Milestones of 2002 (and a bit of 2003)

Issues closed:

Details for the Week ending:

21 January 2003 - 21 February 2003

DSpace:

• ONGOING: Review and mentoring of design.
• Cleared up backlog of DSpace memos: [OAI-general] Articles About DSpace and Open Archives Forum i n _D-Lib Magazine_ (Jan 2003), DSpace enhancement question, Handles feedback quote, [OAI-general] System Architecture, [Dspace-tech] Items with content residing elsewhere

Lead Athena Team:

• Deliver monthly team progress report.
• Review October's meeting with jdb and craft update for February's Process Review Meeting.
• Review (and perhaps suggest amendments) to Delivery Quarterly Report.
• Assist with decision making for Mozilla in Locker or in Release.
• Shepherd testing of Mozilla 1.2.1. Target: Became default on 3 February.
• Update team work plan to more clearly show accomplishments. http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/accomplishments.html
• Update team project page to more clearly show upcoming work. http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/projects.html
• Inventory systems affected by shift to single partition shared root,usr,var Sun configuration.
• Craft outreach email to assess impact, encourage conversion, and supply instructions.
• Published Derek Atkins' VMWare study results at http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/plans/win32-linux.html

Other:

• Took delivery of Mac 12" Power Book. Tested it, found problems, sent it back for hardware repair.

7 December 2002 to 21 January 2003

DSpace:

• Attended luncheon with Cambridge University collaborator.
• Reviewed DSpace article for Joint Digital Library Conference.
• Ongoing review and mentoring of design.
• Reviewed some DSpace public documentation.
• Attended half-day DSpace strategy meeting.

Lead Athena Team:

• Delivered monthly team progress report.
• Crafted for myself notes on what I've heard stakeholders say Athena future strategy should be, and test to see if I heard correctly.
• Confirmed CG has accurate details on team member's vacation status.
• Took inventory of hardware and send updates to jvargas.
• Tidied up and published paper on the whys of Project Management Metrics.
• Shepherded extensive testing of X and IBM-supplied Matrox Hardware. Have clarified strategy for X in release, and direction to advocate for IBM X work.
• Sent note to IBM alerting them to our findings on X and Matrox testing. Suggested policies of possible value to IBM.
• Helped set strategy for Mozilla update, and future tactics in maintaining Mozilla.
• Help shepherd Mozilla 1.2.1 update into infoagents locker.
• Updated team people page to reflect current headcount and job roles.
• Updated team home page to reflect focus on Athena Services.
• Shepherded issue of the Red Hat kernel we're deploying now breaks VMWare.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Did outreach to Pete Kelley for maybe getting Athena more into W91.
• Wrote brief proposals for collaboration and submitted them to Sun.
• Fielded question from customer who was having trouble updating.
• Bought 2 LCD displays to replace monitors in Test Cluster. With help from Zacheiss, got them working and installed.
• Send out 4 port KVM for warantee repair. (No wonder Miki didn't like it. It was flako, and finally failed hard.)

Academic Computing:

• Shepherded first set of disconnected-op upgrades into Athena source tree.
• Got new IBM Config into Test Cluster.
• Shepherded delivery of new Athena install that accomodates new IBM config.
• Sorted out how to buy the IBM Test system we used.
• Shepherded updates of saws_configs.html with new Sun monitor pricing, and new IBM Configuration.

Other

• Investigated iBook battery charge/discharge nonlinearity.(Battery bwoken. Got replacement)
• Provided performance review input on admin staffer.
• Purged 2 baskets full of paper from my file cabinet.
• Purged 4 ancient systems from Test Cluster space.

2 November 2002 to 6 December 2002

DSpace:

• Ongoing review and mentoring of design.
• Attend day-long DSpace World-Wide Launch events.
• Conference calls to help set strategy and tactics.
• A few small document reviews.

Lead Athena Team:

• Have 6month check-in conversation with team members.
• Deliver monthly team progress report for November & December.
• Much soul searching, strategizing, and conversation about budget issues. Worked to manage team member concerns. Worked to help rferrara get info he needed to answer jdb's queries.
• Wrote a document inspired by an article in Project Manager Journal to try and make a case to developers as to why it's important to measure project performance and to agree on success criteria:
  http://web.mit.edu/wdc/www/project-metrics.html
• Attended meeting of W92 team leaders and discussed budget and space issues.
• Participated in CG-led discussion of issues around team members who are on multiple teams. Provided input based on my experiences. Applied some of the discussion to organizing the team.
• Worked at establishing clearer management of Larry Stone and Todd Belton who are fractionally in the team.
• Investigated tactics for having a backup person for Todd's Mozilla responsibilities.
• Helped set strategy and tactics for analyzing and dealing with possible impacts of shifting from desiring to requiring Athena Solaris systems to be one big partition. Involves counting affected users, and seeing how many re-installs of what level of disruption such would be.
• Began discussions about improving responsiveness in Mozilla maintenance. Involves determining either new maintenance procedures for the locker, or moving it to the Athena release. Still in process of analyzing impacts.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Luncheon with Sun representatives to introduce new Sun Service Engineer, and to explore options for MIT-Sun collaboration.

