Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

It’s been a year since my company sent everyone to work from home due to the pandemic, but I’ve been in the office, keeping the lights green and the wheels spinning.

I manage technology for part of a large American media company. In my division, I’m responsible for “everything that uses electricity.” That covers everything from laptops to servers to petabytes of storage to an entire application suite of tools that allow the creation of high-end graphics, audio, and video all connected with a fast ethernet network. Oh, and I worry about powering all these things 24/7 as well.

While many businesses can operate within a web/cloud environment, professional video post-production still requires powerful workstations, significant amounts of server-class hardware to render/convert video, and enormous amounts of high-speed storage.

Someday, we’ll get to doing this all in the cloud, but today, it’s just not practical. Pushing petabytes into AWS is a non-trivial task.

As the COVID situation worsened in February 2020, we started discussing how we might work from home in earnest, but the challenges were daunting. Many staff with workstations didn’t have laptops. Our capacity for remote editing was at a proof of concept stage and didn’t scale to hundreds of users. Getting our staff to understand the basics of how to use basics like VPNs and video meetings was trying, especially with them frustrated in having to learn a new way to work.

I was lucky that we had started a few “business continuity” proof of concept projects in the year before COVID hit. We built out a cluster of virtual workstations (usually called ‘VMs’) that directly connected to our post-production systems. By using high speed remote control software, this gave us the performance we needed from outside the company to operate. We also had worked with a third-party vendor to basically create and use the same technical set-up, but externally hosted.

The first week of March, I was away from the office, in Iceland, remotely trying to work with my team on planning what we’d need if a shutdown occurred. Personally, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to get home, or whether I’d be quarantined somewhere. I had about two weeks worth of medicine with me, just in case. It was a tumultuous and uncertain time.

We developed a plan that might work, but it really hadn’t been done before at the scale we were discussing. The stark realization of what we needed was gut wrenching. Things grind slowly in big companies and we had to move fast.

I got back to Los Angeles on March 6th. No quarantine. Back in the office, the team worked to nail down the exact details of a plan we could execute. Six days later, on March 12th, the company told everyone that could, go work from home. The game was afoot.

That afternoon, I found myself in the office of the President, with the CFO, explaining the plan and the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to build out what was needed and get laptops in the hands of everyone. Best case, we were months away from bringing more remote editing capacity online. Worst case, it simply wouldn’t work.

There was a strongly-worded argument that occured in that room as to whether the shutdown was going to be over in few weeks or not. The kind of intense scene you see in movies. I was mainly quiet, just giving numbers and yes or no answers while the debate raged loudly. In the end they told me to do “whatever is needed” and I placed the orders that night. This was the answer I wanted, but the responsibility was now placed firmly on my team and me.

Looking back, that conversation looks crazy, but at the time the uncertainty was off the charts, and no one really knew how hard COVID would hit the entire world and change almost everything about how people work.

In the office, most of the staff disappeared, but the core post-production team stayed to keep the “factory” working. We pushed the two remote projects into service, each limited to about 20 people working at a time.

I sent most of the engineering team to work from home. My rationale was that the two of us on site would probably get COVID at some point and be out for the count. Plans were made on who would be the next to come into the office if we fell sick. My family was super stressed at this point, as the virus seemed out of control and I was still going into work. I remember verifying if my life insurance was still in good standing, as I felt as if catching the virus was a matter of “when” not “if”.

The pressure in this moment was almost overwhelming. People were now at home, most with no way to work. Everyone feared widespread layoffs. My small team was tasked with finding a way to put all of these people back to work, and quickly. New hardware was months away and we had few tools to help.

After another week, the shutdown hammer came down in Los Angeles County and almost everyone was sent home leaving a small crew of about a half-dozen in a building that normally holds 500+.

