Partsearch Technologies

RIP Partsearch

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Today seems like the last day of Partsearch Technologies. It looks like the staff has been let go and the company is going out of business.  It is still kind of odd that I found myself wanting to write about it. After all I haven’t worked there since February 2007. In any event I have several friends that still worked there up until the end, and after spending so many years working there I feel like a wanted to write something.

For the past several weeks I’ve heard about problems they been having. Of course it seemed like (to me) there’ve been problems for years. In the end I have mixed feelings about this day. Partsearch was a place I loved to work at for many years, but toward the end for me it was a place I dreaded to work. At the time my decision to leave was both sudden, and a long time coming. What I mean by that is, by the time I was ready to leave I realized I should’ve left the year before. I talk about that now because it seems like the decisions that were being made then probably had an impact on the company’s ultimate demise.

In recent years I have had many negative things to say about working there. In reality as I said I had several years where I loved working there. I met many friends that I still keep in touch with today. I got to work side by side with one of my best friends for 2 years. I went from being just a systems engineer, to manager, then to a director. Today I can’t help thinking about all the fun times I had, but also about the frustration that led me to leave.

I talk about this now because in the end it seems like the company doomed due to its virtual reliance on one client. This wasn’t news. This was actually in fact a problem since the day the company was founded. Over time from what I’ve heard their reliance on Best Buy decreased, however at the end the vast majority of business was still from them. The detail that I have are fuzzy about the last days, but I recall talking to other managers years ago, and discussing the fact that in the end the business model just did not work. That and the companies reliance on one customer was worrisome from the get go. I’m not a finance guy, all my information is secondhand and anecdotal, but to me this seemed obvious. Let’s put it in an other way. If it was a great business model, Partsearch would not have relied on Best Buy for such a large percentage of revenue 10 years into the company’s history.

I can recall spending weeks and months preparing to build websites for customers that were to be the next big thing for Partsearch. The problem was the next big thing never came. It was always a bit demoralizing to spend all this time and money and effort on a website and never generated more than $5-$10,000 a month in revenue. This happened, more times than I can remember. At one point we had to have been managing 15 to 25 websites with 2 to 3 generating 90% or more of the money. One of those sites with the company’s own Partstore site. And from what I heard Partstore wouldn’t have gotten much focus if it wasn’t for Dan convincing upper management it could make money. Don’t get me wrong, the actual building and constructing the sites and infrastructure was challenging. That’s what I did. That is why I liked working there for so long. The frustrating part was to do it knowing that historically it wouldn’t make any difference.

I guess in the end my thoughts about working there a very bipolar. On one hand I got to work with some good friends. I gained new friends. I grew as an engineer and manager. I learned a lot more about technology than any other place I’ve ever worked. Gus for one still motivates me today even though I haven’t worked for him in over five years. All that positive thoughts get clouded when I think about the frustration of having to deal with Glenn and other upper management. In my mind the lack of understanding some aspects of technology, and being delusional in the fact that they thought they could build software better than they could just buy off the shelf that eventually led me to leave. I know you can argue anything I’m saying right now. However think about this, as far as I can remember the website infrastructure was rebuilt, or attempted to be rebuilt no less than four times in 10 years. In all those attempts (again as far as I am aware) it never worked just right. Today that still baffles me. In the end it was a e-commerce site, with the search engine backend, and fulfillment system. That’s nothing groundbreaking, yet there was so many problems with it.

What I find kind of funny is that I knew several people that worked there up until the end. Most of them are actually happy the companies out of business and they’re forced to look for something else.

When I was younger and jaded right after I left Partsearch I look forward to this day. Then it was almost like when it happened it would be justification. Now when the day is here, it is just sad. For everyone that I still know I was working there I wish them good luck finding a job. For those friends who had already moved on like myself, I say take a moment to think of the good times we all had. Because now that it is all over, all we have are the memories. When you count up the time that I was happy there outweighed the time I was unhappy!

Company Party Vs Reunion

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Yesterday was a bit hectic at work. I worked out of two different offices. I ran from one to another at lunch so I could be at meetings at the other location in the afternoon. It was very hectic but also extremely productive.

