Post Sabbatical

I've been back at it for two weeks.  Two weeks of getting settled into a new position, learning new faces, and getting exposed to a different culture and environment.  I'm going for a large company to a much smaller one, from many different clients and locations to a single product suite and a single location.  It'll take some getting used to, but the differences aren't as large as you think.

In a larg company, how many people do you interact with on a daily basis?  Ten? Twenty?  And how many clients at a time?  These numbers ar probably a lot smaller than you might think. I usually only had a single client I had to make happy at a time, and most teams were small.  No where near the thousands of people in the company.  So I'm actually working with a larger proportion of the company. My new management team is in the same building, and I do see them daily.  It is a different world.

I'm getting used to the commute.  For years my longest drive was usually the one to the airport.  Once at a location I was at most ten or fifteen minutes from the site.  Right now it is a comfortable thirty minutes, which allows me to easily drop my daughter off at school, get to work, get tngs done, and make it home in time to pick everyone up, make dinner, and relax in the evening.

So what have I learned in the past eight months?  Well, the first is I'm not a prolific blog writer.  I should do more of that, and may do so in the future as time permits. Topics will change and very s bit more, though.

I have learned a few technical things.  A bit of self study, a seminar on the Microsoft campus, some personal projects to dig into some different concepts.  I was able to get more depth on a couple of topics, and some breadth over the Microsoft development environment.  There is so much out there that it is almost impossible to know everything, but sometimes just knowing what is there is good enough, if you can get the details later when you need to use it.

House work takes time.  Whether it be cleaning, cooking, washing, or whatever.  My wife usually did that, but was busy with her final semester and board exams to do that.  I still missed things, though.  Cooking was not a problem, but the cleaning never lets up.  My wife has grabbed back most of that, but I still do the cooking - I actually enjoy it, and according to my wife, I'm better at it than her.

I got to spend plenty of time with my family.  Biking to school with my daughter, planning events and other family activities, even a vacation to central Florida for an extended time.  Being on the road sort of isolate me a bit fm that, though FaceTime, Facebook, and other communications eased that a lot.  

Finances were someone I had to watch a bit.  Since we had no direct income during that time, I cashed out some stock to cover expenses. Some luxuries were dropped (except for that vacation) and cutting corners here and there helped.  Cooking at home, cheaper entertainment, and just not doing some things were some easy things to do.  

So where do I go from here?  Well, first will be to integrate myself into my new work environment.  So far that is relatively painless, probably due to my experience with going to a new client periodically.  Getting used to going to a work place every day hasn't been too hard - I was up every morning at the same time anyway to get everyone to their respective schools, and tried to keep busy most of the day, though I was able to sneak in a nap here and there.

Wel, that's it for today.  I'm helping a friend with a production of Macbeth, and need to get to my place for some music pieces coming up in the fourth act.

Locking down the toaster: IoT security

You just got your new toaster set to deliver toast at exectly the right shade of brownness.  Going to bed with the knowledge in mind, you wake the next morning, shuffle into the kitchen, where the pile of burnt and raw toast meets you.  Did the toaster fail? is it possessed?, or did your new internet enabled toast have a visitor from an external source?  For now, lets go with the latter and assume that someone is wanting to play with your toaster, someone that you dont want to place with your toaster.

How do you prevent this, you might ask.  well, you could unplug the toaster, move to a cave, and promise to never get a newfangled internet toaster again.  the second, and probably less drastic, is to protect your toaster from external influences.  this is called (wait for it) security.

Security is the act of protection, whether it be aggression (i'm going to attack now, to prevent you from atatcking me later) to passive (padlocks on the doors, bars on the windows) to monitoring (i know someone broke in, and here's a picture).  we're going to focus more on the later items, those of authentication, authorization, and logging.

