Work – Page 2 – The Curious Canuck

June 13, 2010

Visiting Los Angeles

I’m here in Los Angeles (technically, I’m in Rancho Cucamonga, which is east of LA) for a customer testing cycle. I’m here for a full week. As there is no testing planned during the weekend, I’ve had the weekend free to play tourist around Los Angeles. This is my first trip to LA.

Saturday morning I woke up quite early, as I am still adjusting to the 3-hr time difference. I packed up what I needed and went down to the car. I had an iPod Nano with some podcasts and audiobooks, hat, jacket, sunscreen and the Eyewitness Travel Guides Top Ten Los Angeles. I brought all my camera gear as well, including my Amod AGL3080 photo tracker.

I stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s and was on the highway around 7am.

Dennis Hopper - Walk of Fame — Dennis Hopper's star

My first stop was Hollywood. It took about an hour to drive there (Los Angeles is huge – more about that later). I parked the car and started walking down Hollywood Boulevard. My first stop was the Art Deco style Pantages Theatre and the Capital Records building. From there I walked down the Walk of Fame towards the Kodak Theatre (where the Oscars are currently presented) and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I could see the famous Hollywood sign in the distance on the hills to the north. The sign is smaller than I expected. As with the Statue of Liberty, the photos I’ve seen are shot in such a way as to make it look bigger than in real life. It’s also because it is actually quite a distance from this part of the city.

In front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre are the handprints, footprints and signatures of famous Hollywood stars in concrete tiles.

After walking back to my car, I drove south from Hollywood Boulevard to Sunset Boulevard, where I drove westward. I drove by the Viper Room (where River Phoenix died), the Rainbow Bar and Grill and the Whisky a Go Go (where The Doors were the house band). From there, the road leads through Beverly Hills, past UCLA, Bel Air and into Santa Monica. Lots of nice homes, but I didn’t spend much time looking around as I did not want to get lost.

Once I reached the Pacific Ocean, I took Highway 1 south with no particular destination in mind. Driving by kilometer after kilometer of beach, I decided to pull over and take a walk. I could see a pier in the distance.

It was a great day for walking along the beach. From where I parked, it was about a kilometer to walk to the Santa Monica Pier. I did not realize until I arrived that Santa Monica Pier is also the west coast terminus of Route 66. The Pier had an amusement park, including a roller coaster and Ferris wheel. There is a trapeze school as well. Many people were fishing off the end of the Pier. I walked around for about an hour, taking lots of pictures before I stopped for lunch – deep fried shrimp – and then headed back to the car. I decided to walk on the beach instead of the sidewalk. At first it was nice walking barefoot along the sand, but the sand was unbelievably hot. I walked along the edge of the water to cool my feet before crossing the beach to the parking lot.

I wanted to head south to Long Beach. I thought it would be easy to get there. Lacking a good map, I had no idea how difficult it would be.

I followed along the coast for as long as I could before I had to start taking other streets, due to the marinas in Marina Del Ray. I took Washington Boulevard, thinking that it looked big and I thought it was heading south. After driving for what seemed like an hour, I drove by the Sony Pictures Entertainment studios in Culver City, which allowed me to find out where I was the tiny map I had brought. All that driving and I had barely moved on the map. This is when it really hit me how big Los Angeles is. Almost an hour of driving and I was maybe 10% of the way to Long Beach. The only way to get there would be to get on a highway.

I found the 405 and 110 and it still took about 40 minutes to drive to Long Beach.

The map I had did not show Long Beach, so I had to guess my way around. I was looking for the Queen Mary. I thought, “Hey, how hard can it be to find a huge ocean liner?” Stupid question. I was still not grasping it how big the city is! I stumbled upon the SS Lane Victory, a World War II Victory Ship, so I stopped to take a look. I found out that it still functional and is used for tourist cruises!

The Port of Long Beach is stunning in size. The Port of Long Beach and the nearby Port of Los Angeles combine to be largest port in the world (109km of waterfront and 43 km^2 of land area in total). It goes on for mile after mile. I had heard that the rows of giant cranes along the many waterfronts inspired George Lucas in the design of the AT-AT Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back.

