The Daily Parker

Remember how I've spent the last three months moving stuff into the Cloud? And how, as of three weeks ago, I only had two more services to move? I saved the best for last, and I don't know for sure now whether I can move them both without some major changes.

Let me explain the economics of this endeavor, and why it's now more urgent that I finish the migration. And then, as a bonus, I'll whinge a bit about why one of the services might have to go away completely.

I currently have a DSL and a 20-amp power line going into my little datacenter. The DSL ostensibly costs $50 per month, but really it's $150 per month because it comes as an adjunct to my landline. I don't need a landline, and haven't for years; I've only kept it because getting DSL without a landline would cost—you guessed it—$150 per month. The datacenter has six computers in it, two of which are now indefinitely offline thanks to the previous migrations to Azure. Each server uses between $10 and $20 of electricity per month. Turning two off in July cut my electricity use by about $30. Of the four remaining servers, I need to keep two of them on, but fortunately those two (a domain controller and a network attached storage, or NAS, box) are the most efficient; the two hogs, using $40 of electricity every month, are my Web and database servers. I get to turn them off as soon as the last two services get migrated.

So we're already up to $190 per month that goes away once I finish these migrations, down from $220-230 per month three months ago (or $280-300 in the summer, when I have to run A/C all the time to keep it cool). I've already brought Azure services online, including a small virtual machine, and I signed up for Outlook Online, too. Together, my Azure and Office 365 services, once everything is moved, should cost about $120-130 per month, which stays exactly the same during the summer, because Microsoft provides the air conditioning.

The new urgency comes from my free 90-day Azure trial expiring last week. Until then, all my Azure services have been free. Now, I'm paying for them. The faster I finish this migration, the faster I get to save over $100 per month ($180 in the summer!) in IT expenses—and have much more reliable services that don't collapse every time AT&T or Commonwealth Edison has a hiccup in my neighborhood.

Today, in the home stretch with only Vault and Weather Now left to move, it turns out I might have to give up on Vault completely. Vault requires integration between the Web and database servers that is only possible in Vault if they're running on the same virtual network or virtual machine.

I want to keep using Vault because it has my entire source control history on it. This includes all the changes to all the software I've written since 1998, and in fact, some of the only copies of programs I wrote back then. I don't want to lose any of this data.

Unfortunately, Vault's architecture leaves me with only three realistic options if I want to keep using it:

• Keep the Web and database servers running and keep the DSL up, obviating the whole migration effort;
• Move the database and Web services to the domain controller, allowing me to turn the servers off, which still leaves me with a $155 per month DSL and landline bill (and puts a domain controller on the Internet!); or
• Upgrade the my Azure VM to Medium, doubling its cost (i.e., about $60 more per month), then install SQL Server and Vault on it.

None of these options really works for me. The third is the least worst, at least from a cost perspective, and also puts a naked SQL Server on the Internet. With, oh yeah, my entire source control history on it.

So suddenly, I'm considering a totally radical option, which solves the cost and access problems at the expense of convenient access to my source history: switch to a new source control system. I say "convenient access" because even after this migration, I have no plans to throw away the servers or delete any databases. Plus, it turns out there are tools available to migrate out of Vault. I'll evaluate a few options over the next two weeks, and then do what I can to migrate before the end of September.

Not to mention, it looks like Sourcegear may be re-evaluating Vault (as evidenced by a developer blog that hasn't changed in over a year), possibly for many of these reasons. Vault was developed as a replacement to the "source destruction system" Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, and achieved that mandate admirably. But with the incredible drop in cloud computing prices over the past two years, it may have lived long enough already.

As for the final service to migrate, Weather Now: I know how to move it, I just haven't forced myself to do it yet.

I've banged away at the 30-Ballpark Geas for four seasons now, long enough for three new parks to spring up since I started. Next weekend I'm visiting Cincinnati, the 24th park, leaving eight to go. (Citi Field and New Yankee Stadium got added to the list because they replaced parks I visited before finishing the Geas. The third new park, New Marlin Ballpark, replaced one I hadn't ever visited before, and therefore wasn't already ticked off only to be un-ticked by new construction.)