That was a stressful time, trying to get laptops delivered and explaining how to use them. Keeping the backend running with my engineering team mainly at home and inventing remote practices on the fly. Planning the expansion of our VM systems. Racking, cabling, and powering hardware under pandemic conditions. Explaining to frustrated execs that it was not business as usual with the usual flow of video out the door. Trying to calmly explain to non-technical people about wifi, VPNs, and authentication over the phone. Trying to explain CDNs, network topology, latency, jitter, wifi channel collisions to non-technical staff that insist that “Netflix works fine, so why can’t I edit” tested our patience. Repeatedly telling people to mute their mics on video calls became a meme.

Soon, we had to start rotating time shifts to use the remote systems so more people could work. From 6AM to Midnight, we had three different shifts of people swapping in and out of the machines. Poor internet at home meant poor performance of remote editing. Frustration was high.

The next couple months were difficult, developing new workflows to utilize post-production staff at home, getting into the rhythm of video meetings, getting the needed laptops and home setups out to people, dealing with software licensing issues, and all the while trying to build out our hardware systems to handle the needed load. Pandemic safe processes were being developed on the fly by the supply chain of vendors, shippers, mail rooms, and on-site teams just trying to keep the wheels turning.

We tried to make the workplace as safe as we could, scrounging for cleaning supplies, masks, gloves, sanitizer, and other supplies while the store shelves of America were empty. We opened every cabinet in the building looking for hidden resources we needed. it felt like a zombie disaster film, as we celebrated finding a set of Clorox wipes under a desk.

Soon the Corporate groups started taking the on-site conditions seriously and mysteriously a plethora of stickers started appearing all over the building floors. Stickers to tell us which way to walk in the hallways, which sinks to use, and other “helpful” instructions that seemed quite out of sync with the reality of life in an empty building.

To destress, at times we would walk the halls, looking for office plants to water. Trying to find some normalcy in a time of chaos. A respite from the anxiety flooding into our inboxes and swamping us in Slack. I wish we had focused on this earlier as the dead plants still remain in offices, reminding us of our failure to save them.

The realization that this work at home situation would not be going away in weeks or months started to take hold with the staff. This is when I started getting asked to retrieve personal items.

Everyone was a little different on what they wanted sent to them. For some it was notebooks and printed material. Many wanted some of the family photos from their desk. We sent out yoga mats, pencil sets, personal computer mice, vintage computers, throw pillows, etc. We viewed it as doing what we could to make them feel better about the situation.

Outside my office, I keep a small basket of candy for the few people in the office. We started adding a small bag of candy to deliveries when we could to provide a little extra to those stuck at home.

By mid-summer we had upgraded enough software and installed better remote software that everyone could work simultaneously. Performance was good, not great, with some people having frustrating problems we simply couldn’t fix for them. The internet service providers are under tremendous load and some areas simply have bad service, that my team can’t fix for them.

We started to get into a rhythm, as the ‘crisis’ needs became fewer and we dealt with more mundane issues, mainly replacing laptops due to various predictable fates, being dropped and having coffee spilled into them.

Often, we have to enter offices to reboot or update computers, as many things still cannot be managed remotely. These moments sit with me. At someone’s desk, we still see the notes from the week before shutdown. It’s as if they just took the day off, nothing changed.

Looking around the room, you see the space they created, filled with personality and things special only to them. I have no context for most things at people’s desks. While waiting for the computer to reboot, I look at the objects and imagine why they are important. A concert ticket stub from the 90s. A plastic party mug from a bar in Florida. A set of Hot Wheels cars. A light saber. A lego box set. Offices of people that have left the company, still filled with personal items that have never been retrieved. Booze. Just so much booze in people’s offices, waiting for a Friday afternoon get-togethers that aren’t going to happen anytime soon.

The holidays were strange. Zoom meetings just don’t compare to cookie exchanges and white elephant gift exchanges. Traditions matter to people, and without them, marking time is hard.

As we approach a year in the empty offices, most of our day to day operations have transitioned and we are well out of crisis mode. Still not operating at Beforetimes capabilities or ease, but we get the job done.

