I've got a couple things. My grandfather was a radioman in WWII and he somehow came upon two German field radios. I think they're the same as the one in this auction.
I've got an old Pong console (ie, of the gaming variety) that my dad got for his 15th birthday - that'd have been in 1974. It wasn't an official Pong console, which didn't come out until the following year, but a knock-off.
I've got (at my parents' house) a massive TI calculator with a solar panel on it. Probably one of the originals, don't remember the brand. That's got to be at least 35 years old, and it's got all the functionality of those novelty "wallet calculators" that companies will sometimes use as business cards.
I've also got a fair collection of old IBM hardware. First on the list is an IBM Personal Portable Computer (IBM Portable PC 5155), circa 1984. It still works, to the exception of one of the two floppy drives, as far as I know (I've not had a 5.25" floppy for over a decade.) It's got an old (can't even remember the interface) 10Mb hard drive which also still works. I've thought of getting Linux to run on there several times, just for S&G, but never got around to it due to lacking a proper interface card or an easy way to get it on there.
And then there's the pile of a dozen or so IBM Model M keyboards, dating from 1980 through 1992. Yes, 1980. Maybe it wasn't technically a model M (according to wiki, the Model M came out in 1984), but the ones I've got from 1980 and 1981 are identical and part compatible, as near as I can tell, with the post-1984 "Model M" keyboards which are marked as such on the back.
I also have my original NES, which was mid-1980s. Hardly old, but there you have it.
Not only had I essentially decided that my first netbook purchase would be an Eee, and that I'd recommend them to friends and family (I have been - that changes today), but I just bought an AM3 board and video card from Asus (both automatically set up via Ubuntu 9.04 installer, of course).
I've been a fan of Asus in the past, but I did specifically go Asus this time around because of their Linux support (whether it was specifically for the hardware I purchased at this point or not). Now I think I'll go MSI for hardware purchases - and likely go for that Dell Mini instead.
They better have gotten one hell of a deal from MS. They're going to lose a lot of business. I guess there goes the hopes of the next Eee being ARM based, too.
Society - all of them - is inherently sick. It's composed of people, who are all imperfect, fucked in the head, retarded, etc. etc.
What, do you think some sort of Utopian society can actually exist? Name for me one society which has not been "sick". Failing that, can you present a logical argument as to why one might even be possible?
Honestly, if you think it's possible, you've been reading too much fiction. Our society (western society) is notably less fucked than most throughout history, and the majority of the other ones on this planet, at this time. Can it improve? Yes. But not fitting in isn't a "bad" thing. And not fitting in -does- mean you're unsociable.
(Said the unsociable person who's willing to face reality.)
If you are in the server room, and you have: A: a spreadsheet that your predecessor made. B: a post-it note on the switch saying it what it does. Which one do you trust?
If that's all the information you have, then neither. There is an out-of-sync issue, and you have no idea which documentation source (if you can call a post-it documentation - I prefer a ledger on each system, or a clipboard w/ diagram).
Personally, if I'm doing a two-source documentation, I will label -everything- with a date (as you recommend). Disk fails? I'll label it and put it away for disposal. System gets an upgrade or hardware change? Log it in the ledger with a date.
Everything gets documented with when it happens, what happened, and what was done to fix/change it. If I reference something as having been done somewhere, it should be easy to find documentation on the specifics (or the abstract, depending on where the reference was) elsewhere.
Eg, taped-down post-it says "hostname 3-3-2008" and spreadsheet says "hostname2 3.5.2009". In this case, the newer reference is the one you trust. Ideally, your ledger should also detail when and why hostname transitioned to hostname2. (And even more preferably, you shouldn't rely on hostnames, as those change - there should be an asset ID associated with the equipment that remains with that equipment until it's thrown in the bin).
Basically, the idea is "document your documentation". To be useful, it needs to be one level more functional than the systems it documents.
Where do you get your information on "best practice"? Is it merely experience, or is there some industry standard(s) you refer to? Everyone seems to claim "adhere to best practices" and so on, but what exactly does that mean (and who defines it)?
Would a bridge builder get away with saying "don't worry too much" or "odds are no truck over $tonnage will use this bridge"? No, they are paid to make a proper spec bridge to perform a specific tasks, and they need blueprints before they can even start.
You are an amateur, unprofessional hack if you do not document, not a system or network administrator. Maybe that's what your title says, but it doesn't make it true.
