Monday, May 18, 2009
Sweet sweet long weekend
The rest of the training I was running last weekend up at Blue Mountain ended well! It's always a good feeling to wrap things up without there having been any major calamities, particularly with so many moving parts to the puzzle (Two different batches of people flying up from the states, some people coming up on the Friday, others on the Saturday, sorting out all the restaurant menus, the room lists, the schedule etc, let alone the actual content for the weekend!) Happy to have it all done with for now!
Had a busy week...went to Hooters on Monday with some guys from work, worked late on Tuesday, went out for dinner with Laura and one of her friends on Wednesday (got caught in one of the Tamil Tiger "protests" trying to meet them - more on this later), Thursday went out for dinner to Don Juans with work guys then went to see "Earth" with LT (cineplex mystery shop!). Aside - Earth was really gorgeous, and totally worth seeing on the big screen if you're at all into wildlife documentary kinda shows....really gorgeous photography, including some amazing time-lapse shots.
This weekend we went up to Laura's parents place - did a BBQ and wine tasting last night, then went for a nice hike today on the Seaton Trail for a few hours. Wine tasting candidates: Hillebrand Cab-Sauv, Jackson Triggs Cab-Franc/Cab-Sauv, Pelee Island Cab-Franc, and a red blend from Strewn. Blind taste test winner? Pelee Island, which means 2 of the 4 wines for the wedding will be Pelee Island!
Rant of the week - Tamil protests in Toronto. I've been a bit confused about this whole thing, since there have been BIG protests almost every day for the past few weeks. In a nutshell, Sri Lanka has had an ongoing civil war for the past 20+ years between the two main ethnic groups, one which is in power and one which is fighting for the creation of an independent state( the Tamils). The government has got the tamil rebels pinned in a fairly small area and have been shelling them into submission. The issue is that civilians have been caught in the cross-fire.
Canada is home to the biggest group of Tamil's outside of Sri Lanka, something like 250,000 or so...seemingly many of whom live in TO. The rallies/protests have gotten a lot of attention because literally thousands (like 5000-8000) have shown up, and while they've been peaceful, they've been a big pain closing down major streets for whole days, and even taking over the Gardiner last weekend, and Yonge / College / University this week. The goal is to draw attention to the situation and to try to pressure the government into leaning on the sri lankan government to stop their attacks on the rebels and to give the tamil's an independent state.
Here's the part I don't get. The protesters are all waving Tamil Tiger flags, wearing Tamil Tiger tshirts, and waving picture posters of the leader of the Tamil Tigers. I didn't fully realize until I did some reading, that the Tigers are a recognized terrorist organization according to 32 different countries, including Canada. They've been accused of/blamed for everything from using child soldiers and dressing in civilian garb while fighting, to using suicide bombers, to assisinating political leaders to drug / weapon smuggling, counterfeiting, piracy / hijacking, money laundering. ( Good ol' wikipedia)
On one hand it sounds like things in Sri Lanka have been very difficult, and no doubt many civilians have been negatively impacted by both sides. I'd be all for protests simply trying to draw attention to the situation...but waving the flags of a terrorist organization with an undoubtably sketchy history and track record? Just not sure I really get the whole thing.
Had a busy week...went to Hooters on Monday with some guys from work, worked late on Tuesday, went out for dinner with Laura and one of her friends on Wednesday (got caught in one of the Tamil Tiger "protests" trying to meet them - more on this later), Thursday went out for dinner to Don Juans with work guys then went to see "Earth" with LT (cineplex mystery shop!). Aside - Earth was really gorgeous, and totally worth seeing on the big screen if you're at all into wildlife documentary kinda shows....really gorgeous photography, including some amazing time-lapse shots.
This weekend we went up to Laura's parents place - did a BBQ and wine tasting last night, then went for a nice hike today on the Seaton Trail for a few hours. Wine tasting candidates: Hillebrand Cab-Sauv, Jackson Triggs Cab-Franc/Cab-Sauv, Pelee Island Cab-Franc, and a red blend from Strewn. Blind taste test winner? Pelee Island, which means 2 of the 4 wines for the wedding will be Pelee Island!
