Dave McNamee Weblog

Application Monitoring

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 02:00:15 GMT

There's a pretty good article in Computerworld about application monitoring. It's true that it's tough to measure the user's experience with automated monitoring. At ITS, we host a large number of applications and we have people who are developing better ways of determining if those applications are performing as advertised. It's not a service that we have sold in the past, but I think there is good market potential to sell these kinds of services.

BCS

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 04:57:47 GMT

I just want to say publicly that I think the BCS is the worst racket in college sports. I know, it's March and I should be thinking about basketball and spring training, but I just had to express myself about the BCS. The addition of a fifth BCS bowl game is much like the 1% raise state employees will receive in this year's budget. It's not a lot but we're grateful for it.

SOA: Nothing Magic or New

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 02:39:53 GMT

Here's another good article about SOA in the age of web services.

Favorite Books, Part 2

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 02:37:23 GMT

I got to thinking about my favorite books from other genres besides fiction. Here are my top three business books:

Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box by the Arbinger Institute. This book is written as a story about a manager that learns about being true to himself and to others. Very good.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni. If you have questions about why teams often don't work, this book pretty much covers it.

Finally, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by Jim Collins. If you are considering reading Built to Last by the same author just skip it and read this prequel. The principle of "getting the right people on the bus" really rang true to me.

Favorite Books

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 14:55:44 GMT

I am currently re-reading one of my favorite books, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you haven't read it, here is a brief synopsis:

The heroine of the book is the heiress of a great transcontinental railroad, which she operates with supreme competence. While she pursues excellence and achievement, almost everyone around her, including her brother, the president of the railroad, is only interested in avoiding blame and "social issues." As conditions get worse due to draconian government regulations, industrialists of the same mindset as our heroine begin to dissappear, closing their factories down without notice. Our heroine tries to discover the mystery of their dissappearance, and to avoid dissappearing herself. Set in the mid 20th century, you get the feel that every scene should be decorated in art deco style.

I like this book because I agree with the tenet that truly great people create value for society. They leave it better off than they found it.

Some of my other favorite books (fiction) include:

Ender's Game by local author Orson Scott Card
The Corps Series by W.E.B. Griffin
and of course "THE Trilogy" as my dad calls it, from the venerable J.R.R. Tolkien

Gliding

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 19:13:01 GMT

I have recently (within the past few months) decided that I am no longer going to pursue a career as an airline pilot. It's been a tough decision, but I would rather be home with my family on a daily basis than fly jets. Plus, I would have to significantly decrease my family's standard of living for a decade before we were back up to where we are now.

I am definitely not giving up flying, though. It's like an inoperable brain tumor-impossible to be extracted from my life. I will continue to work part time as a CFI. Eventually I will feel compelled to buy my own airplane. I am also very interested in becoming a glider pilot, maybe even a glider CFI. About a month ago I paid a visit to Morgan Valley Soaring where the owner expressed an interest in me becoming a CFIG so he could get out of the back seat of their old, uncomfortable Schweizer 2-33. It sounds like fun to me.

Boris Trajkovski

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 13:10:34 GMT

The President of Macedonia perished in a King Air. It's the old fog/rain/mountainside story. I am an instrument-rated pilot, so I can imagine the conditions and what the pilots were dealing with. I don't think King Airs have CVRs, and I am curious what kind of radar coverage they have in Macedonia, so we might not ever know if the pilots even knew they were in trouble.