Ubuntu Test Drives

Well, I've had more than week to play with Ubuntu 10.04 and I think it's great. There are a few rocks out there, but overall, it's rock stable, feature rich and totally customizable.

Here's the good:

• Ubuntu, the Open Source Community and a few business have pretty much every application you want. For free. With source code. With the ability to contact developers easily to suggest improvements and features. In other words, Screw the Ribbon. Open Office has everything you need, fer free, there's one exception which I'll discuss in the Disadvantages list.
• It doesn't slow down.
  
• You can blow off PhotoShop. The Open Source Gimp photo 'manipulator' and Open Office's Draw Program pretty much have all the features of PhotoShop and Correl Draw for vector and raster graphics files.
• I've only seen one blue screen and it was my fault.
  
• Much as I love Winamp, Rhythmbox pretty much beats it in every feature.
• I can do without the Outlook replacement Evolution (fingers crossed) because, while it does everything Outlook does. I'm used to and like Thunderbird and its Lightning Add-In, I don't like the way Evolution' calendar works and I like having separated InBoxes for my e-mail accounts. This is obviously a matter of preference.
• There are so few of us using it right now (comparatively speaking) that the evil forces of Virii and Malware pretty much don't care about us. Hence- while you should still run an Anti-Virus Program and software firewall (both free, of course), there's not much out there to hurt your 'puter.
  
• You don't need Snag It. There are a couple of screen grabbers (free) that work very well.
• Ubuntu comes with Open Source versions of Disk Burners, E-mail client. IM client (that will handle all of your IM accounts in a single screeen), FireFox (Linux Version- slightly different), a video editor, video viewer, print manager... yuddah, yuddah. In short, you can get started right after the installation is complete with new, free tools that work as well, if not better than Windows tools and applications.
  
• It doesn't crash.
• There are three ways to download and install software. Two are very easy. One isn't. So use the Ubuntu Software Center or Synetics Package Manager to handle this for you.
• It doesn't crash.
  
• Wireless not only worked right of the box, the client actually knew what security my system has and just asked for the password.
• It doesn't crash.
• If you have a smarphone, the makers of Ubuntu have a new service called Ubuntu One (actually it came out with release 9.04, but I had no idea what it was).... a combination Boxnet.net (i.e. secure cloud file space) and activesynch (for Windows Mobile) on Mozilla's Thunderbird. If you use the built-in email client called Evolution which synchs right out of the box. I don't like its calendar since I'm used to Lightning o the $10 a month for the synch service and 50 Gb of free cloud space is a good deal. You get 2 Gb for free.
• It doesn't crash.
• It will integrate all your social media- including Instant Messaging, Web Services and e-mail in a superb user interface.
• Ir doesn't crash

Now there are some minor issues, nits, really:

• Once I paid my first ten bucks to Ubuntu One, they took down the synch to Windows Mobile option. Arrrrgh.
• While I can install Microsoft VISIO using the WINE application, and it will launch. It craps out very easily and consistently. Yes, I have a certified copy. I couldn't open a 2003 VISIO document and had to make due with creating a bunch of boxes in Draw. It worked, but was a pain. I use VISIO a lot, so I guess my next employer is going to have to gimme a laptop with Windows on it.
• Do NOT put your media files on an external drive and have that drive unavailable when you launch Rhythmbox. It indexes media files on initiation and  it has to re-index when you get your external drive up. You're supposed to be able to put media files up on your Ubuntu Cloud share, but I haven't had time to check that out yet.
• The documentation (web-based) is fine for very unsophisticated users and walk them through simple processes and procedures. You really gotta dig for answers on the community wiki or other websites if you have something more complicated than installing a software package from Ubuntu Software Center. I spent a half hour finding out what to do with a *.bin file containing a program I wanted. It was a simple answer (you right click on it, change the properties by adding 'execute' permission and taking out 'read only' permission and then double click it or right click again and select EXECUTE).

Would I install it on my mother's machine? I'm actually thinking about it. She gets so much adware and malware on her machine it's not funny. I'm thinking not because you do have to be a little technical.

For my wife? Yew betcha. But she's a developer using Visual Studio, so that' out.

The kids? Like a shot. Fast, malware and spyware resistant, FREE software and IT DOESN'T CRASH. Yeah, I'm thinking about doing a demo for them.

Oh Yeah---did I mention it doesn't CRASH?

