Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • Senseless Regulations

    I rarely complain about regulations.  I know that many, if not most of them are really for the best. We know what happens when there isn’t any oversight at all.  But once in a while, I have a real WTF moment.

    RoHS, or Reduction of Hazardous Substances is in general a “good thing”. It means to not use chemicals or components that are toxic, or hazardous to the environment. Whether this is removing lead from solder in electronics, or not using hexavalent chromium (google it – nasty shit). But sometimes it goes too far.

    Case in point. Many microscope objectives fail. They use optical elements made from leaded glass.  They use these components and materials because adding lead to glass increases the refractive index, and improves the performance of the optic. Fine, I get it that there is nasty lead in these parts.

    But the risk is so low that any of this lead will ever be released into the environment. It would require that the glass be removed from the objective, vaporized, and then, and only then would a couple micrograms of lead be released into the environment.

    Common sense would tell you that this is such a small risk of exposure that microscope objectives provide would lead to an exemption. No such luck. So, you get to go to a design with crappy performance and resolution that costs nearly 2X what the standard objectives would provide.  Groan.

  • Bad UI of the week: VMWare’s “my.vmware.com”

    Continuing on the theme of bad UI, this week’s hall of shame goes to VMWare.  Sad, because they used to “get it”, or so it seemed to me.

    Background:

    I have long been a VMWare user.  I have (purchased) a license for Workstation and Fusion, the desktop products for virtualization on the PC and Mac platforms respectively.  On the PC Side, I use Workstation to segment software that seems invasive (Sales Logix, I am looking at you) from my main install.  On the Mac it is to use the (dwindling) PC only apps that I can’t live without.

    The situation:

    Two weeks ago, I took the plunge and upgraded to Mountain Lion (OS-X 10.8), and my version of Fusion wasn’t supported.  Off to the VMWare website.  In the past, I would just log in, and the option to view my licenses and download my entitled products was on the main page.

    Now they have this my.vmware.com stuff.  I can find my licenses OK, but downloads?  It seemed I could only sign up for a demo version to download.  No amount of navigation got me there.  And yes, I know that using the demo version would work, but then you get harassed by their inside sales people.  Another story for another day.

    I ended up searching, and finding the download page on the main site.  But still the my.vmware.com site kept trying to navigate me back to it.  Argh. Perhaps if I spent time on their site every week, it would make sense, but for my, the 2 or 3 visits a year, it was painful.

    I am sure this will not be the last installment in UI ridiculousness.

  • Secure communications

    So, I have recently taken a new job (it is a kick ass place to work too), and have moved.  In the process of buying a house, a lot of sensitive infomation is exchanged.  Particularly around the documentation required for a home loan.

    Email has become the de-facto standard for exchange.  Nobody seems to worry about sending things with social security numbers, EIN, and other identity information. 

    Alas, I query the mortgage broker, asking for their public key, and I get a big “huh?” in response.

    I know that email encryption is not trivial, and that it takes some effort to get your certificate (for free from comodo.com for personal use), and to distribute your public key.  But you would think that someone who handles thousands of personal financial documents daily would have it in place.

    Sigh.

  • Things that drive a “car guy” crazy

    I am a tech head, and I do have a thing for cars.  I drive a pretty sweet Honda S2000, and I have ridden performance motorcycles for most of my life.  So I know a thing or two about a well running car. 

    This morning, while walking my dogs, I walked by a house where someone was leaving for work. He gets into a 2010 BMW M3.  Just about every M3 I have ever been near or in is a supremely functioning machine.  Fast, functional, and about as well tuned as you will fine.  The perfectly balanced inline 6 cylinder, mated to a 5 or 6 speed Getrag transmission equals a butter smooth ride, and more than a little “go”.

    This car however ran ratty.  It would barely idle (usually an indication of someone screwing with the program of the ECU), and it had a loud exhaust.  Nothing wrong with increasing the breathing of the engine, but on something as highly tuned as an M3, you need to balance intake and exhaust modifications to keep the fine balance.

    Alas, this example was poorly executed.  It ran about as rough as a 396CI 1969 Ford Mustang fastback.  Barely idled, and popped and backfired a lot as he (barely) got it away from the curb.

    Sad really.  At least it wasn’t an automatic…

  • UX, an example of lousy design and usability

    While I am no longer in a realm that has to integrate with MFP (multi-function peripherals), I now use them more than ever.

    For the record, I am talking about the upper end HP office printer/scanner/facsimile machines.  The ones that integrate with an AD domain, and provide user based functionality.  So keep that in mind.

    First, the 1990’s want their processors and their displays back.  All of these devices run on a few different “engine” models.  All of them were originally designed in the early to mid 1990s (think RAM at $400 a megabyte).  The screen resolution is probably 50ppi – state of the art for LCD touch displays in 1998, and to add insult to injury, they are monochrome.  Ugh.  Ugly.

    The processor choice is important too.  The UI is largely event driven (I know this from my time in the realm of building connectors), and the processor has trouble keeping up even when a user is manually entering information.