Authentication is the act of figuring out who someone is.  in the real world you can do this in many ways, such as look out the peephole to see whoe is at your door, ID badges in the work place, or keys for locks.  the first of these, looking out the peephole, is a form of positive identification.  you have to know who they are before you open the door.  the second is also a form of this, but with the addition of a token, you can identify someone that you don't know.  think of the phone guy coming to your door.  he's got a badge, but he's also not your aunt martha.  the final is a key for a lock.  here the user of the key is anonymous, in that you don't have to know who the holder of the key is, but it is sufficient to know that they are allowed because they are holding the key.

in the computer world ther eare plenty of ways to authenticate people.  passwords, number tokens, and fingerprint sensors help to do this.  there is some element of trust to setting up the authentication in the first place, but once its done, you are golden.  Now this can be done in many different places, and in many different forms.  A lot of applications handle the authentication on their own, keeping track of users and passwords internally, while others will make use of various third party authentication services from Google, FaceBook, Twitter, and plenty of others.  

Authorization is what you are allowed to do after we know who you are.  Our hypothetical toaster might let anyone in the family toast bread, but only one person change the level of brownness.  One way to look at this is a list of users, a list of capabilities, and a bunch of lines connecting the people to what they can do.  This is a simplified way of looking at things, but thats ok at this time.  

Logging allows you to see what is going on, by tracking who is doing what activity, as well as other properties on the system.  Logging would tell us that someone is cooking toast, and possibly when it is being done, and who is doing it.

When we start applying security to our internet of things we start seeing that there are a couple of places that we may need to apply it.  first is at the device, since we don't want unauthorized people cooking toast.  second is on a hub or server that the toaster may be communicating with.  in this case think of the device as the thing that needs to be authenticated and authorized.  

I'll stop here for today.  there are plenty of ways of do these tasks, and i'll beat them to death later on.

The Internet of Things, or, The Toaster says Hello

The Internet of Things (IoT, for short) is a concept that has been around for over 15 years, and with the advent of cheap devices and plenty of bandwidth, has started to gain some traction.  So what is it?  There are a lot of definitions out there, covering a lot of area (and even more marketing hype) but there needs to be a good way of stating what it is.

 

So here is my definition:

 

The Internet of Things is a way of looking at how mundane devices can communicate with each other.

 

Yes, it's short, probably a lot shorter than you would expect.  But at the heart of it, it is things communicating with other things.  So maybe a few more definitions are in order

 

A Device can be anything that generates, processes, or consumes data. 

Communication is the act of sending and receiving of information

 

So far it sounds a lot like the regular internet.  You've got devices communicating back and forth, and you've got information flowing around between devices (in this case computers and servers).  We need that final word - Mundane.

 

Mundane - average, ordinary, not standing out in any way.

 

So we're not talking about connecting a tablet to eBay.  We're talking about connecting your front door to the security system, your mailbox sending a text message, or your toaster to the breadbox.  Some of these can already be done, and if you follow the news, you are seeing more products out every day that communicate back and forth.

 

But there is something lacking, and that is the ability of any device being able to communicate with any other device (within reason, of course - some conversations just don't make sense).  I've got the capability the tie my mailbox into the security system, and from there send me a text message whenever it is opened, but I can't just take that mailbox sensor and tag it directly from a browser.  I've got to go through an intermediary or two before I can get to the information.  Now this in itself isn't a problem, since there are times when you want this sort of aggregation to take place.  But in my case, since this information is local to my house, why should it go from the mailbox, to a centralized panel, to a server someplace in California, to a text message aggregator, and then finally I get that buzz on my phone when the postman does a delivery? 

 

Each device also has its idiosyncrasies for setting them up and communicating with them.  A WiFi camera will use 802.11x to communicate, while a 2Gig system uses a different set of frequencies and protocols to get things done.  Even the same class of devices on the same network may not communicate in the same way, meaning you cannot just get a device and add it to your security system, but have to get a specific type of sensor, sometimes with proprietary protocols that prevent it from working with other devices. 

 

So let me add another definition:

 

Open - the systems use non-proprietary methods of communications using commonly available protocols, and the communications medium is transparent as to function and capabilities.