Rant of the week - Tamil protests in Toronto. I've been a bit confused about this whole thing, since there have been BIG protests almost every day for the past few weeks. In a nutshell, Sri Lanka has had an ongoing civil war for the past 20+ years between the two main ethnic groups, one which is in power and one which is fighting for the creation of an independent state( the Tamils). The government has got the tamil rebels pinned in a fairly small area and have been shelling them into submission. The issue is that civilians have been caught in the cross-fire.
Canada is home to the biggest group of Tamil's outside of Sri Lanka, something like 250,000 or so...seemingly many of whom live in TO. The rallies/protests have gotten a lot of attention because literally thousands (like 5000-8000) have shown up, and while they've been peaceful, they've been a big pain closing down major streets for whole days, and even taking over the Gardiner last weekend, and Yonge / College / University this week. The goal is to draw attention to the situation and to try to pressure the government into leaning on the sri lankan government to stop their attacks on the rebels and to give the tamil's an independent state.
Here's the part I don't get. The protesters are all waving Tamil Tiger flags, wearing Tamil Tiger tshirts, and waving picture posters of the leader of the Tamil Tigers. I didn't fully realize until I did some reading, that the Tigers are a recognized terrorist organization according to 32 different countries, including Canada. They've been accused of/blamed for everything from using child soldiers and dressing in civilian garb while fighting, to using suicide bombers, to assisinating political leaders to drug / weapon smuggling, counterfeiting, piracy / hijacking, money laundering. ( Good ol' wikipedia)
On one hand it sounds like things in Sri Lanka have been very difficult, and no doubt many civilians have been negatively impacted by both sides. I'd be all for protests simply trying to draw attention to the situation...but waving the flags of a terrorist organization with an undoubtably sketchy history and track record? Just not sure I really get the whole thing.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Oi - What a weekend!
So as I'd mentioned, this was the big weekend for work...really, the culmination of almost 16 months worth of effort. Going in to things, we certainly expected to have a busy / challenging night, but I had no idea just how busy it would be...
There are / were a few "background" challenges:
- We had a limited window of time to do the work...stores in Vancouver close 9pm their time, so midnight here. Stores in Newfoundland open at 11am, so 8:30 here. To make the changes, the whole website had to be turned off to the public, which again means the less downtime the better.
- We were making massive changes from a "data" standpoint...we literally moved and merged over 25 million rows of data repesenting > 4 million customers. It took more than 4 hours with some HARDCORE servers to actually just move the data.
- The sheer number of different systems and servers involved. We modified / updated roughly 10 totally independent applications, ranging from the core systems for creating accounts, logging on, buying items and managing your account, to the systems that customer support uses (to look up orders, handle refunds, detect fraud), to corporate orders, to the applications that send emails ( 4 totally seperate apps). To make things more interesting, because it's such a huge site, most of the applications are load balanced across many different machines...probably touched 20-25 machines total. ( the site can handle lots of concurrent customer requests quickly by balancing the requests out to the 8 different sets of servers)
But we were ready...we'd tested the snot out of this puppy and were ready to roll. Super detailed plan, and probably about 30 people total involved with the deployment( although most were working the 5am - ... shift).
A few highlights:
- By 7:30am things mostly looked good. There'd been 1 or 2 complaints about error pages, but couldn't track them down.
- At 8:30am we turned the site back on for the public....and started to get complaints about error pages, as well as 4 or 5 other major issues (about 10% of people couldn't view their order history, etc). I was one of ~3 tech oriented people trying to track down, isolate and fix the issue....except I had no idea what was causing the problem!
- By 10am traffic started to really pick up as people woke up and came online....started getting ~10 customers per minute seeing error screens, and roughly 5-10 customer complaints to support every 15 minutes, mostly about not being able to place orders. We figured out that one of the problems was a configuration issue on all 8 main servers, so fixed that problem.
