Greenland paddle from a tree, Step 1 - 19 January 2023

Birch trees, particularly silver birch, seem to be popular for landscaping in our area.   Unfortunately, they seem to have a short lifetime as trees go, something around 40-50 years in our area.  To be honest, I am not sure the particular trees I am talking about are silver birch, but that is my best guess.  About 40 years ago, the builder of our neighborhood put three birch trees in our back yard as specimen trees.  They formed a nice contrast against the dominant evergreens (cedar, fir, and a redwood or two - I think the redwood is a specimen tree, too, by the way), but the birches never really liked out winters.  At least, they were constantly shedding smaller branches, but the snowloads would bring down major parts of the tree. 

In a winter storm about five years ago (c. 2018), the two larger trees were snapped off.  One was badly damaged and I removed it, while the other was severly damaged and I was hoping it would recover.  Well, after four years, I decided it was not going to recover, that it was worsening to the point that it was threatening to fall on the house, so I took it down.

Most of the 40-foot-plus tree became bark mulch or firewood, but I kept a 12-foot section from the base of the tree.  My plan is to make a Greenland paddle from it.  With luck, I might even be able to get two paddles from it.  I hope to be able to get an 8-10-foot 8x8 out of the trunk that I can use for the paddles.

I started by leaving the trunk on sawhorses outside the garage.  While this was convenient and gave me free space in the garage (workshop), I think it greatly slowed the drying of the wood that is required to work it.  I used a small chainsaw to remove one side (hidden on the bottom in the photo) in a crude styling of an Alaskan sawmill, but that did not work well.  I finally decided my only option was to bring the log inside the protected space of the house - the unheated garage will keep the log out of the rain.

The log has been sitting in the garage for about two weeks, and it is already looking drier.  This could be wishful thinking; likely is wishful thinking.  As an experiment last night, I took an electric planer and started trying to remove the bark as a poor-man's jointer.  The chainsaw was faster but I think the planer produces much better results.  The resulting wood is prettier than I expected.  All the talk of Baltic birch brings plain grain to my mind, and this looks to be more interesting.  The interesting bit may be planed off in the end.  We shall see.

Unofficially, my moisture meter shows 34%.  I suspect this is optimistic as most of the readings are "off the charts" - too moist to measure.  I hope a few more weeks in the garage will show the needle moving in the right direction.

Speaker of the House 2023, part deux - 15 January 2023

Mr. McCarthy has won his Speakership on the fifteenth (15th) voting round.  This is a 100-year-old record, that is, more voting rounds required than any Speaker in 100 years.  In fact, it has taken one (1) voting round in each opportunity in the last 100 years.  The final holdout seems to have been Matt Gaetz, R-FL.  The House immediately adjourned and then took up foolish votes on the Monday when they returned to the chambers.  We now face a vote on the debt ceiling and the Republicans are again threatening a default.  Yes, there are a few playing games that border on default (e.g., "pay debt interest, military, Social Security, and Medicare bills first" and some are proposing to postpone paying foreign debt holders), but none of these proposals are taken seriously.  In particular, the US payment obligations are so complex and intermingled that it is not clear how to separate out these types ("interest, military, ...") of payments from other types of payments.  Mayhem.  

There have also been a handful of Secret documents found in old offices that were used by President Biden after he left the VP position.  Biden has promptly searched for additional documents and handed them all over.  This is in sharp contrast with Trump's troubles wherein he keeps documents that he is supposed to turn over, and he does not seem to look for documents when asked (he says he looked for documents, but then a search under subpoena finds more documents).  Anyway, Trump obstructs, Biden complies, and the press seems to think the two are somehow equivalent.

The real problem is  Representative George Santos, R-NY.  He appears to be a serial liar, have some real money problems, and running from Brazilian authorities for fraud there.  So Santos hogs headlines that should be about Trump's problems.  Santos is also important because he was a critical vote for McCarthy (in the opening paragraph), and it is not clear McCarthy would be Speaker today were it not for Santos and his vote.  As a result, McCarthy and his team are just ignoring the Santos problem.  The Santos Problem?  Yeah, a demonstrated liar was seated as a Republican Representative in Congress.  The seating of Santos should have been postponed until the legal troubles were sorted out, but this would likely require a replacement and the replacement would likely be a Democrat and so McCarthy et al are just ignoring the problem.  with Republicans, it is always projection.  Today, fraud, tomorrow voting fraud, and so on.

