In need of some honest job advice...
ERT
I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff. Since my
University days, I've held a series of progressively more responsible network
type jobs. (HelpDesk -> SupportMonkey -> LAN Admin -> SiteAdmin -> Engineer)
The problem? They're all NT jobs. *ducks* Once you go down the dark road of
NT/2000/XP/whatever's next, it's hard to come back. I also know more than most
NT admins (uh, yeah, it does that, just reboot and you'll be fine.) I'm looking
for work now, as it seems the layoff bug is about to hit. For my next job, I'd
like to start working more with unix environments. I've done a lot of learning
on my own (home network, etc) and want to step up to a sysadmin job that's more
challenging than applying service packs and fixing the registry. The old Catch-
22 exists here...how do I get an "experience required" unix job without paid
experience? Any idiot in our company can come in off the street with an MCSE
(and believe me, they DO) and get an NT job in 5 minutes. Every unix shop (even
NT/Unix hybrids) doesn't have learn-on-the-job type positions.
ObNTRant: I want out of NTland because of people like Joe NewlyMintedMCSE.
Being an "engineer" type, I design the stuff for field deployment. Site admin
calls me up a few weeks ago, and wants to know why GroupA can't execute the
custom script I wrote for them. I rattle off a few commands to put in the
login script, and he says "thanks." Another hour passes, and he calls up unable
to find the login script. "\\ServerName\NETLOGON\profile.cmd" "Thanks." Another
call... he used MSWord to edit the script and no one can log in.
So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
are? And if you're in the NYC area and need a good solid admin who can actually
think, could you let me know? :)
Thanks in advance...
-Eric
Arthur van der Harg
ERT <er...@optonline.net> wrote:
>So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
>are?
$ORK wanted a Mac-experienced sysadmin, I wanted a job administering
Macs and/or Unix. The job originally started through a temp agency with
the agreed condition that they knew I was looking for a long-term job.
Basically the deal was: "I'm good. If you hire me out you get a good rep
and I get a chance to see the company. Win-win situation both ways."
Told $ORK the same deal: "Hire me for three months thru the agency. If
you like me I'll stay, if not I'll give it my best for three months and
move on. Even if I don't want to stay I'll commit myself for these three
months." That was well over five years ago.
How I got the experience? I administered my group's LAN while I was
working as a student and PhD student. Hardly "paid experience". More
like everyone knew me as the sysadmin. Some people were surprised we had
an actual sysadmin that was not me. Some were surprised I was a student.
The best part was when arrogant students would come up and go like "you
have to do $thing for me". 'Scuse me? Who did you think you were talking
to? The LAR was all the better because I actually outranked them :-)
Arthur
Jonathan Guthrie
> So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
> are?
Well, the FIRST time Bob came into my office and told me to change
the root password on both development systems. I've never had any
trouble looking for Unix (and other) admin positions. They usually
come looking for me.
Ick.
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jgut...@brokersys.com)
Sto pro veritate
Mike Andrews
: So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
: are? And if you're in the NYC area and need a good solid admin who can actually
: think, could you let me know? :)
I started off at Rice U. in '64, computered out, worked for
Lockheed as an eletronics tech at NASA MSC (ham license and
FCC 2nd Class Phone and Telegraph tickets helped) and computer
operator (computering out gave me useful skills, enlisted (AF)
with an Army draft notice in hand, spent a year (would have been
18 months, except that my electronics skills allowed me to test
out of 24 weeks of stuff) in AF electronics tech school in San
Antonio, got out in '71, worked for the OU computing center as
System Programmer (skills from Rice and Lockheed came in useful),
went back to school and changed jobs from SysProg to Student
Assistant.
Job as Student Assistant exposed me to _EVERYTHING_ from "Hello
World" in Watfor, through tying IMS databases to various
statpacks, to showing post-docs why their simulation of an LNG
tanker rupture in a crowded port with open flames wasn't working
right (went to dynamic stepsizes, adaptive integration, etc.).
Also took lots of computer-related math as well as the standard
"pure math" curriculum, and had a true master (Richard V. Andree)
as my mentor.
Worked for Andree for 2 years, writing programs to build
wordlists, pattern word dictionaries, anagram dictionaries,
etc., for his crypto-in-school projects. Took more pure and
computer-related math, and got within 12 hours of graduation
when a classmate who was working for WeBuildHighways said their
lead sysprog was leaving and did I want the job at US$14,900
p.a.? This was when a new Volvo 240 cost $8K and was considered
expensive.
