This topic comes up for me not necessarily as a rant, but as I was going through some old notes before tossing them away, and this issue came up. How much damage can an organization do to themselves by hiring discount, unqualified programming resources?

The answer: A hell of a lot.

If you own a small software development shop, do yourself a huge favor and keep reading.

Stupidity cost us about $250,000 over a 9 month period. Another $250,000 was lost for us in other means.

A previous company that I worked at had a habit of hiring low-cost coding staff to handle production quality servers- Not just any production machines… but the very hardware which was responsible for 100% of the revenue being generated for said company. This makes no sense as their client side programmers were generally top-notch, and among the more creative and competent that I have had the pleasure to work with.

Management also had a habit of protecting these junior staff members voraciously- for various reasons, but mainly economic. A single server-side programmer could cost two or three times more in salary to maintain. Also, some in the management felt that this staff member was a ‘worthy project’ that could become a superstar programmer someday. I mean, it worked for Darko Milicic during his stint with the Pistons, didn’t it?

I calculated that my previous employer definitely cost themselves $250,000 in lost cashmoney over a 9 month period for the mishaps they had in retaining ONE very junior server-side engineering resource. This was absolutely staggering to me. Another $250,000 could easily be accounted for in other means. I’ll get to that in a moment.

The other sources for my numbers are the assumptions that:

1. Yes, this programmer was causing problems nearly EVERY SINGLE DAY.
2. Five client/server development resources were utilized, at $20/hr in wage costs each time a bug needed to be fixed.
3. Eight QA staff were utilized, at $15/hr in wage costs to confirm said bug fix.
4. This underqualified developer introduced one bug per day, which took an average of six hours per bug to fix.
5. This individual worked for a period of 9 months, before finally being axed for causing a systemwide outage of all revenue generating products for a significant part of a business day.
6. Not entirely relevant, but said individual produced on average 15 lines of code per day, with the assumption of 21 working days per month. Vacation time is included in this count because this individual only really took one, and worked some weekends as well – so it all balances out.

The numbers I am leaving out are:

1. Costs to management salaries. The reason for this is twofold- one is that I don’t know how many staff members were involved in back-room decisionmaking each time we suffered downtime events. This ranges from one to four. Who knows…
2. Costs to my productivity. I was a systems admin, so it was my job to support the engineering staff. I had the unique experience of being able to read/understand code, but full well knew that I could not hold a candle to the proper engineers. In a nutshell, I could talk shop with them, and help diagnose problems. I was a bit faster than a plain old sysadmin at doing this. I was a good cheerleader at times. That’s about it.
3. Costs of contractors: During most of this 9 month period, we had consulting/contracting staff on board who had to shift gears to help fix problems on a near-regular basis. I simply did not accurately keep track of how often they had to drop whatever they were doing and scramble to help us.
4. The damage caused by spaghetti code. This is utterly incalculable. Each time new server-side programming staff were added they faced an absolute nightmare of a learning curve.
5. The amount of time lost by production server uptime – According to my notes we were down (and by that I mean not being able to process subscription material) for a period of nine total business days during that 9 month period. To this day I still don’t exactly know how many dollars per hour in transactions were being handled by those servers, so I can’t guess there. I won’t even bother to put a price tag on it, but it is the elephant in the room.

If I really do have to hazard a guess at the total cost of damage over 9 months, then I’ll say that stupidity cost us about USD $500,000 total. There is also the untold damage done to the reputation of the company, as subscribers probably grew tiresome of outages and took their business somewhere else.

How much damage can one incompetent programmer do to an organization? A hell of a lot.

In the end it isn’t my intention to throw anyone under the bus for the mistakes that were made. Guilty parties all know who they are, and to some degree or another, they all paid for it already, so there’s no need to flog that dead horse all over again.

The underqualified individual who boasted of general programming expertise which he did not have faced the prospect of never finding work in a proper engineering environment again. Management who felt they were saving money by having this resource around because of cost-effectiveness are facing the prospect of their entire company going down the tubes because the server-side codebase is nearly unmaintainable, among other things. Those of us who stuck around trying to fix the situation paid for it with a few sleepless nights, and the agony of ‘Heisenbug’ code which was nigh near unpossible to debug or maintain effectively.

