Analog vs. Digital thinking, a cooking example

July 2, 2010 Dave Ohara

Society as a whole has embraced digital as better than analog. Audio and video have been marketed that digital is better. Digital is concerned modern and more powerful. But your eyes and ears are analog devices. Your taste and smell are analog.

When I was in Tuscany I noticed the digital thinking when in the cooking class at www.tuscanwomencook.com when the other people attending would ask questions what temperature and how long to cook a dish. And, a focus on the recipe. As the class went on people would discuss what recipe they were going to try when got home. When they asked me what recipe I was going to try. Being honest, I said I don't know. Huh? How can you attend a cooking class and not be thinking about the recipe? Because I was decomposing the cook's techniques looking for what I could use. How people approach cooking was more interesting to me than the recipes. The complexity of cooking can be simplified when you see how someone makes cooking easier and more effective.

Then it hit me. When I wrote about the Apple iPhone 4 Antenna problem. Most people have lost the art of thinking in analog.

Here is an example of an awesome restaurant I ate at in Florence, Trattoria Sostanza

Trattoria Sostanza Troia S.A.S. - TrattoriaVia della Porcellana, 25, 50123 Firenze, Italia055 212691‎ 77 reviews

"IME, having Italian beef cooked beyond medium rare is not worth the price" - fodors.com ... "Don't skip dessert" -tripadvisor.com ... "The service was wonderful and the food was fantastic" - tripadvisor.com ... "the wine list is also excellent value" - tripadvisor.com ... "The food is out of this world" - tripadvisor.com ... "A true Italian experience!" - tripadvisor.com

Frommer's says.

Sostanza is popularly called "Il Troia" (The Trough) because people have been lining up at the long communal tables since 1869 to enjoy huge amounts of some of the best traditional food in the city. The primi are very simple: pasta in sauce, tortellini in brodo (meat-stuffed pasta in chicken broth), and zuppa alla paesana (peasant soup ribollita). The secondi don't steer far from Florentine traditions either, with trippa alla fiorentina or their mighty specialty petti di pollo al burro (thick chicken breasts fried in butter). It's an extremely unassuming place, so laid-back you may not realize you're meant to be ordering when the waiter wanders over to chat. They also frown on anybody trying to cheat his or her own taste buds out of a full Tuscan meal.
Read more: http://www.frommers.com/destinations/florence/D34473.html#ixzz0scmTsDEq

So, here is a top restaurant cooking some of the best food in Florence. And their main cooking appliance is?

A wood fired grilling area.

In this small kitchen

Now if the chefs told you the temperatures they cooked at and how long, do you think any of that translates to what you should do when you go home?

Here is a close up of their top two dishes being cooked bistecca fiorentina and pollo al burro

Good cooks use their senses - smell, sight, sound, touch, temperature, and taste to cook. It's not digital. Cooking has turned into a digital experience for most, but good cooking is analog.

This is the same point made for Christian Belady, Mike Manos, and Chris Malone when they discuss metrics like PUE. PUE is a number, but not the end. For those who get the analog experience of running their data centers they know when things are right.

Do you think of your power and cooling systems as analog?

Your people are analog devices too. But how many of them are treated as digital components? You can replace any individual without changing the system.

Digital thinking is easier, but it is not right and it doesn't taste good.

Note: correction to Frommer's statement Il Troia in Italian is The Whore not the The Trough.

Google's action to limit speed trap avoidance used in France declaring Google a monopoly

July 2, 2010 Dave Ohara

NYTimes posts on France's declaration of Google a monopoly.

Google Ruled a Monopoly in France
July 2, 2010, 3:53 AM

From Floyd Norris in his latest High and Low Finance column:

It is fun to run a monopoly. But in the long run, it can be a lot less enjoyable to own one.

Why?

Companies change as they grow larger and more profitable. Bureaucracy and success slow innovation. Will this new product hurt an old one? If so, should we delay, or price it very high? Old monopolists find themselves outrun by newer companies with no stake in the old ways.

What did Google do?

In a preliminary ruling, the Authorité de la Concurrence said that Google's Adwords system, which prompts ads to appear alongside search results, lacked transparency and "resulted in discriminatory treatment."

The ruling followed a complaint by Navx, a French company that provides data on the location of road traffic speed cameras and petrol prices, as well as other services and content for GPS devices. Navx said its ads were removed without warning from AdWords in 2009, and accused Google of anti-competitive practices.

Google said the reason for the disappearance of the Navx ads was a change of policy in 2008, when it decided no longer to promote services helping people to avoid speed cameras and fines.

The issue being debated is whether Google has the rights to limit a French companies business model.

"The competition authority is saying that Google has a dominant position," said Ron Soffer, Navx's lawyer. "When you have that position you can't just do what you want."

Google is confident it is in the right.

A final decision is expected in September, and a Google spokesman said the company remained "confident of a positive outcome."

But this is politics and gov'ts around the the world are looking for ways to regulate Google.

IBM was one of the first high tech companies to have monopoly problems.

However, IBM's dominant market share in the mid-1960s led to antitrust inquiries by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. The case dragged out for 13 years, turning into a resource-sapping war of attrition. In 1982, the Justice Department finally concluded that the case was “without merit” and dropped it, But having to operate under the pall of antitrust litigation significantly impacted IBM's business decisions and operations during all of the 1970s and a good portion of the 1980s.

Microsoft monopoly history is well known.

Google is next.