Academic Computing:

• Publish Web page(s) that documents present Athena disconnected operation, issues, and expected timeframe for different refinements (Disconnected Operation Project Notebook). TODO: add target delivery dates. Get reviewers to see if its useful info.
• Dealt with change-over of IBM Hardware. Shepherded issues of impacts through Owls and various stakeholders. Led a discussion where the Athena and IBM calendars do and do not overlap.
• Installed new Sun, Sunblade100 in W92 Test Cluster.
• Got some updates made to desktop and laptop configuration web pages.

Other

• Participated in a functional, business, and infrastructure review of RedHat Update service. Helped others understand its costs, benefits, and impacts. After initially working to slow the delivery, worked to speed delivery of the service and establishment of pieces MIT needs to be responsible for.
• Took some vacation during Thanksgiving Week.
• Performed a one-hour poetry reading as part of Artists Behind the Desk.

15 September 2002 to 1 November 2002

DSpace:

• Catch up on email reports; reviewed discussion of OAI support, new look, e-person auto-creation and management.
• Discussion threads: Unknown file format, Home page issues, November 4th TODO list, Workflow task acknowledgement issue, team conference call on 10/31.

Lead Athena Team:

• Refine budget answers with Delivery Council. Prepare to present them to Jim on Oct 11.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Work on article about IBM Linux Athena. TODO: See about getting a press release made from draft.
• Plan and deliver IT Partners hands-on tutorial Oct 24.
• Inventory Sun issues into easy-to-track list
• Opened trouble ticket at IBM over necessity of doubly initializing wireless card.
• Responded to a query from NCSU about our experiments with VMWare on Athena.

Academic Computing:

• Was a test user for usability review of Stellar assignment module. (At long last, there is something I believe in that is capable of replacing NEOS/turnin. Well done guys!)
• Did heavy duty pondering and offered up amendments for the Athena-related bits of isweb team's alphabetical list of products and services.
• Swapped my T30 for the hi-res model. Did much testing and learning. Got another set of recovery CD's.
• Got 100 more Athena install CD's made and spread them amongst SIPB, Help Desk, and OLC office for distribution.
• Bought too many replacement CD blanks.
• Accepted IBM's offer of ESS Support contact. Set it up for zacheiss, amb, and me.

Other

• DONE: Test bug fix for mailsync data destruction bug.
• 10/25, 10/28 Vacation

14 September 2002 to 11 October 2002

DSpace:

• Ongoing review and mentoring of design.
• Supplied some clarification to a CMA grant reviewer of why the head counts were sane.

Lead Athena Team:

• Came to closure on plan for re-purposing team member.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Began work on an article describing IBM Linux Athena.

Academic Computing:

• Publish Web page with Athena Laptop Linux lore (and made several revisions over that past weeks).
• Tested hi-res T30.
• Tested Dell Latitude C640.
• Shepherd writing of new partition code. Ended up doing some actual coding myself on it. Actively participated in further design discussion.

24 August 2002 to 13 September 2002

9/2 Holiday
9/3-9/6 Out sick
DSpace:

• Ongoing review and mentoring of design.

Lead Athena Team:

• Worked with team members who expressed interest in pursuing new projects in their performance reviews
• Deliver monthly team progress report.
• Closed out remaining open issues for annual hardware renewal.
• Met with team and discussed budget situation and what it means to us.
• Crafted answers to Jim's budget questions and reviewed them with tomt and with the team.
• Conceived of direction for the team for the next year as part of budget question answering process.
• Sent kudos letter to team and directors.
• Started digging into what is meant by "re-purposing some Delivery headcount" in the budgeting work. Short answer: "Mostly harmless".

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Started beating the bushes for answers to OpenAFS questions asked by some colleagues.

Academic Computing:

• Monitored and assisted with qualification of Linux Athena Laptop configurations.
• Monitored and assisted with development of Athena Disconnected Operation for Athena 9.1.
• Mozilla
  • Participated in decision to abandon Netscape 6.2, and in choice of Netscape 1.0 as new Athen adefault..
  • Helped with testing and deploy of infoagents version of Netscape 1.0, and its integration into the Athena release as the default browser.
• Revised athena.iso CD image to include INSTRUCTIONS; Worked with Angela Blossom to craft CD artwork. Shepherded production of Athena CD's.
• Further testing of Athena install on recommended laptop platforms. amb has done a terrific job of fixing the partitioning problems and X configuration problems. TODO: Resolve remaining partitioning problem.
• Drafted a web page describing lore of recommended laptops with Athena install.
• Worked issue of video configuration for the Dell Latitude C840 laptop.

Other

• Investigated mailsync as a way to replicate my IMAP store in AFS for backup and safety. Mark Silis has been most helpful in this regard. TODO: Test mailsync and if successful migrate all local archives in mh and Evolution formats to IMAP server.
• Did 6month check-in on my goals. Wow, it was quite a difference this year: Alignment between my goals and goals expressed by leadership much greater. Comfort much greater. Very little time spent arguing this year. Examples of my goal changing (Visit sister schools delayed; Laptop contribution transformed). Examples of organization realizing value of my diverging opinion and aligning with it (VMWare and Mozilla).

23 August 2002

8/19 - 8/23 Vacation
DSpace:

• Meeting on forming consortia.
• Various chats and check-ins.

