See Patrick’s LiveJournal post for details, but the short version is that we’ve lost everything from March 1.
So come on over here and put your feet up. I haven’t any super-linked quotes to start it off. Suggest one, if you will.
Category Archives: Blogging
The very unhappy path to Terminal 5
I see that the new terminal at London’s Heathrow airport is in the midst of another weekend’s disruption. Problems on the terminal’s opening weekend resulted in over 200 flights cancelled and a backlog of 28,000 bags. The chaos has already cost British Airways, the sole user of the terminal, £16m, and some estimates put the eventual cost around £50m.
Initial problems reported included the failure of either passengers or staff to find the car parks, slow security clearance for staff, consequent delayed opening of check-in desks, and multiple unspecified failures of the baggage handling systems. Once the initial failures occurred, a cascade of problems followed as passengers began to clog up the people-processing mechanisms of the terminal.
This weekend’s disruption has been blamed on “a new glitch” in the baggage handling system. I suspect that means that when they solved one set of problems they unmasked another. A spokeswoman assures us that they’re merely planning how to put an identified solution in place. Her statement doesn’t include any reference to the fact that these problems often nest, like Russian dolls, and that the new solution may uncover—or introduce—new problems.
Of course, my reaction was, “Did they test the terminal before opening it?” The errors shown include both functional errors (people can’t find the car park) and non-functional ones (the baggage system failed under load). No system is implemented bug-free, but the breadth of error type got me wondering.
Fortunately, the Beeb covered some of the testing performed before the terminal opened. Apparently, operation of the terminal was tested over a six month period, using 15,000 people. The testing started with small groups of 30 – 100 people walking through specific parts of the passenger experience. Later, larger groups simulated more complex situations. The maximum test group used was 2,250. BAA said these people would “try out the facilities as if they were operating live.”
Do 2,250 people count as a live test? Are they numerous enough to cause the sorts of problems you’re looking for in a volume test?
I plucked a few numbers off the web and passed them through a spreadsheet. T5 was designed to handle 30 million passengers per year, which comes out to an average of 82,000 per day, or 5,000-odd per hour in the 16-hour operating day (Heathrow has nighttime flight restrictions). These are wildly low numbers, because airports have to handle substantial peaks and troughs. Say that on the busiest day you get 150% of flat average, or 7,500 people per hour. Assuming 75% of the people in the terminal are either arriving from or heading toward London, and the rest are stopping over for an average of 2 hours, that’s about 9,375 passengers in the terminal at a given time.
9,375 is more than 2,250. You can,however, magnify a small sample to simulate a large one (for instance, by shutting off 2/3 the terminal to compact them into a smaller space). It’s not just a numbers game, but a question of how you use your resources.
Most of the testing documentation will of course be confidential. But I found an account of one of the big tests. I would expect that any such report was authorised by BAA, and would therefore be unrealistically rosy; they want passengers to look forward to using the new terminal. But still, the summary shocked me.
In fact the whole experience is probably a bit like the heyday of glamorous air travel – no queues, no borders and no hassle.
Any tester can translate that one. It means:
We didn’t test the queuing mechanisms, border controls, or the way the systems deal with hassled passengers.
In software terms, there is something known as the happy path, which is what happens when all goes well. The happy path is nice to code, nice to test, nice to show to management. It is, however, not the only path through the system, and all the wretched, miserable and thorn-strewn paths must also be checked. This is particularly important in any scenario where problems are prone to snowballing. (Airport problems, of course, snowball beautifully.)
Based on the account I read, these testers were set up to walk the happy path. They were not paid for their labours, but were instead fed and rewarded with gifts. I’m sure food and goodie bags were cheaper than actual pay, but they dilute the honesty of the exchange. We’re animals at heart, and we don’t bite the hand that feeds us. We like people who give us presents. Getting those people—mostly British people—to act like awkward customers, simulate jet lag or disorientation, or even report problems must have been like getting water to flow uphill.
Furthermore, look at the profile of testers mentioned: an ordinary reporter and a bunch of scouts and guides. I wish I believed that the disabled, the families with cranky children, and the non-English speakers were just at another table at breakfast. But I don’t. I suspect the test population was either self-selecting, or chosen to be easy to deal with. In either case, it didn’t sound very realistic.
