Month: December 2006

Performance Matters, and boy does it.

My Google Alerts today picked up a post from a former colleague of mine, commenting on another post from the Yahoo! Interface blog.
I had some problems following the stream in the Performance Matters post, so I thought I would this post to clear up my thoughts.
A technical note up front: Using a waterfall chart that only shows non-persistent connections gives a very skewed view on how a modern Web page page performs. Persistent connections and modern TCP/IP stacks with fast-retransmit algorithms and window-scaling have seend a trend away from network-related performance issues in the recent past.
After the dot-bomb crash, the overabundance of bandwidth (in the form of over-built fiber-optic networks) made backbone and end-to-end connectivity issues for business and most home broadband users almost completely disappear.
The wealth of bandwidth (ok, North America consumers arethe poor cousins compared to their European and Asian counterparts) removed the veil of “it’s the network” which had been the crutch of performance engineers for many years, and exposed the effects of poor design and badly designed infrastructure.
In many cases, poor page design could be overcome. However, issues with core infrastructure and application design were (and are) notoriously difficult to resolve without spending a lot of money and investing a large amount of time and manpower.
So, when these issues were combined with the shrinking budgets and constricted IT staffing in the post-boom era, application performance issues became (and still are) the root-cause of most Web performance issues.
In recent months, as the use of Internet telephony, rich-media streaming, file-sharing, RSS, and SOA products rise nearly exponentially, the bandwidth crunch is starting to re-appear. This is something I first speculated about in October 2005 [here].
In one area, I do agree with the Performance Matters post: the larger the page, the slower download. However, the ongoing debate is one that pits the “more smaller” crown against the “fewer larger” crowd. The “fewer larger” crowd appears to be losing, given the design of most modern Web pages.
The only other comment I can fairly make here is that the majority of the sources cited in the Performance Matters post are 5-6 years old. In that time, I have learned a lot about Web performance, and that the post is more relevant to to the state of the Internet at that time, and not now.

Paul Fisher dies at 93

Over the last two years, Fisher Space Pans have taken on near iconic status with the leaders (and followers) in the trendy nouveau geek crowd.

Paul Fisher died recently at 93. [via Notebookism]

Having “donated” four space pens to the cosmos through my own absent-minded behaviour, I can say that I have done my bit to help spread the meme.

Paul Fisher, write when you get there.

FeedBurner Feeds Back

After a couple of days vacation, the FeedBurner feeds are back.

I bought the domain forwarding option from WordPress.com (http://crazycanuck.org/), and then waited. I reactivated the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/crazycanuck this morning, and you can start using that again.

Rick Klau from FeedBurner left a comment last night, which prompted me to try again.

Hopefully things will remain stable now.

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WordPress.com: BUILD A SKYPE WIDGET!

I do not want to host my own blog.

Even if I wanted to, WordPress.com does not make it easy to export content. This, however, is a separate discussion.

Skype and Web 2.0 (I hate the term, but I am using it) are inextricably linked.

WordPress and Web 2.0 are inextricably linked.

WordPress.com hates Skype. It’s that simple.

According to a WordPress.com forum post:

Actually in this case it’s because skype and callme are being stripped. They’re not XML recognized tags and staff has stated that they won’t be supported.

And

Fraid not. Javascripts are still removed from input for security concerns. If you really need Skype, I would suggest getting a paid host.

See here.

WordPress.com: BUILD A SKYPE WIDGET!

Thank you.

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The Joy and Stigma of Burnout

Today, the sun is shining and I am working from home, so things don’t seems as bad.

The last few days have been interesting, as I have become more aware that the my work-related anger and dissatisfaction does not originate with the people at work, or the place I work, or the work itself, but from that beast that so many white-collar professionals suffer from: burnout.

Burnout is not sexy. In the US and Canada, it is seen as a sign of weakness, a lack of the American Work Ethic. NPR had a great discussion of burnout this week, and New York Magazine published a cover article on it this week.

Listening to NPR on Monday, there was a story of how the US armed forces are punishing soldiers who return from Iraq and are diagnosed with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) [here]. The successful soldiers see the soldiers (what defines success for a soldier?) with PTSD as weaklings, people who should be punished, pushed out onto the streets, stripped of their American citizenship as cowards and traitors.

I do not claim that PTSD and work-related burnout are equal; my focus here is on the stigma that the US culture places on doing the job, regardless of what the job does to you.

You can do the job. Good. What kind of person are you?

I am a rebel. I do not fit the US success criteria. I don’t want a title. I don’t want a box on an org chart. I don’t want to have the biggest bank account. And I have no respect for people who worship at the temple of US success until they show me that they can do something that I respect.

Today. I wrote an email to my manager and VP stating that during my Christmas break this year, I will be completely unreachable for anything work-related.

Unreachable for EVERYTHING work-related.

It is likely that I will be seen as “letting the team down”, as it is not only end-of-quarter, but end-of-year.

You know what? I don’t care. I am more important than my job. If the company I work for now doesn’t recognize that, I will find a new company.

You know who the most successful people I know are? My friends who “dropped out” of the corporate world, moved to Maine, and are slaving, day and night, to get their under-funded winery project off the ground. While raising three kids. While renovating and repairing 200-year old farm buildings.

Success does not come from money, power, or a title. I comes from having the respect of the people around you. I comes from a desire to get up in the morning and do something that completes you, fills a void inside you.

Right now, when I get up, I step into a void.

Burnout. It’s here to stay.

Changes at work — your thoughts?

Yesterday, I read Anne Zelenka’s post on ROWE at Best Buy. I was heartened to see that this idea was getting mentioned again, and that it was getting front-page interest from Big Media.

On a lark, I forwarded the post to my director and VP. Their responses frightened me. They were written in management-ese, and indicated that timesheets are soon to be added to my daily routine.

Hugh Mcleod — Sheep/Wolf

I can help cure the first, starting with Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The second plague, timesheets, I see as more odious. It goes along with the new measurement-focused management culture in our company. Sometimes, I wonder what’s more important to the managers and executives: measurements or results.

As a person who is difficult enough to manage due to my bipolar, and my deep-rooted desire to do things that have meaning, timesheets are a problem for me. I don’t work to timesheets; I work to goals.

Structured environments have always been a serious problem for me. They trigger a deep resentment, some deep rooted need in my soul not to conform. I know that they serve a purpose, and that some people take a great deal of comfort in the process of knowing how they spent their day. My comfort comes from delivering meaningful results, not in worshipping the almighty bureaucracy.

I suppose that as the company I work for grows and has more people to manage, timesheets are inevitable. However, it’s about the time that timesheets appear that I feel the need to find more results-oriented, dynamic organizations.

Timesheets are a sign of corporate doublespeak, freeing people from the need to excel.

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