Oops. I thought I had a post queued up for Tuesday, and then everything else in the way I didn’t get a chance to look until now.
I’m going to try to get up a post later today for today’s post. This is just to acknowledge that i botched Tuesday’s :/
I wanted to let folks know that I’m working on the DES example (nee demonstration).
I’m currently doing it while I’m on the train every day, usually in the evening now that the fall season is starting up and iTunes is having my shows again 
But it’s slow, and some days I just feel like reading my book.
Anyway, each iteration takes ~3 half-sheets (I’m folding papers over and using half a sheet to write on, just because it gives me a contained space that’s easy to hold on to for writing). It looks like I can do 1.5-2 iterations a day at this point, but I’m only done with the 3rd iteration, so that may be over or under. The first iteration took a day, then I finished the next two in one day give or take, but the XORs are starting to get more complex … Hopefully will be done by the end of the month, then I’ll have to work on typing it all in. I want to get them posted in a row, though, so it’ll be a while before they start posting.
I did change the example some, however, so the old start is no longer relevant.
Apparently people don’t like to take credit for their mistakes. Gee, who knew? And they like it even LESS when you point them out. In front of their bosses. Shocking
Today was a wrapup meeting for a deployment that went horribly wrong in July. Actually, it went badly, then wrong. Then badly again in August before finally working. Today’s meeting was to go over what all went wrong, why it went wrong, and how do avoid it in the future. ”Lessons Learned” kind of meeting.
Some of the issues were “unpredictable.” Like the network switch ignoring the system. Or the network configuration being wonky and requiring a new magic piece that didn’t need to be there before (and had no particularly good explanation for why it is suddenly needed now on multiple various configurations). And there was some confusion with the security group and whether the system was supposed to be checked or not. That part sounded like a failure on the security groups planning and distribution end. To Wit: They have a mailbox for these kinds of requests, that no one on the server group knew about. And even if they had, the policies are kindof vague. Like “You ask for A, and we do it (when we can) and don’t tell you the results”. That was actually the basic policy. They’re looking into it and thinking about maybe, yaknow, telling you the results. Instead of making you guess.
The code on the system, that was all configured and functional. That had been tossed up on various occasions on an internal network for testing and qa. But the networking had to be physically changed over to a whole new set of hardware to make it public rather than private. The errors at that point were numerous. And still not code related.
First error — The server group misconfigured a piece of hardware so it wasn’t coming up properly. They actually took the bullet on that one, saying they made a typo. Except that instead of 1234 it said abcd. ABCD was the configuration from another system. So, yes, technically she might have miskeyed it, it’s more likely she started with that file and just didn’t fix that line. Nitpick, since she took the bullet, but it’s still different. And during the meeting she took the hit after I mentioned that piece. They kindof glossed over that error, blaming it all on other things. Including error 2
Second error — Some of the networking and scripting was messed up, didn’t work properly, wasn’t allowing traffic correctly to the services. Turns out that there were a bunch of lines that they hadn’t understood what they did or how they worked on the old system, so they had just copied some of them over wholesale without changing any of it so that it reflected the new system. Others they declared to have no effect whatsoever and deleted. Turns out that the prior admin had set them up for specific reasons, and even had a script to automatically generate those lines for any new server. But failed to document why or how they worked. So oops The official explanation is “magic script” that fixed “undocumented problems.” I’m still not sure if they documented the lines, their function, or the script. I’m not convinced they know what any of them mean (I don’t, but that’s because I don’t know what they are ; I’m still not convinced they weren’t a red herring tossed up to hide the first error, and after they got called on #1 they couldn’t retract #2)
Error the Third — Because of the way they have things set up (badly and undocumented), it turns out they needed to move a SECOND configuration to the new server. Because it turns out that the services had two interfaces. And both were actually necessary! go figure, who’d've thunk? After the second “badly” they found this, more by accident than design. Actually, they were wondering what A meant in the config, looked it up, and it came back with C. Which didn’t match with the part where a different check (from a different server) came back with B. When they should have matched. When I asked about it, I was told offhand “Oh yeah, A has two answers, B and C, depending on where you ask from” Really? Did we need to tell the new machine about C, then? We told it about B, does it need C? “Yeah. Hey, do you think that could be the problem? It’s supposed to be listening for B or C”
And someone actually suggested that that COULDN’T be the problem. Because it worked on the old machine. DUH. … the old machine which knew both B and C? That one? That still knows C? Yeah … Turns out that it WAS important. But at today’s meeting? They kept saying the only problem was a networking issue from outside their control that makes no sense. Until I asked about the config B/C thing. And then gave more details. Then a few more. And finally just told them exactly what had happened, how it had happened, and how it had gotten fixed. ”YOU forgot to move the config for C.” The manager of the server group finally said that they vaguely recalled something from what I was saying, I <em>might</em> be right. I think that was basically a signal to the other guy to drop it because I wasn’t letting them deny it.