It's much quicker, and easier, to have a billboard in ops with the diagram. The lazy way, if you will. Especially if things change a lot. Print out a bunch of computer, network, etc. images from dia on some 8.5x11 paper, and cut them up with a paper cutter into individual shapes. Then arrange them as they are in the real world, and use post-it notes to label the diagram. Colored string works well for network infrastructure.
It makes good 'living documentation' which everyone in a group can quickly reference, if need be. If a change is made to the physical network, it can be documented immediately with little effort by someone in the team. This works really well for an environment which has a lot of change going on and/or multiple people with similar roles who need to communicate.
(Every once in a while, make sure a digital copy of the diagram is created/updated, so you don't just have one copy.)
Nope, not exactly. There's another scenario. You've triaged the fuck out of all existing problems, and everything is running like a Swiss watch, check. But then there's the "management is stonewalling me and I can't get priority on any future-looking projects". In which case you're good at what you do, but you're also being prevented by management from getting further work done to reduce future triage/firefighting scenarios. That's a stressful situation, and you sure as hell deserve 'triage pay' for that, even if you're just administering the wall clock and a game of nethack.
I've inherited a couple jobs from people didn't document. (Or, at least, I assume they didn't document - I didn't find any that wasn't trivial, outdated, and useless). I scoured the previous sysadmin's file cabinet, desk, file drawers, and pretty much everywhere in the office. The IT Manager insisted that there was thorough documentation on the digital documentation system, but there was nothing but terse (and untechnical) work logs.
I was fired from that position - the IT Manager didn't like the way I did things, in that I was actually fixing things that needed fixing and recommending - strongly - the replacement of archaic PC systems used-as-servers which were over 10 years old - but when I left, I did leave my predecessor a small 3-ring binder with infrastructure, host, policy (according to the IT Manager - the unspoken shit which was never clarified except in write-ups), and anything else that would be useful to the new gumshoe.
When you come into an environment like that, it's good to document as you figure things out. It helps you remember, and it also helps present the information in a manner which would be directly useful (in a sequential manner) to your replacement.
Though, in guilty hindsight, I do wish I'd have reset the domain administrator password(s) immediately after I got the phone call (wtf) to come in for my firing meeting. I knew it was coming, and I -could- have done it. Common sense prevailed, thankfully.
Yes, yes, yes! A big part of a documented site is physically documenting what individual pieces of equipment are. I don't care if you're using masking tape and a pencil, label your systems (and no, not the monitors)!
Even if you've got an extensive tome of documentation detailing each individual system, it does no good if a person can't find which system it is without non-trivial digging.
Right. And I, as an employee, am going to share my personal account password with a company which, in the event of my firing or layoff, could use my account to pin wrongdoing on me by committing said wrongdoing through said account? No.
Root has its purposes. There's a reason it hasn't been removed.
Oh, and adding your account to wheel? What the hell? That's a security problem in and of itself - much worse than your shallow impression of having an available root password in the event of emergencies.
The difference between "near-maximum control" and "near-maximum wild", in terms of psychological impact, aren't all that too dissimilar. When there are known predators out there, you will pack up. And you will pack up quickly, with people who seem the most like you/the most likely to sympathize with you.
When you're stressed to make a decision, you don't have time to determine the ins and outs of the person's socio-political and religious beliefs. He's not wearing thug clothes? He's got a haircut like me? I hope he'll be my bud!
(This is, in no small part, why uniform haircuts and uniforms are often the status quo in institutions: to encourage unity and discourage tribal behavior. Limited options for allowed/possible/practical behavior means additional avenues become tenable, so the tribal instincts are squashed.)
There are templates, and maybe they work for some networks, but from what I've seen, they don't work for an 'organic' network. Especially one which has been shoehorned into working by someone competent, and then allowed to languish at the heightened state for a while before being taken over by a competent person. (It's like what happens when you hit a cluster of dandelions with a non-mulching mower, sorta.)
There are a couple basic things to document, in my opinion.
