Category Archives: Meta thoughts

Copying a Large File

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It was a pretty simple request actually. “Can you copy over the Panama database from FOO\WAS_21 to server BAR\LAX_45?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Of course it was a problem.  Here’s the issue. This is at one of my clients. They have a couple of datacenters and have hundreds of servers in each.  In addition, they have servers in different AD domains.  This helps them partition functionality and security requirements. Normally copying files between servers within a datacenter isn’t an issue. Even copying files between the different domains in the same datacenter isn’t normally too bad. To be clear, it’s not great.  Between servers in the same domain, it appears they have 1GB connections, between the domains, the firewall seems to throttle stuff down to 100MB.

The problem is when copying between different domains in different datacenters. This can be abysmally slow. That was my problem this week.  WAS_21 and LAX_45 were in different datacenters, and in different domains.

Now, for small files, I can use the cut and paste functionality built into RDP and simply cut and paste. This doesn’t work for large files. The file in this case was 19GB.  So this was out.

Fortunately, through the Citrix VDI they provide, I have a temp folder I can use. So, easily enough, I could copy the 19GB file from FOO\WAS_21 to that. That took just a few minutes.  Then I tried to copy it from there to BAR\LAX_45. This was slow, but looked like it would work.  It was going to take 4-5 hours, but they didn’t need the file for a week.

After about 4.5 hours, my RDP session locked up. I logged out and back in and saw the copy had failed. I tried again. This time at just under 4.5 hours I noticed an out of memory error. And then my session locked up.

So, apparently this wasn’t going to work. The obvious solution was to split the file (it was already compressed) into multiple files; except I’m not allowed to install most software on the servers. So that wasn’t a great option. I probably could have installed something like 7zip and then uninstalled it, but I didn’t want to deal with that and the paperwork that would result.

So I fell back to an old friend: Robocopy.  This appeared to be working great. Up until about 4.5 hours.  And guess what… another out of memory error.

But I LIKE challenges like this.

So I looked more closely. Robocopy has a lot of options. There are two that stuck out: /Z – restartable mode. That looked good. I figured worst case, I’d start my backup, let it fail at about 85% done and then resume it.

But then the holy grail: /J :: copy using unbuffered I/O (recommended for large files). 

Wow… unbuffered… that looks good. Might use less memory.

So I gambled and tried both.  And low and behold, 4:19 later… the file was copied!

So, it was an annoying problem but… I had solved it.  I like that!

So the take-away: Don’t give up. There’s always a way if you’re creative enough!

Math is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping

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If I were to ask my readers to take a math test right now, approximately 1/2 would perform worse than if I had used a more neutral title such as “Math Quiz Below”. I’ll let you as a the reader guess which 1/2.

This is a subtle form of priming. Multiple studies have shown that by priming people before taking tests or making decisions, we can influence their outcome. It isn’t quite subliminal advertising, but it can be close.

I’m currently reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and it’s quite the read. I recommend it to my audience here. She goes into the studies showing how priming can impact outcomes and references them in more detail.

Overall, we know that women are less represented in STEM fields, but this lack of representation doesn’t start out this way. Studies show in grade school the interest in STEM by gender is about equal. But over time, there’s less representation of women in most STEM fields and often when they are represented, their positions either carry less weight (not as much advancement) or perceived to carry less weight (ignored, spoken over, etc.) And before anyone comments, “but I know a woman who is a CTO at my company” or similar, keep in mind that those are noteworthy because they are the exceptions, not the norm.

Now, no single solution will solve the problem of women’s representation in STEM. But there are things we can do. First, we need to recognize that the human brain is probably built to be primed for certain responses. But don’t confuse this with saying that we can’t change what we’re primed for or how we respond. And, we can also avoid priming.

One study that is cited by Fine appears to suggest that collecting gender-biased demographic data AFTER a test or survey doesn’t cause a gender based result in the test. In other words, if you simply give a math test and then at the end ask questions like gender, or even to put ones name on it (which can often have a influence on self-perception) it appears to remove the bias towards poorer performance by women.  Similarly if you don’t ask at all.

But, most of us aren’t giving math tests are we?

But we are doing things like looking at resumes, deciding what conferences or seminars to attend, what blogs to read or respond it and how we interact with our coworkers and bosses.

One technique to consider is blind recruitment. Here much if not all demographic data is removed from a resume. This sort of work goes back to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s. But note, there is some evidence that it’s not the panacea some make it out to be. So proceed with caution.