I took a bridge and highway east until I could see signs for the Queen Mary. I got off the highway, followed the signs to the entrance to the parking lot, but for some reason all the cars were being waved back onto the surrounding streets. I thought perhaps there was a problem, so I circled back around. This time I was allowed into the parking lot, but was soon directed back out again. I was driving around in circles, all controlled by the parking attendants. I circled around once more and again was directed back towards the exit. I stopped at one of the parking attendants to explain that I wanted to stop and see the Queen Mary. I was told that the parking lots were full. Oh, that would be why I was directed out of the facility. I was told that the facility was being used for the 7th Annual Iron and Ink Tattoo & Kustom Culture Festival. Oh, that would explain all the goths, biker dudes and pink-haired punks.

I explained that I only wanted to take some photos of the Queen Mary. I guess the parking attendant liked me because she let me try to find a place to park for free. I thanked her and found a spot next to a light standard (technically it was not a parking spot). I walked through the crowd to the bow of the ship. I felt awkward because it was obvious that I The RMS Queen Mary is a fine example of an Art Deco ocean liner of a time when liners were the only way to travel between continents. Incongruously, there is a Cold War Soviet Foxtrot submarine moored next to the bow. I was not able to get on the ship (or sub) to look around due to the festival. I wish I had been able to go onboard.

After that, I decided to head north again to see the Hollywood Bowl. Once I got there, near suppertime, I was mired in a traffic jam. I found out that it was a jam to get into the Bowl, as it was the Playboy Jazz Festival.

I gave up and drove north past Universal Studios, and into North Hollywood and Sherman Oaks. I gave up randomly driving around and decided to head to see Griffith Observatory, which was a good choice.

Griffith Observatory overlooks Los Angeles. It’s a fantastic example of the Art Deco style. It’s still a functioning observatory, and I went inside to see their coelostat (solar telescope). I was starving, so I stopped at the cafe. I bought two peanut butter and jam sandwiches and a huge Rice Krispy square. That really hit the spot. I sat on the patio eating and watching the sun set by the Hollywood sign. At one end of the patio was a photo shoot – an Asian girl in a cocktail dress posing on the stairs while her boyfriend (?) snapped away. An assistant was holding the rest of the equipment and flash.

I went back to the roof to watch the lights of Los Angeles in the growing darkness. I waited about an hour for night to fall and then started shooting some longer exposures of the expanse of the city, bright against the clouds (or is that smog?).

I walked back to my car with some difficulty. It was pitch black and my knee was felt like it was burning – my body was telling me I walked too far for one day. It was a long day and I arrived back at the hotel around 9:30pm.

Today, Sunday, was a little shorter. This was because I needed to get some sleep before heading into the customer site at midnight for the start of the maintenance window.

Again, I stopped for pancakes at McDonald’s, filled the gas tank and headed back to LA.

My first stop was the Hollywood Bowl. I had no problems getting in and parking at 8am. I grabbed my camera and walked into the site. No one stopped me, as I think everyone thought I was part of the event staff.

Next I went north to the start of Mulholland Drive. It winds along the top of the Hollywood Hills. There are some fantastic views north and south over the city. All along Mulholland you can see spectacular homes. I stopped at one viewing area and took a short walk (my knee started to hurt again) though the hillside. Lots of people were out walking their dogs along the dusty trails.

Once I reached Interstate 405, I drove south (past the Getty Center) and down to Venice Beach. Venice Beach is just south of the Santa Monica Pier. I parked and started to walk along the infamous boardwalk. I was expecting it to be a complete freak-show, but to be honest, it was actually nothing like its reputation. Perhaps Sundays are quieter.

There were lots of artists displaying their works, a few buskers, a dozen shops offering “free medical marijuana tests”, clothing stores and tourist traps. There was a fantastic skatepark, where I stopped to take lots of pictures. I could also practice my french with another tourist who was visiting from France. Next were the streetball courts, where there were multiple pick-up games going on.

Further down was Muscle Beach, although there was no one training when I walked past. I bought some ice cream for lunch and then started to head back.

I took some more pictures at the skate park and then came across a drum circle. I sat and watched the drummers for a while. Everyone was having fun. One older guy in a muscle shirt and surfer shorts was whaling on his drum while a Che Guevara look-alike was in his own groove on a shaker.

I started back to the hotel around 4pm. It took longer to drive home because it was close to the Sunday rush hour.