 

So, a camera will look like a camera, and behave the same, at least at this level.  This isn't to say that a camera manufacturer can't add more functionality that can only be gotten to in their own special way - just that if you are a device, you have to play nicely.

 

So what am I doing here?  Well, I can't leave well enough alone. I don't do the hardware side, so developing devices isn't really my thing.  I'm an architect and developer, and I see a lack in the overall area.  There has been some mentions of a Web of Things, but it is also a bit nebulous.  So I'm not planning on creating the next widget to make my toaster talk to the breadbox.  Instead I'm exploring how I can make it easier for things to talk to each other.

 

In later posts I'll continue this discussion with myself.  There's a lot of stuff out there that I can look at, and maybe someone or something has already solved my problem.  But I'm guessing not, since my toaster still doesn’t recognize me and toast things the way I want them to.

A Break from my Break

If you have been following this at all, you may notice that there is a bit of a gap between the last post and this one.  Three months, in fact.  Quite a bit of time when measured against the internet, but miniscule when compared to the age of the universe, so everything is relative.   

What have I been doing?  oh, quite a few things.  Taking a few classes in Windows Azure, mowing teh yard, getting people through college and licensing, playing music, and doing some recording, just to name a few.  I also took a nice long vacation and did some heavy self inspection.

Since the first I've also started getting back into the work swing of things.  Formatting my resume for the first time in ages, registering on various technical job boards, setting my criteria for what I wished to do, and contacting places, while politely telling the recruiters with their perfect opportunity in New Jersey that I wasn't willing to relocate, and that Houston is too much of a commute from where I live now.  Five calls yesterday, ten the day before, and an undetermined number before then.  I've been limiting my search to within a ten mile circle (which given my location on the edge of the DFW Metroplex, cuts out a lot of area) to cut down my commute, and primarily looking at senior developer and architect jobs.  Drawing that line cuts a lot of the positions from Dallas, Irving and Addison, but even so there are quite a few things up in the Plano, Frisco and Richardson area.  

We're still living off of savings, primarily from selling stocks purchased over the past fifteen years.  It is sort of like retirement, but different.  I have mentioned that watching expenses is an important thing that you will need to do on a sabbatical, and that is still ongoing.  We have had some backsliding, such as eating out a bit more, but I still enjoy cooking at home.  

We did take a vacation through most of June, though.  Orlando, Disneyworld, Universal, NASA, and the beach for an extended period of time.  while portions did cost a bit (You can't eat at Disney too cheaply) we did save quite a bit by using hotel points, airline miles, and car rental points from my previous travels to cover the really big stuff.  From there it was primarily food, admission, and souvenirs.  

I'll see what the next few weeks brings.  I've talking to a few people about open positions that they have, and am entertaining a few others here and there.  There isn't a dearth of positions, and I got time to be a bit choosy, so I'll choose whats best for me.  

Finances

One thing about taking a sabbatical is handling the inflow and outflow of money.  Now in most cases there will be no inflow - i.e. you aren't working, therefore no inflow.  So how do you balance the inflows and outflows so that they balance, at least in the long run?

the first thing is your budget.  Budgets aren't just for when you are working.  you'll also need one for managing your expenses for the upcoming period.  You can think about this as a precursor for retirement.  

My budget is simple.  I've got a house, a car, and a family.  I've got a mortgage, I need to maintain things, and we need to eat.  Also, we need health insurance, auto insurance, and a few fun things here and there.  So my budget needs to handle that.  

Mortgage and insurance are the biggest ticket items.  Mortgage is around $2800, and insurance around $1400 a month. auto insurance is around $50 (paid every 6 months), gas and car maintenance runs a few hundred, and amusements will run a bit here and there.

Now I could save on the insurance, but I like not having to worry about that sort of things.  I could go through the marketplace and get insurance for around 800, but with a high deductable.  I extended my coverage under COBRA, which let me continue my existing insurance at the same rate.  It is interesting to see the cost of health insurance through your employment - most places that supply insurance usually have pretty decent programs, since a sick employee isn't adding any value.  