When attending a conference or seminar, you can do one of a few things. For one, try to read the session descriptions without seeing the name of who is presenting. This can be a bit hard to do and may not quite get the results you want. Or, and I’m going to go out on a limb here because some people find this concept a bit sexist and I don’t have a great deal of data to support it, but…. go based on the names, and select sessions where woman are presenting. Yes, I’m suggesting making a conscious, some would say sexist, choice.

So far I’ve been pleasantly pleased by doing so. Over a year ago at SQL Saturday Chicago 2017 I decided to attend a session by Rie Irish called Let Her Finish: Supporting Women’s Voices from meetings to the board room. I’d like to say I was surprised to find that I was only 1 of 2 men in the room, but I wasn’t. I was a bit disappointed however, since really it was men who needed to hear the talk more than women.  Oh and the other gentleman, was a friend of Rie’s she had invited to attend. And a related tip, when attending such topics, generally, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. But that’s a different blog post for a different time.

Other great talks I’ve heard were Mindy Curnutt‘s talk at SQL Summit 2017 on Imposter Syndrome. Or Deborah Melkin’s Back to the Basics: T-SQL 101 at SQL Saturday Albany 2017. Despite her being a first time speaker and it being a 101 class, it was great and I learned some stuff and ended up inviting her to speak at our local user group in February of this year.

Besides making your fellow DBAs, SQL professionals, IT folks etc feel valuable and appreciated, you’re also showing the event coordinators that their selections were well made. If more people attend more sessions given by women, eventually there will be more women presenting simply because more will be asked to present.

But what if you can’t go?  Encourage others. Rie and her partner Kathi Kellenberger (whom I’m indebted to for encouraging me to write my first book) are the leaders of the PASS WIT (Women in Technology) Virtual Chapter of PASS. Generally before a SQL Saturday they will retweet announcements of the various women speaking. It doesn’t hurt for you to do the same, especially for women that you know and have heard speak.

But what about when there are no women, or they’re poorly represented. Call folks out on it. Within the past year we’ve seen a “Women in Math” poster, which featured no women.  There was a conference in Europe recently (I’m trying to find links) where women were extremely underrepresented. When women AND men finally started to speak out and threaten not to attend or speak, the conference seemingly suddenly found more women qualified to speak.

I’ve heard sometimes that “it’s hard to find women speakers” or “women don’t apply to speak”. The first is a sign of laziness. I can tell you right now, at least in the SQL world, it’s not hard. You just have to look around.  In the second case, there may be some truth to that. Sometimes you have to be more proactive in making sure that women are willing to apply and speak. For my SQL/PASS folks out there, I would suggest reaching to Rie and Kathi and finding out what you can do to help attract speakers to your conference or user group. Also, for example, if you don’t already have women speaking or in visible public positions within your organization, this can discourage women from applying because, rightly or wrongly, you’re giving off a signal that women may not be welcome.

Math may be hard, but it should not be because of gender bias, and we shouldn’t let gender bias, primed or not allow under-representation to occur.

PS – bonus points if anyone can recognize the mountains in the photo at the top.

PPS – Some of the links below may end up outdated but:

And that’s just a small sampling of who is out there!

 

Alarming

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So a recent trip to the ER (no, nothing serious, wasn’t me, thanks for asking) reminded me of a topic near and dear to my heart: Alarms and Alerts. What prompted this thought was the number of beeps, boops, and chirps I heard while there that no one responded to.  This leads to the question: Why have them, if no one responds to them?

I have a simple rule for alarms: “Don’t put an alert on something unless you have a response pre-planned for it.”

This is actually more complex than it sounds. And it can sometimes lead to seemingly illogical conclusions if you follow it in a reductio ad absurdum fashion.

Let’s start with an example of one alert I heard while sitting waiting. It was a constant beep, about 90 times a minute. I soon tracked it down to a portable monitor attached to a patient that was soon to be moved upstairs.  It was the person’s pulse.  Besides a possible HIPAA violation (I was now in theory privy to private medical information) it really served no purpose other than to annoy the patient and those around them. “But Greg, perhaps they were afraid the patient would suddenly go into cardiac arrest or something else would happen.”  And I agree, but then let’s alert on the sudden change in conditions, not in what was, at the time, a stable pulse for the patient. This beeping went on for over 10 minutes. And no one was monitoring it, other than the patient and us annoyed strangers.

