My first experience with backscatter security...

On my recent flight from Denver, I had my first experience with a new backscatter security scanner. And I have to say, I found it very disturbing.

First, it caught me by surprise, I was returning from a workshop, having a good conversation with a colleague, going through security on autopilot. I put my stuff on the x-ray belt and then the first unusual thing happened: the TSA guard asked if I anything in my pockets. "No metal" I said. "No anything" they clarified. Odd, I thought, and double checked. "OK, nothing" I affirmed, just my boarding pass in my hand. Then I was ushered towards a device next to the normal metal detector which looks like a clear vertical tube about the size of a broom closet (the photo in this LATimes article seems close).

Now unlike walking through a metal detector, where you basically walk through like you would a doorway, the backscatter process is much more controlled and time consuming. First they took my boarding pass. Then I had to step in and assume a fixed position with my hands in a triangle over my head (thumbs and index fingers touching - the photos I find online don't really show how high your hands have to be). I had to hold that position for several seconds while the device pivoted around me, closing the entrance I walked in and opening an exit towards the other side. While I was standing there all the images I'd seen online were going through my head and the thought that somewhere someone was now basically looking at me naked while I had to hold this pose. (It probably takes a moment for the image to develop so in fact they weren't looking at me yet.) 

Then I was told to wait in the device for a few more seconds, presumably until someone verified they got a good image. The guard at the exit had a walkie-talkie they were using through the process to communicate with someone looking at the image - I don't recall if they got a clear signal to let me exit or if they just waited a fixed period of time. After I exited I figured I was done, but I was then directed to another spot, outside the scanner, with foot outlines on the floor, and had to wait for another 5-10 seconds until the guard got a "male subject clear" message from their walkie-talkie (actually, the first time the message was garbled and the guard had to ask for a repeat, hence my knowledge it's a two-way communication channel).

Then I was given back my boarding pass and was free to go collect my stuff from the x-ray belt, where it had been sitting for a while at this point. (I wonder what would keep someone from walking off with it? I certainly was in no position to keep an eye on it. It wasn't clear TSA was.)

So why did I find it disturbing? First, I have to say the TSA guards were courtesy through out, they did nothing to contribute to my discomfort besides being part of the process. I can think of three reasons why it bothered me: (1) from start to finish, it's much more controlled. Unlike the metal detector, where you walk through on your own volition, it is a series of steps where you stand in specific places and poses - you feel very tightly controlled. (2) It's very asymmetric: somewhere, someone you can't see is scrutinizing you and you don't even know where or who they are. (3) It's very revealing. Having seen pictures online, I know just how laid bare I was. I've never been strip searched, so I won't say it's comparable, but with the combination of being tightly controlled and knowing I'm being seen basically naked, it's the only analogy that comes to mind.

Why was I picked to go through the device? Best I could tell, they just picked the next person in line as soon as the scanner opened up.

Did it make me feel safer? No. From everything I read (google for "odds of dying from terrorism"), I know I'm much less likely to die from a car crash, cancer and many other things. My odds of being killed by terrorism on that flight from Denver I'm sure were much lower than my odds from dying from human error on the flight.

Would I do it again? You can decline to undergo the process, but based on my experience, don't expect this option to be offered, you'll probably have to assert it. There is some debate as to how you'll be treated if you do so. I did find it disturbing enough that if I'm not in a hurry, I will decline it and take the alternative.

Added 9/20/2010: Some experiences with declining to undergo the process collected by Lauren Winstein.

 

"Open Source is Really About Documentation" and many other things...

Interesting post "Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado", which is summarized by the author as:

if the documentation for an open source project sucks, nobody but the most hardcore developers will use it.

I'll give a different summary: Developing good software is less about developing and more about many other things: documentation, maintaining stability, good release practices, good patches, etc.

Simple Dollar Time Management Post

I ran across a good post on time management on the Simple Dollar blog today. Reading it, I found it captures what I found worked well for me. What follows are the tips it suggests and my variants of them.

I've just capturing the titles here, please do read the full article for a lot more than what I have below. The Simple Dollar is an interesting blog, focusing on financial and productivity issues.

The tips...

Avoid multitasking like the plague.
This is unavoidable at times, but I strongly agree.