I learned many things myself. I used to never document very well. Because of the insanity I was forced to deal with, I feel I have come a long way in that regard. I enjoy documenting now. It’s saved my ass a number of times since then.

Over a year after the staff member was let go, the server programmers were still fixing bugs.

Also, a young and promising programmer who was forced to help debug and manage the fix processes on a regular basis learned a hell of a lot from these failures, and it will serve him tremendously in his career as time goes on. This is the type of education you just can’t get in college. Over a year after the staff member was let go, he was still fixing bugs. The thing is, he’s already bailed on this company and isn’t looking back. If there was someone worth focusing on and making into your future team nucleus… this guy was the one.

What’s done is done, and hopefully dear reader, if you’re in management or if you own a small company, you won’t make the same mistakes that they did. I implore you to hire competent people. Don’t cheap out in that regard. It will cost you a whole lot more than you think.

The Sarawak Chamber is the largest known underground chamber of its kind in the world. It is part of the ‘Good Luck Cave’ system which is located in Gunung Mulu National Park, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

The chamber is not yet fully explored, and roughly measures about 700m (2,300 feet) long, 400m (1,300 feet) wide and at least 70m (230 feet) high. To get a sense of how much space this is, imagine the amount of land you would need to park ten Boeing 747-400 aircraft in line.  That’s a lot of space! The irregular shape of Sarawak Chamber would probably fit at least 30 more inside if the ground was flat, and the entrance was big enough… well, it’s safe to say that I would have to be making a good number of assumptions indeed. In any event- It’s BIG.

There are no good photos of the chamber because it’s rather difficult to get to, and lugging along a light source powerful enough to light up the entire chamber just to get a photograph is not a trek that would provide a very good bang for the buck.

The story of the initial discovery itself is quite interesting as well. Andy Eavis, Dave Checkley, and Tony White – all highly accomplished spelologists wandered into the chamber not quite realizing what they were in. At some point they realized from the air and how sound carried that they were inside a large chamber, but their lights were not powerful enough to see where the border walls were. Imagine the terror of not knowing where the walls are, and that you’re just in the dark somewhere underground, clambering about in a field littered with giant boulders.

One of the men had a panic attack (the other two won’t say who of course) and they spent some time just trying to find a wall so that they could make a bearing. The whole story is documented in greater detail in the book “Underground Worlds” by Donald Jackson.

There are few places left on Earth that inspire such wild imagination of the unknown.

Gary Hobostein, my new comic strip

Shameless plug alert!

This is something I’ve started as a bit of an odd side project.

It’s a rather mature and cheeky webcomic about a strange character named Gary Hobostein.

Those of you who know of my odd sense of humor may find these strips entertaining- or absolutely horrifying. It’s your call

I haven’t been posting much on here this month because of a trip to Paris, and a generally busy working schedule. Sorry about that. I did take a lot of pictures while traveling though.

Warning- this may not be really all that funny unless you are a database administrator or a geek with the right knowledge. This rather silly product I am working with stores its data in the backend via a Microsoft SQL Server database. There’s nothing wrong with that… but on further examination of the schema I found a pretty ridiculous jewel of a table setup. Click on the picture to see the bloody details.

For those not technically inclined- this is precisely NOT how you would utilize a relational database server. It’s poor design, and rather an extreme and laughable example.

Octomom. Patron saint of the Clown Car. Image by davidvogler@flickr

I’m beginning to wonder if something really unavoidably bad has happened to the core of American society. I used to think that the rise of religious zealotry was one of the biggest issues we face internally as a nation and as a (relatively) educated people, but now I realize that is only the tip of the tidal wave.

Yeehaw. This is where we are headed it seems.

