Lunatic Platitudes

From Backyard Theater

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Yay!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/05/hands-on-with-the-kindle-reader-for-android.ars

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I’ve been pretty down lately. To be honest I sort of expected it to turn out bad and have been pleasantly surprised to find positivity instead. Benjamin Franklin said that if you expect the worst then you won’t be disappointed. Or maybe it was, ouch! That lightning hurts! One of those things. They both apply here I think.

Basically I’ve been with my current company since 1913 or so it seems. Now that a big monolithic company has bought us, everyone has lost their minds. Would it surprise any of you to know that while I have grown technically in my current job, I have been physically and mentally worn thin by the politics and swarms of low self esteems in our building? Ok. I haven’t exactly been worn thin. That’s not a word anyone would use while describing me.

The point I am trying to make here is that I am a survivor. It’s not that I am special or somehow destined to do great things and therefore deserving of being spared the loss of my job. I just survived. That’s it. I feel pretty good about it. It doesn’t make me better than anyone else, if anything it just shows that I have remaining oportunity where I had been nurturing a growing dispair. Either that or it proves that even expendable bomb sniffing dogs survive once in a while.

I think mostly the people who read my blog are friends. If you and I don’t talk personally on occaision you are the rare exception. So I feel comfortable closing by just saying that I am taking a breather, being thankful for what I have in my life and taking in the air as I need it.

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If you are deploying VOIP using POE in your enterprise, you need to stop now and dedicate a significant amount of time to planning power. In our case we have Cisco 4506 switches in our wiring closet, all equipped identically as they were purchased all at once as part of our future proofing in anticipation of VOIP. Now VOIP is a reality and I have learned a couple of lessons that I am wanting to both pass along and remember myself. This article contains details specific to the 4506 platform but the concepts are universal.

What is your input power source?

The first thing you need to evaluate is how your switches are powered. My suggestion? Go ahead and order power strips with built in amp gauges. Trip Lite has some really nice units. If you are running 110V circuits they have a sub $200 horizontal rack mount unit part number PD6974 that I recommend. Install these in each of your wiring closets and document the power circuit numbers and what power supply in each switch each circuit is connected to. This will come in handy later on if you have to coordinate changes with your facilities operations. Hopefully you will have a consistent configuration that is not only well documented but that can be easily scaled.

How many phones per switch can I support given my current configuration?

This might seem obvious but it is amazing to me how counterintuitive it seemed to be at first. We always talk about the larger project and how many phones we’re going to deploy, but you need to break it down to a per switch/per configuration aspect. Concentrating on power, I know that I have 1 or 2 switches per floor and that they are all identical in configuration. Cisco provides a very good tool for calculating power requirements called the Cisco Power Calculator. Use this tool to input your exact hardware and input the number of each different type of phone you plan to deploy. We pretty much standardized on the 7945G or 7965G depending on the individual user. This made it very easy to plug in the numbers to calculate what I could do. In my case, I configured a 4506 with a 4013+ sup, 5 blades of 4548G RJ45V and two 4200W power supplies with 100-120V input power. What I found by trial and error is that I could run up to 120 phones on a single power supply with dual 100-120V power inputs.

How does the catalyst budget power and what is my redundancy model?

Don’t gloss over this part. There are two power redundancy modes, 4 power inputs, 2 power supplies and a lot of options to utilize all those resources. Cisco tells you in documentation that you should run in power mode “redundant” and not “combined” because you can overload the switch and lose redundancy should a power circuit fail. In reality, I have found that not only can input power fail, individual power supplies can fail in such a way as to experience reduced output levels. What I said at the end of the last section was that I found that I could deploy 120 Cisco 7945/65G phones on a single 4506 chassis as long as I always had at least 2 110V input power connections. Now, I can connect those two power inputs into a single power supply and run all day long within my power budget, but I have no hardware redundancy. In this way my power mode would be “redundant” or “combined” because it doesn’t matter with only a single power supply. I have another option in that I could spread those two 110 volt circuits across a pair of power supplies, but now if I lose a power supply, I lose half my power and I can no longer run 120 phones. Plus, with two power supplies each wiht a single 110V power input source, I have to run “combined” mode to take advantage of both inputs together.