I did, and had had a little experience with their system about 4
years previous, when I took a database-and-earch-engine package
up there and installed it. They knew me, and I knew them, and
classmate made sure I got noticed. So I quit school in mid-March,
worked 2 weeks free to make sure I'd land running, and got
the job on 04 April 1977. Somewhere in all this (1973), I got
married, and I got divorced shortly before I started the job.
Retired from it Jan 1, 2001, went back to work as a contract
temp there in July 2001. _Still_ there. It's home.
--
"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article,
then hire a hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and
fuck his dog and smash his computer into little bits. Anything
more is just extremism." - Paul Tomblin
Mark C. Langston
> OK, this is my first post in a LONG time...but I could use some advice.
>
> I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff. Since my
> University days, I've held a series of progressively more
> responsible network type jobs. (HelpDesk -> SupportMonkey -> LAN
> Admin -> SiteAdmin -> Engineer) The problem? They're all NT jobs.
ObPeeve (ignoring the line-length one I just graciously corrected): NT
systems administrators who insist on referring to themselves as
network administrators. A network administrator is a critter who is
neck-deep in switches, routers, and routing protocols. They are the
monks who understand "shortest path first" means something more than
"I'll look for my keys over here because the light's better."
I realize that The Beast From Redmond insists that NT systems
administrators be called "network administrators". That doesn't,
however, justify propagating the misuse of the term. If I interview
someone for a networking position, they'd better be quick with
explanations of the benefits and costs of CIDR. They'd best have a
good rationale for not using BGP4 handy. And if they were looking
forward to continuing respiration, they'd best not be some NT admin
come looking in the wrong office for a job just because the almighty
Bill thinks "network admin" means "bloke who console-jockeys M$
software."
I'll refrain from applying the verbal blood-eagling just now. It's
late and I'm a quart low on vitriol at the moment, having used most
of it dealing with the BPCFH[0] earlier today.
[0] #define PC "phone company"
--
Mark C. Langston
ma...@bitshift.org
Systems Admin
San Jose, CA
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
In <l5xm7.57437$tb.50...@news02.optonline.net>, on 09/08/2001
at 10:38 PM, ERT <er...@optonline.net> said:
>So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up
>where you are?
By being in places small enough to not have separate
administrators, or places where there were administrators but they
didn't know their tools and had to come to systems for assistance. Or
places where they didn't come to systems for assistance and we had to
clean up after them.
Of course, this was mostly on an IBM mainframe track, and in the Unix
world things are different[1] and all of your cow orkers will know
their jobs and do them properly.
[1] Who is making that insane cackling sound? Even if it is patently
false I want to believe it.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Reply to domain acm dot org user shmuel to contact me.
"He was born with a gift of laughter,
and a sense that the world was mad."
J.D. Baldwin
First of all,
echo $MARKS_COMMENTS_ABOUT_LINE_LENGTHS
In the previous article, ERT <er...@optonline.net> wrote:
> I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff.
Slight complaint here: I've known lots of network and other kinds of
admin who "kn[e]w [their] stuff" but were still shitty admins, mainly
because of deficiencies in personality, troubleshooting skills and/or
work habits. Smart people who didn't function in slot ______. "Know"
isn't the beginning and end of the story.
That comment is not about you, of course; I don't know you. It's
about the assumption underlying the statement, which is a bit of a
peeve of mine.
> So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up
> where you are?
echo $SHMUELS_COMMENTS_ABOUT_SMALL_SHOPS
Also -- and you won't like this one, but I offer it as a cautionary
tale for others -- I simply refused to touch Windows. Even when I
knew, I pretended not to know.
I turned down training. ("I think Joe's free that week. Send him.")
I made like I didn't understand GUIs. (This one is an acting
challenge and takes some mental prep. Don't try to "wing it.")
I denounced it as evil-and-rude in earshot of anyone with the
slightest influence over my work assignments. Repeatedly.
Somehow, I just sort of wound up gravitating toward the UNIX stuff in
my shops. (I did have the advantage of having direct UNIX experience
I'd picked up before beginning my civilian career. Still, there was
pressure to move in the NT direction until I landed in my current
niche.)
> And if you're in the NYC area and need a good solid admin who can
> actually think, could you let me know? :)
I can't help you directly, but if I were you, I'd apply at Panix.
Frrfu, people are going to start thinking I hold Panix stock.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Felix von Leitner
> I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff.
