Eschew Obfuscation

Today for me is a wonderful day. My children have decided that they do in fact love me and that they would like to show that appreciation by wishing me a happy father’s day with extra hugs and kisses.

I’m good with that.

For my part, I want to take the opportunity to publicly thank my father for being there for me and making the tough decisions when they needed to be made. I wasn’t the easiest child to raise and I’m not always the easiest adult to live with.

Thanks Dad. You’re the best. I love you and wish that you could be here. I only hope that when my children grow up

written by halfdime

If this takes on the appearance of a rant, I apologize. I have some strong feelings about this topic.

I was talking to someone the other day who commented that I seem to be in a good mood much more often than bad. I told them that I don’t have a reason to be unhappy when I have so much good in my life.

This seems to be a difficult thing for many geeks to do. I’m not really sure if it’s the belief that it’s cool to be grumpy or if it’s just a lack of perspective brought on by being blessed with so much for so long. Regardless, we tend to dwell on the negative and often thrive on contention.

What’s perhaps even more disturbing is that instead of making an attempt to fix the problems we see, more often than not, we grouse about them and then do nothing beyond adding fuel to the discontent of those around us. The true irony of this situation is that we as geeks have an innate ability and drive to fix things. We thrive on fixing things that are truly challenging. Why then do we so often retreat from societal problems?

To be fair, I don’t see this as just geeks. As a society we are moving aggressively away from being a part of the community that we live in. Each person goes from their home to their car to work and back making as few social interactions as possible. We spend too much time tending our devices and not enough time taking care of what matters most. How do we expect any of the societal ills that we perceive to be remedied if we’re only willing to make sure that we’re not contributing to them? When will we decide that it *is* worth our time to help others?

So here’s my hope. If you’ve read this far, maybe you’re willing to do something besides flame me in the comments.

Sign up for something to improve the life of someone around you. The only stipulation that I would make is that you do something you’ve never done before and that you get no recognition of any kind.

If you feel brave, leave me a comment about what you’re doing/have done/will be doing.

p.s. No. I’m not going to blow my own horn. Just suffice to say that I feel pretty comfortable about what I’m doing and have done in the past to call on folks to be more active in the community.

written by halfdime

As I’m wont to blog about a number of technical things, I find that I’m thinking about personalities in the IT landscape.

To that end, I wanted to jot down the broad categories of people as I see them in the IT world. As far as I’m concerned, there are only really four classes of people in IT.

The Closet Geek
We all know the stereotypical geek who has bad hair, acne a chronic clothing problem and lacks the social finesse necessary to successfully buy candy at a drug store for fear of interacting with a clerk of the opposite sex. The seemingly dominant personality traits in this type of person is hard to find due to the overwhelming lack of self confidence in a social setting. This is the person that they make movies about and that some people believe can shoot energy rays out of their noses [1].

The Casual Geek
These folks can be hard to spot by other casuals and are often targeted by Alpha’s without a moral backing. The most notable trait these folks have is an absolute passion for computer hardware (everything from PC hardware to gadgets). A common mistake that’s made on their resume is considering using the record function in Excel to be programming. There are scores of these folks working at retail computer establishments doing a great job helping folks determine the best of consumer grade electronics. My most recent encounters with this class of geek has been through IBM support but that’s another story entirely.

The Alpha Geek
These are the closet geek escapees. They’ve managed to become functional in a social setting and some may actually excel in social situations.[2] Frequently alpha’s come off as arrogant due to the, “I NEED TO BE RIGHT” setting in their brains. Patience with anything that isn’t interesting (like people) is often in short supply. The irony of this is that the social ability of alpha’s puts them in constant contact with people who are going to ask that the obvious be explained ONE MORE TIME! If you’re not the one asking for the explanation, it can be quite entertaining to prolong this process and watch the alpha’s head near bursting.

The Non Geek
You know who you are. If you’re reading my blog, we won’t be talking about you any more because we’re really only interested in flavors of geeks here, right? Ok, maybe not. The non-geek in an IT setting is really fun. This is the person that everyone looks at and asks, “You’re not offended by profanity, are you?” Regardless of the answer, this is quickly followed by a quick string of obscenities.

If you’ve kept with me to this point, you’re probably wanting to know what this has to do with the topic line at all.

It’s the interaction of the various groups in an IT environment. Mix in one of each class from above and sit each down with or without alcohol (preferably with for at least one) and wait for the topics to move. It’s a great to watch the verbal gymnastics to get to the topic that each excels at so that they can stick it to each other.

Some of the best humor I have ever been witness to has come from seeing someone go from the euphoria of a great quip to the low of being zapped themselves. The creative juices required to be flexible enough to laugh and still come off as a know-it-all prick is what I like to call, Creative Curmudgeonry.

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[1] Let’s be honest. That’s the biggest thing on their body and likely dispenses a multi-jigawatt bolt if they’ve put any effort into “enhancements.”
[2] I believe that some of the closet dwellers were actually dragged out by their parents and dropped in a vat of toxic sludge and that changed their personality.

written by halfdime

So I’ve started this insidious little creature known as a blog. I think about it all the time.

I start a thought and then immediately diverge to, “Hey! That would be a good thing to blog about.”

Then I start to compose the blog post in my head and realize it’s, at best, a sound bite worth of information and really isn’t getting anything accomplished in line with my goal for this blog.

So I discard the idea and move on to something else.

After a few seconds, the person sitting across from me who said something that set off the whole chain of events in my little mental detour starts to get a concerned look on their face. You know the look. That, “Hey STUPID! I’m over here.” Pretty soon, it changes to the, “Is he having a seizure” look and if left too long, it becomes the wake up slap.

