Install and maintain a formal ticket system. Use this system to communicate with users/clients. Ticket systems allow you to document the entire process, allow the user a means of communication without having to hunt you down, and allow your manager to see all of your tickets and make or change priorities.
Secondly, have a Service Level Agreement. This needs to be hashed out by your manager and other key managers, but it needs to be written (mostly) by you and your colleagues. This gives you and the user community common ground to start from, and sets realistic expectations. All employees must be aware of this SLA, so it should be part of a new-hire package, etc.
Use the ticketing system to print out and/or track your jobs on a daily basis. Be sure and set your daily workloads, keeping in mind employee absences, etc. Don't schedule more jobs than can be completed in one day, and allow room for emergency calls to your helpdesk. If you do not have a formal helpdesk, create one. This can be as simple as setting up a voicemail box on your voicemail system that the users dial and leave a message on. This help line response time must be included in the SLA. Have the mailbox tied to a pager that someone carries, so emergency situations can be responded to quickly. We tell our users that all calls logged on the helpdesk will be responded to within 15 minutes, and tickets will be created so the user can then further communicate with the assigned tech.
In your free time (heh) read "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Limoncelli and Hogan, ISBN 0-201-70271-1. They talk about all of these things, plus many other things that make our lives easier, and worth living.
It takes 20 minutes to reach your target heart rate and maintain it long enough to actually burn calories. These 11 minute/5 minute/etc., ad nauseum workouts can't possibly reach that heartrate, as well as including proper stretching (muscle strains are no fun).
A 20-25 minute brisk (keyword) walk will help to lose weight, as long as you cut out the heavy carb intake (beer). Eat sensibly, exercise 20 or more minutes a day, and you will eventually lose weight. It won't melt away in 48 hours (you're not an ice cube), but it will go away. My bike-riding buddy has lost almost 100 pounds in the past year and a half following this exact regimen.
I agree, mostly. I have been attending the con the past two days and I can say that many things are missing, but some of them I don't miss.
All the bubble companies are gone (good riddance. there is a more level-headed approach to this from all involved). The booths are still fairly attractive, but there aren't any booth babes (thank goodness. they just insulted my intelligence. Give me someone that can talk about the product, please). And only 1 goofy mascot (the last time I saw a mascot at LWE, My cohort spun them round and round and sent them careening off into the crowd. Hilarious!)
The things I do miss are the lack of a community on the show floor. Luckily, that doesn't hold true in the conference sessions. The conference sessions have been very good (Thanks Jan! Thanks David! Thanks Jay!), and they have carried that community spirit. But I do miss sitting around a booth watching Wrath of Khan.
And pony-tails and beards? Very much in attendance...with a good mix of suits as well. The world is opening it's eyes and adjusting to the market before us. Excellent.
BTW, I'm from California, and the weather is ABOMINABLE! as in snowman. Crimeny, it's cold! I got a scarf as schwag and it has served me well. I'd take three more if they would give them to me.
On the surface, I agree. However, if you would actually read the artical, it's the Laotian farmers who WANT the access. And they want it so they can get a handle on the weather and what the rice prices in the world are doing. I say valiant effort, and maybe this will be an actual web connection that SAVES LIVES. Booyah!
To say that Larry's statement is false is to generalize it completely. When Larry says that God is good to people that look for Him, He doesn't necessarily mean that Christians will have a better life on this transitory planet. I believe what he means is the after-life.
Study of the Bible reveals that God NEVER said that Christians would have more money or fame. He did promise that we would be blessed. So much so that our cup would overflow. This blessing doesn't mean it's part of this earth. A Christian, who follows the word of God and patterns their life and worship found in the pattern laid out in the New Testament, will receive those blessings. He also promised that we would have hard times, too. Talk of persecution, loss of family, property, and life. Read a bit of Paul's writings, and see how he switched his credit and debit columns. It's very interesting stuff.