Speaker of the House 2023 - 5 January 2023

Nine votes and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) has yet to meet the required majority for a win as Speaker of the House 2023-2024.  The BBC has a balanced summary of possible outcomes, McCarthy wins (eventually), McCarthy withdraws, or Dems join up with "centrist" Republicans to select a compromise candidate (Republican). Finally, many commentators are saying that a McCarthy loss (either the second or third BBC conclusions) would lead to the end of McCarthy's political career.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64170729

Although I respect the BBC and generally agree with their analysis, many commentators are falling into the trap that the current crop of Republicans in Congress are old-style politicians, willing to be pragmatic and compromise.  The last few years, indeed, the last few decades since Gingrich, have demonstrated that the old-style Republican no longer exists in Congress and the Tea Party Republicans (including QANON) have taken over.  As a result, we can not use reasoning or pragmatism to predict their behavior.  The current Republican party is dominated by burn-it-all-down members.  Rather like the dog that catches the car after chasing it, they do not know what to do nor how to govern.

McCarthy wins.  I have to see this as the most likely end game.  McCarthy (and his MAGA/Tea Party opponents) have never recognized a loss.  McCarthy will keep pounding until he wins.  The others will finally succumb to loss of honor and give in.  This is the only real way that the Republican House can get to the desired games of investigations, impeachments, and other foolery that they want to pursue.  Eventually, they will give in at this round and advance to the next round.  Advance to the next round?  Well, move to the next round.

McCarthy withdraws.  Although this might make sense with an old-style Republican operating on pragmatism, that does not describe McCarthy.  After two years, Trump still refuses to acknowledge that he lost, and there is no reason that McCarthy should.  Like Trump, he should simply call his fellow Republicans corrupt and object to the cheating voters!  Oh, wait.  Nevermind.

Democratic-Republican compromise candidate.  Again, this makes sense in an old-style Republican pragmatism, but the MAGA and Tea Party wedge of the Republican party would never let the resulting leadership function.  The Democrats might get some committee chairs, some rules changes, and other benefits, but the MAGATs and Qanoners would burn down the Congress.  The "moderate" Republicans that might join this D-R group might argue for compromise to advance their agenda, but there are three problems with this compromise.  First, there are no more moderate Republicans; they are extinct.  I think McCain may have been the last.  Second, the MAGATs and Qanon wedge would stop all progress.  And third, who would want the job?  No Democrat would accept and there are no Republicans that could handle it (no credible alternatives to McCarthy).  Boehner and Ryan were the last two to try, they gave up, and neither of them was a shining example of anything in the first place.  Trump has shown that he is toast, has no weight anymore in the Republican party.  Any Democrat that tried would suffer worse than McCarthy from Boebert, Goetz, and Goser.  

Not considered by the BBC, but there is discussion that an outsider might be selected as a compromise candidate.  Perhaps a now-retired Republican congressmember or Trump himself might be put into nomination.  I really cannot see that.

Somehow, this will all get sorted out and a Speaker will be elected.  Then we descend into the madness that is today's MAGA-Tea Party.  There will be an endless display of regressive investigations, unsubstantiated impeachments, and pointless government shut-downs.  Good times to come.

Photo: Spencer Ridge (view from), Eugene OR, December 2022

Server Consolidation and Virtualization with IBM CDAT - 4 January 2023

In times gone by, I worked for IBM and managed a development group writing system software for Windows running on IBM x-series systems.  This was about 2001-2005, give or take.  We started to do a lot of systems work with VMware and Microsoft on virtualization.  VMware was independent (a start-up) and Microsoft bought "the other" virtualization start-up for x86.  The Microsoft product is now Azure, basically.  