It’s possible that there was another test day for people who walked the unhappy path, and that it wasn’t reported. It’s possible that they did clever things, like salt the crowd with paid actors to clog up the works and make trouble, and that our reporter simply missed those incidents.
But I’ve worked on big projects for big companies, and that’s not what I’m betting. I suspect there were very good test plans, but that for reasons of cost and timing they were deemed impractical. So compromises were sought in large meetings with mediocre biscuits. Gantt charts were redrawn late at night using vague estimates that were then taken as hard facts. Tempers were lost, pecking orders maintained. People assured each other that it would be all right on the night.
It wasn’t.
I wish I believed that the next time someone does something like this, they’ll learn the lessons from the T5 disaster. But that’s happy path thinking, and I’m a tester. I know better.
First Easter in the Netherlands, an act in Three Parts
- Alex is fevered for the second day today, and has added barfing to his repertoire. I know he’ll be better soon, but it’s hard watching him suffer.
- My first thoughts on waking this morning and looking out at the snow:
I’m waking to a white Easter
Staring out at falling snow
The church bell’s ringing
Under thick clouds bringing
More flakes to fall on us below.I’m waking to a white Easter
Where every egg we dyed so bright
Will not stay hidden
But will show, unbidden
We should just have left them white.I’m waking to a white Easter
And feel that something isn’t right
The leaves that shrivel with blight
Put all my dreams of sun to flight.
- A dialogue between Martin and me:
A: So what are we going to do with that bacon in the fridge?
M: Ummmm…eat it?
A: That sounds like a good idea.
M: So should go downstairs and put the bacon on?
A: (looks him up and down) Do you think it’ll cover enough? I don’t want you to be cold.
New dress for Mistress Pink, or, Package tracking as entertainment
Last year, my mother made a [jumper / pinafore] (depending on dialect) dress for Fiona. It was every pink-obsessed little girl’s dream garment, with tier on tier of floral ruffles. From a parental point of view, it’s also very good – corduroy, washable, looks good unironed, long and loose enough that she can wear it for some time before it is too small. Fiona loves it, and has to be wrestled from it when it’s time for a wash.
So in the tail end of the year, with the sewing machine and serger throwing inviting glances her way, Mom asked me if I wanted her to make another one. I thought about it, but Fiona only really needs one obsessive dress, or we’ll run out of shirts and tights to go under it. But I had an idea for the leftover fabric from the first dress. Why not make a matching one for Fiona’s favorite doll, Holly?
Measurements were taken in the dead of night. Guesses were made and rechecked. More measurements were required. Christmas threatened to squat like a toad on the postal services, so the decision was to wait till after New Year’s to send the package. Federal Express then required a crash course in Dutch postcodes (hint: looking at them on the US ZIP code database gets you nowhere). Finally, the thing was sent and all we could do was watch the tracking.
And watch it we did, with versification to keep it entertaining.
On January 3 it arrived in Memphis. Mom commented,
Give me Memphis, Tennessee!
Hep me find the party tried to get in touch with me.
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
Cause m’uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall!
I replied with a mangling of Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis:
Warehoused in Memphis
Would that I could see the sights outside
Warehoused in Memphis
Waiting for my transfer. Where’s my ride?
Then it was sighted leaving Memphis, destination unknown. I found myself humming:
I’m leaving on a jet plane
At last I’m on my way again.
Fedex can ascertain
Where next I’m set to go.
Paris, as it turned out, was the next step. Mom announced this with:
The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay,
I heard the laughter of her heart in every street caféThe last time I saw Paris, her trees were dressed for spring,
And lovers walked beneath those trees and birds found songs to sing.I dodged the same old taxicabs that I had dodged for years.
The chorus of their squeaky horns was music to my ears.Holly’s dress arrived in that most magic of all cities at 8 pm today, January 3.
The first time I saw Paris I was 19 years old. We took a train into town, and we got there at about 6 am. (“We” being Mike Thacker and me.) I walked out onto a bridge over the Seine, and the city was misty and quiet still….the cathedral had been there forever. At that moment I fell in love, as one does at 19, unthinkingly. And forever. I can’t see the real city now, when I go back. All I can see is what I saw in 1965.
The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay,
No matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.
I Googled for Paris poetry, and settled on one that starts:
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart’s delight. . . .
