Where are my bags, British Airways?

So some history to start with.

I came back on Friday 31st October from St Louis to home via Chicago.

The weather on Friday was pretty apt for Hallowe'en in that is was frightful. Frightful enough to mean a lot of flights in and out of Chicago were cancelled. My flight took off nearly three hours late, but luckily I had allowed for this after the last return flight on American Airlines had left me stranded.
The landing, in an Embraer ERJ-175, was well handled by the captain. Given there was a 70 miles per hour headwind and sleet and snow in the air, he held the plane about 5 meters off the runway for a few seconds before slamming it down. Having been in a similar situation before the slamming down is an approved method for ensuring the wheels bite the tarmac.
We made the gate at 9:00pm with the BA flight closing the gates at 9:25pm. In a different terminal, and after security. And a train ride.
I made the gate at 9:20 or so, perhaps even earlier and probably leaving a wake of devastation and muttering yanks behind [but then I did drag a few other brits with me too - complete with the phrase "Don't be such a Brit, we're getting on the plane..."]
What I also knew was that whilst I had made the flight, the chances of my bag doing the same were slim to none.
On arrival at Heathrow I did what you do and waited for the "Bags Arriving" sign to change to "Bags Delivered" before heading to the Lost/Delayed bags counter.

And now the fun starts.

Having duly processed my ticket and agreed that the bag wasn't on the flight the agent and I set about to agree when and where the bags would be delivered.
Knowing there wasn't much I needed in the bag, I suggested it be delivered to work on Monday.
"Monday?" says the agent, "We can get your bag to you on Sunday at home. It'll be here Sunday morning, we'll pick it up, give to the carrier and there you'll be."
Short of "Bish, bosh, jobs a good'un" it couldn't have been more chipper. Or less accurate.
So Sunday comes and yes, the bag was on the first flight out of Chicago that landed 6:31am on Sunday morning.

Here's the BA/AA tracking info from their baggage tracking page:

Here's the flightaware data for it: FlightAware-BA294 I like this site by the way. InfoGeek!

And here's the Courier log for it from BA:

And here's their log that I grabbed at 12:05 pm Monday 3 November.

Wait a minute, you're going say, you haven't had your bag delivered. But it's Monday. It's the afternoon, and your bag is still sat in the courier's office? How did that happen?

Well I don't know. In fact there's lots of things I don't know.

I don't know, for example, why at 4:00pm on Sunday the bag was still shown as in-transit. This caused me to ring the BA support line to tell them to deliver it to work as sure as apples are apples they weren't delivering it to my home on Sunday...
Then at 6:00pm, the status changed to "DELIVERY PROCESS INITIATED". 6:00pm, what the heck? Why then? I means that pretty much 11 hours after the bag landed. Was that one final sweep of the hall before cocoa?
So, back to BA customer support to say, well, if it's with the courier then send it to my home.
So they entered that address.
Didn't bother telling me that I had less chance of getting my bag on Sunday then I did of winning the previous day's lottery. Nah.

So, Monday morning comes, and unsurprisingly my bag hasn't. So back to BA customer to get the address changed again. It's 8:05am when I call and the agent kindly tells me that I have to phone the courier to get the address changed. But they don't open until 10:00am [so that's hardly a rush job, is it].
And here's a question, why do I have to phone the courier, when it's just a BA sub-contract? Why isn't that automated? What's the point of customer service, if the only thing they offer is that I do it myself.

Actually what happened was that whilst the agent said she wouldn't do anything, when I called back at 10:00am the address had been changed.

And finally, why the fumble is it still sat at the couriers?

Oh yeah, here's the reason:

From the ticket info on the lost baggage site:

ADVICE TO CUSTOMER - PLEASE NOTE :

Once your baggage has been picked up by the courier it will be delivered to the address provided. Please be aware that this can take variable amount of time depending upon the number of bags to be delivered as well as the time of the day.

Please be assured that we will endeavor to deliver your baggage as promptly as possible.

Which is a big shoulder shrug of responsibility, isn't it? That's basically saying: We'll get round to it.

It's also important to note that the bag has been more delayed by the handling in the UK than the actual missed connection. Surely that's wrong too.

And "COURIER WILL CALL U" on a web-site? In 2014? That's so professional, innit? Unless you have got time-locked teenagers running the service, in which case you're excused.

And finally, BA, update your phone number on the lost baggage website. If you have a local number [0344] why not have that there instead of the 0844 one?

As Dave Brailsford pointed out it is "the aggregation of marginal gains" that can lead to success.

British Airways seem to be aggregating something else, and it's not helping.

Update!

So it's now Tuesday and I have good news: I have my bag.

Here's the delivery log from City Bags:

Yes that is 23:16 when I signed for it.

If you look a bit closer at that log you'll see that the bag was loaded onto the delivery vehicle at 15:28. And that was when the driver gave me a ring to say that the delivery time would be between 10:30 and 11:30 pm.

So, once again, I had to change the address, cos y'know offices are pretty closed at that time of night. Actually, so are most homes.

And the saddest thing? The poor sod was not done yet. He still had another few bags to deliver. Folks are being asked to stay up past midnight, that's not customer service. And it's not the driver's fault either. Were I jet-lagged that's a big ask.

So what would I recommend to BA to get things sorted.

Well, 

• Don't promise and then fail to deliver. I knew from the get-go that Monday was the most likely day that my bag would be delivered. Although I hadn't reckoned on how close to Tuesday we would get. It also meant that I was waiting in on Sunday for a bag that was never going to arrive.
• Don't have a system that lets folks see how inept you are. The phone line tells you that you can track your bags online. Actually, what you get is to see a bag sat lonely on a conveyor belt waiting for someone. Someone that will never come... And then you can track that your bag has gone for a rest in a warehouse somewhere. This is not reuniting you with your bags.
• Have customer service agents that could give two hoots. At this particular moment in time, and you're lucky this was on the flight home not out, the contents of that bag are important. Were I sat in a hotel wondering where my next pair of skivvies was coming from, as happened once in Cuba, then humour and patience will be at very low levels.
• Try delivering at reasonable times.You can't say that 11:16pm is because you wanted to get my bag to me as fast as possible; if that were the case the 11:16pm on Sunday would be true. So would 11:16am on Sunday. In fact the earliest you could have made this was by using BA1541/AA90 [a godawful flight - I know from experience] which would have landed at T3 on Saturday night, less than 12 hours after I landed at T5.

