Welcome to Domestic Arbitration Court #375. All property lists should be pasted to #flood. Do NOT paste in this channel!
Litigator42: This is a fact finding session for the divorce hearing between John Citizen and his wife Kate Citizen
H0rn3yGuy69:It's not my fault, she's frigid. CalikoePrincess: You spent all our money on porn! H0rn3yGuy69:Litigator42: a/s/l? CalikoePrincess: He's a lying cheating f*ckwad! H0rn3yGuy69: Litigator42: What are you wearing?
Litigator42 has left the room(Quit "I want to be re-assigned to drug court")
Speed dating males must be able to present genetic documentation on request, along with their bank balance. It's just Lunch is now It's Just Lunch with Smart Guys. "He's really cute, and really sweet! And just look at those genes!"
It's good to be old and off the market sometimes....
You'll do fine. Working in a camp, or traveling in the wilderness teaches you some things about the workplace that CS classes don't cover. That guy on your team with the emotional problems? You probably dealt with some campers like that. Workplaces have currents to read, rapids to negotiate and hazards to avoid. You've had to get a group of people working together on short notice, and not kill each other. You know how to take care yourself and set a realistic pace. It's just my opinion, but I don't think you missed much when passed on the internships. Good Luck on your journey.
Great, another idiot putting my hometown on the map. Of course, what do you expect when the local Chamber of Commerce comes up with slogans like "Omaha. Rare. Well Done"
Early in my working career I did such exciting thing s as
bagging and carrying out groceries
pulling stacks of freshly filled gallons of milk of off a conveyor.
shoveling spilled grain back onto a conveyor
scrubbed tanks at a tropical fish wholesaler.
outbound telemarketing
With the first four, I constanty was inventing games , building algorithims in my head, calculating the average number of carryouts per hour or some other activity to keep my brain moving. The jobs were dead boring, so I created my own mental overhead. The telemarketing job was the most stressful job I had, because I was required to have 12-15 converstations per hour with people that did not want to talk to me, were pissed off and the company that I was selling for, and did not want the product I was pitching. It drained me in ways that 8 hours on a production line never did, and I celebrated when the call center laid me off.
I've now been working in IT for 16 years. I carry a pager. I'm the guy them call in the middle of the night. Most of the time, it's great. I want the responsibility and I enjoy the fact that there is always something new to learn. I've found that most of my stress comes from situations when the deadlines are unrealistic, the people are jerks, or I don't have the skills to fix the problem. To combat that I work very hard at negotiating realistic deadlines. I try to avoid working with/for jerks, but I've come to realize that the people who are the biggest assholes are usually the most insecure. Being polite and businesslike usually calms them down. As for the skills, I learn as much as I can. I've got 5 kids and time for self-learning is precious, but I still work on some new skill a couple of times a week. I think it helps me feel more in control.
Analyze your work and home life for the things that are causing you stress. Then figure out which of those things you can change and work at changing them. Find some monotonous physical task to do off hours, strangely enough it's a stress reliever. Before you ditch something you love, take the time to figure out where the negatives are coming from.
I'm currently a DBA/SysAdmin for a small shop. (7 devs/ 3 admins) I've been working here for 10 years. This are the rules I live by.
1)Provide the best development environment you can. My company is not fond of buying development boxes. I see them as an absolute necessity. I scrounge hardware, software, and what ever else I can to make sure the devs have what they need.
2) Give appropriate access. Dev's need root access to the development box and DBA access to the development instances. They get what they need as soon as possible, I don't get interrupted to restart Apache 10 times a day. Dev's don't get root to production machines. Processes are not run as root.
3)The BOFH doesn't work here I'm a service provider to the devs, our end users, and ultimately our customers. It's not a kingdom, it's a big freakin' amusement park. My job is to make sure the rides all work, the popcorn is fresh, and the soda is cold. I will install tools, modules, kernel patches or whatever else you need. All I ask is that you test the heck out of it before you ask me to put it in production.
4)Commumicate and Collaborate
Tell everyone what you've done with performance tuning and why. Explain why you've had to freeze database changes. Tell them why you had to disable port xxx. Ask the devs for help with those nifty widgets to read the database system tables. Send them the SQL performance tuning tips you find so the SQL can be done right the first time. Look for ways to make the devs life easier. It will make your life easier, too.