I applaud Larry on speaking his viewpoint regarding the importance of faith, but it is a bit simplistic and ignores some very basic Bible principles (like obedience in relation to grace). I'd love to talk Bible with him sometime, it's my favorite subject...
I have a laptop that sports a GeForce chip and it does run games nicely. However, trying to play any serious LAN game on a 15" LCD can be very frustrating. In fact, after a couple of hours my eyes completely bug out.
So, I am still gonna gear grip pro my case and monitor to LAN parties, and take my laptop for someone who shows up empty-handed...
Cisco supports a protocol called HSRP (Hot Swap Router Protocol). It's high availability for routers. I can't believe this wasn't in place. You guys are an online entity, right?
I'm working the CCIE right now, so if ya needs a hired gun...:)
One readers comments stated that he was convicted by a randomly chosen jury of morons? How many jury summons have we, as geeks, tried to avoid? I know I have, but I have also been selected as part of a jury. These people aren't always morons. They make judgements made solely by comments made in the courtroom. They usually do not have access to the media's representation after the fact. So, in response to that, do your civic duty. be the one non-moron on the jury. exercise your right to be a voice of reason, and stop your whining.
apparently catholics aren't accepted, but only protestant methodists. so baptists are right out, and there goes the irish and italian voter base, too...
Eric Idle: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
Michael Palin: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Seriously, it seems the author's main foundation, and a crumbling one at that, is the UI. He forgets the things he says earlier. Like, "Linux, the fledgling OS started in 1995." He does good in not insulting Linus (how could you insult such a nice guy?), but he spends the rest of the time frothing at the mouth in the same fashion as RMS and ESR. The UI is constantly changing in X, and will continue to change, because EVERYONE IS NOT THE SAME. We all like different things, for different reasons, and my desktop will probably never look like your desktop. I think that is a beautiful thing, because it is NOT a company deciding how my desktop should look, and it is NOT a team of 5 programmers deciding what they like. It's what I like, and I can change the freakin thing if i want.
I am not a programmer, and I use Linux.
I am a network engineer, and there are no better network performance monitoring and control tools out there than the ones that run on *nix.
The market is not one person. It's a variety of people with a variety of tastes. Get on with it, pal.
1. Open Source is already successful, and it has largely been because of E$R and innovators like him. So, I think that his views can work, if enough voices are heard by people other than/. posters...
2. Lessig states that Microsoft is not an evil empire. It is true that it did not start in this manner, and it took advantage of a need to "universalize" the desktop before anyone else did (I know, they stole it from Apple, but Apple never tried to "universalize" the desktop, they just wanted to sell macintoshes). E$R does tend to over-generalize (I wouldn't call Microsoft evil, I'd use different words with the same overall meaning, and use tact). So, Lessig is right in the fact that the norms outlined by E$R are not always real-life.
3. We, the users and developers of open source, have a responsibility to tell government and big business how great it is. Not to focus on other systems failures, but to focus on open source's achievements, and to continue to be a voice. We also must realize that we are part of the system that must deal with Microsoft, and stop using their crappy products.
That is all..
What doesn't kill you leaves you badly mangled lying in a pool of your own fluids searching for one last round to finish the job.
Why are we trying to make the Linux interface so much like Windows? I like Gnome (despite the fact that it's kind of a pig {i know, flamebait}), but the current choice of desktops for Linux are all so much like Windows, and I'm kind of tired of Windows. I don't have any suggested alternative, unless it included body armor and serious weaponry, but I just thought maybe a new direction is called for, since we would like to get Linux to every desktop?
I'm gonna get a 0 for off-topic, but i just gotta say it...
Those that believe that the Bible is a storybook full of fables have not done any research. They blindly believe what others tell them because reading the Bible requires a commitment level that is just uncomfortable for a society absorbed in self-fulfillment. And, before you say it, belief in the Bible is not an exercise in blindness. History and archaelogy has shown time and again that Biblical facts and historical references are just that: FACTS and HISTORICAL. Not fables... Anyway, I had to put in my two cents on this subject, and I am completely willing to discuss this outside of slashdot, and am prepared for the flamewar from my fellow techies.