What is wrong with BA's android app

Oh lord.

British Airways used to have a reasonable app. It was mostly their website converted to mobile. But it worked.

The shiny new app looks lovely, it shows you pictures of where you're going. And the background matches your executive club level.

But it is god awful to use.

I can't find the WiFi password anymore, that was kind of handy.

So here's the worst thing though: it can no longer remember stuff. Like you account balance, or flights.

Now I'm going on a limb here, but that last thing is the doesy. Add a booking, and next time it's forgotten.

Go and refresh the account and there it is again, but if the app is unloaded... Guess what? Got to go refresh the account again.

And the upgrade option is comedy value. First, it's very kindly told me that all the seats on the outbound flight have sold; well that's OK as the flight was a week ago. I don't expect there to be any seats. But it won't let me upgrade the return flight as I haven't done anything with the outbound...

And we all know about responsive design: so when you turn this page round - you have to, it just doesn't fit a portrait screen all the check boxes and images occupy the same area leaving loads of white space mind - it reloads the data... slowly. Special that is.

Ugh.

T-Mobile and Passwords

The History

For a long time now, I've had a pay-as-you go T-Mobile 4G WiFi hotspot for when I'm in the US.

It allows me cheap[er] access to the WWW from my tablet, phones and PC. In all it's a nice bit of kit if not a bit hungry on the batteries. 

Just before I go I log in to the T-Mobile website and top up the data. Sometimes $30 for 3GB, or $50 for 7GB. Which is a bit cheaper that Vodafone's £1/MB. And of course I don't have to pay the hideous charges hotels still make for Internet access [can someone explain that to me].

The Change

So originally you managed the device through my.tmobile.com and life was easy. Username and password. But then T-Mobile had the great idea to change all that and got Ericsson in to fix the service and provide an enhanced user experience. And we all know what that means.

So for months you couldn't access all the features you had and log in would fail and eventually, eventually I got the 'Incorrect Password/Username' message. Which caught me unawares. And after a few goes using what I thought was my password, I relented and clicked the 'Reset my Password' button.

And this is the e-mail I got.

I did not have to enter my username, just the phone number of the device. And the e-mail was sent to the address on file. Not that that really matters, they might as well have shown it in a pop-up.

So given that this is hardly a secure 32 character random string that allows a one-shot login, nor is it the classic 'click here to change your password' link, it concerned me somewhat.

Moreover, once I had opened the page there were all the controls to change my plan. Auto-refill, re-charge etc. All tied to my credit card. How easy for a thief to simply turn on the auto-refill and burn data like a wotsit? Well, they didn't need the card in front of them.

And that UI - ugh. Designed for a tablet, run on a PC. It fitted into a 800x600 window. And if you had a 1920x1080 display - well it still had a 800x600 display, but with scroll bars. No honest. It was all squidged up in a corner, with scroll bars. And when you changed something it popped up a dialog saying 'Updating your tablet'. Which was funny the first time. But as that wouldn't go away and you then had to click back to actually see the change, it just go annoying.

The saving grace

They've changed it all again now. 

Now there's a funky T-Mobile pink image of folk dancing [no doubt on the graves of the original developers]. And you don't need your cell number and then username/password. But the auto-top-up option has disappeared and they still want 8-15 characters [one digit, one letter] as a password.

For one person and one dog

and that's it

More of the same, sorry

So, I'm a bit delayed

What with the lack of VOD testing, and some constant niggles about the boxes bouncing I decided it was better to stay here than venture to Denver to listen to the RDK meeting. And on that, hey, waddja know RDK 2.0 came out today, just in time...

And yes, my flight was put back and the hotel informed. But that was a write only device so my room was all closed up and I had to pay to cash for the night. The next day Customer contacted the hotel and put them right, but getting my money back was fun - as was keeping hold of my credit card receipt. But y'know some things are going to happen...

Sochi Problems

In case you haven't heard there's a Twitter feed with the tag @SochiProblems. It's where folk can post issues with Sochi and it has more followers that the @Sochi2014 account. So here's my picture taken on Sunday, two/three days after the show opened.

This is the fabulous Sochi Olympics Megastore - it definitely says Mega and Olympics on the front - the rest? No idea. And you can see the workmen still hiding the planks and what have. But what riches must lie within the Sochi Olympics Megastore, well for a preview check this out Sochi Online Shop but we'll return to this topic later.

A moment of Joy

So, Britain, after XXII, well XXI technically, Winter Olympics Games has managed to win a medal on snow. We saw Jenny Jones on the OBS feeds, without the BBC commentary - mores the pity, and she was a happy person that didn't know what to do with her face. Obviously her team mate Aimee was made up and I don't if they showed Aimee's second attempt in the semi-final but that was probably the run of the competition for me. Up until then the ladies had been quite cautious with the jumps but Aimee just hung one out and hoped it would stick. Sadly it didn't but more power to her for it cos some of the landings, like in today's Ski Slopestyle have been nasty.

Any hoo, Colleague and I ventured to Olympic Medal Plaza, out badges are special like that, to watch. And actually anyone in the park was allowed in, just to give it a bit of atmosphere.

We had to make do with this first:

Congrats on the 1,2 in the Ladies Mogul Skiing

Before seeing this:

Strange old thing, seeing your flag raised live. Makes you quite proud.

Useless Diagram Time

OK, so to help you understand how tall, long, fast things are Customer have these natty graphics:

Which means the men's downhill has a drop of almost 3 Empire State Buildings. Some people may remember Monty Python's if an orange were the size of my head, this football could fill one and a half swimming baths sketch thing. Well it's like that. You'll note that to stop the triple decker Empire State Building from falling over, they've handily skewered them on top of each other.