June 11, 2010

Iron Man 2

I went to see Iron Man 2 this evening with two co-workers from Ericsson. We are in Rancho Cucamonga for a testing cycle with one of our major customers.

Iron Man 2 is a fun movie. Lots of action, great costume design, great special effects and so forth. Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous.

But, just like the first Iron Man, the dialog is awful. Cring-inducing. Tony Stark’s character needs to be over-the-top, but the dialog doesn’t sound crisp for that purpose. It sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old.

When we got home from the theatre, there was a police helicopter flying circles around a local field. A police car showed up, but it did not have the light bar on. I’m not sure what is happening, but it is obvious that they are watching something.

So I’m watching the detectives.

This is the live entertainment I don’t get to see living in Canada.

April 5, 2010

Carling Place

There is a new sign at the Carling Campus, which was installed last week. It replaces the old Nortel signage, which is understandable due to the divestiture.

But the sign is really hideous. The former Nortel Carling Campus is a beautiful location, with interesting architecture, surrounded by forests with wonderful walking paths. I like working at this location because of all of these reasons.

First, I don’t like the name. It’s too similar to “Carleton Place”, the town just outside of Ottawa. It is a non-descript, meaningless name. The name could have been more apt, like “Carling Campus”, which sounds like a place of higher learning. Or perhaps “Technology Park”, which echos places like RTP and includes the nature around the campus, even if the actual name is a little boring.

And finally, the font. I can’t believe the height of design for the sign was an Arial font. Arial is the most boring font in the world. It is completely without character (no pun intended). It is the font of last resort when there are no other fonts available. It is classless and boring to look at. A 6-year old could have designed the sign. I could have designed the sign better than what we got. Instead of spending $100 to hire some Algonquin College Graphic Arts student to do a nice sign (and support the local schools, which is a good news story for the papers), someone decided it was more important to give hundreds of millions of dollars on executive bonuses.

I am so incredibly disappointed in what Nortel will come to represent in the future. It’s a horrible misrepresentation of Nortel that more people will remember the bonuses to executives instead of to pensioners than for the technology that made the company as important as it was a decade ago.

December 18, 2009

Last Work Day of the Decade

Today is the last work day of the decade for me. I’m still working in the office in Lab 9, as I have some work to complete before I leave on vacation. I end the decade only feet from the exact point where I started the decade.

Jan 1, 2000, at 12:00:01, I was here at work, in Lab 6, as part of Nortel’s Y2K task force. We were all carrying pagers, waiting by the phone and basically doing nothing. For me, it was a non-event, as our software had been updated in the months before, and patches sent out to all of our customers. At the exact moment of the new millennia, I was in the cafeteria, where Nortel had brought in some light snacks and (secretly) handed out glasses of champagne to anyone working to celebrate. I did wish I was downtown though – I’m sure it would have been quite a party.

At the start of the decade, the US elections were in full swing. I told anyone who would listen that Bush would set the US back by decades. Never did I expect that his performance after becoming president without winning the election would have been worse than I anticipated. Of course, no one could have expected 9/11, except for the US agents who specifically told Bush 4 weeks before that an attack against the US was being prepared. And who would have guessed that the US would have invaded a country who had nothing to do with the 9/11 tragedy, other than Donald Rumsfeld who said on 9/12 that the US should attack Iraq because “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan“.

The year 2000 was also the start of the layoffs at Nortel. The earliest reference I can find is that they started in October 2000. This was my life for the next 9.5 years. I made it through the first year of layoffs before my entire team was cut 2 months after 9/11. I returned and worked for CDMA, dodging more than a dozen layoff rounds before being picked up in the Ericsson purchase a few months ago.

The time at Nortel was good in one respect. I was introduced to the love of my life at Nortel: a blind date over lunch in the Lab 6 cafeteria. Rosa and I talked for 2 hours that day, and we knew immediately that we had found who we were both looking for. Seven months later we got engaged in Paris, and on Jan 3, 2007, we married in Rome.

I’ve traveled more in the last 5 years than I had in my entire life. Rosa and I have visited Halifax, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Naples, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Warsaw, Krakow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Jerusalem, Amman and London. In 2 days, we leave for our next trip: Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Vienna. Before Rosa and I met, I had also visited New York, Toronto, Montreal, Dallas. 2 years ago I had a business trip to Bangalore.

