Recovery Party (Bay Area)
Michael Turner
When: 7:00 PM, June 19th
Where: Fibbar Magee's, Mountain View CA
Why:
Yes, recovery is imminent. I will be leaving the world of contracting
and tech support, and heading to the world of engineering, specficaly
web programmer. Not IS. Not tech support. Not sysadmin. Not even
testing. Nope... writing code.
Not at a big company (I'm at one ~9,000). Not a small company (was
at a startup that wentdown of ~19). One that is just right... ~500.
So, to celebrate my recovery, a gathering at Fibbar Magee's in
Mountain View, CA. Its on Castro St (thats Mountain View, not SF).
I think its 235 Castro street (its certainly 23[579])
http://maps.yahoo.com/yahoo/yt.hm?CMD=MAP&FAM=yahoo&SEC=geo&MA=1&GC=X:-122.07835|Y:37.39352|LT:37.39352|LN:-122.07835|LS:20000|c:Mountain_View|s:CA|z:94041|d:807|p:USA&IC=37.39352:-122.07835::&GAD2=235+Castro+St&GAD3=Mountain+View%2c+CA++94041-1203&H=250&W=400&LV=1
Egads is that an ugly URL... and its on the other side of the street.
There is plenty of parking in the vicinity (behind in front, on Braynt
and Villa) and all of it is free.
I promise to buy at least one round of drinks for everyone who shows up.
If you have any questions about its location or how to get there,
feel free to mail me. Reservations aren't necessary (its an Irish pub).
I will be the one wearing blue jeans, BOFH shirt, with a ponytail and
a beard. There will probably be a decent group (cow-orkers too).
Atleast a few pitchers of cider will be around, and probably some Guiness too.
--Michael Turner
mtu...@csd.sgi.com (not for much longer)
Peter Keller
Michael Turner (mtu...@dewi.csd.sgi.com) wrote:
: Yes, recovery is imminent. I will be leaving the world of contracting
: and tech support, and heading to the world of engineering, specficaly
: web programmer. Not IS. Not tech support. Not sysadmin. Not even
: testing. Nope... writing code.
Long time no see Mike[0]. What kinda code will you be doing? Writing Java
to convert perl to java bytecode? That would be up your alley!
Man you *needed* recovery in a bad way. You should get a hold of
Gus. He is in the Seattle area and might well drive all the way down there
just for your little get together. Man, does he have some admin stories to
tell. Ask him about Mendota, or The Inwave, then run whilst he breaks things
and screams. I should get him to post his rants to the froup, you guys would
laugh till hell freezes over and warms up again.
:[snip] and probably some Guiness too.
Guiness? I thought you mostly stuck to pale ales and things. Hmm... admin
life must have taken it's toll on you and shown you beers with good taste.
Maybe after a couple of years, you'll end up in hard liquer[3].
It's kinda funny Mike. My last day at the job was last friday! I have
recovered! And lo! did the woodchuck and vodka flow into my system! It feels
good to have a month completely off before I start a new programmer job,
and I told them I would do nameless unspeakable things to them if ANY OF THEM
asks me ANYTHING about making the machines work. I wouldn't care if it was
my mom, she can call 1-800-techs-rus like the rest of them.
See you around Mike. Good luck on your new position. Don't let them see you
sweat, and more importantly, don't let them see you fix any system related
problem. They will never stop asking you, ever--for big values of ever.
--
-pete
E-mail address corrupted to stop spam.
Reply mail: psilord at cs dot wisc dot edu
I am responsible for what I say, noone else.
[0] Mike and I met at the Undergraduate Programming Laboratory at UW-Madison
in 93-94 or something like that. I ended up getting his old admin job running
a bunch of SunOShit 4.<mumble>[2] and Digital Unix[1] boxes for a building
here at the university.
[1] I almost began posting here after messing with those things, (I've been
lurking here for about a year and a half now) you would think that the
OS sucks less, but it sucks in slow, vague, and undefined ways, just like
its process scheduling algorithm, and its virtual memory system, and etc...
[2] You're running sendmail version WHAT!?! Damn! Unpatched kernels!
Down, not across.
[3] Vodka and creme de menth. My favorite. I can drink that until I'm stupid.
John Clear
In article <6l5mii$b...@spool.cs.wisc.edu>,
Peter Keller <psi...@dukat.i.cs.hate.wisc.spam.edu> wrote:
>Michael Turner (mtu...@dewi.csd.sgi.com) wrote:
>: Yes, recovery is imminent. I will be leaving the world of contracting
>: and tech support, and heading to the world of engineering, specficaly
>: web programmer. Not IS. Not tech support. Not sysadmin. Not even
>: testing. Nope... writing code.