So, there was an alert, that apparently needed no response.

But let’s go to the other extreme. What about when an alert isn’t needed. Let’s say you’re driving your car and it throws a rod. (Yes, this happened to me once, well I wasn’t driving, my father was. It was his sister’s Volkswagon campervan). I can tell you there is NO alert when such an event happens. But, there’s no need for it. The vehicle stops. It won’t go. So an alert in that case is pretty superfluous.

But let’s tie this to IT. I’m going to give you an absurd example of when not to have an alert: When you run out of disk space.  Again, you might disagree. You’d think this would be the perfect time to have an alert. But go back to my rule. What if you have no plan for this? You’ve never gamed out the possibility.  Now, you’re out of disk space. You don’t have a plan. Does it really matter if you had an alert or not? If you can’t respond, the alert really hasn’t added anything.

The main lesson to take away from that example is, if you’re setting up an alert, make sure you do have a plan. (The other lesson of course is perhaps to have an alert BEFORE you run out of disk space!) The plan may be as simple as, “delete as many files as I can”. But of course that only works if you have files to delete. Or it might be “add another filegroup to the database for now and then figure out the long-term solution during our next planned outage.”  Or, in the worst case it might be, “update my resume.”  But the point is, if you have an alert, have SOME plan for it.

On the flip side, how many times do you have an alert that you look at and say, “oh yeah, we can ignore that, that always happens.”  Sure, that’s a plan, but honestly, ask yourself, do you need an alert in that case? Probably not. I hate getting woken up at 2:00 AM for an alert I don’t need to respond to.  So in this case if there is no plan because you don’t need a plan, eliminate the alert.

I could go on (and perhaps this will be a good topic for my next book) but I’ll add one last real-world case where people all to often ignore alerts: smoke and CO detectors; especially CO detectors.  If you have a CO detector and it alerts, do NOT assume it’s faulty and unplug it. Respond. Somehow. Don’t automatically assume it’s a faulty battery, especially if it’s the winter. If you have any doubt, please call the fire department. Trust me, they’d much rather respond to a call where you’re all alive and it’s a false CO alarm than to show up and find the alarm going off, but everyone is now dead.

So the take away is, alerts are only useful if they generate a useful response.

Oh and because the inner child in me can’t resist: be a lert because the world needs more lerts! 🙂

 

 

Wet Paint

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There’s an old saw that if you tell someone there’s 1 billion people in China, they’ll believe you, but if you put up a wet paint sign, they’ll have to touch the paint to be sure. I find it interesting that we believe some things easily and others not so easily.  Or even sometimes, we may think we believe something until we actually experience it. Then we somehow believe it even more.

Two incidents of this nature occurred to me within the last year.  Last year I drove to my uncle’s house in South Carolina in order to observe the total eclipse. Prior to totality, one of the phenomena that I knew would happen was seeing crescent shaped “shadows”. (Really it’s sort of the reverse since you’re seeing crescent shaped light.) I mean I had read about it, I had seen pictures, and I basically understood why they would occur.  And yet, at one point I was walking back into the house to do something when I looked down and lo and behold… I saw crescent shaped “shadows”.  My reaction was one of “Holy Cow, this really DOES happen!”  Now, I had no doubt intellectually that it should happen, or that I would most likely see it. But, actually seeing it was still amazing and while I really had no reason to have to verify the phenomenon, the fact that I personally had experienced it was incredible. I understood it at a visceral level, not just an intellectual one.

The second incident occurred just the other day. As a long-time sufferer of allergies, spring time has sometimes been a bit less than comfortable for me. And over the years, I had seen videos of pine trees releasing their pollen in a massive cloud (I’m thankfully NOT allergic to pine pollen it appears) but I had never actually experienced it myself. So again, I knew intellectually it happens.

So two days ago I was sitting outside looking at a pine tree when suddenly I saw this puff of what looked like smoke, and then a cloud of pollen waft away from the tree. Again, I had experienced that Holy Cow moment when the visceral experience matched the intellectual one. It was pretty cool.

That all said, I have stopped touching wet paint at this point in my life. But I still love these sort of confirming experiences (though I’m not eager to start counting heads in China at this time).

What facts did you know that when you finally experienced them first hand, had an impact upon you. I’d love to hear them.

