Slim Chants

Just when you think things are going well … I ordered a replacement windscreen for my FZ750. The one it came with is cracked. This is the last thing I need to do before taking it in for a safety check. So I got excited when I called the bike shop and they told me it had just arrived. When I picked it up however, I found it was the wrong one. They ordered me one to fit a FZR750. Now I sure wish I had a FZR750. Those bikes are fast! With an aluminum frame they weigh almost a hundred pounds less than my FZ750. Though the race position is a less comfortable ride. Anyway, I called the dealer and he says they’ll get the new one ordered on Monday and send the old one back.

Weather like this and my mount still isn’t ready. Damn, I’m itching to ride.

It’s spring, the nice weather has arrived a tad early, and I’ve got the itch to ride. Readers will know that I’ve been having troubles with the clutch. Last fall I replaced the plates with brand new EBC plates with new Barnett springs in place of the stock units. That helped but I still had a spongy feel. I messed around with bleeding and that didn’t help. I set things aside for the winter. With spring here I ordered kits to rebuild the master and slave cylinders. The slave kit went in easy but I had trouble with the circlip in the master so I decided to try it all out before figuring out how to tackle that job. Once everything was back together I still had a spongy feel. But I’d done some research on bleeding the clutch. It seems that air can get trapped at the top of the system. Its only natural because air is lighter and rises. The trick, it seems is to bleed first at the banjo bolts (master then slave) followed by the nipple. This turned out to be valuable advice. When I pumped some pressure and cracked the bolt bubbles spurted from the joint. I couldn’t believe the amount of air I was able to bleed from the banjo bolt. After I was finished bleeding the master banjo there was next to no air at all in the slave banjo and nipple. Once I had cleaned up the mess and put the tools aside I fired up the bike and she shifted flawlessly!
I thought I was going to get away without replacing the cracked windscreen but research into the safety inspection legislation wording reveals that it must be replaced. I had a heck of a time sourcing this part. The catalog for Zero Gravity in Canada does not list anything as old as an ‘87. But their website indicates that they are still available. I didn’t want to wait weeks for a shipment. I finally found a local performance shop, Cycle Improvements in Waterloo, who tracked down a light smoked screen direct from Zero Gravity and they tell me it will be here in 7 days. These folks went out of their way to help me. I can’t say enough about Cathy and crew at Cycle Improvements. If you live in the Waterloo Region and you want performance work done on your bike give them a call.

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Organizations looking to mobilize and motivate their employees by implementing a social network are in uncharted territory when it comes to evaluating the various products available in the marketplace. Social Network Solutions can harness information, organizing it in one place, thereby transforming it into knowledge. Wikis make great documentation systems. Blogs are an excellent way of publishing timely articles and keeping staff informed. Forums give employees a place to discuss issues. Pages can help departments and teams maintain a presence and identity of their own. Search and tagging systems can mine the accumulated information, especially when these components are all integrated into one large application.

But Social Network Solutions are new and very different from other enterprise applications like ERP, MRP and CRM, especially when they are provided “In the Cloud” or in multi-tenant form. Providers are almost exclusively startups, usually fresh out of university and without any of the discipline enforced by corporate IT staff. With those thoughts in mind I’ve put together a list of ten important questions that you should ask any potential vendor, when sourcing a Social Network Solution.

• Who owns my data? This is obviously the first question. If the answer isn’t you then you should move on to the next vendor. Not much point in continuing the conversation.
• Is my data stored in a database separate from other customers? It’s very difficult to prevent a security breach when people who don’t belong anywhere near your data have access to the same database. Isolation is the first step in securing data so it only makes common sense to store it in a separate database. Again, if the answer is no you should move on to the next vendor.
• What is the guaranteed availability or uptime (including scheduled maintenance)? All web service providers publish uptime stats, usually guaranteed. What they don’t all necessarily tell you is how they define uptime. From the client’s perspective it may seem as simple as the percentage of time that the system is available. Social Network Solutions are Web 2.0 applications and many providers of such technologies evolve their product rapidly, meaning frequent updates to the system. If they don’t have controlled roll out plans with redundant servers and instant switchover there will be downtime at every roll out and some providers may not count that as “downtime”. Large corporations insist on service level agreements (SLAs) that specify penalties when they are exceeded.
• How will you integrate with our Change Management Process? Having raised the issue of system updates this is an appropriate time to ask about change management. Many medium to large corporations have rigorous controls over change. This is especially so in any ISO 9000 certified company. ISO mandates that your providers at the very least meet your own strict requirements, if they are not certified in their own right. You should be informed about each change and have input into any decision regarding if and when to deploy. This goes further if you are using the solution as part of your documentation system Wikis and document storage repositories will have to conform to your document control standards.
• What is the disaster recovery plan? While we’re on the standard process track we might as well ask about this. Any business in today’s economy needs to think about business continuity. Advanced catastrophe planning allows staff to react instantly to implement the plan and keep your business going. If you have a business continuity/disaster recovery plan it will have to be modified to include the new system.
• If I decide to change providers in the future, how can I extract my data? Pretty obvious, this one. You don’t want to be tied in to one vendor.The advantage of the customer to walk out the door and deal with someone else or even do it yourself is essential.
• In the event that your business fails, how will I be able to obtain my data? Not meaning to sound ominous but it does happen, to an alarmingly high percentage of startups. This should actually be part of your own disaster recovery plan but it warrants asking a separate question of the vendor. In the old days, IT departments would demand that source code to mainframe applications be held in escrow so that they could continue to operate in the event of a vendor’s demise.
• How closely does the product integrate with existing business systems such as LDAP, Email, Messaging, ERP, MRP and CRM? Don’t get your hopes up too much here but the question still needs to be asked. At the very minimum, companies using Directory Services should demand LDAP for sign in security. Unless you like duplication of data (possibly even duplicate data entry) you should also require LDAP be used for user profile information. In an ideal world all email on behalf of your network would be routed through your own email servers to help you maintain your “email reputation” (critical in a SPAM infested web) and also to keep track of what is sent and received. This can easily be accomplished through forwarding. Some companies already have a private instant messaging network like Lotus SameTime, MSN or an Open Source XMPP implementation. Ideally the Social Network Solution would hook in to this for presence management so other users could know when their contacts are on line. It’s unlikely that ERP, MRP or CRM integrations are available but if there is an extensive web service API you may be able to roll-yer-own extensions.
• Is the solution white-brand? You’ve done a lot to build an identity for your business. Social Network Solutions are web applications. You will want your implementation to look like it is from your company in almost every respect. Beyond “Help – About” annotations all prominent logos and identifiers should be your own. Email should look like any other corporate correspondence.
• What about moderation? Any system which encourages open discussion and publication is subject to abuse. Moderation is essential to maintain decorum and respect and to promote a civil exchange of ideas. Face to face meetings are moderated so why wouldn’t you do the same on line? You need to know who’s responsibility it is to moderate (the vendor or you), how many staff you will have to dedicate, and how to establish standards and train them.