Ubuntu 10.04

Well, it took a bit of doing, but I've got Ubuntu 10.04 LT on my Lenovo T-61 laptop. I had version 9.04 installed as a dual boot Windows XP/Ubuntu system. All of the issues I've identified were caused my me, not Microsoft nor Canonical, the company that creates and supports Ubuntu.

You say you're not sure what this stuff is? Well, you must have heard of UNIX, right? UNIX (and there are variety of flavors out there such as Sun OS, AT & T, etc.) usually runs on what used to be called 'mini-computers,' which used to be between a PC and a Mainframe. Now it runs on what are known as 'workstations,' which are nothing more than really beefed up PCs. Anyway, LINUX is UNIX which can run on your PC.

The problem has been that despite installation scripts, graphical user interfaces and better installation programs, LINUX has been the haven for the technical among us. Until Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has a philosophy. And in its most recent revisions, shown that it can replace your Microsoft or Apple-centered operating system (in fact, one of the reasons Apple moved away from the Motorola Chips a few years back was to get the Intel x86 architecture. OS 10 and above are based on LINUX.

With Ubuntu, you download a file (called in image file) and burn it to a CD. You then boot your PC with the CD. After it boots, you have the option of playing with Ubuntu to see if you like it, or install it on your PC.

Here's where Ubuntu shines over many other forms of LINUX (because the operating system is 'open source,' anyone can change, adapt and create his/her own version...just like the different flavors of UNIX) since the installation routines have been honed for several years. And its very easy to do.

You have a couple of decisions to make during the install. Of course, I blew it. The power was going on and off during a storm and I had to get it done so I could re-do my resume. This is a recipe for disaster.

The first decision you have to make is whether you want to run Ubuntu as the sole operating system on your PC or with Windows or OS 10. If you pick the former, the installation program completely reformats your hard drive and then installs the new OS. If you select the second option (which I did), Ubuntu adds a 'boot manager.'

This is a program that interrupts your PC's start-up routines and allows you to use either Windows/OS 10 or LINUX. This is what got trashed on the second of my installations. Yeah, I know. I use a laptop and the battery should have taken care of it.

Except the battery wasn't installed because I read an article that says you sharply reduce the life of a Lithium battery by not using it and charging it well before it needs to be charged.

Then, I had trouble. Lord did I have trouble. I knew what I did and knew what I had to do to get out of it. I rebooted into the setup routine.

And pressed the wrong button without realizing it (because I didn't read the damn screen). Big Shot IT professional.

I pressed the button that lays in Ubuntu as the only operating system. And I didn't realize what I had done until the re-format routine was half over.

Office 2003. Gone. All my e-mail archives. Gone. All my resume and archive files. Gone. All my website files. Gone.

Wait a sec.

Ubuntu comes with Open Office (a free, open source Microsoft Office replacement) right out of the box.

It comes with FireFox. XMarks will re-synch all my bookmarks. The password synching didn't work for some reason.

It comes with GIMP, an open source alternative to PhotoShop. It also comes with free Instant Messaging, integrated E-Mail/Personal Information Manager (Evolution), allows you to install Thunderbird and its Lightning add-in and a raft of other 'must have' utilities.

There are dozens of free, downloadable open source programs. In fact, Ubuntu doesn't use the Synaptic Program Manager anymore- it has its own Add/Delete software utility now.

The interface is much cleaner than before. All those upper panel icons have been grouped together to make things a lot easier to find.

Hmmm.

Yes, I can install Microsoft Project and VISIO (the only programs that the open source community or Apple have no replacements for) using WINE- a real time application that allows you to run Windows programs under LINUX without the hurky-jerky screens we used to see on Apple machines running similar utilities.

Version 10.04 comes with integrated social media (a one stop application that gathers all the Tweets, Status Changes and FaceBook attaboys you got).

It integrates with Ubuntu One. That's a web site in the 'Internet cloud' that automatically gives you 2 Gigs of free, integrated data space and the option to pay $10/month for 50Gb (yeah, you read that correctly) AND will synch your Smart Phone (even my Windows Mobile 6!).

Maybe I won't miss Windows much at all.

It's been five days and there's been no withdrawl symptoms at all.

I recommend you run it in a dual boot configuration like I did for a few months so you can ease yourself into it. There's a lot to learn if you have trouble (and I realized I had trouble with R9.04- WINE didn't work, the OS didn't recognize the SD Card Reader nor the USB connection to my phone) and it was because of the multiple installs I did on 9.04.

Don't do that.