Teamwork

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I spent the majority of last week with some of the greatest people I know: my fellow NCRC (National Cave Rescue Commission) instructors and students.  Let’s start by the obvious, it takes a strange twist of mind to be the sort of person that actually enjoys crawling through dark holes in the ground. Now take that same group of people and add  a sense of altruism and you’ve got folks willing to rescue others trapped in caves.

Let me interject in here by the way, that caving is actually a fantastically safe sport. When an accident in a cave makes the news, it’s because it’s so rare and generally so unique as to attract attention. The NSS puts out a report every 2 years detailing the accidents across the US. It’s well worth the read if you can find a copy. Now back to the rest of my blog post.

I have been one of the many instructors who teach the “Level 2” class. I love this level because students have gotten beyond the basics and are starting to learn the “why” we do things more than simply the “how”.  And we start to really work on their team leadership and teamwork skills (as I mentioned last week in my post about the lost Sked).

Good teamwork isn’t just a bunch of people working to solve a task. It’s them working together and often anticipating the needs.  Two events last week illustrated a failure and a success.  At one point, I was a mock patient and the class had been broken into two teams. The first one had to get me out of a tight crawl-way (packaged in a Sked) and up to an open area. From there another team had set up a haul system to get me to the top of a 60′ or so (I’ve never really measured it) block of rock.  This was towards the end of the week when the students (and instructors) are a bit tired and overwhelmed with everything they had learned.  We had allocated 90 minutes for the exercise.

During the first part, I just felt like something was off. Nothing serious, nothing I could put my finger on. But the magic the students had shown all week just wasn’t quite there.

And then there I was, 2 hours into the exercise, laying on top of the tight area, waiting to be hauled up. Someone on the lower team said that I was ready to go.  Someone at the top of the block said they were ready to go.  And then I sat for 2-3 minutes until finally things started happening again.  But for a few minutes the days of teamwork had fallen apart. They weren’t trying to anticipate needs or even work cooperatively.  It wasn’t a huge issue, but it did get a reaction from our oldest, most irascible Level 2 instructor.  I think the word ‘disappointed’ was used at least twice.  It might have been a bit harsh, but… it worked.

As the final exercise of the day, the instructors decided to have a bit of fun with the students. We hid the previously lost (and then found) Sked.  The instructor in charge then informed the students that their lost “patient” for this particular exercise was about 4′ tall, last seen wearing bright orange, and was afraid of the dark. As details were added, it suddenly dawned on them what we had in mind.

But they took the task seriously. They did an excellent search and when they were then told the “patient” wasn’t responsive to stimuli, and they couldn’t rule out a c-spine injury, therefore the Sked had to be packaged in another litter, they did so with gusto and honestly, one of the best packaging jobs I had seen all week. All this while laughing.

They took an absolutely silly scenario, laughed while doing it, yet exhibited amazing teamwork. They were back on their game!

Sometimes teams can start to fall apart, but reminding them of how good they can be and providing a bit of levity can help elevate them back to their best!

 

A Lost Sked

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Not much time to write this week. I’m off in Alabama crawling around in the bowels of the Earth teaching cave rescue to a bunch of enthusiastic students. The level I teach focuses on teamwork. And sometimes you find teams forming in the most interesting ways.

Yesterday our focus was on some activities in a cave (this one known as Pettyjohn’s) that included a type of a litter known as a Sked. When packaged it’s about 9″ in diameter and 4′ tall. It’s packaged in a bright orange carrier. It’s hard to miss.

And yet, at dinner, the students were a bit frantic; they could not account for the Sked. After some discussion they determined it was most likely left in the cave.

As an instructor, I wasn’t overly concerned, I figured it would be found and if not, it’s part of the reason our organization has a budget for lost or broken equipment, even if it’s expensive.

That said, what was quite reassuring was that the students completely gelled as a team. There was no finger pointing, no casting blame. Instead, they figured out a plan, determined who would go back to look for it and when. In the end, the Sked was found and everyone was happy.

The moral is, sometimes an incident like this can turn into a group of individuals who are blaming everyone else, or it can turn a group into a team where everyone is sharing responsibility. In this case it was it was the latter and I’m quite pleased.

Legacy

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“…the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Or these days, lives on in the Internet. I never quite agreed with Shakespeare in this line. I think the good lives on beyond the grave.

In the book, Lies my Teacher Taught Me author James Loewen talks about how certain African tribes divide people into three categories: those alive, the sasha or living-dead, and zamani or the dead.