It swiftly became:
First, Piedmont, for the artistry that creates,
Flat Memphis that still Elvis elevates;
But Paris for its far-flung motorways
That bear the dress to where the dresser waits…
Before any more versification or doggerel could be committed, the Fed Ex van arrived here in Oostzaan. Fiona was delighted.
Thanks, Mom, for the dress and the entertainment.
Immoderately Pleased
I have a confession to make.
Over the past couple of years, I have been spending more and more time on another blog. After my experiences with Everything2, I never intended to join an online community again. But somehow, by accident, I kinda did.
It’s owned by the Nielsen Haydens, a couple with deep roots in science fiction and fantasy publishing and fandom. Patrick is a senior editor at Tor Books, and has won a Hugo for his editorial work. Teresa has edited for Tor (and is still a consulting editor, I gather), but is now – among other things – moderator in the recently reopened comment threads at Boing Boing.
The blog, Making Light, is what’s got me back into writing sonnets. I’ve spent a good deal of time there, punning and playing with words, getting to know and like the people. We kick around a lot of topics (the blog subhead is “Language, fraud, folly, truth, knitting, and growing luminous by eating light.”) I’ve hosted them here when the server there went down. And, when there have been quarrels, I’ve done my best to restore the peace. It’s a community of smart folks and good writers. They generally manage to impress me at least once a day.
I guess I must have been impressing right back, somehow, because I’ve been made a moderator and front page poster there (one of five). I’m very aw-shucks and embarrassed about it, because I’m writing on a site owned by editors, and moderating on the home site of one of the most skilled moderators on the net.
This doesn’t mean I’m abandoning Evilrooster Crows – the reasons I haven’t posted much here are not to do with Making Light. (They’re to do with the difficulty of summing up our experiences of moving to the Netherlands while we’re still in the trenches. Sorry.)
But hey – yay me!
Open Thread, Just In Case
There’s server work on a site I hang out on tonight. If it all goes wrong, people can come over here and discuss how to make it better, or just chat.
JM Barrie, of Peter Pan fame, once described his writing as “playing hide and seek with angels.”
How, in a good* moment, would you describe your work†?
—–
* or strange**
† either the thing that pays or your life’s work‡
** to the extent that there is a difference
‡ vide supra
Apple product announcements, all of them
Striding and striding along the red carpet
The publicist cannot hear the designer;
Things fall apart; the specification cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the news,
The bloggers speculate, and everywhere
The customs of the press conference are lost;
The spokesmen lack all conviction, while the insiders
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the iPod announcement is at hand.
The iPod announcement! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of 1984
Troubles my sight: somewhere in Los Altos
A device with touch screen and new proportions
Memory as vast and limitless as the sun,
Is showing onscreen, while all about it
Flash quotes of the breathless Apple publicists.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twelve months of hush-hush development
Were brought to market by a production schedule
And what smooth gadget, its moment come round at last,
Sloches towards the market to be born?
Originally posted on Making Light
M’n Fiets (my bike)
Martin has written about the new car, which forms part of our fleet of transport mechanisms. But Turty is mostly intended for the movement of children (plus sundry light haulage). I’d like to spend a little time talking about my commute vehicle.
I’ve always had blue bikes, for some reason, since the first banana-seat cycle with the coaster brakes. Since the age of 10, I’ve always had multi-speed bikes with rams-horn handlebars; this is my third and best of the line: a Dawes Horizon bottom of the line touring bike (heavier and stronger than a road bike or racing bike). It’s a nervy, responsive thing, though maybe just a little short in the frame for me.
I bought it in Edinburgh, about a year ago, in the hopes that I would be able to ride it during the brief Caledonian summer. I used it about five times before fear of the homicidal Scottish drivers caused me to stop.
It was quirky and bizzare in Scotland, where pseudo moutain bikes are all the rage. It’s even more outré here, where the classic Dutch granny bike rules the roads, with its upright riding position and its near-immortal construction.
Unfortunately, it’s also a target for theft, since it’s what the bike shops here call a “sport bike”. And bike theft is a national phenomenon – all my colleagues have stolen bike stories. I’ve guarded against thieves with a few strategies. First off, those large and ugly silver panniers really do ruin its sleek lines, so it doesn’t look so appealing.
(They also hold a rain jacket, trouser clips and a few other useful items.)
Also, I’ve added a Dutch wheel lock. These things are practically indestructible, and it’s positioned so even cutting the cable ties won’t allow you to get the back wheel off while it’s present.