The 4506 will manage power based on a budget taken from the lowest common denominator. In other words, let’s say you have three 110V inputs connected to two power supplies. Meaning one power supply has a single input. If your power mode is redundant, the switch will budget power based on a single 110V circuit even though three are connected. If you run that same hardware configuration with “power redundancy-mode combined” you will suck from all three indiscriminately and you will be able to support more than 120 phones. Cisco implies this is a dangerous situation and they are correct in saying that. The fact is, this is not redundant once the 121st phone is connected. When you reach the 121st phone on a 4506 switch with 110V inputs and 4200W power supplies there is NO REDUNDANCY POSSIBLE in power. The simple fact is that even with 4 110V inputs and combined mode, you will not be able to sustain a failure in a power supply. What to do? PLAN!

The most important thing you can do in a project as big as a VOIP deployment is to plan every detail up front. Document how many phones your current infrastructure can support in a given area of your company. It’s that simple. If you are in a similar situation to me, and need to support more than 120 phones in a space that has a single 4506, you have to document the risks to management and options to mitigate that risk. In my case, I documented that power could be upgraded from 110V to 208V dryer circuits, or a second or third switch could be added to the floor in order to spread the POE ports between a second chassis, bringing my total supported phones up to 240.

My Recommendations

I realize this is yet another rambling post, but I’ve gone through a good bit of frustration with POE and VOIP lately on my 4506’s. My ultimate recommendation is two fold. First, document everything you have exactly and maintain that document. When negotiating expensive power renovations you must be completely well informed. Second, specific configurations must be made with the actual user experience in mind.

Let me explain. If you have a mandate that only 120 phones can exist on a 4506 because of 4200W power supplies and 110V inputs (dual) you are implying that you can sustain TWO input failures or a SINGLE power supply failure, but nothing else. If you follow Cisco’s recommendation to run “power redundancy-mode redundant” you cannot sustain ANY other failure condition. I have seen TWICE now where a power supply will be running and providing power to the switch in a degraded mode and go unnoticed. As soon as an engineer goes to move a power cable or perform some other maintenance, they impact users and I have to explain. My recommendation is that you MONITOR your power situation and phone counts and run “power redundancy-mode combined” and ensure that even if you have to do maintenance on a degraded platform that your users don’t get impacted by you. I am sure you are important but if your users have to suffer everytime you have to actually work I guarantee folks are going to start questioning why you exist.

Conclusion

VOIP is a big project.

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I have been in that mood lately. It’s hard to stop the snowball effect when you start letting your eye wander over car lots and allow that thought to enter into your head that buying a new or used vehicle might not be so bad. I am completely and firmly rooted in the idea that I do not actually need a new car any more, but I still love to shop for them. In my last post, I was pretty hard on car salesmen, drawing generalizations off a few that are in reality very poor stewards of their collective profession. I should revise what I said and temper it by saying that I am developing something of a sympathy towards these people.

I read an article by edmunds.com entitled something similar to “Confessions of a Salesman”. This article was developed by an undercover reporter the editors of edmunds.com sent out to get jobs at a couple of different types of dealerships. It’s sad and disturbing on a couple different levels that the dealerships are really forced to beg, lie, steal and cheat their way to a profit and even the honest salespeople are caught in the middle of what I can only describe as an uncomfortable situation. In the end, it’s the consumer that owns the responsibility to protect their money and to get the best deal. Dealers essentially lay out a big web designed to catch whatever prey is willing to get stuck in it. The gist of the article to me was that you should deal with the Internet manager who generally operates on a volume commission as opposed to a per deal commission. You should set up financing before you go shopping. You should research prices using carsdirect.com, edmunds.com, consumerreports.com, kbb.com and wherever else you can find that kind of information. All of these things will help to keep you out of the web by keeping you from having to negotiate.

This is a short one. The boy wants me to do something.

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I apologize if you sell cars for a living, but chances are great that no matter where you sell cars, you suck. I realize just as much that you must push and prod and poke and cajole and ask creepy questions along the way, but please. There has to be boundaries. I wanted to share a couple of my recent experiences that should illustrate the point quite nicely.

I am a large person. I’m wide, heavy and not too flexible. This steers me to certain types and sizes of automobiles. There is a counterpoint in that my commute consumes 150 miles per day and up to 3 hours of my time. These points steer me towards other types and sizes of cars. The mileage to efficiency, the time to luxury. My current commuter car is a very basic one, a 2002 Honda Civic EX coupe. I bought it when gas was headed towards $4/gallon and I have not been that happy with it except at the pump. I sometimes feel I have to grease the door frame to slip into it and wear it like a mechanical sport coat on the way to work, but I digress. For most people, my current car would be a superb commuter car. It is even for me, and I will probably keep it, especially after the characters I have met the last few days.