Employers have problem finding skilled workers

July 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Finding data center staff is one of the top jobs of data center executives and part of the reason they are out at the data center conferences. NYTimes has an article about the skill worker mismatch in manufacturing.

Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Students at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland are training for manufacturing jobs. More Photos »

By MOTOKO RICH

BEDFORD, Ohio — Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.

Yet some of these employers complain that they cannot fill their openings.

The job shortage is for the type of workers in data centers.

Now they are looking to hire people who can operate sophisticated computerized machinery, follow complex blueprints and demonstrate higher math proficiency than was previously required of the typical assembly line worker.

Makers of innovative products like advanced medical devices and wind turbines are among those growing quickly and looking to hire, and they too need higher skills.

Given the labor shortage in data centers, I am curious how many people are coming from other industries.

Employers say they are looking for aptitude as much as specific skills. “We are trying to find people with the right mindset and intelligence,” said Mr. Murphy.

Ben Venue has recruited about half its new factory hires from outside the pool of former manufacturing workers. Zachary Flyer, a 32-year-old Army veteran, had been laid off from a law firm filing room when he applied at the drug maker last summer.

He spent four months this year learning how to operate a 400-square-foot freeze dryer that helps preserve vials of medicine. Monitoring vacuum pressure and temperatures on a color-coded computer screen with flashing numbers, Mr. Flyer said last month that he preferred his new work to the law firm, where he had spent seven years.

The vast majority of you outsource your data center maintenance and operations.

How do you manage your Service Level Agreements (SLA) for your data center maintenance?

Part 1 - Italy Trip 2010, going with the flow

July 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Many of my friends and coworkers want to know how my vacation was. Logistics were great, Food and Wine were awesome. Had great time to reflect and think.

It took us 24 hours to get from our home in Seattle to our hotel in Rome. So, it was a trek. We used mileage points, so our choices weren't ideal and we ended up flying SEA - SFO - LHR - FCO. There were some flight delays, but our layovers were long enough that it didn't affect the overall time. Slowing down, going with the flow is something I've learned with travel

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” - Lao-Tzu

No matter how much structure we create in our lives, no matter how many good habits we build, there will always be things that we cannot control — and if we let them, these things can be a huge source of anger, frustration and stress.

The simple solution: learn to go with the flow.

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”- Thich Nhat Hanh

Air travel can be extremely frustrating if you don't go with the flow.

My trip to Italy was a 50th Bday present and we went to the city of Montefollonico where we attended a cooking/travel destination www.tuscanwomencook.com

Montefollonico is the orange pin marker between Florence and Rome.

Here is town on Bing maps.

Montefollonico is a town of 600 off the the beaten path. The town has escaped the notoriety of towns like Cortona where the author for "Under the Tuscan Sun" lived.

6 days of living at a small country town pace, a 15 room Hotel La Chiusa, a daily routine of 2 hours of cooking, 2 hour lunches, 2 hour of site seeing, then a 3 hour dinner, and less than 15 minutes a day of wifi (thanks to thick stone walls you need to be next to the antenna), it was a nice break.

I had some great business discussions with Bill Sutherland, the owner of Tuscan Women Cook as well. Our discussions fit well to ask why you are doing what you are. Bill picked up from Texas selling his commercial real estate business to live in Tuscany and run a cooking business.

Note all you iPhone users, I did have my iPhone, but I never connected it to the cellphone network. Why?

International data roaming can get expensive quickly.

For example, opening an email with a 5 megapixel picture in it, or downloading a 3-minute video on YouTube, each takes about 2 MB of data. The cost would be almost $40, based on pay-per-use international data rates of $0.0195/KB.

What can you do to minimize your international data charges?

Turn Data Roaming "OFF": By default, the setting for international data roaming will be in the "OFF" position.
To turn data roaming "ON/OFF", tap on Settings>General>Network>Data Roaming

– Turning "OFF" data roaming blocks email, browsing, visual voicemail and downloads, but it will not block text or picture/video messages.

– When abroad, international roaming rates apply when you send text or picture/video messages.

– To access audible voicemail when data roaming is “OFF”, tap on Phone>Voicemail. International roaming voice rates apply.

Utilize Wi-Fi instead of 3G/GPRS/EDGE: Wi-Fi is available in many international airports, hotels and restaurants to browse the Web or check email.

There were plenty of people on the trip who had their phones on and were checking e-mail. We'll see if they are ready for the AT&T bill. Getting a bill of over $1000 is not unheard of.

We used Skype on a PC connected to wifi worked great to talk to our kids. And they had a blast calling from their iPod Touch with a headset. I would use gmail's SMS feature to send a text to our babysitters and they would tell the kids Dad was online and they could call.

I did figure out a bunch of things related to data centers when I was on trip, but here is a little background before I start down the path of things figured out. Just because I was disconnected, relaxing, eating and drinking, doesn't mean my brain stopped thinking. :-)

Some GreenM3 Statistics from my 12 day blogging break

June 30, 2010 Dave Ohara

Taking a 12 day break I wanted to get a an idea what happens to GreenM3's blog traffic.

Here is feeds and readership of posts. The blue line is the # of posts being read.

This was expected as I wasn't writing, so reading should trail off.

But, a lot of traffic comes from search engines like Google. Here is TypePad's dashboard traffic. The last week and a half drop in traffic doesn't jump out.

And Google Analytics provides more numbers.

Overall, it was I expected the RSS readerships monitored by Feedburner dropped significantly as i wasn't posting, but Google Search continued to drive traffic.