But just as you brain is trying to deal with that scale, they do this. For their American customers:

And I just don't understand, cos the only time most Americans see Big Ben is just before it gets blown up by aliens... So they're probably panicking by now. Or wondering where the spaceships is.

Another day, another corridor

Cast you mind back to the Corridor of Doom, well here's its cousin. We've finally managed to work out that you don't need to travel all the way down the CoD just to walk up this one to get to the office. But you have to walk down this one to get a coffee. A well-known popular coffee from an easily recognized chain. Ahem.

Back in the park

OK, so a word from out sponsors:

But I'm not entirely sure that segregation is the word Coke is looking for.

Now, here's a picture of the park at 11:00am, it's been open since 7:00am and it's thronging.

But where is everyone?

They're queuing outside the Sochi Olympics Megastore. And it's like 1980's Russia, only even more so. You may recall that I said the colour and texture of the uniforms, and you can buy them from the above link at super-discount-bargain prices only $200 for a tracksuit top, gave the impression of '80's Russia, well this finishes it off.

So these folk have no idea what's in the shop, whether it has any stock or how much it costs. And the weather is grey. Ah, just like the good old days. I joined the queue and bought a loaf of bread and some pickles I can give to Stanislav.

Oh and inside, apart from only taking VISA, it's just one layer and looks like, well, Pound-continent. You could put a polyester trackie on, a nylon hat and some acrylic gloves, run around the place and set fire to yourself.
And some of the tat is just glorious, but so expensive it's just not worth buying even for fun value...

'K so I come back on Thursday. So perhaps chance for one last post.

Oh yeah, the boxes

Meh, y'know mostly they stay up. The ones up the mountain have issues but we think that's most likely cable related now cos the ones in the IBC and the Client Sales area are behaving well. We have a couple more kernel patches we want to try to improve the buffer depth and now we know that there's >100M of memory free on the box we're going to play with that a bit.

It's been a long time

Since anything really, including going to bed the same day you woke up.

So let's break things down by day...

Friday

Friday finds us up in the mountain as the afternoon is quiet waiting for a build. We visit Krasnaya Polyana which is where the mountain center [yes I know] is. Until the Olympics were awarded to Russia, this town did not exist. Nor, obviously, did the road. Or railway. Now we see where the money went.

But the funny thing is it looks like this:

From the front. From the back they are a uniform beige. It is like Las Vegas, and I'm not sure who has the larger scale.

We're here to see the client suites and ballroom. The client suites are, disappointingly, mundane. Just hotel rooms with TVs in them. Look, this is mundane:

Yeah. Paper mugs with the logo on... And in the background. Wahhey!!!

And this is the ballroom where there will be a free bar and TVs hanging from the ceiling, the walls and probably the 8 Welsh people they have hired in specially for the event. And a mezzanine floor. And everything.

And it is ready Wednesday. And a planned 40 STB will be there too; and they don't even drink.

We return to the box that is home to download the build, set it on the server and reset everyone. Only the channels don't change. Or more accurately they do, but only to an OSD saying failure 50% of the time. We track down a fix by setting an override, but don't want to deploy with overrides as they are a nightmare to handle.

Saturday 

is spent in the US House helping them bring the systems up. We have had a build with the ability to control the output to ignore the TV settings. And then another to force 50Hz operation, but still some channels don't work and Customer aren't too happy with having to manually set the output of the multiplexing system when you change channel. The Germans relent and have some new multi-format cards sent over. From Germany. Given the customs policies in Russia, I imagine it was an uncomfortable flight being an output-card mule. But he is the managing director of the company.

There's a total disconnect sitting in the US house in Russia watching the London Opening Ceremony as a test stream.

Sunday

The Mountains

Sunday we went the mountains and took pictures and everything. Thing is, to get to the mountains you can take a train or a bus. But we missed the train by 3 minutes - not bad planning as such, we didn't know when they left - so elected for the B11 bus. The badges get you free travel you see. The B11 bus though is driven by a man who knows less about where we're going than we do. As we leave the train station we get a fabulous view of the park:

But much like Clint Eastwood in Coogan's Bluff we get to ask the question:
How many Olympic Parks are there in Sochi?
One.
We passed it twice.

But at least we saw Adler. In all it's glory. In detail and very slowly given we're on a bus that's lost.

The mountains are very pretty if not a little low - the peak is 2300m and it's reasonably warm. About 2C, which for our cousins is 2 Celsius. Here's what you see when you step off the bus that arrives at the base complex.

You then get a bus up to the various sites. The cable cars, of which there are many, are being tested so we can't use them. We chose the Extreme Park as it was the first bus we saw. Actually that's not correct, we saw the bus to the sliding center [yeah, noted] but that left as we approached it. We were lucky cos most of the center is underground so we would have seen the start ramp...

The hills at the Extreme Center are, well, extreme and still being modelled by men in diggers and tractors. And then covered with machine made snow. Here's a feel for the Center.

And here's a better view:

A Diversion

You had one thing to do, and...

To be fair, the next day the machine had a cover on it with generic 'Chocolate' pictures on it. So perhaps Mars aren't a worldwide sponsor...

The reason we are here

Sunday is also super bowel day. One of our big challenges. We have Fox piped to the US house and all TVs set to accept NTSC [59.94] not PAL [60]. The sound is carefully balanced and the nibbles placed in bowls.
At 3:00 am in the morning, that's not tautology, that's emphasis, I return to ensure the pictures are still going. And there is no one there. Not a soul. Ho hum.

At the IBC a few folk are gathered round the foyer TV but most are in the commissary. The boxes we set to record are recording and then at exactly 4:03 there is a massive glitch in the network. Every box skips and misses 30 seconds of video. But at the time, I was only watching the one in the foyer and that wasn't funny. The network guys are still having problems with dropping packets and are still testing; well, son, I just dropped one in the foyer...

