Donald Ferguson’s Blog

I have also started an official CA blog.

Someone suggested that I produce a list of “The Best Sayings by Don.” I am going to keep the list at one of the pages on this site (here). I will update periodically.

I had breakfast with someone the other day, and the conversation reminded me of my 1st job in the computer field. I worked for a summer (1981) at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. This was one of the high points of the Cold War. Lincoln Labs worked on all kinds of secret stuff: nuclear weapons, MIRV systems, reconnaissance satellites, etc. I had a job in IT support setting up a graphics system for the other project areas. The summer was very interesting.

The recruiter was walking me out of the building after my interviews. Someone had dropped one of those cafeteria butter patties, and the recruiter stepped on the patty and did a Wile E. Coyote fall. I had to walk by myself to security to get someone to help her. This was rather awkward because I was wearing a badge with big red letters saying “Escort Required at All Times.”Also, the security guards carried guns.

I had to apply for government security clearance. My department head told me that applying was just a formality. The application evaluation process took longer than a summer, and never came back before the summer job ended. I got my approval in three weeks, which was some kind of record. Some people asked me what I had put on my application in case it might help others in the future. I started describing the information. The application asked for three character references. I listed:

• My father’s childhood friend, who had been in the Marine Corps with my dad. Everyone nodded that this was a good choice.
• Prof. Ion Filottee — I had been his teaching assistant for a computer science class. A couple of people scowled and one asked, “Where is he from?” I respond, “Romania. Why?”
• Another professor, whose name I cannot remember but who had an equally foreign sounding name. Someone asked, “Where is he from?” I responded, “Bulgaria. Why?”

Two schools of thought emerged about why my application was so quickly approved:

1. The “He is clearly too stupid to be a spy” school of thought.
2.  The “Aha. Give him a clearance and keep an eye on him and we will roll up the entire academic spy ring.”

My ID badge was red until I got my clearance. Before getting clearance I had to work late one night. I was strolling out of the building around 8pm and said, “See you later” to the guards. Then I heard the “boing noise” that Wile E Coyote’s eyes make, chairs scrapping and what sounded like pistols being drawn from holsters. Then I heard “Freeze!” Turns out that people with red badges are not allowed to work unsupervised after hours. No one had told me. I got arrested. I thought that an arrest was a bit much for breaking a policy. One of the guards informed me that I had actually broken a federal law, at a government facility on a military base (Lincoln Labs was on Hanscom AFB).

Security called my department head in from home. My manager went into the office and spoke with the head of security, who was wearing a military uniform. I think I heard the phrase “He’s the one too stupid to be a spy.” Anyway, I got a lecture and was sent home.

When my clearance came through I had to take a training course on security. The course was a two hour filmstrip explaining all of the ways the Russians would try and get information out of me. But the filmstrip never used the words “Russians,” “Communists,” Soviets,” etc. The filmstrip used the term “Boris” and then advanced to a cartoon drawing of a guy in a Cossack uniform. At the end of the filmstrip, I walked up to the person running the class and tried to explain that:

1. There aren’t really any more Cossacks
2. Because the Commies pretty much wiped them out.

The person running the class mumbled something like “If everyone thought I were to dumb to be a spy I would quit while I was ahead.”

Part way through the summer one of the other summer interns came to me for some help. The intern had printed plots of data. She wanted to know if we could put the plots on the graphic machine’s tablet, touch the points with the stylus and get the data values entered into a file. I explained that the data must be in a computer file somewhere, otherwise they could not have printed the plotted data. Turns out the intern was not authorized to have access to the plots’ because the data was secret. I said, “This is silly” and went to talk to her manager. The manager confirmed that neither the intern nor I had a need to know the data values, but we did have a need to know the data values if we could use a tablet and stylus to reconstruct the values.

I pointed out that this approach was fraught with peril. There were two possible outcomes.

1. We would correctly reconstruct the values, thus giving us access to data that we did not need to know.
2. We would incorrectly reconstruct the values. Using bad data in a place that designs satellites and bombs and stuff seems bad.

The manager did not seem concerned. So, I helped the intern.

Finally, Lincoln Labs had a large data center. The data center was grounded through a communications antenna, which seemed bad to me. I asked what happens if lighting strikes the antenna. They said that I should not worry because the antenna was grounded through another antenna. I then asked what happens if lighting hits both antennae at the same time (I had gone to Catholic school and used the correct pluralization of antenna). I was assured this was not possible.

Lightning struck both antennae at the same time, while I was in the data center turning in my material on my last day at the end of the day. My final impression of Lincoln Labs is standing in the darkness, seeing flickering warning and emergency lights, listening to banging noises and smelling smoke.

A couple of people mentioned that Scott Adams is a genius for the insight in the strip below (2010-2-12). I have a different perspective (BTW, this is a joke. I really like working with India).