Back To Work

I go back to work, this time as a Project Manager for a nationally known retail operation based in Hoffman Estates, IL. I'll probably start on Wednesday or Thursday, but fully expect the the start date to push to next Monday. Hiring managers at this place have a lot to do to bring in a new contractor. This will be my third go round and this may be the charm.

With an unprecedented positive recommendation from a previous IT manager, the new boss was pretty well convinced he'd hired me before I came in for the face to face interview. That's what the recruiter said. This time he was right.

That was amazing. Thanks Nancy!

As usual, it took less than a day to get confirmation for the contract. Every job I've ever gotten resulted in the offer or confirmation taking hours instead of days. Once or twice it took as long as two days- but never any longer. In the latest round of interviews and waiting for the rejection phone call, e-mail or letter, I think offers were extended to other people (when I made it that far) and I was the 'back-up.' Of course, I may think too much of myself.It just might be I'm too old, made too much money or a combination of the three.

The new contract's supposed to run 4-6 months. In the interview, my new boss listed the projects his team will have to handle in the next 12-24 months. I believe he was telling me there's a perm gig in it for me, if I don't step on my....er....keep my nose clean. The recruiter thinks the same.

I had no idea Loyalty Programs could keep that many folks employed for that many projects over that length of time.

Thank Goodness for Marketing. Yeah, you heard me.

The journalist in me cringes when I say that because I've seen marketing and PR communications bombarding the newsrooms I managed.

Since then, I've worked three or four marketing projects and as visionary, pie in the sky and wishful thinking as these folks tend to be, the checks don't bounce and I learned the application isn't mine. It's theirs.

I'm an IT Project Manager now, pretty cool, hunh?

I gotta keep studying for my Microsoft Project and PMI PMP credentials or I'll lose access to the on-line question bank. I've found that pretty good for study.

It'll take a little while to get used to getting up at a reasonable hour more than once a week. So, I'm thinking I'll read and test in the evenings and maybe 8-10 hours a day on the weekend until I'm ready. I hope the new place will give me time off to take the tests. If I was smarter, i would have done all of this over the last 3-4 weeks.But I'm not and job hunting was a much higher priority.

As one Blog Commenter told me, Good. Maybe now you'll quick all that whining.

Probably. But if you've been looking for work over the last two years and know your elbow from your foot, you know I didn't exaggerate anything. And writing this blog with all the rants helped keep me sane. That and the Wellbutrin, Xanex and my wife.

But that's over, hopefully for a while- worst case for 4-6 months.

I hope to have some non-proprietary detail on how small teams in a huge IT arena handle development, project management and some generic info on Loyalty Programs. I've dome them on the BA side, so the PM side ought to be very interesting.

Thanks for sticking with me on this drive to be productive and back to work!

If Anything Can Go Wrong...

...it will. Murphy has to have had my search for work in mind.

This latest one is classic.

The company advertised for a permanent full time Business Analyst.

I got 64 (I'm not kidding) phone calls on this. My LinkedIn Profile is working, I guess. And two dozen e-mails. You know the ones- created in Java or a PDF so you can't do anything with it

I went with the first guy who called me.

Two days later, the company called my recruiter, said it wanted a phone screen. Great!

The phone screen was done by the incumbent. The company is smart enough to allow some overlap. Support Content Management, check; Lead Projects for enhancements, check; create and troubleshoot reports from a data warehouse, check. Great, the hiring manager will get my notes and we'll get back to you.

Three days later they want another phone interview. Hmmm.

The hiring manager is still screening. So what was the time I spent out of class invested in? Nothing, obviously, thought the suspicious former reporter now Business Analyst without a job. Yeah, forgot to tell you, I was in a certification class for the first interview.

I call in. We talk. The manager keeps harping on supporting the Content Management System. No, the manager didn't expect any major or minor enhancement for quite a while. No, you wouldn't be creating reports so much as trouble shooting them.

So you advertised for a Business Analyst because........?

Hmmm. The manager wants a Level Two Technical Representative, not a BA.

The last zinger occurs when I ask about the next steps.

"I'm not sure," says the hiring manager, "If we decide to go outside the team, we'd call you in for a face to face interview."

Go "outside the team"?

"Yes, I know we have people on the team who can do this, I just haven't decided if that's the route I want to go," the hiring manager says.

I politely say goodbye while making a rude gesture as I hang up the phone. It's an old Help Desk trick to lower your frustration level without getting into trouble.

