Embracing ChromeOS (and the cloud mindset required)

2019 will bring many changes.   After more than 20 years as a Chief Information Officer, I will pivot to lead innovation as part of the senior leadership team for the newly merged Beth Israel Lahey Health on March 1, 2019.
   
Here's the Boston Business Journal article about it.

My innovation role will focus on 5 areas:

A front door/liaison to government/industry/academia for digital health collaboration at Beth Israel Lahey Health

Exploring new technologies, especially those arising from outside healthcare, to assess their role in provider/patient/payer workflow

Mentoring startups and internal faculty seeking to create new products/services especially in the areas of machine learning, mobile, telecare, internet of things and blockchain

Lecturing/writing to broadly disseminate lessons learned about innovation

Hosting of international visiting groups from around the world which want to learn about our innovation efforts.

In many ways, this next step combines the best of my youthful experiences researching and writing in the early 1980's Silicon Valley with my 30 years of experience as an IT leader and professor.    I look forward to it.

In the early 1980's while writing for Infoworld, I had the opportunity to personally evaluate emerging products - the IBM PC, Compaq's portable, Wordstar, Microsoft compilers, and various dial up modem services.  Nearly 40 years after evaluating the first PCs, I'm now evaluating Chromebooks and ChromeOS as the next frontier in personal computing.   Here's the experience thus far.

Think of ChromeOS as not just an operating system replacement for Windows or MacOS/ioS but an entirely new approach to computing.   It's essentially a cloud viewer, consuming data and services available on the internet combined with limited offline replication of data just in case the internet is not available.    What does that mean?  Instead of using a local file system to store my documents, media, and data, I'm using Google Drive.   If my device is lost, stolen or damaged, there is nothing to hack on the device.    My Chrome applications are all web services with nothing running on the local Chromebook - Gmail, Gsuite, and Outlook Web Access (or Office 365).   

Why is this a useful concept?    A few months ago, I was in Tel Aviv and I damaged my computer.  There was no way to replace/repair it easily.   If I had been using a Chromebook, I could buy any $200-300 Chromebook and immediately have access to all my data and services.

The Pixelbook supports Android apps in addition to ChromeOS, so I can run local software with local data if I chose.   I've added a few such apps such as Nest (cameras, smart home controls), Gmail offline (local replication of email), and Weatherlink (to control my weather station), but I really don't need them.   The combination of my phone for apps and a Chromebook for cloud hosted services works extremely well.

Are there downsides?   Absolutely.

Cloud/web native apps may not be as sophisticated or usable as locally installed apps.   Moving from local storage to cloud storage requires some planning and adaption.    I installed sync software on my previous computer and synced all my files into Google drive so cloud migration was one step.    I set up offline files so that every document I edit in the cloud is replicated into offline storage on my Chromebook for easy access when I'm on an airplane without wifi.     I previously managed photos and media on devices but now I manage them in the cloud.    All of this is change and requires getting used to.

For my use case - productivity applications, email, media management - a Chromebook works perfectly well.    I imagine there may be tasks/high intensity computing  use cases for which the cloud application and file system approach may not be optimal.   But for me, it works.

Truly, about the only thing I would like to see improved is that the Beth Israel Deaconess version of Outlook Web Access (2013) is not as full featured as Gmail or Office 365.    Once we upgrade or migrate, then the final piece of my cloud-based computing environment will fall into place.

I know that I may be edgy by suggesting that thin client, cloud-centric computing is the future, but from a security, cost, and maintainability perspective, it certainly seems like the right direction to me.

Unity Farm Journal - First Week of February 2016

The germination station I built last week has worked fabulously.  500 sprouts of romaine, bibb, boston, greenhouse, and red lettuce are growing rapidly in the heated, moisture retaining, and light controlled spaces.   Here’s what lettuce looks like 3 days after planting!

 I’ll cold harden these plants starting the week of February 14 and I’ll plant them in the hoop house beds the week of February 21.   We have a succession planting schedule for three rounds of planting in 2016 - early lettuce/greens, warm weather vegetables, and late lettuce/greens.