5) Stay Professional
Projects get delayed. Things break. Tempers flare. Keep your cool at all times. (I have a very hard time with this, BTW) Do not add to the problem. If you screw up, admit it, and fix it. Now. If you find a dev's mistake, handle it in a diplomatic and low key way. Nothing sucks worse than an us vs. them IT department.
At work we use penguin species. rockhopper, chinstrap, and gentoo, the linux laptop is magellan. At home I use characters from the Harry Potter books. My firewall is dementor, the web server is Hagrid. Dumbledore is off line at the moment.
Damn Straight! And get those hookers off the street, too. That's not even subliminal advertising! And while you're at it, find the
Mayor's sense of humor. NO! Don't use your cell phone. That man over there can HEAR you! You're violating his privacy! I want that logo off the front of your car by 5pm. All of SF is complaining about having to look at it. And while you're at it, paint your sidewalls black so I don't have to look at that disgusting Firestone sign. Oh, and tell Starbucks to give you a plain white cup the next time you stop for coffee, what were you thinking!
You should be worried if open source programmers develop the same things as you do without charging anything. Why pay you then?
Actually, they have paid me to install, customize and smooth the rough edges off of several open source applications. And they'll keep doing it as long as my selection of applications is appropriate and cost-effective.
Open source is my ally. FUD is my enemy
Gee, we just found out the new multi-gazillion dollar financial package we bought from this
guy named Larry only supports IE 5.0! Do you
think we really care if our employees can see that rich, compelling web content? Not if it messes up payroll!
I live in an area where there is some real competition. In the Omaha, Nebraska area Cox Cable began laying fiber like crazy 5 years ago and is now taking a lot of residential customers away from Qwest (formerly US Worst). Cox is beating Qwest on both price and service.
At work we had a fiber loop laid around the office park by a company called TCG (now swallowed by AT&T and called AT&T local.) They also have kicked Qwest's ass on price and service.
When I call AT&TL's service center they actually try and resolve the problem instead of telling me they'll get to it by 5 pm tommorrow. What a concept!
Because they were able to finance construction of their own lines, both of these companies have been much less dependent on and susceptible to interference from Qwest. The big Q did try a few dirty tricks. Until the FCC allowed numbers to transfer between companies, Qwest told Cox what prefixes they could have. They would only give Cox 991-xxxx until the local emergency services center began complaining about the misdials.
I have Cox cable modem service, I live too far from the CO for Qwest DSL. I've had my cable modem for six months. Qwest might get my neighborhood set up for DSL next summer...
I wish the success we had here was more widespread. SBC and Verizon sound like carbon copies of US Worst.
"Rooted deeply in any living being is the urgent need to feel as if its own life is within its own control. People have enough intelligence that they can suffer greatly from subtleties of loss of control that would be beyond the perceptual horizon of a box turtle, say, or a dog. It's psychological torture, no less real for being "low-grade", and it can go on and on for years, eventually causing odd mental breakdowns that may be very difficult to accurately trace to this perceived lack of fundamental control over one's own life."
I gave up the idea that I had much control over things at work long ago. I haven't had any mental breakdowns that I was treated medically for, but I certainly have had my share of days of hopelessness and despair with the actions of my corporate masters. After a certain point in time, I decided to give up on changing them and work on my own life. People are going to act on
their own self-interest. I might as well do the same. If I can't prevent my CM's from doing something idiotic, then at least I can mimimize it's disruption to my life, or eliminate it by leaving.
I see the the constant change in workload and information flow in the same way that I see weather or the ocean. Every day I go to work
I am surfing on this complex system. Sometimes
the waves are small, erratic and annoying. Nothing much happens. The next day they might be absolutely gigantic and give me a fantastic
ride. The only thing I know for sure is that
the work will be there tommorrow and that the system as a whole will feel slightly different than it did today. And I will still have no control over it, but I might be able to use some of it to my advantage. Surf's up!
Scooby Doo and Popeye need to added to the banned list too. And how about that cow on the Cartoon Network? IT HAS AN ANATOMICALLY CORRECT UDDER!! Oh, and as for the Vegan rant? Rant On brother, You won't spoil my dinner. The rib eye was real tender. But at least my cats are spayed....