This was brought to mind yesterday when I was trying to debug an issue which turned out to be a bug in SQL Server 2016 SP2.  While trying to debug it, I needed to add a user to an SSIS setup. This has been a problem in the past, but I recalled I had used #SQLHELP on Twitter to ask the question and gotten a great answer. So, a quick search later found the response I was looking for. The fully correct answer (since MSFT’s page leaves out a step) was available at: http://sqlsoldier.net/wp/sqlserver/howdoigrantaccesspermissionsforssistousers

Now, many of my readers won’t recognize the name, but some will: @SQLSoldier, a member of the #SQLFamily that passed away recently. At the time of his passing I had forgotten that he had reached out to help me last year. The search yesterday though brought it back to me. I never had the honor of meeting Mr. Davis in person, but I know many others spoke highly of him. It was comforting to me to know that even months later his legacy was still helping me (and presumably others).

After thinking about that, I got thinking about my dad.  Soon after he passed in 2015, I picked up the hefty Milwaukee right-angle drill that had been his and was now mine. I was working on the addition (that he had helped design before his death) that has since become my office. I had always liked that particular tool. It has a certain heft and power to it.  At the time, with his death so close at hand, it was a form of grief therapy for me. I had often used this in my youth, helping him out with various construction projects. To this day I’ll pick up one of the tools I inherited, or start a house project using the skills he taught me and I realize, he’s sasha, living-dead. He’s still lives on in me.

SQLSoldier is also living-dead, he’s very real in the hearts and minds of those who knew him and his legacy lives on, still helping others, such as myself.

As my age is now entering its 2nd half-century,  I wonder more and more what my legacy will be. I hope that when I’m sasha, my legacy can still help and aid others.

And with that, I will conclude with a scene from one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite movies:  “What will your verse be?”

 

RCA or “get it running!”

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How often have any of us resorted to fixing a server issue by simply rebooting the server?  Yes, we’re all friends here, you can raise your hands. Don’t be shy. We all know we’ve done it at some point.

I ask the question because of a recent tweet I saw with the hashtag #sqlhelp where Allan Hirt made a great comment:

Finding root cause is nice, but my goal first and foremost is to get back up and running quickly. Uptime > root cause more often than not.

This got me thinking, when is this true versus when is it not? And I think the answer ends up being the classic DBA answer, “it depends”.

I’m going to pick two well studied disasters that we’re probably all familiar with. But we need some criteria.  In my book IT Disaster Response: Lessons Learned in the Field I used the definition:

Disaster: An unplanned interruption in business that has an adverse impact on finances or other resources.

Let’s go with that.  It’s pretty broad, but it’s a starting point. Now let’s ignore minor disasters like I mention in the book, like the check printer running out of toner or paper on payroll day. Let’s stick with the big ones; the ones that bring production to a halt and cost us real money.  And we’re not going to restrict ourselves to IT or databases, but we’ll come back to that.

The first example I’m going to use is the Challenger Disaster. I would highly recommend folks read Diane Vaughen’s seminal work: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. That said, we all know that when this occurred, NASA did a complete stand-down of all shuttle flights until a full RCA was complete and many changes were made to the program.

On the other hand, in the famous Miracle on the Hudson, airlines did not stop flying after the water landing. But this doesn’t mean a RCA wasn’t done. It in fact was; just well after the incident.

So, back to making that decision.  Here, it was an easy decision. Shuttle flights were occurring every few months and other than delaying some satellite launches (which ironically may have led to issues with the Galileo probe’s antenna) there wasn’t much reason to fly immediately afterwards.  Also, while the largest points were known, i.e. something caused a burn-thru of the SRB, it took months to determine all the details. So, in this case, NASA could and did stand-down for as long as it took to rectify the issues.

In the event of the Miracle on the Hudson, the cause was known immediately.  That said, even then an RCA was done to determine the degree of the damage, if Sullenberg and Skiles had done the right thing, and what procedural changes needed to be made.  For example one item that came out of the post-landing analysis was that the engine restart checklist wasn’t really designed for low altitude failures such as they experienced.

Doing a full RCA of the bird strike on US Airways 1549 and stopping all over flights would have been an economic catastrophe.  But it was more than simply that. It was clear, based on the millions of flights per year, that this was a very isolated incident. The exact scenario was unlikely to happen again.  With Challenger, there had only been 24 previous flights, and ALL of them had experienced various issues, including blow-bys of the primary O-ring and other issues with the SRBs.