I’ve prepped all the beds in the greenhouse using a 36 inch field rake with 2 inch tines to break up the soil and a flat edge to smooth it for seeding.

 Some have asked how I have learned the various skills needed to run a farm.  My approach to any new field is a mixture of reading, practical experience, and constant iterative improvement.    In 1972 when I was 10 years old, my parents went to law school and I had free time after school.    I went to the Henderson Public Library in Torrance, California  (about a block from our apartment) and started reading at Dewey Decimal 600 and read through to Dewey Decimal 700 (600-699 is Applied Sciences and Technology).   My favorite range was 621.0-621.9 which covers electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and tools.  Using several of those books, I built devices using parts I scavenged from surplus stores in Torrance.   I learned to manage analog modules, digital integrated circuits, and early microprocessor concepts.

Farming is similar.  My farm office contains  books on everything from managing an alpaca in labor to fermenting sauerkraut.   After reading all these books, Kathy and I built infrastructure and began managing the farm operations.

 I made many mistakes and gained the experience that books could not teach.    For example, last weekend I had to trim the pig's toenails.    I used my experience with llamas (and the same tools), but had to master pig relaxation techniques (it involves belly rubs and sleeping in the sun) in order hold and do precision cutting of a pig trotter.    I did cut a little too deeply on one of Tofu’s nails and drew a few drops of blood, but he did not seem to mind.   Lessons learned for next time.

This week we adopted another rooster (our 5th) from  a local family who thought they had a hen but when it started to crow, they knew their neighborhood would object and did not want to surrender the rooster the someone who would eat it.  At our vegan farm, we’re going to run a skilled nursing facility for chickens - they will all live 15 years.    The new rooster has established himself in the pecking order (he’s docile and submits to the alpha rooster) and has his own spot in the coop where he returns every night.

Thus far the snow has been light in 2016.   The Terex snowblower moves 10 tons/hour.  I feel that buying it last year had the same effect as washing your car.   If you wash your car it will rain.  If you buy snow removal gear, it will not snow.  At least the pigs are happy - they do not like snow!

This weekend will be inoculating more mushroom logs, rebuilding some of our pond circulation infrastructure to be more robust in winter, and harvesting carrots/lettuces.  Here’s what the hoop house lettuce beds look like today - fresh greens daily in the middle of winter.

Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of May 2015

While I have been traveling in Eastern Europe, Kathy has been busy with bees, alpaca, and the daily duties of running the farm.

There have been many articles about accelerating bee deaths/colony collapse disorder.

On our organic farm, there are no pesticides, herbicides, or significant stressors for the bees.   We keep them warm by having south facing hives painted in dark colors.   We provide them extra nutrition - pollen and sucrose during late fall and early spring.   We use minimal medication - oxalic acid treatment in Fall for Varroa mites and fumigilin B for nosema (bee dysentery) control.

The results have been promising.   We started one of the worst New England winters in history with 11 hives and end the winter with 7 hives.   2 of our queens have overwintered for two years.

In spring we have split 3 of hives and purchased a few new nucs.

As of this week we have 6 hives at the farm plus 2 nucs.   We have 6 hives set up on properties in surrounding towns.

By Summer we’ll have 12 hives at the farm and 8 hives off the farm, creating a very strong pollinator workforce.   The apple trees are all blooming at Unity Farm, so they are ready for pollination.

Yesterday, Kathy supervised the shearing of all the alpaca and llama.   The professional shearer was able to complete to the entire herd in 2 hour, taking off their winter coats in a single piece.    I’ll post before and after pictures next week.