Most days, there are only five or six people in the entire building, each in our own space, adhered to the safety rules. Masks at all times when we have to talk in person. There are “COVID” patrols in the halls that occasionally look for us breaking the rules.

These days, I bring my lunch to work and eat outside, alone, on a balcony meant for dozens, away from the ding of email and the braap of Slack. At some point, people will be back and I’ll have to share the space.

I’m eager for a vacation, but there’s nowhere to go. I’m anxious to get the vaccine. I fear getting COVID after a year of avoiding it, when the end is in sight. The weight of holding so much together for so many people presses on me. I just need to bear it for a little while more, trying to avoid falling to pieces when the next crisis appears on my plate.

But, as my father would say, “pressure makes diamonds”.

After this, I’ll be able to cut glass with my fingertips.

Two months ago, I bought a Tesla Model Y. The purchasing process was simple, all done online. Reminiscent of the old Saturn dealership model, where prices were clear, no haggling, no drama. Quite nice compared to the antiquated dealership process.

I could go on at length about how backwards other car manufacturers are in this regard, but that would be a very long post on its own.

The Model Y is our 4th EV car, so we are quite used to the charging life and have a Level 2 charger at home. All our other EV cars had the charging port in the front, but the Tesla has it in the rear. Makes it a little more painful to back into the driveway and into charging spots at work. Not sure as to why it’s on the rear. I’m sure there was some reason behind it, but I don’t see the benefit.

Our charger has a J1772 connector, which means I use the adapter to plug into the Tesla. Charging works great, but having to put on the adapter leads to a lot of in & out of the car to grab it. Michele’s Kia Soul EV uses J1772 connection, so we aren’t switching the charger to a Tesla connector. I have considered buying or building a J1772 to Tesla extension cable that would allow me to charge the car without backing into the driveway.

Driving the Model Y is a bit different than other cars I’ve driven. Both in terms of handling and the interface to the driver.

The power and handling of the Model Y is great. Quite a step up from the Bolt. Super responsive and quick. After picking up the car and getting on the freeway ramp, accelerating into the 90s with such ease was surprising. We’ve had BMWs before and the handling was on par if not better when compared to a make known for a great driving experience.

The Model Y is a big car. It’s wide and the hatchback gives it a ton of space. It’s comparable to the Toyota Venza wagon we once owned. I was able to haul all my beekeeping gear to a colony removal with plenty of room to spare.

My last car was the Chevy Bolt, which is a good EV, but still used a traditional dashboard model. Having all the information on the touchscreen takes a little getting used to before feeling comfortable. There’s a tremendous amount there and I spent quite a while watching videos and googling up questions. I’m comfortable using it now, but almost 40 years of traditional automobile UX/UI creates a lot of ‘muscle memory’ about driving.

The first night drive in the car was a bit shocking with a dark emptiness where normally there is the glow of the speedometer. Nothing was wrong but it felt strange in the moment. We are creatures of habit.

The only drawback is missing Apple CarPlay. Having Waze and direct control of my podcast app was neat. I understand that it would be difficult to integrate Apple CarPlay into the Tesla system, especially with Apple’s requirement to have a physical, hardwired connection, but it’s the one thing I miss from the Bolt.

The software of the car has been updated 3 times since I picked it up. That’s astounding. The Bolt had 1 update in 3 years. Looking forward to as the UI and features update over the years. The rest of the automobile industry seems 5+ years behind on this kind of updating.

One of the things that I was looking forward to the most was self-driving on the highway. In short, it works.

I’m one of the people that still needs to go into the office during the pandemic, and my commute is about 17 miles, with about 10 of it on the freeway. I use the ‘Autosteer’ on the highway, and it works remarkable well. The interface is straightforward and the only issue was getting used to the actual computer driving. It’s not like a human, it just feels different. More precise or maybe more decisive.