So, the bottom line is:

1. The company's job listing, if not an outright lie, was misleading.
2. The inequitable playing field (she has a job, I don't) just became more so because I'm competing with people she already knows and who obviously have more domain experience than I do.
3. There ain't a chance in Hell I'm getting this job, the manager's doing this to fulfill corporate policy and this was just a numbers game.

If the manager calls back and wants a face to face (which I doubt will happen- trust me, I've been looking for work for over 18 months now), I will politely tell the manager that I'm not interested any longer and have accepted an offer with a competitor as it's new CTO (Chief Technical Officer).

I like Cornell's corollary to Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.

Feeding Frenzy

So I'm about ready to open my Project Management Professional manual to start studying this morning. When I got the first phone call. Every single one of them is the same:

Me: Hello, this is Scot.
Recruiter: Hello, Yes, is this Scot?
ME: This is Scot
Recruiter: Hello, Scot, How are You today?
Me: Fine, you?
Recruiter: <long Pause> um, fine, thank you very much. This is <insert non-Western name here> from <insert goobledy gook because the recruiting companies don't seem to care that their recruiters speak terrible English). Is this a good time to talk?
Me: Sure
Recruiter: um, yes....Scot, I have an immediate need for a Business Analyst in Chicago, IL with Documentum and Micro Strategies would you be interested?
Me: Depends, where is it and what kind of hourly range are we talking about.
Recruiter: Ah, very good, um it says Chicago, Illinois.
Me: Well, the Chicago area goes all the way from Joliet North to the Wisconsin Line and as far west as Bannockburn. That means my commuting time and cost would determine if I could take the contract or not.
Recruiter: What is your best rate?
Me: <getting pissed> Um, anything above $45/hour if it's downtown or within ten miles of my house. More if they want a senior role and even more if they want a BA/Project Manager.
Recruiter: $45? That's within our range.
Me: <pissed off now and knowing the offer is going to $47/hour> I said anything above $45 per hour.
Recruiter: Would $48 per hour be satisfactory?
Me: <visibly pleased about the potential of making an extra $8 per week> Yeah, I can do that. Who's the client?
Recruiter: <proprietary information> (the world's second largest soft drink company, the Choice of a New Generation, which is no win its 50s)
Me: Sorry, I was presented yesterday for that role and you're the twelfth caller in the last three hours.

Yes, I got 12 calls this morning from people who search my LinkedIn, Monster, Dice and CareerBuilder profiles. And 8 e-mails. All with the same role. Unknown to these intrepid seekers of commission, another, faster company with people who don't speak English that well got a hold of me yesterday and offered me $50/hour.

That $50 is straight time- no benefits, no overtime. While it's W-2, I couldn't take it if the wife wasn't working as a Developer/Analyst with a company that doesn't immediately dump its workers.

So, here are my 'take-aways:'

• Recruiters are finally becoming wise to the internet and job boards.
• Recruiting Company Employees can't read. They keep calling my cell phone even though I marked my home phone as the preferred contact method. I get a lousy cell signal in my basement office.
• Recruiting Companies don't look in their own databases. I had applied to other jobs posted by three quarters of the companies that called me.
• Recruiting companies need to practice their recruiters on everyday American English. Sorry, but that's the common language here. As liberal as I am (which is plenty liberal), this is one thing that annoys the hell out of me. If you're going to work in a public arena, learn the language.

If history is any indicator- this belly-aching won't mean much since I probably won't even get a phone screen.

Agile and Finger Pointing

Anytime there's been a failure on a project in iterative and waterfall methods, the first thing you see is finger pointing. Either as a CYA maneuver or as a means, they think, of root cause analysis

• The Business tells the DevTeam it should have been able to deliver what it wanted or needed in time to make <fill in the blank here>.
• The DevTeam tells the business in a slow, methodical manner that when one keeps adding more and more features and more and more complexity, one needs to either add additional developers or stretch the final release to a more reasonable time.

And you know something? both sides are right.

Both sides can point to pieces of paper that tell them they are right. Which is cool because they can use that paper to wipe off their lathered faces.

Remember that one of the Agile goals is to generate useful code, not create documentation. Despite what may appear to be a stand that goes against my vocational goals (BAs control the documentation in Waterfall and Iterative projects), I think a pile of paper is counterproductive. M-Gates be damned.

I've more important stuff to do than write stuff that no one reads. So do you.