Lead Athena Team:

• After the team drafted the 2 monthly status reports, I sent them in.
• Worked on team member development plans.
• Had conversations with team members and find out what they're doing, and what they'd like to work on -- both from a work and personal development standpoint.
• Updated Athena Who Does What with more current job mix reporting.
• Updated Athena Projects with current project status.
• Spent a little to omuch time shepherding renewal of 11 systems. Reviewed about 30 entries in the Athena inventory database to see which systems do and don't need renewal. Made sure inventory DB kept up to date through renewal. Asked for guidance in process improvement.
• Identified many disk drives and systems to be deactivated. Got them deactivated.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• reviewed and suggested refinemenst to Zacheiss AFS whitepaper
• Met with IBM reps and suggested refinements to our collaboration.
• Kicked off effort to cleanly resolve an IBM Ethernet issue under Linux. IBM is being a good partner. amb is leading this work.
• Kicked off effort to cleanly resolve an IBM/Matrox Video issue under Linux. Here too IBM is being a good partner, and amb is leading the work.
• Received a CNBoot inquiry. Forwared it to Sun for further action.
• Began bi-weekly Sun conference calls. Checked in on CNBoot, Netscape, hardware futures, install and software distribution issues.
• Tested etherboot fixup floppy supplied by Danilo. It works.
• Made etherboot fixup floppy image available in bootkit locker along with some documentation.

Academic Computing:

• Got Andrew locker working on Linux platform.
• Assisted with a troublesome Athena deployment. Suggested some process improvements.
• Evolution:
  • The IMAP Caching bug stopped biting because we've stopped caching. The Ximian folk described how it's a server bug. I forwarded the description of the server bug to Mark Silis.
• Netscape 6
  • Helped break log jam on Netscape 6.2 for UNIX.
  • Received working Athena Netscape 6.23 for Linux and switched myself to using it instead of Mozilla. (We eat our own dog food here!)
• Submitted stopgap prose changes for ACS Athena purchase pages so that incoming students would not be harmed by out-of-date info.
• Did more review of IS Athena config and purchase pages, and got new versions of Athena Workstation and Server Configurations: Life-Cycle Summary, Recommended and Supported Athena Configurations, Recommended and Supported Athena Server Configurations, Purchasing an Athena Workstation or Server out the door.
• Helped qualify IBM Tower system with flat panel display as variation on Athena Workstation theme.
• Worked on getting Athena to install on recommended laptop configurations. (Supplied much input to amb for incorporating changes, improvements and bug fixes to Athena install.
• Tracked development effort on Laptop Athena Disconnected Operation.
• Helped with training of Help Desk on Linux Athena install.

Other

• iBook:
  • Used it a lot.
  • Learned about MacOS 10.2

16 August 2002

8/16 Vacation

9 August 2002

8/5 Meeting on forming Consortia

2 August 2002

26 July 2002

7/22 Vacation
7/23 Vacation

19 July 2002

7/18 Vacation
7/19 Vacation

12 July 2002

5 July 2002

7/4 Holiday
7/5 Vacation

28 June 2002

DSpace:

• Discussion threads: Handles.
• Reviewed position paper on persistent identifiers. Reminded everyone that persistent identifiers must NOT have internal structure, because it means stuff ends up being required never to move out of the advertised structure.
• Attended a second hardware meeting and helped further refine understandings and configurations.
• Attended farewell luncheon for Peter Breton. His contract has ended. We're all gonna miss him a bunch!

Lead Athena Team:

• Kicked off some deployment of the new Athena IBM Linux hardware for the team.
• Did inventory with jweiss of systems that need renewal. TODO: visit my team members and get the renewals done or dropped.
• Reviewed contractor budget issues.
• Finished up end-of-year hardware purchases.
• Wrote complete first draft of Disconnected Operation white paper; got feedback; wrote second draft; got more feedback; reviewed proposal for proof-of-concept implementation by warlord; Managed warlord in his prototyping.
• Took Disconnected operation to Athena Release Team. We're going to fast-track documentation and an implementation into 9.1 to help be useful to Athena Linux on Laptop users.
• Rewrote Disconnected Operation White Paper to include implementation, and to eliminate speculative and superfluous ramblings; got review from ghudson and warlord; got review from pbh: There is other disconnected operation stuff we'll hook into in the future. TODO: Get review from jis as sanity check on integration and enterprise issues.
• Helped with watchmaker orientation
• Participated in ILEAD review of EC3. It looks like CG has learned a great many things from the EC3 efforts that will result in fewer "everybody has to do this training" things, and more direct help to team leaders in sustainable continuous improvement.
• Submitted bullet items from the team to rferrara for President's Report.
• Created big punch list of tasks for fall readiness and for team deliverables. This should help me keep track of stuff with greater comfort.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Reviewed warlord's VMWare survey. He has definitely inventoried the questions and their relationships in a useful way. They are difficult questions, but at least we know what they are.
• Reviewed warlord's design and implementation status on the Disconnected Operation stuff. Good progress is being made.
• Helped someone use the new Athena installer to set up dual-boot private Workstations.
• Made changes to andrew locker so that it will work when /usr/andrew goes away in 9.1; tested on Sun & SGI; Found problem on Linux. TODO: fix linux problem.
• Took delivery of Itanium system from HP to play with. Garry likes it. Got a DEEP discount from HP for it. Will buy it with end of year money.
• Met new HP Sales force for MIT. Helped suggest strategy for working together in the future.