(Nostalgia mode on) SCO was my first. I learned UNIX on an IBM-AT (286) with a Digiboard attached to 6 Wyse 30's. This was in 1989. We also had a brand new Compaq 386-12Mhz with a 300MB hard drive and 16 MB of memory. It cost $10,000. (Nostalgia mode off) Out of the scenarios presented by Zedlewski, the one I hope to see is the purchase by IBM. They have the support organization to handle the transtition, they are already supporting Linux on their hardware, and this keeps Project Monterrey on track. After the experience Novell had with UnixWare in the 90's, I don't think they would be interested. They seem to fighting for their lives against Win2K and have no time for distractions. I think the UnixWare/WordPerfect distractions of the past are partially what opened the door for NT in the first place. So long SCO. Don't forget to turn off that damn Yanni music on hold for the tech support line.
"Um, I don't know if this is oT or not, but I kinda like the hum."
Suits me too. I like feeling the pulse of the machinery. I've always been a stimulus junky and I probably always will be (pager goes off on cue). Never mind, it was just the TV station telling me about a thunderstorm watch. I love what I do. It is fun. It is a blast. It is hard and tiring and exhilarating and makes me smile when I go to work. The cell phone and the pager are tools that I use to be able to increase my face to face interaction, not decrease it. They let swat the little things when they are still little. That helps me have quiet time for the people and places that I love.
I have seen a couple of different sides of this. I have had a factory job that turned into a 100 hour a week nightmare. Yeah, they paid OT. I handed the check to my wife and fell asleep. I find that I have to be awake to enjoy spending money.
I've done the "Office Space" IT gig too. "We'll need you to come in Saturday and Sunday for this important project." I stayed because I was too scared and stupid to stand up for myself and have a life. I got a lucky and got recruited out of there to a place that thought I should have a life.
So now I choose. Sometimes I can still choose poorly. Last year I got into a hell of a place by working 1-2 allnighters a week for a month. It was a nasty reminder that I still have to sleep to function well. If my corporate masters don't want to give me a workload that allows for that, well I have a lot of headhunter's phone numbers. And I'm not afraid to use 'em.
Hmmm. I thought "Rough Boys" was about his kids and "Who are you" was about the meeting with the Sex Pistols. But my memory isn't what it used to be....
The network is not the computer, the computer is not the network, and as far as this user is concerned, there are times when I'd like the network to fuck off and leave me alone with a completely functional machine.
Amen! Here are a couple of interesting scenarios for you. A couple of weeks ago Inacom declared bankruptcy and closed their doors, completely shutting down an outsourced help desk operation for a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan. Imagine your ASP failing to achieve critical mass, filing for bankruptcy, and leaving you without access to your applications, databases, etc. Your corporate masters will only want ASP's with deep pockets...like MS, AOL, or Oracle.
A more ominous scenario is the effect of a shift from the machine to the network to Open Source software. The Open Source movement is focused on replicating the functionality of OS and applications built for the desktop or server market. If you want to use an automotive analogy you could say that they build vehicles of various types and let you use them for nothing. What happens when the functionality is no longer in the cars but in the network of roadways? Where do the resources come from to maintain a parallel network of value-added roadways that can be used for nothing?
Of course, the.NET, AOL, and Oracle folks have to actually get some value added to the roadways first...
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to Domestic Arbitration Court #375. All property lists should be pasted to #flood. Do NOT paste in this channel!
Litigator42: This is a fact finding session for the divorce hearing between John Citizen and his wife Kate Citizen
H0rn3yGuy69:It's not my fault, she's frigid.
CalikoePrincess: You spent all our money on porn!
H0rn3yGuy69:Litigator42: a/s/l?
CalikoePrincess: He's a lying cheating f*ckwad!
H0rn3yGuy69: Litigator42: What are you wearing?
Litigator42 has left the room(Quit "I want to be re-assigned to drug court")
Speed dating males must be able to present genetic documentation on request, along with their bank balance.
It's just Lunch is now It's Just Lunch with Smart Guys.
"He's really cute, and really sweet! And just look at those genes!"
It's good to be old and off the market sometimes....
You'll do fine. Working in a camp, or traveling in the wilderness teaches you some things about the workplace that CS classes don't cover. That guy on your team with the emotional problems? You probably dealt with some campers like that. Workplaces have currents to read, rapids to negotiate and hazards to avoid. You've had to get a group of people working together on short notice, and not kill each other. You know how to take care yourself and set a realistic pace. It's just my opinion, but I don't think you missed much when passed on the internships. Good Luck on your journey.
