I wasn’t going to get sucked into the 2016 election, then Donald Trump ran for President I’ve struggled with what to write about this election for months. I’m not shy about my opinions on social media but when it came down to going long form about making my arguments in this election, I’ve written and deleted more than can be known.

I’ve always been deeper into politics than probably any of my friends and family. It started when I would watch Dana Carvy do his iconic impressions of both Bush and Perot on SNL during the 1992 election.

My brother and father are sports junkies. Politics is my drug of choice.

During the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, I was active on social media as a vocal supporter of Obama. It was hard not to be. I think he’ll go down as one of the most transformational figures of my lifetime.

But this year, it’s different. In past elections, I’ve said not great things about GOP candidates. My statements in hindsight, never expected Donald Trump to enter politics.

Mitt Romney is by all accounts an honorable man, and would have kept this country safe. I would have been frustrated but not ashamed before the world, and before my children, that he was our representative.

Now is the election of 2016, and there’s a chance that Donald Trump, could be our next President.

I repeat: there is a chance that this racist, fascist, sexist, disgusting excuse for a man, could be the next President of the United States.

I have two young boys. They know who we support in this election. My oldest son was more upset than I was when someone stole the Clinton/Kaine yard sign from our yard. In a year when it’s not popular to advertise that you endorse either candidate, it’s even more important to take a stand.

And, so, I built a bigger sign.

But in our house we teach our children to treat each other with love and respect. We teach our children to stand up the ideas and the rights of themselves, and for others.

As a straight, white, college-educated, male, in Kansas, I could easily sit back and hide. I could leave the signs down. I could be a registered independant. I could save my money. I could stay quiet.

I won’t.

I support Hillary Clinton for President.

And so should you.

So, vote. For our republic, for the rights and the protection of everyone. Vote. Against bigotry, against hate, against someone who can’t see that America is already great.

Vote.

For many years, 16GB devices have been an issue for Apple and its users. However Apple fixed this in September, bumping up to 32GB of storage as the new minimum capacity in the iPhone 7, and then going as far as to rev-up the existing iPad line to this new minimum.

16GB problem, gone.

Yesterday, Apple announced a revamped MacBook Pro. Thinner, USB-C / ThunderBolt 3 all over the place, P3 display, Intel Skylake CPUs, and a new dedicated T1 chip powering a watchOS-enabled Touch Bar, including a Touch ID sensor in a non-iOS device for the first time.

Great stuff. One small problem.

😡😡😡 pic.twitter.com/dGCTMS6dXD

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) October 27, 2016

Intel’s Skylake processors and chipsets that Apple is using are able to support more than 16GB of memory. For instance, the i7–6920HQ, which based on Apple’s advertised clock speeds looks to be what is utilized in the maxed-out 15” model, says it can do up to 64GB. Apple is a company that makes amazing products, that create and redefine entire catagories. But they’re they’re bound to some limitations.

I figured this wasn’t something that Apple did “just because” … if there was a way they could sell me more memory, at a premium, I’d think they’d do it. There’s a tradeoff being made here.

On the Intel page for the Skylake chips, it indicated that the maximum size was dependent on memory type. Apple is using LPDDR3 chips, which from what I can gather based on the 2133MHz speed, are either made by Micron or Samsung as they appear to be the only two vendors producing them, and based on past relationships makes a lot of sense.

In both cases, what I’ve been reading is that 16GB is the maximum size available in this class of chip. LPDDR3 has a lot of advantages when it comes to power consumption, running at a much lower voltage of 1.2V, and only using 10% of the power during standby compared to regular DDR3 or DDR4 memory.

Given that the people who’d really take advantage of the additional memory are people like me who want to run multiple virtual machines, containerized applications, etc, and these tasks are probably better suited to systems not running off batteries, a trade-off of limiting the maximums in order to reduce power consumption, makes a lot of sense.

If the decision here was something like “We can use LPDDR3 and get 10 hours of battery life but we’re limited to 16GB, or use DDR4 and get 8 hours, but support 32GB,” I’d rather get 10 hours of battery.

I’d probably use those two hours in the field a lot more than the extra RAM, right now.

All this appears to be backed up by Dan Frakes, who confirmed the limitation with Apple.

Apple told me MBP maxes out at 16GB RAM because LPDDR3 limit is 16GB/chip; Apple uses it because of performance/energy ratio.

— Dan Frakes (@DanFrakes) October 27, 2016

I was already going to sit out upgrading my Late-2013 Retina MacBook Pro 15” since it does everything I currently need, and has 16GB of DDR3 RAM already.

It also doesn’t require me to replace every cable, dongle, adapter and power brick that I currently own.

You know you have a problem when you get excited about plan changes on your cellular provider. Yesterday, AT&T gave me a problem.

Initially, no more data overages, higher caps, and reduced pricing tiers looks like good news all around, but is that really true? After looking at the details of these new AT&T data plans I’m less than impressed. They’ve upped the per device access charge from $15 to $20.

Right now I have the $100 plan for 15GB, plus three devices, for a total of $145. Under the new plan, if I move to the similar the 16GB plan the base price is $90 but I’m now paying $60 in per device charges for a total of $150. (+$5)

Even going from the 15GB down to the new 10GB plan, would result in a savings of only $5, at the loss of 5GB of data.

Maybe.

It’s still really a bit confusing, the press release says “All Mobile Share Advantage plans also have an access charge of $10 — $40 a month per device not included in prices shown above.” but then later “customers will pay a $20 access charge per smartphone a month for Mobile Share Advantage.”

My hope/guess is that it’s likely to depend on which plan you pick, at least that’s how it is on the current setup. I believe the current $15 per device does jump to like $20 or $25 , on their current plans. So, if it continues to be a graduated scale, the new 16GB plan may actually be a money saver, but until their pricing calculator shows up when the new pricing is available on Sunday, we probably won’t know.

But from the “clear” statement, it looks like not a great deal. For now, they get a splashy headline. Verizon, who has a similar plan, has the separate fee for allowing “unlimited” reduced bandwidth, instead of charging an overage, and it seems like this increase is just a clever way of hiding that fee.

If I was really concerned about overages I’d probably just do it, but I never go over.