Some might want to have the Autosteer negotiate all the merging, intersections, and other more complicated traffic maneuvers, but I’m happy with the car to handle the highway traffic, especially the stop and go bits, which it manages extremely well.

Autosteer wants your hands on the wheel and reminds you frequently. Being an engineer, I wanted to see how easily the car could be fooled. I found that putting ~400g of weight on the steering wheel laterally would create enough force to let you drive hands-off indefinitely. I don’t recommend doing that, but it was interesting to test the sensitivity of the steering wheel.

You can use Autosteer on city streets as well. Yes, the car will go through traffic stop signs and signals very carefully, but it’s so conservative, it feels like crawling through the neighborhood. The car recognizes stop signs, street lights, and even cones in the road. Again, fun to the see the capabilities, but I’ll probably only use the Autosteer on the highway, not in city traffic.

I’d love to go on a road trip with the Tesla, but in the Coronatimes, it’s best not to travel far from home.

However, I did want to see the Supercharger experience and went to a 24 charger location nearby. The process was simple and quicker than a Chargepoint CCS locations or other CCS charging networks I’ve used. No dealing with apps or other issues. I just plugged it in and it worked. The car displayed the details of the charging and if I had been traveling for real, would have had to rush a meal since the recharge was happening so fast.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance at a road trip in the Aftertimes, but for now, it seems like the Tesla charging infrastructure is markedly ahead of the fast CCS infrastructure, both in terms of availability and ease of use.

Having a charger at home, I kind of take for granted being able to recharge anytime I want. But after visiting the Supercharge location, it made me realize that there are some people that rely on them for their primary charging. Of the 24 spaces, over half were in use on a Saturday morning. But I guess it makes sense if your apartment doesn’t have charging or you don’t want to spend the money to install at your home. I hadn’t really considered that before, but it makes sense.

Lots of discussion among Tesla owners and fans about “fit & finish” out there these days. First, I’m not super picky about this stuff. It’s a car, not a piece of jewelry. It’s going to get dings. Birds are going to poop on it. It’s going to get water spots. The car is there to take me places, not represent my personal identity. So some of the issues that people have with finish are lost on me. If it matters to them, then it’s important to them. It just isn’t in me to go measure body panel gaps with calipers.

My experience has been good with no real issue with performance or finish. I don’t notice any serious issues. I have no doubt that if someone with an eye for this stuff came to take a look, they’d find something. The only thing I’m caught up on is why you have to back into spots to charge the car. 🙂

Besides finish issues, I haven’t had any serious performance issues. I see people have issues with the frunk and seats, but I’ve been lucky. Maybe I got a car made a little later than the first batch that the earliest owners received.

I don’t peruse a lot of the Tesla online community stuff. I read a few things and watch some videos, but I’m not obsessed with Tesla news. Some parts of the Tesla community are downright fanatical, and parse out every word and nuance from statements. I’ve seen it in a few other car communities like Jeep owners who are a breed apart, and it’s similar to Apple enthusiasts that treat any info from Cupertino like tablets from Mt. Sinai.

IMHO, it’s a great car, but it’s just a car. It’s not worth the energy to argue with anonymous netizens over anything, but there are a bunch of people that make it a priority to stomp out Tesla wrongthink.

I’ve got plenty of other hobbies that I enjoy, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time focused on every bit of Tesla news. I’m just going to have fun and drive the car.

To wrap up, after two months, I’ve happy with the Model Y and glad I chose it as my new car. The many upsides far outweigh the few minor issues I have with the car. If you have been hesitating to make the leap to EV, the Model Y is a great choice to get you into a car designed for the future, not one saddled with the past.

Last week, I turned in our Chevy Bolt, as it’s 3 year lease was due.

I wrote briefly about our first two months with the car.

The Bolt was a good car, but not a great experience. The Bolt was our third EV car, but we won’t be getting another one from GM.

tl;dr: good car, bad company

The only real failure was about 6 months in where the car basically stopped on the highway as the power system shut down. I was able to get off the highway and pull into a parking lot. The dealership had to replace the entire battery pack to fix the problem.