Great, another idiot putting my hometown on the map. Of course, what do you expect when the local Chamber of Commerce comes up with slogans like "Omaha. Rare. Well Done"
More like
"Omaha. We want to be cool, but we're clueless"
With the first four, I constanty was inventing games , building algorithims in my head, calculating the average number of carryouts per hour or some other activity to keep my brain moving. The jobs were dead boring, so I created my own mental overhead. The telemarketing job was
the most stressful job I had, because I was required to have 12-15 converstations per hour with people that did not want to talk to me, were pissed off and the company that I was selling for, and did not want the product I was pitching. It drained me in ways that 8 hours on a production line never did, and I celebrated when the call center laid me off.
I've now been working in IT for 16 years. I carry a pager. I'm the guy them call in the middle of the night. Most of the time, it's great. I want the responsibility and I enjoy the fact that there is always something new to learn. I've found that most of my stress comes from situations when the deadlines are unrealistic, the people are jerks, or I don't have the skills to fix the problem. To combat that I work very hard at negotiating realistic deadlines. I try to avoid working with/for jerks, but I've come to realize that the people who are the biggest assholes are usually the most insecure. Being polite and businesslike usually calms them down. As for the skills, I learn as much as I can. I've got 5 kids and time for self-learning is precious, but I still work on some new skill a couple of times a week. I think it helps me feel more in control.
Analyze your work and home life for the things that are causing you stress. Then figure out which of those things you can change and work at changing them. Find some monotonous physical task to do off hours, strangely enough it's a stress reliever. Before you ditch something you love, take the time to figure out where the negatives are coming from.
Not in Omaha, NE They'll send you to the local computer recycler that charges per pound.
I'm currently a DBA/SysAdmin for a small shop. (7 devs/ 3 admins) I've been working here for 10 years. This are the rules I live by.
1)Provide the best development environment you can.
My company is not fond of buying development boxes. I see them as an absolute necessity. I scrounge hardware, software, and what ever else I can to make sure the devs have what they need.
2) Give appropriate access.
Dev's need root access to the development box and DBA access to the development instances. They get what they need as soon as possible, I don't get interrupted to restart Apache 10 times a day. Dev's don't get root to production machines. Processes are not run as root.
3)The BOFH doesn't work here
I'm a service provider to the devs, our end users, and ultimately our customers. It's not a kingdom, it's a big freakin' amusement park. My job is to make sure the rides all work, the popcorn is fresh, and the soda is cold. I will install tools, modules, kernel patches or whatever else you need. All I ask is that you test the heck out of it before you ask me to put it in production.
4)Commumicate and Collaborate
Tell everyone what you've done with performance tuning and why. Explain why you've had to freeze database changes. Tell them why you had to disable port xxx. Ask the devs for help with those nifty widgets to read the database system tables. Send them the SQL performance tuning tips you find so the SQL can be done right the first time. Look for ways to make the devs life easier. It will make your life easier, too.
5) Stay Professional
Projects get delayed. Things break. Tempers flare. Keep your cool at all times. (I have a very hard time with this, BTW) Do not add to the problem. If you screw up, admit it, and fix it. Now. If you find a dev's mistake, handle it in a diplomatic and low key way. Nothing sucks worse than an us vs. them IT department.
Blue
At work we use penguin species. rockhopper, chinstrap, and gentoo, the linux laptop is magellan.
At home I use characters from the Harry Potter books. My firewall is dementor, the web server is Hagrid. Dumbledore is off line at the moment.
Actually, they have paid me to install, customize and smooth the rough edges off of several open source applications. And they'll keep doing it as long as my selection of applications is appropriate and cost-effective. Open source is my ally. FUD is my enemy
Gee, we just found out the new multi-gazillion dollar financial package we bought from this guy named Larry only supports IE 5.0! Do you think we really care if our employees can see that rich, compelling web content? Not if it messes up payroll!
-----------
Just to the right of Frederick the Great.
In a related story, CNN reports that AOL is ready to unveil it's latest improvement to IM, the "WAAASSSUUUUPPPP key."
At work we had a fiber loop laid around the office park by a company called TCG (now swallowed by AT&T and called AT&T local.) They also have kicked Qwest's ass on price and service. When I call AT&TL's service center they actually try and resolve the problem instead of telling me they'll get to it by 5 pm tommorrow. What a concept!
Because they were able to finance construction of their own lines, both of these companies have been much less dependent on and susceptible to interference from Qwest. The big Q did try a few dirty tricks. Until the FCC allowed numbers to transfer between companies, Qwest told Cox what prefixes they could have. They would only give Cox 991-xxxx until the local emergency services center began complaining about the misdials.