My car search pretty much started out with a suggestion from my father to look into the Chevrolet Impala. This is a big family car that boasts up to 29-30 MPG on the highway which is very respectable for long commutes. It just so happens I was involved in a minor fender bender with my Civic and so I chose the Impala for my rental vehicle for the few days my car was in the shop. The car was powerful and roomy and my family loved it, but I didn’t like it so much. First, the head rest was permanently angled too far forward making it difficult to hold my head up straight. It gave me headaches. Plus the location of the cruise control buttons is right where my thumb likes to rest while cruising, causing me to constantly adjust or cancel cruise control settings unwittingly. Then there is the reality of fuel economy. The Impala, like many other cars on the market today, is capable of high 20’s, but with normal weather, terrain and traffic conditions, it’s not likely you’ll see what’s on the sticker. My Civic gets 32 MPG no matter what. The Impala ranged from 24 to 27MPG, but no better, even if I was very old man like in my driving. It was still in the running though. With a good seat package it could make up for the MPG by being so comfortable. Let me tell you about test driving a new one!

I decided to stop off at a Chevrolet dealer on my way home from work one night. It was kind of late, about 8:30pm, but they were there ’till 9. I took a test drive with a sleazy salesman. I say he was sleazy because he started telling dirty jokes during the test drive. I thought I was going to have to defend myself. It was that creepy. I did my best to be polite which he took as being acceptance of the behavior, so I was rude and told him I was married and had a family. I thought that might make him stop, but he just proceeded to tell me what a horrible person his ex-wife is. I figure she felt about like I did although I couldn’t imaging associating with the guy beyond the test drive. So I decided to try Carmax, right down the road (in Kennessaw, GA) the next night.

Carmax is cool if for no other reason than they have almost everything on the market at any given time. I do believe you have to be careful with their “no haggle” pricing because sometimes the pricing is WAY TOO HIGH!!! Every Marquee is there from Range Rover to Honda and I wanted to check out those Dodge Chargers. I met a super nice sales guy after making a couple laps around their expansive parking lot. He was happy to show me what he had which was not much in the way of Chargers. These cars have low slung roof lines and if you don’t get the power seats you can’t lower your head out of the headliner if you are over 5′ 2″ tall. Who knew. Now this guy was alright all the way around. He did an online search and found a 2009 Charger he could transfer in for me to see in a couple days. I asked him to do that on condition that I was in no way obligated to make a purchase. A few days later he called letting me know it was in and I agreed to come by the next night to see it. He wasn’t there and no one was available to unlock the car or take me on a test drive in it. Oh well. It appeared to be pretty nice on the outside which is a good indication for a Chrysler vehicle. Their paint is typically pretty bad after a year or two on the road, but I couldn’t look at the car very well so it’s out. Mileage is pretty bad on those even though that one had the smaller V6 and had power everything… and was under $17k with 36k miles. One thing I hate about the ‘09 Chrysler products… they came new with a LIFETIME warranty to the initial owner. When they were sold or traded in, they revert to 3/36. No fair! There are not many new ones left, and the new prices are way too high. Anyway, my despair was rising pretty high at this point, but there is more to the story, yet.

So I’ve had a creep and a no show for salesmen, but both were at what I guess you’d call lower tier dealers. Carmax and Chevy are both respectable, but they are not BMW, right? My dad sent me a Carmax listing for an AWD 525 BMW which I dismissed at first. It was around $25k which is about $10k more than I was wanting to spend outside of my trade-in allowance. But after a while it started to sink in. I’m not new to BMW but I had written them off as being outside reasonable for myself, but I was drawn to them again. MY first BMW was a 1984 528E and it was the coolest car I have ever been in. It was fun to drive and, like my Civic, got 30MPG no matter how I drove it. We later got a 1995 325I and it was about the same as the old 5 series except it was smaller. They hug the road, are powerful, relatively reliable and are freaky nice. So I decided to go to Global Imports BMW around the corner from work. They are snooty and all that but their cars are at least nice (usually). I told the sales person, a gentleman named “Bob”, that I was looking for something older. They had a 2003 525I listed with about 80k miles on it for about $12k and I wanted to see it. He acted as though he didn’t know what I was talking about and offered to let me look at a cherry “sub $10k” LS400 Lexus. I told him I would be worried about fuel economy and was looking to stay closer to 30MPG. Although that Lexus was nothing but nice. An older couple had traded it in recently. It was a 1996 model with just over 100k miles on it. Sweet. Looked brand new. But I’ll pass anyway, thanks. The next thing I know I am looking at a Certified Pre-Owned 2006 525I. We took it around the block and I completely fell in love with it. I mean completely. It was $25k and was all ME! I still want it. I’ve had a couple dreams about it. Under BMW warranty until 100k miles and it had about 48k on the clock. Perfect! It was about the same as the Carmax car, but was certified and was rated higher for reliability than the AWD version. But when I told Bob I needed to bring my wife in to look too and be a part of the decision, he invited me to sit at his desk. He started filling out a credit application! I told him that I didn’t mean to offend him, but that I was not prepared to do anything that night and repeated that I needed my wife to be there. He started pressuring me saying that was the only 2006 he had and that it would likely sell pretty quickly. He refused to give me a final price on the car as if he expected me to pay whatever they stuck on the windshield. Oh well. So much for that one.