>
>Long time no see Mike[0]. What kinda code will you be doing? Writing Java
>to convert perl to java bytecode? That would be up your alley!
Mike just thinks he is going to be recovering. I bet he'll be admining
the web servers before the summer is out.
>Guiness? I thought you mostly stuck to pale ales and things. Hmm... admin
>life must have taken it's toll on you and shown you beers with good taste.
>Maybe after a couple of years, you'll end up in hard liquer[3].
Nope, he is still into pear cider and such, and is corrupting others.
Pear cider is surprisingly good.
>It's kinda funny Mike. My last day at the job was last friday! I have
>recovered! And lo! did the woodchuck and vodka flow into my system! It feels
>good to have a month completely off before I start a new programmer job,
>and I told them I would do nameless unspeakable things to them if ANY OF THEM
>asks me ANYTHING about making the machines work. I wouldn't care if it was
>my mom, she can call 1-800-techs-rus like the rest of them.
That number provides great recovery for tech support folks [1].
John
[1] RNA[2]
[2] We gave it about 5 rings before giving up.
--
John Clear - j...@panix.com http://www.panix.com/~jac
Michael Turner
In article <6l5mii$b...@spool.cs.wisc.edu>,
Peter Keller <psi...@dukat.i.cs.hate.wisc.spam.edu> wrote:
>Michael Turner (mtu...@dewi.csd.sgi.com) wrote:
>: Yes, recovery is imminent. I will be leaving the world of contracting
>: and tech support, and heading to the world of engineering, specficaly
>: web programmer. Not IS. Not tech support. Not sysadmin. Not even
>: testing. Nope... writing code.
>
>Long time no see Mike[0]. What kinda code will you be doing? Writing Java
>to convert perl to java bytecode? That would be up your alley!
from: http://www.netapp.com/career/level3/support.html[i]
>Man you *needed* recovery in a bad way. You should get a hold of
>Gus. He is in the Seattle area and might well drive all the way down there
>just for your little get together. Man, does he have some admin stories to
>tell. Ask him about Mendota, or The Inwave, then run whilst he breaks things
>and screams. I should get him to post his rants to the froup, you guys would
>laugh till hell freezes over and warms up again.
Isn't Mendota a mental health building? It seems fitting.
>Guiness? I thought you mostly stuck to pale ales and things. Hmm... admin
>life must have taken it's toll on you and shown you beers with good taste.
>Maybe after a couple of years, you'll end up in hard liquer[3].
Nah... I don't drink that, though I have found some intresting other
drinks involving vodka and chambourd or razamatazi[ii]. But at heart,
I'm still a cider fan[iii].
>It's kinda funny Mike. My last day at the job was last friday! I have
>recovered! And lo! did the woodchuck and vodka flow into my system! It feels
>good to have a month completely off before I start a new programmer job,
>and I told them I would do nameless unspeakable things to them if ANY OF THEM
>asks me ANYTHING about making the machines work. I wouldn't care if it was
>my mom, she can call 1-800-techs-rus like the rest of them.
You know that number just rings through...
>See you around Mike. Good luck on your new position. Don't let them see you
>sweat, and more importantly, don't let them see you fix any system related
>problem. They will never stop asking you, ever--for big values of ever.
Thank ye muchly.
>[0] Mike and I met at the Undergraduate Programming Laboratory at UW-Madison
>in 93-94 or something like that. I ended up getting his old admin job running
>a bunch of SunOShit 4.<mumble>[2] and Digital Unix[1] boxes for a building
>here at the university.
Ahh... the memories... the way DoIT[iv] can fsck up the entire net for a
a weekend (we expect to have it up by 8am Monday) and not get it up
till 3pm tuesday, and then get complenets from some of the faculty on
a speedy turnaround[v].
>[1] I almost began posting here after messing with those things, (I've been
>lurking here for about a year and a half now) you would think that the
>OS sucks less, but it sucks in slow, vague, and undefined ways, just like
>its process scheduling algorithm, and its virtual memory system, and etc...
>[2] You're running sendmail version WHAT!?! Damn! Unpatched kernels!
> Down, not across.
I still rember bribing the lab to look over sendmail configs with me
with pizza[vi]
>[3] Vodka and creme de menth. My favorite. I can drink that until I'm stupid.
[i] Yea, I know the page says support, but the last item on the page
is a 'Software development position'.