With the MLB 2013 Schedule released ridiculously early this week, a path forward has presented itself. Barring rain, war, or other unpredictable misfortune, here's the likely End of the Geas, five years after it began:

† vs. Cubs

The trip to O.Co in July is a bonus game, added simply because the Cubs have never played there before, and going to the West Coast would likely result in a stop to see the family regardless.

So, there it is: An early-season road trip to Toronto and New York; a mid-season West Coast trip followed by a triangle trip through the Great Plains; sneaking in a quick overnight trip up to Minneapolis; and ending at the home of the Cubs' ancient rivals, the Cardinals.

The Cubs might even win one or two of those games...

Everyone knows that San Diego has year-round perfect temperatures, lots of sun, and great pizza. Except today, only two out of three:

The National Weather Service issued a hazardous weather outlook for Friday and Saturday, saying temperatures could reach up to 38°C near the beach.

Extremely high temperatures are unusual for the coast, which is where people typically go to escape the heat. This weekend the beach could be as warm as the inland areas.

At this writing, the temperature has hit 41°C at Miramar MCAS and 39°C at Montgomery Field, both within 16 km of downtown San Diego. (Lindbergh Field, right on the bay, is a more-palatable 27°C.)

This makes San Diego the hottest place in the world tracked by Weather Now.

Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, Airbus Industrie has some ideas about the future:

More flights, fewer emissions and quicker passenger journey times. Welcome to Smarter Skies, the latest installment in The Future by Airbus. For the first time, our vision of sustainable aviation in 2050 looks beyond aircraft design to how the aircraft is operated both on the ground and in the air in order to meet the expected growth in air travel in a sustainable way.

Already today, if the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system and technology on board aircraft were optimised (assuming around 30 million flights per year), Airbus research suggests that every flight in the world could on average be around 13 minutes shorter. This would save approximately 9 million tonnes of excess fuel annually, which equates to over 28 million tonnes of avoidable CO2 emissions and passenger savings of over 500 million hours of excess flight time on board an aircraft. Add to this new aircraft design, alternative energy sources and new ways of flying and you could see even more significant improvements.

Specifically, they envision:

• Eco-climb – save energy by launching aircraft using an assisted-take-off mechanism. Since planes use so much power to leave the ground, the idea is to source that power from devices on the ground, rather than have them weighing down the plane. Then you could shorten the runways and lighten the aircraft, which would reach cruising altitude faster than at present.
• Express skyways – planes travelling in formation, like a flock of birds, will use less energy. In Airbus's example, three aircraft heading east from Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco would meet over Utah and fly onwards together. Planes could also reduce the distances they have to fly if they take genuinely direct routes between A and B, rather than zig-zagging round different countries' airspace.
• Free-glide approaches and landings – with better air-traffic management planes would be able to glide smoothly into airports, as opposed to descending in stages and wasting energy.
• Ground operations – "autonomous receiving vehicles" that would get planes from runway to gate faster are among the ideas for improving operations at the airport.
• Power - biofuels and other alternative sources of energy would reduce CO2 emissions and improve the security of energy supply.

Cool stuff. And the "taxi-bot" is already here.

The area of Chicago approximately bounded by the river, North Ave., Clybourn St., and Division St. used to house factories, warehouses, loud Goth clubs, and—who could forget?—the Cabrini-Green towers. Here's the area in 1999:

Since the Whole Foods Market moved in and Cabrini-Green came down in the last few years, the area has changed. And over the next year or so, it will become unrecognizable to my dad's generation:

Target Corp. is readying a big box at Division and Larrabee streets that would extend the corridor by more than a half-mile from its heart at North and Clybourn avenues, where Apple Inc. has a store. Also imminent: Nordstrom Rack, Dick's Sporting Goods, Mariano's Fresh Market, Williams-Sonoma, Anthropologie and Sephora as well as a 14-screen movie theater.

The first of the new stores are set to open later this year. Deerfield-based CRM Properties Group Ltd. has leases with kitchen accessories seller Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Anthropologie, a women's apparel chain owned by Urban Outfitters Inc., for its site on Fremont Street, near Whole Foods' flagship store it completed in 2009 on Kingsbury Street.