At half time, or hafftime as it is, I leave. The game is frankly shocking and no-one is going to watch this on playback. Not even Seattle fans. As I walk past the US house the TVs are playing to themselves. They seem happy.

Monday

The weather is taking a turn for the better and whilst it is cold in the evening, we've even had frost, the days are clear and bright. The America House is fully open now and the wraps are off the sign outside.

The sign is made of solid wood, a German asks me if it's the correct number of stars (13). I tell him I am English and he apologises. The interesting thing is that the sign weighs 250Kg, for our cousins that's 250 kilograms... The US house will be re-purposed after the Olympics and become the BBC presentation centre at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. It will have another floor by then. And one final thing, it is built on a marsh; the company installing it had to sink 1m50 posts into the ground to stop it sinking. Oh yeah, it has under-floor heating which will be handy for Glasgow in July.

Studio A

Studio A is a place of wonder, they're doing tech rehearsals now, but here are two shots of it. Remember, we're in Sochi and they had to fly this in.

More builds

I mean, in the end, we're here to make sure the systems work. We've had three builds in the past 4 days and the code is getting better. But we're getting more customers and we need more, more what? Well, more.

The system is, however, being well received still. The guide does look nice and the changes to make it more responsive are great. We still have to worry about hard use, as we don't think too many folks are using it yet and we haven't seen much DVR or VOD use. There are enough niggles to worry me and so I'll have to decide soon if I need to stay a little longer to help ensure everything runs smooth and it's not just Colleague running around.

We hadn't really expected the scale of deployment. We think there are 10 separate VLANs in use, which means 10 separate areas where the boxes are. Some in the IBC and some in the mountain and some dotted around the park, that's a lot of walking. And that assumes they haven't closed the place for a rehearsal, and that really pisses you off. And the mountain center, where there are about 60 STB, is a good 45 minutes away.

Random Thoughts

I keep a notebook with things I need to remember. My name, my address that kind of thing. But sometimes there are things that pass you by that you think: I gotta remember that. Like going out with trousers on. So here goes.

Laundry

Whilst being highly effective and probably the most gentle hotel service I can remember, it is stupidly expensive. You can buy clothes for less than it costs to wash them... Except Olympic Branded Stuff. That is even more stupidly expensive; a not particularly nice jacket - certainly one that couldn't stand the strain of skiing for example, is over £200. Check out the Sochi 2014 on-line shop for more examples of stupid.

And paying for the laundry is tedious. Every time someone new, and no experience of a card reader. We were told the NSA, CIA and FKB were installing under-cover officers in the hotel, these are the ones charged with operating the card readers...

Adverts

So help me, I can't work out if that Russian advert I just watched was for yoghurt or tampons.

Tiles in the IBC

The tiles in the IBC are still suffering from impact damage. It would probably have been easier to lay crazy paving than these because that's what they are becoming.

Take your coat off

I may have mentioned the locals are having problems with the concept of scanners, they still are. Wearing a heavy bulky coat through the scanner is going to get you frisked and piss the rest of us off.

It's all been a bit of a blur

The story so far

You may remember that things had been going well, swimmingly well... ah well.

And here we go

So on Sunday we rolled out a few settops around the place and all of a sudden we start getting issues. And on Monday the executive private jet turns up replete with executives and they start complaining about stalled images on WNBC, Those with good memories will recall that during testing in New Jersey the channel that gave the most trouble was WNBC.

Same as it ever was

Cap deaf

Not a new hip hop act, but instead two words that send dread through anyone who remembers issues with DirecTV where the card would refuse to accept messages. And because it would not accept messages, you couldn't tell it to reboot...

We we have the same problem. Not, luckily for us in the settop, but in the system. The problem being that every once in a while the picture would freeze, only to come back some two and a half minutes later. Doesn't that sound like cap deaf. I said, DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE CAP DEAF. HELLO?

But now we come to tracing the issue, which took until 4:00am on, well today really, to track down.

So the issue is that for multicast, the routers all send messages to each other to make sure that someone is actually watching the pictures, those that know will liken this to Switched Digital Video. The source router sends - and I've been doing the research hence the 4:00am - an IGMPv2 General Membership Query. We have, as specified in the message, 10 seconds to comply. On occasions we take 9.998 seconds to respond. And when you look at the chaining of the message there's a good chance the origin router times us out and stops the broadcast. Damn you, damn you to Heck...

Two and a half minutes later another request comes in, and this time we reply in a more timely manner - the spec says we should take a random time up to the maximum indicated - and the stream restarts. Pictures are restored and off we go.

So the solution is simple right? We just hack our code to respond, y'know a bit early. So we did; you tell us 10 seconds to comply we'll comply in 5. Give us a second and we'll take half. Fixed, right?

Wrong. Still dropping.

So tonight it was the turn of the router team to get to watch the sun come up on the way home. _This is a lie, the sunrise is so damn' late they got to travel home in the dark..._

Although luckily, not totally in the dark as to what was going on. Seems that between the layer two and layer three protocols these are you watching messages are getting lost. And so although we say yes, the middleman kindly ignores this and tells the boss no. And away goes the stream. Only on the next request does the response make it all the way back and we get a good flow of the stream.

The router development team are now investigating how to fix this properly, having given us a workaround to at least allow folk to watch TV uninterrupted.

In other news

Ian arrived on Tuesday. And this place, like the national debt, has a size and scale impossible to understand until you see it. When a tour takes 15 minutes you know it's a big place and on walking home we passed the BBC operation with the doors open you understand they have a few desks, a computer with I swear Windows for Workgroups 3.1, a Flip video camera - that's who bought it - and a dog. This it seems is all you need. According to the BBC, amateurs.

We had another fire alarm, it was at 4:00pm. OK. 4:00pm. There are signs all over the area - 4:00pm. So why we're standing outside at 12:30 no-one knows. And once again those that were eating, all of a sudden weren't. And I got to break the security seal on the fire doors. Which was strangely satisfying.

