Toyota Gas Pedal Rant - Put it in Neutral?

I usually don't go on too many rants. But reading about the Toyota gas pedal issues over and over again with no remedy in place to help educate people on what to do if this happens to them is odd to me.

This story here tonight is what really got me thinking.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/08/eveningnews/main6279727.shtml

The gas pedal sticks and the driver has time to make a phone call to 911, dispatch patrol, and work for 20 mins to stop the car.

WOW, really? Why is the sequence of events not something like this;

Gas Pedal Sticks (instant)
Attempt to Stop - Fails (5 seconds)
Put on Right Turn Signal (1 second)
Get into right lane (5-15 seconds)
Put car in Neutral (2 seconds)
Turn off engine (2 seconds)
Brake to a stop safely on the shoulder (5-15 seconds)

All together we're up to 45 seconds post incident and we're stopped safely on the side of the road to now call and report the failure.

I just don't understand how/why the media is promoting just hitting the brakes and call 911? Why is the education not to do the above or worst case, if this happens, immediately throw the car in Neutral, and get over to the shoulder - let the engine blow up.

What's worse, running for 20 mins at 90+ mph or more risking many lives or simply letting the car die and having Toyota give you a new engine.

Is logic just simply not a plausible solution for this?

Life with Diabetes, for an 8 year old

Many people ask us what it is like for our daughter Destin to have diabetes. Our goal as her parents is to make her life as "normal" as possible and not let diabetes limit her ability to just be a kid.

While we believe we have made great strides with this, what people don't see is what goes on "behind the scenes" everyday that allows her to do this.

Attached is a typical day of what it is like for Destin in her life with diabetes.

Her strong will and determination to not let this slow her down makes me incredibly proud of her and humbled at the same time.

Please read the attachment, it is a powerful illustration of what a typical day is for her.

If after reading this, you'd like to help make her dream come true of finding a cure, please follow the link and donate to her team in our walk for a cure on February 27th.

LifeWithDiabetes.pdf

Click Here to Donate

Walk for a cure

I've blogged about the challenges that my daughter has overcome with her living with Type 1 diabetes. This weekend, I was quickly reminded how important technology plays into her ability to live.

This weekend we were on our way to grandma and grandpa's house for Valentine's dinner. We had stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items on the way. My daughter Destin was "feeling low", meaning she felt as though her blood sugar was low, this is a common occurrence after a long day of dancing. She tested herself and the store and sure enough, she was low. I took her "PDM" case as her and my wife went to go find some quick carbs to bring up her blood sugar.

Her "PDM" is from a company called Insulet, it is her "Personal Diabetes Manager". It is about the size of a cell phone and has a built in blood glucose checker and also controls her Omnipod Insulin pump. This is what provides a continuous amount of insulin as well as additional insulin when she eats anything with carbohydrates.

When we got to grandma and grandpa's house, Destin asked me "Dad, where is my PDM?"

It was nowhere in the truck. My heart sank into my gut. Where did it go?

I immediately drove back to the grocery store and walked up to customer service. Asking if they had a lost and found, the lady at the store looked at me, saw my panic and said "little black pouch?" YES, they clearly had it!

She said they opened it, realized what it was and knew someone would be back soon for it. Talk about feeling like an awful father. Everyday we entrust our daughter to manager her diabetes care with this little black pouch, keeping track of it everywhere she goes. It has to be within quick reach every minute of every day. I had it in my possession for 5 minutes and lost it.

Driving back to grandma and grandpa's for dinner I quickly realized how much of a burden this is on our daughter. How responsible she must be at 8. She doesn't know or remember what it's like to be "a normal kid", this is her normal, her normal includes poking her fingers 10-12 times a day, getting woken up in the middle of the night to feed her juice, having to put new pumps on her at 3am when they fail, never being able to just have a snack, eat a candy bar, etc without first testing herself.

Destin dreams of a cure for diabetes and we have this same dream for her as well. Technology has allowed her to have as normal a life as possible, but the dream still exists for a cure. On February 27th, we'll be walking for the 4th year as Destin's Dream Team. Together with all of the walkers and donations by you, someday her dream will come true.

This is the one time of year that I do reach out to the community and ask for support. With the research that is taking place and the funds that JDRF raises, we do believe that sometime in Destin's lifetime, a cure will exist. To help us make this dream come true, please follow the link below and donate anything that you can. Every dollar helps as every dollar brings us closer to a cure for all of those living with this disease.