Part IV — THEN there was another problem, with services going out from the new server. Turns out we forgot to tell group X that we were changing the server host. So they didn’t update their configs to reflect our new source. They also had some unrelated problems that affected myriad hosts. So that was glossed over at the meeting and denied. Until I pointed out that part of the problem had required them to update their configs to reflect our new server. At which point, yes, that’s true, but … but what? That means that there was <strong>A</strong> problem related to our server move! Thus it should be part of Lessons Learned!
Oi. I didn’t make any new friends, I’m sure. Probably negatively impacted some of the folks I AM friends with in that group. But jesus, take your own hits.
Speaking of. Last week I got a project finalized and it went live on a new server. And I neglected to note that the old server was accessed via secure tunnels. So I didn’t check the new server that way. Code all worked, so I approved it. And then the next morning had to scramble to find out what everyone’s problem was.
During this scramble, I was getting IMs from the server group asking if I’d checked it. ”Yes” Did you check it via secure? “Uh, no, I didn’t realize it needed it” So you didn’t do your testing via the mechanism used to properly access the service?
This set off alarm bells. We’re setting me up for the fall here. It’s not THEIR fault, it’s all MY fault. Which, yeah, I effed up and didn’t check it properly. But I went and checked my dev environment, because I didn’t remember secure being set up there either. But it turned out it was. Great, lemme look … and … yeah, everything works FINE still. So, yaknow what? Not really my code being broken here folks.
So I sent a message to all involved, apologized for dropping the ball on the testing, announced that it all worked with the proper mechanisms on dev, so as soon as the server group identified the problem with why secure tunnel wasn’t set up or configured, we’d be good.
Server group never responded AFAICT. In a different conversation I was brushed off with “well, you didn’t tell us you needed it so we didn’t bother configuring it properly”. And I’ll grant that it’s possible that I told them that I didn’t need it and it wasn’t on dev anyway. but since I also told them to make production look like dev, one would have thought that it being on dev would have given them pause. But yeah, that one was me
I was working on my other blog a little while ago.
First off, Kiir noticed the avatars on someone else’s blog and realized that ours supports them by default. so she wanted an avatar. She went and set up her account, getting it all set up nicely with a nice pic, rebuilding it a few times as she figured out the (apparently undocumented) size she could use. Apparently it can take an 80×80 (gravatar this is) and it auto-resizes whenever someone requests a different size. More to the point, it takes the smaller image, resizes it UP to 80×80, and then can resize down. So her 50×50 didn’t turn out so well. Actually, I think 80×80 is what I told her from something I read after she did 50×50. I think she said it was noticeably larger still. So yeah.
Then she went to look at the blog. and her avatar wasn’t showing. So she was fiddling with her gravatar account and her commenters account. And there I am trying to get it working for her. I’m looking at the IMG SRC (which, it turns out, auto-rebuilds to the ACTUAL src, which was the fallback default, rather than the full URL, so that confused me for a bit). Then I’m digging through the code for the template, maybe guy broke it somewhere (yeah, because, you know, I’m the first person to ever try using gravatars on that theme). digging, looking, debugging, wtfing. Find the full URL. Falls back to the default. Try it piecemeal, and it worked all the way to the end. Seriously, it took me 10 minutes and I eventually fell back to using vi and diff to fin the difference between the working URL that I put together and the broken one that it was using.