1. God’s cost would not have been reduced. God will still need two angels/demons to supervise the outsourced workforce.
2. How would management and coordination work? What is the timezone offset? Even God cannot get e-meetings to work.
3. People pray. People sell their souls to the Devil. Do you have any idea of the customer satisfaction issues the call center would create? Have you ever tried to enter a demon’s or angel’s name using your keypad for a look up in the corporate directory. Try Arphugitonosor or Beelzebub? I tried entering Beelzebub in the CA directory and got my extension, which I find mildly alarming.
   
4. The turn over would be unbelievable. As soon a Buddhism or Islam offered 10% salary raises people would change jobs. Buddhism and Islam have the same CEO (God) but are clearly different business units. BTW, try using your keypad to find    ميخائيل‎ in the corporate directory.

I finally broke down and got an iPhone. The device is very cool. The only downside is that the thing eats the battery.

I was having dinner with my kids the 1st night I had the phone. I brought the phone to the table and was playing with it during dinner. My oldest daughter asked, “Why can you play with your iPhone at dinner but you do not let us use iTouch, phones or other gadgets?” I responded, “Because when you have to give your kids a timeout because they will not eat their vegetables THERE IS AN APP FOR THAT! Bwah HaH HaH!”

About ten minutes later I asked my youngest daughter to get the salad dressing out of the fridge (I had exercised before dinner — karate, Krav Maga — and my legs were sore). My youngest daughter responded, “Why? Isn’t there AN APP FOR THAT? Bwah HaH HaH!”

This falls into the category of “You get the kids you deserve.”

I have been receiving emails on a thread on “Microsoft and Innovation.” I finally got around the reading one of the emails. An op-ed piece in the NY Times by Dick Brass, a former Microsoft employee, severely criticizes Microsoft’s lack of innovation. I politely disagree. Microsoft also published a rebuttal.

I worked at Microsoft for a little more than a year. I was very happy there and had to leave for family reasons. I found Microsoft to be a very innovative company that relatively quickly delivered innovations. I worked on their enterprise products and strategy, and in Server and Tools Business. My experience may not be accurate for Microsoft as a whole.

I also competed against Microsoft for many years when I was the chief architect for WebSphere and for IBM Software Group. I found Microsoft to be annoyingly innovative.

Any large company has a culture and processes that too frequently stifles innovation. This comes with the turf and is one reason why a lot of innovation comes from start ups. Large companies can and do deliver on innovation but sometimes stuff gets stifled. Just the way things are.

I noticed one unique thing when I was at Microsoft. Microsoft was willing to take a very long view on projects. There were projects that teams were evolving and incubating for years. Microsoft was willing to make bets and invest in projects that would change the world five years in the future. I was very impressed.

ChannelWeb (CRN) named me one of 25 Thought Leaders for 2010. Four of the thought leaders are former IBMer, or five if you include Ray Ozzie. I do not know if this is good news for IBM or bad news. Clearly IBM is producing some technical leaders, excepting me.

IBM took my blog off of developerWorks, or so they thought. There were some complaints outside of IBM about “erased from history.” The history of WebSphere book was a more egregious example.

Turns out IBM needs a better erase. I just blog at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/donferguson/?lang=en.

I finally managed to align my finder scope and telescope. The process is amazingly hard. The telescope’s field of view is very, very small. Figuring out what I am seeing is not easy because I see a leaf, not the tree for example. Adjusting the finder scope is very annoying. The screws that adjust the lineup seem to make almost random changes. I managed to blunder onto a light on my neighbor’s house and then lined up the finder scope. I have been using my neighbors’ houses as lineup targets for the past few days. I am probably in trouble.

I then lined up the Moon in the finder scope, centered the Moon in the telescope and adjusted the finder scope. Of course, at the very end of using the scope tonight I managed to knock the finder scope loose.

The Moon was awesome in the telescope. The 26mm lens is as powerful as the 10mm in my Orion 8″. I used my 10mm and 10mm + 2x Barlow. The detail and magnification was incredible. I could see craters within craters.

I managed to find Jupiter and its moons. The detail was poor because Seeing was poor tonight.

I then figured, “What the heck. Let’s try taking pictures.” I have a Celestron Radial Guider and 9mm lens, which I did not power-up by did try to use. I could not see anything through the lens, and I tried several lens. I did manage to find the Moon and Jupiter using the camera’s eyepiece.

The pictures are kind of crummy because I had trouble with focusing, manual shutter speed, etc. I guess my girlfriend was right — I do need to read the manual. I will never live this down.

This is my best shot of the Moon (Larger):

The Jupiter shots are really blurry. I copied the position of the moons from Sky and Telescope’s position calculator, and inserted the position in the photos. You can sort of see the four moons. The best Jupiter shot is

I did some photo-processing in iPhoto and iCCD, and made some improvements. I have no idea what I am doing, however.

In a previous post I discussed finding M1 — the Crab Nebula. The nebula was very faint and hard to see. I tried taking some photos through the GRAS telescopes but the results are not much better.

Unedited image (Large):

Edited Image (Large)