Apneic Jay continues to provide us with insights into the American mind. It's a wilderness in there, it is.

Anyway normal* service tomorrow, probably.

* For a given value of normal...

Just some pictures from the park

Don't ask about the Americans, I won't tell about the Americans...

And one from the restaurant...

Encounters with America

Encounters with the most boring American ever.

Apologies [a] for the tardiness - that was Google's fault and [b] some of the language. That is entirely mine.

So, at the risk of insulting an entire nation, here goes.

Today's bus journey - after a 19 minute stand in the drizzle - was not interesting. OK, so the retro '80s video playing on the TV were amusing, in that way all '80s retro videos are. But after a while I realised these weren't all retro, some were new. It seems the program had gathered together Russian, or I suppose more accurately, Soviet bands from the '80s and were playing one of their videos followed by the band playing live at a concert. Now, I may be one to talk, but some of the folks had certainly lived the Life of Pie and were having trouble getting into their costumes. But what really struck me was how can you celebrate the '80s as a Russian. OK, so we're ones to talk what with the Falklands, Miners' Strike, Thatcher, Housing Bubble #1 etc. but Russia? The Mighty Root Vegetable Shortage of 1983? Afghanistan Part 1. And the Clod War. Where stupid people tried to spy on each other without getting caught. Anyway it kept me from having to listen to The Most Boring American Ever.

Right, so there are nice Americans. Those that keep themselves to themselves, don't over share and open doors for you. Then there are those that deserve to be on daytime TV. Or maybe even night-time TV. This guy was a Network Analyst, but perhaps was more Networkyst Anal. Oh lord help us from the what correct dose of Doorhingaprol is, and what the side effects are and the best way out of Manhattan when going against traffic and what Minnesota is like in the winter and the summer and the spring and the fall and how many cushions he's got on sofa and whether they really go with the drapes but his girlfriend chose them. And all the time you want to bash him against the headrest shouting 'Autumn, Curtains, Autumn, Curtains' But manners, we are their guests. He kept this up for the entire journey, a good 40 minutes. They didn't have any Kate Bush, but that had a lass singing 'Grandmother'; wasn't the same.

Today's handy hint: Don't drink the premium water in the hotel. Sure it's got minerals and vitamins aplenty, but it tastes like it came from the foothills of Chernobyl...

That Studio

Here it is. At the start of the week it was the Union Jack Flag Jack.

Today's amazing statistic: I had to reboot the settop in te Foyer to put a new version on it. I didn't mean to reboot it, but from the Videoscape Juno Cloud Client Management Console (tm) I accidentally selected in before sending the reboot command. Anyhoo, it had been up 4 days and recording constantly. The recording was 21GB in size.

The office is a changing

My two colleagues have been kicked out of 'our' office and have been given a desk in the IT lair - where I made the classic mistake of speaking mock German in front of a German, two nations down. Anyway, moved in are two guys from IBS Sports. They provide Timing and Score Data into the Customer character systems (they have Chyron, if you're interested. Didn't think so) so when the score pops up you know it's a live 0-0 not a guessed one. And the timing comes straight from the Olympic Timekeepers. Why they don't take the OBS CG feed I don't know. But hey.

IBS has one of those mid-aged, mid-sized mid-west Americans that can bitch about anything - bit like me really, only with more class. It was the range of bitching that impressed in the end. Office [MS] Windows [MS] Office [Physical] Windows [Lack Of]. Keyboard; Typing; Laundry; Coke; on and on and on. And the fact that the laptops provided by Customer weren't quite to spec - bring your own, we did - and they weren't quite right and every time he moved it was accompanied by the word - apols - fuck. Arm up, fuck; arm down, fuck. Walk, fuck; fart, fuck. I mean, ah jeez. And in the end, in the midst of the cursing and the farting and the whingeing, he wondered if he might get some action with one of the young runners that are here. Whaddja reckon?

The reason we're here

Here's a picture of why we need 25Mb data.

Yeah.

Here's a picture of the BOC

BOC == Broadcast Operations Center

This is where all the feeds come into the station and go out. I'll take a couple more piccies later. Well impressive huh?

They way home

Colleague and I walked from the IBC to the hotel tonight, it took about 40 minutes and two security checks. Naturally, all the pictures I took are rubbish, so I'll have to try again.

And that means, that for once, it wasn't raining.

A Broadcast Engineer Speaks Out

See, that's him speaking out.

Now the really great thing about working in Russia, apart from the rain - yes I do go on, but so does the sodding rain and the one thing you expect at the Winter Olympics is snow. And vodka, and there's been sod all of that too. But that's probably my fault... Any way, the really great thing about working in Russia for the Americans is that you get to watch night time TV. This is like daytime TV but for the challenged. No honest, it the same three infomercials every day. Dean Martin Roasts, Soul Sounds of the 70s and this sodding Clear TV. Which is an aerial for digital TV. And they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on - and to give me my due, I did type that, not cut and paste - 'bout how cable and satellite rip you off for $10,000 - over a period of many years - when you could buy this for just $19.99 plus processing and shipping. And, you've guessed it, call now and we'll double that to two shitty aerials for $19.99 you just pay the additional P&S.

So take a look here for a review and here to buy two of the sodding things. And I hope you get to watch the infomercial too. And those pictures on the TV are simulated, it even says so on the sodding advert. AND at one point they tell you that cable and satellite TV is compressed digital but ClearTV is uncompressed HD digital. Feck OFF I scream at the TV. And the only thing I'm grateful for is that we seem to finally have fixed seek and shuttle and I don't have to watch this any more...  So check it out, especially the actors acting surprised.

Actually there are four ads, no five, no countless. You could spend a fortune on shite like a grill pan with a polar bear shaped handle or a chair that will help you lose weight whilst you sleep and an oxygen purifier cos some oxygen isn't as pure as others. And a cat coffin and burial kit with free fake wounds and a no way window - which is just a wall, really - and some bloke called Gavin from Gavins  Inc where if you call now you can get two Gavins for the price of one.

