as an isolationist

The past 2 weeks was possibly one of those weeks where I had dreams every night of all sorts of strange events. I was jolted out of bed once in the morning at 6+ am by a vibration of my phone (silent mode) that was one metre away from me, and I normally wouldn't have noticed. I was woken up at 5+ am almost everyday because yaya was choking over her cough in her sleep. I met up with a network vendor today, the vendor asked why my namecard says applications, and said that nobody will know that I don't have any infra experience. Passed.

So I was just looking back at all the events and thinking about how different I am from others, prompted by a HR guy asking me what kind of education I went through to produce a someone like me (apparently word of mouth has spreaded that I have proven that any applications person without network/infra background can learn and pick up the knowledge easily), because he wants to hire more people like me, which was flattering, but at the same time means I have a higher market value. Hmph.

Background: I was assigned a new role 2 months ago, covering both application and infra (server and network) security, so it's like a third dimension to my work.

I also got hooked on a book, Susan Cain's Quiet, that really helps me understand myself better, and I will extract some content here:

Tom DeMarco, a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild team of consultants... noticed that some workspaces were a lot more densely packed than others. He wondered what effect all that social interaction had on performance. To find out, De Marco and his colleague Timothy Lister devised a study called the Coding War Games. The purpose of the games was to identify the characteristics of the best and worst computer programmers; more than six hundred developers from ninety-two different companies participated. Each designed, coded, and tested a program, working in his normal office space during business hours. Each participant was also assigned a partner from the same company. The partners worked separately, however, without any communication, a feature of the games that turned out to be critical.

When the results came in, they revealed an enormous performance gap. The best outperformed the worst by a 10:1 ratio. The top performers were also about 2.5 times better than the media. When DeMarco and Lister tried to figure out what accounted for this astonishing range, the factors that you'd think would matter - such as years of experience, salary, even the time spent completing the work - had little correlation to the outcome. Programmers with ten years' experience did no better than those with two years. The half who performed above the median earned less than 10% more than the half below - even though they were almost twice as good. The programers who turned in "zero-defect" work took slightly less, not more, time to complete the exercise than those who made mistakes.

It was a mystery with one intriguing clue: programers from the same companies performed at more or less the same level, even though they hadn't worked together. That's because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption. 62% of the best performers said that their work space was acceptably private, compared to only 19% of the worst performers; 76% of the worst performers but only 38% of the top performers said that people often interrupted them needlessly.

So you know my secret - isolation.

Hint: When your interrupt-ers (irritating-like-hell-mates-or-users) are on leave, you will be able to perform better.

can i have your email address?

Yesterday I received a call from a guy who claimed to be from HP.

Him: Are you the IT manager?

Me: Who are you looking for?

Him: I am looking for the IT manager.

Me: How did you get my number?

Him: Your CTO gave me your number.

Me: What is his name?

Him: *gibberish*

Me: Sorry that's not my CTO.

Him: Sorry I am from India and I am not good with chinese names.

Me: Spell it to me.

Him: *spelt wrongly*

Me: Whose names did he give you?

Him: Lee which is this number and another person *he got the name and number right*

Me: Ok, why didn't you talk with him?

Him: He said he was busy and told me to call you instead.

*running through my head was - my account management scope also covers getting redirected calls when my user is busy*

Me: What do you want?

Him: I want to know whether you have any problems.

Me: What problems do I have?

Him: Do you have any server or network problems.

Me: No.

Him: Are you looking to buy any servers in the next 6 months?

Me: Yes.

Him: How much is your budget?

Me: I don't know.

Him: How much do you intend to spend in the next 6 months?

Me: I don't know.

Him: How big is your company?

Me: Are you really from HP?

Him: Yes I am from HP.

Me: Our account manager should be able to tell you how big we are because they meet us every month.

Him: Are you able to give me a rough estimate?

Me: No.

Him: 100, 1000?

Me: What is our account manager's name?

Him: Ok nevermind. What is your name?

Me: *gave my name*

Him: And your job title?

Me: I thought you said I am the IT manager?

Him: Are you the IT manager?

Me: Well you said the CTO said I am the IT manager.

Him: Ok. Can I have your email address?

Me: How do I check that you are from HP? I would want to confirm your identity before I release my email to you.

Him: Ok I am Frank.

Me: What's your email address?

Him: You don't need my email address, you just need to give me your email address and I will email you our product brochures.

Me: I will email you my email address. What is your email address?

Him: I don't have my email set up yet.

Me: You said you will be emailing me, but you don't have your email set up yet?

Him: We will send you from another email.

Me: Ok, then what is your email address?

Him: I don't have an email address.

Me: Will you be able to give me your colleagues' or boss' email address?

