Sunday, September 21, 2008

Telemetry Enables Command and Control

It is 48 degrees(F) and falling. I am in a sleeping bag, in a tent, in
my backyard. There is popcorn debris in my sleeping bag. I will have
symptoms of a cold virus by Monday morning because at least one of
these third graders in the tent is hacking up a lung. It is 2:47 in
the morning. I can hear the deer milling around in the woods prior to
their morning muster to devastate any landscaping I have left. I can
hear the bucks scraping their antlers.

My son Jack fashions things out of nothing. Recently he has been seen
carrying all manner of components into the woods where he "has a fort"
and is making stuff. Things have been disappearing from the garage.

Tonight these kids bent a tent pole and I had to make a splint. I had
to wake up Jack and ask him where the duct tape was. Half asleep he
knew exactly what beech tree in the woods he left the tape last.

I had snapped this shot Friday morning after Jack showed me the "Fire
Control Panel" of his latest device. (fiuor is how he spells 'fire') I
still can imagine where he got that minature IBM keyboard.

I am working on something special to help (others) manage the
complexity of a large URI namespace. If you want to get vectors on
how your systems and resources are performing - if you want actionable
information - you must have telemetry. The simpler and more discrete
(on the time domain) the better.

I have been thinking a lot about early lessons learned about
complexity and scale. Jack, who is "John", reminded me of my studies
of Panama Canal construction and how the engineer who finally
conquered the jungle and scale did it.

Thanks Jack! Now I know what I will name the application. cGauge

Jack and I will know what "gauge" really refers to and for everyone else
it will hopefully make sense that we are measuring stuff.

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