Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz

We got a new au pair in January from Spain, Andrea Ayuso Morillo, for our daughter. Our previous au pair had been Finnish, and Anaïs did learn pretty good language skills from her. We now wanted a Spanish girl to take care of our daughter Anaïs, to ensure her Spanish would improve. We found Andrea on a specialized site, au-pair world, and after a few calls and email exchanges she seemed like a really nice girl.

She came to the UK, and she seemed reliable and hard working. She was also imposing a bit of more authority in Anaïs, I guess a good thing too. We thought she was happy. But obviously we were wrong.

We spent last weekend in Finland, and returned on Sunday night. Andrea had disappeared. Her room was empty, all her belongings gone. And only one note to tell us that she was quitting. No notice, no discussion. No nothing.

She has now fully removed any traces. She has removed my wife as a connection from gmail. She has removed her profile from the au pair world where we first found her, and now we know that she posted an update in January looking for a new place in London. And she also posted her profile on another couple of sites. Yes, we know, Andrea. Even if you removed it, you cannot change the past. That’s what the search engines cache is for.

So here is the thing, Andrea, you might be the best child caretaker in the world. You might be the best in social services. You might be friendly and good at your job. But you are not trust worthy. And trust, with a child, is the most important thing.

Andrea, nobody will trust you unless you grow up and find ways to discuss and communicate, to negotiate. You won’t get far by being a coward, hiding away without daring to confront people. And yes, we are angry. Had you told us you were leaving, we would have understood, and planned for it. End of the story. All we needed was notice. You were paid for a week, and left half way through, and without notice. Besides this constituting a breach of contract, you behaved like a teenager. Shame on you, our daughter is more mature than you, being 27!

So why I am posting this? Firstly because you, Andrea, need to become accountable for your actions. You see, I just need to post this and let the search bots crawl my site, something that happens several times a day. And within a few days, this posting will be showing on the search results pages for Yahoo! and Google when people look for your name. Even a few years later, this post will still exist, and folks looking for references will find it.

Secondly, because I hope that by reading this other parents may not follow our own fate. If you are a parent reading this and Andrea is taking care of your children, take a minute or two to reflect about our story. Because it could happen to you too. One day, you wake up, and Andrea is gone, leaving you and your child in a really difficult situation.

Update (2008-03-02): It seems like Andrea’s experience has improved dramatically since she left us a few weeks ago - she’s gone from looking for au pair positions to aspiring to become a nanny.

This is mostly to recruiters and speculators alike. No, I have not been laid off. No, I don’t know anything about the Microsoft bid. And no, I am not moving.

So that’s clear: I love Yahoo!, and we have kick ass engineers producing kick ass technology. We rock, man! We are so cool!

I have been running this blog on a slicehost VPS with excellent results so far. However, I am at the point where I need a bit more flexibility and I can’t justify the $20 monthly fee to my home CFO. So, I did setup myself to move the server back home this weekend, where funny enough, I used to host this blog.

The first choice came down to choice of OS. I had been running Gentoo, but I have found this distribution bad for very low spec hardware. I am running on a fanless and rather exotic VIA C3 533Mhz chip, and compiling packages isn’t particularly a fast thing on this box. I tried Gentoo a couple of years back on it, and getting gcc to compile would take a couple of days. Plus at some point it stopped working because of not sufficient memory.

Going through the choices I hesitated for a while with FreeBSD, but lack of good references for my CPU made me look at the Linux side, where I considered CentOS5, Debian and Ubuntu. I did not like CentOS RPMs - I don’t any value-added on top of RHEL, and it feels odd to go free beer, but not free speech. That left Debian vs Ubuntu.

Whereas I have been relatively happy with Ubuntu as my laptop’s OS for the last three years, I don’t think Ubuntu has the necessary levels of testing required to “certify” a server OS. So I picked Debian, but instead of running stable (etch), I decided to go for test (lenny). Not as aggressive as Ubuntu, which is based on unstable (sid). Additionally, some packages I need (e.g. gmp for php) were not available in Etch.

So far, setting up the box to replicate the slicehost configuration has been relatively easy, with the exception of the MTA/IMAP which is always a pain. Have I had more memory and CPU I would have installed Zimbra. But since I am not sure my home CFO is going to be very impressed with me asking for yet another computer, I think I’ll pass on Zimbra for now.

The initial install out of a bootable USB went without complications picking a basic setup, after which I added MySQL, Apache, PHP, Postfix and Cyrus. I prefer to add the stack by hand, to control exactly what gets installed. Finally, the upgrade to lenny was also extremely smooth.