The mortgage will not change.  I've got a pretty good rate, so I don't really want to refinance.  Most of the insurance offers are currently above that rate, so refinancing will actually have me paying more over the long run.  

auto insurance, gas, maintenance, and the like will not change, either.  I can drive a bit less (and have done so) get cheaper insurance, and skimp on maintenance.  But here in Texas there isn't any such thing as walkable shopping, so a car is essential.  Gas is pretty much a constant - a mile driven will consume x amount of gas.  Biking to a few places helps to cut that a bit. Getting a more effficient car would lower that, but at the expense of a car payment.  Since both of our cars are paid off that would be an extra $300 that we can delay on.  Maintenance could also be delayed, but usually the longer it is put off, usually the more it will be.  Insurance could also be downgraded, but stuff happens.  Even a minor fender bender will cost thousands, and having made a claim for this just last month, I'll keep that right where it is.

Food is an easy one.  Restaurants are easy, seductive, fast, not too nutricious, and don't seem to cost too much.  but added up over time the cost of food when you eat out all the time adds up.  By preparing more meals at home I can cut that expense down quite a bit, and make them more nutritious.  I shop around, get good ingredients, and stock up a few things when they go on sale.  Most of the meals I prepare are simple - pasta, vegetables, some sort of protein, and dessert every once in a while.  I usually cook a bit extra, since I can reheat stuff for another meal with little added cost.  While we don't eat every meal at home, even a few a week cuts the expenses by a good percentage.  I eat most lunches at home, rather than eating fast food.  

Entertainment is a tougher one - We don't spend massive amounts of time going to amusement parks or at the movies, but we don't cut them out completely.  We still go to the movies, usually a smaller Cinemark down the road from us that has a cheap matinee.  We don't go to Six Flags, but are planning a trip to Florida in June.  

Again, it comes down to planning.  I went through this exercise before I decided to take my break, I have been saving money in a couple of locations, such as the stock purchage plan and some external investments, and factored in what I would need on a monthly basis.  I planned periodically to draw off money from selling stock.  Keeping these draws spread out keeps the expenses down, and makes me think more of where the money is going.  

Thinking about this in terms of retirement, there will be only a few differences.  The mortgage will be gone, and the health insurance will be offset a bit by medicare/medicaid.  there will be some income in terms of pensions, but the draws from a 401K and other sources will still remain about the same.  I'll figure out some of that later on, exactly.  Beffoore that time I'll think about whether we'll want to move because of taxes.  I'll always have federal taxes, but different states have different state income taxes, property taxes, and the like.  Texas has no state taxes, but has one of the higher property taxes.  Louisiana has one of the lowest, but has a higher income tax.  essentiall every state has advantages and disadvantages, not all of them monetary.  access to shopping, entertainment, health care, and other amenities are also important.  Personally I like some space around me, but I also like close by shopping and high speed network access.  In twenty years these priorities may change, though.

Two Months

So far I've been on my sabbatical about two months.  I've watched the last snows of winter (such as they may be down here in Texas) move into the budding trees of spring.  I've spent plenty of time around the house doing some of the various chores that I've been putting off for a while, and even some of the longer range ones.  I've even started some grass seed in a couple of the dead spots, since I know that I will be here for a while to water it until it is started.  I've even mowed the yard a couple of times, when it started looking a bit shaggy.

I spent a day moving a hot tub.  Now this isn't quite as arduous as you might think.  What I have is a large SofTub, which is about 6 feet across and can easily be moved/dragged/tugged around.  two people make it move faster, though.  Now the location we had it at was right off of our patio, which was right off of the bedroom.  due to some poor planning on my part, i neglected to take into account the noise factor of a hot tub kicking on in the middle of the night.  after a few nights of this I did put a switch on there to prevent it from coming on after 10, but even then, I knew I would have to muve that sucker.  I already had a place picked out - just on the other side of the patio, about fifteen feet away.  