Academic Computing:

• Evolution: Worked with ghudson on IMAP cache-coherency problem. Had trouble reproducing it at home.
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 for UNIX Athena
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.
  • Did extensive review of Netscape Release Team work and documents. Am DELIGHTED to have Athena UNIX be in better coordinating with the rest of IS deployments.
  • Weighed in with helping tbelton unbreak the configurations that Netscape insists on breaking.
• Attended second fall readiness meeting. Took away action items.
• Took issue of Laptop Linux to Release team after hearing that the Help Desk prefers Athena Linux to stock Red Hat at the present time. We're gonna try and fast-track something useful into the Athena release.
• Received draft of "Mac OS X for Athena UNIX users" from Laura Cerritelli (lokie@MIT.EDU). TODO: read it more carefully and give feedback.

Other

• iBook:
  • Played with Mozilla. It crashes just like Netscape 6.2.3 does. I think it's a JRE interaction.
  • Updated to MacOS 10.1.5. Pretty smooth even from home.
  • Learned the email program that comes stock with OS X. The UI is very similar to Evolution. The support for enclosures is smoother on the mac. But latest Microsoft .doc's choke AppleWorks. This email solution works BETTER for me on the road and at home than pine. That's cuz it looks like Evolution, and has the same productivity enhancing features, and runs fast.
  • Ordered up Office v.X to make enclosures TOTALLY smooth.

21 June 2002

14 June 2002

7 June 2002

6/3 Delivery Council
6/3 Owls
6/4 Discovery Offsite
6/5 ganderso
6/5 edolan
6/6 DSpace Weekly
DSpace:

• Attended meeting on crafting hardware recommendations for long term ongoing recapitalization, and for other sites to use. Summarized my input in email.
• Determined Athena 9.1 works OK on the Vectra VEi8's that would hang with Athena 9.0.26. Upgraded 1 system.
• Discussion threads: Naming of another sort, Schema Changes.

Lead Athena Team:

• Wrote complete first draft of Disconnected Operation white paper; got feedback; wrote second draft; got more feedback; reviewed proposal for proof-of-concept implementation by warlord; Managed warlord in his prototyping.
• Canvassed team for specs, sorted out, and ordered final end-of-year hardware.
• Wrote monthly status report with Release team and shipped it.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Helped roll-out new Linux Athena Install floppy: Tested it myself; Did usability testing with Lou Isgur; Reviewed instructions; Helped cook CD version; Made some floppies for hardserv.
• Helped establish how we undo the EEPROM bashing that the old Linux Athena Install floppy did; It's now all in phase2 install with clear status reporting.
• Made changes to andrew locker so that it will work when /usr/andrew goes away in 9.1; tested on Sun & SGI; Found problem on Linux. TODO: fix linux problem.
• Took delivery of Itanium system from HP to play with. Garry likes it.
• Nudged release-team to remove last 2 restricted packages from Linux Athena release by carefully reviewing 1 license, and restricting source only, and appropriately spinning the other out into a locker.

Academic Computing:

• Returned Athena evaluation hardware to HP and Dell.
• Logged 1 new major bug and 1 new enhancement requests with Evolution; Determined that 1.0.5 (in Athena 9.1.5) fixes 3 major problems I had, but still doesn't fix the IMAP cache-coherency problem.
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 forUNIX Athena
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.
  • Participated in some Netscape 6 roll-out discussions.
  • Tried out Athena Netscape 6 on Linux and Sun. Reported on issues.
• Helped sort out issues of roll-out of Linux Desktop Discovery recommendations.
• Discussed with various people my concerns about providing good support to freshmen arriving with Laptops; I have settled into reasonable comfort that the right thing will happen.
• Attended Fall Readiness meeting. Mentioned my concern about a possible gap between freshman expectations and our ability to deliver laptop-based services.
• Took on supervision of a watchmaker, Laura Cerritelli (lokie@MIT.EDU). She will be working on some documentation for "Mac OS X for Athena UNIX users."

Other

• iBook:
  • Spent a little time settling into MacOS X. It is SO nice not to have to use a pointy hat, pear wood staff, and entrails of a chicken to get a laptop going!
  • Set up networking for home, and work, including wireless. DHCP and wireless registration were not difficult.
  • Found bug in OS X NFS mount implementation
  • Joined Apple Dev Consortium (to report the bug)
  • Fetched developer kit and installed it over the net.
  • Reported problem with login to bug sending system for new ADC member, me.
  • Got help from zacheiss, lxs, and mjv on making system a little more tuned to my liking
  • Fetched Netscape 6 and the JRE and installed them. (I shoulda used the SWRT system, and will next time.)
  • Confirmed I can ssh to my home system
  • Learned rsync and used it to synchronize a bunch of files I use on laptop.
  • reported bug in MacOS X NFS mounting.
  • reported bug in MacOS X emacs. (Fixed in an upcoming release.)

31 May 2002

5/28 Fall Readiness
5/28 Service & Support project review
5/29 Release Team
5/29 IS Forum
5/30 DSpace Weekly

24 May 2002

5/20 Delivery Council
5/20 Owls
5/21 Linux Desktop roll-out meeting
5/22 DSpace Hardware discussion
5/22 edolan
5/23 DSpace weekly
5/24 Lerman customer chat.