I’ve long been annoyed with copying files to a USB stick, and then handing them to a Windows user (typically a customer) and then telling them to ignore all the .whatever files that are created.

Recently I found BlueHarvest, which runs $15 and has a 30-day trial, and it’s appears to be the new solution to my problem. It automatically cleans the OS X specific files on any non-Mac formatted (exFAT, FAT32) drive that enters the system.

The results have been great, and my portable drives are now very clean.

I used to have a menubar application called CleanMyDrive by MacPaw that would get rid of these, but at some point I quit using it for reasons I don’t even remember. I think the menu bar icon was kind of ugly on Yosemite+ (yes, I’m that picky.)

When the 4th generation Apple TV was announced a few weeks back, my initial response was basically “take my money!”

But then, I had second thoughts, and I didn’t order one at the start of the week when they were first available. I don’t really know why, my heart just wasn’t in it. I decided I’d wait it out and let others figure out all the kinks. However, on launch day I had a change of heart and decided to stop by the Apple Store and pickup a 32GB model.

I have two of the 3rd generations units, and the 2nd generation, and while I love them for all they do, I have been patiently waiting for Apple to revolutionize TV. I want a single TV solution from Apple that makes my life as a cord cutter better. Unfortunately, that still hasn’t happened yet, but it’s a nice box.

Pros:

• Universal search, with Siri, is fantastic. Telling the box to “show me the latest Ben Affleck movies” results in unified results with content from all the major providers like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO. Selecting a title brings you to the one that is the best option based on if you’re paying for streaming or if you’d have to buy it. (ex: Gone Girl is available on HBO, and iTunes, but it defaults to HBO.)
• New remote is very handy, and a nice upgrade from the previous one. The touch sensitive panel is very sensitive and takes some getting used to. I’ve used the motion controller on a couple of games, and it’s fun but not something I’d probably do a lot of.
• The volume control and TV power is controller through the new remote, and I didn’t have to do anything to program it.
• The App Store. Yeah, that’s pretty self explanatory.

Cons:

• The current iOS Remote application that can control my 2G/3G units doesn’t work with the new Apple TV. No using the iOS keyboard to enter search terms on your TV.
• You cannot pair a bluetooth keyboard (even the Apple ones) to the Apple TV, either.
• The first two combine to make initial setup with logging into accounts, a real pain in the ass when you have super complex passwords for everything.

Overall, I very much like the new box. There probably isn’t a day that goes by where it doesn’t get used. I’m going to be adding an OTA network tuner and downloading the Channels app this week to replace switching inputs on my TV to a dedicated antenna. I’ll probably also pickup another box for the downstairs TV and then gift my 3rd generation units out to the family for the holidays.

My original bout with the 4.7” iPhone 6 lasted almost seven months to the day. I remember this because I received it on September 19, 2014. It was the same day my second son way born.

On April 18, 2015, I purchased an iPhone 6 Plus.

Why Switch?

That’s what everyone had been asking me since I even brought up the idea of switching. I’m one of those people who originally couldn’t even fathom Apple ever making a phone with a screen larger than 4”, like what we had on the iPhone 5. Jony Ive had taught us that this was the superior phone size, and I carried that logic and marketing out into the world. Over time, I started to rationalize to myself that a 4.7” phone was a good size, and that if Apple were come out with one I know they’d do it right. It was inevitable. That’d be the phone I’d buy.

And then came the iPhone 6… and the iPhone 6 Plus. The Apple Phablet had arrived.

Admittedly, the thought to join the dark side had entered my mind a few times since the 6 Plus was announced. Would I want a phone this big? Could I handle a phone this big? Back in September, I said “Nope!”

So along came the iPhone 6. And I loved it. Reading my original quick review from October, it’s still absolutely true:

I’ve owned it a month now. Originally I felt that I was going to drop it every time I tried to grip it (using my smaller than normal man-hands) — that panic led me to the Apple Store to pickup the black, leather Apple case. The case gave me a safety blanket and the ability to learn to adapt my grip, however, last Thursday I took the case away. It’s been a week since I’ve removed the training wheels.

I love this phone, it feels great. The size is perfect. The rounded corners feel great holding it for long periods of time. I’m also past fussing about the camera bulge. I worried it’d get scratched, now, in Apple(Care) and sapphire crystal, I trust.

I had an original iPad through work, and then purchased my own iPad 2 on launch day, which I used until it was replaced by the iPad Air. However, I found myself using the iPad Air less and less over time, especially as OS X started to get more and more features from iOS. I started to embrace the idea of two primary screens. My phone and my laptop. Also, the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 gave me fewer reasons to think about the iPad.

And with iOS 8 and OS X 10.10, along came iCloud Photo Library. This feature I absolutely love, but, it blew up my iPad. I have 170GB of photography stored in iCloud now. Even with the optimization features enabled, my 16GB iPad Air couldn’t deal with this. This led to it being turned off completely more than anything, and then eventually being sold to my brother.

I was on the edge of buying a new 128GB iPad Mini for about a week, but I could never bring myself to buy. I wasn’t sold on the utility of another screen. I was actually very happy with the idea of my iPhone 6 and MacBook Pro as my major points of computing.

But then my wife’s iPhone 5S started to have the same issues as my iPad. The 16GB limit would hit and every other day I was shuffling around apps and data to keep her under the bar. Enough was enough.

My solution at the time was to obtain an iPhone 6 Plus 128GB for myself, and give her my gently used iPhone 6. This worked, and at first it was glorious. I was in love with my giant new friend. In my new two device world, it was a match made in heaven. The iPhone 6 Plus was great for reading, writing, and arithmetic.

But, it had trade-offs.

It is massive. It’s great for use around the house or at the office, when you’re not up and around with it. It was the first iPhone that I ever dropped and broke the screen, in seven years of owning them.

Going out with it felt a little bit like having an iPad to contend with. My car didn’t really have a convenient place to put it and at one point we had family pictures done and I forgot to empty my pockets. Now, the giant rectangle in my pants will be forever immortalized in print.