I should stop now. Because I have this to show you.

Welcome to the phone of the 21st Century

The unnecto psx-1200. Actually I made the model name up but not the manufacturer. What a great name - get Unnected - there's a slogan for you. I mean, it's almost what you say when you complain about a phone - uh oh, just got unnecto'ed. It's like disconnected, but more so.

So these are the phones that Customer is giving out for local number access. Everyone can have one, they've got literally thousands - I've seen the boxes. You might be thinking they look like a BlackBerry, nah. You might be thinking they have capacitative touch screens. Well they're more resistive in that respect, in that they resist touch. It's more like a jab screen. Not that there's anything to jab, really. If you took a feature phone, and then took all the features away; this is what you would get. A lack of feature phone, a dumb phone. A brick. Bring an unlocked phone, take the SIM out of the phone they give you and you're good.

And now, as the building site clears and the offices become obvious. Allow me to introduce you to the

Corridor of Doom

This is the central corridor down the engineering wing. We're situated about 3/4 of the way down on the right. Before us is production, logistics, runners, studio entrance - with makeup, wardrode, hair - and after us is the tape library, tape ops, graphics and ingest. It's not until you see this that you get an idea of the scale of the place. As we walked in, there was a door open and in there was another studio, I think I've found 6 now. If not more, they're like Easter eggs on a DVD.

Another Colleague came in today, after a 30 hour journey from Denver - NE USA weather - and I think it took him back a bit. The scale of the operation, I don't think Meridian was ever this big, even in it's heyday, is just monumental. Or mental, you choose. And every day some new happens in the commissary, last night - for the first time - we got something other that cake for pudding. It was a tiramisu, complete with Russian spelling. And tonight they have installed the ice-cream cabinet, probably ready for tomorrow. Starbucks is now open 8:00 till 7:00 and slowly but surely the 24 hour rota are going up. The place is coming alive, and it's kinda fun.

Some random notes

Django is brilliant. We've got some issues with the data source in that we want to do stuff it can't. And due to network issues, and this being a cloud solution, there is often sod all data. With a bit of Django, and I mean a bit like 20 lines, we now have a database that can provide multiple lineups just like the real thing. It is stupidly scary. Complete with management interface and everything. It took about 90 minutes to code.

Yesterday I alluded to dogs having a crap time, but they're not the worst off. The worst off are the folks that have to pick the litter up on the highways. Every morning you see them walking against the traffic picking up litter. There are no 'Workforce in Road' signs nor do they wear high-viz jackets. They must be tired of life, is all I can think.

You may have heard of the Ring of Steel, fnarr fnarr Mr Putin, that surrounds Sochi. It is getting stronger by the day as more and more military, police and security guards become present - you can tell them apart by the quality of their footwear. They normally lurk, like trolls, under bridges and for a while I thought this was their nature. But actually it stops them getting wet.

From all the SODDING RAIN.

What day is it?

So I hear Wednesday. But only just.

h2. What day is it?

I think I managed to take some photos today. Not of anything interesting though.

But here's what I've been looking at most of the day...




 Hardly inspiring is it?

Still when you think you've got it rough, there's always a dog to let you know it could be worse...



And in classic dog abilities, it is failing to enjoy this:



The hotel has been under development for so long that there are packs of dogs roaming at night. Silly dogs should have bought a local SIM card. What, sorry. No, wrong window. Anyway, there's a bunch of puppies that live in a crate in the car park. Someone has constructed a kennel for them and in the morning they come out and go exploring. But they're going to be big dogs as they look very German Shepherd-ish. You almost worry for them...

And the dogs at the IBC get a hard life too:



So what else do we know?

Well we created the alternate channel lineup, hence the expanded normal lineup, and the fact that hidden channels are going to have to start at 50, not 30. There are that many streams. And Colleague has had a look at backfilling the recordings, which sounds pretty good and when we upset Customer I'll offer that service to him.

And now we're playing with live and VOD. And the fact the streams don't start at the beginning. But I think I have a nasty hack for that for now.

And it's all a bit busy.

On the way out they've put the banners up and some Russian, well, crappola that I don't understand but then I only had a few minutes to make the last bus of the day. And for some reason, the damn' thing went via the rings... Perhaps that's what the last bus does - makes sure there are no lost buses between the hotel and the IBC.

Oh, yeah. Banners. Crappola. Here you go:

Disaster Diary

I thought I would detail what happens in a day. You know, a running diary. But some of the day ran away. Any how, here goes:

7:15 Alarm #1 rings, check mail, twitter and Guardian to find what's been going on in the world - nothing, mostly.
7:30 Alarm #2 rings. Get out of bed.
8:00 Breakfast, where the room is getting noticeably more full.
8:25 Walk to the bus top whilst Colleague tells me of the CNN report on terrorists, gunships and helicopters.
8:30 Bus arrives
8:50 Go past the Olympic Rings for the fist time. There's been something nagging me about the rings and I worked out what it is. They're written country/land on the side so Blue is Europe, Red America and Green is Australia. Yellow is Asia and Black Africa. Only trouble is, the IOC stopped this association back in the 50s when it was pointed out that this isn't what the colours mean [go look it up, it's interesting] and it could be considered a mite racist. But hey, Russia - stuck in the 50s... 1850s
8:55 Go past the Rings in the other direction...
9:05 Security. And today's special - apart from the shoes, which they no longer care about - is that you're only allowed 5 medicines in your one medicine bag. And I have six, I have to throw one away. I kid you not, I couldn't make it up...
9:15 Office
9:20 Coffee
9:25 Code reviews.

And so the day descends into a blur as we do reviews and testing and generally larkery until there's an all-hands to discuss stuff.

