Lunch and Learning

Had a little jam session today, we did, over lunch.  Why are these always over lunch?  No one shows up. Ohhhh...

The questions were hot and heavy, and followed a common theme:

1. how do we decide when we need more staff?
2. how do we know we already have enough staff?
3. are we not so understaffed that we're being unsafe?
4. what do we do with the lost tasks that no one has time to work, but are too important to just drop?
5. how do we properly record the things that aren't going to get done, ever?
6. if our only metrics are how well we accomplish this one requested task, how can we prioritize anything else?

You get the idea.  

1. Their only metric is whether the customers complain
2. We don't have enough staff to be safe
3. Stuff's not getting done
4. Stuff's never getting done
5. Everyone's looking for work
6. The brass needs to be okay with that

I don't know they'll even understand.

Even odd I go to a new job, the unemployment line or the asylum.

David Gewirtz: I Feel For Ya, buddy, But You Brought This On Yourself

I'm skimming David Gewirtz' post, the one where he talks of going back to windows because Linux is too hard.

I'm really surprised to hear someone say this, and I can only suggest he's let the stress get the better of him and sees the greener grass on the other side.

And, as I said, he did this to himself.

How to Hate Linux:

1. Believe that random source code you pick up on the street is safer, cleaner and will install the very same as that which has been tuned and tweaked for your OS and tested for 6 months by professionals.
2. Mix distros.  See #1
3. Mix real third-part (3p) repositories and official ones.  See #1
4. Feel like you're entitled to this week's release of something.  See #1.  The difference between Windows, Apple and Linux is that in Linux apps you see the upstream code releases and feel some arrogant entitlement to them, like you're a dev and not just a user of that app.
5. embrace products with finicky dependencies and no real tracking thereof.  Perl.  Ruby too, I'm sure.
6. Don't consider your actions, and look for a scapegoat.

I want to say that David's new at this.  He didn't have a good change plan, he had no backout plan, he didn't test his upgrade.  It looks like he did no planning, but just rushed off a cowboy change without understanding and taking on the responsibility for it.  In no OS is this a smart course of action.  He talks of snapshots and didn't even make one.  But his credentials look good, even if he professes frustration at some basic syntax problems.  Then it gets weird:

Here’s where it gets crazy, though. I asked if they used this distro (CentOS, version 5.6) anywhere else in their organization.
“Yes,” I was told. “On lots of machines. But we don’t ever run updates. Once it’s installed, we leave it alone.”

All I can say is that co-lo facility needs to understand security a bit, and a certain former kernel-dev needs to understand why updates are updates.  I hope he outs the co-lo facility so I can ensure no one I know is using it any more.

The part that baffles me the most is that he wants to move over to windows.  Tests in our, um, "Bigger-than Large Scale Multi-site Enterprise Shop" showed that Linux runs the same three times as fast on the same hardware.  It's more secure, more stable and I can have my stuff only a day behind the 0-days vs up to a month behind them on that side of the fence -- because yes, I test my updates, set snapshots and prepare my back-out plans.  It's a no-brainer, David, but if you have a life and want to spend it on an extra-special relationship with your pager, car and cube, then that's totally up to you.

I admit:  I use windows.  I'm using it now.  I use windows (XP here, soon 7) to launch my putty sessions, run winamp, chrome, seamonkey and skype, and maybe some warcraft at home.  

But that's all you want to be running on it.  Windows is just another tool to get the job done .. on Unix.

Groklaw Heralds Minimal Victory

Groklaw's shutting down.

Well, if your heroes are no longer heroes, and your villians are vanquished, I guess it's time to call it a day.

That, and I expect the money ran out.  I guess if you're the first bunch to claim the SCO-IBM case was a SCO-Linux case, the people who're being paid to do so at least know better.  Good job:  you helped mislead thousands. Take a bow.

So, go away, already.

Getting the Business from Skype

For curiosity's sake, I grabbed a copy of Skype's Business Edition, for I wanted to see how it differed from Skype's Non-Business edition.  Judging by the layout and design of the non-business edition, it must be known as the 14-year-old or Kiddie Chatter edition.

How did it go with the Business Edition?

F A I L

That's kind-of it, really.

Dear Skype.  

I am uninstalling your 'business' edition today.  I have some questions, as well.

1) Unless I work for Facebook, do you think a Facebook add-in is appropriate for an edition targeted at Business?

2) I do not look at the phone when I'm in a conference; I look at other things, like what I'm working on.  Skype 5.1's 'Compact' View is still ridiculously large; please look to rendering it as unobtrusive as the phone we're trying to replace, so that its presence indicator can stay off to one side.

3) Please tell me which subscription you think I need to buy to get rid of further advertisements.  No, really:  You tell me what the threshold is, and I'll tell you whether I'm paying you or someone else.

At this point in time, I'm unable to properly discern a difference between this 5.1 business edition and that which I may have just installed on my niece's computer at home.  If there's been potentially a mix-up, and you do have a business edition that is at all different from the one targeted at the teen audience, please accept my apologies and pass it along.  I would like to upgrade if a better version exists.