Not many other mechanical issues during the rest of the time with the car. Much simpler in terms of regular maintenance compared to other cars.

We went on several long trips without a lot of issues and learned a bit about charging strategies.

The Bolt has several drawbacks that are frustrating. It lacks adaptive cruise control, which for a cutting edge car, makes no sense. We had cars 10+ years ago that had adaptive cruise control and the lack of it is a significant drawback for highway travel.

In terms of charging, the Bolt has a lot of trouble doing a high speed charging with any charger above 50kW. Yes, it’s supposed to auto-negotiate and be able to use a higher power CCS charger, but in practice, it doesn’t work. We tried several times and it always ended in failure. Incredibly frustrating when you are mid-journey and the car won’t charge.

As more and more CCS chargers are installed with 100kW+ capabilities, this a real issue. Charging is everything with EV cars. Chevy needs to remedy this ASAP.

Over the three year period, there was basically one significant software upgrade to help with Apple Carplay that I noticed. Nothing else that the average driver would see. The UI remained mediocre and full of shiny but useless screens. It’s like the UI was designed by people that didn’t drive the car and had just watched movies about people who did. The phone app was basically useless for anything other that seeing the battery level and even that took several minutes to update.

In today’s world of regular app updates, GM seems disconnected and oblivious, clinging to a past of locked in time automobile software. When pizza delivery apps have better interfaces than an expensive automobile, it shows a clear disregard for the way the world works today.

When I leased the car, the Tesla Model 3 was not available and I went with a 3 year lease believing that there would be lots of EV models to choose from for a replacement. I thought GM would have several cars to choose from when the time came and the Bolt was just first of many new models.

However, from GM there is nothing new. The only EV car Chevy sells is the Bolt and all they’ve added is a tiny amount of increased range. No significant new features and no other models. Unbelievable.

They promise adaptive cruise control is “coming soon” and a few new car models in 2022. Pretty pathetic for GM to be so far behind. The next model released is going to be a Cadillac. Yes, a Cadillac, because people associate innovation with Cadillac. What in the world are they thinking? Could they pick a brand with less resonance with anyone under 65?

Tesla completely owns the EV market at this point and has followed up the Model 3 with the Model Y, all within the timespan of my Bolt lease, while GM offers literally nothing new.

In default features, GM is 3–5 years behind Tesla. Elon Musk isn’t taking his foot off the innovation pedal so I have no idea how GM will ever catch up. GM is even dawdling on building charging infrastructure, while a Telsa charging network is fully operational.

GM is not alone is being behind. VW is behind, trying to deploy hybrids instead of EVs. Ford has delayed a pickup truck which would a winner, at least two years.

Lastly, if you want a Chevy or GM car, you still have to deal with a dealership. Dealerships are basically run by con men, intent on shaking every last penny out of your pocket. Dealerships work on misinformation and intimidation with a follow-up of robo-calls about service appointments & recalls to try to suck money out of GM’s wallet as well.

GM used to have Saturn, a bastion of sensibility in the 90s that broke the model and made the dealership an extension of the brand and an unstressful environment. I had a Saturn and loved the car and the process. Of course GM killed it and is sticking with their 1950s operating model.

The Bolt was a good car, but I don’t think the company behind it has any real commitment to making a new kind of car and changes to what car ownership is like these days. They make a lot of press announcements, but not a lot of cars. Go to a Chevy dealership and sees for yourself, even the salesmen shit-talk the Bolt because they don‘t make as much commission.

EV car #4 arrives soon. Let’s see how that journey goes.

Cruft Manor has Halloween traditions: Every year, we give out full size candies, made a listing of all costumes, and make a timelapse movie.

I let the kids choose their favorite candy themselves. This can sometimes lead to a prolonged choosing process and debate. The moments of “OMG” and “wow” are wonderful as they realize the candies are full size.