    Second, the API’s are all littered with legacy calls and widgets.  This is tp provide backwards capability, so that a connector designed in 2002 has a fighting chance to still work, albeit as lousy as it did in 2002.  That this is a curse is not immediately obvious.  Who wouldn’t want to keep a wide range of legacy products alive?  But, it cripples what can be done.  Often connectors, and widgets are run slowly  on purpose to match the timing the device expects. … and this leads to users havng longish delays to respond to soft buttons pushed.  Which leads me to point 3

    Third, none of the major device makers has found a good tactile indication to signal to the user that their input was recognized.  If the user can’t see a state change, hear a “click” or feel a button change (a tactamorphic touchscreen, how cool would that be?), they are all to liable to “double push” the soft button, and then unintended consequences that often require a signtout/signin process again.  Groan.

    While I don’t expect the visual experience of Android or iOS, some significant improvements are needed. On a device that can cost $35,000 it seems like a reasonable expectation.

  • Using the wrong tool – Excel

    Few things make me scratch my head more than people who insist upon using lousy tools way outside their envelope.

    Case in point:

    Product Requirements Document done in Excel.  While there are a few positives, like easy to prioritize, and re-order lists, it is too constraining.  Not enough space in a cell to really explain what is needed (I know, you should break them into smaller pieces, but sometimes, something is so fundamental, it can’t)

    Competitive Analysis in Excel.  Again, there are pro’s:  Easy to create lists.  Easy to match across a row features that are related.  Can be formatted into a pretty table for insertion into a PowerPoint presentation.

    Meeting minutes captured in Powerpoint.  There is nothing worse than a 2K text file being blown up into a 2 megabyte presentation to capture the minutes and actions, then sent to the team.  Really, Microsoft OneNote is a perfect vehicle to do this.  Or Notepad. Or, if you are a Mac-phile, TextWrangler or BBEDIT.  Sigh.

    I wonder if anyone reads these posterous posts anymore.

  • White trash hotels

    I recently took a new job, a couple hours from my home.  While we are house hunting and preparing to move, I have been staying at a budget hotel (I have to pay for it, so it is really cheap).  This has been going on for about 8 weeks, and it works well.  Up on Monday, return on Friday afternoon.  

    However, it seems like I am always in a room next to a fighting couple.  One night around 2:00AM, it was loud.  This morning at 5:30AM.  

    Please, leave your domestic discord at home, and let a traveller get some rest…

  • Product Owner barely being ready with backlog to start planning?

    Just curious if I am unique.  I am the Director of Product Management, and have a staff of 6.  I am the product manager for our main product line (about 80% of our business), and I play the Product Owner.  Today was planning sessions, and as usual, I was working on my backlog until late last night.  It seems like I get it done in time, but it is always a crunch to get it done.  

    Does anyone else barely get the coming iterations stories and acceptance criteria done on time?  I am fortunate that I have a deep well of ideas, and a knack of pulling it all together as needed, but all effort to get an iteration or two ahead have been thwarted.

  • Some tasks really can’t be done Agile

    Sunday morning here, and I am working on my backlog in preparation for iteration planning tomorrow.

    One of the major tasks is that a recent architecture change (that was SUPER for performance) heinously breaks our old model of licensing.  By old, I mean from the early 1990’s.  Way before we had cool stuff like the Internet, and ubiquitous access.  We had bandaged this process along until now.  However, this new change turned it on its head.

    We could create a limiting mechanism to replace it with identical functinality (keeping the licensing tied to the server, and emanating from said server), or we could rip this wide open.  Create a special licensing service (either running on the main server, or on its own instance).  This is attractive for many reasons.  As time goes on, the concept of a single server, and a set of components that communicate with it is becoming quaint.  Fast WAN’s, intranets, geographically diverse deployments are becoming standard.  People expect to drop components where their business needs sit.

    Cool.  But even the most foundational sub component of this is way too large for a single developer in a single 3 week sprint to accomplish.  And there isn’t really a way for me, as a product owner, to break it down at a high level.  This is going to take our architect probably 6-8 weeks to get built, and with the minimal functional feature set done.

    I think we will make this work, but it will make for interesting planning poker tomorrow.

  • eBooks – Sony Reader & possibly the BEST SciFi novel of all time

    I am a prodigious reader.  Have been since early in my High School years.  Science Fiction is my chosen escape.  

    I have read most of the genre’s and deeply into some of the authors.  Heinlein, Asimov, Jordan, Pohl, Haldeman, and many many more.

    There is one book that stands out.  Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner.  I have probably 3 copies of this book.  All of them are out of print, and I re-read it frequently.  It is the “near future” type of Science Fiction, and it is chilling in how accurately he predicted society about now.

    The problem with this as an eBook, is that Brunner was a master of using typography as part of the layout of the novel  There are sections where formatting is altered to drive a point.  Tables, coordinated paragraphs and sentences.  All these have fallen flat on the scans I have, um, ‘acquired’ from dubious sources.

    Now there is a real version, with the typographical performance pieces.  I am happy.  It was worth the $9.99.  Now it is on my Sony Reader, and my iPad.  

    Bliss.