I’m fully aware of my problem with shiny objects and my coworkers (and my wife to a certain extent) are familiar with the problem and exploit it often.

This new blog thought-hijacking that is going on is just disturbing.

I think I need to find a qualified blunt-trauma specialist to knock some sense back into my dome.

Nah. I think I’ll just take a cue from my daughter and talk until someone hurts me. If I use a tape recorder, I should get at least a month’s worth of blog entries out of it before I lose consciousness.

written by halfdime

As part of my new job, there have been several things that are different due to the nature and size of the company.

First, I have the wonderful opportunity to work with a bunch of brilliant people every day.

Second, I get to travel from time to time to our off-site facilities.

This week, I’ve been able to combine the two and have been on the road with three other guys from work.

With few exceptions (to be exact; severn, including the Dunkin Donuts safari), it’s been great. We’ve gotten a bunch of work done and had a good time.

When talking to one of my coworkers, we agreed that the road trip is a pivotal event. You either leave and come back better friends or leave and decide that you never want to go on a company road trip again.

In my case, I would go anytime with these guys.

Thank you gentlemen. It has been my pleasure.

written by halfdime

As a present to my wife and me, my mother came down to visit us and watch the kids for a couple of days whilst we went to Disneyland to celebrate our anniversary.

First of all, I’d like to say, “Mom. You ROCK!”

Secondly, I want to talk about the odd behavior that was had by me at Disneyland.

Having done automation and control a bit in a previous job, going to Disneyland is part entertainment, part fantasy and part occupational curiosity. On California Screaming [0], we spent the 10 minutes before and after riding looking at the control systems for launching the cars (a magnetic drive system). We rode Pirates of the Carribean looking back often to find the location of as many cameras, doors and control system components as possible.

I even went so far as to wonder what their maintenance records looked like to find out how they “prove” that the rides they’re making are safe.

The trip was great. I can’t wait to go again. I wish that I could go on a tour of the operation of the park.

I love to find out how things work.

[0] This is a GREAT ride. It’s not overly scary and is a long, enjoyable coaster.

written by halfdime

Not too much to say about this one.

Just go read it.

written by halfdime

• If you come home at o-dark-thirty and your wife says, “You’re home early.”…
• If you have a computer that’s over ten years old and you’re lamenting you can’t get RAM for it…
• If you can’t name all the layers of the OSI model but know which layer http is on…
• If you hate programmers (because you would’ve written it better)…
• If you’ve thought of killing someone for top posting…
• If you know of more than 2 IRC servers that are poorly configured…
• If EHLO makes perfect sense to you…
• If seeing SYNACKRST makes you twitch…
• If you’ve ever typed, “AFK. WMA.” into an IRC chat…

Ah the things I think about when moving.

Oh, and for those of you so inclined, meet the bumper dumper.

My favorite t-shirt image from the site:

written by halfdime

Having been doing the sysadmin gig for awhile now, some things have become abundantly clear.

• DNS, email and pretty much all core services are only sexy to other sysadmins
• Long hours are part of the game at times

Friday was a reinforcement day for me on the second one above. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but bite the bullet and put time into the problem.

The positive from this was that I got the thing working for our customer.

The negative was the time away from my personal affairs.

The true take away for anyone just starting out as a sysadmin, IMHO, is that you shouldn’t be shocked when things go terribly, horribly wrong and you have to spend the night at work. It happens. Hardware will fail. Someone has to fix it or do the restores.

What *SHOULD* shock you is if this is the normal situation at your work.

For example:

When I decided that I was going to look for work, I applied at my current employer and another company that shall henceforth be dubbed DysfunCo. I had already interviewed with $employer and was talking salary before I went to interview at DysfunCo. The two gentlemen (PHB #1 and #2) that interviewed me are programmers promoted to management. The following is paraphrased excerpts of the interview.

PHB #1: “We’re looking for a sysadmin to help our developers any way they see fit.”
PHB #2: “It’s really important that the candidate enable our developers to keep their creativity going.”
Halfdime: “Can you give me an example of what kinds of things you’re looking for?”
PHB #2: “We really need a broad based specialist to help us liaise with our corporate headquarters.”
Halfdime: “What’s your relationship with corporate like?”
PHB #1&2 (together): “Oh. They HATE us.”
PHB #1: “Yeah, remember the dhcp incident?”
Halfdime: “What was that?”
PHB #1: “One of our guys was working on new appliance and he needed to have it be a dhcp server. So he plugged it in to the core router here and it started handing out leases on the wrong network. Everyone in the office was down for like two days until he realized he was the cause of the problem.”
PHB #2: “Yeah, those guys in corporate were pissed. Good thing they never found out it was us!”

What followed the numerous tales of what they allow to keep their staff from having their creativity stifled was embarrassing. When they finished and asked me what I thought I would do to help them out, I gave them an hour long treatise on how broken their organization was and that any sysadmin worth hiring would start by setting boundaries.

They didn’t call me back.

I’ve thought about sending them a bill for two hours of consulting.

The morbid curiosity in me hasn’t grown enough for me to reach out to my contacts there and find out how long the guy that DID take the job lasted.

If you’ve made it this far, I would like to wrap this one up with another thanks to my wife. She put up with the horrendous hours I had at my previous job every May through October and is as unflappable as they come. She keeps me grounded and reminds me of what’s really important.

Thanks for being patient honey. You rock!

written by halfdime

For all that there is to talk about, nothing can compare to the 10th anniversary of the best decision I’ve ever made.

All of the many rich blessings that I enjoy would be nothing without my lovely wife.

If you know her, please thank her for her patience, kindness and great attitude while putting up with me these ten years.

I would be less than nothing without her and want the world to know it.

written by halfdime