Bob Plankers

Bob Plankers is a man who wears many hats. In his professional career he has spent three decades leading teams that design, build, operate, and talk about reliable, secure, and compliant IT infrastructures, both in the public sector and in the high tech industry. He currently focuses on applied security, compliance, and operational resilience for virtualization and cloud platforms.

Why No HTML in Microsoft Project 2007?

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Why can’t I save my project as a web page? “Microsoft Office Project 2007 does not support the ability to save a project file as a Web page. Instead, you can save a project as a more flexible XML file. This enables you to apply any style sheet to the XML file.” And by “more flexible” they mean “not useful to someone who just wants to share a project plan with colleagues on Macs and Linux boxes.” B as in B. S as in S. The reason I can’t save my Microsoft Project file as a web page is then there wouldn’t be a need for the Microsoft Project Server 2007! Frankly, I cannot think of a single reason they …

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Scripting Repeatable Tasks

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My new rule: if you intend to do something the same way on more than three machines, ever, or if the time spent on doing this same thing exceeds ten minutes in your lifetime, or the lifetimes of the folks around you, then it needs to be scripted. Why? Humans cannot do the same thing the same way for very long. Period. They forget things and get distracted. They take bathroom breaks and forget where they were. They can’t remember how they did the exact same thing last week, but they think they do. They think they remember the written directions by heart. They don’t. There are lots of things humans are good at. Doing the same thing the same …

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links for 2007-04-19

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Coyote Blog: I Can Fix the Water “Shortage” in Five Minutes Amen. Raise the price of water and demand will fall. And don’t even eye my Great Lakes. I put up with the cold to enjoy them, you hot southern bastards lie in the bed you made. The Benjamin Franklin Guide to Marketing Your Business Online | Copyblogger The Storage Forum: blog » ‘Small’ 5Mb Hard Disk in 1956 Finally, Common Event Expression (CEE) is Out!!! – O’Reilly Sysadmin …and it will be 15 years until syslog works with it, in a stable 1.0+ release, shipped by an OS vendor. Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Rails Developer David Heinemeier Hansson’s Response to Alex Payne’s Interview [dive …

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links for 2007-04-18

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Matasano Chargen » FISMA Using Homeland Security Advisory System Nice. The Fishbowl: Newsfire Aftermath Amen. Look at VMware: no phone-home, no activation, selling a ton of software because they don’t give their customers a hard time. They’re in the business of making life easier, after all. From CSOonline.com: Navigating the PCI Standard

Taxes, Ugh

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Admittedly I did wait until the last day (but I always do! Except last year when I had a big refund coming because of my house…), and it isn’t so bad because with a return coming it isn’t a penalty situation, but I expected more out of Turbotax. Their whole back end appears to be non-functional now. “Thanks for paying us but we can’t file your stuff. Sorry! Try again at 4 AM! Hope you don’t get totally screwed! BTW our EULA says we rule and you drool regardless of what happens!” And yes, I understand scaling issues, but I also understand planning. And I expected better planning. Lord knows at $20 to $100 per return they can afford it. …

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VMware Consolidation Ratios Aren't A Competition

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“I just read an article about an IBM shop that is planning a 50:1 virtualization ratio in their VMware environment,” I told two coworkers. “What’s our ratio?” “19:1 across our whole VMware environment.” “Do we plan to get to 50:1?” “No,” I reply. “Why not?” “Well, that’s just not the way we’re built. They went for fewer, larger servers. Some places go for lots of smaller machines. We’re sort of middle-of-the-road with four way and dual quad-core machines. The bigger the building blocks in the environment the more VMs you can put on them. But the more eggs you have in one basket, too.” “Isn’t it easier to manage two huge machines instead of ten smaller ones?” “Often, yes. In …

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links for 2007-04-17

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The Old New Thing : Code is read much more often than it is written, so plan accordingly Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Code of conduct The Old New Thing : What’s the row of numbers on the copyright page of books? The Old New Thing : Email tip: People didn’t answer your first email for a reason Haidinger’s brush: the unknown sense » Enjoy the Perfect Shower Anywhere in the World…for $2.96 – The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Three Decades

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As of 4:21 PM CDT I will have been on this Earth for three decades. Of course, minus the time before I was born, I guess I was technically on Earth then. Wow. They say that 30 is the new 20. Game on! Anybody who is in or around Madison, WI can join me in the back room of the Big Ten Pub, 1330 Regent St., 5:00 PM to midnight. Cake and beer! If you aren’t, well, I’ll just have to drink a beer for you. It’ll be rough, I tell you.

Code of Conduct

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I think that the quotes from Jeff Jarvis are the best part of the BBC article on the blogger code of conduct: “This effort misses the point of the internet, blogs, and even of civilized behavior. They treat the blogosphere as if it were a school library where someone… can maintain order and control. They treat it as a medium for media.” “It’s a place. And when I moved into the place that is my town, I didn’t put up a badge on my fence saying that I’d be a good neighbor.” He added: “I don’t need anyone lecturing me and telling me not to be disagreeable.” Amen. I like the First Amendment because it lets you see who the …

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