So back to our servers.  When can we just “get it running” versus taking downtime to do a  complete RCA vs other options?

I’d suggest one criteria is, “how often has this happened compared to our uptime?”

If we’ve just brought a database online and within the first week it has crashed, I’m probably going to want to do more of an immediate RCA.  If it’s been running for years and this is first time this issue has come up, I’m probably going to just get it running again and not be as adamant about an immediate RCA. I will most likely try to do an RCA afterwards, but again, I my not push for it as hard.

If the problem starts to repeat itself, I’m more likely to push for some sort of immediate RCA the next time the problem occurs.

What about the seriousness of the problem? If I have a server that’s consistently running at 20% CPU and every once in awhile it leaps up to 100% CPU for a few seconds and then goes back to 20% will I respond the same way as if it crashes and it takes me 10 minutes to get it back up? Maybe.  Is it a web-server for cat videos that I make a few hundred off of every month? Probably not. Is it a stock-trading server where those few seconds costing me thousands of dollars?  Yes, then I almost certainly will be attempting an RCA of some short.

Another factor would be, what’s involved in an RCA? Is it just a matter of copying some logs to someplace for later analysis and that will simply take a few seconds or minutes, or am I going to have to run a bunch of queries, collect data and do other items that may keep the server off-line for 30 minutes or more?

Ultimately, in most cases, it’s going to come down to balancing money and in the most extreme cases, lives.  Determining the RCA now, may save money later, but cost money now. On the other hand, not doing an RCA now might save money now, but might cost money later.  Some of it is a judgement call, some of it depends on factors you use to make your decision.

And yes, before anyone objects, I’m only very briefly touching upon the fact that often an RCA can still be done after getting things working again. I’m just touching upon the cases where it has to be done immediately or evidence may be lost.

So, are your criteria for when you do an RCA immediately vs. getting things running as soon as you can? I’d love to hear them.

And credit for the Photo by j zamora on Unsplash

Oil Change Time and a Rubber Ducky

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Sometimes, the inspiration for this blog comes from the strangest places. This time… it was an oil change.

I had been putting off changing my oil for far too long and finally took advantage of some free time last Friday to get it changed. I used to change it myself, but for some reason, in this new car (well new used car, but that’s a story for another day) I’ve always paid to get it changed. (And actually why I stopped changing it myself is also a blog post for another day.)

Anyway, I’ve twice now gone to the local Valvoline. This isn’t really an add for Valvoline specifically but more a comment on what I found interesting there.

So, most places where I’ve had my oil changed, you park, go in, give them your name and car keys and wait. Not here, they actually have you drive the car into the bay itself and you sit in the car the entire time. I think this is a bit more efficient, but since, instead of lifting the car, they have a pit under the car, I suppose they do risk someone driving their car into the pit (yes, it’s guarded by a low rail on either side, but you know there are drivers just that bad out there).

So, while sitting there I observed them doing two things I’m a huge fan of: using a checklist and calling out.

As I’ve talked about in my book and here in my own blogs, I love checklists. I recommend the book The Checklist Manifesto. They help reduce errors.  And while changing oil is fairly simple, mistakes do happen; the wrong oil gets put in, the drain plug isn’t properly tightened, too much gets put in, etc.

So hearing them call out and seeing them check off on the computer what they were doing, helps instill confidence. Now, I’m sure most, if not all oil change places do this, but if you’re sitting in the waiting room, you don’t get to see it.

But they also did something else which I found particularly interesting: they did a version of Pointing and Calling.  This is a very common practice in the Japanese railway system. One study showed it reduced accidents by almost 85%. So while changing my oil, the guy above would call out what he was doing. It was tough to hear everything he was calling out, but I know at one point the call was “4.5 Maxlife”  He then proceeded to put in what I presume was 4.5 quarts of the semi-synthetic oil into my engine (I know it was the right oil because I could see which nozzle he selected). I didn’t count the clicks, but I believe there was 9.  Now, other than the feedback of the 9 clicks, the guy in the pit couldn’t know for sure that it was the right oil and amount, but, I’m going to guess he had a computer terminal of his own and had his screen said “4 quarts standard” he’d have spoken up.  But even if he didn’t have a way of confirming the call, by speaking it out loud the guy above was engaging more of his brain in his task, which was more likely to reduce the chances of him making a mistake.