What's the difference between a hub and a multi-port repeater?
> Since my University days, I've held a series of progressively more
> responsible network type jobs. (HelpDesk -> SupportMonkey -> LAN Admin
> -> SiteAdmin -> Engineer) The problem? They're all NT jobs. *ducks*
> Once you go down the dark road of NT/2000/XP/whatever's next, it's
> hard to come back.
Praise the Lord! We wouldn't them idiots to come back anyways.
Please stay with NT. Thank You.
> I also know more than most NT admins (uh, yeah, it does that, just
> reboot and you'll be fine.)
Funny. That's what all of them say.
> I'm looking for work now, as it seems the layoff bug is about to hit.
Good riddance, NT weasels!
random
> So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
> are? And if you're in the NYC area and need a good solid admin who can actually
> think, could you let me know? :)
Accident.
At my previous $ORK the $PHB tried to make me the NT admin. I pretty much
flatly refused. Whenever asked I deny any and all knowledge of
Winsux. Now I'm the $NIX God, the Network God, and the IT PHB. I have
PFYs to do anything invoving a M$ product.
Moving to Denver in six days. Allergies are telling me not to wait that
long.
R
Carl Schelin
Mike Andrews <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote:
>ERT <er...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>: So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
>: are?
>
newsswerver. My apologies to Mike.
In the Army stationed in va.us and working as a graphic artist. The
old cut-and-paste with X-Acto knives and waxers. The civilian in
charge of the typesetter moved on and I slid in to that role. A field
tech showed me how to get in to the guts of the OS and put a couple of
games (pong and mastermind are the main two). I was able to get more
out of that machine in six months than the civilian did in two years.
I also play D&D among other games. I picked up a Sinclair and whipped
up a tiny menu based basic program that did come character tables. I
converted the program to the Radio Shack Color Computer.
In '84, after moving back in with my parents, I converted the program
to an IBM PC (Dos 1.1). My brother and I found BBS's ($133 first month
phone bill).
I also found a part time programming job (basic) (the other part was
chasing cows and doing surveying work).
I attended Computer Learning Center, learning mainframe type
programming but there were no jobs for people who went to CLC so it
was back to the part time programming/part time cow chasing job.
Found a full time job maintaining a funeral home package in IBM Basic
on the System 23 and in Libra Basic, a System 23 basic clone. I also
installed Novell networks on Arcnet type networks. When the lady doing
the Network configurations started her own company, they asked me if I
wanted to learn networks. They sent me to a Novell class in Raleigh.
Next job was installing Novell networks.
Around this time I ran a gaming BBS at home and used machines from the
last job which folded because of lawyers.
The next job was telephone tech support for 3com networks, word
perfect, c programming, and dos. You try walking an irritating asian
lady through her third installation after losing her key disk twice.
In that company, I moved down to programming in r:base and then became
their first full time "Network Engineer".
In the mean time, I worked on my gaming program and other utilities. I
sold copies of my 3com toolkit to Seagate and GTE.
When they outsourced their MIS department, I moved on to Johns Hopkins
APL where I met the first person outside of somewhere I worked who
knew my name and looked forward to meeting me. I also was exposed to
Unix, VMS, and the Internet. At the time, that was specific to Nethack
and Usenet. JHUAPL asked me to write a news reader. I used the code
from WinVN (Mark Riorden?) and made a Dos based newsreader.
A year later, two guys recommended me to a company with a contract at
NASA who were looking for a "LAN Admin". I took over their LAN MAN
setup and kept it running for 5 years. About 2 years past when just
about everybody else at HQ gave up on it. I also whipped up a new
newsreader and kept up on Usenet.
A new contract came in and I moved in to the centralized network
department. The first time I began working with my peers. Boy was that
an experience. I've just been reading and doing what I could to keep
everything running and I found out that doing that was not "normal".
Being in the new department let me talk directly with the Unix guys.
I asked many times over the next couple of years if I could take over
the NNTP server. I had knowledge in how NNTP ran but not on the server
side. No every time.
So when the consolodation of the NT servers were completed, I found
that I didn't want to become an operator (changing tapes, making user
accounts, checking permissions) and decided to move on. Before that
could happen, the lead Unix guy and the Operations manager stopped by
and offered me a position as a Unix geek running the news server. I
actually had to consider whether I wanted to change jobs or stay with
NASA but I eventually accepted the position.
Gradually I admined the systems until I became the Lead Unix Geek. The
old LUG moved on to Engineering where he still sits today.