Unless, and this is important, you have regulatory requirements (HIPPA, SOX, FDA, etc) or the customer wants documentation (in which case, you find out what they want and chances are it's usually a user manual or Admin manual which I can whip up in less than a week- usually).

The only place I've worked where the business actually read Use Cases (instead of looking at my color flow charts) was at a pretty big company. The managers there knew a multi-million dollar application which touched pretty much every server or mainframe in the house probably required them to read the Use Cases. And they provided superb feedback (at least to me). But the developers weren't reading the use cases.; And Because our company didn't allow us (the BAs and there were a lot of us) to talk to the developers, you wouldn't believe what the issues list looked like.

Just before everything blew up, we had a meeting. We were going to make this Agile stuff work, damn it. All we need is a new template.

A template for what, I asked
For requirements!
You think a template is going to clean up the process?
Yes!
No, templates only help standardize the results of requirements gathering...we have a governance issue.
Sit down, Scot.
I gave them all the reasons we weren't Agile.
We are MODIFIED Agile

Obviously, no one in my company had read the Agile Manifesto.  Agile, by definition, adjusts to change and issues. There's no such thing as 'Modified Agile,' because all Agile projects are modified (Teams are self organizing, remember?).

But the finger pointing stopped, by gosh. One day the champion came over to our area and asked us all to get our stuff and leave. We piled all the stuff in our manager's trunk- he had no idea what was going on. A week later we all found out that our company hadn't been paid for five months before they hired me. I can guess the reason. But the finger pointing stopped, by golly!

I won't tell you an Agile Project can't fail. They have and they will continue to for a variety of reasons- scalability comes immediately to mind as does risk management and lack of buy-in.

But done with a little bit of care and a committed business unit, Agile eliminates the finger pointing.

God I hate finger pointing. Let's just figure out what went wrong and fix it. Anyone can make a mistake.

No matter how many SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), Stakeholders and champions you think you have on your team, it won't work unless the business frees the application owner or designate to spend a significant amount of time on the project (say 25-50% depending on how well communication works). This person needs to be able to:

• Make decisions for the business.
  
• Negotiate sprint features lists with me (the Business Analyst).
• Help me develop the road map.
• Coordinate Change Management with me or assist in coordinating with the business' own Change Management Team.
• Attend as many Scrum/Stand Up Meetings as possible.
• Perform the same Alpha tests that I do on a new build in production.
• Cheer lead for the end users to play with the application and get feedback.
• Co-Plan each UAT (User Acceptance Test) round with me so we're actually testing requirements.
  
• Let me help them create User Stories and tests. Agile is test-driven and the developer needs to know when s/he is done. So do I, so I can test boundaries and functionality.
  
• And stay on top of everything like the Project Manager and me.

If you were spending $250K or more for an application, wouldn't you want to avoid counterproductive finger pointing and bring the project in on time and withing budget?

I thought so.

Assign a decision maker to the development team and back them up when the need arises.

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Fixes for FaceBook

OK, friends and neighbors, it turns out we do not have to take this constant change of FaceBook sitting down. You have to get a little geeky, but it's pretty simple. if you follow these instructions you should be just fine.

What we're doing is adding a 'scripting' program to Firefox called Greasemonkey, three scripts and a program to manage your scripts to make things as easy as possible.

Greasemonkey and its scripts are designed specifically to do the sorts of things we're going to do. There are hundreds of available, free scripts so you do not need to be a programmer. The scripts alter the way Firefox displays pages... including the never ending changes to FaceBook.

• You have to install and use Mozilla Firefox, latest release (3.6) because that's what I'm using and no, I'm not gonna test it on anything else. Go here if you don't already have Firefox 3.6. Install it over your older version, you don't need nor want it. If you really think you need the older version, this procedure may work. It may not. If it doesn't, I told you so and you'll need to go back and install 3.6 anyway. Is this making any sense?
  
• Install the add-on called Greasemonkey.
• Install the add-in Greasefire.
  

• Allow Firefox to shutdown and restart.
• Click Tools, then Add ons on the Firefox Tool bar:
  

• Click the Greasefire add on and 'update' the list:

• Open FireFox to your FaceBook homepage. Then click TOOLS|ADD ons again until you reach Greasmonkey. Add the three items you see below:

• Close everything up except FireFox and your home page will look like this:

• You will see a new icon at the bottom of FireFox, this is the Greasemonkey Icon.
  

If you want to delve deeper (like find the script options, or finding other scripts), lemme know and I'll try to help. Or you could read the same web pages I did (They're all marked above).

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