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.

links for 2006-06-20

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CBC News: Study dishes the dirt on hygiene’s role in disease DUH. People who are not exposed to germs and dirt and stuff have bodies that are incapable of dealing with them. (tags: health science)

T.S. Eliot

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“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot

Toad the Wet Sprocket

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40 hours until Toad the Wet Sprocket. It’s been eight years. I’m nervous. Toad is wrapped around some of my fondest, and some of my most bittersweet, memories. Of her. I hope it’s as good as the last time. I hope.

Ah, Vacation

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I’ve been taking a much-needed break from work over the last five days. It’s really amazing how my attitude can improve with a little rest. Of course, tomorrow represents the last of the vacation, but that’s okay. Vacation must end, so that a new vacation can start later, and the between-time reminds us of why we take vacations. I sat today on the deck of a house, overlooking a few acres of pond, grass, and forest. I was actually doing work, but it was fine, because I had nature around me. Birds coming into the feeders, something causing all the red-winged blackbirds in the cattails to freak out, grass swaying, all of it intoxicating. All while I sorted out a …

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Compromise Sucks, Long Live Compromise

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BMW’s new ad campaign says “We say no to compromise so we can say yes to great ideas.” How dumb is that? Since when are compromises and great ideas exclusive? What happens when there’s a great idea but it needs some tweaking? Do they just throw the idea out? “Hey Hans, I’ve got a great idea for how we can solve the problem with the headlights!” “Oh, excellent idea Franz, but we’d need to change it a little to accommodate the new front-mounted death rays.” “Gosh, I am sorry for not having a perfect idea. Forget I mentioned anything. I hope we can get this headlight problem fixed sometime.” Nearly every good idea I encounter needs a little compromise to …

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Avast, thar be BitTorrent

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In a followup to my post on The Pirate Bay, a friend told me that it’s probably not wise to admit to being a software pirate. “How’d I admit that?” I asked. “Well, you ended it with ‘Which, if you ask me, is fine.’ It seems pretty clear that you support piracy.” “Oh, yeah. I can see how you think that.” I’m not a fan of software piracy, though I do think that companies should either give away copies of their software or permit longer, full-featured trials. The longer I can use a piece of software the more likely it is that I’ll buy a license, especially with expensive software. I was able to use the full JetBrains Omea Reader …

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Scavenger Hunt

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“Hey Bob, I didn’t know you have a blog.” Great. A coworker has found my blog. Now I get to be the second person in the organization to experience the whole blog persecution thing. “Yeah.” “Where is it? I want to read it.” Okay, so maybe I’m safe. I have a couple options here. I could lie and tell him my blog is someone else’s (in fact, maybe I should set up a decoy blog… just thought of that). I could tell him to find it on his own. Or I could tell him where it is. “I write it on my own time, from home, and it’s on my own server elsewhere in the world. I try pretty hard …

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