No doubt, there are more questions which pertain to your specific situation. I’m sure the vendor sales folks will provide many answers to questions you might not even care to ask. Hopefully, the ones I’ve provided will prompt a lively discussion and many more questions and answers to your satisfaction. Social Network Solutions can be a powerful tool for your business or organization. As with any new product on the market, it is best to choose wisely.

The latest tactic by the Harper PMO in the effort to stifle the Opposition’s efforts to get to the bottom of the Afghan detainee issue may have backfired. The so-called Document Dump strategy basically involves releasing an overwhelming number of documents in response to demands for a selected few; the idea being that the Opposition would be swamped with irrelevant information. The government surprised everyone on Thursday morning when it released two thousand six hundred pages of redacted documents the government presented two boxes containing a single copy of what it said were previously unreleased documents pertaining to the handling of Afghan detainees. It now appears they likely didn’t read them all before releasing them.

It’s only been a day and already two reports by the CBC raise concerns. The first, that a Canadian soldier had raised concerns that Afghan soldier routinely executed detainees. The second, that a soldier assigned to question an Afghan prisoner later expressed concern Afghan forces had abused the detainee before the questioning took place. Did Harper, Soudas and crew fail to consider that the press would be all over these documents? Is it possible that they haven’t bothered to dig into this themselves to see if indeed there is something to the Opposition’s allegations? Surely if you’re going to dump documents you’d take the time to read them all and ensure that they don’t contain anything that would raise more issues.

Spring has arrived a month early in these parts. With the melting of the last remnants of snow I put the battery of my FZ750 motorcycle on a trickle charge for a few days and on Wednesday of this week I installed it in the bike and fired it up. She started on the third try and after a few minutes on choke she ran smooth at idle. The clutch however, still needs work. I popped the shifter into first and she stalled. It seems as though there is no hydraulic pressure. I’m going to have to try a bleed and may have to install a master and perhaps also a slave kit. Still to do for the safety check are the brakes. I have a new front-right rotor and a machined, used rear rotor and also new pads all around. That should do for the safety but I may also replace the chain and sprockets and also the windscreen before putting her on the road. Hard to say. With this weather I’m anxious to ride.

Here’s something that came as no surprise: A recent survey of enterprise IT managers that administer both PCs and Macs finds that Macs have a lower TOC (total cost of ownership) than Windows boxes, and require less user training and help. It came as no surprise because Macs have a reputation for ease-of-use. Most business employees need a computer as a tool and they could care less what you gave them as long as it made them more productive with little effort. Virus infections and disk fragmentation are non-issues on Macs. Apple takes care of both the software AND hardware updates. As a rule they are problem free.

One wonders why it took IT so long to catch on. Likely Vista caused many IT shops to examine alternatives and if they asked their employees many would have said give me a Mac like I have at home. Little wonder they cost less to support.

I’m back to running Linux on the desktop. I took a few months hiatus due to some overheating issues that seemed to coincide with my update to Ubuntu 9.10. Others running various laptops had the same problem. The problem as it turned out was caused by an out-of-date BIOS in the laptop. Once I flashed it to the latest my fan started spinning up and down as required and my Acer notebook was useful once again.

Since the occurrence of the overheating I was using a MacBook Pro for my day to day computing. I’ve since dedicated that wonderful machine to recording studio duties specifically. (More on that in another post.) While I was dependent on the Mac I fell in love with Ecto for blog posts. It’s really a wonderful tool and today I went on a quest for an open source equivalent for my Ubuntu system. It took me awhile. Most of the available clients just don’t measure up. In the end I installed Bilbo, a KDE client which has most of the features provided by Ecto. It does not currently support addition of categories, unfortunately but it seems to be quite capable of managing posts. I’m using it to write this post. So far I’m satisfied but I will miss Ecto.

The Harper government’s recent speech from the throne came after months of shuttered parliament, a necessary break from the inconvenience of democracy required so that the government could take time for careful thought toward recalibration. Indeed, until this past Wednesday parliament has been adjourned since prior to Christmas of last year. One would have thought this to be ample time to come up with a new plan. Rex Murphy is less than impressed.

I’ve been using Ecto to write articles, post them and manage the blog for the past month. I like it so much I paid for a license before the trial ended. This tool is so much more convenient and effective. I much prefer the quick response of a desktop app over an HTML interface which is inherently slow. The convenience has resulted in more time spent writing. I especially like being able to work offline and then publish when I can get connected. For anyone using a Mac I highly recommend it.

Remember the 407. S’all I got to say.