PolarLava::Blog

At work this past Friday I was informed the Technology Department (about 75% of the company) is being restructured.  As such, my department —Engineering Practices is being disbanded and my employee's reassigned to someone else.  Fear not, Kevin isn't winding up unemployed (yet again), but rather is being moved from his management position to the position of "Senior Architect".  I guess one can view this move as either a) a demotion (removed from management), b) a lateral move (from manager to Sr. technical staff) or c) a promotion (for the same reason).  Personally I believe it to be "b" or "c" as either way this is a tremendous opportunity for me and show somebody believes I know what I am doing.  :)

For more than the past year, my department was responsible for three areas: code review (enforce coding standards and looking for stupid mistakes), release engineering (management of our software and it's distribution) and bug repair (fixing other's mistakes after release).  Over the past several months we have been overwhelmed with the demands from other departments and I had been in discussions with my boss as to how to remedy the situation.   And although I had buy-in from him on how we should fix the problems, other more fundamental issues also needed to be addresses within our organization.  So, in an effort to fix my department's problems and others within Technology, a complete restructuring is being undertaken.

In my new job I will be retaining a portion of the code review responsibilities along with writing technical specifications and determining the overall direction of our software products and how we build them.  This job is in tandem with another Senior Architect who is currently overloaded and will now share responsibilities with me.  In short we are combining my original code review job with his architect job.  Needless to say Kevin is both very excited and scared to death with this opportunity.

From a career perspective this is a very good move for me (baring failure) as this is a very high level software engineering position.  One of the problems in my previous role (through no fault of mine) was my inability to effectively perform both a technical role (code review) and a managerial role.  This change will again allow me again to focus strictly on the technical aspects of my job and the needs of the company and not have to deal with constant interruptions and managing the personnel issues of others.  Time will tell how this all works out.  :)

After much anticipation Synacor finally moved into our new office space.  And Kevin is most happy with his new digs and his lovely waterfront view.  If you start with this picture in my photo gallery you can then navigate through roughly a half dozen shots of my new office.

This past Saturday I walked down stairs to the basement to find my water heater leaking.  Fortuantely it wasn't a major blow out, but over the next couple of days it was slowly increasing in its output.  So this was an issue that needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later…

A couple of months ago Mary Lou and I talked to a guy at the Buffalo home show about tankless water heaters as we liked the idea of endless hot water.  We also liked the idea of moving to the "state of the art" in this exciting technology.  :)  The only tankless systems I had ever seen were smaller point of use units, but a while back I had heard that you could now get whole house units.  So at the show we did find that they were available and learned a bit about them.  This proved to be worth the time as we had to contemplate whether to switch to tankless or buy another standard tank unit.  It really comes down to cost versus life expectancy.  A tankless unit is 2-3 times the cost, but lasts 20-30 years where a standard tank only lasts 10-15 years.  (My tank heater was 12 years old so that seems about right.)  So in the end we opted to take the plunge and go with a Takagi T-K2 Tankless Water Heater.  And as a bonus we will get a $300 energy tax credit.  Only time will tell the wisdom of this choice…

Anyone that knows me knows I'm not a big country music fan.  With one exception being Johnny Cash who's the best.  And I don't really care for the Dixie Chicks music, although being a red-blooded male, my eyes could gaze upon far worse sights.  :)

No, I'm talking about seeing them (mostly Natalie Maines their lead singer) on I believe it was 60 Minutes Sunday evening.  I'm sure most all of you aware of the blow back in 2003 just before we invaded Iraq, during one of their concerts she said "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."  OK, not a popular sentiment at the time, although know it would clearly be a more popular statement.

Anyhow, they're churning out a new album and are about to hit the road to tour again.  And they are not a all apologetic for what was said.  No regrets. Period.  And that is why like the Dixie Chicks.  They too a rash of shit for the comment, but they haven't backed down.  It might not be a popular statement among their hard-core Republican voting fans but hey, get over it.  Freedom of speech people.  Some of us haven't forgotten that silly little Constitution thing like most in Washington have these days.

The Chicks might go down in flames and be abandoned by their former fans for staying the course, but at least you still have your integrity.

So I've been doing the slow burn over this whole situation with Iran.  I don't have the time or patience to write a long diatribe about it, but need to have my say.

An Iran with nuclear power capability is not an issue for me.  Actually pretty much any country pursuing a nuclear power program is alright with me.  But if one is going to do that, you should be building state-of-the-art reactors and disposing of the waste in a safe and secure manner.

But an Iran with the bomb would not be a desirable situation from most of the world's perspective.  Actually, with the exception of those who have it, most outsiders probably see it as a pretty bad thing.  I'm pretty sure Iran and most middle-eastern countries don't see the U.S. circling overhead with the bomb as a real positive situation for them.

I really fear the Neo-Conservatives in Washington because they believe they have god on their side and feel they are empowered to do "what is right" against anyone whose views differ from their own.  Thus George and his cronnies feel it is their right to wage war —including using nukes, on anyone that doesn't fit their vision of the world.  Heck, at the rate things are going I could almost see them turning the gun on their fellow citizens who disagree with them.  Actually with the police state they have build —and continue to build, in some respects they already have.  After all, "you are either with us, or against us", right?

Getting back to Iran…it wouldn't be a real positive situation for them to have the bomb anymore than a number of countries.  I don't exactly see North Korea and Pakistan as real desirable candidate to have ownership of the bomb.  In those two cases you have a nut-job with his finger on the button and a trememdously unstable and corrupt political system on the other.

But if you really stop and look at the situation, if you were Iran, would you too not be busting your ass to develop the bomb?  They live in a very unstable region and on top of the regular harassment from the U.S., we are now sitting on both their front (Iraq) and back (Afghanistan) doorsteps.  I'd be a bit concerned too!

Iran is a very messed up country.  The government is controlled by the old guard, hardline Islamic rulers, but the bulk of the common people are very pro-western thinking.  And if the U.S. decides it needs to wage war to fix the problem, it quite well may make matters worse in the long-run.  You might stop any nuclear program they have (clean or dirty) right now, but you risk turning a lot of hearts and minds against you.

Look at the rousing welcome we got when we rolled into Iraq to "save them".  All because they were an imminent threat to our security and world peace.  Oops!  Yeah, Saddam was a bad dude and he needed to go.  But the threat didn't exist and you had him contained in a box.  But we couldn't let the politics play out could we.  Nope, we had to save the day!  Nice job George.  Asshole.

I just hope we're not watching the same scenario play out again.  The Iranian government is bad and there is tremendous world pressure for them to come clean.  There is talk of evidence of them pursuing the bomb.  Yeah, like I said, that would be bad.  But can we at least let the politics of this play out before we start bombing them into submission?  No, they haven't been very cooperative, and they keep talking trash, but before we light them up can we get everyone on the same page?  If the politics don't work out then at least at that point there might be more international support of military action.  We can't keep bombing countries just because we don't like what they are doing or what they believe.  Can we have some consensus here first please?  Otherwise you're just furthering our image as an intolerant bully.