you right away what almost everyone on my shift orders from our favorite Chinese deliver place – almost like clockwork), their choices in music, their favorite computer games (yes, WoW tops this list, seemingly a standard in the IT Industry), and even how they react in certain situations. While the operations team is a tight knit group, we also have our extended families in SLales, InfoSys, Dev, and the other departments.

As many know, they recently opened up our new HQ. Yes, it’s as awesome as every has said it is. Lance made it a point to acquire a Sonic-style ice machine, our facilities are state of the art, and the building is just simply awe-inspiring. I suppose you could consider it our new home. As a new home, we’ve recently brought all of our departments together under one roof. Operations can grab a quick break with SLales, Dev can bounce some questions off of the CSAs or SBEs simply by walking a few feet, and even better, the friendly trash talking and joking just got easier (we’re a family, of course we’re going to mess with each other every chance we get!).

I’m sure employees everywhere are akin to this metaphor, but here it seems to ring true. We have our family quarrels, we know each other like the backs of our hands, and when things get heavy, we’re there to watch each others’ backs to ensure the mission is accomplished, and we continue to dominate the hosting industry.