One of the challenges of travel (and I really try to minimize overnight travel) is that the farm is filled with complex equipment and systems.  We have extensive water management and irrigation systems.  We have sophisticated heating/cooling systems for all the buildings.  We have a 400 amp electrical system backed up by generator.   In effect the farm is like a small city for 100 inhabitants.     Although I have maintained every system and replaced a great deal of the infrastructure, the heating/cooling systems are 22 years old and still vulnerable to breakdowns.    As a farmer, I know to conserve capital and avoid purchasing too much too fast - that’s what causes economic stress for small farmers.  The heating/cooling system replacement is likely a 2016 project, since our big improvement in 2015 will be replacing the driveway/paved areas of the farm (which are also 22 years old).   One day after I left for Eastern Europe, the primary ventilator fan for heating/cooling the house failed.   The weather station also failed but that is IP connected and I was able to reboot it/reconfigure it from Eastern Europe.   However, our heating/cooling infrastructure is no IP connected so I had to diagnosis it manually with Kathy serving as my eyes, ears, and fingers.   It’s clear that that relay failed and since the ventilator was manufactured in 1993, the parts are only available on eBay.   I was able to locate the needed part and Kathy purchased it, so it will be ready for my repair work when I land in Boston in 13 hours.

The work of a farmer is never done - keeping the bees healthy, the alpaca/llama cool in summer/warm in winter, and the systems of the farm running is immensely satisfying.

It also gives me a context to experience the traditional arts of other cultures.   Here’s a few photos from the Latvian Natural History museum - Eastern European bees, traditional bee keeping and even an alpaca (imported to Latvia from South America).

As I posted yesterday, I can imagine running a castle and farmlands in Europe, and I really have an affection for Eastern Europe,  reinforced by a visit with Latvian IT leaders at the American Embassy last night (pictured above), but I look forward to returning to my own “castle” in Boston tonight.  

On Top of Mt. Fuji

July 4 began with a breakfast meeting to discuss cloud computing with Japanese industry leaders.   Japanese industry is ready to provide cloud solutions, but there are policy and adoption barriers including privacy protection, service level guarantees, and general distrust of the internet as a transport mechanism for healthcare data.     To explore these barriers, I visited the Japanese Medical Association for lunch and had a remarkable discussion while walking in the Rikugien Gardens.   I spent the afternoon with policymakers at the Japanese Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor.    We reviewed the Beth Israel Deaconess clinical systems, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Quality Data Center and  the Massachusetts Health Information Highway as examples of private/public collaboration for public health, population health, and care management cloud-based applications.

The meeting ended at 3:30pm I took a taxi to the Shinjuku West Bus Terminal where my Japanese hiking partner (Dr. Nagata) and I exchanged our business suits for hiking gear.   After stashing our computers and luggage in a locker we boarded the Fuji bus carrying water, food (onigiri rice balls), and the appropriate clothing we'd need to climb the 12,376 foot Mt. Fuji in rain, light snow, and freezing temperatures.   I travel internationally with carry on baggage, so I had to be very minimalistic in choosing the hiking gear to bring.

Our plan was to do a "bullet climb" - from the trailhead of the Yoshida trail to the summit of Fuji without stopping to rest/sleep at the mountain huts along the way.    The trail was uncrowded given the bad weather and cold summit of early July.      The trailhead weather was in the high 40's F and raining.    Hiking in warm wet weather in total body Gore-tex is always a clammy experience.    In a few hours, we climbed to 10, 170 feet, the 8th station, without feeling any altitude effects.    As an experiment, we carried a small pulse oximeter and found that at 10,000 feet our oxygen saturation was about 95 with a pulse rate in the 80's.

The trail from the 8th station to the summit becomes much steeper, with loose, wet, volcanic rock.  At this point those hikers who brought running shoes have difficulty traversing the trail.   It's also the point at which the temperature drops and altitude effects become noticeable.    Our goal was a steady pace and we climbed to the 8.5th station, the 9th station, and finally the summit arriving at 2:30am to light snow, 10 mph winds and freezing temperatures.     Since twilight and sunrise viewing would be best 3:30am-4:30am, we decided to sleep a bit on the platforms near the shrine at the summit.    Hiking at freezing temperatures in a base layer and gore-tex is easy, but sleeping is challenging.  We did have mid layers for warmth which we added as our bodies cooled down.    While at rest our oxygen saturation varied from 88 to 92 with a pulse of about 100.  

We were the first hikers on the summit that morning and we watched the line of headlamps snaking up the mountain from our summit perch.

Between 4am-4:30am, the clouds parted and we saw the sunrise - the rising sun from the highest point in the land of the rising sun.