And the struggle with RAM, is real. There simply isn’t enough in it. Having a page open in Safari, and then switching back to a different one caused the site to reload. Having streaming audio from Apple Music running and then opening Tweetbot would cause jitter. It was annoying but not life threatening.

I commented about this back in August, and even then I was planning to stay with it. As I said:

… the reality is I’d have a hard time going back to anything smaller.

It turns out, it wasn’t that hard.

Coming Back

When the iPhone 6S was announced, I started hatching a plan. What if I got a pink one for my wife, and (re)obtained the iPhone 6. I’d just give it a shot for a little bit, and then if I thought it was too small to stick with, I could sell it and go back to my Plus.

So I did, and it turns out, I liked the 4.7” phone a lot more. It was easier to hold, didn’t act as sluggish, and overall was a lot more comfortable for me. Playing around with 3D Touch on my wife’s phone, I imagined the difficulties and all the broken screens I’d have with a larger display to contend with.

The battery life on the regular 6 is crap compared to the Plus, I’d really become spoiled by that, but I own at least a half dozen Anker batteries with more car and wall charging outlets than should be legally allowed, so I made it work. I sold the Plus to a nice woman on Craigslist.

And I love it.

I tried to go back to the Plus, twice, just to be sure. One night I lasted almost 5 hours before switching back. It was sold the next day.

I’m back to the 4.7” phone, and when the iPhone 7 arrives, assuming Apple doesn’t do anything stupid and move everyone to 5+ inch devices, that’s probably the form-factor I’ll stick with for the future.

Data Lake 2.0 is the next generation of the EMC Isilon portfolio. Isilon is EMC’s scale-out network attached storage product. Traditionally, Isilon OneFS runs on physical nodes, with the cluster scaling from roughly 30 TB of raw capacity, all the way up to 50 PB. The nodes are all connected across a redundant, private, Infiniband network. But next year, EMC will offer two more ways to utilize Isilon. In addition to the traditional setup, EMC will offer “Cloud Pools” and “IsilonSD Edge” products.

Software Defined

The IsilonSD Edge product is the eqivilant of an Isilon virtual edition. Instead of running Isilon’s OneFS operating system directly on EMC provided hardware, customers can utilize their own physical boxes, loaded up with disk, and run the Isilon software as multiple instances inside VMware ESXi.

There are some restrictions though, chiefly, the ESXi host operating systems must meet strict specifications. EMC will leverage the hardware compatibility list used by VMware’s VSAN product, to determine what will be a supported IsilonSD configuration. Each IsilonSD virtual node will have VMDK files running on the local storage of the ESXi hosts. Shared storage (even one provided by another EMC storage system like the VNX or VMAX) is not supported. Even though IsilonSD and VSAN will share the same HCL, it should be noted that IsilonSD does not leverage VSAN’s technologies in any way. The VSAN team has done extensive work with testing various storage controllers, solid state, and hard drive brands, so it makes sense for EMC to lean on their work.

IsilonSD is intended for small, remote or branch office, and it will be limited in that it won’t scale-out like its traditional Isilon. Like traditional Isilon, IsilonSD requires at least three instances to create a cluster, but is limited to a maximum of six VMs. Traditional Isilon can scale to 144 nodes (the largest Infiniband switch on the market has 144 ports.) IsilonSD is also limited to 36TB of raw capacity in the cluster.

IsilonSD comes in two licensing models. A fully licensed (and, importantly) EMC supported configuration, and a free edition.

Cloudy, with a chance of RAIN

CloudPools allows administrators to leverage off site “cloud” disk targets as storage for your files. Traditional Isilon has three tiers of disk/node types; high performance all solid-state S-nodes, general performance SSD/disk X-nodes, capacity focused disk based NL-nodes, and high density deep archving HD-nodes. Now you can think of your cloud storage target as the super-cold target for your files. CloudPools leverages rules to determine what type of data, or at what age, files are moved between tiers, or off-site.

End users will have no knowledge of where the files came from, but may see the latency associated with having to retrieve files from off-site instead of from disks located in the company data center. Administrators don’t have to manually move data between on-site or the cloud, as the tiering is automatically done through pre-set policies. Files sent to the cloud are encrypted both in transmission and at the target cloud, and then decrypted as they arrive back on the on-site Isilon cluster.

CloudPools will be able to leverage both public and private clouds offerings. Supported public clouds instead Amazon Web Service S3 and Microsoft Azure; support for VMware vCloud Air is intended for a future release. Private cloud offerings are limited to EMC’s Elastic Cloud Storage solution.

All of this forms EMC’s “Data Lake” — an edge to cloud file storage strategy. IsilonSD Edge puts big data in remote locations, and makes it easily accessible and consumable to end users, with support for Isilon’s SyncIQ replication technology to keep a copy back in the data center for long term archiving, backup and disaster recovery. From there, data can be moved out to a cloud provider as files age out, to keep the speedy access available for more frequently used data.

EMC IsilonSD Edge, Isilon CloudPools, and the Isilon OneFS.Next version that will enable these functions is slated for availbility in early 2016.

Originally published atwww.petri.comon November 17, 2015.

Neil McNeill was the most interesting man in my world.

Neil knew something about everything and had an opinion to share on all of it. Not in a way that made you feel inferior or insignificant, but in a way that kept you wanting to hear more. It wasn’t hard to spend hours in his living room engaged in conversation.

He could discuss corporate taxation, or international affairs, and then a few minutes later explain how to avoid overcharging a lithium battery.

He was born in Kansas. He worked in the Pentagon, lived in Japan and served in Vietnam.

He flew planes both big and small. He retired from the Navy, but didn’t want to be called Captain. He had a PhD from Harvard, was an accounting professor, but hated to be called Doctor.

He was a husband, father, brother, uncle, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Those titles he didn’t mind.

He owned one of the very first telephone answering machines. He sniped eBay auctions for radio control airplane parts. He complained about PayPal, a lot. His house had a gadget, part or widget for doing just about anything.

He was a geek.

In 2013, doctors told him he had just a few months to live. He lasted almost two more years. Even as cancer gripped tighter on his liver, lungs and heart, even as radiation and other treatments abused his body, he always had just enough energy to light up and entertain us all.