Moving the hot tub involves three major steps. First I have to move the hot tub to a completely unrelated location.  this is so I can do the second step, which is move the cement blocks to the new location.  Finally I could move the hot tub to the new location.  After a couple of minutes hooking up the pump (the SofTub has an external pump, which also acts as a heater) and the rest of the day filling it with a garden hose I was ready to turn it on.  Even then I couldn't get in for a while because the water was a balmy sixty degrees, which for me is a bit cold.  it would take a couple of days to warm it up fully.

Getting grass to grow is my next task for that area.  I have a decent lawn, I take care of it, but this is a hundred square foot area of dirt.  A trip to Lowes later I had grass seed, and shortly after that had it spread out and watered.  I'll have to do that for a few weeks until it takes hold good, and then the regular sprinklers can do their job.

I've been teaching my daughter how to rid a bike.  She was a complete chicken for the longest time, but after it finally annoyed me enough I removed a training wheel.  She adapted and complained.  After a couple of weeks I removed the other training wheel.  She complained again.  finally this past weekend I got her on the bike and we kept working at it until she could traverse the length of the driveway - about sixty feet.  And after a few more days of practice, a scraped knee or two, and a couple of bumps, we rode our bikes to school, and will ride them back this evening.  She's about to outgrow her bike, though.  I think the Easter bunny might have to bring a new one since her birthday is still three months off.

So where will the next few months lead? I've got a few things planned to do, so here's the list.

1) Scarborough Faire (http://www.srfestival.com/) - I'm the performing company music director, and as such, need to be out there a good chunk of the time.  I've been doing this quite a while, and it is worthy of another blog entry a bit later.

2) Learning - I'm planning on taking a couple of classes in Azure and possibly a few other things.  some of these land on the weekends, but that is normal.  I'll work them in as I can.

3) Get my wife through her final semester - She's been working on the Dental Hygiene program at Collin College for the past two years.  She's taken her board exams a couple of weeks ago, and has six weeks of classes left.  just doing the chores around the house helps a lot there.

4)  Personal Projects.  the weather watcher, the mail categorizer, and a couple of others creeping about in the back of my head.  I've started some of this stuff, and have also taken the time to rebuild and update my local server machine.

5)  Get back to work - I like what I did, but I needed the break.  As I discovered when I started this I didn't need a change in venue as much as I needed to take care of family stuff for a while.  I might try something new, or go back to the old - that hasn't been written yet.

6) Update my resume -  I usually update my resume out on the various job sites about every three or so years, and it's due time.  I liken it to feeding time in the shark cage when I toss my resume out there.

7) Vacation - I owe my wife a vacation.  we've been talking about it for a while, and once everyone is out of school for the summer (graduated, entering second grade, or whatever) we want to go someplace.  We're thinking Disney World, since everyone likes that, but we'll spend some time there this go around, possibly seeeing some of the other sites such as NASA and Busch Gardens.

Music

The past week or so have been busy - small tasks here and there, but the main things have been music related.  

Scarborough Faire (http://www.srfestival.com/) is a Renaissance festival located just outside of Waxahachie, TX.  I've bee associated it for the past 20 years in various capacities, but primarily as the performing company music director and lead musician for quite a while.  Now this isn't hard, but it is time consuming at times, especially in March right before we open.  First off we have workshops on the weekends, which I go down at least one day to do music related stuff.  I usually direct the performing company in full ensemble music (the end of day "Parting Glass") and also work with the instrumentalists and pub sing director to make sure things are lined up.  there's also some other non-music stuff, but mustly music.

Next on the scarborough list is some outside rehearsals.  normally we can get by with the rehearsals during the workshop periods, but due to weather and a shortened workshop season we've had to have a few more to get some of the newer folks up to speed.  it also lets me hear how things will sound, correct some of the music, and get to know everyone better.  While some of these people i've been working with for a long time, others are relatively new. So far we've had one rehearsal and will have at least one more this week, with possibly another next week if called for.  