I have Cox cable modem service, I live too far from the CO for Qwest DSL. I've had my cable modem for six months. Qwest might get my neighborhood set up for DSL next summer... I wish the success we had here was more widespread. SBC and Verizon sound like carbon copies of US Worst.
Ummmm. For the unenlightened, just what the hell is EULA?
I gave up the idea that I had much control over things at work long ago. I haven't had any mental breakdowns that I was treated medically for, but I certainly have had my share of days of hopelessness and despair with the actions of my corporate masters. After a certain point in time, I decided to give up on changing them and work on my own life. People are going to act on their own self-interest. I might as well do the same. If I can't prevent my CM's from doing something idiotic, then at least I can mimimize it's disruption to my life, or eliminate it by leaving.
I see the the constant change in workload and information flow in the same way that I see weather or the ocean. Every day I go to work I am surfing on this complex system. Sometimes the waves are small, erratic and annoying. Nothing much happens. The next day they might be absolutely gigantic and give me a fantastic ride. The only thing I know for sure is that the work will be there tommorrow and that the system as a whole will feel slightly different than it did today. And I will still have no control over it, but I might be able to use some of it to my advantage. Surf's up!
Scooby Doo and Popeye need to added to the banned list too. And how about that cow on the Cartoon Network? IT HAS AN ANATOMICALLY CORRECT UDDER!! Oh, and as for the Vegan rant? Rant On brother, You won't spoil my dinner. The rib eye was real tender. But at least my cats are spayed....
(Nostalgia mode on) SCO was my first. I learned UNIX on an IBM-AT (286) with a Digiboard attached to 6 Wyse 30's. This was in 1989. We also had a brand new Compaq 386-12Mhz with a 300MB hard drive and 16 MB of memory. It cost $10,000. (Nostalgia mode off) Out of the scenarios presented by Zedlewski, the one I hope to see is the purchase by IBM. They have the support organization to handle the transtition, they are already supporting Linux on their hardware, and this keeps Project Monterrey on track. After the experience Novell had with UnixWare in the 90's, I don't think they would be interested. They seem to fighting for their lives against Win2K and have no time for distractions. I think the UnixWare/WordPerfect distractions of the past are partially what opened the door for NT in the first place. So long SCO. Don't forget to turn off that damn Yanni music on hold for the tech support line.
Suits me too. I like feeling the pulse of the machinery. I've always been a stimulus junky and I probably always will be (pager goes off on cue). Never mind, it was just the TV station telling me about a thunderstorm watch. I love what I do. It is fun. It is a blast. It is hard and tiring and exhilarating and makes me smile when I go to work. The cell phone and the pager are tools that I use to be able to increase my face to face interaction, not decrease it. They let swat the little things when they are still little. That helps me have quiet time for the people and places that I love.
I have seen a couple of different sides of this. I have had a factory job that turned into a 100 hour a week nightmare. Yeah, they paid OT. I handed the check to my wife and fell asleep. I find that I have to be awake to enjoy spending money.
I've done the "Office Space" IT gig too. "We'll need you to come in Saturday and Sunday for this important project." I stayed because I was too scared and stupid to stand up for myself and have a life. I got a lucky and got recruited out of there to a place that thought I should have a life.
So now I choose. Sometimes I can still choose poorly. Last year I got into a hell of a place by working 1-2 allnighters a week for a month. It was a nasty reminder that I still have to sleep to function well. If my corporate masters don't want to give me a workload that allows for that, well I have a lot of headhunter's phone numbers. And I'm not afraid to use 'em.
Hmmm. I thought "Rough Boys" was about his kids and "Who are you" was about the meeting with the Sex Pistols. But my memory isn't what it used to be....
Amen! Here are a couple of interesting scenarios for you. A couple of weeks ago Inacom declared bankruptcy and closed their doors, completely shutting down an outsourced help desk operation for a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan. Imagine your ASP failing to achieve critical mass, filing for bankruptcy, and leaving you without access to your applications, databases, etc. Your corporate masters will only want ASP's with deep pockets...like MS, AOL, or Oracle.
A more ominous scenario is the effect of a shift from the machine to the network to Open Source software. The Open Source movement is focused on replicating the functionality of OS and applications built for the desktop or server market. If you want to use an automotive analogy you could say that they build vehicles of various types and let you use them for nothing. What happens when the functionality is no longer in the cars but in the network of roadways? Where do the resources come from to maintain a parallel network of value-added roadways that can be used for nothing?
Of course, the .NET, AOL, and Oracle folks have to actually get some value added to the roadways first...