Neil’s dad had lived to be 102, but Neil was only 83. He had too much life to live for. This man wouldn’t go down without a fight. Even towards the end, hospice would say he had only had a few days left, and weeks would go by. When they said it was a matter of hours, no one believed them.

They obviously had no scale to properly measure Neil McNeill.

Neil was my wife’s grandfather and since both of mine had passed away years before I was even born, over the the 12 years I knew him, he became mine too. He was the most interesting man in my world, and he will be forever missed.

Peace out, Gramps.

A couple of months ago I noticed a rash on my wrist, under my Apple Watch. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it at first, made sure to clean the strap and back of the watch. Figured it was just from lack of skin breathing under the sport band, on a hot day, after a workout.

But the rash didn’t go away, it actually got worse, and it seemed to be localized to one spot on the back of my wrist, right where the metal clasp of the sports band rubbed by arm.

And it was getting painful.

My wife was the first to suggest that it looked like a nickel allergy. At first this seemed strange, why would Apple put nickel in the band? Everyone knows that can cause issues. So I did a little research.

The stainless steel in the Apple Watch and in the bands, is grade 316L, per Apple’s own site. It’s incredibly common in jewelry, medical implants, and other places where contact with the human body is a thing. It’s also easier to machine than other grades of stainless steel. But it has nickel in it. According to AZO Materials, about 10–14% of the composite is within spec for 316L.

Still, I’ve worn watches forever, and ever since I was a teenager they’ve all been watches with metal bands. Apple Watch was the first watch in probably 18 years that had a band made out of plastic. (Sorry, fluoroelastomer.) I started thinking back, and when I was about 15, I had a similar reaction on the top of my wrist that a doctor told me was because of the nickel in the back of a cheap watch, but I ditched the watch and it was never an issue again.

My wife suggested that I apply some nail polish to the back of the watch clasp to create a barrier between my skin and the watch. This didn’t last very long, within a day the polish had separated from the metal and stuck to my skin. I started to wear a bandage with some hydrocortisone cream on the irritation, under my watch. But this all seemed silly.

So, I called Apple.

The first person I spoke with instantly transferred me to a specialist the second I mentioned a rash and Apple Watch. They weren’t going to mess around. Tom took my case, and started to ask me a lot of questions about my usage of the watch, how often I wear it, what bands I use, if I shower with it, work out with it, how often do I clean it, etc. Then he started to ask medical questions like if I had asthma, allergies, other issues with jewelry, rashes on other areas, etc. And then questions about the rash specifically, what I was doing about it, what it looked like, did it hurt, was it raised, when did it appear.

The initial call took about an hour, and at the end he had me send 8 pictures of my wrist. Four with the watch on from all angles, and four without the watch on, including a closeup of the rash. Eventually he let me know that this would have to be escalated to engineering and that he’d give me a call once he heard back. It was the Saturday before the big fall announcement, so I didn’t expect anything back for a while. I was told to stop wearing the watch to see if the rash cleared up. Eventually I put the watch back on with a barrier and continued my hydrocortisone treatments. The rash went away.

That Thursday, Tom called, and after discussing the current status of the rash, advised me to try wearing the watch again to see if it returned. So I did, and it did.

Tom called back a few days later, and I let him know the rash had returned. He asked for more pictures, the same as before, which I sent over, and he said he’d call back in a couple of days once the case had been reviewed again.

Eventually, Tom called back and said that after reviewing the case Apple had determined that it was indeed a nickel allergy, and they’d be willing to process a return for the Watch. He also suggested trying an alternative band. I quickly told him I wasn’t interested in returning the watch, because despite the fact it’s slowly trying to kill me, I love it. I asked if under the circumstances I could get a discount or trade-in on another band, he said he’d find out and called back a little later with another woman from the customer support team.

She asked me what band I would be interested in, color, size, and then asked for my shipping address. She initially said she would call back the next day with more information but then about an hour later I got an email from Apple that they were sending me out a new medium black Leather Loop, at a $0 charge.

It arrives today.

For those of you who keep track, I’ve actually had the leather loop before, for about 18 hours. I bought it on an impulse. Twice, actually. The first time I ordered it with the watch before it shipped, but then cancelled it to give the sports band a proper evaluation. The second time, was in the store, but I had buyers remorse at the $150 price tag. (More accurately, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to justify to the wife.)

For now, I’m still sporting bandages under my watch, to clear up the second coming of the rash. My next problem is figuring out what to do about the fact that the leather band isn’t appropriate for working out in.

My other issue is that a week before I learned all this, I backed a Kickstarter for a stainless steel band to match the space grey aluminum watch. It’s made of 316L.

Yesterday my local paper posted an article about a new coffee shop that has opened up near my house.

Arshad said he has instilled his own requirements for quality in the restaurant. Most of the products used are kosher and organic and he uses organic fair-trade coffee.
And with that philosophy, he also balances the need for affordable prices. Arshad says he has accomplished that and maintains some of the lowest prices in the area. A large cup of coffee at Java Jive costs $1.95 while a small costs $1.50.

I’m all for supporting a local business, so this afternoon I decide to go check it out.

I just wanted to get a plain cup of coffee, nothing fancy. I look at the prices and a confirm what the article says a coffee is, $1.95. I ask the girl working there for one. She asks if I want milk in it. Sure.

“OK, that’s a latte” … Rings me up for a $4 drink.

No, I explain, I just want regular coffee.

“But you said you want milk? Did you mean a cappuccino?” and she points to the cappuccino machines in the corner that look just like the ones you see at a gas station turning powder and water into drinkable substance.

“No, plain, black coffee, with milk in it.” … She looks puzzled. Turns around at the board, looks at me, shrugs her shoulders and says …

“So, not a latte?”

I left and went to Starbucks.

(Thanks to @djchrisallen for pointing out how much like Larry David I’ve become.)

This afternoon, this image and rants from angry Kansans hit my Twitter timeline. I didn’t even realize prior to today, that it was even a thing, and when I saw Uber’s announcement my reaction was, immediately … I can’t believe I agree with Governor Brownback!