Just another techie, who believes in the hereafter...
Agreed. However, I don't think we need to visit and re-visit distro wars. I like debian (and i think corel has done something interesting there), and i like turbolinux's clustering solution, and i like suse's video config, and i like....etc. etc., ad nauseum.
The point is, that Linux is so incredibly cool, and appeals to me (a 28 yo geek) and my father-in-law (a 70 yo retiree), is what matters. Every distribution appeals to someone. Just use one, keep the kernel updated, and away we go....
These boxes are sold to the consumer usually, and come with some very intuitive interfaces (check netopia, linksys, webramp). So, you can set your OWN port access and ssh stuff. It's just an easier interface, without 400 boxes between you and the connection. Every millisecond counts...
woof. I think TIVO will have their turn to get sued. Not because what they are doing is morally wrong, or even technically illegal. It hinders the artist's ability to make money (paraphrase). In all of the RIAA's site, it's the artist's ability to make money that is it stake. How much does the artist make on royalties now? 13 cents on each cd sold at 15.99? Yeah, it's all for the artist...
Slashdot Mirror
So far, I haven't read this, but it is a MUST.
Install and maintain a formal ticket system. Use this system to communicate with users/clients. Ticket systems allow you to document the entire process, allow the user a means of communication without having to hunt you down, and allow your manager to see all of your tickets and make or change priorities.
Secondly, have a Service Level Agreement. This needs to be hashed out by your manager and other key managers, but it needs to be written (mostly) by you and your colleagues. This gives you and the user community common ground to start from, and sets realistic expectations. All employees must be aware of this SLA, so it should be part of a new-hire package, etc.
Use the ticketing system to print out and/or track your jobs on a daily basis. Be sure and set your daily workloads, keeping in mind employee absences, etc. Don't schedule more jobs than can be completed in one day, and allow room for emergency calls to your helpdesk. If you do not have a formal helpdesk, create one. This can be as simple as setting up a voicemail box on your voicemail system that the users dial and leave a message on. This help line response time must be included in the SLA. Have the mailbox tied to a pager that someone carries, so emergency situations can be responded to quickly. We tell our users that all calls logged on the helpdesk will be responded to within 15 minutes, and tickets will be created so the user can then further communicate with the assigned tech.
In your free time (heh) read "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Limoncelli and Hogan, ISBN 0-201-70271-1. They talk about all of these things, plus many other things that make our lives easier, and worth living.
Hope this helps...
It takes 20 minutes to reach your target heart rate and maintain it long enough to actually burn calories. These 11 minute/5 minute/etc., ad nauseum workouts can't possibly reach that heartrate, as well as including proper stretching (muscle strains are no fun).
A 20-25 minute brisk (keyword) walk will help to lose weight, as long as you cut out the heavy carb intake (beer). Eat sensibly, exercise 20 or more minutes a day, and you will eventually lose weight. It won't melt away in 48 hours (you're not an ice cube), but it will go away. My bike-riding buddy has lost almost 100 pounds in the past year and a half following this exact regimen.
I agree, mostly. I have been attending the con the past two days and I can say that many things are missing, but some of them I don't miss.
All the bubble companies are gone (good riddance. there is a more level-headed approach to this from all involved). The booths are still fairly attractive, but there aren't any booth babes (thank goodness. they just insulted my intelligence. Give me someone that can talk about the product, please). And only 1 goofy mascot (the last time I saw a mascot at LWE, My cohort spun them round and round and sent them careening off into the crowd. Hilarious!)
The things I do miss are the lack of a community on the show floor. Luckily, that doesn't hold true in the conference sessions. The conference sessions have been very good (Thanks Jan! Thanks David! Thanks Jay!), and they have carried that community spirit. But I do miss sitting around a booth watching Wrath of Khan.
