NevDull’s Take On Things

American Chopper’s Michael Teutul - An Unfunny Seth Rogen?

I couldn’t help but think to myself that “Mikey” on American Chopper is an unfunny version of Seth Rogen.

Or is Seth Rogen a funny version of Mikey?

Is it a Canadian thing?

Add comment July 22nd, 2007

The Smell of Bacon — Curse or Blessing?

Since it was cool out, we had the windows open yesterday and last night.

I woke up about 6AM to the smell of bacon wafting up from the vents of the diner 2 floor below.

How pleasant to wake to the smell of bacon… and how horrible to know that I’m not waking up to the smell of bacon being made for me.

1 comment July 2nd, 2007

Throwing things like a crazy man…

Well, throwing exceptions, in Java…

Trying to get into some beginner Java programming with too much of a C-style background makes for nice headaches. I figure that it’s better for me to learn some and be able to commisserate with my colleagues… or at least know when they’re full of it.

After all, as a “systems architect”, some idea of the little picture is good to combine with the big picture I’m responsible for…

Doesn’t make try{} catch{} “rules” any simpler to grok, though.

Add comment June 28th, 2007

What makes you think they’ll get this one right?

Consolidated Edison, the power company in New York City, is planning to deploy a superconducting cable through Manhattan.

The headline for the article? “Attack-proof power line to be installed under NY”

Inside the article?

Superconducting cable must be cooled with liquid nitrogen to -382 degrees Fahrenheit (-230 Celsius). At that point, conductivity resistance falls, allowing the cables to carry the extra power.

Last July, ConEd left parts of Queens without power for over a week from overloading of feeder circuits. (see: wikipedia, Public Service Commission case study) There’s plenty to see about the chaos surrounding even figuring out what happened, and apparently ConEd came quite close to shutting off power for 100,000 more people.

Yeah… so I don’t have confidence in their ability to keep their cable at -382F. And how does something that has to be kept at -382F get labeled attack-proof? And when ConEd screws this one up, will they be sent to Guantanamo?

Add comment May 21st, 2007

Google’s Dark Fiber

It’s been quite a while since I heard anything about Google and their dark fiber ambitions. I just got home from an Akamai user forum, and happened to see a link in IRC to one of Joel Spolsky’s posts. From there, I followed a few links, and eventually ended up here.

That links to an article from November of 2005 in which Cringely talks about Google’s ability, with datacenter-in-a-shipping-container, to be a bit of a Walmart on steroids. That, of course, brought to mind both archive.org’s Petabox and Sun’s Project Blackbox. Actually, the Petabox philosophy (aside from the shipping-container form factor) even seems to jive with Google’s storage philosophy.

This is more than another Akamai or even an Akamai on steroids. This is a dynamically-driven, intelligent, thermonuclear Akamai with a dedicated back-channel and application-specific hardware.

Man, this has to get you thinking. I know that the number of Google’s data centers has gone up dramatically… are they just dumping these shipping containers everywhere and wiring them up? When does it end? Is there a need for it to end? Was Google polite with China because they have 600 of these things ready to deploy inside the Great FireWall? Does Google scale up the Google Apps that compete with Office by dropping one in an office park? Or even crazier, in a parking space leased to them by Wal-Mart?

Add comment May 8th, 2007