IBM had a lot of customers totally immersed in virtualization, but on mainframes.  Because IBM more or less created virtualization (as a product), their monitor software was called "VM".  You can do that with names when you are first into the market.  But virtualization was a strange, new beast in the x86 world.  (Remember that x86 was still almost pure 32-bit, and AMD64 had only recently been announced; Intel had Itanium as their 64-bit architecture.  But that is a conversation for another day.)  

In working with customers to understand requirements for virtualization on x86, it became clear that customers did not really understand it.  The customers were used to a business model in which every Windows server application got its own (physical) machine.  It was said that "Windows apps do not play well together."  Server-class PCs were consider cheap, about $10K (USD) or so, cheap compared to mainframes based on purchase price, so a new app or new capacity on an existing app meant that the business would buy a new server.  Thus, there were file servers, mail servers, web servers, and business app servers, and each of these was a physical server in a rack.  As capacity demands rose, buying a new physical server became more expensive, so some organizations started looking at virtualization as a solution.

The first problem they faced was estimating capacity.  Since every PC server ran its own app, there was always plenty of performance headroom - well, until there was not.  Capacity was usually easily solved by buying a new, bigger server.  With the march of Moore's Law, this was usually a no-brainer.  As the old server ran out of capacity and warranty, then buying a new server got one all sorts of benefits - faster CPU clock, more memory, faster disks, bigger disks, and a new warranty.  This worked pretty well on a server-by-server basis, but it became clear that replacing all the servers every 2-3 years was expensive across the server-room.  Virtualization came as the answer - buy fewer new servers.  Pretty good, but how many to buy?  Nobody bothered to collect performance data on PC servers.  Until a server started running out of capacity, no one cared becasue each app was on its own server.  No competition between apps means no problems.

Back to my software development group.  There was a delay in the hardware schedule that caused a couple of software engineers to have nothing to do for a couple of months.  I kicked around some ideas for short projects with two colleagues, Jim and Ted (I cannot recall Ted's real name, so let us just run with Ted).  I do not recall which of us actually invented the idea, but our conversation converged on a Windows-based tool that would reach out to Windows servers and collect performance and capacity snapshots, collect the data into a database, then analyze the database to recommend virtualizationo consolitation plans.  This became the Analysis part of the tool.

One of the simplest customer problems was that they lacked actual inventory data - they had no list of servers or applications that they were running.  Well, running through lists or ranges of IP addresses and poking ports for responses would quickly and easily find and identify the Windows Servers.  This became the Discovery part of the tool.  

Consolidation using virtualization was the objective, so the tool took on the working name of CDAT, for (server) Consolidation Discovery and Analysis Tool.  I regret that we did not get clever and call it something like "BlueScope", "BlueWindow", or some other IBM blue-colored name, but we were engineers and we missed the opportunity.  Seriously, I regret missing this obvious hook.

Customers loved it.  IBM could walk in with a laptop, plug into the customer's network, and run silently and unobtrusively to collect the data required.  The customer needed to enter some network passwords, but that was about it.  The tool did all the data collection automagically.

IBM sales folks love it.   In the x86 Server space, IBMwas an also-ran.  HP, Dell, and Compaq ran the x86 Server world.  IBM got a chance when HP bought Dell.  Customers usually sought three competing bids, so when Compaq "disappeared" into HP, IBM became the their option, even if HP and Dell were the only "real" players.  To exploit the new foot-in-the-door to become the third bid, the technical support engineer could collect data for a day or a week, spend a little time with spreadsheet and make a highly tailored proposal for the customer.  In contrast, HP and Dell salespeople came in with generic, one-size-fits-all proposals (e.g., 4:1 consolidation for everything).  In contrast, IBM could propose that certain apps remain on dedicated servers, that a middle class of apps could be consilidated at various ratios from 2:1 to 8:1, and a third class of apps could be consolidated at 20:1 or higher.  

The customers were consistently stunned with the IBM proposal.  The proposal named systems that the customer recognized.  It gave supporting statistics for consolidation ratios.  The data could even be sorted the customer's servers into convenient groups according to their resource demands:  memory consumption, CPU consumption, and network consumption.  