This year I heard “this is the house I told you about, with the big candy” which makes me smile.

When people come to the door, I ask every person what they were dressed as and wrote down their answers. I am careful to ask what they are, accepting their answers rather than interpreting what I see.

As has become tradition, I made a timelapse movie of handing out candy to the kids. This year, I started when the first trick or treaters appeared a little after 6 PM.

The time-lapse takes place over a little more than three hours that is reduced to just over two minutes for your viewing pleasure.

Here are few of the fun costumes I saw this year.

This Halloween makes it 15 years of data to compare, though 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Here are the top ten costumes for the last fifteen years compared.

Again, wide diversity this year. Spider-man was on top, with Black panther and M&Ms candies breaking into the the top ten. Longtime favorites like cats and ninjas were not seen much. Continuing the trend of the last few years, there were no politics oriented costumes this year. No big new trends appeared.

Our total number of visitors was about the same, 162, slightly up from last years 157. Again, several homes on our street had their lights off and probably lead to lower traffic to our house.

This year’s complete costume list of 162 people:

5 Spider-man
5 Witch
4 Black Panther
4 Harry Potter
4 M&Ms
3 Naruto
3 Unicorn
2 Biker Girl
2 Captain America
2 Clown
2 Ghost
2 Gorilla
2 Gravity Falls Twins
2 Harley Quinn
2 Horsehead
2 Rilakkuma
2 Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas
2 StayPuft Marshmallow Man
2 Superman
2 Wonder Woman
1 Air Force Pilot
1 Alien
1 Archer
1 Aria from Inherited
1 Audrey
1 Banana
1 Bank Robber
1 Baseball Player
1 Basketball Player
1 Batgirl
1 Belle
1 Belly Dancer
1 Big Fat Monkey
1 Black Ninja
1 Bunny
1 Captain Marvel
1 Chuckie
1 Cinderella
1 Clipper Fan
1 Coach
1 Coco
1 Connor Murphy
1 Cookie Monster
1 Cow
1 Crash Test Dummy
1 Dad
1 Darth Vader
1 Deadpool
1 Dinosaur
1 Dog Biting my Butt
1 Doll
1 Domino
1 Dwight Schrute
1 Elastigirl
1 Elsa
1 English Immigrant
1 Evan Hansen
1 Evie
1 Flapper
1 French Immigrant
1 Ghostbuster
1 Ghostface
1 Giraffe
1 Graffitti Painter
1 Gryffindor Student
1 Heisenberg
1 Hot Dog
1 Hydro Waka Flocka
1 Ice Cream
1 Identity Theif
1 Inflatable Dragon
1 Iron Judge
1 Iron Man
1 Jasmine
1 Joker
1 Ketchup
1 Killer Clown
1 Ladybug
1 Legal Vampire
1 Lunatic Cultist from Terraria
1 Mad Hatter
1 Mario
1 Michael Meyers
1 Mickey Mouse
1 Minnie Mouse
1 Mom
1 Napolean Dynamite
1 No Skin Joker
1 Oreo
1 Panda
1 Papyrus the Skeleton
1 Pirate
1 Police Officer
1 Poncho
1 Princess
1 Pumpkin
1 Pumpkinhead
1 Purge Master
1 Rapunzel
1 Ravenclaw
1 Santa
1 Scarecrow
1 Scary Skeleton
1 Scream
1 Shark
1 Skeleton
1 Skeleton Ninja
1 Skywing Dragon
1 Smoker the Bear
1 Snow White
1 Soldier
1 Sonic
1 Student
1 Teddy Bear
1 Teenage Ninja
1 Thor
1 Tiger
1 Tigger
1 Tinkerbell
1 Toad
1 Treebeard from LotR
1 V for Vendetta
1 Vampire
1 Velociraptor
1 Violet
1 Winnie the Pooh
1 Yoshi
1 Zombie

162 Costumed Visitors