After work I headed out with a bunch of people to the company holiday party. I ended up not staying. There were really long lines. Truth be told I was double booked. A bunch of friends I used to work with at Partsearch were getting together and I hadn’t seen some of them in almost two years. I originally wanted to goto the holiday party and mingle for a while and then head out to the other get together. Well we needed up leaving for the party late, and then there was a huge line so I decided to skip out. I am a bit upset by that, but almost no one I know was going to be at the party. My team wasn’t going.

The Partsearch semi-reunion was cool. One of the big things I miss from working there was hanging out with everyone there. I still am friends with many people I worked with there, but it is still different being friends and seeing people everyday and doing almost everything together. To be able to go out to lunch with a group of friends at work is priceless. OK, enough reminiscing. The get together at No Idea (of course) was fun. I ended up staying out till after 10. Not so late, but late enough when I had a meeting at 8:30 AM today.

My Mediawiki

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I have been using VoodooPad for a few months (actually pushing a year now, wow) and it has been a great product. With me at a new job that requires me to use a company issued computer having all my wiki information on my Mac is not the most functional setup. If I am at work our out and about I cannot access my data. Because of that I have been trying out Google App’s Sites. It is a decent wiki like application, but I don’t like the fact that I cannot export my data easily. I am also becoming more and more wary about Google’s privacy and security policies. I tried to setup PHPWiki on my web hosting account, but ran into issues with it. I used PHPwiki at Partsearch and we had all of our department documentation on it and I loved it. More recently however I have been liking Mediawiki.

I finally sat down and tinkered around with my hosting account and got Mediawiki installed. Because this is a private wiki, I had to password protect the directory that the wiki resides in on my hosting server, but otherwise the install wasn’t so bad. I have to get used to formatting my pages for the wiki. Voodoopad spoiled me in that way. It was like writting in word when you wanted to format text in Voodoopad, but this is the price I pay for having my data availible to me anywhere I have an internet connection. I have already leaveraged that benifit of my new site by accessing it on my iPhone. I also like the fact that I can backup the DB and port it to another Mediawiki install if I ever have to. Overall I have been happy with my experience!

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Task Management

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For the past few years I have been trying to find the perfect solution for task management. I try to follow the Getting Things Done model for organizing my “stuff”. Even before I followed GTD I tried different tools for task management. For years that simply meant using the built in task functions in Outlook. When I switched to a Mac I continued to use Outlook for about a year or so for mail and tasks since I wasn’t comforatable enough with iCal, Address Book, and Mail. By 10.3 or so I switched over and began using iCal for task management. iCal is a good calendar program, but it isn’t so hot for tasks (in my opinion). I used it since it was what worked when syncing my Treo’s. I wanted to have the categories stay intact so I had problems with Entourage. That left me stuck with iCal. I tried Market Circles’s Daylite for a while. In the version 1.x days or even the early 3.x days it wasn’t the best with syncing with the Palm so I used it on and off again but I always ended up back with iCal. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the one that worked for most of the basic functions. When Daylite 3.5/3.6 came out last summer with Sync Services support I switched back to Daylite. I had problems with my computer that forced me again back to iCal. By the time I got my iphone I knew I needed to find a new solution for task management, since the iphone didn’t support iCal tasks. Daylite is coming out with an iphone product that looked perfect, and there were a few other products out there that did similar functions, but my new job threw a kink in my plans. See next paragraph!

During this entire time using a Mac based program was not an issue since the two companies that I worked at didn’t care if I used my own Macbook. My boss at Partsearch at one point allowed my tech team to buy Mac’s when we wanted to. He even got one. My current job however requires me to use a windows PC exclusively. This poses a problem for me. If I used a desktop program to manage tasks I would have to choose between data I can only access at work or via my work laptop or data that I can access only at home or via a PDA. Neither option was appealing to me. For the first 3 weeks at my new job I was using outlook for work tasks, and continued to use iCal for personal ones. It was becoming apparent that I needed to take the plunge and choose one. I couldn’t decide! Then I remembered I signed up for Hiveminder. It is a web based task tool by Best Practical. They are the guys that make Request Tracker, a favorite issue tracking tool I have used at a few companies. I started using that site for my new tasks. It was an ok experience. I had some issues with the usability of the site so I wasn’t sure if I would continue using it.

