The Lone Sysadmin

• iPod Earbud Revelation Is Shocking – ABC News
  This happens to me all the time — I've stopped using the Apple In-Ear headphones because of it.

• Achenblog – Astronauts At Safeway Self-Checkout
  This paragraph reminds me of of my work as a sysadmin, and the general lack of credit sysadmins get when things just work: "This is sort of like fixing a car that has been sitting in a field for 8 years. NASA has this problem — the things that they do are really really hard. And yet often to outsiders it looks relatively easy. But it looks easy because a) they train like crazy, and b) they throw a lot of top resources at it. So they solve these problems fixing the Hubble, but that's because they've been practicing for _years_ and they have 200 people on the ground looking over every procedure. They make it look easy like an Olympic athlete makes it look easy."

Hey, what’s this? It’s a blog… and I seem to have a login to it. :-)

Some of you have emailed me, wondering where in the heck I’ve gone. It’s not a long story:

1. Work has been nutty lately. I can safely summarize it by saying “be careful what you wish for.” For a long time I’ve wanted to get more involved with project management and higher-level decision making in my organization. Now I long for the days when it was just me, vi, and a dark room.

2. My hobbies have been nutty lately. I decided about a year ago that I’d like to try producing a play with my theater company, Strollers Theatre. I’ve done that now. There’s really no way to describe how difficult it is to start from nothing and build a show that people will want to attend. I can say that it’s a lot easier when you get the right people on your team. Someone who is on top of their game makes everything more enjoyable. It’s finding those people that’s tough (and then not burning them out).

On top of it all, where I’ve had some personal time it’s been consumed with weddings, funerals, births, emergencies, illnesses, my desire to sleep, and occasionally some escape back into World of Warcraft (yeah, I started playing again — a guy needs at least one fun hobby). :-) At any rate, this week is different. I’m getting back on the horse here, catching up on my blog reading, and going to start writing again. Yeehah!

• Thierry Legault – Transit of Atlantis and Hubble in front of the Sun
  This is darn cool.