17 May 2002

5/14 all-Delivery meeting
5/15 Release Team
5/15 edolan weekly (cancelled due to edolan absense.)
5/16 DSpace Weekly
DSpace:

• Helped craft hardware configuration recommendation for DSpace follow-on, and implementations at other sites. TODO: Continue assisting with this work till it's done.

Lead Athena Team:

• Submitted input to perf. eval on member of another team.
• Drafted outline for Disconnected Operation white paper.
• Wrote complete first draft of Disconnected Operation white paper; got feedback. TODO: Write second draft.
• Co-wrote monthly status report and submitted it.
• Helped get Athena Services document rolled out; Modified main delivery page to link to it.
• Presented overview of UNIX Athena Platform team membership and work to all-Delivery meeting.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Played with OpenOffice 1.0 and reported a non-ideal behavior.
• Monitored work on new Linux Athena Install floppy.
• Checked in on possibility of IBM Linux Laptop. Expressed strong displeasure with IBM decision to shift to outsourcing certification of same via LinuxCare.
• Checked in with HP on where we were with Athena certification. Alas, certified system will have early End of Life as a consequence of the HP/Compaq merger. TODO: go to Owls for guidance on what response to make.
• Fielded query on Athena configs from Bob Lang at UNIX/VMS Help Desk. Pointed him at the new IBM-based config and recommended he buy that.
• Made changes to andrew locker so that it will work when /usr/andrew goes away in 9.1; tested on Sun & SGI. TODO: test on Linux. Ask release-team if we want to have warning messages instead of just 'Not Found' for former /usr/andrew/bin/*.

Academic Computing:

• Contacted vendors for instructions on returning loaners.
• Logged 1 new major bug and 1 new enhancement requests with Evolution.
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 forUNIX Athena
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.
  • Participated in some Netscape 6 roll-out discussions.
    
  • Tried out Athena Netscape 6 on Linux and Sun. Reported on issues.
• Revised APSE project notebook. Completed shift over to managing that work as 3rd party software rather than as a project, or technology watch activity.

10 May 2002

5/6 Owls
5/7 Chat with azary about Free Software futures
5/8 Release Team
5/9 DSpace weekly
5/9 DSpace Hardware config discussion.
5/9 Review 5/14 talking points.

3 May 2002

5/1 All Lib Meeting: DSpace Roll-out
5/1 Release Team
5/1 Edolan weekly
5/2 DSpace weekly
5/3 Half Day vacation

26 Apr 2002

4/22 Delivery Council
4/22 Owls
4/23 Edolan
4/23 rclarke farewell
4/24 Release Team
4/25 IT Partners
4/25 DSpace Weekly
DSpace:

• Did quick reviews of: Database Architecture Doc, cert config, mod_throttle, cvs directory structure, Configuration Manager Proposal, Early adopters DB Schema, Context object proposal, Non-autogenerated Storage Layer Proposal

Lead Athena Team:

• Helped craft Systems Programmer III Job description.
• Finished and signed remaining performance review.
• Helped with review and refinement of Athena Services document.
  

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Reviewed VMWare exploration work by warlord.
• Had some discussions with Release Team about how the Linux Athena install is un-graceful off campus.  Suggested changes to remedy this.
• Did some investigation of customer, implementation, and support issues for a Linux Athena install CD.
  

Academic Computing:

• Logged 1 new major bug and 1 new enhancement requests with Evolution.
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 for UNIX Athena
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.
  • Participated in some Netscape 6 roll-out discussions.
    

19 April 2002

4/16-17 Vacation
4/18 DSpace Weekly (punted)
4/18 Visitor from Oxford

12 April 2002

4/8 Delivery Council
4/8 Owls
4/9 Edolan
4/10 Watchmaker Interview
4/11-12 Vacation
DSpace:

• Attended DSpace celebration

Lead Athena Team:

• Submitted proposed performance ratings for my team members
• Submitted final performance reviews for all but one of my team members.
  
• Brainstormed watchmaker projects for this year's summer hiring process. 
• Co-wrote monthly status report and submitted it.
  

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Reviewed Hardware Diversity work by warlord.
• Reviewed Linux Desktop Discovery final report and submitted suggested changes.
• Successfully burned new install into CD and installed Linux Athena with it.
• Made house call to DSpace to investigate system hang after taking Athena 9.0.25.  Alas some systems hang when they run Red Hat 2.4.9-31 kernel. Others have seen this bug. (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=61340)
• Sent email to release-announce warning of problem with RH 2.4.9-31 kernel.
• Logged bug with OpenOffice RTF import
• Suggested less misleading way OpenOffice should handle issues that are Bugs with known fixes not yet deployed.
• Played with OpenOffice
• Asked warlord to look at VMWare under Linux Athena.
  

Academic Computing:

• GX150 network problem:
  
  • Tested new way to initialize NIC.  Mixed results.
  • Isolated fault to actions of OUR OWN Etherboot install.
  • Followed up with 3c59x folks and Etherboot folks, and release team.
  • Plan is to replace Etherboot floppy with new installer.
  • closed bug with Red Hat.
  • Discovered that the fix was more complicated than I thought -- crafted new one and deployed it to two clusters with Lou.
  • Handed off revised fix to ghudson for integration into new patch release
    
  • This problem is CLOSED as of Athena 9.0.26 on 31 March 2002
    
• Logged 6 bugs/enhancement requests with Evolution.
• Got Ximian and ghudson talking about mh folder support in Evolution
  
• Logged bug with Red Hat over mis-parse of double quote from vendor monitor string.
  