Now I've moved on to a Sustaining Engineer position working with the
Cisco and Unix systems here at HQ. The company I worked for coughed up
$10,000 to send me to CCNP class and the new company coughed up the
class fee so that I could stay at NASA HQ when the contract changed
again.
All in all, I've just been myself and moved in to the spots as they
opened up. I explore what's interesting to me and they seem to fall in
to what people are paying money for. I'm sure I'd still be here mostly
lurking even if I didn't make some extravagant amount of money.
And the boss came up to me Friday and wanted to know if I had enough
experience to install a client on an NT server. I think I've reached
Nerdvana.
Carl
Tanuki the Raccoon-dog
<er...@optonline.net> said
>So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
>are?
Your Humble Narrator started off doing a Botany degree[1] but
developed an aversion to sitting half-way up wind/rainswept Welsh
mountains trying to identify an insignificant moss or liverwort
using a misted-up hand-lens.
So I stayed in the lab and did the statistics[2] on the data
collected by the others. And this led me to cross paths with
a CDC7600[3] and a Honeywell-6080, and in turn, a knowledge[4]
of FROTRAN-60 developed.
After that, it was downhill all the way - accelerated by the
discovery that people with rather-poor degrees in Agricultural
Botany got paid a lot less than those who could code FROTRAN.
Being presented with a GEC 4000-series minicomputer, a heap
of CAMAC-crates and a Honeywell 66DPS/300, and told "network it"
led to a growing acquaintance with "Coloured Books" protocols and
PDP11 assembler and HDLC and CATEX and other such mutant evils.
Then they offered me the "new" drug. TCP/IP via a 64Kbit/second
transatlantic link some time in the late-1980s. I couldn't go
back.
Such is the path of my fall from grace. It could, however, have
been much worse - I could have fallen amongst Auditors or
Sociologists.
[1]call me a "flower-counter" and I'll show you just how distressing it
is to experience a colonic-irrigation with the sap of Euphorbia spp.
[2]Principal Component Analysis. Blech.
[3]at Manchester University
[4]indeed, a love. Go on, call me a prevert.
--
!Raised Tails! -:Tanuki:-
http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/tanukigarden/tanuki.htm
"Young, Plump Guests are Especially Welcome at the Restaurant of Many Doors"
Peter H. Coffin
>Thus spake ERT (er...@optonline.net):
>> I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff.
>
>What's the difference between a hub and a multi-port repeater?
US$500. (:
--
Peter H. Coffin
"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the
sleeping world."
--Leonard Cohen, The Favourite Game
Paul Tomko
ERT <er...@optonline.net> wrote:
>So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
>are?
I started out banging out basic code on a Radio Shack Color Computer just
for fun. I wrote lots of interesting graphical stuff to simulate snowfall, and
ligthning storms and the like and would sit and stare at my creations for
hours, plugging in a different random number seed to get different results.
I even wrote a monopoly program with full cards, mortgages, trading, and all.
In high school, I didn't want to take typing, so didn't take any computer
classes until my senior year, in which I convinced the teacher to let me
skip typing and computers 1, and went straight into computers 2, where
I proceeded to finish all the assignments in about 1/10th of the alloted time
and spent the rest of the time taking early lunch.
All this time, I thought I wanted to be an Architect, because I loved
buildings, but couldn't draw freehand orth a darn. I was an excellent
mechanical drawer, though, and finished all of assignments in that class
in less than half the allotted time. I applied to University of Illinois
Architecture school, but by the time they were finally convinced that I was
an in-state student, the college was closed. I could go into the agrictulture
college, and then transfer after 1 year. My mother suggested that maybe I
should go into computers, since I liked to play with them so much. Up until
that point, I hadn't realized that people would actually pay you to play
with computers.
I went to the University of Oklahoma (where I was also in-state thanks to
the .us phenominal divorce rate and custody laws) Engineering college
and took Fortran and Pascal, and spent many overnighters at the computer lab
reading USENET or writing programs that were NOT required by the classes. Yes
I was on USENET in '88, though I would imagine some here could do much better.
Despite the fact that my playing with computers still took precidence over
doing homework, I still did well, something like 3.87/4.0.
The summer of my freshman year, I took an internship in Oak Brook, Illinois,
coding Fortran for a futures trading company. After about three weeks, they
were so impressed, they asked me to stay and transfer/drop out/whatever.