[ii] Purple Hooter[vii], Grape Ape[viii]
[iii] Wydners, pear.
[iv] Division of Instruction Technology. Pronounced 'Do it' by suits,
'D-oy-t' by those who deal with them.
[v] The one thing DoIT apparently did right is managing customer
expectaions: expect the worst and you won't be dissapointed.
[vi] "Hey guys, want some pizza? We'll just check over some of this code
while eating it..." 30 Min later and several slicese of pizza...
"So, here's the code... sendmail.cf"
[vii] <useful info="drink">http://www.webtender.com/db/drink/1521</useful>
[viii] <useful info="drink">http://www.webtender.com/db/drink/1619</useful>
Peter Keller
Michael Turner (mtu...@dewi.csd.sgi.com) wrote:
: In article <6l5mii$b...@spool.cs.wisc.edu>,
: Peter Keller <psi...@dukat.i.cs.hate.wisc.spam.edu> wrote:
: >Michael Turner (mtu...@dewi.csd.sgi.com) wrote:
: Isn't Mendota a mental health building? It seems fitting.
Oh, not _that_ Mendota. Just some garage ISP that is gonna go under because
it is filled with idiots.
: Nah... I don't drink that, though I have found some intresting other
: drinks involving vodka and chambourd or razamatazi[ii]. But at heart,
: I'm still a cider fan[iii].
Ah cider.... Mm... woodchuck. I had it for breakfast as some party at Gus'
house that I've already forgotten what the occasion was. hehehe
: >my mom, she can call 1-800-techs-rus like the rest of them.
:
: You know that number just rings through...
Really? Fitting. I made that up a while ago, never thought to actually
call it. I just told it to the lusers I *really* didn't want to deal with.
: Ahh... the memories... the way DoIT[iv] can fsck up the entire net for a
: a weekend (we expect to have it up by 8am Monday) and not get it up
: till 3pm tuesday, and then get complenets from some of the faculty on
: a speedy turnaround[v].
<rant type="scathing">
Oh let me begin...
So a few months back I come into work and my boss, who is decidedly NOT
pointy-haired, pulls me over and explains a hideous conspiracy by DoIT
to redo all of our network numbers[0x0]. Oh man... I wasn't happy.
Also, the PC group, who mostly exists independent of the UNIX cluster,
decided to set up this bizzare domain for DHCP that spanned really wierd
IP masks a while ago and didn't really tell us[0x01]. Also, the one
router that we actually had control over was going to disappear. Not
a good situation. Not only would we be unable to filter out crap, but
until the routers were configured correctly, people could see our packets
on networks that are more untrusted than a proven child-molester teaching
at a day-camp for kids. So after changing hardcoded IP adresses for days,
watching things not work, doing it again. We notice that the NT machines
can't/won't understand the new netmask for the DHCP. I laughed, not my
problem[0x03]. But what was my problem was security. Hmm, let me see....
We are on an uncontrolled subnet, with a router we can't point[0x04] to, and
strange messages appearing in the logs and named seems to core dump
pretty often now... Then, in the process of fixing the crap, someone
does something illegal to our setup[0x05] and it is reinstall, reconfigure
time. I just didn't have enough time to put out the fire before it burned
me to a pile of ashes. Oh, and we did have switches(the kind eludes me at
the moment), but they were set up in "one big collision space" mode and
well were pretty useless. Thank Ghod that got fixed before I left.
And in Acedementia, there is so *much* red tape. I coudn't upgrade
a stupid machine's kernel until 3 weeks of paperwork and meetings had
passed so I could reboot it. Eventually, I just rebooted when I needed to
and gave them <mumble> until they agreed it was the best thing to do.
Got more done that way[0x07].
</rant>
: I still rember bribing the lab to look over sendmail configs with me
: with pizza[vi]
Yeah, 'cept now it's gin instead of pizza. Might as well not beat around
the bush. Straight to the point.
: [v] The one thing DoIT apparently did right is managing customer
: expectaions: expect the worst and you won't be dissapointed.
heh.
I think they're zenith was when The Big Fat Manager Who Shall Not Be Named
fired all of the clueful people and told the rest that if they are not
helping anyone, they must stare at a wall or be fired. No kidding.
I haven't seen a clueful person there since basically 2 years ago.
It is a shame. Used to be a cool place.
--
-pete
E-mail address corrupted to stop spam.
Reply mail: psilord at cs dot wisc dot edu
I am responsible for what I say, noone else.