12:30 Lunch

3:00 All-hands. Apparently that CNN report has really shocked folk back in the USA so the meeting is to make sure we're all OK with the safety plans. And to tell us that most of the stories are, well, made up. Even NBC news has gotten in on the act of stretching the truth, and they're here. So the gunships only have one helicopter on them, and NBC has more folks on the ground [along with FSB and NSA] so we're safer here than there. At the end of the meeting I tell folk to watch UK news, cos there's none of this on there...

3:30 Customer-man agrees the office may be a mite cold and gets a chippy to remove the aircon. The room warms up. To corpsey warm.

6:30 Dinner

8:00 Download the new code and try it. Audio only works on one channel, so that's not so good...

8:30 Customer-man phones and asks if we can support two channel maps. They want more channels in the IBC but only six in the client area. I say we designed it to do that, so we just need the channel maps and we're good. He is impressed. The official request comes in later.

10:30 time to get the 10:40 bus home, assuming it's running.

Observation Round

This morning's coffee went a bit wrong. The lass serving had obviously had a nice day off and concentration wasn't high on the agenda. So when I asked for a Normal Americano coffee, this is the cup I got.

Yup, instead of my name it says 'Normal' and it's brilliant. She wanted to take it back and give me either a plain cup or one with my name on. But I insisted on having this. Not cos it's funny - cos it is, really - but because I now have it in the office on my desk. And when I look around at what is going on, this cup is the closest to normal I can get. Everything else is just, well, mental.

For example, Customer has brought in excess of 1000 laptops for their staff and due to security concerns, these are likely to be destroyed at the end of the games. In their defence, they are two year old Dell laptops, so they're lucky they've lasted this long, and were used at London. But, still. I'm sure there's many a school in developing nations that would kill for such things.

And the number of staff goes up each day. At the start you could have a choice of table at lunch, now you have to wait for one. And the choice for lunch has expanded with the pizza and burger bars now open.

This is a picture of one of the data centres here. You can see a couple of ASX-9000's here. No I don't either, but they have Employer written on them and they hum something rotten.

The actual work we're doing progresses well and we got brownie points for recording and playing back the football from last night. Apparently there are many Seattle fans working here, so they were pleased with the result. And how the game went. A week on Sunday/Monday we best make sure we succeed again.

But the reason this is Observation Round is I thought I would sum up some of the trivia from the week.

Heating

In the office there isn't any. It is fecking cold, you could keep beef in the office. For weeks. I relented today and wore my thermal liner, the one I brought for mountain activities, to the office. It didn't stop my fingers freezing but at least my teeth stopped chattering.
In the hotel, however, there is an elegant sufficiency of heat. Now, many years ago a friend of mine lived in Moscow and she said the heating came on on a fixed date and went off on a fixed date regardless of conditions. And in Sochi, some 20 years later, it is still the same. It is winter so the aircon blows hot. The air is centrally heated and distributed to all the rooms. Your fan simply controls the flow. My thermostat is at 12C and every night I have to open the window. If I turn the fan off, the room freezes. If I leave it on, without the window open, the room bakes. If I turn it off and close the window the temperature slowly rises but like a frog in a pan you don't notice till too late. So the answer is to have the fan on and the window open and a fabulous temperature gradient across the room. Perhaps those folks in the 4 star hotel have better control of their environment, but I somehow doubt it.

Weather

When you think of the Winter Olympics you think cold, snow, ice. Clear skies and seeing your breath. Sochi is slightly different. You get rain. It is January. You get rain in the morning, afternoon and evening. It is cold rain. The place is miserable. Waiting for a bus is not a pleasant experience. And with the rain comes puddles, and even though this is all new build they are professional puddles that have been doing this for a long time. In places they could be mistaken for the sea, except people would be allowed to swim in these.

Building

It's fair to say the place ain't ready - yet (to be honest, neither are we, but we didn't get six years notice). They have the same amount of time to go as we do. Except one is being looked upon by a ruthless dictator that will accept no apologies and the other - yeah, you know the rest. Me and Vlad, best buddies. [What do you call Ventolin for an elf? Imp-haler...]

Yesterday on the way home they were ripping up one of the new roads, and this morning they were putting it back. Some of the old roads however, especially with the buses thundering over them, are ripping themselves up and becoming quite an adventure course.

Traffic

I mention this 'cos it's funny. There are now signs saying 'Olympic Traffic Only'. But I can't think for the life of me why anyone would be here if they weren't here for the games. And even then, they're Russian - these signs are for other people...

Shovels

As mentioned, the Yes Make Happy Work Camp across the way isn't complete and there is a considerable number of workers still building it. Today, as I got an earlier departing bus that strangely arrived at the same time as normal, we passed the workers as they queued to get in the park and I swear half of them were carrying shovels. I can't imagine why you would need so many when the major work is mostly done. Unless, like to a hammer everything is a nail, to a man with a shovel everything is a hole; that needs filling. I can point out a few on the journey to the IBC.

Finally

Welcome to Russia

As we left the airport on Tuesday we got stuck behind a Lada that was weaving all over the road. The driver must have had a couple, and when we did manage to pass him we could see that he was texting. This image is one that kind of burns in, along with the security guard/policeman on every corner.

In some respects, little changes.

This is not a test

To whet your appetite I'll quote Tommy Lee Jones from Men In Black - I'm going to get my gun back.

The best laid plans

I thought that today I would walk to the office, it wasn't raining much so whatever. However I got lost and ended up in Sochi Park, Russia which is a fun park - for a given value of fun. That cloppa castle I've mentioned is a hotel in the park. Security is less intense - come on in - and the workforce is having a Sunday fag mostly. Here are some shots of inside the camp park.

After getting out, and thinking that the park won't be ready by Summer let alone next month, I went to the gate to get in. Well, I looked at it and decided sod that and went back to get on the bus. Here's why:

I reckon on a two hour queue to get through the checkpoint.

This is a test

In the office today was a day of failure. On purpose, I don't quite understand this one but it seems the failure has been successful, mostly, and there are only a few areas that need rework.

So to be more accurate, today folks have been testing what happens if there is a catastrophic failure and systems have to swap over. We did well mostly, one problem is that when both power supplies are disconnected from the VM rack, it doesn't work. Who'da thunk it?