After sunrise we explored the crater of Mt. Fuji and then began our descent through the large Torii gate at the summit.   We walked through thick cloud cover and pouring rain, arriving back at the trailhead by 8am.     In retrospect, I had a 24 hour day that began and ended with a discussion of "clouds" in Japan.

Building Unity Farm - Emergency Preparedness

In the month of June, we've had 10 inches of rain at Unity Farm (to view our weather station data click here).

Although our paddocks, pastures, and trails are normally dry, we've accumulated water in ways that impacts our ability to care for the animals.  The picture above shows one of our paddocks after a deluge of rain.   A manure pile that is under water is a bad thing.

What did we do?   I purchased a 1/2 horsepower submersible sump pump  and attached 1 1/4 inch sump pump hose to maximize outgoing water flow - a garden hose would have been too limiting.     Sump pump hose is sold in 25 foot segments because sump pumps are designed to go from basements to outdoors over a short distance.   In our case, we needed to pump 40,000 gallons of water into  a dense forest that would easily absorb the flow and return it to our water table.   I used 1 1/4 barbed couplings and hose clamps to link together 150 feet of sump pump hose.  

I built a cage of 23 gauge hardware cloth and submerged the pump inside the cage to ensure floating debris did not clog the pump.

The end result was a water flow of about 4000 gallons an hour from paddock to forest.   After 12 hours of pumping, the paddock was transformed from a lake to puddle.  

After mastering this technique, we're now ready for any flood related emergency.

Too much water is one challenge, but what about too little?   We have a well that consistently produces 8 gallons per minute of clear, chemically perfect water.  However, the well depends upon electricity.    If we lose power due to a storm, we have 50 gallons stored in the basement which will serve the needs of the household.   But, what about the animals?

To ensure we can keep all the animals of Unity Farm hydrated, warm, and safe, the farm has a 20 kilowatt generator and four propane tanks.   The entire barn, heating system, food storage, water supply, and internet connection can run off grid for a few weeks.   The pump system I described above is powered from the chicken coop, which is also backed up by the generator.

Last year, we replaced all the well equipment which had reached end of life.   In addition to water flows to the barns and paddocks, we do have drip irrigation keeping all our fruit trees and produce plantings moist.    Just as we're ready for floods, we're also ready for droughts.

Finally, we have a fully stocked root cellar with about a year of food kept at 60 degrees, so if there is a very significant man-made or natural disaster, we should be self sufficient.

Every day at Unity Farm is a learning experience.  Thus far, our emergencies have been few, but we're prepared for whatever may come.

Cool Technology of the Week

Continuing my series of farm related cool technologies, today's post is about solving a practical agricultural problem.   How do you keep water flowing in the barn during the freezing temperatures of winter?

Of course, you could use electrically powered pipe heating tape but what if the power fails on a cold winter night?

For over a hundred years, farms have solved this problem by using a freeze-less yard hydrant such as the Woodford Model W34

The idea is simple.

In Massachusetts the frost line is between 30-35 inches.  

At our farm, all water pipes are buried 4 feet or greater, ensuring they never freeze.

A yard hydrant connects to water sources below frost line.   When the handle is opened, a 4 foot rod moves a gasket so that water can flow up the hydrant.   When the handle is closed, a siphon below the frost line is opened, draining the hydrant.    Thus, there is never standing water in the hydrant that can freeze.

Our hydrant has 27 inches above ground and 48 inches below ground.   We also created a dry well around the hydrant and siphon to prevent any runoff from accumulating around the pipe.

A simple technology that uses the insulating properties of the ground instead of electricity to keep water flowing in the winter.   That's cool!

By the way, a weather station on our barn provides detailed data for Sherborn, Massachusetts to most popular internet weather sites and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.    This winter I'll be able to track the temperatures and ensure our animals and infrastructure are protected from the cold.

At Home with Hurricane Irene

For the past 2 years, I've operated a weather station which provides realtime data for Wellesley, Massachusetts to the National Weather Service, the Citizens Weather Observation Program, and Weather Underground.

If you search Google for Weather Wellesley, you'll get my data.

For graphs of the temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, and rainfall rate during Irene, here's a summary from Weather Underground.