I transferred to University of Illinois at Chicago and worked my way through
college. That summer internship lasted 5 years.
Three of us from this company split off and started another Futures trading
company with funds from a Korean company. We had one trader who was
very good. We had me, the only technical person. And we had another
guy who knew how to have a PhD, but knew nothing technical, and was a horrible
trader. This company, I believe, was my crowning glory. There was nothing
but a cement floor. I drew the office plans (finally, I get to do
architect stuff), drew the wiring , network, and phone diagrams, researched
everything from the coffee maker to the unix workstations to the HVAC
system, bought all the equipment, hooked it all up, wrote futures trading
model simulations and real-time programs, wrote programs to print tickets,
hired other programmers, supervised the lot, and also was the Unix
Administrator. Unfortunately, the job wasn't working out because the
PhD was a PHB and becaus of his meddling on the trading side, out of
$5 million in funds, we never had more than $200,000 invested, and it
was usually closer to $30,000 on any given day. His meddling on the system
side was a little less pronounced, because he didn't even know how to meddle
properly. The trader and I both left, along with one of the two programmers
we had hired. I went back about a month later because the system had been down
for about two weeks, and the lady they hired to replace me couldn't
figure out how to get it working again. I fixed it in about a half hour
and charged them for a half day. A year later they folded.
I got hired on to Sybase, knowing nothing of RDBMS, but having designed
my own custom database for the previous company. A month later, I was out
on client sites doing DBA work. After a year at Sybase, I decided to go
it on my own, and spent the last 4 years doing DBA, development,
Datawarehousing, replication, still some sysadmin, and some programming.
I've done a lot of project lead and team lead work over the last four years,
and have done a lot of business requirements gathering, and project
manager type work.
At the moment, I am doing some DBA work. I'm filling in for a woman
on maternity leave, and upgrading Sybase. In two weeks, she comes back,
and they don't have enough work to keep me on. I'm looking for contract
or permanent work, but it seems that my past is not interesting to
the employers in the market today.
Paul
--
Paul Tomko pa...@tomkoinc.com http://www.tomkoinc.com
10000+ Humorous Quotes http://www.tomkoinc.com/quotes.html
"Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself." - Hajime Karatsu
Joe Moore
J.D. Baldwin <baldwi...@panix.com> wrote:
>I turned down training. ("I think Joe's free that week. Send him.")
Thanks a lot. Do you know what I had to go through to get out of that[0]
fscking training class?
(end of "using `Joe' as generic person name" rant)
#include "local-definitions.h"
It seems COMPANY has a contract with TRAINING_PROVIDER to give WindowsNT
admin training to the entire IT organization. Including, as it happens,
all the Unix admins. Being probably the most vocal Unix bigot here, I was
rather surprised to recieve an email stating that I was to go to
Windows 2000 training starting the following Monday.[1] WTF? I am an
AIX admin[2], according to my job description, and am not interested in
Windows 2.0.0.0. Go talk to SENDER. He points out the contract (of which I
was not previously aware) I say "Send someone else. I'm not interested.
You might also want to send someone in place of EXEMPLOYEE (who was on the
To: list) since he doesn't work here any more."
- "b-b-b-but don't you want to know how to administrate W2K?"
- "No. If you keep me on the schedule, I will enjoy the 5-minute commute
from my house to the training site, and will enjoy installing FREE_OS on
their lab systems. I will also make quite sure I have the latest version
of winnuke."
- "b-b-b-but we have a contract..."
- "I'm not interested in administering NT."
A brief conversation with my manager reinforced this, and I was removed
from the schedule (and returned to the pool for later education).
Tragically, this was the last training class under the current contract
which was not renewed. What a shame.
--Joe
[0] Actually it was a different training class, as J.D. and I don't work
at the same company.
[1] I was also surprised that the email was sent out before I left work
on Friday. Specifically I received it early Thursday afternoon.
[2] Among other things. AIX admin is not exactly a full-time job here.
--
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
c...@nospam.netunix.com
>
> So I stayed in the lab and did the statistics[2] on the data
> collected by the others. And this led me to cross paths with
> a CDC7600[3] and a Honeywell-6080, and in turn, a knowledge[4]
> of FROTRAN-60 developed.
>
> After that, it was downhill all the way - accelerated by the
> discovery that people with rather-poor degrees in Agricultural
> Botany got paid a lot less than those who could code FROTRAN.
>
OK, you are a prevert.
I find that it's more of a love-hate relationship. I manage to
stay off the hook for a few years, but then somebody waves money
at me when I need some and I'm hooked again.
Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
How much effort does it take to leave a few clues for posterity.
Every time they say that it will be better this time.
It never is.[2]
[1] Usually 3 or 4 generations of $somebody.
[2] All software sucks. Everyone else's sources suck.
--
From the quill of Chris Newport G4JCI, RCC, ex ZS6N.
If you want my real address go figure it out from the headers or
bugger off, keep your shit to yourself, and boil your head.
Spammers will be educated with a chainsaw.
Garrett Wollman
<c...@NOSPAM.netunix.com> wrote:
>Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
>else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
>compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
Because they don't really expect that anyone else will ever use their
``codes'', and in many cases the don't really think of the program as
being the real ``source'' anyway. The real ``source'' is a set of
formulas in a paper published in a learned journal; their code is
merely an executable translation (or transliteration?) of the Real
Research.
Of course, their papers are seldom much better -- I don't want to
remember the semester I spent helping some poor secretary translate
one EE prof's scribbling into TeX for journal submission.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick
Plumed L. Basilisk
> So, I humbly request the following advice: How did you folks wind up where you
> are? And if you're in the NYC area and need a good solid admin who can actually
> think, could you let me know? :)
Well, I started off while studying rocket science at a nice little
university. The class two years ahead of me had convinced the dean[1] that a
knowledge of $FREENIX would help them round out their skillsets, and that
they didn't get enough *NIX in classes to feel comfortable in the real
world.
So the dean donated/approved/weaselled a 100bT unfirewalled connection to
the campus network, a class C, some office space, a bit of hardware, and
another class C. A couple of corporate sponsors donated cast-off hardware
every so often, and soon we had a student-owned farm with 2000 users using
it as their primary web/mail/news accounts. People dialled up to the
university, and used our swervers instead of the school's. Only those in
the dean's department, though.
So when I started school, I got me one of these shell accounts that most
people only used for PINE, and I started playing. I found CGIs first,
then procmail. Mmm, procmail. After two years of ramping up the
adminning of those boxen, I realized that I was more at home with *NIX
than with calculus, so I got the heck out of rocket science, and moved in
to the first systems program I found.
While studying part time, I got a full time job adminning IRC Servers, as
well as the IRC company's web/mail/dns/whatevers and a bunch of Apples.
I learned about real-world security really fast with an IRC job, let me
tell you.
The IRC company went under, taking my last paycheque with it, and I found
myself out $10,014.98, CDN. That's when I went from being an admin to
being a Bastard. I dropped out of the program that was teaching me dick
all, and started reading lots of O'Reilly at my next job. My new manager
has really helped, by valiantly throwing himself between me and any PHBs
around, so I think I'll hang on to him.
I did not choose Bastardism, Bastardism chose me.
[1] - Dr. Malcom Bibby was the best dean to ever walk the face of the
Earth. He personally bankrolled many a student venture, granted
permission where no other dean would even entertain a proposal, and his
students were always allowed to shine.
--
Rob.R...@Canada.Com, Unicorn of Usenet & Bastard of Bandwidth
"If my son wants to be a pimp when he grows up, that's fine with me. I
hope he's a good one and enjoys it and doesn't get caught. I'll support
him in this. But if he wants to be a network administrator, he's out of
the house and not part of my family." Steve Wozniak, http://www.woz.org
random
> On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 13:59:27 GMT, Felix von Leitner wrote:
> >Thus spake ERT (er...@optonline.net):
> >> I'm a good network admin. Test me, I know my stuff.
> >
> >What's the difference between a hub and a multi-port repeater?
>
> US$500. (:
Isn't there some harsh pennatance for acolytes who abuse specials?
R
Suresh Ramasubramanian
> I did not choose Bastardism, Bastardism chose me.
Some are born Bastard, some achieve Bastardy, some have Bastardy thrust upon
them.
--suresh
c...@nospam.netunix.com
> In article <1000168020.3999.0...@news.demon.co.uk>,
> <c...@NOSPAM.netunix.com> wrote:
>>Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
>>else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
>>compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
>
> Because they don't really expect that anyone else will ever use their
> ``codes'', and in many cases the don't really think of the program as
> being the real ``source'' anyway. The real ``source'' is a set of
> formulas in a paper published in a learned journal; their code is
> merely an executable translation (or transliteration?) of the Real
> Research.
It would help if the learned journal got the formulae right in
the first place [modulo tyops].