Three turds and no new car. But now I have resolve in another direction entirely. My Civic was repaired and now it looks brand new. I cleaned it up. On top of that, last summer the A/C died in it. Well, the compressor started smoking on the way in to work the other day, so I put it in the shop and dropped the grand on it to get that fixed too. Now it’s comfortable again, cleaned up and respectable… I want to just keep it.

I’d have thought a salesman at a BMW dealer would have operated on a higher plane than the other guys, but this is just not so. I am not white trash so it’s not my projection to them, they just are all pushy little instigators.

Now here’s some funny. I use Google voice. If you give someone that number, and they start calling you at all hours like the pushiest of them all… Chris at Jim Ellis Volkswagen… you can block them. Now if he calls me again, he’ll get the recording as if I had not paid my phone bill. LOL. He told me the day I test drove a TDI Jetta that if I purchased a car THAT NIGHT he could give me a special rate on it and promised me FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS on my trade, sight unseen. Yeah right. The next day he started calling, promising me the same exact deal. Stick it is what I say. The TDI Jetta looks good but cost of ownership, even with the pseudo maintenance thrown in the first three years, is still too high.

So anyway.

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There is a new on screen keyboard coming to the Android platform that is pretty neat. I downloaded it and installed it following the information at this blog.

I went to the main settings off the home screen, selected keyboard settings and chose the Swype keyboard. Then I went through the tutorial available in it’s settings menu. It’s a different way of typing, and it seems to work really very well. It’s vocabulary is acceptable for pedestrian conversations you must have while away from your full sized keyboard. I believe I shall leave the application installed indefinitely and look forward to becoming more and more Swype proficient.

I think they have a version for the iPhone as well. But who would want an iPhone anymore?

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We took Amrin to see the WWE show in Chattanooga. It was fun.

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Gonna try not to be wordy.

Pros = Fast browser, many apps, great UI, not Windows dependent, Not Windows, GPS, voice turn-by-turn, great video, great wifi

Cons = hard to use still camera, battery management through application process killing, reserving judgment on the battery but it looks like a charge every night and maybe in the day sometimes kind of phone.

Compared to Windows Mobile <=6.1? A joke to even try to compare them. I’ve owned a lot of Windows Mobile devices since 5.0 and they all suffer from the same problems. They are not in the same class as the Droid OR the iPhone and offer no real benefits over either. Mobile word and excel is a joke at best and that’s pretty much the end of what you get “over” the iPhone or Droid.

Compared to iPhone? No iTunes = GREAT! I’ve never owned an iPhone but just having played around with them in the past, I think it is at least on the level and possibly better considering the open architecture. No AT&T but I have the Motorola Droid which I guess is Verizon only so you could say the same thing about the Droid from the other side. When will carriers stop hog tying us to them? I’d have bought Verizon anyway because I need their network to work at the house.

I got a discount on the phone and accessories with my company association. Cost wise it was cheaper than a new iPhone with comparable storage. Plus I upgraded both our phones so the wife has a Droid too. She’s medium techy and likes it and that says a good bit.

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Here is a quote from a below linked story. It’s encouraging to me that maybe there are limits to the reaming society is getting from copyright vultures in the music and movie industries.

“In tort law, as the Court recognized, Op. at 29, a landowner is subject to liability for physical harm to trespassing children caused by an artificial condition upon the land where there is a substantial risk of serious bodily harm and the landowner fails to exercise reasonable care to eliminate the danger. An unfenced in-ground swimming pool is the classic example. In this case, the plaintiffs facilitated and enhanced the comparative availability and attractiveness of their songs on the peer-to-peer networks. They failed to fence off the songs they published on CD by encrypting them, and they refused to provide an unencrypted online alternative for obtaining them. In consequence Tenenbaum, along with millions of others like him, fell into the vast, unfenced pool of unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing.”

And the link: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/tenenbaums-p2p-use-the-labels-made-me-do-it.ars

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