The Art of War is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
The Moral Law
Heaven
Earth
The Commander
Method and Discipline- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Browsing Posts published in May, 2010
Wow what a week! It was a stroll down math’s hit parade… number line theory… adding fractions… primes… substituting variables… and the rules for the order of mathematical operations. The fact is we use math everyday but rarely do we think about the fact we are using math! So let’s see how we take our math skills for granted!
The other day I was in NYC. I had $7.50 in my pocket for lunch! It was the end of the week and wife’s snagged my wallet so going to the ATM was out of the question! For anyone who’s never been to New York, filling your belly on $7.50 is not an easy task!
I was in the mood for pizza. I ran into the nearest pizza place and saw that a slice of pizza costs $3.50 and a coke would run me an additional $1.50. Now I know this is going to be a stretch but bear with me… Let’s put some number line theory to work! Let’s look at 0 on the number line as being the dividing mark between contentment and starvation! If I drop into the negative side of the number line I’d go hungry. If I stay on the positive side, I’d walk away with a full belly!
Let’s begin…
Starting at + 7.50 on a number line… let’s do some math. 2 slices of pizza, because one slice wasn’t going to cut it… could be represented by the following the equation:
(2 * -3.50)
Let’s apply that to our number line.
(2 * -3.5) = -7.00 + 7.50 (our starting point) = .50
So we’re still positive… still good! BUT then I need to add the coke in.
.50 + (- 1.50) = -1.00
As you can see I’ve fallen into the negative side of the number line at -1.00. Bill goes hungry.
I know one can say do without the Coke… but I just can’t eat a slice without and icy cold soda!
Let’s look at the menu again!
Ohhh… that calzone looks good at $6.50 for a plain one (I’d have to sacrifice palette for hunger)!
Back to the number line…
(1 * -6.5) = – 6.5 + (7.50) = 1.00
Now we’re talking… still on the positive side. BUT I still need to add in that icy cold Coke (it doesn’t matter… just need one of them to swallow back food with)!
- 6.5 + (- 1.50) = -.50
Poof… I just got blewn that out of the water by .50. I’m running out of options! Let’s see what else is on the menu!
Ahhh… Garlic knots at $2.25. SO maybe I can do a bag of knots, a slice of pizza and that icy cold Coke!
-3.5 + (-2.25) + (-1.5) = -7.25 +7.25 = +.25
Now we’re talking! Still on the positive side of zero… SO I guess I’ve got my lunch! Contentment!
Is my example simple? Yes BUT this is the kind of math that we perform automatically everyday without really putting any effort into it!
Stay tuned for primes and encryption next week!
Everywhere we look in life… rules guide us to the correct way of doing things. Whether it’s the rules of the road or something as basic as math! It’s funny; those of us with kids often have to think back many years when they come home with new math problems. AND the older they get the more you have to think. This year I’ve had to look at the rules of operations all over again… both in this class and my kids. Without these rules the correct answer will be ever elusive! One person may do addition first… another follows from left to right… still another multiplication. Rules are put in place so that everyone can understand and interpret equations without ambiguity! Math has its rules! One easy way to remember which order to execute math equations is…
BEDMAS (Brackets, Exponents, Divide, Multiply, Add, Subtract)
So what does all this mean? Given the equation
4+7-(8*5) = X
The first thing we would do is deal with what’s inside the brackets (8*5) or 40.
Then we would deal with the addition 4 + 7 or 11.
Now we’d deal with the final operator subtraction so 11 – 40 or -29.
SO 4+7-(8*5) = -29
Preparing to introduce the fine employees of SCUNCI to eWorks!
During the course of our day, we are often asked to provide answers. What’s wrong with the server? Who’s going to take the late shift? How can we implement this? We rely on the skills that we have developed over years of work and provide quick answers! Most times we’re right but every so often because we haven’t put the time into thinking things through, we are wrong! And the thing is most times the powers that be don’t always consider the things that have went well, BUT rather focus on those few times things that went wrong!
So what are we to do? Look forward and anticipate next steps. Think logically about the problem. Come up with a game plan! Sure following your gut will help but only to a certain extent. While your initial response may be right most of the time it is not always on the money! Part of preparation is mitigating risk. If we are studying for a test, we concentrate on what we feeling are the important concepts… Studying the longest on those concepts! You may get some answers wrong BUT if you do your homework you may still walk away with an A even though you got a few answers wrong. You have to balance getting every question right verses getting most questions right. Acceptable losses!
Putting together a game plan often requires more time and effort than actually implementing a solution. Understanding the why is of the utmost importance! Knowing your audience and the reasons they need the technology rolled out is the key to a successful rollout. We are not here to simply implement the next coolest technology. We are here as enablers! We are here to leverage our understanding of technology with a clear business need!
Once you have the business need figured out, its time to start thinking about a rollout plan. What is the return on investment? How many man-hours will it take to get this done? Will this work in our environment? How will we do a proper pilot program? The list goes on and on. It is up to us to try and discover as may of the potential problems BEFORE we put our solution into production! Take copious notes! Remember you’ll need to reproduce this and introduce it into production. Focus on the important points. Understanding the scope of the project will help you determine whether or not an obstacle is truly an impediment to a successful rollout! Remember… there will always be problems; it’s just a matter of whether they are show stoppers!
This leads to how you are going to mitigate the problems you can’t get around. I’m in the middle of a fairly large migration from one directory service to another. It requires me to make changes to servers throughout the world. I can’t update all the servers globally in one weekend. SO… I’m going to have some users that will need to remember two passwords when they log in on Monday morning. One for their login the other to access resources not yet migrated.
So how are we going to break down this problem?
THINKING THINGS THROUGH – In an optimal situation I’d be able to coordinate the migration globally. That would assume I had fully qualified people situated at each location that had a server that needed to be upgraded. This will lead to users having to remember two passwords and which to use at the appropriate time because we will have two directories running at the same time.
UNDERSTANDING THE RISKS – Unfortunately this is not the case. For power users this shouldn’t really be a problem but for novices this could lead to multiple failed logins that would have the helpdesk resetting passwords the first day after the implementation. So how do we avoid all the phone calls about failed logins on Monday morning. We could have the two directories trust each other. BUT that would require a lot of extra work.
MITIGATING THE RISKS – We can use Keychain Access (yes we’re talking about an OpenDirectory migration) to securely store the passwords from the old directory. This gives the impression of single sign-on. Alleviating the need for users to remember multiple passwords.
Yes this is really simple and it doesn’t truly depict the actual planning of the directory migration… if it did I’d be out of a job! BUT the point is you need to think about what you’re trying to do. There really isn’t one right solution. The solution is dependent on how your organization is able to handle the situation at hand. Think through the issues ahead of time is most important. Create troubleshooting checklists to pass out to those individuals (both the end-user and the helpdesk staff. Test, test and test again. The more you plan, the better your chances of a successful rollout!
