Thursday, September 19, 2002

The value of backup systems One day last week, during the Santa Cruz County Fair (the fairgrounds are maybe a mile from here, making for horrendous traffic during that week), the power went out in mid-afternoon. I mention the fair, because power outages hereabouts are frequently due to errant drivers hitting power poles. I gulped, but my computers didn't: not one of the four boxes running at the time went down, nor either of the routers nor either of the hubs. When power reappeared a minute later, I thanked APC and their fine uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) once again. I have two BackUPS units supporting my main boxes, and two BackUPS Office units supporting the peripherals. I rarely think about the, but they always come through when I need them. No, this is not a paid endorsement. Just a comment on the value of backup systems. 7:21:23 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Tech writers do QA Guy Haas, immediate past president of Silicon Valley STC, is working up a blog on subjects STC, hoping to encourage discussion online. (Disclaimer: this is Guy's project, not sanctioned by STC.) He's trying out WebCrimson, new software that allows collaborative editing of blog entries. He's not quite ready for prime-time, so I'm not at liberty to include the address here. Well, we banged on it pretty hard this morning, and I mangled some of Guy's good work, discovering some problems with the WebCrimson interface and collaboration model. But we recovered, and documented the failure modes, and sent them off to the developers. I'd call it a good exercise in collaborative QA, demonstrating the value of technical writers in working out the bugs in alpha software. 7:12:43 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Tara Sue has company Our favorite congressional candidate, North Carolina's Tara Sue Grubb, has good company--another blogging Libertarian congressional candidate, also from North Carolina: Jennifer Medlock. Jennifer is kind enough to point to a third blogging candidate, Jim Capo, who's running for a seat in the North Carolina senate. So what is it about NC that they have three blogging candidates, and we (Silicon Valley and vicinity) have none? Is it the activism of Ed Cone? Is it the courage to put opinions online, without being massaged and filtered by a press secretary? Is it the only way to go for poorly-funded campaigns? Or is it the campaign style of the future, and we're behind the curve on this one? 7:03:28 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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