* Passwords. They go in the lock box which you and your boss have keys to. * Configuration files. Print them out and archive them. * Infrastructure topology and routing. BIG BIG BIG. This stuff can go left undiscovered for years and takes a long time to actually dig into, especially if you don't have a central management system. * hostnames (and IPs if apropos) with associated services * Critical service list (and interdependencies).. granted sorta like the previous one but a bit different) * Things that are on the "do not touch" list - eg. legacy applications - which will cause problems or have problems with certain infrastructural changes (eg. I know of one terminal client which can not exist on a DHCP network) * Peculiar configurations on workstations used regularly, eg. in a dept. (see the previous point) * The location of all assets * The physical/digital location of ALL OTHER DOCUMENTATION!
The above should be in a printed binder and reviewed every couple months for changes. It should short and to the poitn so that your incumbent (or you) can use it as a quick reference.
You should also already have some way to track licenses and control the software installed on workstations; it's part of your documentation.
There are only a couple additional things I'd document (unless you're feeling bored and want to give your employer too much of an incentive to get rid of you for some young and inexperienced blood) as a small network administrator, IMO, to get out from under the "negligent" banner. Do more as time and desire permits, I suppose.
Personally, I think it's very important to document everything remotely interesting/useful, and to make it accessible in a fashion that's more useful than figuring out the 'neat'/solution again. Keeping a daily 'script' so you can backtrace what you did is potentially useful short-term (for your incumbent in the event you get hit by a bus, or a new coworker). Keeping a daily log of what you did is also useful.
Keeping a wiki from here-on-out of problems as they crop up (as well as documenting the more important information retroactively) is what I'd call the bare minimum.
I've had two very irritating md raid issues lately (both on ubuntu 9.10 *spit*) that I've never heard of before.
I installed the system to a single disk, mirrored it to another disk shortly afterr, and then made that disk have software raid partitions. Reboot, add the first drive's partitions to the arrays.
Only problem was that I'd initially set up the swap partitions as a single raid swap device. Very silly. In attempting to fix that w/ two separate swap partitions for the kernel to stripe, I could not remove one of the partitions from the array - the boot process (initramfs, maybe? I hate that thing) kept making the second disk unavailable and joining it to the partition - and then due to hibernate functionality, would remain unable to unmount. I went through a dozen cycles of reboot, single-user, make partition table changes, format, reboot to try and get md to ignore it. It didn't matter whether the partition was in fstab as swap, or if it was in mdadm.conf as a raid device.
Ultimately I had to disable mdadm from scanning the disks for raid superblocks, AND I had to dd if=/dev/random of=swap_partition to get the kernel to leave it alone.
The second I have yet to resolve. I've got an array (the one for the system root) which is (according to/proc/mdstat) degraded, but when I --examine each disk, they all checksum, etc. properly. I'm thinking this might be traceable to GRUB root= declarations, but I've yet to sort it out.
I also once had a network with a disparate variety of Windows workstations (100+ w98/2k/xp w/ a smathering of OEM/image/etc. installs) have systems which would randomly throw up that friendly message about only one domain controller being allowed per domain (re: SBS licensing issue). It was just the XP and 2k systems, not the older crap, which gave the message. Ironically 2k3 and 2000 Server installs didn't seem to notice. The solution was to pull the 2003 SBS server out a little sooner than planned, and migrate all of its services over to the new 2k3 Server system.
"Destroying X through upgrade" has become much, much more common in recent years. It used to be (pre 2006 or so) that an upgrade meant added functionality, support, and stability. Very rarely was anything taken away.
* and other misc. hardware support or functionality. I've got a list longer than I can count with one hand of devices I've had "not work" which really should (ie not ancient crap) after an upgrade. No errors, usually - just like the devs replaced the driver functionality with an empty loop.
I blame Ubuntu's break-neck development cycle (regression control? what's that?) and the kernel's "let the distros fix it" mentality since 2.6 came out. It's a bad combination.
A helium balloon with control valves and maybe directional sails, or some such thing would do the job nicely. IE, a 'weather balloon'. Depending on air currents you could launch it quite a far ways off.
Setting: front lawn. Neighbor is watering his lawn and CBS is coming home from work.