Near as I can tell? One of them had ;r=G and the other had &r=G. There was also a difference in image sizes, technically. I don’t know which of them was the broken part. I’m guessing the & vs ;. But it works for the other persons avatar, so thats obviously not it either.
So then I’m looking at the admin options, because maybe this is some kind of cached response thing … or something. I finally turned off the default avatar, figuring maybe that’d flush whatever it was. And suddenly it worked! So I turned it back on, and it didn’t work anymore.
So, now, my other blog doesn’t have a default avatar. Not sure about this one yet. It doesn’t have any comments, so I’m not real concerned.
Imagine if you will. A room with 4 people for a meeting. Two of them are coders. Developers. It’s a design meeting. Lets call them A and N. The other two people we’ll call D and C. Because that way the letters are nice and random 
The meeting is talking about the design and design decisions behind a new content framework for a series of sites. Rather than investing in a CMS that might do most of what they want badly, the customer has asked for a custom built deal to perform the functions they need well. (OK, that’s a bit of a stretch. Group S convinced the customer that this was the best way to do it, but the customer isn’t necessarily convinced they need anything more than their current “bob edits the HTML files for us” system). A has just been invited to the meeting, apparently related meetings have been going on for months.
N, the other developer, has a system he worked on previously that he feels can be easily retooled to provide CMS functionality without having to start from scratch. Reusability of code, cool. Reusability of code from another client while working for a different company, questionable. Reusability of an inventory tracker as a CMS framework … uh … When you have to start wedging site design ideas around the existing code so you don’t have to rewrite it …
D is a manager. His major contribution to the meeting was fairly benign. Basically, anytime N asked a question about how this or that should work, D deferred to C or sent the question back to N. He also nailed the manager ability to agree with everyone in the room, even when they disagree with each other.
C is an idea man. He generates ideas, mockups, etc. He doesn’t work on the code, directly. During the meeting he shoots down multiple design choices due to the customers being, effectively, retarded imbeciles.
So, during this multi-hour meeting, you have A making repeated comments and suggestions based on a total lack of background. N making choices and declarations based on how the sites can best be modeled as inventory. And C firing down ideas due to customer incompetence. N and C both keep making suggestions based on, effectively, retaining the current system and model. Which is Bob edits html files by hand on the server. D’s major contribution is repeated use of statements like “outside the system”, and then wanting these tasks that exist outside the system to be triggered or to effect a change in the system. Without them being connected. Every user role that comes up is “Well, that would be Bob”, the only example in every mockup is a section that, within the first 20 minutes, is written off as not-exemplary of the rest of the system.
In the end, it’s a poorly implemented system based on a defective design, intended to minimally meet abysmal requirements for a product that the customer isn’t even sure they want. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
One of the things I’m having to deal with at work lately is Python. It’s used around the UltraSeek (nee Inktomi) search engine in use that predates me (and boy is THAT a nuisance)
And a few things I’ve learned about python so far:
- If I wanted to use a position-sensitive language, I’d go back to programming in FORTRAN. whitespace should be used for making things pretty and legible, not for replacing “ugly” braces
- Bacchus-Nauer Form language definitions are NOT good user documentation
- The guy who wrote the local mods for this code was an idiot!
On the first point: Seriously? Whitespace structured code? Jesus, Guido, (no, that’s not a slur, that’s the man’s name who designed python), did someone put out a hit on { and } ??? I’m scared to replace tabs with spaces, because, honestly? I don’t know what effect that would have. I think 1 space would===1 tab, but wtf knows. Because back in FORTRAN we used spaces b/c those first couple columns had meaning. I’m not versed enough in python to know all the ins and outs, but I think it’s just “whitespace”.
Point the second, BNF. Don’t get me wrong, I can read BNF. I actually LIKE BNF definitions. They’re great for the details and nuances of “what can I put here” once you’ve got the basic setups. But for interpreting “what does this line do”? BNF SUCKS. Because now you have to know the answer to know where to look for the answer.