The overall idea of a web based tool did have my curiosity. In the past I had discounted a web based tool since I wanted a full featured client. Now I needed the flexibility of accessing my data anywhere. I went to Lifehacker to see what reviews they had for web based task management or GTD tools. I found a few that looked promising. That was when I came accross Remember The Milk. I remembered reading reviews about RTM a while ago, and every review was positive. So after signing up and playing with 2 or 3 other services I signed up for an account with RTM. It has only been a few days, but I have all my active tasks in RTM. So far I have found it to offer most of what I am looking for. I can have lists, tags, due dates, & reminders. It has a good search function. Adding of notes isn’t so hard. It also has a quick entry for for tasks (Hiveminder’s is better, but you can’t have everything). I also like that I can access an iPhone optimized version of the site. It isn’t an offline client, but it is close enough. I can also view (unfortunately not edit) my tasks in iCal. I just downloaded the gmail plugin for RTM that allows me to manage my tasks in my Google Apps account. That looks very promising also. The other major feature I love is the offline mode thanks to Google Gears. If I had any doubt that I would be trying this service for a while it went out the window with the offline mode option.

Remember The Milk

For now I am exploring what I can do with RTM. As it stands now task management is now another function I can perform via a web app, and not an installed application. More about that in a later post.

So why am I rambling on for paragraphs about task management? There are a few tools (hardware or software) that I live and die by. Managing tasks is one of those critical tools and I have been in limbo for ages with mediocre options (Daylite excluded, it rocked but I was never 100% right for my situation). With Remember The Milk, it looks like I have a great tool, and I have options with how I access it. I like that. I know I am fickle. In two weeks I might be writing about some fatal flaw I found in this service that makes it not right for me, but for now this is the way to go for me!

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Nagios

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Rob has gotten allot done with Nagios. Hopefully by the end of the week he should have basic system monitoring (up and down) plus disk space checking on all gear at our data center. Once that is done we can roll out more locations as well as add functionality. He is doing great with it so far. I know Danny wanted to work on the project but he is busy with other issues. I also know Danny would have done a great job on the project, but when he works on stuff like this it seems like it takes him forever to complete stuff. Rob is able to churn out product allot faster. For a time sensitive project like this I am happy with the quick response.

Hopefully this program works out better than our old whatsup system. I can’t wait till the end of the week.

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Sleepless Night

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I got woken up at 3AM with a problem with our phone system. Dan seemed to think the voice mail being down the day of the picnic was the end of the world. Turns out it wasn’t voice mail that was screwed up but our AC unit in one computer room was acting up again. Kai ended up sending Ian out to the office at 5AM to get the Unity server up and the room venting so the rest of the equipment didn’t over heat. yet another facilities issue that is not resolved.

My sleep was totally screwed up today because of the early morning calls. They where necissary but my team needs to learn when it is necessary to call 4 times in the middle of the night and when it is ok to send an email update or wait till later.

Hectic Week

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Thursday was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday. I didn’t leave the office until around 8PM. I spent a large portion of my day helping (or organizing help) to get a project finished. The day was just a blur of activity.

Friday was hectic also, but not as bad as the rest of the week. I had to deal with AC issues in a computer room, and ensuring all projects are moving along normally. I was able to get out early enough to make it to my parents for my sisters birthday dinner. We ended up going out. It was nice to be able to unwind and have a steak, see my parents, niece, and sister.

Carrie gave me a ride to the subway while morgan sang me all the new songs she has learned!

Back To Work Monday

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It was hot at work. We turned the AC on in our office also. Just my luck that we are having AC issues all around. Our other office had an AC issue in one of the computer rooms, and our room in NYC was a bit hot. Not broken, but not at a cool 69 degree’s like it should be. I had to deal with that in the AM. Then I had some meetings and taking care of misc issues.