And pony-tails and beards? Very much in attendance...with a good mix of suits as well. The world is opening it's eyes and adjusting to the market before us. Excellent.
BTW, I'm from California, and the weather is ABOMINABLE! as in snowman. Crimeny, it's cold! I got a scarf as schwag and it has served me well. I'd take three more if they would give them to me.
On the surface, I agree. However, if you would actually read the artical, it's the Laotian farmers who WANT the access. And they want it so they can get a handle on the weather and what the rice prices in the world are doing. I say valiant effort, and maybe this will be an actual web connection that SAVES LIVES. Booyah!
"Insert obligatory Soviet Russia remak here."
To say that Larry's statement is false is to generalize it completely. When Larry says that God is good to people that look for Him, He doesn't necessarily mean that Christians will have a better life on this transitory planet. I believe what he means is the after-life.
Study of the Bible reveals that God NEVER said that Christians would have more money or fame. He did promise that we would be blessed. So much so that our cup would overflow. This blessing doesn't mean it's part of this earth. A Christian, who follows the word of God and patterns their life and worship found in the pattern laid out in the New Testament, will receive those blessings. He also promised that we would have hard times, too. Talk of persecution, loss of family, property, and life. Read a bit of Paul's writings, and see how he switched his credit and debit columns. It's very interesting stuff.
I applaud Larry on speaking his viewpoint regarding the importance of faith, but it is a bit simplistic and ignores some very basic Bible principles (like obedience in relation to grace). I'd love to talk Bible with him sometime, it's my favorite subject...
I have a laptop that sports a GeForce chip and it does run games nicely. However, trying to play any serious LAN game on a 15" LCD can be very frustrating. In fact, after a couple of hours my eyes completely bug out.
So, I am still gonna gear grip pro my case and monitor to LAN parties, and take my laptop for someone who shows up empty-handed...
Cisco supports a protocol called HSRP (Hot Swap Router Protocol). It's high availability for routers. I can't believe this wasn't in place. You guys are an online entity, right?
I'm working the CCIE right now, so if ya needs a hired gun...:)
"That makes no sense," said Russell Frackman, lead counsel for the record labels. "That's trying to fix it after the horse has already left the barn."
This coming from the lead counsel of the record labels, in response to Napster filtering filenames only after they have appeared on the site.
I think the horse left the barn MONTHS ago. Score -3, Obvious.
i'm replying to this to state that i did not set out to be a troll, and yet i end up one. oh, the vagaries of moderation....
One readers comments stated that he was convicted by a randomly chosen jury of morons? How many jury summons have we, as geeks, tried to avoid? I know I have, but I have also been selected as part of a jury. These people aren't always morons. They make judgements made solely by comments made in the courtroom. They usually do not have access to the media's representation after the fact. So, in response to that, do your civic duty. be the one non-moron on the jury. exercise your right to be a voice of reason, and stop your whining.
apparently catholics aren't accepted, but only protestant methodists. so baptists are right out, and there goes the irish and italian voter base, too...
Eric Idle: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
Michael Palin: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Seriously, it seems the author's main foundation, and a crumbling one at that, is the UI. He forgets the things he says earlier. Like, "Linux, the fledgling OS started in 1995." He does good in not insulting Linus (how could you insult such a nice guy?), but he spends the rest of the time frothing at the mouth in the same fashion as RMS and ESR. The UI is constantly changing in X, and will continue to change, because EVERYONE IS NOT THE SAME. We all like different things, for different reasons, and my desktop will probably never look like your desktop. I think that is a beautiful thing, because it is NOT a company deciding how my desktop should look, and it is NOT a team of 5 programmers deciding what they like. It's what I like, and I can change the freakin thing if i want.
I am not a programmer, and I use Linux.
I am a network engineer, and there are no better network performance monitoring and control tools out there than the ones that run on *nix.