I have now finished reconfiguring all DNS records to point to my public static IP (ADSL), which works great from the outside, but mixes things up while trying to access servers from the home network. I have figured out I’ll have to setup a DNS server and overwrite the domains I serve and forward up to the ISPs everything else, but I wish there was an easier way of doing this. Yes, I could hack /etc/hosts, but I won’t. The other downside of running at home is lack of reverse DNS lookups, but I think I can live with it.

In conclusion, I am overall extremely pleased with Debian, like I was with Ubuntu. I hope a few months of service, and I’ll still be happy with it.

It seems like it’s open source buying season, with now Nokia buying Trolltech. I feel very happy for the Trolltech folks. We already talked about it, that Trolltech needed some fresh funding to change its business model.

Since my first EPOC apps on a then Nokia Communicator prototype phone back in 2000, I have never been a Symbian fan (Symbian’s SDK custom half-baked toolchain, the libraries solving C++ problems that should be left to the compiler, and most importantly, not running on Linux have always put me back from Symbian). Qt, is by far, the best UI toolkit, but Qt has not grown to its full potential because of it being GPL.

And, the question to me really is, will Nokia change the licensing of Qtopia? I certainly hope so, otherwise it will be really hard for mobile app developers to invest on this platform, especially in light of the competition from Symbian, .NET and Java platforms.

I set myself to write last night a simple PHP OpenID consumer for Yahoo’s! However, I have encountered the Oops message that most folks have also faced:

Ooops…
Hey there! You have stopped by a bit sooner than we had expected. This feature is still being tested, so please check back later.

Anyhow, I think it’s really cool, both for users and for application providers, for a whole number of reasons:

• OpenID V2 has the notion of Directed Identity, which from a user’s perspective simply means not having to know that you are using OpenID (like it should be). In other words, it just works. A simple HTTP POST to yahoo.com and you are all set!
• There is no need anymore to go through hurdles of storing user information and mapping users, like you almost always had to do with OpenID. With OpenID V2 the consumer can query profile information from the OpenID provider. The user has the control to select from a number of profiles stored on the provider, and even pick what attributes in a given profile get shared with each consumer. The user is in control!

Really, this is really exciting, and makes me very proud of being a Yahoo! I’ll pick this test back once we go live by end of this month.

This is truly amazing. Sun and Oracle are set to buy all letters on the LAMP stack, with now Sun buying MySQL for 1 billion dollars (thanks Pascal for the ping). Maybe now Monty and David will start competing with Larry Ellison’s extravagant yacht department. Seriously, 1 billion dollars is a record price for any open source company. Will Oracle now finally buy RedHat to put pressure on SUN?

I am hoping to see the JAVA ticker symbol company improve MySQL support, and licensing, for Java. Since, honestly, right now it sucks so much that one would say the only viable RDBMS alternative for Linux and Java is Oracle (please don’t get me started with DB2).

The flight to Singapore left close to midnight, and I had to go through only 6 security checks, one person checking after another that the previous one had done their job. It’s always surprising to me to see how in India things are not necessarily always done in the most efficient ways. But then again, it is in fact and optimal utility point, since given the low cost of labour there is no incentive for being efficient in manual processes.

The flights with Singapore Airlines were fine, although the plane between Bangalore and Singapore was much older and rather run down than the one between Singapore and Seoul. The service however in both of them was exceptional. Singapore Airlines is always an amazing experience.

I did watch the last movie of the Pirates of the Caribbean, whatever is called, since I did not manage to sleep, at all. As we landed in Seoul, I saw an unbranded Airbus A380 in Seoul/Incheon being taxied. That plane, a double decker, is simply huge. I wonder what it was doing there, and where it was going to. It looked like a promotional plane for Airbus perhaps going or coming from some event or show.

The taxi was waiting for me, unlike in Bangalore, and it took us a bit over an hour to get the the Grand Intercontinental. It’s a suberb hotel. Highly recommended, and example of the elegance and fine, delicate treatment of Asia.

It was my first time in Korea, and I was definitely impressed. Pity that everything is so expensive. I can see Korea might having trouble, alike Japan, to compete with China.

While talking this morning to the cab driver taking me to our EGL office in Bangalore, when for some unknown reason, the driver told me that his boss was paying him 3,400 rupees per month, and that after 22 years of service. That actually got me thinking..

The taxi company appointed by the hotel is paying a monthly contract fee of 60,000 rupees to the hotel. There are 30 drivers on contract. Each driver makes 3 to 4 trips a day, each bringing in 400 to 800 in sales. I’ll let you do the numbers, but even considering extremely expensive car leases, gasoline, insurance, etc. you’ll find out that this taxi business runs easily at close to 90% margins.

