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.

Not Seeing Partitions on USB Disks

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I have a 750 GB WD MyBook drive that I move lots of data around on, specifically from work to home and back. Today I wanted to hook it up to my development Linux box. The last time I did this I walked up and plugged it into the front USB ports on the machine (a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4). No sweat. Today was different, though. For whatever reason the partition on the disk didn’t get picked up automatically. I plugged the drive in and got /dev/sdt, but no /dev/sdt1, though fdisk showed it there. Um, WTF. After a few minutes of futzing around with it, unplugging it, plugging it back in, flailing with pvscan, …

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links for 2008-01-15

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Davenetics* : The Sound Filters soundflavor.com added browsing by style, year recorded, tempo, mood, etc., which is pretty cool. The octopus who loves his Mr Potato Head | Metro.co.uk “The 1.8m-wide (6ft) creature is so attached to Mr Potato Head that he turns aggressive when aquarium staff try to remove it from his tank.” ThinkMac Blog : Scorched earth “Honestly I am a little bitter about this, what NewsGator has done is effectively anti-competitive…” OMFG. Um, sorry, but giving away the desktop software to win the enterprise sale is pretty common. Grow a set and step up. molly.com » Too Wired in a Wireless World? “The luggage I pack is sometimes filled with so many wires, cables, power supplies and …

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Making A Difference

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“You guys sure make a difference around here,” a coworker says on his way out the door. “He didn’t say if the difference we make is good or bad.” “Sure, ruin the first compliment we’ve had in years.”

links for 2008-01-13

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How NOT to handle a layoff, via Tesla « FoundRead I agree completely: don’t give people a reason to take you down before you’ve even released a product. Sad Kermit – Official Website “Soon after the death of Jim Henson, Sad Kermit spiraled downward into a life full of addiction, romance, and pain.” The video on the web site of Kermit singing the Cash version of “Hurt” is awesome.

links for 2008-01-12

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The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.: How To Actually Win A Fist Fight This is the sort of content you don’t see much of. I like it. No idea why someone in del.icio.us tagged it with ‘funny.’ It isn’t — getting the crap kicked out of you sucks. 37 – Newyorkistan « strange maps Interesting blog, all about strange maps like this one. Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen), Baz Lurhman “Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

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I had to dig this up for a friend, I figured I’d post it. Last time I looked on teh intertubes I couldn’t find a copy. All Your Base Are Belong To Us It is the dance remix version. My coworkers promptly counterattacked with the Picard Song. FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

Having Your Act Together

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Having been a support technician I can safely say that the fastest way to a support guy’s heart is to know that he hates you. He doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want an audience. You are not his friend. And it isn’t personal. He just wants to get in, get the problem fixed, and get out again. The best way to defeat this is to have your act together. Help him get out as fast as possible and he’ll stay forever. My DSL modem died two days ago. I know it died because the power light would come on, then the Ethernet light despite no Ethernet connection. Then it would sit there, and the Ethernet light would occassionally blink …

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links for 2008-01-11

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The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry Architecture: A House Made from 110 Tons of Steel At least you can decorate with magnets. gapingvoid: beware of turning hobbies into jobs “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.” True — I turned my computer hobby into a career, and ended up needing to find a new hobby (lighting design for community theater).

links for 2008-01-10

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Woot : Kodak EasyShare 5100 All in One Printer I love Woot’s product descriptions. My friend John described this one as “a printer’s take on Requiem for a Dream.” Blacklisted from Google Notebook “Your account was accidentally blacklisted by a blacklisting heuristic that looked at total size of notebook information.” Showing a 404 error page instead of a “you’ve been blacklisted” message is yet another example of n00bs running services. Do hardworking employees make their slacker colleagues more productive? – By Tim Harford – Slate Magazine “It turns out that facing toward a fast worker makes no difference, but having a fast worker face toward you encourages frenetic scanner-wielding.” Makes sense, if you know someone is watching your game improves. …

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Why Would You Say No?

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I registered to see a Cisco seminar about their Network Emergency Response Vehicle. Like seeing the Sun Blackbox, I look forward to seeing what technology they’ve crammed in a truck. The registration form had a funny field, though. Admittedly it was optional, so you didn’t have to answer, but it’s strange to see a form with only one response checkbox:

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