The market is not one person. It's a variety of people with a variety of tastes. Get on with it, pal.
And watch Eazel. That's gonna be cool...
http://www.doubletwist.com/info/pressarticle.jsp;$ sessionid$ALGC3CIAAAVXJWBCHIRAUWY?id=art 120
or just...
http://www.doubletwist.com
Agreed. There are some points to be made, though.
/. posters...
..
1. Open Source is already successful, and it has largely been because of E$R and innovators like him. So, I think that his views can work, if enough voices are heard by people other than
2. Lessig states that Microsoft is not an evil empire. It is true that it did not start in this manner, and it took advantage of a need to "universalize" the desktop before anyone else did (I know, they stole it from Apple, but Apple never tried to "universalize" the desktop, they just wanted to sell macintoshes). E$R does tend to over-generalize (I wouldn't call Microsoft evil, I'd use different words with the same overall meaning, and use tact). So, Lessig is right in the fact that the norms outlined by E$R are not always real-life.
3. We, the users and developers of open source, have a responsibility to tell government and big business how great it is. Not to focus on other systems failures, but to focus on open source's achievements, and to continue to be a voice. We also must realize that we are part of the system that must deal with Microsoft, and stop using their crappy products.
That is all
What doesn't kill you leaves you badly mangled lying in a pool of your own fluids searching for one last round to finish the job.
Why stop there? Why not allow companies to register part of their company names as tld's?
.cola as a trademark...
That way, coca.cola and pepsi.cola can sue each other for the use of
And then, the MPAA and RIAA can start feeding off of themselves, much like the French Revolution did...
You are most correct. No power converters needed. Now, where's my free PlayStation 2 for verifying this?
Why are we trying to make the Linux interface so much like Windows? I like Gnome (despite the fact that it's kind of a pig {i know, flamebait}), but the current choice of desktops for Linux are all so much like Windows, and I'm kind of tired of Windows. I don't have any suggested alternative, unless it included body armor and serious weaponry, but I just thought maybe a new direction is called for, since we would like to get Linux to every desktop?
World Domination Rules...
oh, and matrix is a very cool movie, but comparing it to the Bible goes beyond my comprehension of even a "stretch."
I'm gonna get a 0 for off-topic, but i just gotta say it...
Those that believe that the Bible is a storybook full of fables have not done any research. They blindly believe what others tell them because reading the Bible requires a commitment level that is just uncomfortable for a society absorbed in self-fulfillment. And, before you say it, belief in the Bible is not an exercise in blindness. History and archaelogy has shown time and again that Biblical facts and historical references are just that: FACTS and HISTORICAL. Not fables... Anyway, I had to put in my two cents on this subject, and I am completely willing to discuss this outside of slashdot, and am prepared for the flamewar from my fellow techies.
Just another techie, who believes in the hereafter...
Agreed. However, I don't think we need to visit and re-visit distro wars. I like debian (and i think corel has done something interesting there), and i like turbolinux's clustering solution, and i like suse's video config, and i like....etc. etc., ad nauseum.
The point is, that Linux is so incredibly cool, and appeals to me (a 28 yo geek) and my father-in-law (a 70 yo retiree), is what matters. Every distribution appeals to someone. Just use one, keep the kernel updated, and away we go....
uh, maybe i missed something, but....
These boxes are sold to the consumer usually, and come with some very intuitive interfaces (check netopia, linksys, webramp). So, you can set your OWN port access and ssh stuff. It's just an easier interface, without 400 boxes between you and the connection. Every millisecond counts...
woof. I think TIVO will have their turn to get sued. Not because what they are doing is morally wrong, or even technically illegal. It hinders the artist's ability to make money (paraphrase). In all of the RIAA's site, it's the artist's ability to make money that is it stake. How much does the artist make on royalties now? 13 cents on each cd sold at 15.99? Yeah, it's all for the artist...