To prepare for the storm, I took down flags, removed hanging bird houses, and stored every object that could become a projectile in the wind.

Interestingly, we never had sustained winds more than 10 mph.  Our peak gust was 17 mph.    Likely, the impact of the storm on my location was much less than the surrounding neighborhood because of the grove of old hemlocks nearby that serves as a windbreak.

However, we did have a substantial amount of rain - 2.24 inches on Sunday and 4.66 inches in 24 hours related to Irene.

I retrofitted all our gutters with extenders to push water away from the house and sandbagged the bulkhead to our basement, just in case standing water accumulated in the backyard.

The key technology that saved our house was not anything wind related, but was the disaster recovery sump pump I created last year.

At the height of rain intensity, a tree down the street collapsed. due to the weight of water on its leaf canopy, and fell through power lines.   The Department of Water and Power cut power to the neighborhood to do the repair.

Water began rising in my basement drains and as designed, the battery backup sump pump worked perfectly, pumping the basement dry despite the loss of power.

Installing a battery backup sump pump makes great sense - the likelihood is that in the worst storms, you'll also lose power, so having an AC powered sump pump will not help you (unless you engineer a complete alternative power solution for your home)

If my neighborhood was typical, the storm did have a profound impact.   Down the street, a tree fell into two cars.   My father in law lost a portion of his entry roof.   Downed limbs have impacted traffic flows throughout the area.

However, our engineered systems for power backup and water control plus our preparation for the storm made our experience of Irene, our first hurricane, uneventful.

Weather Station Lessons Learned

As part of my Christmas gift research, I wrote about selecting a home weather station.

I  configured the Davis Vantage Vue weather station  at my home so I could more easily install it at my parents house.

The integrated sensor suite is now sending so much data to so many people, that I'm keeping this one and purchasing a new unit for my parents home.  

Here's what I learned

Weather Underground, the default Google source for weather data, includes thousands of personal weather stations throughout the world.    To become a weather contributor, all you need to do is register your station.

You'll be given a call sign  - I'm KMAWELLE10 and my data is now available to any weather underground user.

Since Google's weather gadget draws from Weather Underground, any Google user seeking Weather from Wellesley Hills, MA is now receiving data directly from my home - I've become Google's default weather source for Wellesley.   Here's a great Patch article about it.

The Citizen's Weather Observation Program also enables easy registration of personal weather stations.   Once the data is quality controlled (here's my quality control report) , the data is added to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration's (NOAA) Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) and becomes part of the dataset used for research, disaster response, and forecasting.   My MADIS ID is D6574.

NOAA has given me "2 thumbs up" for accuracy - less than 1 degree variation in temperature and 1 millibar of barometric pressure from the official NOAA data sources.

Finally, I've added real time weather from my home to my blog - just scroll down past my crosslinked blogs and you'll find real time "Geekdoctor weather" from home that is located at

Lat: N 42 ° 18 ' 2 '' ( 42.301 ° )
Lon: W 71 ° 16 ' 19 '' ( -71.272 ° )
Elevation (ft): 221

The experience with this weather station taught me a great deal about interoperability.   A single XML standard for content complemented by a domain specific vocabulary, transported using a simple web protocol enabled me to connect a complex data stream from my house to thousands of users throughout the world in minutes.    Of course, the privacy/security/data integrity of temperature reporting is a much different problem than electronic health records, but let us hope that by the end of 2011, connecting patients, providers and payers will be as easy as sharing my home weather telemetry.

Selecting a Home Weather Station

My parents live in a windy area near the beach in Southern California.   With a prevailing 12mph wind, there is a reasonable possibility that a small wind generator  to reduce their energy bills makes sense.

My father would like to make the case to the city council and needs to collect weather data.   His requirements are

-Solar powered, wireless sensor array for wind, rain, temperature, and barometric pressure
-Indoor real time data console with a trend display
-Computer interface from the console which enables long term archiving of data for analysis

I've compared all the major manufacturers (Davis Instruments, Oregon Scientific, LaCrosse Technology).   Choices are very limited for a solar powered sensor array with computer interfacing. You'll find a great discussion at the Weathertracker website.  