• Video card problem (NVidia card we have been buying is soon to become unavailable. Its replacement does not have totally graceful support under Linux):
  • Complained that Dell is being lame about NVidia substitutes, taking in excess of a month to ship anything.
• Request for Quotes on July Athena buy
• Played with IBM NetVista Series X system; Sexy design.  Easy to install Linux Athena.  Impossible to configure X.
  
• Followed up with HP and Dell.
• Tested Dell submission
• Tested HP submission
• Validated zacheiss test of IBM submissions.
• Found myself a handy-dandy 3d X server test program.
  
• Hosted a visit by HP saleswoman and engineer.
• Proposed vendor for this year's Athena renewal.
• Proposed strategy for levels of support/purchase for renewal.
• Proposed wording for notification to vendors.
• TODO: Monitor that the decisions get made, fully accepted up the chain of command, and implemented.
  
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 for UNIX Athena
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.

Other

• Received, installed, tested and accepted new Rose Electronics USB cables that remedy our SunBlade 100 problem.
• Began migrating myself off email reading with Andrew Messages and onto new Athena standards of Pine and Evolution.  I like Pine.  I'm finding bugs in Evolution.  I feel that we are making progress on rendering Evolution ready for prime time by this summer.
• Refinanced my house.  Used E*Trade Mortgage.  Did a post mortem on the process.
  

5 Apr 2002

4/3 Release Team
4/4 DSpace Weekly
4/4 Dot Commisary restock!

29 Mar 2002

3/25 Delivery Council
3/25 Owls
3/27 Release Team
3/27 Linux Desktop Discovery
3/27 Edolan
3/27 HP
3/28 DSpace Weekly
3/29 Linux Desktop Discovery

22 Mar 2002

3/19 EC3 Feedback

3/19 DSpace Weekly
3/20 Release Team
3/20 Edolan
3/21 DSpace Celebration
3/22 Linux Desktop Discovery

15 Mar 2002

3/11 Out sick
3/12 DSpace weekly
3/12 IS Forum -- Academic Computing
3/13 Happy birthday to me.
3/13 Release Team -- cancelled
3/13 My performance appraisal.
3/13 Performance appraisals for amb, rbasch, miki, ghudson, tbelton
3/14 DSpace all day offsite
3/15 Performance appraisal for zacheiss, lcs
DSpace:

• All day offsite

Lead Athena Team:

• Had my performance review
• Did face-to-face performance review with everyone on my team.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Merged in suggestions for change-policy.html.
• Got changes to server-configs.html reviewed, and published.
• Got changes to min-std-athena.html reviewed and published.
• Experimented with Linux cd recording on my GX150.
• Had Sun conference call on CNBoot.  They still don't want to take our change.  We've agreed to test their fancy new solution to the problem when available.  They've taken careful inventory of our requirements.  Have asked Sun salesman for help with transition to fancy new solution.
• Experimented with Evolution.  Noted many issues; Reported a bug; requested a pull-up of a bug-fix.
• Isolated fault and crafted trivial change to text file to enable MIT Certificates to work when someone has had Mozilla (Netscape 6 too, probably) migrate their profile.
  

Academic Computing:

• GX150 network problem:
  
  • Extensive testing of revised EEPROM utility.  Sent lots of data back to author.
  • Agreed with Dell that this is an issue Dell cannot help with.  (They don't have the right contacts within 3Com.)
  • Asked the relevant folk in Linux-land what we should do next, and how I could help.
  • Downloaded 3Com documentation and started trying to help design solution.  TODO: discuss ideas; maybe contact 3com.
  • Asked a different part of Red Hat for help with 3com.
• Video card problem (NVidia card we have been buying is soon to become unavailable. Its replacement does not have totally graceful support under Linux):
  • Monitored amb progress on more graceful handling of new card.
  • Asked our contact for help with card strategy.  He sent me back to our sales person to discuss "Custom Factory Integration" service.
  • Sales person said she would have to check on whether or not CFI could, in fact, help.
  • Asked Red Hat for help.
• Request for Quotes on July Athena buy
• Reviewed zacheiss's communications with IBM.
• Conference call and email request for quotes from Dell
• Contacted HP rep and requested quotes.
• Reviewed response by IBM
• Facilitated expedited receipt of Solaris Update release .
  
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 for UNIX Athena
  • Attended meeting to be scheduled by tregan to discuss the issues.
  • Monitored tbelton progress on Netscape 6.2 test-install for Athena.
  • Confirmed with Release Team that all is well with patches for Solaris for Netscape 6 (and in somewhat related news, they are well in hand for Java 1.4 as well.)
  • Isolated fault wherein Netscape 6/Mozilla will silently fail to save.  Mozilla.org has patches crafted and in the pipe!
  • Isolated fault where MIT client-side Certificates were reporting obscure "Unknown SSL Error -27777" message.  Traced to a fault in handling of a particular preference.  Reported work-around to netscape-release.  Mozilla.org is crafting a fix.
    