“As I said when I vetoed this bill, Kansas should be known as a state that welcomes and embraces innovation and the economic growth that comes with it. Over-regulation of businesses discourages investment and harms the open and free marketplace. Uber, and other innovative businesses, should be encouraged to operate, grow and create jobs here in Kansas.”

I don’t disagree. I want innovation, and I especially want it here in Kansas where I’ve lived for 31 years.

However…

I’ve read the law, it’s Kansas SB 117, and it’s just 8 pages. Nothing I’ve seen would prohibit Uber from doing business in Kansas. This isn’t a prohibition of ride sharing services. It doesn’t make unreasonable demands of drivers or the company that prohibit it from doing business. I’m not sure why I’m going to even try to defend the Kansas legislative branch, because I generally think they’re a bunch of Looney Tunes. However, I think Uber is playing social media users and rest of the media into a false narrative.

What if, and I’m just saying, the regulations the Kansas legislators passed were actually in the best interest of consumers… but not Uber? Is that such a bad thing?

Uber, like most companies, doesn’t want any regulation of their business that doesn’t actually benefit them. But every business has to expect some level of government scrutiny, even in an otherwise conservative state like Kansas. “Regulate commerce” is sort of a fundamental reason why we elect people into government.

In this case there were actually some things that would have probably been beneficial to Uber, such as prohibiting municipalities from adding additional prohibition or regulations. But, if their goal is no regulation they’re understandably annoyed with this law and in this case they’ve decided to take their ball and go home.

Full disclosure: I’ve never used Uber services, I’ve never needed to. That said, I don’t have issues with them or the business. I just don’t travel enough where I don’t have my own car or end up renting one for work. I think I’ve hailed a taxi twice in my life.

Here is my (non-lawyer) understanding of what this law does:

• It defines Uber as a “transportation network company” for the purposes of Kansas law and now referred to here as a TNC.
• It explains that TNC drivers are using their personal vehicles for ride sharing.
• It specifically outlines that TNC drivers are not taxi services, private motor carriers, etc. Again this seems like it would be beneficial to Uber to have this codified in state law.
• It would require Uber to register with the state as a TNC and pay an annual fee of $5,000. It would also require Uber to have an “agent” in Kansas.
• It requires TNCs to disclose fare calculation prior to the ride, something Uber already does.
• It requires TNCs to show the license plate and a picture of the driver in the app prior to the ride, something they already do.
• It requires TNCs to provide an electronic receipt for the transaction, something they already do.
• It requires TNC drivers to carry insurance, something they should already be doing. It does not require Uber to insure the drivers, but gives them the option to. It requires a $1m policy be carried by drivers. My understanding is this is the same requirement Uber already has.
• It allows Kansas auto insurance providers to exempt coverage for TNC drivers from their auto insurance policies. I could see this being an issue, where drivers might have to obtain a different “business” policy. But this seems like the cost of doing business for the drivers.
• It requires TNCs to conduct criminal background checks and prohibits drivers from having recent convictions for reckless driving, sexual assault, etc. which seems completely logical. It might be additional overhead, but the cost of this could be passed onto the drivers when they start.
• It requires the TNC to have a zero tolerance policy for drivers who use drugs or alcohol while doing their jobs. This doesn’t seem like rocket science.
• It requires the drivers to only accept prearranged rides via the app, you can’t “hail” an Uber driver from the street. This is pretty much the entire appeal of Uber, and not an issue in my mind.
• It requires the TNC to have a non-discrimination policy with respect to riders, and to make accommodations for handicapped riders. This I found it shocking that Kansas would even care about something like this. I actually applaud them for this.
• It requires the TNC to hold driver records for one year. I don’t know what Uber does in this respect now, but it doesn’t seem cumbersome given the amount of data these companies are holding already.
• It prohibits the TNC from disclosing rider information to third parities without their consent. Again, nice.

In my mind, while all of this does indeed place restrictions on Uber doing business in Kansas, they don’t seem like unreasonable restrictions. Some of them almost conform exactly to Uber’s existing business model. But more importantly, the law actually appears to benefit and protect the consumer when it comes to security, discrimination and privacy.

It would be great to live in the libertarian utopia that many of the technorati want for their services, where innovation and market forces drive consumer protections. In the meantime reasonable government restrictions doesn’t seem like it requires Uber to pull their services completely.

I’m often critical of government attempts to protect intrenched interests, such as Tesla’s constant battle with states who prevent the company from selling cars directly to consumers, because the existing dealer/franchises don’t want that model in the states. I’m also not being critical of Uber as a service, or have any interest in maintaining the status-quo in terms of taxi cabs, etc.

I want Uber in Kansas, but at the same time I don’t think it’s unreasonable to set reasonable minimal expectations for doing business here.

I ran into a situation recently where the need arose to effectively “factory reset” an Generation 5 EMC RecoverPoint Appliance (Gen 5 RPA). In my case, I had one RPA where the local copy of the password database had become corrupted, but the other three systems in the environment were fine. There was nothing physically wrong with the box, I just wanted to revert it back to new and treat it like a replacement unit from EMC, and rejoin it back to the local cluster.

From what I could find, EMC had no documented procedure on how to do this. So after finding a blog entry and EMC Communities post (that individually did not help) here it is:

• Attach a KVM to the failed appliance and reboot.
• Hit F2 to boot into the system BIOS (the password emcbios).
• Under USB settings, Enable Port 60/64 Emulation.
• Save your settings and reboot the appliance.
• This time hit Ctrl + G to enter the RAID BIOS.
• Select the RAID 1 virtual drive and start a Fast Init.
• Reboot the appliance.
• Hit F2 to boot back into the system BIOS.
• Under USB settings, Disable Port 60/64 Emulation.
• Reboot the appliance and verify that no local OS is installed.
• Insert the RecoverPoint install CD (the one you created after you downloaded the ISO from EMC Support and after you’ve burned it) and press enter to start the install.
• The installation does not require any user interaction, your appliance will reboot when its competed into a “like new” status.
• Rejoin the appliance to the cluster using procedures generated from Solve Desktop. (You can ignore instructions about rezoning fibre channel connections, or spoofing WWPNs, since none of this will have changed.)

