Bob Plankers

Bob Plankers is a man who wears many hats. In his professional career he has spent three decades leading teams that design, build, operate, and talk about reliable, secure, and compliant IT infrastructures, both in the public sector and in the high tech industry. He currently focuses on applied security, compliance, and operational resilience for virtualization and cloud platforms.

LOPSA Sysadmin Days, August 6 & 7

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The League of Professional System Administrators is holding their second Sysadmin Days, this time in Cherry Hill, NJ, which is just outside of Philadelphia. August 6th and 7th. I spoke at their first Sysadmin Days last November in Phoenix, and had a great time. These are low-cost training opportunities, and unlike other organizations they are OS-agnostic and also focus as much on the professional side of things as they do the technical. This program includes Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux technical sessions, as well as sessions on time management, ethics, documentation, communication, policies, and compliance. If you sign up by July 13th there are excellent discounts available, especially if you are a student or from an educational institution. Lots …

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links for 2007-07-09

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gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: no longer angry “Just because I’m no longer angry at you doesn’t mean your ability to piss me off has lessened.” I love his cartoons. 3 Dollars or Less : Cheap Eats I’ve been looking for simple, cheap meals for myself lately. Lots of stuff here to try. (tags: revisit-food)

Broken Windows

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Have you read “The Pragmatic Programmer” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas? No? For what it’s worth I think you should. System administrators and software developers have so much in common, but we just don’t realize it. “Two sides of the same coin,” or something like that. A bunch of software development books would make great system administration books if you just replaced the word “software” with “operating system.” 🙂 As an example, check out this short excerpt on software entropy and broken windows, straight from the book. Sound familiar? What do you have that could be considered a broken window? I’ve got a few. One is my Linux server build system. When it was first designed we only supported …

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links for 2007-07-08

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$ dmesg_: DNS names in configuration files? No. Don’t use DNS? This guy has GOT to be kidding. Probably the worst advice ever. If your DNS sucks that bad use hosts files. Or, god forbid, fix your DNS situation. Message in a Bottle – Bottled Water – Luxury Water – Mineral Water How to Survive a Road Trip | Wise Bread Good advice for road trips. I might also add that an AAA membership and roadside assistance plan is often a great idea. Plus, you’ll often make up the cost of the membership in discounts at hotels. 55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read | Entrepreneurial Blog of Matt Huggins (tags: revisit)

FeedBurner

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Hey all, now that FeedBurner is free I am going to check it out by installing the feed redirection plugin. You shouldn’t have to do anything on your end, but I’m posting this just in case something goes sideways. Drop me a line if I broke something and didn’t catch it. Not that you’d know, since you’re probably reading this via the feed. 🙂

links for 2007-07-07

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YouTube – Keith Olbermann – You have stabbed us in the back – RESIGN Awesome monologue about the Libby pardon. While my politics don’t map to a single party I do agree that pardoning Libby is ridiculous. This administration has got to go. Going-to-the-Sun Road across Glacier National Park in Northern Montana – New York Times I love Glacier National Park. Boy, 5, subdues rabid fox to protect family – CNN.com Props to this kid. Hopefully he never learns how to be a coward. Tuning out technology / Pressures of the wired world drive some to cut back on e-mail and electronic gadgets I started doing this about ten years ago and still do it regularly, going offline for a …

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Dear Apple: Multi-Monitor Mac Minis

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Dear Apple, I’ve been using a secondhand, older PPC Mac Mini for the last three months at home, replacing my homebuilt PC running Vista. I like it. It is simple, quiet, and small, and exactly what I need at home, where my computer acts more as a terminal and browser than anything. Plus, Vista sucks. I would buy a brand new one right now if it could drive two monitors. Yup, I’d be a Mac owner if that were true. But it isn’t. You made the iMac capable of dual displays. Can you do it for the Mac Mini, too? PLEASE?!? …Bob

Ratatouille

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Saw Ratatouille today. Good movie. Pixar has outdone themselves (again) in the shading and textures, especially the night street scenes. If you see the movie notice the stones on the sidewalk. Beautiful. There is also a great lesson in how the characters handle the food critic. That’s all I’ll say to avoid any sort of spoiler.

Heard At The Police Concert

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Just remembered: last night at The Police concert the mostly-intoxicated lady behind us told Susannah: “You’re very patriotic! You’ve got a red shirt and a blue skirt, and, um, well, I guess you’re white.” Heh.

The Police in the Twin Cities

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“Poor FrictionPlane,” Susannah said at the end of the concert. “Big shoes to fill.” “You mean FictionPlane,” I replied. Her slip spoke volumes about our opinions of the opening band. The Police were in Saint Paul last night, and it was a great concert. Their opening band was FictionPlane, who are still a little rough around the edges, sounding like a cross between ColdPlay and The Police. Not surprising, given that the front man for FictionPlane is Joe Sumner, Sting’s son. There was no mention of that whatsoever, though. The crowd seemed to really like them. I didn’t think they were bad, just that they could have stopped jumping from the stacks on to stage after the second leap… It …

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