iPad2 - Smashed!

It finally happened.

About 11:00pm last night, my lovely daughter managed to arrange a high-speed liaison between my iPad 2 and the tile floor. Oh joy.

Smashed beyond all reapair, I took my sorry excuse for an iPad back to the Apple store. Tail between my legs, the associate politely informed me of the benefits of Apple Care warranty and the rugged Otter Box cases available for my precious gadget. 10 minutes later, I'm sitting at the Genius Bar, awaiting my fate.

In classic Apple style, my appointed Genius gave me an awesome deal on a replacement, and had it in my hands within 30 minutes of me showing up at the store. No, it wasn't free, but it's a bit much to expect a free replacement after declining the warranty and then dropping it on the floor.

Just one more reason I love Apple products (yeah, call me a fan-boy or whatever). Not only are the products outstanding, but when it comes to customer service, they are second-to-none.

Thanks again, Apple. This time for dulling the pain of a rather unpleasant event.

Kudos to the Apple store in Boulder and my Genius, Max.

Steve Jobs - 1955-2011

Few people have changed the course of human history as Steve Jobs has. May he forever be remembered as the most visionary technology innovator of our time.

Much as the work of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford ushered in the industrial revolution, Steve Jobs and his remarkable vision and leadership has largely defined the information revolution.

Henry Ford put power and promise of the automobile within reach of the common man. Steve Jobs put the power of a nearly infinite universe of information in our pockets.

Thomas Edison made the technological breakthroughs that enable modern life accessible to the masses. Steve Jobs envisioned and created products that enable unprecedented communications, access to information, and in a very real way he "redefined" modern life on Earth.

The world has suffered a great loss.

Magento on Rackspace Cloud - Update

At the beginning of the year, I posted about my experience running Magento on the Rackspace cloud infrastructure.  The gist of that post was that Magento does in fact run quite well, as long as you use a minimum of the 2GB instance provided by Rackspace.  (Original Article Here)

Since then, I have been migrating several sites to this infrastructure.  Initially, I figured it would be easy to put 5 or even 10 sites on one instance, and scale it up to 8GB or 16GB or whatever was needed.  Vertical scale with a single cloud server appeared to be a quick and simple deployment plan.  Unfortunately, this all came crashing down on me when I went to add the sixth site.

Rackspace kindly informed me that they could only assign a total of 5 IP addresses to a single CloudServer instance.  This really makes no sense to me, since I can get 5 more just by adding another server, but that's their policy anyway.

In case you didn't know, every site that has its own SSL certificate requires its own dedicated IP address.  This includes all of the Magento sites that we currently manage at 4word systems.

Forced to deal with the reality of spinning up several 2GB+ instances to support a larger number of sites, I got to thinking about my original strategy.  After all, to keep on the planned path would turn out to be expensive as hell.

What if I offloaded the database activity to a separate server?  How might that impact the performance / hardware requirements for the web server?  How big would the DB server need to be?

Through a good amount of trial-and-error I have discovered the following (so far).

1:  The database server can be surprisingly small if properly tuned.  MySQL database tuning and maintenance can be a tricky thing, but currently I am supporting around 10 Magento databases on a 1GB CloudServer instance with no performance problems whatsoever.  I will again mention that this absolutely requires a well-tuned MySQL installation.

2:  The web server size requirement also drops considerably.  Previously, I had a single Magento site that was so busy most of the time, I needed to upgrade from 2GB to 4GB to prevent heavy swapping to disk.  After offloading the database to the new 1GB instance, I was able to reduce the web instance from 4GB to 1GB.  This is a remarkable improvement.  2 servers at 1GB is half the cost of a single 4GB instance, and the 1GB database server is able to service at least 9 more websites.

The long and short of it is this:  If you plan to host Magento on CloudServers, do yourself (and your budget) a favour.  Split the database on to a different server.  Even if you are only managing a single site, you will get more performance for less money any way you cut it.

Mass Transit in America - Time for a New Dawn

The history of this country is rich with ambitious, nationwide transportation projects.  One might argue that transportation has enabled much of the growth that has fuelled the rise of the US as a global superpower.  Transporting materials, supplies, finished goods and people across the nation with speed and efficiency is a hallmark of American accomplishment.

Sadly, with the completion of the interstate highway system in 1992 (at a cost of 4x the original estimate and 3x longer than planned) transportation has taken a vacation when it comes to public policy.