The key points here are the bits about Port 60/64 Emulation. If you don’t do this, the RAID BIOS will load to a black screen and take you nowhere. Likewise, if you leave it enabled your RecoverPoint OS may not install correctly.

After months of industry speculation, Apple today released pricing for the new Apple Watch. As a registered iFanboy, I’m legally required to purchase one. I wasn’t even sure when they were originally announced last fall if I’d want one, but I’ve come around.

However, I haven’t decided which one to purchase. Because I don’t have $10,000 sitting around, the “Edition” line is out. That leaves the stainless steel (starting at $549) and the aluminum versions ($349/$399) to choose from. Then it comes down to straps.

There are many obvious things to consider…

• Material durability: I work in datacenters, I have small children, I occasionally go outside. Which one is going to hold up better under such abuse?
• Fashion and personal preference: I like things that look nice. But I’m not flashy.
• Face size: I have small wrists, and traditionally wear smaller faced watches. But would I like something bigger?

Then there are the, less obvious…

• What cost am I willing to pay for a smartwatch?
• What cost am I willing to try and convince my wife that she should let me pay for a smartwatch?
• What cost is my wife actually willing to let me pay for a smartwatch?

Humm… decisions, decisions.

As it is, I’m leaning towards the 38mm Stainless Steel w/ Black Sport Band.

I spend a considerable amount of time and effort considering the infrastructure and engine that powers this blog, far more than I’ve ever spent contributing actual content.

Recently I’ve been considering a move from Ghost to GitHub Pages. It’s the hip thing to do these days. Scott Lowe moved his over last month, Jay Cuthrell moved his earlier last year. I’m sure there have been plenty more.

I’ve been playing with it for the last 24 hours or so. I can’t seem to decide if going to all the effort is worth it. I rather like what I’m using now (Ghost), it’s pretty simple, but with just enough features to do what I really need it to do. It seems like spending time moving away from it, for me, is sort of a solution in search of a problem. I already write in Markdown inside Ghost (required) and was doing so on previous platforms for this site including Octopress and Second Crack.

Might just stick with what works, and find more stuff to write about…

Pardon my language, or don’t. Last weekend in my Instapaper Weekly email, was a link to a fantastic article by Mark Manson called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

Take 12 minutes, and give it a read:

Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given… Fucks given everywhere. Strewn about like seeds in mother-fucking spring time. And for what purpose? For what reason? Convenience? Easy comforts? A pat on the fucking back maybe?

This is the problem, my friend.

Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us.

As Mark points out, not giving a fuck doesn’t mean being apathetic, it means only caring about the things that really matter, and then not giving a fuck about what anyone else things in pursuit of that caring.

Ironically, the Instapaper Weekly email that came today included a mention about the language of Mark’s article, and an apology.

The top highlight in last week’s email contained some… colorful language, and we’re sorry if you were offended. The Weekly is an algorithmically generated newsletter based on the most popular articles & highlights saved by Instapaper users, and unfortunately we didn’t build the algorithm to filter profanity in any way.

We’ve added in some filters on our end to ensure that future content remains as interesting as ever, while avoiding any potentially offensive language. Again, we are sincerely sorry if you were offended, we’re still getting the taste of soap out of our mouths!

Perhaps if those people who were offended, spent some time reading the article, they would have realized there are more important things to give a fuck about.

Avoiding potentially offensive language, what the fuck!?

This is the turkey brine receipe I’ve been using, adapted from this one by Traeger. The first time I used it, it was identical to their instructions but I’ve since boiled it down to what I consider the basics.

• 20 cups of water AKA 5 quarts
• 1–1/2 cups of kosher salt
• 2 cups of bourbon
• 2 cups of maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon whole cloves
• 2 tablespoons whole peppercorns
• 6–8 cracked up bay leaves

Mix everything in a big pot. I start with the water and salt on high heat to get it broken down and then add the other stuff. Heat until just shy of a roaring boil. Let it cool off, you can add ice if you want to speed up the process, keep in mind it dilutes the brine.

Submerge and refrigerate for between 12 and 24 hours. (Don’t forget to remove the neck and gibblets from inside the turkey!)

When ready to cook, remove and rinse. Discard the brine since it’s a giant biohazard from having a dead animal float around in it for a day.

Slice up oranges and onions and insert them into the belly of the beast. Salt and pepper the exterior.

I smoke the turkey for 2 hours on the Traeger, and then cook at 350F for about 3 hours. Traeger has you use melted butter over the bird during cooking but I have realatives with milk allergies so that doesn’t happen. Make sure the thickest part of the bird reaches 165F with your meat thermometer. (Don’t rely on the little plastic popper.)

Remove from heat and let it rest for an hour before you do anything with it. When ready, remove the stuffing and discard, then slice and dice. Try not to eat all of it before you serve it to your guests.

Happy turkey day.

My second day transferring my iPhoto library to iCloud Photo Library seems to be going very well. The “optimize storage” feature on the iOS devices is going to save users a ton of space.

Yesterday when I posted my last entry I had a 16GB iPad completely full (which was roughly 7GB of photos.) When I returned, all the photos had been uploaded to iCloud, and returned 5GB of space. No matter what I throw at this (and I have about 19GB of images in iCloud now) the devices sit around 2GB utilized for photo storage.

When photos further back in the catalog that are not currently on the device are accessed, they’re retrieved from the cloud in full resolution.

I’m only about 1/5th the way through my library. I’ve been doing it in chunks as I have time, because during the upload process I tend to fully saturate my 5Mb upstream home connection.

If you’ve not turned on iCloud Photo Library yet, even if you don’t intend to do as I’m doing and dump everything into it, you’re really missing out.

When I saw the new iCloud Photo Sync demo at WWDC, I was in love.

Photo storage and syncing has been a struggle of mine for a while. I’ve bounced between external drives (which makes accessibility when I’m not at home difficult) and using local storage (which wastes expensive MacBook SSD space) … but never been happy. I’ve switched between Lightroom and Aperture for my “professional” images (AKA those taken when my Nikon DSLR) and mostly used iPhoto for my iPhone captured images.

The other issue was 16GB iOS devices fill up quick these days. So to save space, I would regularly sync my devices back to iPhoto and then delete the photos from my phone, but again, this made accessing older photos difficult when on the go.