For people like Nadya Suleman to actually make a living (and profit handsomely) out of being basically useless outside of being a vaginal clown car is a clear sign that something is wrong with us all. Her poor kids are innocent at this point, but they’re really going to be caught in the swirling whirlpool of feces as they get older. This is a woman who successfully sued her former employer for USD $160,000- and then spent $100k of it on in vitro fertilization so she could be a famous garden sow. Now she is going as far to try and trademark the term ‘Octomom’ and possibly build a franchise out of it all. Boy, I can’t wait to be able to buy a case of Octomom condoms, or some Octomom official sports drink… in “Sweaty Crotch Fruit” flavor.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Hotel.

Give it up for the guitar army. YEAAAAAH!

The rise of the idiocracy is at hand. It’s sobering how similar it is to the dark comedy “Idiocracy” by Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis & Butthead. There’s a man who knows something about mocking stupidity, and he crafted a distopia so frighteningly real (yet bonesnappingly funny) for what was a relatively low budget.

It’s really unfortunate how 20th Century Fox completely dumped the promotion of the movie, and tried their best to kill it. In any event that gave it the street cred that it needed to become a true cult classic. Watch the film- it will grab you by the neck in the first five minutes and you will be hooked- guaranteed. If in the beginning you were indifferent about people like Octomom, you’ll be pretty disgusted by the end.

Is this what we have to look forward to?

In conclusion however, the only thing that I can say that even I am guilty of helping perpetuate this idea that being ‘famous’ is the end that justifies the means. I’m sitting here writing about how stupid someone else is, and contributing to their legacy- even if that legacy is sheer idiocy. You as the reader are sitting here reading about my rant, and contributing because of an innate curiousity- whether you agree with me or not does not matter.

It doesn’t change the fact that someone like Octomom is famous and quote possibly can continue to hold the public eye’s attention. The type of attention doesn’t matter any more. Captivating, or repulsive- attention like this generates money.

We’re doomed!

Does this really need a freaking sign? Picture is non related to the iPhone.

Is your 1st edition or 3G iPhone home button stuck?

Does it take multiple presses to get back to the home screen?

Does it sometimes not respond at all to the touch, even though the clicker mechanism seems to be intact and not making any grinding noises?

Is your phone no longer under warranty so you fear those sales reps er… Genius Bar technicians are going to try to gouge you on repair costs?

Is your phone not going to be serviceable because it’s been jailbroken?

Well, I’m not saying I have all the answers, but consider this before you take matters into your own hands and begin dissecting your iPhone looking for a way to replace the switch.

This is my three-step guide on trying to fix the problem:

1. Buy or borrow a blower that you would use for camera gear. Not one of those rinky dink ones- but something like this Giottos Rocket Blower- which should set you back about $13 or so. Even if this process doesn’t fix the problem, you should own one of these things if you have ANY other electronic equipment.
2. Depress the home button, and then guide the nozzle into the thin gap where the button and body meet.
3. Squeeze the hell out of the blower a bunch of times (it took me about 20-30 shots) and vary your position around the button if you feel inclined to.

The whole point of this exercise is to try and lodge free any dust & debris which may have accumulated in the home switch itself. While it seems unlikely, this fix worked for me. So in my super-large sample set of one person, I have achieved a 100% success rate!

Again, your mileage may vary- but if i’ve saved you a trip into the iPhone innards by having to disassemble it, only to realize that access to the motherboard where the button (and it’s popple) are limited at best- then you’re welcome.

Otherwise, if it didn’t work, i apologize. But at the very least you are now in possession of a useful cleaning tool, and you have a legitimate reason to try and kick my ass if were to ever meet in person.

Thanks for reading!

Some workers at Alang, by carrieteicher@flickr

Alang is where ships of all sizes and nationalities go to die.
Located on the western coast of India, the great differences in shoreline between low and high tides allow ships to easily beach themselves where they are then disassembled on the spot. Dozens of ships are broken up here every year, and tens of thousands of workers flock here to earn a living in what could best be described as a free-for-all involving hand labor, blowtorches, and hammers.