I mean, honestly :  I admit I may not 'get' the value of Facebook and Twitter and them, but there's a time and place for it.  I really feel recreational surfing and downtime are one in the same, and required; but these should be separate from our work tools, so that we can choose when and how to integrate them into our daily routine;  having the games and toys added in with our tools allows the games and toys to bug us , and that's a little backward.

And yeah, I just installed the 5.1 edition marketed to kids and surfers.  It's the very same.  Is this a bait-and-switch, or did they just mix up the versions?  If there's a business-targeted version, sign me up.  This ain't it.

A Drunk Sailor with a Bag of Money ...

...Still could not buy this product from HP.

I've just spent two hours navigating the organically-grown compost that passes for the HP.com website.  Have you been there?  Really?  I don't know for whom it was designed, but I promise you I should know how to find this thing.  No luck.

I've been on the site a few times, now, and every time it was a dismal, abject failure and waste of time.  I can't find a single thing on there, on a site which could be optimized for the customer and built perhaps with the goal of getting you the information you want quickly so you can just open your wallet and spend.  I actually texted my boss, tonight, as he was also looking for the same thing on the same site, and wrote "we need to go whitebox.  These guys look like BOZOs with a site like this."

Do this.  Pretend you have a big bag of money. Your job is to buy something specific from HP, and this time let's say it's an ILO2 Advanced License.  It's required if you wanted to use the iLO interface to reinstall your server remotely (incidentally, the totally free product that does the same thing on everything else is called IPMI).  It's going to cost you $400 for something that costs them a dime in after-development materials.  Do you think you can buy iLO2 in under an hour with absolute concentration and a big bag of money that they really want you to give them?  Don't be so cocky:  I went around and around for two hours.  We both gave up.

Your turn.  GO!

One Trait of the Noob Unix Admin -- snobbery

Paul Venezia squeezed this gem out on his Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin:

Veteran Unix admin trait No. 2: We use vi, not emacs, and definitely not pico or nano
While we know that emacs is near and dear to the hearts of many Unix admins, it really is the Unix equivalent of Microsoft Word. Vi -- and explicitly vim -- is the true tool for veteran Unix geeks who need to get things done and not muck about with the extraneous nonsense that comes with emacs.

and the best part:

Emacs has a built-in game of Tetris, for crying out loud.

.. and it's here that Paul suggests he has no clue but a good helping of editor bias.

Fucking LINUX has built-in games: does that make it unacceptable to Paul? Just because the options are there, doesn't mean one needs to use them or even install them, but I worry this indicates the idea of a modular suite of tools could be too new a concept.

No, he's just biased against emacs, which is normal. I used vi for a while, early on in my career, suffering with the archaic two-mode system that I still cannot fathom. I had no bias at that time, and as such didn't have the built-in snobbery that comes with using an obsolete tool that even its creator agrees is "built for a world that doesn't exist any more." Yes, and after giving emacs the same amount of unbiased time I gave to learning vi, I never went back. I assessed the two without bias, and I made a choice.
I'd challenge Paul to do the same.

I've listened to the ranting of the vi bigots for a generation, and I've worry how similar this new crop sounds to the old. I like Paul, and I agree with him on many topics, and I enjoy reading most of what he writes. Occasionally, though, when he displays an error as fundamental as this one, I wonder at the thought processes.

But, he's only been doing the sysadmin for just over a decade, so he's still almost new.

Groklaw's head cries unimportant

Christmas day gave us Santa, Stockings and a gripe from IBM's Pamela Jones.

 If you note the dates in our Archives, March is when we were staying up 'til 4 in the morning covering the second SCO v. Novell trial in Utah, which started on March 8, and that same month Novell entered into this humiliating deal with Microsoft, agreeing to get paid in part for showing up for a contractually set number of OpenXML standards meetings and events. It was signed on March 29, the day before the jury ruled that Novell did not transfer the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights to Santa Cruz in 1995. Reading the excuses from a couple of Novell employees after the news of the work agreement broke justifying the deal makes me even more furious, because there is nothing they should say except, "I'm sorry we made the community look like we sell out for money." And they are not sorry. 

I don't wish to help people like that. 

All I have to say is, Sorry Pam.  You painted someone as a total hero and, shock of shocks, they're only just a normal company.  The company took the opportunity provided by the minute examination of the written agreement and, despite everyone in the room agreeing that a sale was a sale, found they could reverse the terms of the deal and un-sell the rights they may've admitted to believing they sold earlier.

Now the company sees another opportunity.  What, you think they're not going to capitalize on that?  It's an asset they can sell off, and a problem they can give to someone else.  Wheeee!  Were I them, I'd sell it in a heartbeat.

Sorry to hear the heroes you promoted aren't, well, heroes.  Companies are like that, and while I resent you for painting my favourite people in the worst light possible for so long, I don't resent you for not knowing that companies are companies.  It's a growth opportunity.

I'll be waiting for your re-examination of the past decade in this fresh, new light.