Him: I don't have anyone with me right now.

Me: How am I supposed to believe you?

Him: Ok I will get someone else to call you.

Me: Ok.

He hasn't called back. Maybe his HP doesnt stand for the HP we know of. Did I say I must also thank the CTO for giving my number to an unknown fella.

On this topic, I received a call from supposedly Fuji Xerox few days back. The receptionist called me and said that a lady from Fuji Xerox said that he was looking for a guy called Kelvin who is in charged of printers but she can't find such a guy in our directory. I took the call. As I am the so-called account manager for the receptionists as well, I get called to collect gifts for my boss when his secretary isn't around, and I also get called when they can't find who is in-charge of whatever they need to look for. Anyway, back to the story:

Her: I am conducting a customer satisfaction survey and would like to check whether I can have your email address to send the survey to you.

Me: I may not be the correct party, what product or service is it regarding?

Her: It's for the xerox printers.

Me: I don't think we have a contract with you for xerox printers. Do you have the contact person's name and telephone number?

Her: The person is called Kelvin and the telephone number is the main line.

Me: Ok I don't know any Kelvin who looks after printers.

Her: Can you call me back after you have found the person?

Me: Ok.

Her: *she gave me her number*

I didn't call back. 

troy and elephants

Recently we have been receiving many emails about security vulnerabilities in internet facing websites, almost everyday, which resembles the story about 5 men describing how the elephant is like based on touching the ear, trunk, leg, body, tail.

Email 1: please ensure that all internet applications have proper security.

Email 2: please ensure that all vendors check their applications to ensure that there are nov vulnerabilities. 

Email 3: please conduct your own security tests before monitoring them because any high risk alert detected will be a big issue. 

Email 4: please make sure all vendors are prepared for the xxx scan exercise on auspicious-date. 

Email 5: please make sure applications are secured against sql injection attacks. 

The worst case scenario is if this elephant is role playing the horse in the invasion of troy. Meanwhile we still will be pre occupied with elephants.

recent ramblings on how i talk with common sense

Individual applications need to raise their own SR (service requests) to check their connectivity to the mail server. That was what my colleague told me when I asked whether the connection to the new mail server resolves the email sending problem, he said it didnt resolve his problem, and even though the firewalls have been cleared, individual applications (read: servers) need to raise their own SR to check that the firewall is indeed cleared.

Huh? I was stunned. My colleague gave me a frustrated look and said that he had been arguing with the network guy to no avail, and arrived at this arrangement, so I went to talk with the network guy.

Me: Why do I need to raise 5 people to raise 10 SRs to check the connectivity to 1 stupid mail server?

Network guy: Because each server is different.

Me: And so you mean the firewall clearance is different for each server hence require a different SR to test?

Him: Technically yes.

Me: It's a waste of time. Did you raise 10 requests to clear 10 IPs and ports to 1 stupid mail server? No right? You combined all into 1 request, so why is it now my job to ensure that your firewall request is done, and by that I mean having to test the connectivity for each server to the mail server?

Him: It's ok, I will do it.

Me: Ok good.

I went back to my colleague and told him the network guy said he will do the connectivity test for all the servers. He was flabbergasted because he felt like he wasted his time raising the SR for his own application. That was few days ago.

Today the infra guy (not the network guy) sucked a good few hours of my time trying to convince me that his technical specifications for a project was sufficient. At first I told him just stating the server model and RAM (memory) is not enough, and the specs are too low for me as well, after 2 days, he came back with a revised specs, slightly better, with more information, but still no OS (operating system) information.

Me: So if the vendor gives you unix will you take?

Him: No.

Me: Why? You didn't say you don't want unix you know?

Him: They should know we use windows.

Me: Why should they know when you didn't say?

Him: It's implied that we use microsoft products, so they should know we use windows server.

Me: I can use microsoft products, but my DC (domain controller) is unix, right?

Him: Yes.

Me: So is writing windows server important?

Him: Let me think about it.

Me: What if they tell you they want to install a unix DC because in your specs you didn't say you already have a windows DC? Will you let them install?

Him: No.

Me: So? Are you going to write that you are using a windows DC?

Him: We don't write this in specs normally, let me think about it.

Me: You can think, but I want it in.

No moral of story, just ramblings.

having committee meetings in my head everyday

What I like about psychological tests is that despite all the generalisation, and how unique I feel I am, I still feel that it describes me. My team recently did an assessment on our emergenetics profile and mine says this:

She has two thinking preferences (Analytical and Structural) from the "left brain" and one (Social) from the "right brain". This gives her brain a slight bias for the logical and rational over the intuitive and inspired. She has two thinking preferences (Structural and Social) that are concrete and one (Analytical) that is abstract, giving her concern for details and practical matters a slight edge over theorising and speculating.

