Does anybody else think we’re living in Atlas Shrugged? When can I get bailed out? I’ve made several bad decisions in my life and I’d like to be compensated for them. And by “compensated” I mean “massively compensated, like dump trucks full of cash.” After all, why should I be responsible for my own actions and decisions? If I were Honda or Toyota I’d be getting my lawyers ready to sue a lot of people.
Update: Symantec has altered their support documentation so that VMotion isn’t unsupported anymore. That’s a good move. As you read the rest of this post keep that in mind. I second the vinternals commentary on Symantec. The security software vendor joins the ranks of the clueless with their wonderful support document: Question/Issue: Is ESX server VMotion supported with SAV and SEP? Solution: Symantec does not support ESX server VMotion at this time. Vendors are shameless. They charge you a ton for support, then they’ll do whatever they can to point the finger at somebody else when you call. It’s one thing to put a disclaimer in for performance issues. Virtualization sometimes exposes weird performance issues, and if it’s a performance …
It’s a rare day when I get to see operating systems fail in ways I’ve never seen before. I’ve been having the strangest problems with a virtual machine I’m trying to deploy. It boots but won’t come up properly on the network. Services will start but complain about the network, or just be unresponsive. I can’t ping it, either. I’ve deployed several other virtual machines today from this same image, so it isn’t the image. Regardless, I redeployed it. Still messed up. I double-checked the network settings, /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf, gateway devices, netstat, route, everything. Nothing is wrong. I changed the IP address to something else, and it works great. I checked with my NOC to see if the IP I’d …
“What, you just sit around all day browsing Wikipedia?” “Excuse me?” “What are you looking at in Wikipedia?” “The article on X-Men.” “Tough day at work, I suppose.” “Um, I’m trying to figure out a naming scheme for the 10 new servers I’m bringing in. That okay with you?” “Oh, sorry.” Just because you think I’m not doing work doesn’t mean you’re right. (also, great site for naming schemes: namingschemes.com)
My friend Terry’s slightly unorthodox take on cloud computing: To hell with cloud computing. Clouds are puffy crap that float lazily by. Is that what you want out of your service provider? Just floating by without a care in the world? It is time for tornado computing. Or hurricane computing. Real wrath of God type stuff. I want an architecture that knocks me off my feet, whips my apps around and hurls them half way through a tree. I don’t want my data intact for some script kiddie to steal. I want it like a frog in a blender; unrecognizably processed with a taste only I care for. So to that end I am setting half of my air handlers …
You know, if you’re a system administrator there are a few things you should know (and probably do). One of those things is why you should have backups. If you can’t figure out why perhaps you should find a different profession. Seriously. I’m fine if you don’t keep backups because you’ve thought about it and you are taking a calculated risk. However, having to explain why backups are valuable to someone who, until this moment, I considered a peer is ridiculous. It’s like having to explain what DNS does to someone who calls themselves a network administrator. I’ve done that, too.
How do I know that it’s time for Apple to give birth to the 3G iPhone? Because my officemate has started to refer to it as “the second coming of Jesus.” I wrote the new phone a haiku: Dear 3G iPhone Wish you were here already So people shut it. Not that I’m tired of hearing about it. Nope. I hear it will have infinite battery life. And it will read your mind. And it will have 1 TB of storage. And it will find your keys when you lose them. And it will feed your cats. I can has 3G iPhone. Arggh.
/etc/hosts is a nice way to temporarily convince a host that certain DNS mappings exist, for testing, troubleshooting, or just temporarily working around oddities. However, I’ve seen a resurgence in using /etc/hosts for more than just temporary purposes. This, in my opinion, is bad. I’ve always been a huge fan of tip #6 in “The Pragmatic Programmer:” Don’t Repeat Yourself. As soon as you repeat yourself you risk the different copies getting out of sync, which causes problems and confusion. Putting a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) in /etc/hosts as well as in DNS means that at some point later in life the two will be out of sync. “It’s only on a couple of hosts, for testing.” First, if it’s …
I just cleared out my voice mail box, and I made some observations about voice mail messages: First, I hate voice mail. Email me instead. You don’t have to tell me what time it is. Voice mail is time-stamped, and it usually doesn’t matter that much. You do need to say who you are, because voice mail doesn’t record that. Do this in your first sentence. If you are with a vendor you should say that, too, especially if I’m waiting for a call from you. Please use your full name. You might be one of my closest friends but sometimes phones make people sound weird, cell phones cut out, and background noise sometimes makes it hard to figure out …
The ever-annoying, ever-moronic[0] Java Updater popped up today and prompted me to update. I indulged it, figuring there was probably some new gaping security hole again. What did I find as I proceeded? It wanted to install the Google Toolbar. Did I have the Google Toolbar already installed? No. So why is the default action to install it, unless I opt out? Apple’s taken some heat lately for their decision to push Safari to anybody who runs their Apple Software Update utility. I didn’t want Safari, but unless I opt out of it I’ll get it. Now Sun and Google are doing the same thing with the Google Toolbar. Users know that if they don’t update their software they’ll get …