I seems like I have been racing for so long, but it was only in 2001 that I became a licensed marshal and 2003 before I received my race licence. I have raced in a 1971 Datsun 510 (“The Pumpkin”), 1991 Nissan NX2000, Nissan Sentra, Honda Civic, Formula-1600 and this year multiple Acura Integra Type-R’s. I also became a Secretary of the meet for 5 MCO Race Schools and 5 Ted Powell Memorial Race Weekends, including the first full race weekend at the new Calabogie Motorsports Park.

I’ve starting learning French, so I may become a bi-lingual Canadian. And I started to kayak.

I wonder what December 2019 will bring?

November 13, 2009

My Last Day at Nortel

Exit this way Today is my last day as a Nortel employee.

In late 1996, I was just finishing up my 2-year contract working in the Computer Center at Acadia University. But the longer I stayed at Acadia after my graduation, I knew fewer and fewer people, as my friends graduated and moved away for work, mostly to Ottawa. So I decided not to renew my contract and that I would move to Ottawa.

I moved in January 1997. I borrowed my dad’s Chevy Tahoe and loaded my life into the back. Driving through the Maritimes was ok, but once I entered Quebec, the snow started falling. Driving from Quebec City to Montreal was the hardest because the snow was so heavy and the highway had not been plowed.

Once in Ottawa, I started looking for work. I hand-delivered my resumes to Nortel, Newbridge, SGI, Cray, Apple, Corel, and a bunch of smaller companies. None of which lead to any interviews. In February, a friend from Acadia got me an interview with his group at Nortel. The interview went well and by March 1997, I was working for Nortel.

I’ve spent my entire career at Nortel in OAM software – meaning Network Management and Configuration Management.

I started with network management of the Passport-6400 (now MSS-6400). We built a software package (called OMS-P) to integrate the Passport into HP Openview and IBM Netview. There was another group that also did network management of the Passport, which used a proprietary interface that did not work with other software like Openview. Eventually the senior managers decided to only fund one of the two products, and OMS-P development was halted.

Most of the team moved to a new project to integrate the Passport-15000 (now MSS-15000) into the new Optivity Network Management System (ONMS), which came from our purchase of Bay Networks in 1998. I worked on the development for about a year before insurmountable issues caused the cancelation of that project before we could ship the product. Basically, the Passport used software-allocated MAC addresses; by default all Ethernet ports on all Passports had the same MAC address. ONMS needed unique MAC addresses for discovery, which is the correct implementation of the Ethernet standard. The ONMS team would not change their discovery for Passport, and Passport would not change their flawed Ethernet implementation. So the project was cancelled.

Next, our much smaller team moved to Optivity Network Configuration System (O-NCS), which was a configuration manager instead of a network manager. This used a plug-in architecture to manage the new Alteon Layer-7 switches that Nortel had also acquired. We made good progress and were heading towards delivery when the team that was building the O-NCS framework was laid off. Without a framework, our plug-in was useless and in November 2001, our entire team was terminated.

Most of the team went to CDMA, although I briefly left the company to try something new. I didn’t find a new job before I started getting calls from CDMA asking me to come back to Nortel.

In March 2002, I did come back. Nortel bridged my service (after I paid back the severance package).

I’ve been in CDMA since then. I was the first person hired for upgrade/installation, and I wrote the first installation tool for the CDMA network management project that was just starting up. The first delivery of that new tool (C-EMS – CDMA Element Management System) took a very difficult 24 months. The project was almost cancelled a number of times. We all worked long hours, most weekends, and many holidays. It has been a horrible experience for everyone to go through all the layoffs of the last 7-9 years.

After the first release of C-EMS, the work still demanded long, long hours, but it was less likely that the entire project would be terminated. We still lost a lot of people from the layoffs (typically 5-20% per layoff) though.

Trailer for sale - cheap I’ve given all I could to Nortel, and in the end it didn’t really make much difference. Nortel still went down the toilet.

I’ve had nights where I worked 24-hours straight. I’ve worked over the Y2K switch over. I’ve been wined-and-dined and nickeled-and-dimed. I’ve worked through the bubble, got laid-off and worked under uncertainty for years now.

And today, it’s all over. Today is my last Nortel day.