With the convergence of getting better and better iPhone cameras that rival my 8 year old Nikon D200, and getting tired of paying for Adobe software updates, I eventually merged everything into iPhoto.

Now, with iOS 8.1, the iCloud Photo Sync beta rollout has begun, but only on iOS devices and via the iCloud website. The previously announced Mac app is slated for early 2015. But I want all my stuff in Apple’s cloud now, accessible on every device.

I figured out how:

• Make sure you have iCloud Photo Sync enabled on your iOS devices.
• Open iPhoto, open Finder > AirDrop on your Mac.
• Open Photos on your iOS device.
• Drag and drop photos from iPhoto to your iOS device of choice via AirDrop.
• This triggers automatic sync to iCloud which starts dropping optimized versions all around the place.

I’m currently chugging back through May 1 of this year, which I only stopped there because that filled up my iPad with photos, and I want to see if after it uploads how it smashes the used space back down. I could keep going with my iPhone 6 that has another 40GB free, but this is enough experimentation for now.

I’ll also probably have to increase my 20GB iCloud plan to keep going beyond what’s in there now. Once I’ve got things moved off, I’ll be able to get my local copies moved back to external storage and then at some point once the Mac Photos app is released figure out how I want to deal with my local copies again.

I think my iPad will become central to future workflow for editing. I’ve long owned the camera connection kit, but never used it. Now it’s going to become the primary injection point of new images taken with the DSLR or editing ones taken with iPhone. (Especially now that Pixelator for iPad is here!).

My iPhone 6. 4.7”, silver/white. 64GB. AT&T. This iPhone is the first iPhone I didn’t immediately open the box to feel it was the best one ever. I almost didn’t even order one. The 5 was fine.

I’ve owned it a month now. Originally I felt that I was going to drop it every time I tried to grip it (using my smaller than normal man-hands) — that panic led me to the Apple Store to pickup the black, leather Apple case. The case gave me a safety blanket and the ability to learn to adapt my grip, however, last Thursday I took the case away. It’s been a week since I’ve removed the training wheels.

I love this phone, it feels great. The size is perfect. The rounded corners feel great holding it for long periods of time. I’m also past fussing about the camera bulge. I worried it’d get scratched, now, in Apple(Care) and sapphire crystal, I trust.

I still find myself adjusting my hands a lot more than the 5 or 3G/4 to reach the entire screen, but I’m getting used to it.

iOS 8.1 has massaged the major issues I was having with the software. Battery life has been awesome, far superior to the 5. The ability to use the higher capacity chargers for quick refills is great. Apps are now being updated to take advantage of the increased real estate of the larger screen resolution, but there are still some stragglers. (I’m looking at you OmniFocus.)

Over all, solid purchase.

A few months ago I wrote about the VMware View optimization script breaking Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat through the addition of a registry entry that disabled Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR):

ASLR was a feature added to Windows starting with Vista. It’s present in Linux and Mac OS X as well. For reasons unknown, the VMware scripts disable ASLR.
Internet Explorer will not run with ASLR turned off. After further testing, neither will Adobe Reader. Two programs that are major targets for security exploits, refuse to run with ASLR turned off.
The “problem” with ASLR in a virtual environment is that it makes transparent memory page sharing less efficient. How much less? That’s debatable and dependent on workload. It might gain a handful of extra virtual machines running on a host, and at the expense of a valuable security feature of the operating system.
For some reason, those who created the script at VMware have decided that they consider it best practice for it to be disabled.

At the VMware Partner Technical Advisory Board on EUC last month, I pointed this out to some VMware people and sent a link to the blog entry.

Over the weekend I got a tip from Thomas Brown from over at Varrow:

@vmstan looks like they updated the windows optimization guide for view. I assume they incorporated your changes into the script?

— Thomas Brown (@thombrown) July 19, 2014

Today I had an opportunity to download the updated scripts (available here) and was very pleased to see:

rem *** Removed due to issues with IE10, IE11 and Adobe Acrobat 03Jun2014 rem Disable Address space layout randomization rem reg ADD "HKLMSystemCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management" /v MoveImages /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f

Success!

As always, please review the rest of the contents to make sure the changes that the script makes are approprate for your environment.

Wednesday I had the chance to spend the whole day soaking in knowledge. Always a welcomed event. This time it centered around Cisco Meraki.

As an employee of a Cisco Premier partner (AOS), and a current CCNA, I was able to attend this one day boot camp on Meraki and earn their Certified Meraki Networking Association (CMNA) designation.

Other things you get for attending the class:

• CMNA polo shirt
• MX60 security appliance
• MS220–8P switch
• MR26 wireless access point
• Lunch

Lunch was delivered today. The shirt and kit get shipped to me, and I can’t wait to get my whole home network setup on it and really start playing.

I’ve been trying to determine the best way to link the blog and my Twitter account together. Obviously I tweet links to much of what I post here, but I tweet far more often than I blog. There are usually lots of good nuggets that I find, either links to other blogs, KB articles, or even just retweeting insights.

As an experiment I’m going to start putting together a little digest with some extended comments from me on them. Sometimes they’re the most popular things I’ve shared, sometimes the things I’ve found the most interesting, or sometimes just my failed attempt at being funny. So here we go.

Storage Controllers previously supported for VSAN that are no longer supported http://t.co/XQTXJscMUr

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) July 2, 2014

Take note of the Dell PERC H310. This is in no doubt response to the VSAN Day from Hell that one unlucky user experianced a few weeks ago. The low queue depth on these cards prevent VSAN from performing as it should. It was good of VMware to yank these to prevent further issues, but frustrating that it wasn’t accounted for prior to rollout.

“I try not to be a bad mom” says @SadieStan

“Try try try, and you’ll get better” replies @PDanStan #smartass2yo

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) July 1, 2014

Kids say the darndest things.

This kid got up at 8am asking to go to the Apple Store. Dad makes dreams come true. pic.twitter.com/fs2MjF8nS9

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 29, 2014

I do what I can to raise my children right.

Testing out Zentyal as a new home domain controller. I like what I’ve seen so far.

