Sitting on my floor, reading people’s horror stories of misused rm -rf’s, as I delete more data than I can count in a reasonable amount of time… (the command to show how much data is in this qtree just seems to hang… I haven’t had the patience to wait for an answer)…

I have stopped and restarted this command half a dozen times to make sure I’m deleting what I want to delete… Its been running for 12 hours now… Its going to take a while.

My first linux system, roto-router, was an IBM PS/2; a 486 that I upgraded to have a math coprocessor, 32MB of RAM, and a 1G hard disk. The system has been kicking around and still boots, but its only a matter of time before the 13 year old hardware gives up the ghost…

So, thanks to virtualization and some common unix tools…

Roto-Router is running in Parallels on my intel mac.

I did recompile the kernel to get the ethernet interface detected (old card was an isa ne2000, parallels uses a realtek 8029), removed an append line from lilo.conf, and I set eth0 to dhcp. Otherwise, its untouched.

We found the coolest thing on one of our servers today… legacy.txt, which describes the history of the application… From the first admin through buyouts and new admins…

Having come into this environment 7+ years after its creation, reading these names is lile… reading about relatives. These people have sat here and plunked away at these very servers… I bet if I check, I’ll see remnants of old accounts… home directories that were kept around… initials that I’ll now recognize…

If I turn over an application, I’ll have to leave something like this behind…

I need to immerse myself in light and techno, and bounce all night.

Where’s the B&W Ball when you need it?

If I’m listing countries I’ve been to, do I need to have been old enough to remember them? There’s a photo of me there, but I don’t remember much of that trip… Maybe I just need to head up to canada and touch the other side of the border to keep it honest.

[Edit: And how long would I have to be in the country for it to count? I was in Tahiti for like an hour while the plane refuled…]

I’m determined to see this project through, even though I may soon find myself the old man on the team; having been with the company for about a year (4 months of that as a contractor).

Its daunting, and I know that I’m not prepared for the tasks ahead of me… yet. But I have laid out a path, and I have faith in myself and my team (even as it grows smaller and smaller).

The next three months will get tougher and tougher, and I’m sure I’ll continue to live like a zombie until its over… but maybe on the other side of this I can take some time off… My first real vacation as a working man. A whole week; not just a monday or a friday off or a three day weekend… No, I’m talking 7 days in a country where english isn’t their native language, and possibly one that requires a passport. Drinking rum drinks, and oogling bikinis. I haven’t picked it out yet; but I don’t need to.

I bitch, and I stress on bullshit things that don’t really mean anything (in the hunter-gatherer sense of things)… but I also know that this is a great opportunity; and I did more last month than a lot of sysadmins will get to do in their entire careers. And while I will never see myself as good enough; especially as I find new, extremely talented people to hold myself up against, I do know how I compare to the average person in this line of work…

Its been a real privilege to be able to interview people for this job, and a real eye-opener. Questions we initially presented as “sorry, but we have to start with the basics…” went unanswered so often, that we started to get extatic when we got an answer. I also know what I look for in another admin now, and I understand better the face I need to present the next time I go out and look for a job (maybe later this year, maybe middle of next).

“Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters.”
– Margaret Halsey

Management American Style…….

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program”, with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.

A girl of six triggered a security scare at an airport – with a pink Bugs Bunny water pistol rammed full of sweets.

Kelly Vinnicombe was bought the £2.50 toy in the departure lounge by her mother Sarah, and packed it in her bag.

But, as they went through the X-ray security machine, guards hauled them to one side.

Ms Vinnicombe, 34, was told the toy was technically a ‘weapon’ and would have to be registered at the firearms desk.

She spent an hour explaining where the gun came from – just metres away in an airport shop – before the toy was tagged and packed in a separate part of the plane.

Ms Vinnicombe, of Plymouth, Devon, said: ‘It’s bright pink with Bugs Bunny on it.’

The pair were reunited with their cargo at Heathrow Airport after an 11-hour flight.

A Cape Town airport spokeswoman insisted: ‘It’s is better to be safe than sorry.’