Thank you everyone.

Click Here to Donate

Keeping Data Forever

David Ferris had an interesting post the other day hinting of keeping all data forever. (Here) At Procedo, this is something that we're seeing with our customers as well. Over the course of the past few years we have seen our average customer increase from 2-3 TB to well over 10TB.

Over the past two months we've also had two requests for quotes from customers that have over 1PB of archived content each. We also have many customers that ask if we can increase retention during a migration applying a new retention period to all legacy archived data.

What this trend is confirming for us is that customers are keeping more data, longer. Customers who 6 years ago applied a 3 year retention period to their data still have it and don't know if or when they may turn on expiry to purge the data.

Storage growth is going to continue to compound as the rate at which we are creating new data is increasing multi-fold and we're not purging the legacy data. At our current rate, we could start to see the 100TB archive as being normal for the good majority of our customers. Needless to say, our storage partners are starting to realize the archive market is going to be a major growth area for them in the next few years.

The Recession Is Over!

Yeah yeah, I know this is still being debated. I waited for awhile to post after reading this as just like everyone, has their doubts regarding if this is true or not, did the cash for clunkers create an artificial high, did the expired, soon to be expanded $8000 homebuyer credit contribute, etc.

At Procedo we have weathered through this past 12 months just like everyone. Being impacted in at least one way or another during that time. However, we are seeing the activity levels or real deals starting to increase. What is interesting is that during the time we never really saw a dip in our activity, but what we are seeing now is an increase of deals starting to close. The shear volume of deals increasing, but more importantly, real deals that have been on the radar for some time with our clients preparing for them are starting to close as well.

We're seeing more of the "want to get done" deals happening vs. just the "need to get done."

What we're also seeing, is the continued need and drive towards archive improvements. As many of our partners have indicated over the years, archiving is continuing to be an integral part of the organization and is no longer just a want. Companies are realizing the vast benefits of archiving. What we are starting to see a major trend with is not just archiving, but companies demanding more from their archives and therefore an increase in migrations from one archiving platform to another.

We're excited to be partnered with so many leading providers in the archiving space and working with them bring new customers to their platform through competitive archive migrations.

Users, do they really matter?

I've been working in the world of providing IT solutions for over 15 years now in various capacities. However, the one thing that has never changed from any role I've been involved with is that there are "users" we all need to deal with. From my consulting days, "user" was just another four letter word. Anyone who has ever consulted dreaded hearing that "a user called and is having a problem." Especially if it was right after an upgrade or a major system change.

In the world of archiving, the user seems to be forgotten when we speak to a lot of our potential clients, until the user calls...

So what about the user in archiving, do they really matter? Is the users input really important in selecting an archive? Does it really matter how easy it is for the user to get access to their archived content?

Obviously, the simple answer is yes, they do. The more complex answer is, "yes they matter and even more important, their experiences should be positive and as non-impacting to the way they use their email/archive."

Shortcutting objects in the archive in Exchange became the standard, because it provided users with virtually the same way to access their data as if it was in Exchange. So what happens when the company migrates their archived content from one application to another? So what happens when the shortcuts are now different and they don't function like they are supposed to, or they look different than new shortcuts, or you can't click on them the same way you can new shortcuts? Does it really matter? Does it really matter that the user experience is now negative with the new multi-million dollar archive system you just deployed?

Do users really matter? maybe, maybe not. Go ahead, disrupt their environment, you'll find out soon enough. When migrating, make sure you provide them a positive experience. If not, they will blame the new archive - not the old one you just migrated from.

Is Different Better?

One of the constant challenges that our customers struggle with is, " Is Different Better?" Our customers approach us when they are ready to make a change for a significant portion of their archive environment. This might be the storage, the application or both. Regardless, making a change is a significant stress activity for our customers. They ask the usual questions "If I change, can I search better?", "If I change, will I ever have to manage the archive again?

Something that we always tell our customers is to make sure that the decision they are making to change will bring them a better balance of what they need from their archive. Not every archive is perfect, even though some vendors claims theirs to be, but why change unless there is improvement? Even if the improvement is perception to the end users. Selecting a solution that provides them a better balance will make them more satisfied with their decision and therefore reduces the stress of the change.

Change can be good, change can be bad, change that creates a better balance is key. Make sure when you decide which path you are going down, that you will create a better balanced environment.