To those of us who grew up in Chicago, this boggles the mind. The Target mentioned above will occupy the vacant Cabrini lots, for example. And Kingsbury St. no longer resembles a post-apocalyptic horror movie.

I can't wait to see the traffic, too...

Major League Baseball released its 2013 schedule today. Here are the highlights for the Cubs:

• They start the season April 1st in Atlanta.
• The home opener on April 8th will be against Milwaukee.
• The first appearance at a park I haven't gotten to yet won't happen until they visit Seattle on June 28th; but:
• ...with their first-ever trip to Oakland immediately following on July 2nd, I sense a trip to the West Coast coming next summer.
• Same with back-to-back series in two other parks I haven't seen, Colorado (July 19-21) and Arizona (July 22-25).
• They end the season in St. Louis, playing our arch-rivals, the Cardinals.

The Cubs will not be visiting New Yankee Stadium, Minnesota, Texas, or Toronto, the other four parks in the 30-Park Geas I haven't visited yet.

Chicago's local CBS affiliate has a Cubs-specific schedule.

Last night, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, died in an attack on our consulate in Benghazi. The attack initially seemed predicated on the release of an anti-Muslim film funded by infamous Florida bigot Terry Jones (of Qu'oran burning fame), as the film caused riots in Egypt at the same time.

The New York Times is now reporting that sources in the US suspect the Libya attack was planned:

Officials in Washington studying the events of the past 24 hours have focused on the differences between the protests on the American embassy in Cairo and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the Libyan city where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the other Americans were killed.

The protesters in Cairo appeared to be a genuinely spontaneous unarmed mob angered by an anti-Islam video produced in the United States. By contrast, it appeared the attackers in Benghazi were armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence reports are inconclusive at this point, officials said, but indications suggest the possibility that an organized group had either been waiting for an opportunity to exploit like the protests over the video or perhaps even generated the protests as a cover for their attack.

Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney immediately used the violence as an excuse to lambaste President Obama with a statement that has put Romney way out in front of his party. Romney's (and RNC chair Reince Priebus's) willful misstating of facts to score political points after what could be a paramilitary attack against an American diplomat clearly shows he is unfit to serve:

The obvious responsible thing to do when American citizens and public officials are under physical threat abroad and when the details are unknown, and events spiraling, is to stay silent. If the event happens on the day of September 11 and you are a candidate for president and have observed a political truce, all the more reason to wait to allow the facts to emerge. After all, country before party, right? American lives are at stake, yes? An easy call, no?

But that's not what the Romney camp did. What they did was seize on a tweet issued by someone in the US Embassy before the attacks in order to indict the president for "sympathizing" with those who murdered a US ambassador after the attacks. ...

The knee-jerk judgments, based on ideology not reality; the inability to back down when you have said something obviously wrong; and the attempt to argue that the president of the US actually sympathized with those who murdered his own ambassador in Benghazi: these are disqualifying instincts for someone hoping to be the president of the US. Disqualifying.

At the time the United States was trying to calm down violent, unpredictable situations in two mostly-friendly countries, in which it appeared that an American ambassador was assassinated, before all the facts were known, Romney and his campaign made scoring political points their highest priority.

Romney showed us what we could expect from him as president: making ill-informed decisions for short-term political gain that put Americans at further risk.

Look, attacking the president's policies is part of his job as challenger. But for dog's sake, wait until the shooting stops. And try, just try, to think things through before speaking. In other words, if you want to be president, Mitt, stop acting like a spoiled child who feels entitled to the highest office in the country, and start acting presidential.

I'm trying to make sense of why the Chicago Teachers Union's fight with the Chicago Public Schools has blown up into a teachers' strike (the first in 25 years).

One of my neighbors, for years a member of the local school board, said "every parent in Chicago will vote against Rahm Emanuel" in the next Chicago mayoral election. My experience of the strike, however, was being trapped in the Loop for an hour yesterday as the teachers' rally outside the school board building stopped traffic.