But most importantly, though I always double lock it (with a cable through the front wheel and frame and through something fixed; the Dutch have bike racks everywhere) or treble-lock it (another wheel lock, loose, through the back spokes and the frame), my main defense is geography. It does not go into high-theft areas such as central Amsterdam. And where possible, I park it among many bikes, because the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.
Because I ride it in street clothes, I had to change the pedals on the bike. It comes with toe clips, and usually I love toe clips. But I can’t use them with all my shoes, so I went for some non-slip pedals instead. I considered a chain guard as well, but the sprocket is too large for most of the aftermarket guards I have seen. So I still use a trouser clip when I wear trousers. (I also cycle in skirts. There is nothing so pleasant as riding in a long, flowing skirt.)
Naturally, I also have reflectors, lights and a bell. I keep a spare inner tube and a set of tyre tools in the bags, and have already done one roadside swap. This weekend, I’m going to buy tyres with reflective stripes around them – both because they are required by Dutch law, and because they really are safer.
I’ve really enjoyed my commutes by cycle, even in the rain. The endorphins mean that I arrive at my destination glowing a little, no matter how challenging the day. And if I have a little extra time (25 minutes instead of 15), I take the route that runs through the Twiske, the local recreation area.
(It even has its own windmill!)
In short, I love my bike. I love working on it, commuting with it, shopping on it (the panniers can hold a lot of groceries). I might start calling it Vera.
Them’s the breaks, unfortunately
Just when we thought life was stressful enough…
I was giving Fiona a shower last night when she slipped and fell. When she got up, the little finger of her right hand was at a funny angle. It clearly hurt a lot.
I shouted for Martin, who called…someone (not sure who) in Dutch while I got her dried and redressed. M took her to the emergency room, where after some waiting, she got an X-ray that confirmed that she had a small break in the inner side of the lowest long bone of the little finger. The doctor adjusted it (which she did not like) and put a plaster cast on it. Martin brought our brave and solemn girl home at about midnight.
Fiona showed a lot of courage and class throughout this incident. She stopped crying very quickly, and started to look for upsides almost immediately. “At least I can wiggle the other hand.” “At least I can wiggle the other fingers on this hand.” “At least Alex can wiggle his fingers.” “At least the stars look lovely tonight.”
Alex, too, did a lot of good. He fetched and carried things to get her out the door (socks, things like that). He was then very comforting and amusing when we were alone in the house, and went to bed very easily when it was time.
Fiona is very tired today – she fell asleep just before we had to go get Alex, and I fully expect she will nap at least once more. But she’s being a good sport about asking for help, and eventually took the prohibition on riding her bike in her stride. (Eventually. After some argument.) She will be going to the hospital again on Tuesday to get the break checked and the cast replaced with something smaller and longer term.
I’m exhausted and pretty stressed about the whole thing (as is Martin), but she is doing well. And that’s what really counts.
thuis!
(at home, in Dutch)
It’s taken us so many months to get to this point that sometimes I don’t believe we’re here. But we’re in our rented house in Oostzaan, with our possessions around us (many of them not even in boxes; some of them even in plausible locations).
One thing we still don’t have is internet connectivity. I’m typing this on my laptop to save on a data key and post from work. If you’re trying to email us, be mindful of this. I can read emails during the day, but my replies will be either short or composed offline. Martin has no net access at all, poor thing.
The move was an enormous effort, but what has really been hard is how much of it we have had to do separately. It started when I went off to work in Amsterdam for the month of July. Though that was pleasant in many ways, it was also profoundy disorienting for both Martin and me. We’re used to having one another as backstop in so many ways. When things went wrong last month, each of us felt so deeply isolated.
The week of the actual removal was more of the same. The schedule was as complex as a ballet:
- I returned home on Thursday 26 July, and was (as usual for the commuter lifestyle) fried on Friday the 27th. Nonetheless, we packed our possessions into boxes all weekend.
- Monday 30 July the kids went to their childcare places. I packed, and ran errands in town.
- Tuesday 31 July started with Martin going to the van hire place to get a van for the move. Although he had arranged it well in advance, it took him longer than we had hoped to get it home, because the paperwork was not in order. Then he helped me with two items I couldn’t manage on my own and went to work, taking the kids for their last days at their childcare places. And I started packing boxes into the van. I had it most of the way packed when it was time to take the kids for a final farewell to Mother Goose, the nursery they’ve been at since Alex was 9 months old.