Keep a notebook/PDA with you and write down your thoughts.
Like the author, I use EverNote from my iPhone or Mac. Though if I'm really in a hurry and I'll just send myself an email or jot it on my notepad, and then copy it into EverNote when I have a few minutes.

Keep an “inbox” and process it once or twice a day.
Just like the author I keep both an online inbox (a combination of my email inbox and EverNote) and a written inbox on a notepad on my desk. At the start of my day I process the online inbox, creating my to-do list (more about this in a moment) and at the end of my day I process the written one, moving any items still undone to my online inbox, meaning all my to-dos are online and available from anywhere (home, on travel, etc.) when I leave work.

Keep a project list - and focus on it at least an hour a day.
I also keep this list in EverNote. Certainly I hope to find at least an hour every day to work on stuff in it (if I don't that means I'm in meetings all day :-/).

Keep a SHORT to-do list for each day - four items, max.
At the start of my day, I review my inbox and project list and I select what I'm going to work on for the day. I limit myself to 2-3 large items that I know will take a chunk of interrupt-free time (typically writing or planning), and then I have a half dozen or so small items that will just take a couple minutes each (e.g. send an email, order something, set up a meeting, make a quick decision, have a quick chat with someone). Whenever I get time to work, I pick a item based on the length of time I have - if I just have a few minutes between meetings, I do one or more small items, if it's longer than say 15 minutes, I pick a large item and work on it. I like to have a number of large items in case I get blocked on one or reach a point where it just needs to percolate, then I can switch to another one and make good use of any interrupt-free time.

Check email only twice a day.
I fail badly here. What happens to me is that when I start thinking about something, my hand just seems to wander my mouse over to my email applications and check it. I don't know I could get away with just twice a day, but certainly checking less would help me keep more focused at times. Maybe I should try shutting down my email application as the author suggests...

File things once a day.
I'm lucky - I deal with very little physical paper in my work, so I find I only need to do this weekly. I have a Friday routine where I go through a weekly maintenance of filing paperwork and checking deferred tasks and pending stuff.

Start your day with your major creative or thought-intensive task.
Agreed. I have two peaks in my productivity - first thing in the morning and after about three in the afternoon. Post lunch is definitely my low point - I've learned to use this time to read through old email, read papers, and other stuff that doesn't require peak brain power.

Take lots of microbreaks (or at least switch to very different tasks regularly).
I can't say I have found these to help with energy lulls. I do find that making time for brief unstructured conversations with colleagues is often beneficial. Many good ideas and problems have been solved walking to the coffee shop.

Don’t overwork.
Obviously it is unavoidable at times, but I do find at times taking a break revives one and it worth it in the long run. Sometimes this means 15 minutes during a late night push. Other times it means taking an evening off during a really busy stretch spanning a week or more. And when you do this, you have to make yourself OK with it - if you are feeling guilty when you do it, it just is not effective since your mind never gets into a relaxed state.

I miss Sandy...

Don't worry, no one passed away. Sandy isn't a person.

A little background. It all started with me reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. And while I'm not a religious GTD follower, I did take away one concept that has served me well. That is to have a system that gets things out of my brain so I don't have to worry about remembering them. It is very empowering to just know I have a system with which I won't forget things. I find it very stress relieving, letting me concentrate more fully on other things.

What does this mean in practice? Well, my todos fall into a few categories. Some have an obvious time they have to be done, like a meeting or a vet appointment for our dogs. There is a while array of calendar services out there with configurable reminders so that I can be emailed or SMS'ed to remind me. I like Google Calendar and it works well for these.

The next category of todo items is the "someday" category. These todos don't have any hard deadline, but when I have free time, it's nice to have them listed so that I don't have to try to remember them, they are just in front of me. Examples include writing a blog entry, cleaning up some source code I was playing with, or investigating a new technology. Really any sort of task list application works for these, but I found it is nice to have the same application for these todos as for the final cateogory.

The final category of todos is the most tricky, it's the "must be done by" group. For example, a report that has to be written by next Friday, a paper read before a meeting three weeks from now, or a phone call made before the weekend. I include in this category repeating housekeeping tasks like watering the plants in my office every week and checking up on a task I delegated.

These todos don't have a specific time they must be done, just a due date. Sometimes one can schedule them and put them on a calendar like an appointment, but often they take much longer than any single block of time I can schedule. And they are flexible, so I don't want to block out a time I could be using to meet with someone.