As a special deal, I could look at the data and give them the names of apps that were memory leakers and CPU runaways.  I was using a bit of probability, but any Windows app that consumed all 4Gby of memory was either a database server or had a memory leak.  If the admin checked memory usage after the next schedule reboot, they could tell quickly (low memory after boot on a high memory consuming server meant memory leak).  The CPU looper was more speculative, but very few x86 servers actually needed their CPU capacity - most apps were (literally) 1% utilization or less.

As a result, the IBM salespeople presented the customer with highly detailed recommendations that could ben supported with data.  Recommendations that were tailored to the customer's actual needs.  Far better than one-size-fits-all from the other vendors.

Customers loved CDAT.  They would often quickly agree to a prototype - buy 5-10 servers from IBM xSeries and apply part of the consolidation plan using virtualization.  If this worked, the customer was positioned to buy more servers from IBM, ultimately replacing their server hardware.  

In the first year of CDAT use, IBM xSeries used it to secure about $10M in business.  The second year, $20M, and the third year, $40M.  Pretty good.  So good, that CDAT was eventually expanded to cover pSeries AIX systems for server consolidation.  the 

I have two regrets coming out of the experience.  I mentioned my poor choice of names above, and that is big.  Names like "Watson" or "BlueSphere" resonate with people.  The other regret is that I did not push and advocate CDAT as much as I should have.  My attidude was, "yeah, theis is cool, but it was pretty easy."  Bad answer.  The customers loved it, and I should have pushed hard to increase the exposure (within IBM) and add features.  My team could have been seen as the core of a $50M/year business.  Instead, we were neglected.  In retrospect, a missed opportunity on a large scale.  Not smart.

So that is the story of CDAT.

Here is a Computerworld article from 2007 that describes CDAT for public consumption.  As I left in 2005, CDAT outlived me by years.

https://www2.computerworld.co.nz/article/497013/ibm_takes_server_consolidation_tool_smbs/ 

Dated November 2007, the article reports in part:

IBM takes server consolidation tool to SMBs

IBM has just launched an analysis tool that it believes will help businesses find under-utilised x86 servers that could profitably be consolidated.

The vendor believes that server consolidation using virtualisation technology can save up to 60% in IT costs while quadrupling computing utilisation.

Big Blue has expanded its Consolidation Discovery and Analysis Tool (CDAT) to allow IBM resellers and integrators to evaluate smaller environments of 50 servers or fewer. IBM says it is also providing an additional end-user service, Server Consolidation Factory, at US$500 (NZ$655) per 50 servers, which it claims is "up to five times less expensive than competitive services".

As an example, IBM integrator Mainline Information Systems performed a successful CDAT evaluation for a 575-employee client, Frankenmuth Mutual Insurance Company, a US-based property and casualty insurer, which has since virtualised its server farm.

A Quiet Week - 1 January 2023

Tradition dictates that the last week of the calendar year is a quiet one, and 2022 has been no exception.  We spent some holiday time in Eugene, OR (source of the photo is Spencer Butte) after a delay due to an ice storm (freezing rain).  It was a quiet drive home and some quiet days since.  We did get miscellaneous wind storms that required clean up and a snowstorm that required a bit of shovel work, but nothing serious.

Along with the clean up from the windstorms, I have continued pruning.  Yesterday, I pruned Grandma's climbing rose by our back deck.  We took some cuttings from the original Grandma's rose at Keats Island, rooted them, and planted them by the back deck.  I say "planted" - it was barely more than sticking them in the ground.  The cuttings have happily taken to their new location and provide color in the spring.  I plan to build a rose arbor this year to allow them to better flaunt their colors.  The original rose at the cabin continues, having survived the trauma of construction and the repeated attacks of local deer.  It is now on an ad-hoc trellis that keeps the bulk of the plants above the reach of deer, so it is also quite happy.  The Keats trellis was very much a spur-of-the-moment design from lumber on-hand, so I am now in the mode of continuous repairs.  Last summer, I had to realign a couple timbers and re-screw them together.  I tried to find a recent photo of the trellis but I seem to have focused my photographic energies on other interests.  I will have to get out the large ladder to accomplish anything in 2023.

To anyone reading - Happy New Year!  May 2023 bring successes and peace.