And apparently this is not unusual in India. The differences between the poor and the rich are huge. Whereas a taxi driver makes only 3,400 a month, a hotel general manager makes close to 100,000 rupees. Take into account that the taxi driver is not among the poorest in India, and you have right here an example of the remaining of casts in modern India.

But getting back to technology, I gave a TechTalk to the Indian office regarding architecture. I used the “seek vs transfer” example to show how we, as technologists, must sometimes solve technology problems that are strategic in nature and that the business is not necessarily going to think about, not to talk about spontaneously sponsoring. It is an architects job to identify these gaps, and ensure that long-term investment in technology is done.

The seek vs transfer problem and the work we are doing with Hadoop is just one example, but one that I find highly illustrating, and that most engineers associate easily once I walk them through Ebay’s publicly known strategy for databases, removing transactions, order, joins, foreign keys … to the point that Ebay even challenged whether a relational store was still useful for them.

I was reading today during breakfast the Economic Times of India when I came across a really interesting interview with the CEO of Airtel India, Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal. He was making the point that given the development cycle in which India is in mobile is as important as broadband. According to the CEO of Airtel, consumers expect in India expect a seamless experience from broadband to mobile, and from mobile to TV.

When we funded Meridea back in 2001, we commissioned a research survey among CEO/CIOs to understand their likelihood of mobile booming as the channel of choice for financial services. And back in 2001, the answer was a resounding yes. However since then, mobile has not really picked up due to a number of reasons going from device limitations, network limitations, bandwidth costs, and security issues. The end result was that Meridea struggled to sell in a market when only broadband was important. The key value-added of the software were its multi-channel features, but the market did not want to think multi-channel.

However, if Mr. Mittal would be right, and I believe he might, especially given the low penetration of copper infrastructure in Emerging Markets, a multi-channel solution like Meridea definitely makes sense to address both content distribution and interactive services.

The fact that TV is listed on the list make me wonder though, since good TV infrastructure with interactive features depends again on copper or fiber, not available generally in most Emerging Markets. So perhaps Airtel is thinking about adding mobile devices to TV sets? Now, that would be interesting.

After finishing breakfast, I got into a cab, and started heading down to the office in MGR. It’s an older building than EGL, and the age tells internally. The Yahoo premises are quite well-maintained anyway. Funny enough they have the same elevator problems as we do in London.

I did take a look at several projects, one of them being OurCity, which is beautifully minimalistic. If you have not had a chance yet, take a look at OurCity. OurCity works with the notion of modules, and a module repository. A module is a composition of a view and a data source, which will normally be a parametrized service call. You create modules and add them to a slot in a layout, which itself you can manage. Simple, elegant and efficient, it allows Yahoo! to quickly create local presence without major editorial costs.

For dinner I went with the team to a local Indian restaurant “apt” for foreigners. Really nice place in MGR, and great company. Believe or not, we actually spent most of our dinner discussing about architecture and design, the value of standards, technology strategy, etc.

After a peaceful flight, and a short sleep, we landed at 4.30AM in Bangalore. Getting through immigration in Indian airports is always a unique experience, but this I time I really flew throw passport control and customs, especially since I only had carry on luggage. Note to self: never check-in luggage.

The problem was outside. My driver from Le Méridean was not there. There was another driver from the hotel waiting, but for another guest. I had to wait. And after more than 10 hours on a plane, with little sleep, I was wondering why I had to wait for my driver. Anyway, after a few calls, he did finally show up, claiming he had had trouble parking. I mean, how difficult is it parking at 4.30AM in an almost empty car park? No tip.

On the way to the hotel I noticed how different Bangalore is from New Delhi. Whereas New Delhi is all upside down, full of works, cows, and messy as hell, Bangalore is relative tidy and developed. Even the thousands of trucks cruising during the night in New Delhi, since they are limited during the day, were not present in Bangalore.

I managed to catch an hour of sleep until going into the office. The hotel is alright, but I would not recommend it. You really don’t get much for your money, and there are better options in Bangalore, which actually happen to be closer to both Yahoo! offices in MGR and EGL. As much as I normally like both Le Méridean and Sheratons, this one simply does not cut it. The rooms were not very clean, some light bulbs were blown off, and you can smell the kitchen from the rooms. Also the shower-in-bath does not cut it, with barely any pressure and water getting all over the place.

The day at the EGL office was really good and productive. It’s always inspiring to meet the teams, and this time was no different. The facilities are also really good. It feels like being back in Sunnyvale.

On the way back I stopped by the State Cottage Emporium in MG Road, an (allegedly) safe place to shop for foreigners, with marked prices. Well, after bargaining a 25% discount on a traditional necklace, and walking out proudly, I feel strange at such a discount, and I am not sure whether I have been an artist of negotiation, or really, really, stupid.