What did I ultimately buy him?

1.  Davis Instruments Vantage Vue  $395.00  (a new, updated, modern product that is easy to install and maintain)

2.  Davis Instruments WeatherlinkIP $295.00 (a direct to web interface)

The computer interfacing question was challenging.   Davis Instruments offers 3 options

a. Windows based USB interface - simple, easy to install, and includes full featured software for Windows 2000/XP/7.

b.  Windows based Serial interface - can also be used via a serial to USB adapter with Mac OSX but can be problematic.   If the OS changes, there is a chance the Serial or USB drivers will not work.

c.  A Cloud/web-based option  - data is uploaded via IP from the console to a data management application and publicly available website hosted by Davis Instruments.  Data can be downloaded and archived directly from the website - no direct computer interfacing or drivers are needed.  It works on any operating system and browser.

I chose the Cloud option.   Thus my father will be tracking the clouds in the Cloud!   I've temporarily installed it in Wellesley and you can follow the weather at my home via Weather Underground.

The Broken Window Effect

As an adult I've returned to various locations from my childhood and found the white picket fences, station wagons, and neighborhood shops transformed into rough, run down, and unsafe neighborhoods. This did not happen overnight. What happened in these places is the same thing that can happen in a business or your personal life. I call it the "Broken Window Effect"

Imagine the perfect "Lake Wobegone" neighborhood where everything is above average. A baseball goes through a window, but the owner decides not to fix it. Then, because the house looks a bit shabby, another neighbor leaves a junked car on the street. Then a bit of graffiti is not cleaned up. Then folks stop picking up garbage from their yards.

The can happen inside a house. One pile on the floor doesn't take too much room, so a few more piles are put around it. Before long, all floor spaces have piles on them. Maintenance items are deferred and junk is not tossed. Years pass and eventually the house is unhealthy to live in, but no one really notices because it happened so gradually.

In IT organizations the Broken Window Effect can occur when management begins to tolerate downtime, constant workarounds, and broken processes.

How do we prevent the Broken Window Effect?

Every downtime incident is investigated within hours of the problem, and a full report is issued to our weekly change control board meeting. The meeting is not punitive, it is a learning environment attended by all my technical managers so that the entire organization can learn together. Questions include

Was there a process failure?
Was there a training failure?
Was there a policy failure?
Was there a planning failure?
Was there a lifecycle maintenance failure?

By examining ever incident when it happens and by building a culture that encourages constant improvement based on collective sharing of our experiences, we ensure that "broken windows" are fixed and that problem recurrence is minimized.

The change control board was created after my Network collapse in 2002 because at that time we discovered several aspects of the IS organization that needed improvement such as

Lack of transparency to downtime with details not openly shared among all groups
Silos of technical knowledge
A tendency to work around and patch rather than identify and correct root causes of problems
A lack of planning projects as a coordinated whole with all services - applications, networks, servers, storage, desktop - considered components of a single comprehensive implementation.

The change control board is so rigorous that even I can get into trouble. I recently implemented a health information exchange application update and did not discuss it at the change control board. Thinking that it was just a minor update, I assumed that there were no infrastructure implications. However, given the fact that the application exchanges data securely outside our firewall, involves databases, integration engines, and application teams, it was important to brief everyone first. My next directors meeting will include an overview of all our health information exchange projects - past, present and future - for all IS stakeholders.

On a personal level, I also try to avoid the broken window effect by renewing/maintaining all aspects of my life ie.

I erase all emails older than 90 days and all files older than 1 year. It's really rare that issue has not been resolved after 90 days or someone requests a file older than a year.

I replace my laptop every 2 years

I replace my blackberry every 2 years

I replace my clothes every 3 years

I keep no paper of any kind in my office and very little in my home. All my reading materials are digital.

Every season has its activities that lead to renewal - Spring house cleaning, Summer planting, Fall yard cleanup, Winterization to prep the house for cold weather.

Whether it's your neighborhood, your home or your office, I recommend you stay vigilant for the Broken Window Effect. Fixing all those broken windows keeps everyone engaged in renewal.