I left the oil change with a high confidence that they had done it right. And I was glad to know they actually were taking active steps to ensure that.

So, what about the rubber duck?

Well, a while back I started to pick up the habit of rubber duck debugging. Working at home, alone, it’s often hard to show another developer my code and ask, “Why isn’t this working?”  But, if I encounter a problem and I can’t seem to figure out why it’s not working. I now pull out a rubber duck and start working through the code line by line. It’s amazing how well this works.  I suspect that by taking the time to slow down to process the information and by engaging more of my brain (now the verbal and auditory portions), like pointing and calling, it helps bring more of my limited brain power to bear on the problem.  And if that doesn’t work, I still have my extended brain.

PS As a reminder, this coming Saturday I’m speaking at SQL Saturday Philadelphia. Don’t miss it!

Sharking

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The title refers to a term I had not given much thought to in years, if not perhaps decades. But first let me mention what prompted the memory.

This weekend my daughter was competing at the State Odyssey of the Mind competition in Binghamton, NY. While waiting for her team to compete, I noticed a member of one of the other teams walking around with a stuffed, cloth sharkfin pinned to the back of a sport jacket.

This reminded me of a t-shirt my mom made for me years back with a similar design.

So, you may be asking yourself, “why?” and perhaps asking “what’s the point of this particular blog post”.  I’ll endeavor to answer both. But first we have to jump back into the time machine and again go back to my days at RPI. The year is 1989 and I’m now helping out with the Student Orientation (SO) staff. We were a bunch of students who would return to RPI over the summer and help the incoming Freshman class get oriented while they visited RPI in prep coming in as students in the fall.

Back then, the ratio at RPI was pretty lopsided, it was 5 men for every one 1 women. This among other things lead to some women using the phrase, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” In a strictly mathematical sense this was in a way accurate, if a woman wanted to date, she had 5 men vying for her attention. The reality of course was much different. It meant that if a woman didn’t want to date, she still had 5 men vying for her attention. (Of course it was far more than that since things didn’t divvy up nearly as cleanly.)

This was a tough social environment and combine that with fairly geeky students who often didn’t develop good social skills in high school and you often ended up with a lot of awkward situations and honestly, some pretty bad behavior all around; hence the goods being odd.

And unfortunately, some SO staff weren’t immune from being problematic. We tried to self-police, but there were always the 1-2 men who would be extra friendly to the incoming women and like a shark swimming the waters, look for their easy prey. We called this sharking. We would look out for it among ourselves and try to stop anyone SO advisor we thought was doing it and if they were particular egregious, make sure they weren’t invited back the next year. But the problem definitely existed.

My mom, bless her heart made me a shirt with a shark fin on the back, not because I personally was a shark, or to mock the problem, but more to highlight the problem and help us be more self-aware.

So, this weekend I was reminded of sharking.

So why bring it up? Because, being a member of several communities, including IT savvy communities, caving, and others, I still see this as an ongoing problem; someone in a position of power or influence, preying upon the newcomers; often young women. Now it often can start out with the best of intentions and without the person meaning to. You see someone new, they ask for help. You decide to mentor them. You’re just being helpful, right? But then it becomes the extra friendly touch, the slight innuendo in a comment, the off-color joke or even the outright blatant consent violations.

Watch out for it. Don’t do it and if you catch others doing it, say something. Nip it in the bud. If you’re mentoring, mentor. Provide them with professional guidance and advice. Don’t use it as an opportunity to prey upon their naivete and lack of knowledge or experience. Remember, as a mentor, you are in a position of power and influence and so you should be like Spiderman and only use that power and influence for the greater good and to help them, not to help yourself.

And if you do for some reason find yourself slipping beyond the role of a mentor and your mentee also appears to be comfortable with this (hey, it does happen, we’re all human), then STOP BEING THEIR MENTOR.  Make it clear that you can’t do both. A mentor, by definition and nature, is a position of influence. Don’t mix that with relationships in a professional setting. Just don’t.

As many of you know, I love teaching, it’s a reason I’m a cave rescue instructor and a reason I teach at SQL Saturdays and at other events.  I encourage folks to teach and help mentor others.  But please, be aware of boundaries and keep it professional.

Oh and a final note, I’m not immune to my own follies and mistakes and if you ever catch me crossing a line, by all means call me out on it. I don’t want to be “that guy”.