What I want with this category of "due by" todos is something that will start pestering me when the due date approaches, where the lead time is configurable depending on the amount of time I need to do the item. If I think it will take me three days to do the task, I'd like the pestering to start a week ahead of time so I know I can find time. If it's a 5 minute task, a day will do.

OK, so back to the title of this post and Sandy. IWantSandy, or Sandy for short, was an online service that offered a service which provided this todo list and reminder functionality. I could enter todos and tell her (yes, I will use the feminine pronouns for Sandy) to bug me when the date approached or not associate a date with "someday" todos. She had a great email interface, allowing me to add items by email and use email to mark them as done. This worked well with email, around which a lot of my work life revolves.

Well, last December, Sandy left me (OK, technically, the web site shut down) and I was forced to find an alternative. First, I tried Remember the Milk, but it just didn't work for me. Here's why:

1. It didn't let me configure how far ahead of time I should get reminded about something. It always uses 3 days before the event. This was too long for some todos and not long enough for others.
   
2. If I have multiple events on the same day, I would get them collectively in one email. I really use my email inbox as a short-term todo list for each day and I found not having a separate email for each todo just didn't work for me.
3. The web interface was flashy, web 2.0, but it was too flashy. For example, one has to hover over an todo to have a menu appear to edit it and if one wasn't careful in how one then moved the mouse to that menu, it would disappear before one got there. I felt like I was playing a video game trying to use it.

I moved on and tried EverNote next. And I have to say as a note taker and organizer, EverNote rocks! It has native clients for the Mac and for the iPhone, my two primary work devices, and a decent web interface for everything else. (As much as I like web-based services that be accessed from anywhere, they still cannot beat a good, well-written native client.) If you are reading this and can't understand why one would be exciting over a note organizing application, you should give EverNote a try.

EverNote also allows you to upload pictures and then recognized text in the pictures so you can search on it, something I haven't really used yet, but just seems cool! So far I've been happy with the free version, though if I continue to like it as much as I do now, I'll probably support it by upgrading to the pay verison.

But EverNote has one big short-coming for my todo management needs - it doesn't do reminders! One cannot associate a due date with an item and get email reminders. Alas.

For the moment, I'm using PingMe for this functionality. It offers nice functionality for setting reminders - offering one time or a "pester" mode, which causes it to keep reminding me, at a configurable interval, until I tell it I've done something. The interface is web-based, and nice and clean.

So I'm currently using two services - EverNote for "someday" items and PingMe for "due by" items. It's livable. Somethimes a item moves from one category to the other, which is a pain.

Which brings me back to my title: I miss Sandy. Both EverNote and PingMe do their thing better than Sandy did, but she was a good combination of both and I have yet to find her equal as a reminder assistant.

Thanks for listening.

Stuff on the Net I Like...

Thought I'd take the time to give kudos to some of the things on the Internet I find really useful or fun. In no particular order...

(Update: Lesson learned with Blogger - don't use relative sizes for images, e.g. height="10%", they look like they work until you publish and then they seem to get ignored. Use absolute values, e.g. height="100px".)


grooveelectic is nice regular music mix you can get via podcast. I find it's great music for working out but not so in your face that it can't be used as background music while you're working.


I admit I was skeptical at first of Facebook. But now that I've used it for a while, I see it's a great way to keep track, if not in touch, with people.


Some of my professional side showing through here, but if you want a good, pragmatic view of computer security and security in general, Bruce Shneier is a good source. He has both a blog as well as a monthly email.


DropBox is just a great network filesystem, letting you store and access files from multiple computers. It has web interface as well as a software to sync the files with a directory on your local filesystem. It doesn't get any easier.


Firefox is an alternative web browser to IE, Safari, etc. I find it very useful because it runs on all the different computers I use plus you can add all sorts of add-ons to increase its usefulness.


Delicious is a great alternative to web browser bookmarks. All your saved sites can be accessed from multiple computers, plus you can tag sites with multiple keywords and sort or search based on keywords. And if you are a Firefox users, there is a great extension to make using delicious easy.


Google has a lot of useful things, but if I limit myself to just one thing, it would be Google Docs. Collaborative on-line sharing and editing of documents done right.


Every Day Fiction is a daily short story you can read in five minutes. You can get it either via email or RSS.


The Fail Blog is just a good daily dose of mindless humor.