So, in no particular order, here are some sources of information about the strike, its geneses, and its likely outcomes:

• Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews, writing on Ezra Klein's blog, modestly provides "Everything you need to know about the Chicago teachers’ strike, in one post". My key takeaway: the CPS faces a $665m deficit this year, despite moving millions from reserves, and next year faces a $1bn deficit. (I can't wait to see my 2013 property tax bills...)
• The Tribune reports that CPS has offered 2% raises over the next four years and some concessions on its proposed policy of not calling laid-off teachers back in the order they were let go. The article doesn't make clear how the CTU disagrees with the proposal, saying the union hasn't released details.
• The local NPR station, WBEZ, asks What's really driving teachers to strike? Teachers want air conditioning, smaller classes, more social workers, and yes, last-out-first-in recalls after layoffs.
• CTU president Karen Lewis may have miscalculated, however, having "openly feuded with Chicago Public Schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, accusing them of not caring about schoolchildren or their education," which made her no friends. Still, 90% of union membership voted to strike, so it looks like they may have gotten the leadership they wanted.
• New York Times columnist Joe Nocera yesterday wrote a cogent and balanced summary of the issues that nonetheless drew a comparison between this fight and the auto manufacturing fights of the 1970s and 1980s, "with the two sides fighting each other so fiercely that neither noticed that imports were on the rise and globalization was making their squabbles irrelevant."
• And, of course, both the CTU and CPS want everyone to remember the children, who certainly have their own opinions but aren't being asked by either side.

Even though I have a natural inclination to support labor in general and teachers in specific, it looks to me like the strike over-reached and may have handed the PR war to the city. Ultimately the CPS and CTU run up against arithmetic, and the annoying problem that only the U.S. government can print money. We can't pay for the schools we have right now (or, more precisely, for the teacher pensions we owe), so the teachers won't get everything they want. Are they willing to give back on pensions and salary in exchange for smaller class sizes and air conditioners? (Of course, how medieval are we as a city that we can't provide children with adequate classrooms in the first place?)

And again, the kids are getting the worst of it. As goes an African proverb, "when elephants wrestle, the grass suffers."

I'll have something about the Chicago teacher's strike after lunch, but first, I must complain about the returning heat:

The warm-up brings Chicago its 100th day of 27°C-plus degree temperatures; another due Wednesday putting us 2 days from 2005's all-time record annual tally

Tuesday afternoon’s predicted 29°C high is an early August-level reading and 4°C above the September 11 average maximum of 25°C.

The warm-up follows a chill Monday morning, the likes of which hasn’t happened here since early June when the official morning low dipped to 9°C.

I'll probably have to turn on the A/C for the first time in almost a week. I am so looking forward to autumn...

Slate's Mark Vanhoenacker wonders whether the lock-down at lower Manhattan's World Trade Center memorial is a monument to something other than intended:

Advance tickets are required to enter this public, outdoor memorial. To book them, you’re obliged to provide your home address, email address, and phone number, and the full names of everyone in your party. It is “strongly recommended” that you print your tickets at home, which is where you must leave explosives, large bags, hand soap, glass bottles, rope, and bubbles. Also, “personal wheeled vehicles” not limited to bicycles, skateboards, and scooters, and anything else deemed inappropriate. Anyone age 13 or older must carry photo ID, to be displayed “when required and/or requested.”

Once at the memorial you must go through a metal detector and your belongings must be X-rayed. Officers will inspect your ticket—that invulnerable document you nearly left on your printer—at least five times. One will draw a blue line on it; 40 yards (and around a dozen security cameras) later, another officer will shout at you if your ticket and its blue line are not visible. Eventually you’ll reach the memorial itself, where there are more officers and no bathrooms. You’re allowed to take photographs anywhere outside the security screening area—in theory if not always in practice.

Security expert Bruce Schneier wryly (and, given the math, correctly) explains how one could remain safe visiting the memorial even if it didn't have any of these security measures in place: "On the drive to New York, or in your taxi downtown, buckle up, he warned. It’s dangerous out there."

I keep hoping (as does Schneier) that we will someday get past our obsession with fighting the last war. It seems to me that if we have massive security around a memorial site, the terrorists win. What are we protecting? Eleven years ago a psychotic religious criminal gang attacked us, and we went crazy. Even knowing that a goal of the attack was, in the words of the nutjob who planned it, to cause us to over-react, we did exactly what he wanted. Isn't it time we went back to normal—if for no other reason than to prove the terrorists wrong?