Now this music doesn't just magically appear for the musicians.  I've got to go out and find music we can use.  This involves sourcing the music, transcribing it, getting it into a book form, and storing it in a format that everyone can get to.  I've been a big fan of Finale (http://www.finalemusic.com/) for transcription, but because I'm on a slightly older versionI can't really create a good book from here directly.  I print out the individual sheets for each tune, and then copy and paste an image into Microsoft Word to do the final book format.  a quick print (or now, save to PDF) and I can copy it up for others to make use of.  I've been working on this book off and on for about 10 years, mostly as a hobby, and it has been used at numerous other faires and venues from here to Kansas City.  A consistent look is nice, since it does make our music look more professional.  previous to this most faire related music was photocopies of photocopies, with different sizes, wordings, and degrees of readability.  

The other part is the Pub Sing book, which is different than the tune book, though the process is the same.  I take all of the suggestions that we come up with for new songs, and start vetting them.  again, we cannot use modern songs, or stuff that is still under copyright, since we don't really have a budget for that.  there is plenty of stuff out there, though - it is just a matter of finding it.  Mudcat.org is one of the better sources of folk music lyrics, and Google and the internet have made research a lot simpler.  Finding a song that was published at least back in the 1800s is a good sign, and further back is even better.  I also try to make sure our music is reasonably unique from other music groups out there.  We don't want to be singing the same thing as anyone else, even though everyone has their own spin on how they will do a song.  

From here I take a look at the lyrics.  some tunes we can make use of directly, with no changes.  others, because they are from a later time or location will have mention of things that are currently unknown in Scaroborough in the 1530s, such as Captain Kidd from the 1750s, or New York City.  if we can change things to something more period we do so, otherwise the song gets chucked to the side.  I also have to look at the tune, and try to avoid some of the more common recordings that people are familiar with, since that could be infringing on things.  usually if I can source it back to some of the original works in the area, such as O'neals book of irish songs, or the Child ballads (the writer is named Child - a lot of the music is not suitable for children) or the ROUD bibliography, then I'm pretty sure we have a good song.

the next steps, which we'll do later this week, is get all the lyrics together into a book and see how bit it is.  We print, fold, and bind things ourselves, so our books need to be a multiple of 4 pages (a single page folded front and back) and a single song can't go over a page turn, though it can be on two facing pages.  a bit or rearranging, some creative space management, and we'll have a book ready to print.

The other stuff I've been doing is playing a couple of gigs at, of all places, a haunted house.  Dark Hour (http://darkhourhauntedhouse.com/) is a local haunted house with a world class director.  It's been open for about a year, and is still going strong.  Now one of the things you do when you have a house like this is make sure you can do more than be open for Halloween, so they have multiple themed events throughout the year, and Saint Patricks day is one of them.  and what is Saint Patricks day without traditional music?  so Friday and Saturday night a small group of us got together and kept people entertained as they waited to enter the house itself.  Irish step dancers, music, and a fun venue.  And afterwards on Saturday I actually had a chance to go through the house.  And if you get a chance to, go.  There is a diffference between the venues that put together something for the short term versus the permanent houses.  the displays are better, the rooms are thought out, the staff well trained, and there is a continuity and a story line along with the theme.  

Our musical group consists of three people, and we've played together multiple times.  I'm actually the newcomer to this group - one of their members moved out to New York a while back - so i'm learning some of their arrangements, sopplying some of my own, and seeing how my mix of talents will fit in.  we had a couple of practice sessions over the past few weeks, just enough to take the raw edges off a few things, but we did have a couple of decent shows.  

Now it is Tuesday, March17th, and believe it or not, I'm not doing anything musically related right now this evening.  It's reasonably quiet, I had a good dinner, and I'm enjoying it.  I've been in ensembles before that are performing tonight.  once I had three gigs on one day, another I lost a fiddler right before the show due to a death in the family, and spent the next hour calling every musician I knew to get some fill-in.  we survived the first, and scrounged enough stuff to make up for the fiddle tunes.  But tonight it is peaceful.  

Tomorrow it is back to song preparation and lyric checkout.