Work started at 7ish again with me rolling over and waking a bit late, so really 7+ish. I had my first meetings, and then endless emails and issues started popping in. I found no break possible; even bio breaks were hard to find today, and I finally got dressed about 10ish!
There was a lecture from Standford on timing within the Internet hosted by Nike leadership. Professor Balaji Prabhakar talked about “Circuit Training: The Role of Time in Distributed Computing.” This, at first, like many academic presentations, appeared to be about well-understood areas–I seldom listen to the whole lecture. However, soon it was clear Professor Prabhakar showed a useful and alternative solution to a complex issue that fascinated me. He created a process to internally correct the speed of computer systems, virtual cloud ones, so their clocks were kept closely align. If you have aligned clocks, you can then know how long something takes and detect bottleneck issues. This is usually impossible as the misaligned clocks make it impossible to compare any timings. Thus delays and bottlenecks issues are impossible to spot as they are indistinguishable from mismatching timings. With closely aligned clocking, performance can be improved by load balancing algorithms as a simple rule to delay adding loads to busy computer instances. Professor Prabhakar’s work was interesting and a fun way to start my morning. It will be interesting to see if his work will become the standard for virtual cloud clocking.
I then was back into the status and alignment meetings all morning. This was interrupted by Susie needs some caregiving and some emergency laundry.
I drove Air Volvo to Chicago Pizza and had lunch of a stromboli and salad and got a pineapple and ham for Susie to-go. I am again trying to get over the fear and eat out at the same places I used before the pandemic.
The afternoon was more alignment meetings and a demo. I had to demo the demonstration scripts and processes I built for installing programs and running them on yet-another-cloud-software-product. I managed to have my demo fail the first time but got it to work the second time. We will see if this helped. The shoe company has hired a vendor to implement a like process from their experience with the yet-another-cloud-software-product.
That was my last meeting for the week.
It was such a nice day out I took pictures of the Volvo Cave and Air Volvo.
I made dinner of Schwann’s Chicken Cordon Blue, beans, and mashed potatoes. Yes, all Schwann’s. A bit of comfort food, and with the temperatures into the 90+ range next week, it is best to get the baked food consumed now.
Susie was still running a bit slow and not dressed. I decided we could catch a movie on Friday instead. So Susie watched some old shows on cable while I started back onto Game of Thrones.
Well, I am impressed now with The Game of Thrones. I have reached past the second season and starting the fourth season. Unlike the first and second seasons, the story moves, and I cannot predict what will happen next. I am starting to spend hours watching it.
291 people in the USA lost their lives today to Covid-19.
Thy Word Is a Lamp is a hymn (#601) that I randomly turned to in the Methodist Hymnal. I did not know it, but it would be fun to sing at church. I think it is a bit fast for my church, and I am not sure about the musical interlude in the middle of this for our group singing. Still, I would like to try it someday.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 