The Lone Sysadmin

Five simple strategies that might help if you’re driving in snow and ice.

1. Turning, stopping, and starting are problems. Going in a straight line is not. You can go fast in a straight line as long as any movement of the steering wheel or brake pedal is done with care. No sudden movements! Because starting is a problem don’t stop where you or those behind you won’t be able to start again, such as on a hill.

2. Centripetal force is what keeps you going wanting to go in a straight line, off into the ditch or parked cars, while you are trying to go around a corner. Your tires fight this with traction, but when it’s slick you might just keep going straight despite where you’ve pointed the wheels. Give yourself more time to react by maximizing the space between you and whatever you’re going to fly off into. On a multi-lane road position yourself in the lane least likely to send you into the ditch. On a single lane get to one side or another. Ditto for cloverleaf on & off ramps.

3. Turning requires traction. Braking requires traction. Turning and braking require a lot of traction. You cannot brake and turn simultaneously when it is slippery. Slow down to turn, and while you are turning keep your foot on the gas because…

4. …often the only way to steer when sliding is with the use of power. Front wheel drive and many four wheel drive vehicles will respond positively to a “point and shoot” strategy. Point where you want to go and step on the gas. People often go for the brakes when they start sliding, but they forget that if there is no traction to turn braking isn’t going to be effective, either. Think: if you’re sliding your current strategy isn’t working. Try something else.

5. The best way to learn how to be calm when it’s slippery out is practice. Find a mall parking lot, free of things you can collide with, before they plow. Practice starting and stopping rapidly. Practice turning. Practice braking and turning. Try to get the car to slide. Try to fight the traction control, then shut it off and see how you do on your own. Put the vehicle into four wheel drive and see how easy it is to get all four wheels loose. Is your car a “point and shoot” or do you need to do something else? If you’ve practiced the situation in a safe environment you’ll be better prepared to handle it for real.

I know a bunch of you do drive in inclement conditions, too. Let me know if I’ve missed something.

Dear IT professionals and architects,

If we’re having a contest it’s about seeing how simple we can make things, not how complex.

Yes, I know you can run blah in blah with blah against Amazon S3 in a grid with J2EE and blah and blah. The more crap you stack on each other the less likely it is to actually work right beyond this point in time.

While you’re dreaming up Rube Goldberg IT inventions I spend my time tearing them down and replacing them with simple systems that just work.

…Bob

P.S. I don’t care if you are an “architect,” you’ve obviously never had to support one of these things.

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Dear IT managers,

The simplest solutions are the ones you should encourage from your staff. Your crack team of ubergeeks builds neat looking things, but if they are built like a house of cards they will be unmaintainable once those ubergeeks move on. Aim for simple solutions that are easily maintained over time and require the fewest parts to build.

…Bob

It’s time for another edition of “Ask My Readers.” You folks did so well guiding me to places in San Francisco that I am going to ask you again, only with a different slant (basically not so much drinking advice). :-)

My mother will be just south of Windsor, CA in March, for a week. That’s 60 miles north of SF. I’m trying to put together a list of suggested destinations, but I need help.

She’s a crafty sort of person, likes quilting, not so into art or tech stuff. She’ll be with a couple other ladies who have similar tastes, and who aren’t afraid to drive. I am going to try grouping some of the suggestions into groups, including something like “if it’s not foggy out do these…”

So far I have:

• Wine valleys, maybe (if I can find one with a good tour)
• Point Reyes (if it isn’t foggy)
• Muir Woods
• Golden Gate NRA, especially the overlooks
• Walking out on the Golden Gate
• Golden Gate Park & the Conservatory
• Union Square/Fisherman’s Wharf/standard stuff in SF
• A drive up/down Highway 1

I really need suggestions for other stuff north of San Francisco. I’m also thinking about suggesting a day in Berkeley. There’s a quilt shop near UC-Berkeley, and I’ve had fun over there myself.

Thoughts?

I mentioned in some comments the other day that our EMC CX700s hadn’t blown a storage processor lately. Ha! Today ends the streak.

“About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines.”

I was going to put this in my del.icio.us bookmarks but it just didn’t seem like the right place.

I am consistently in awe of raptors.

• (mt) Media Temple - (mt) weblog » Blog Archive » Anatomy of MySQL on the GRID
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On my PCs write caching wasn’t enabled by default for my system disk. Turn it on in the device manager (Right click “Computer”, choose “Properties,” choose “Device Manager” from the sidebar, expand the disk drives category, right click your drive, choose “Properties,” pick the “Policies” tab):

I don’t suggest enabling this for removable media, as it pretty much guarantees data loss if you remove the device without stopping it first.

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  “…Apple is applying FairPlay to files from record labels that do not require DRM…”
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