It’s not easy work. Aside from the relatively low pay (by the civilized world’s standards), there are many hazards on the job. You could get crushed by falling steel components from other workers too hastily blowtorching beams above you. You could get cut up by exposed steel (metal versus flesh… metal usually wins). You could weld your way through what you thought was a bulkhead but actually was filled with fuel vapors (boom!). You could inhale too much asbestos (from older ships) and we all know what happens with that. I could go on, but frankly it’s pretty clear that there are all sorts of physical, chemical, and biological hazards from this sort of work. Health insurance for the workers? Fuggedaboudit! You’re lucky enough to have a place to sleep in the shantytown when your shift is done.

On the flip side of the gruesome human toll being inflicted from daily grind, the amount of recycled materials that are accumulated and resold by the breakers at Alang are truly staggering. Aside from the millions of tons of steel that are reclaimed every year, there is a vast amount of copper wire, brass, electronic components, wood, aluminum – basically all of the things that would be on a ship that was paid off to the shipyard. It also must be stated that the alternative of not having a job versus the chance to strike a better life for your family is part of the allure of working here.

Is it all worth it in the name of recycling? And who really profits from all of this? That’s for you to decide. For now, behold the spectacle that is Alang.

Picture taken by Gabuchan@Flickr

Recycling light bulbs, by SwiatoSlaw WojTkowiak@flickr

Stack of reclaimed windows, by toujjval@flickr

Part of the Alang Yards, by carrieteicher@flickr

Good job, Yahoo.

Republic of Korea's King Sejong the Great

The battleship is dead!

No navy has built a new one since the close of World War II, well over 60 years ago. The concept of an all-gun surface warship is basically a relic from a time past. Imagine if the term “carriage” was used in a car review for something modern like a Lamborghini Gallardo. It would be out of place, and makes the writer sound less intelligent than they may be.

For example in this recent article by Paul Alexander of the API, he uses the word ‘battleship’:

…Japan has deployed battleships and Patriot missile interceptors off its northern coast to shoot down any rocket debris that the North has said might fall over the area…

Sure you could argue this is just petty semantics but unfortunately makes the writer look ill-informed about the basics of contemporary naval military technology. I’m sure that Paul is not a stupid fellow though- but it is a mistake that he is helping to perpetuate. Unfortunately for him what is normally a goof that only happens in conversation bit him with a published article on the web.

So What’s The Solution Then?

The correct terminology in this case is “surface warship”, but you can get away with “guided missile destroyer” as a blanket term for the blunt end of the stick of naval power. It’s a good approximation for the outdated term “battleship” even if you’re not entirely sure of what specific surface assets are involved.

Boats versus Ships

Furthermore, don’t call guided missile destroyers “boats”. There is a size difference implied. Boats are water craft that can be hauled aboard a ship. On a purely technical level you would call that a skiff- but for all practical purposes- Boats are small – play it safe and imagine something that can fit on a flatbed trailer- that’s a boat. Anything bigger than that? It’s a ship.

The only exception to this are submarines. Those are commonly called boats even if they are stupendously huge.

Happy Birthday by redrocker_9@flickr

Feliz cumple.... by Espace vitto

Pattern by d's 2nd@flickr

Down the road, by humanwarmth@flickr

Pogled sa zvjezdarnice by *shana@flickr

Trio, by La Señorita Pil

To go to heaven, by ~ Araien ~@flickr

Dargın mıyız ? by Derya Hacalaki@flickr

Now for the fun part. These pictures come from two of the WORST digital cameras ever manufactured. Again- the pictures are absolutely beautiful and nothing bad can really be said about them… but the hardware is almost universally derided.

The first four photos were taken with a Polaroid i-Zone 550, a camera regarded as a toy. Its own user base tends to not really like it all that much. Not only a camera, it also comes with a built-in MP3 player, and unfortunately is good at neither task. Advertised as a 5.1 megapixel camera, it was shown to be a 3MP CCD that was upsampled to meet the specification- yet look at the nice shots that came out of the camera in this particular case.

The next four shots were taken with a Pentax Optio E-10, a camera known for its technical crappiness and generally hate-filled user reviews, and for its CCD imager chip randomly dying or batteries mysteriously being drained in abnormally short times.

Again, this is proof that the camera really does not make you a better photographer. Good tools help, but that’s all they are- tools. Many pixel-peepers today simply fail to grasp that.