The Truce
I wish that all of the things that like to stand between me and my work would take as kindly to a folded-up blanket.
General Rambling
34 Thoughts For 34 Years
“Ask. What’s the worst thing that’ll happen? They’ll say no.” – Lynn Plankers You don’t learn anything until you have to fix something. Technology doesn’t fix “people” problems. Don’t look at the camera. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire Many greetings are questions. Answer them. A true expert admits when he doesn’t know something. Swing for the fences, unless you like wasting time. “Bad decisions make good stories.” – Unknown People who want to be in charge probably shouldn’t be. It’s good to be alone from time to time. Always give credit. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Edison If a tool doesn’t save you …
Maybe They Were In The Bathroom
My mom always said “if it’s important they’ll call back.”
Hard-Working Software Everyone Will Use
I’m cleaning my cube today. Not because of any employment changes, just that it looks like a bomb went off, and while I watch servers update themselves I can be doing something productive. That all went out the window with what I found between my defibrillator (a Burdick Medic 4) and my Cisco AGS+: It’s discoveries like this that actually make me want to clean my cube. Time to see if TechNet has Windows 3.1…
Sometimes My Job Has Interesting Benefits
I’m not the biggest sports fan around, but it is pretty cool to be telecommunications support from the sidelines on the day the UW Badgers are likely to win the Big Ten championship.
Apple, Xserves, and OS X Server
Apple will not be developing a future version of Xserve. Xserve will be available for order through January 31, 2011. Apple will honor and support all Xserve system warranties and extended support programs. Apple intends to offer the current shipping 160GB, 1TB, and 2TB Apple Drive Modules for Xserve through the end of 2011 or while supplies last. Apple will continue to support Xserve customers with service parts for warranty and out-of-warranty service. As of January 31, 2011 Apple will no longer have enterprise-class hardware for sale. This has sparked a massive discussion, because there are a number of pretty vocal people using Xserves to run Mac OS X Server, supporting Mac OS X clients, or as clusters running Xgrid. …
Getting WordPress Updates To Work With FTP
WordPress includes a handy feature to auto-upgrade plugins, themes, and even the core software when needed. However, it has never worked for me on my self-hosted blog. The Updates page prompts me for FTP information, I press ‘Proceed’, and I get a blank page. Nothing happens. So I tore into the wp-config.php documentation. Here’s how to get automatic updates working with FTP. There are methods to get SSH working for these updates, but at the time I wrote this the PHP ssh2 extension wasn’t compiling right, and the whole process was quite complex. I’ll make another post later when things get better. Goes without saying that a backup copy of your stuff might be handy, too… First, make sure your …
Three Organizational Decisions That Help Me Virtualize
Over the last ten years my organization has come a long way with its IT policies and processes. We’ve gone from the wild, wild west of IT where personal heroism ruled the day, to a place where there’s just enough process to make sure that communication happens correctly and things like our Configuration Management Database (CMDB) stay up to date. It’s been a lot of work, but I am actually really proud of where we’re at. There are three fundamental decisions we made a long time ago that, had they not been made, would have drastically changed how virtualization has proceeded here. 1. Clearly defined maintenance windows. Knowing exactly when someone can do maintenance on server has been crucial to …
Youth
“Hey, do any of you guys have an old, full-height hard disk lying around?” This was a relatively new person from another group in our organization. People occasionally come looking for random old equipment to use for training & examples, because they know we have things like original IBM PCs, Cisco AGS+ routers, token ring MAUs, and 1200 baud Multitech Multimodems on hand. “Sure, I’ve got a full height drive, one second.” I produce a full-height 600 MB Imprimis SCSI disk. Made in the USA, so it’s pretty old. It’s a bookend on my bookshelf. “What in the heck is that?” he asks. “Um, a full-height drive?” I reply, really wondering what he thinks he’s asking for. “No, man, I …
Oregon Trail: The Movie
One would think this is off-topic, but for techies it really isn’t. I present to you the official trailer for The Oregon Trail. Very well done! Makes me proud to have grown up in Minnesota (MECC == “Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium”). If you want to play it Classic Gaming has it and a copy of AppleWin.