September 5, 2009

From Nortel to Ericsson

On Thursday I signed my offer letter from Ericsson. Starting in October, I will be working for Ericsson, although my benefits and salary will still say ‘Nortel’, Ericsson will reimburse Nortel for those expenses.

Starting Jan 1, 2010, I will be part of the Ericsson benefits and salary systems. It’s been too long living with the stress of a declining and very troubled company. I am so looking forward to a new work environment.

June 19, 2009

The Wait is Over

The long 5 month wait for more information about Nortel and my future has come to an end. This evening it was announced that Nokia Siemens Networks has made a $650M bid for the CDMA and LTE Wireless division.

There is still a chance that there will be layoffs as part of the merge of the two companies, but I also feel that my job performance is good enough that I should not have difficulties finding a role in the Nokia Siemens organization.

Just for fun, I also updated the wikipedia entry on Nortel with this news.

March 6, 2009

Living with Layoffs

When I started work in Ottawa in 1997, it was during the ramp up of the tech bubble. Something exciting was happening everywhere. I shared an apartment with the founder of Linux Chix. Corel was competing against Microsoft with Linux, and was producing the Sidewinder. You could get a job anywhere. Companies were doing massive hiring. Nortel hired 1000 new grads in one weekend and competing with Cisco. Startups were everywhere.

Soon after I started, our division starting having free pizza on Friday afternoons every quarter, then every month then every 2 weeks. The cafeteria was open 24 hours a day.

We would receive $2000 USD for every resume we could bring that led to a hiring. Filing for a patent was worth $5000 USD and having the patent meant a $7000 USD bonus. Everyone was getting stock options, which was such a thrill even thought they took years to vest. Just like the book “Microserfs”.

Our director had a room created in our building with a large screen TV, DVD player, pool table and a leather couch. The room was badge-locked so only members of our division had access.

In 2000, that all changed. The wireless auction prices were sky-high. Our customers seemed less likely to be able to create enough revenue to pay off the bank loans required to buy the wireless spectrum. The high-speed optical build-outs were slowing as much of the optical bandwidth stayed dark, which led to other cuts.

Banks cut loans, customers cut back on spending, and the layoffs started at work.

In the fall of 2001, already 30,000 had been cut from the payroll. We watched 9/11 on the TV in the room our director had built. Six weeks later, our department was cut, and I was out of a job.

I was lucky and was brought back to work in late winter 2002, this time in CDMA Wireless.

I have been in CDMA Wireless since then.

Our business has continued to cut every year. We had to re-file our financial results (over and over), and the cuts kept coming. And the penny-pinching kept coming – death by a thousand cuts. They cut the milk for the coffee and then they cut the coffee. The cleaning staff was cut, and now we don’t eat in our office because the food waste is only collected once a week.

Since 2000, over 60,000 have lost their job at work. That’s more than the population of Moncton, NB. Another 3200 people were cut in February; friends I’ve worked with for years were cut.

I’m 38.5 years old. The corporation has been cutting jobs for 8.5 years. I’ve been living with the uncertainty of keeping my job for over 22% of my entire lifetime. Almost a quarter of my life has been living with layoffs.

I spent less time in high school. I spent less time in University, even after changing my major in my third year.

I am so tired of living this way.

February 22, 2009

Tonight is a good night

Tonight, I feel good.

I studied hard this weekend and I think I passed my French mid-term this evening. It was scheduled for 2 hours, and I finished in 1 hour. I didn’t panic and forget everything as soon as the test was handed out.

I finished creating this web site, and have a working web gallery. It’s secure, and it’s finally set up the way I want it.

I am still employed.

My to-do list is only 6 items long, two of which are repeating tasks (weekly status report to my manager and monthly computer backup reminder).

My in-box at work is empty. I am staying on top of the work-load instead of being swamped like I have been for years.

I had a successful requirements review this morning. I could have done better, but I still had a lot of work to complete over the last few weeks.

I have created a transition plan for one of my four projects at work. I am involved in too many projects and need to cut down my project list. The plan has not been approved yet. One of the other projects is winding down too as the team in Beijing is taking over as we near customer release.

This past weekend, I had enough time to watch a DVD with Rosa. It was the first time in months.

I have transitioned all my MCO organizational work to others so I can focus on my racing this year.

And finally, and most importantly, I am married to the most wonderful woman. She means the world to me.

When I have moments of doubt and low moods, I should remember this evening.