The gift of the tri-modal thinker is the ability to empathise with other ways of thinking. She can understand nearly anyone. She can be a catalyst or a facilitator in a group and help promote understanding among the team members.

The stress of having this profile comes from being "Jack of all trades by master of none." She is not always able to sort out her thoughts or feelings about an issue, all sides of the issue make sense. Most likely, making a decision is difficult and time-consuming. As one tri-modal explained, "My brain needs to weight all sides of the question. It's like the committee has to meet, and sometimes the committee fights with itself!"

It really describes how I feel everyday - having committee meetings in my head everyday. It's amazing how it happens, and nobody can really imagine how it feels unless one experience it first hand. It is very tiring to listen to internal debate everyday, and it increases proportionally with my work (read: issues that I have to resolve). I am always the last tower in tower defense terms and I always need to try to influence others to position myself as early as possible in the game and yet still be able to cover the back). Sometimes I see myself as playing 10 boards of chess concurrently everyday. When I was younger, I used to suspect I had a minor split personality disorder. After reading a bunch of literature, I conclude that I wasn't because split personality disorder people are not conscious of the different personalities. I even thought that maybe I was possessed by another being because it became very scary when I had the whole scene visualised in my brain before I actually see the sequence of events happening -  everything happens according to what I plan. As I grew older, I started to accept that it's just the way my brain works, and used this gift to help others understanding themselves better, and lead happier lives.

lessons on interrogation

Today we met up with our vendors to resolve a 1-month old problem, SMTP set up. The last part of the saga was when I went around asking people how they configured their SMTP settings (because I haven't done it before), and also googling and reading how to send SMTP commands, only to have people asking me, "why isn't your vendor doing this for you?" "you are the first person I know who helps their vendor do such things" "why are you helping them?"

Simply because I didn't have a choice. The user calls me every 2 hours the past 2 days to ask me how to resolve the issue, saying that all the web forms must work and the vendors are saying that the web forms can't work without SMTP, and she has promised her boss that the site will be live this friday. After I passed all the information I gathered to the guy, he still said he couldn't get it to work. His boss said that this is an environment factor that is beyond their control, and if we are unable to provide them with settings that work, then they are unable to do anything.

The problem sounds simple. The vendor insisted that we need to give them a username and password to access the SMTP server. The SMTP server works on an unauthenticated mode, meaning no username and password required. I had 3 other systems sending emails through the same SMTP server and all did not need to authenticate with a username and password. Eventually, I sent the question to the helpdesk managing the SMTP server, and we are still waiting to solve the mystery.

That aside, I couldn't understand why the web forms couldn't work if we couldn't send emails. The web forms were storing the data submitted into a database, and the email part was to notify the webmaster that someone had just sent a feedback. They had been explaining and explaining for the past 2 weeks, but I couldn't understand until today, when I asked them, if I don't have any email available, how will the error message look like?

It turned out that the error message misled us into thinking that the form wasn't working! OMG The error message was "we encountered a technical difficulty in submitting the form". When I asked what other error messages he had, he said "we encountered a technical difficulty in saving the form". It was then that it suddenly became clear what the problem was. The forms were saving data into the system, but the notification portion wasn't working, so if we just change the "error message" to "thank you", the user who submitted the feedback will not think that it is an error, the feedback is still captured in the system, and the only thing is the webmaster will need to log in to the system to retrieve the data.

You can just imagine the users' reaction when this was reveal to them. What initially was on a critical path of failure turned out to be something not critical, and all we needed was someone to take the problem apart.

really serious troubleshooting business

I was troubleshooting a 5 month old inconsistent and intermittent problem earlier because I had been relying on the vendors and the issue had not reached the fire-on-the-backside stage.

The problem was easily resolved  in 30 minutes after I figured out the 10 lines of shell script that was fetching the files from the ftp server. I would not have been able to write the shell script from scratch, but I guess I have a good translator in my head.

Before that, 2 external and 2 internal data centre server administrators, 5 application vendors, infra manager, and myself, were all unable to resolve the problem. Just 2 weeks ago, the server admin was asking the infra manager why he is taking so long to solve the problem. The server admin was telling the application team that their code was wrong, the files need to reference the root instead of the sub folder. The application team blamed the script for not copying their files properly. I wasn't contributing constructively by chasing the application vendor for status updates as well.

11 people involved. What a joke, all I did was to tell the shell script to read from the sub folder instead of the root, but to be able to troubleshoot the problem, the person needs to understand shell script and html, which sounds like common sense, but I guess the stars were not aligned.