The World Has Changed
A lot has changed since 1956, when the Federal Aid Highway Act was written.  Smog, congestion, oil-dependency and highway fatalities are a fact of life now for virtually every American.  While the highway system accomplished it's grand objective, the consequences can not be ignored.  Each day, tens of millions of people wake up, get in their cars, and waste an average of an hour each day driving to and from their place of employment.  Risking life and limb, the gainfully employed venture out onto the interstate highway system so they can afford to pay for the vehicles and fuel that make it possible for them to do the same thing the next day.

Count the Cost
With the average price of a new vehicle hovering around $30,000, few Americans can afford to directly purchase a new car.  Instead they turn to the benevolent finance companies (aka banks) who will ensure that the actual cost will nearly double.  Given that a car typically will be out of warranty within 3 years and nearly worthless after 10, it's not unusual for the capital cost of a vehicle to come to $7,000 - $8,000 per year.

Add on the compulsory insurance coverage for another $750 or so per year.

With the average round-trip commute at 32 miles per day, an average fuel economy of 25 MPG, we add another $1,200 - $1,300 per year in fuel alone.

Add to that the cost of regular scheduled maintenance, tires, brakes and repairs, it's easy to see that operating a car solely for the purpose of getting to work can easily run $9,000 - $11,000 per year.

News Flash: For nearly 1/2 of American households, that represents 20% or more of total pre-tax income.  When you look at after-tax income, vehicle expenses can easily exceed 30% of the average family's take-home pay. 

I'm convinced most people don't see that.  We've been conditioned not to.  Advertising works, people.

Oh, and that's before we even consider the more than 250 hours each year lost by the average commuter on their way to and from work.  At an average rate of $25 / hour, there's another $6250 down the drain.

It's time for change.  I thought that's why we hired this guy for President. . .

"Higher" Education

Wow, long time no post.  Been workin my tail off on QuickPix (an iphone app), which you can learn more about here.

In any case, I had to take a moment to talk about college in this country.  It's driving me nuts.

First, as a culture, we strongly encourage, even coerce, nearly every high school graduate in America to run off and attend college immediately after high school.  For many, this means moving out of the house, amassing large student and consumer debt, and becoming somehow "educated" by the academic machinery of America.  Lessons include: binge drinking, drug use, promiscuity, athletics and a few classes sprinkled in between for good measure (and to justify the price of admission).

In these times, few college graduates are able to find jobs.  It's no wonder.  The jobs that most grads are qualified for range from frat party coordinator to entry-level drug dealer all the way up to professional alcoholic and surf bum.  There are exceptions, of course, there always are. . . .

To top it all off, upon leaving college many students are left with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with no means to repay.  Even if they DO get a job - a GOOD job - right out of the gate they start on the American treadmill of life:  Go to work to repay a bank loan (or 6).  Don't forget you'll need a new car to get to that job, and we know just the bank to loan you the money!

College is a good investment in your future.  Just ask the banks (with their record profits) and the Universities (with their skyrocketing revenues and double-digit annual increases).  College grads make more money than non-grads.  Look at the research!

So who does the research?  The same people doing virtually all of the research in this country - the Universities.  Enlightened self-interest?  You be the judge.

The most valuable lesson to be taught in this country is fiscal responsibility.  Millions are made by the likes of Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and countless other financial geniuses (no offense - I've read them all).  Their message is overwhelmingly the same:  That all debt is bad and that to be free, one must cast off the shackles of debt.

So what do we teach our kids?  At age 18, we show them the enlightened path that we know best as a country:  Borrow money you don't have to invest in something that you can't afford the risk of investing in.  We do it with everything - real estate, transportation, stocks, bonds, options, and now "education".  It's the American Way.  Might as well get started as soon as possible.

30 years later, with a mountain of debt, "investments" tied up in inaccessible or prohibitively expensive accounts (IRA/401k), and virtually no asset base, we, as adults, turn to the financial experts.  What do we want to know?  How we can get get OUT from under the debt we've accumulated and not work until the day we die.  We call it "retirement", and less and less of us have any real hope of getting there anytime soon.

What are we teaching our kids by saddling them with debt before they even get their first job?  Our culture of debt-financing and unrealistic expectations are a major contributor to so many of our cultural problems.  It nearly defines the difference between rich and poor, income disparity, the drain on our public treasury.  If the good, hard-working people of this country could stop buying shit they can't afford with money they don't have, perhaps they would save a buck or two, or even invest in income-producing assets over the course of their working lives.  Such a thing could lead to the unthinkable:  reduced reliance on government-mismanaged systems like Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid.

The good news is that we're all on the same page.  The government does it, most Americans do it, and we teach it to our kids.  That many people just can't be wrong . . . can they?