Other

• Did extensive debugging on home DSL problem: Idle ssh or telnet connections get terminated if left idle for too long. Have option of replacing SpeedStream 5250 from Efficient Networks with Flowpoint 2200 Router set in bridged mode, or trying SpeedStream 5251 which alleges to fix, or just running a chron job to make noise on the net.  For now I'll make noise.
• Facilitated loan of ancient version of Solaris.
  

8 Mar 2002

3/4 Dell conference call
3/5 DSpace Weekly
3/6 Release Team
3/6 edolan weekly

1 Mar 2002

2/25 Owls
2/26 DSpace Weekly
2/27 Release Team
2/27 edolan weekly
2/27 CNBoot conference call with Sun
3/1 Libraries/DSpace/NCSTRL strategy meeting
3/1 AFS & Laptops discussion
3/1 Netscape6 discussion

22 Feb 2002

2/18 Holiday
2/19 DSpace Weekly
2/20 ITAG -- Migration to Open AFS presentation
2/20 Release team -- cancelled
2/20 edolan weekly
2/21 DSpace departure luncheon for P. Carmichael
2/22 Linux desktop -- cancelled
DSpace:

• Participated in discussions about federation.
• Suggested contingency plans in case Early adopters submissions are not sufficient for testing.
• Discussed NCSTRL futures.
• Celebrated contributions of Peter Carmichael as his contract with us comes to an end.
  

Lead Athena Team:

• Updated Team project list page to reflect changes in status, attempt at finding owners for the projects, and new projects that have come in.
• Submitted monthly team progress report to Delivery Council.  (We drafted it together at Release Team)
• Kicked off annual performance review process, and gave all team members action items with regards to goal setting and self-assessment.
• Invited team members to participate in Team Leader Baseline Assessment.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Drafted additional prose for Minimal Standard Athena web page to encourage bug reporting, and sent the prose to Owls for review; 
• Drafted additional prose for server-configs.html and sent to Owlss for reviwe. Owls requested further amendments which have been drafted and submitted.
  
• Got dates nailed down for most entries in eol-grid.html.Brought to Owls for review. Published! (as amended by Owls.)
  
• Merged in suggestions for change-policy.html.

Academic Computing:

• GX150 network problem:
  
  • Got Dell involved.
  • Tested at least 3 candidate driver replacements. No joy.
  • Confirmed problem does not occur under DOS and Windows.
  • Sent extensive EEPROM debugging info to Linux driver guru.
  • Understood nature of problem: Undocumented reset lore to handle EEPROM settings that normally make the MII invisible.
  • Experimented with Linux utility to force EEPROMS into a useful state.
  • Asked Dell to help us learn the reset lore.
• Video card problem (NVidia card we have been buying is soon to become unavailable. Its replacement does not have totally graceful support under Linux):
  • Salesman provided Dell contact who understands hardware continuity issue who may be helpful with this issue, with the network problem, and with future partnering with Dell.
    
  • Supplied to Dell contact the business case for hardware continuity. (I expect this message will have to be repeated to different parts of Dell.)
  • Owls team agreed to investigate other Linux vendors to see if they have comparable system offerings and better hardware continuity.
  • Requested salesman provide us with what will get substituted when we return NVidia cards.  Salesman says that such can be expected to change a lot over the next year.  Salesman suggests using contact to address this issue.
  • Monitored amb progress on more graceful handling of new card.
• Successor to Netscape 4.78 for UNIX Athena
  • Requested Discovery Council study the issue.
  • Had informal discussions with various directors to evolve strategy. Discovered that not everyone understood that migrating UNIX Athena to Netscape 6 from 4.78 might be problematic.
  • Got charter to proceed with Netscape 6 work on UNIX Athena (which has been begun by Todd Belton.)
  • TODO: Attend meeting to be scheduled by tregan to discuss the issues.
  • Joined the Netscape email list managed by SWRT.
  • Formulated a plan that provides Netscape 6 to customers of Athena, explores the boundries (for example SGI has Mozilla but not Netscape 6), and suggests future investigation of appropriate degree of collaboration with Mozilla.org.

Other

• Discovered Mozilla composer hangs when you paste complex HTML.
• Did extensive debugging on home DSL problem: Idle ssh or telnet connections get terminated if left idle for too long.
• Got status update from Rose Electronics on the KVM bug.  They're still working on it.  Apparently it's VERY tricky.  They say expect possible relief in another 4 weeks.  (They need to craft a new version of hardware and software and regression test it.)
• Did some catching up in the Squeak mailing list.  (That very portable Smalltalk implementation continues to evolve in interesting ways.  I don't have time to track many details, but I continue to keep an eye on it in a general way.)

15 Feb 2002

2/11 Owls
2/12 Dspace weekly
2/13 Release Team
2/14 rclarke team leadership meeting
2/15 Linux Desktop

8 Feb 2002

2/4 Linux Desktop
2/5 DSpace Weekly -- cancelled
2/5 EJournal Archive -- cancelled
2/6 Release Team
2/6 edolan weekly
2/7 Magellan
2/8 Linux Desktop

1 Feb 2002

1/28 Sick
1/29 Sick
1/31 DSpace IAP Sneek Preview
2/1 Linux Desktop -- cancelled
DSpace:

• Discussion threads:
  
• Supplied info on Athena Help and Helpdesk support targets to mbarton and jharford.
  