My group had to stay late to do a bunch of physical computer moves. Because so many people stayed it only took us an hour to do. I think everyone was working except for one phone that needs to get addressed first thing tomorrow. For the messiness of the job I am happy to report my Dockers where not ruined. We shall see how many issues we have related to the move from users tomorrow. That is the true test of if we did the work right.

Projects Abound

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Our Jabber server is acting up. I think it is another application running on the box. We need to migrate the app to a new machine. Our new guy, Andrew is working on the new Jabber server. We are going to do a Jive server running on Suse 9 enterprise. I got the budget approval from bob today so we ordered a box. To get things going quicker we took a box earmarked for a domain controller in Kingston and borrowed it. We won’t need to deploy the DC until after the new hardware gets in anyway. We hope to have the new server built by the end of next week. Andrew has a test instance of the app up now. Hopefully we can have all the users configured in under 2 weeks for a cut over.

Jayson spent the entire day friday at our data center working with EMC setting up our SAN. For some reason I always underestimate time needed to do things at the data center. Besides the SAN he was working on 2 new database servers we are deploying to replace our existing box’s. They will hold us over until we cut over to the new database cluster design utilizing the SAN.

Our 5th cabinet is finally completed at our data center. we now have room for the growth we are expecting in our server farm. That also means we got rid of the last desktop computer in our data center. They were plaguing me for years. I blame Gus for saying just put anything up there. We finally are doing things right by only putting in nice rack mount servers!

I spent my days this week working on getting quotes for a new 6500 series switch at our data center. it will also do load balancing for our websites, or that is the goal. if we don’t it approved we will go with a standard load balance system. I still think the core switch idea is best. I also did research into a new gateway router for our call center. Actually when I think about it I did more quote, and status update work this week than I did technical work. Man, the management thing is pulling me deeper and deeper each week!

Besides the regular work this week I had enough problems. Jayson was dealing with a core switch at our data center that for some reason would wig out when touched on Tuesday. Again on Friday it seemed to reboot on its own. We are going to observe it and see if it does anything weird when no one is physically near it since both incidents happened when Jay was working on or near the switch. We also had problems over last weekend due to water damage on a smartjack that controls one of our internet circuits. Dam leaky roof in our call center. Then Friday we had another circuit go down at the call center. This time it was our local voice circuit. it took out all inbound local service and all outbound service. the call center can operate with all the inbound calls but can’t make calls out. our LEC is working on it, but they are SO slow. Several other minor issues riddled the week also.

I most likely have to goto our upstate office next week to interview people for the 2 support positions we have open. Originally Kai said I had to come up for 2 days because there were so many people he wanted me to meet, but then we got the number down to a level where I can do it in a day. I don’t like staying overnight up there so a day trip is good for me. it is a long day when you factor in all the travel, but it is a short work day since I am only in the office up there from 10:30 is to 3-4pm. that is needed in order to get back on a decent train. I will have more news on that early next week.

WSUS In Action

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Now that is a really bad acronym. Bad names aside, Microsoft’s Windows Server Update Services is actually a great little tool. I have bashed MSFT recently (and rightfully so on some topic’s) but this product actually works. The older SUS (server update services) was horrible. This new tool solves many of the older ones shortcomings. I can tell one system to update a patch and then deploy it to hundreds of machines at once, or smaller groups I predefine. I can have a desktop test group have patches first to make sure they work ok, and then tell the system to deploy to other machines. I can see what machines need what patch, SP, etc. I can also see errors on patch installs.

Now the I have said WSUS is a great product, I have to ask why it took so many years to get admin’s such a tool? Windows update has been around for years. This is the Windows update that System Admin’s have needed/wanted for years. I could have really used this as far back as 2001 when worms were coming out requiring frequent desktop visits.

Now can I hope for SMS to become easier to configure and deploy to work alongside WSUS? Then we would really be in business.

Can you tell I am happy about a WSUS deployment I ran this weekend? No more sleepless nights worrying about patch deployment. Well I actually didn’t sleep well Friday after I authorized the patches, but it really had nothing to do with WSUS, so I won’t blame it for that!