- The morning of Wednesday 1 August, we put the last items into the van. Then Martin’s family came over and we had a last lunch together. And in the early afternoon, Martin drove the van away with all of our things in it. That night, he took the ferry across from Newcastle to Ijmuiden. In the meantime, I cleaned the house, packed our suitcases, and played that we were camping out with the kids.
- It was very early on Thursday 2 August when I got the kids up and into a taxi to the airport. We flew to Schiphol, touching down just about when Martin arrived at the new house from his ferry. So by the time the jet set had had lunch, taken the train to Zaandam, and taken a taxi from there to Oostzaan, he’d done the checkout with house owners. The kids explored their new home, and we started unloading boxes from the van. It was a quick turnaround – three hours later, he was gone, and I was alone with the kids in a strange house, in a strange country. Not that they were discontent – I put the pedals back on Fiona’s bike, and she and Alex spent the entire afternoon playing with bike and scooter in the garden.
- Friday 3 August was setlling in time. I unpacked many, many boxes, put lots of things away. The kids and I went out to the grocery store (on foot), then they persuaded me to go for a bike ride. We rode for about an hour all told (well, Fiona and I rode. Alex rode his scooter). In the meantime, Martin arrived in Newcastle on the ferry, drove north to Edinburgh, met up with his parents, tidied a few more things in the Scotland house, and flew across to Schiphol.
- Saturday 4 August was much more relaxing, apart from the two hour bike and scooter ride in search of a bike shop (we were going in the wrong direction entirely!
And what details should I tell you about?
About the house, which is beautiful, but huge? The space is good, but I worry that we will become too accustomed to it; barring a lottery win we can’t afford to buy something this size next year.
I could talk about Fiona, who thinks she’s died and gone to heaven. Instead of only riding her beloved bike when (a) the weather is good, and (b) there’s a parent to keep an eye out for her so she can travel the 30 meters to the letterbox and back, she can step out into the sunshine and ride it all the time, back and forth from the front garden to the back. Alex comes out too, and the two of them play long elaborate secret agent games on their vehicles.
Alex is mostly absorbed in Pokemon Diamond version (at which he is very good, though too hard on himself), but he’s been taking time out to ride his scooter, eat Dutch cheese, and watch Sonic the Hedgehog DVDs (it’s comforting when he’s tired).
I could mention the kindness I encountered from Dutch people throughout the difficult day’s travel to Oostzaan, from the friendly immigration officer to the forgiving train conductor (turns out you need a discount card to get a reduced fare for a child…I didn’t know) and the charming and funny taxi driver. The lady at the Albert Heijn meat counter who started giving the kids lunchmeat (which they loved), and the fellow customer who chuckled at Fiona’s earnest explanation of how “lekker” is “yummy” and “heerlijk” is “scrumptious”, and the meat was “lekker heerlijk” – yummy scrumptious.
I could talk about riding on the road with Fiona, who is remarkably brave for someone whose previous riding experience was all helmets and sidewalks. I keep myself between her and the traffic, of course, and Dutch drivers are very careful of cyclists (I also only allow her to ride on very quiet roads). But she is in transports about cycling next to me on the road, which is a layer of maturity and togetherness she can’t get over.
I could describe my trial of my commute on Saturday evening, when I discovered it takes about twenty minutes to bike to the office and about an hour to walk back with a bike with a flat tyre.
I could talk about our attempt at a Sunday drive, which ended at the side of a road with two children throwing up (carsickness and dehydration, in ascending order of age). We abandoned the trip, but went cycling and scootering instead in the afternoon, and found a little beach on the local lake. It was about 20 minutes’ ride from the house, and the kids gleefully threw off clothes and went in (Alex in his shorts, Fiona in her underwear – there were plenty of little girls there in just bikini bottoms). Then we rode home to where Martin was setting up the office space, all but glowing from the fun of it all.
Or I could describe what life is like in a country where I don’t speak the language – how much it is like being deaf, in that I am excluded from verbal communication. Indeed, I don’t always even hear when people speak to me, since I won’t be able to understand it even if I do hear it. Not everything is easy.
For good or ill, we’re in the house, and this is the new home.