- On the conference calls we were having with the VPs every 2 hours, the highlight was the "Looks like in the past hour our sales are down 25% vs last weekend at this time...", then the inevitable "When will this be fixed" question directed over my way ; )
- Finally figured out that the main problem was 1 of the 8 servers....still don't really know WHY it was having problems, but we disabled the server and the errors stopped more or less completely. We were able to test and push out a fix for 4 of the other issues (order history, etc).
- Finally wrapped up and headed home....at 3:45pm. Slept straight from 6pm -> 7:15 this morning. Expect today to be another drama filled day.
There are / were a few "background" challenges:
- We had a limited window of time to do the work...stores in Vancouver close 9pm their time, so midnight here. Stores in Newfoundland open at 11am, so 8:30 here. To make the changes, the whole website had to be turned off to the public, which again means the less downtime the better.
- We were making massive changes from a "data" standpoint...we literally moved and merged over 25 million rows of data repesenting > 4 million customers. It took more than 4 hours with some HARDCORE servers to actually just move the data.
- The sheer number of different systems and servers involved. We modified / updated roughly 10 totally independent applications, ranging from the core systems for creating accounts, logging on, buying items and managing your account, to the systems that customer support uses (to look up orders, handle refunds, detect fraud), to corporate orders, to the applications that send emails ( 4 totally seperate apps). To make things more interesting, because it's such a huge site, most of the applications are load balanced across many different machines...probably touched 20-25 machines total. ( the site can handle lots of concurrent customer requests quickly by balancing the requests out to the 8 different sets of servers)
But we were ready...we'd tested the snot out of this puppy and were ready to roll. Super detailed plan, and probably about 30 people total involved with the deployment( although most were working the 5am - ... shift).
A few highlights:
- By 7:30am things mostly looked good. There'd been 1 or 2 complaints about error pages, but couldn't track them down.
- At 8:30am we turned the site back on for the public....and started to get complaints about error pages, as well as 4 or 5 other major issues (about 10% of people couldn't view their order history, etc). I was one of ~3 tech oriented people trying to track down, isolate and fix the issue....except I had no idea what was causing the problem!
- By 10am traffic started to really pick up as people woke up and came online....started getting ~10 customers per minute seeing error screens, and roughly 5-10 customer complaints to support every 15 minutes, mostly about not being able to place orders. We figured out that one of the problems was a configuration issue on all 8 main servers, so fixed that problem.
- On the conference calls we were having with the VPs every 2 hours, the highlight was the "Looks like in the past hour our sales are down 25% vs last weekend at this time...", then the inevitable "When will this be fixed" question directed over my way ; )
- Finally figured out that the main problem was 1 of the 8 servers....still don't really know WHY it was having problems, but we disabled the server and the errors stopped more or less completely. We were able to test and push out a fix for 4 of the other issues (order history, etc).
- Finally wrapped up and headed home....at 3:45pm. Slept straight from 6pm -> 7:15 this morning. Expect today to be another drama filled day.
Labels: Work
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Almost there...
Hard to believe it's April already! It's been a busy past few weeks trying to get the loose ends tied up for wedding planning, as well as putting the finishing touches on the website I'm working on at work, which goes live this weekend!
Laura and I have been down to Niagara on the Lake twice now -- not sure if I posted about the first trip, but it was a bit of a disaster. It was Laura's birthday week, I'd been offered a free night stay at one of the resorts( was looking to plan a weekend retreat there for work). Perfect timing to score some birthday points, and pick up some wine for the wedding. Ya, except Laura got food poisoning from the little place we stopped at for lunch on the way down! The resort gave us a crazy suite - 650 sq feet, fireplace, huge canopy bed, big flat screen tv, tv in the bathroom, heart shapes jacuzzi for two, free bottle of $30+ wine waiting for us in our room, free breakfast for two at their super fancy restaurant.....and Laura was sick ALL night, and on the Sunday we got up and went home right away first thing in the morning. Not exactly a romantic getaway!