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 28, 2014

It’s actually worked out really well, so far. I need to get into setting up LDAP and vCenter authentication for it. One less reason to have anything Windows running in the home. I also switched the home firewall from Untangle over to pfSense. This will change again soon once I get my Cisco Meraki firewall, switch and access point for the house. (Doing partner level CMNA training this Wednesday.)

Facebook manipulated for a massive psych experiment http://t.co/x4IPrxqSYR … remember when it just showed you what your friends were up to?

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 28, 2014

This shit still has me pissed off, and logged off of Facebook on most of my devices.

Google encrypting data in transit and at rest to Drive is great and all, but who has the keys? If Google, then what difference does it make?

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 26, 2014

Any encryption is good, but I’m not exactly jumping up and down with excitement about it.

I completely bricked a fabric interconnect during a code upgrade today.

Achievement unlocked.

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 25, 2014

Last but not least, what a mess this upgrade was. I won’t get into details since it involves a customer environment, but it was a stressful couple of days when we discovered Smartnet didn’t get renewed on their UCS environment as expected, after the FI was totally bricked. Our company was able to get it resolved with Cisco and they had a new one in the rack and running less than 24 hours later, still not fun.

I just got finished with a customer issue who had deployed Cisco Jabber along with VMware View, using Persona Management and floating desktops set to refresh at logoff. Much to their annoyance, users would have to reconfigure their Cisco Jabber client with the server connection settings and any client customizations made were lost after logging back in to the desktops.

After looking into this, what it looked like was happening was that the Jabber configuration XML files were not being sync’d down to the local PC before the Jabber client was launching and this was causing the settings to default back to a non-setup state. Even though the configuration data stored in jabberLocalConfig.xml was saved to the Persona Management share it never had a chance to get loaded before it was overwritten.

The issue was resolved by adjusting Persona Management group policies to precache the settings stored on the persona share to the virtual desktop before completing login.

Modify the Persona Management GPO setting “Files and folders to preload” to include the following directory:

AppData\Roaming\CiscoUnified Communications\JabberCSF

Server settings and custom adjustments to the client are now maintained across desktop sessions. WIN!

Yesterday I sat for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional in Desktop Administration exam. While I would love to tell you that I passed, sadly it seems I will be sitting for the exam again soon.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to take the exam at 8AM on a Monday morning, and then not study. Add in staying up late on Sunday night to watch World War Z on Netflix and you’ve got a receipe for a rough morning.

But enough excuses…

I did read the exam blueprint, as with every certfification exam this is the best starting place to find out what will be covered. In order to save myself some time I’m going to plagerize what I wrote a few months ago after taking the VCAP-DCA exam to help explain the format for the test.

For the uninitiated, the test is unlike any other exam in the VMware portfolio, and unlike any other exam I’ve taken for any other certification. It is 100% lab based. You have remote access to a VMware vSphere 5.0 environment, with a vCenter, two hosts, a collection of virtual machines, and pre-provisoned storage.

In other VMware exams, you’re given 60–70 multiple choice questions to regurgitate anwsers to. In the VCAP, you are given 26 different “projects” you have work your way though. I say projects because each of the 26 will vary in length and have multiple component problems to solve. Some may be straight foward, some far less so.

In the case of this exam, the environment has more hosts and a newer version of vSphere. There are also 23 projects instead of 26. The rest of it still stands.

You start with 180 minutes, and half way through I thought I was making great progress, but then I ran out of time. I did feel like I was spinning my wheels a bit with lag back to the enviornment from the testing center, and there was a lack of clear direction about the environment and in some of the questions.

The last time I totaled up the number of View deployments I’ve either deployed soup to nuts, or done significant upgrades and management of since 2009, it was somewhere around a couple dozen. Even with that experiance, there were a couple of things on the exam that I’ve never had to do in my work and then plenty of things I was expecting to have to do that never came up. Overall though, it ran a pretty good swath of knowledge.

I’ve rescheduled for Saturday, August 2 at 10:30AM, not because I wanted to wait this long to retry but because that was the first time they had an opening that fit with my schedule.

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote:

I’m taking a Facebook Vacation.

I’ve logged out from every device, removed the apps, the bookmarks, integration to operating systems.

The duration will be as long as I can swing it. There may be a point at which I can’t take it and come crawling back. I wouldn’t say I’m having withdrawal, but when I woke up this morning and got on my phone, the first thing I would normally do would be to open the app.

It wasn’t there.

It lasted about two or three weeks. I came back. We all come back.

I just spent the last 24 hours going without, and let me tell you… it’s hard.

When you’re 30, you’re basically right smack in the middle of the original Facebook demographic. I’m the same age as Mark Zuckerberg. Making it worse is having kids.

Everyone is on Facebook, especially family. They get quite irritated when I don’t keep them fed with pictures of 2.0 or news on developments of 2.1.

But now we have Facebook though their own admission, that they’ve been doing psychological testing on user emotional status without our knowledge or concent.

In a report published at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Facebook data scientists conducted an experiment to manipulate the emotions of nearly 700,000 users to see if positive or negative emotions are as contagious on social networks as they are in the real world. By tweaking Facebook’s powerful News Feed algorithm, some users (we should probably just call them “lab rats” at this point) were shown fewer posts with positive words.

Others saw fewer posts with negative words. “When positive expressions were reduced,” the paper states, “people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”

My initial reaction was that I’m out, cold. That’s what I did last night. I even hovered over the button on the account deactivation page. But the pictures they throw up of my friends and family, wife included, who will miss me when I’m gone is almost another bit of emotional manupation.

After thinking about it today, I’m just going to be curtailing my browsing to a minimum. No more mobile. Just checking the main site a few times a day. Beyond the manipulation Facebook has been caught doing, Facebook really isn’t all that healthy to begin with.

At some point I’ll cut things off, but not cold turkey.

For now I’ll leave you with a bit of topical humor on the subject.

Facebook just let me know I'm now a member of the "Guard" group. Wonder what this is for? #FailedPsychologyEthics

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 30, 2014

Facebook just told me press a button to apply a lethal electrical shock to one of my friends. #FailedPsychologyEthics

— Michael Stanclift (@vmstan) June 29, 2014