[0x0] We didn't control where we got our feed. Y'see DoIT gives out IP ranges
to groups that can't really get thier own. Well, we *could* get
our own, but DoIT wants to control everyone, and then charge them
for the privledge of being controlled. Alas...
[0x01] We were not authoritative when it came to DNS. That changed while I was
there, causing some interesting problems. Like us Admins said,
"I don't care if you want your printer in a vanity domain. It isn't
going to happen." People complained, then they suffered.
[0x03] Har Har Har!
[0x04] As in *physically* point to.
[0x05] How many admin passwords were cracked[0x06]?? I *TOLD* them to use ssh!
[0x06] I use ssh. I was safe.
[0x07] We were setting up a file server to stop the rampant NFS mounting that
was going on, and well, machine should be turned off before removing
devices. Unless they are Decstations....
Lorens Kockum
In alt.sysadmin.recovery,
>
>Also, the PC group, who mostly exists independent of the UNIX cluster,
>decided to set up this bizzare domain for DHCP that spanned really wierd
>IP masks a while ago and didn't really tell us[0x01].
[...]
>And in Acedementia, there is so *much* red tape. I coudn't upgrade
>a stupid machine's kernel until 3 weeks of paperwork and meetings had
>passed so I could reboot it. Eventually, I just rebooted when I needed to
>and gave them <mumble> until they agreed it was the best thing to do.
In fact it is a luser conspiracy. When a clueful tech wants to do
something, it is red-taped to death while lusers who don't
understand What It All Means [1] cluck over it, and when a luser
wants to do something incredibly luserish, it goes through before
in the deep of night.
There must be a special language in there somewhere... next time,
try telling a low-level luser that you'll double his quota [2] if he
can get X approved [4].
[1] I think there's an R to S there, but it may just be another
cliché
[2] No cure no pay, of course [3]
[3] And anyway pay is only forthcoming if you want to use the
luser again
[4] Be sure to pick a luser who couldn't even spell X unless
he copied it, and you're sure to win out.
--
#include <std_disclaim.h> Lorens Kockum
Peter Keller
Lorens Kockum (lk-asr-8969...@bigears.solsoft.com) wrote:
: In alt.sysadmin.recovery,
: Peter Keller <psi...@dukat.i.cs.hate.wisc.spam.edu> wrote:
: >
[...]
: In fact it is a luser conspiracy. When a clueful tech wants to do
: something, it is red-taped to death while lusers who don't
: understand What It All Means [1] cluck over it, and when a luser
: wants to do something incredibly luserish, it goes through before
: in the deep of night.
hehehehe... After spending three months upgrading SunOShit from
vanillia/unknown kernels to current levels and then fighting with
sendmail[0] so that mostly everything worked right. The Sun machines
got decommisioned. Someone didn't want them.
It was so anti-climatic. I felt like I had wasted 3 months to upgrade
garbage. Apparently, they were thinking about it for a long time.
I wish someone would have told me. I had better things to do with the
system than that, like get rid of NIS *spit*.
: There must be a special language in there somewhere... next time,
: try telling a low-level luser that you'll double his quota [2] if he
: can get X approved [4].
That would have backfired because the admins actually know most of the
users face to face. And they have big political guns, so you tend not to
piss them off a bunch of times in a row. Although a few "isolated incidences"
in order to fix a few things and you feel a hell of a lot better.
[snip]
: [4] Be sure to pick a luser who couldn't even spell X unless
: he copied it, and you're sure to win out.
[0] Did I mention that our cluster peers with a VMS cluster? It actually
*really* sucked pre sendmail 8.9.0 Now it is better. Fscking lusers
with 5 or more accounts all wanting mail from all accounts to go
somewhere in some vanity domain that we supported[1][2].
[1] I got a place for them...
[2] I never did like sendmail.
Lars Balker Rasmussen
af380...@chebucto.ns.ca (Norman L. DeForest) writes:
> In my books, Deja News takes the cake for generating pathological
> URLs.
Ah yes, Deja News. It's almost completely useless in my book. The
last time I had to use it (Usenet is a great resource after all, oddly
enoguh), it presented some 100 articles, of which I couldn't access
more than the first 25, on account of time outs...
> A "View Thread" URL (diced into 72-character segments for those whose
> newsreaders don't wrap)
<peave>Grrrr, then use <URL:...> dammit.</peave>
> It is unviewable with lynx[1].
> [1] Can you spell "core dump" class? I thought you could.
Yep, lynx isn't very buffer overrun conscious...
--
Lars Balker Rasmussen "Woo hoo!?"