Now we're sat in our ice-box and the alarms go off. We're used to this, we've had 'this is a test message' broadcast all morning. But this is slightly different as a man pops his head around the door and tells us that whilst every other alarm is a test, this one isn't and would we mind leaving. We didn't mind - to start - but the folk eating lunch, they weren't impressed.
We became less impressed when 'mind leaving' became 'mind going outside and standing in the rain' because today it was tipping it down. Big heavy raindrops that were hitting the scaffold and becoming even bigger and more rainy. At least I had a coat.
And that was when it struck me, we were near the security area where I had lost my belt - how hard can it be to go and get it back, or find if it is lost for ever?

You may remember the line that Kay says after getting his gun back:

I've just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want.

Well, it's pretty much the same when you want your property back. It's not that it's bad, it's just you get surrounded by six security guards as they earnestly attempt to locate the belt. There are phone calls and discussions and an interpreter is called for and he explains I have to follow him.
We leave the hut and enter the main IBC, but at the front desk there they say we have to go to the front desk at the PRC - the printed word equivalent of the IBC. This involves walking past a dozen or so concessions that are slowly getting to ready to sell stuff in exchange for VISA payment and sod all else. And then in the middle is this:

And just down from there is a Coke stand. The Olympics is certainly coming.

At the Lost Property part of the Main Desk at the PRC the lady tells me they have about 20 belts lost in the scanners. She has a list and asks me to describe it. It's black and belty and goes round my waist is the best I can do. She goes one better and produces my lost belt. Woohoo, no more falling trousers. I'll probably leave it in security again tomorrow, they'll be back to panic stations again.

I make my way back past the McDonald's - you can pronounce it if you try, common words are good as you can learn the language, eventually - and back to the IBC and lunch. It strikes me that having 33 letters must make Hangman a bit harder in Russian. Not as hard as Kanji though: Egg? No. Doorknob? No. Button? No. Duvet? No. Yellow? No. I give up. My word was Empathy. Your turn... Not a game that caught on, I think.

In the afternoon we carry on testing until we have the double power out, and it takes a very long time to get the servers - especially the DHCP and NTP servers - back up. Whilst this is all going on, I install 13 devices in the Executive Area. They all have a system each so making it work becomes a bit more real. In the boardroom, there are two, by the way.

After installing and we get the servers back, I create some cron jobs to start a recording off. Well two recordings. We have offered to record the NFL Championship Games that aren't carried on NBC channels so we have no guide data for them - we have no guide data most of the time. I also modify the init scripts to ensure we don't accidentally delete the recordings if the boxes dip for a moment. They haven't yet, but you never know. And I set three devices off doing this. Let's hope, hey?

If the recordings are successful we'll play the games back tomorrow.

As Saturdays go, this one went

OK, at this point I would open with a picture showing how the weather/hotel/locale is. But here's a picture of what I got to see once I had entered the IBC today.

This is the inside of the Personal Examination Booth at Security. I think they were having a slow day. It being Saturday and all there weren't as many folk trogging in at 9:00. Or at least attempting to. So Security were less fraught than usual. But I think they had also turned the wick up on the metal detectors - can't show you pictures but imagine an airport on acid. X-ray machines, Body scanners, Metal detectors, bored Russian Security guards, dogs. And it was my lucky day to make the bell ring. The astute will remember my belt has long left me so it wasn't that, and my shoes hadn't set things off the other day. So I find myself in the booth shoeless and fretting. A few minutes later the guard returns with my shoes, that have no metal in them, and a rather apologetic look on his face. I'll give them that, they're more apologetic than frightening, as if having to scan everyone is embarrassing for them. But 1, it's not as embarrassing as the things Putin says and 2, as I read somewhere, they have to win every time - the terrorists only have to win once...

So once re-united with my shoes my bag is inspected. Normally, this is just show computer, open computer, power-on computer. But today, it being a bit slack, they asked me to written some code... Nah. The iPad on the other hand does not need powering on. The iPad weighs more than the Chromebook. I also have to open my medicine bag, in which I keep Ibuprofen, Paracetamol etc. in case it's needed. He asks what it is and I say medicine, blank. His helper explains in Russian, blank. She says Drugs. Ahh, da, drugs. For a minute I expect to hear 'Take one each tablet' but instead he thinks I'm a wimp for having drugs on me. Well, when you've used a pencil as an anti-diarrhoeal, yeah takes some imagining and once done you wish you hadn't, you make damn' sure you have some with you at all times. Imodium, not pencils.

So the day passes and code is tested and we see some improvements. The images are more stable and the tune time better but some times there are no pictures... and in the end I do a mash up of 1.5.0 with a hint of a new brcmtsdemux and a helping of libQtWebKit4.8.1 and every becomes pretty stable. Even search works well. So it's nice to know we have a fallback solution now.

And it means I can do this:

Watch Southampton play Sunderland. And it wouldn't be so bad but people, American people, asked if we could get the West Ham game...

You may remember I said the bus route was a torture so I installed a GPS tracker on my phone and uploaded the route to Runkeeper but if you see a screen like this

I can only apologise. Not only for its presence, but also for the godawful spelling, grammar and just about everything else. "Howard Teece activity 10.38 miles" and I really don't know what the rest means... "activity a total of miles" ?

So, two more interesting pictures for you. One's the correct use of a computer:

And the other is of one of the production control rooms:

You may recall I said there were two studios, and another two live floors. They each have one of these.

And a final fun fact, the switcher in the PCR is a Sony HDVS-7200, its control panel is the spaceship flight-deck on the right; 20 years ago I helped on the prototype of it. They were designed in Basingstoke. Makes me pine for the old days, as does seeing a Tektronix WFM and some Abekas boxes. I thought they had packed up years ago. And there's a shedload of Snell and Wilcox standards converters as all the pictures are sourced 1080i50 and need to be 1080i60 for broadcast. Used to work for them too.