> Of course, their papers are seldom much better -- I don't want to
> remember the semester I spent helping some poor secretary translate
> one EE prof's scribbling into TeX for journal submission.
Which leads my memory to the floor numbering at RAU ......
Jonathan Guthrie
> Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
> else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
> compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
I don't know why some of us do it. I know that the AGA-8 code (which
is a program used to determine the real gas constant for natural gas
mixtures at a variety of temperatures and pressures) I translated
from FORTRAN to C did things like jump in and out of branches.
My C equivalent was somewhat cleaner and I wound up posting the
FORTRAN code on my office door to demonstrate what I had to work
with and to lay claim on the title of "CAC's head pasta chef".
> How much effort does it take to leave a few clues for posterity.
Currently, I'm sketching out an inviscid flow solver, similar to the
"PMARC 12" program. With that program, the only clue you're going to
get is the first six chapters of Kuethe & Chow. The primary problem
with the "clues for posterity" stuff is that the programs are
supposed to be straightforward applications of the equations derived
directly from the physical theories. If you don't know the physical
theories, then you're not going to understand the program.
David P. Murphy
. . . and the lusers have Bastardy thrust into them.
ok
dpm
--
David P. Murphy http://www.myths.com/~dpm/
systems programmer ftp://ftp.myths.com
mailto:d...@myths.com (personal)
COGITO ERGO DISCLAMO mailto:Murphy...@emc.com (work)
Tanuki the Raccoon-dog
c...@NOSPAM.netunix.com said
>Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
>else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
>compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
Several resons:
Firstly - If it was readable it wouldn't be "code".
Secondly: the FROTRAN I've hacked on was usually scribed
something like 20 years ago, and has since been hacked on
by several generations of students[1] whose experience of
FROTRAN is rarely more than a term of 50-minutes-a-week
lectures, and whose understanding of the computed GOTO is
on a par with a retarded slug's ability to comprehend the
heavens.
Thirdly, the FROTRAN probably started life having to run
on an abacus with $SMALL_VAL of usable memory[2] and slow
I/O, so as well as containing a reservoir-simulation
program, the FROTRAN is also probably pretending to be
an overlay-manager and cache-controller at the same time.
Fourthly, in all likelihood the program has been ported from
one architecture to another, several times, by professors and
postgrads who've been taking copious swigs from the Ether-bottle
while trying to use the cardpunch and hold a conversation in
Gibberish on a crackly landline to someone in Outer Gibber who's
under attack by ravening hordes of carnivorous Wildebeeste.
The results are, as you describe, COMMENT-free spaghetti-code
that makes a world designed by Hieronymus Bosch seem attractive.
[1]employed by research-places during uni vacations, or on a
year's "placement".
[2]this was in the days before ideas like virtual memory...
--
!Raised Tails! -:Tanuki:-
http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/tanukigarden/tanuki.htm
"Schrödinger's Cat found half-alive: Quantum physics a mistake!"
Lieven Marchand
> Writing FORTRAN is fine, but I always get to mess with somebody[1]
> else's code. Why do engineers and science types have this bloody
> compulsion to write twisty undocumented uncommented spaghetti ?.
Occasionally, one of the $somebody's is yourself when you were younger
and stupider.
When I had just started studying CS, a dorm mate who was majoring in
astrophysics asked for a bit of help with a Fortran monstrosity that
was obviously already majorly hacked together. Not knowing better, I
fucked it up some more until it seemed to work. 4 years later a friend
asked for help with a program. Turned out said dorm mate was her
advisor and the monstrosity returned to me with the result of 4
additional years of hacking.
> How much effort does it take to leave a few clues for posterity.
>
> Every time they say that it will be better this time.
> It never is.[2]
Sometimes it is. I rewrote the thing from scratch and ritually burned
the old listing.
> [1] Usually 3 or 4 generations of $somebody.
[2] NMF
--
Lieven Marchand <m...@wyrd.be>
She says, "Honey, you're a Bastard of great proportion."
He says, "Darling, I plead guilty to that sin."
Cowboy Junkies -- A few simple words
c...@nospam.netunix.com
> while trying to use the cardpunch and hold a conversation in
> Gibberish on a crackly landline to someone in Outer Gibber who's
> under attack by ravening hordes of carnivorous Wildebeeste.
>
> The results are, as you describe, COMMENT-free spaghetti-code
> that makes a world designed by Hieronymus Bosch seem attractive.
The last Fortran job I had reminded me more of Esher than Bosch.