• Attended IAP DSpace Sneek Preview.
  

Lead Athena Team:

• Held conversations with amb, rbasch, and tomt about dividing up the load of managing the full set of UNIX Platform Team projects.

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Wrote first draft blurbs for Linux Desktop Discovery Report: Stock/Athena differences, Recommendations regarding: NFS, StarOffice(2 drafts), Hardware Diversity(2 drafts), VMWare, Disconnected Operation. Did a fair bit of discussion and review of these blurbs.
  
• Kicked off investigationof Oracle Client for Linux in oracle locker. Zacheiss created an oracle8 locker which has the proper stuff for all platforms, and will probably migrate to the oracle locker after some testing.
  
• Was invited to look at OpenPKG. Alas, it is in addition to, rather than instead-of Solaris pkgadd and patchadd shell scripts. Notified Sun that our problem has NOT gone away.
  
• Updated CNBoot web page at request of Sun to help support the RFE.
  
• Drafted and then revised document describing Athena Release Change policies.
  

Academic Computing:

• Comissioned mozilla-new locker and began populating it with binaries.
  
• Installed Linux and Sun mozilla in mozilla-new with JVM that I TESTED and which WORKS.
  
• Did some more playing with mozilla, and more outreach to developer community.
  
• Kicked off restart of conversationswith Sun about Star Office.
  
• GX150 network problem:
  
  • Discovered problem more widespread than it initially appeared.
    
  • Pushed on Red Hat for analysis.
    
  • Involved net-help and release-team in process of formulating response.
    
  • Facilitated collaborationbetween Linux ethernet driver experts and us.
    
  • Read several 3c59x driver sources.
    
  • Did extensive testing.
    
• Reviewed life-cycle web page drafts and sent amendments.
  

Other

• Acquired appropriate additional net drops for W92 test cluster.
  
• Did post-mortem on Test Cluster project with sponsor. We both got some good insights.
  
• Fielded an interesting and obscure KVM bug: interactive boot programs don't work on a Sunblade through the USB. (I guess pre-os USB is flaky). Isolated fault with miki, and open bug report to Rose Electronics.
  
• Facilitated more cleanup of test cluster. Deactivated half a dozen unloved disk drives after dalmeida formatted them.

25 Jan 2002

1/21 Holiday MLK
1/22 DSpace Weekly
1/22 EJournal Archive
1/24 EDolan weekly
1/25 Sick

18 Jan 2002

1/14 SGI Phaseout Discussion
1/15 DSpace Weekly
1/15 ILEAD: People Stuff.
1/16 Release Team
1/17 IS Forum
1/18 Linux Desktop

11 Jan 2002

1/7 Owls
1/8 DSpace weekly -- moved
1/8 EJournal Archive
1/9 Release Team
1/10 AUI Wingding
1/10 edolan HR meeting
1/11 Linux Desktop
DSpace:

• Caught up in the dspace-code list.
  

Lead Athena Team:

• Did some planning of Linux Athena installer tasks and GNOME updating with amb.
  
• Drafted with ghudson and amb and then filed monthly status report.
  
• Had discussions with Dolan Jweiss about salaries, promotions, and calibrations for team members.
  
• Performed some equipment and IP address inventory. Sent update requests to athena-inventory, and to various to set proper account number and other relevant data.
  

Champion Athena UNIX:

• Reviewed proposal by Tufts. Shared the info with Miki. TODO: Ponder overlap, and reply.
  
• Prepped for EECS meeting to discuss me as pilot Account Manager.
  
• Had EECS meeting, and got action items regarding EECS needs to amb.
  
• Digested, tabulated, and aggregated Linux Desktop institutional surveys. Sent draft to team leader. Formulated plan for further dissemination.
  
• Did serious analysis of Zero Cost Athena registrations. Determined the current system will not help predict emerging new customer segments. TODO: Investigate building something better.
  
• Set up with jweiss a periodic Linux Athena host count. Circulated current count guess: 102 in public clusters, 682 elsewhere.
  
• Finished aggregating Linux Desktop Institutional Survey responses and presented it to team.
  
• Sent Linux Desktop Institutional Survey responses to contributors to verify answers and get permission to publish aggregates as shown.
  

Other

• Reviewed state of "eliminate mixed messages work". Reorganized the longer term writing tasks, and declared victory. TODO: Remain attentive for reports from others of mixed messages.
  
• Set a new date for AUI wingding
  
• Held the AUI wingding!
  
• Acquired new GX150 desktop Linux and deployed my old GX110 to the W92 test cluster.
  
• Debugged problem with network performance on new desktop Linux system. Verified with author of drivers that the issue is fixed in newer versions. Opened a request with Red Hat to review version of 3c59x driver currently shipping.
  
• Facilitated shift of an Ultra-5 from amb to the W92 test cluster.
  
• DecomissionedSGI Indy in Test Cluster and had it hauled away.
  
• Got rid of a bunch of unloved 17" video monitors.

4 Jan 2002

12/31 Sick
1/1 Holiday
1/2 Release Team -- cancelled
1/3 edolan weekly
1/3 Magellan
1/4 EECS Acct Mgr meeting.
1/4 Linux Desktop