For instance. How do I print out the contents of a variable who’s type I don’t know? Only way to print anything that I’ve found is “write(variable)” (no EOL markers, b/c the newline character is whitespace and thus meaningful, ooooh). I’m sure if I knew python I’d know how to write the equivalent of PHP’s print_r() or var_dump(). But because I don’t, the official docs that I found on python.org don’t help any. Oh, and join(“,”, $array)? join(“, “, @arr)? yeah, reading the docs, it’s supposed to be “, “.join(arr) … uh, W T F? I have to make an string variable, assign it the conjunction, then use it to invoke join? who joins on the conjunction? arr.join(“, “) would be SOOOO much more logical I’m sorry. And I still haven’t figured out how the code is doing when it calls “string.join(arr, “, “)” … because string doesn’t have a join that takes two parameters.
I’ll grant this: Coming from Perl (language of line noise) to looking at python (language of whitespace) is kindof a long jump. They’re kindof conflicting paradigms, honestly. But still. I hate python.
Argh. Grr. Seriously, I WILL get back to this page eventually. I’m still thinking that maybe DES wasn’t the best first choice, though :/
I had intended to get the next post in the DES Demonstrated series prepped and posted to show on Thursday, but had a few too many loose ends to wrap up at work before our vacation.
After the next post, I’ve got “repeat 16 times”, so those posts will probably go up one a day, which will still take 2-3 weeks since they are some LONG steps.
Starting from K(0):
57 49 41 33 25 17 9
1 58 50 42 34 26 18
10 2 59 51 43 35 27
19 11 3 60 52 44 36
Using our translation table for C
57 49 41 33 25 17 9
1 58 50 42 34 26 18
10 2 59 51 43 35 27
19 11 3 60 52 44 36
We are left with C(0)
0 1 1 1 1 0 1
1 1 0 1 1 0 1
0 1 0 1 1 1 1
1 0 1 1 1 1 1
Translation D
63 55 47 39 31 23 15
7 62 54 46 38 30 22
14 6 61 53 45 37 29
21 13 5 28 20 12 4
1 0 0 0 1 1 1
0 1 1 0 0 1 1
0 0 1 0 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 1 1 1
Rotating C(0) to the left by 1 gives us C(1):
1 1 1 1 0 1 1
1 0 1 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 1 1 1 1 0
This simply moves the first bit to the end of the sequence. If the 4 lines are thought of as a single line, you take the first number and put it at the end, then break down into four lines again.
D(1), thusly, becomes
0 0 0 1 1 1 0
1 1 0 0 1 1 0
0 1 0 0 0 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 1 1
CD(1) is the merging of C(1) and D(1) (the 4 lines from C(1) followed by 4 more lines of D(1))
R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
8 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
15 0 1 0 0 0 1 1
22 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
29 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
36 1 0 1 1 0 1 0
43 1 0 1 1 1 1 1
50 0 1 1 1 1 1 0
Using the K conversion table
14 17 11 24 1 5
3 28 15 6 21 10
23 19 12 4 26 8
16 7 27 20 13 2
41 52 31 37 47 55
30 40 51 45 33 48
44 49 39 56 34 53
46 42 50 36 29 32
We take the nth field from our CD(1) to define K(1)
0 0 0 0 0 1
0 1 0 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 1 1
1 0 1 1 1 0
1 1 1 0 1 1
1 0 1 1 0 1
0 1 1 0 1 1
1 0 0 1 1 1
With our initial Block
R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
9 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
17 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
25 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
33 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
41 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
49 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
57 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
Using the L(0) translation table
58 50 42 34 26 18 10 2
60 52 44 36 28 20 12 4
62 54 46 38 30 22 14 6
64 56 48 40 32 24 16 8
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1
0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
The R translation Table:
57 49 41 33 25 17 9 1
59 51 43 35 27 19 11 3
61 53 45 37 29 21 13 5
63 55 47 39 31 23 15 7
The resulting R(0) is such:
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0