Not only was the spaghetti soggier than usual, the underlying
math and the theory were both bogus[1], and there were correcting
fudge-factors sneaking in nasty little corners where various
attempts had been made to get the answers closer to reality(tm).
[1] Correcting for relativistic effects on the progagation of a
signal from a satellite should take half a dozen lines, not
several hundred, and the effects are a lot less significant
than the [totally omitted] observed reduction of c in the
atmosphere which is not, of course, a vacuum.
One is dependant of the distance of the satellite from the
earth's gravitational centre, the other is dependant on the
actual slope distance between the observer and the satellite.[2]
Fudging one to hide the fact that the other has not been
considered is IMHO some very sloppy science.[3]
[2] Plus a correction for mean atmospheric moisture content
which is usually a guestimate and less significant.
[3] If I can figure it out without even a degree, what are
these damn theory profs dreaming of ?.
</mini-rant>
All software sucks.
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
In <o65ln9...@216.39.196.197>, on 09/11/2001
at 08:56 AM, Jonathan Guthrie <jgut...@brokersys.com> said:
> The primary problem
>with the "clues for posterity" stuff is that the programs are
>supposed to be straightforward applications of the equations derived
>directly from the physical theories. If you don't know the physical
>theories, then you're not going to understand the program.
The key word is "supposed". They never are straightforward etc.
I have no problem with a comment that refers you to a readily[1]
available book or paper, but that is rarely enough to make the code
intelligible. There are always minor deviations, tricks, etc., and
those require comments.
[1] To the reader, not just to you..
Jonathan Guthrie
> In <o65ln9...@216.39.196.197>, on 09/11/2001
> at 08:56 AM, Jonathan Guthrie <jgut...@brokersys.com> said:
>> The primary problem
>>with the "clues for posterity" stuff is that the programs are
>>supposed to be straightforward applications of the equations derived
>>directly from the physical theories. If you don't know the physical
>>theories, then you're not going to understand the program.
> The key word is "supposed". They never are straightforward etc.
Of course not. "All programs are poems, and so forth."
> I have no problem with a comment that refers you to a readily[1]
> available book or paper, but that is rarely enough to make the code
> intelligible. There are always minor deviations, tricks, etc., and
> those require comments.
Oh, I understand, and I even do some of that. However, the fact
remains that if I'm transposing formulas from Kuethe & Chow or from
Bate, Mueller, & White (_Foundations of Astrodynamics_ for the
orbit propagation program I did most of a decade ago) the best clue
you're going to get is the knowledge of what I'm trying to do. It
often isn't necessary to get the exact book, either. For the satellite
tracker, I could have used the textbook from the course I actually
took on the subject instead of the one I didn't take.
Oh, and that program (I should put it up for download so it can be
ridiculed properly: God! The Style! What WAS I thinking!) does make
some changes to the definitions of variables. ISTR that one value in
particular is named for the square root of the value held. It's
commented, of course. It's hard enough to tell what's going on
even with the scorecard.
I don't know what to make of Spacetrack Report #3, which has some
FORTRAN sample code that consists basically of lots or what appear to
be arbitrary constants. I'm currently converting it into Modula-3,
which I use because I like it.
> [1] To the reader, not just to you..
That can be tough. On the other hand, I found a copy of Schetz's
_Boundary Layer Analysis_ (my graduate work was in shock-boundary layer
interaction) at the local Micro Center. I thought it had been out of
print for decades.
The Scarlet Manuka
and said:
>
>> Some are born Bastard, some achieve Bastardy, some have Bastardy
>> thrust upon them.
> . . . and the lusers have Bastardy thrust into them.
EEEEEWWWW! Which poor Bastard volunteered for *that*?
--
The Scarlet Manuka
Suresh Ramasubramanian
> sa...@maths.uwa.edu.au (The Scarlet Manuka) said:
> >d...@myths.com (David P. Murphy) stumbled into alt.sysadmin.recovery
> >>> Some are born Bastard, some achieve Bastardy, some have Bastardy
> >>> thrust upon them.
> >> . . . and the lusers have Bastardy thrust into them.
> >EEEEEWWWW! Which poor Bastard volunteered for *that*?
> time.
If the luser is young and beautiful (and a lot of my lusers are virtual blondes
[1]) then I don't exactly mind.
-suresh
[1] All brunettes - but with an IQ that Pheobe Buffett would boggle at.
David P. Murphy
Have katana, will travel.