So this weekend we "re-did" the trip - I found a good deal on Travelzoo for a hotel in Niagara Falls - $89 for the room, including breakfast for 2 and $45 off at The Keg(although dinner still ended up being $30+ all said). We were MUCH more successful, and hit up 7 or 8 different wineries! We've already settled on one of our white wines and picked up 2 cases of it, and were on the hunt for reds. Will probably do one more trip in the next month or two.
The other big news is the website for work! If you have a few minutes, check out the existing site today so you can hit it up again on Sunday and be wowed by the difference! We haven't changed any of the main part of the site where you "browse" for books (search, book details), but have mostly changed the "Account Centre" (click on Your Account at the top, and either log in to your existing account or create a new one with a dummy email) and the purchase path (once you click "add to shopping bag") - however the purchase path changes are mostly all under the covers.
Anyways! Off to the races!
Laura and I have been down to Niagara on the Lake twice now -- not sure if I posted about the first trip, but it was a bit of a disaster. It was Laura's birthday week, I'd been offered a free night stay at one of the resorts( was looking to plan a weekend retreat there for work). Perfect timing to score some birthday points, and pick up some wine for the wedding. Ya, except Laura got food poisoning from the little place we stopped at for lunch on the way down! The resort gave us a crazy suite - 650 sq feet, fireplace, huge canopy bed, big flat screen tv, tv in the bathroom, heart shapes jacuzzi for two, free bottle of $30+ wine waiting for us in our room, free breakfast for two at their super fancy restaurant.....and Laura was sick ALL night, and on the Sunday we got up and went home right away first thing in the morning. Not exactly a romantic getaway!
So this weekend we "re-did" the trip - I found a good deal on Travelzoo for a hotel in Niagara Falls - $89 for the room, including breakfast for 2 and $45 off at The Keg(although dinner still ended up being $30+ all said). We were MUCH more successful, and hit up 7 or 8 different wineries! We've already settled on one of our white wines and picked up 2 cases of it, and were on the hunt for reds. Will probably do one more trip in the next month or two.
The other big news is the website for work! If you have a few minutes, check out the existing site today so you can hit it up again on Sunday and be wowed by the difference! We haven't changed any of the main part of the site where you "browse" for books (search, book details), but have mostly changed the "Account Centre" (click on Your Account at the top, and either log in to your existing account or create a new one with a dummy email) and the purchase path (once you click "add to shopping bag") - however the purchase path changes are mostly all under the covers.
Anyways! Off to the races!
Monday, March 17, 2008
Smooth Move Dude
So, one of the guys on my team is off on paternity leave 2+ weeks earlier than originally planned. The design phase of the project is supposed to wrap up in just over 2 weeks, so there's no point in bringing someone new in to replace him...meaning I'm working double duty and putting in 12 hours days to try to keep the project afloat. No biggie - I'm really liking the project, except....
I went into the office yesterday, planning to get a long, productive day in. I was the only person at the office, so all our doors were closed and you need your security card to get in.
Well, 3pm rolls around and smooth move me goes to the bathroom and leaves my security card on my desk. Yup, I locked myself out of the office! I'm standing in the hallway cursing, and evaluating my options, none of which were attractive.
Luckily it wasn't too cold out yesterday, so I opted to commute home...no jacket though, as that was also at my desk : (
I went into the office yesterday, planning to get a long, productive day in. I was the only person at the office, so all our doors were closed and you need your security card to get in.
Well, 3pm rolls around and smooth move me goes to the bathroom and leaves my security card on my desk. Yup, I locked myself out of the office! I'm standing in the hallway cursing, and evaluating my options, none of which were attractive.
Luckily it wasn't too cold out yesterday, so I opted to commute home...no jacket though, as that was also at my desk : (
Labels: Smooth Move, Work