Neighbor: Hello CBS, good evening! *cbs jumps over fence and grabs Neighbor, dragging him to the closed garage door, and and slams him against it cbs: Where are the weapons?! WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS?! Neighbor (flabbergasted): weapons? What are you talking about? *neighbor starts to fall down the garage door as Bauer^Wcbs pulls him back up and slams him against it, pulling a USP and pressing it into Neighbor's nose CBS: The weapons, god damn it, the WEAPONS! It's over, my partner found your collaborators. They were here twenty minutes ago! Neighbor: Twenty minutes? There were girl scouts here selling us some Ginger Snaps about 20 minutes ago. CBS: Yes, the cookies! Terrorists are using them to disperse dangerous nerve Neighbor: They're just cookies, you crazy fuck! * Neighbor kicks cbs in the nuts takes the gun off the ground, and uses his cell phone to call 911
Not so. My son (who is 5) enjoys 2D Mario games on the Nintendo better than he does Mario 64 on the N64 (the first of the genre to have full 3D, IIRC). And he enjoys the "mini-game" Donkey Kong throwback in SMB3 better than those.
Hell, when I was a kid of 10-13 I remember spending quite a few hours playing old Atari games when I had newer stuff available to me. The games had to be better because the graphics didn't compensate for a poor game experience by 'distracting' the player.
This is clearly impossible. Everyone knows that racism has been isolated to the ruling white class in the West.
$deity forbid someone with brown, yellow, or black skin could do such a thing. There's no historical precedent, I tell you! Surely this is the fault of Western society distorting their pure cultural values.
You, and your friends, are like the people who "tried $drug a couple times; it was OK, but didn't do anything special for me". You were a user - you enjoyed it - but you weren't addicted.
Addicts of all stripes are addicted for reasons more than physical. A person who relapses after years of not using does so largely for psychological reasons, not physical. A person drinks, smokes, does pot, meth, whatever for psychological reasons the first time. IIf they're not physically addicted after that, they continue doing it for psychological reasons.
A psychological addiction is often harder to fight than a physical one because you're not fighting the drugs, you're fighting yourself at a much more existential level.
Maybe because "Office of Public Liaison" sounds somewhat like "Office of Public Lying" - and because its largely a propaganda post. Combine this with the fact that Kal Penn was a financial and personal supporter of Obama and there is a disconcerting potential for sectarian preference and 'selective memory'.
Because MS will set the specs. Since some customers will only buy Windows, all the hardware manufacturers will build within those specs. And those specs will be with us for the duration of Windows 7.
*yawn*
People have seen and appreciated functional netbooks for the past year and a half in the sub-$300 range. That was kind of the Whole Point. What makes you think people will be willing to spend $100-300 more for the same device (to them)?
If Microsoft requires that as their max (target? minimum?) CPU TDP, and that's where things get targeted, then companies like Asus will go ahead and make a $200-300 netbook with Linux, again. (Consider, 15 watts for the CPU is crazy high when you consider the TDP for the first Asus Eee was in the 14.5-18 watt range.)
That's a freaking steal. You realize that you could, with a little know-how, use that as a platform for your own personally-made netbook? You wouldn't even need to know that much in that many domains.
Provided that's the same hardware (I didn't see any specs, board looked a bit bigger than what could fit in a wall plug), all you'd need would be:
* Get one of those 7" USB LCDs for $130 * take an older, thin steel case and bend the metal to make a case * get a couple misc. pieces from the hardware store, and/or salvage an old x86 laptop's hinge * use one of the various USB 'micro keyboards' * fashion a battery pack with some AA lion cells (I'd personally go for 'replaceable' and not a pack, so you could just pop them into a charger and swap in some fresh ones after a day or so)
Preliminary "guess work" tells me that it'd be able to get roughly 5-6 hours on the same battery pack that the original Asus Eee used (based on the Eee 7" with the Celeron using 14.5 - 18 watts and the sheeva using 3-7 watts at full use, I'd guess the LCD might bring it up to 10 watts).
BTW, there's the board + power adapter for $150 on the same site. That's closer to doable.
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I've got a couple things. My grandfather was a radioman in WWII and he somehow came upon two German field radios. I think they're the same as the one in this auction.
I've got an old Pong console (ie, of the gaming variety) that my dad got for his 15th birthday - that'd have been in 1974. It wasn't an official Pong console, which didn't come out until the following year, but a knock-off.
I've got (at my parents' house) a massive TI calculator with a solar panel on it. Probably one of the originals, don't remember the brand. That's got to be at least 35 years old, and it's got all the functionality of those novelty "wallet calculators" that companies will sometimes use as business cards.
I've also got a fair collection of old IBM hardware. First on the list is an IBM Personal Portable Computer (IBM Portable PC 5155), circa 1984. It still works, to the exception of one of the two floppy drives, as far as I know (I've not had a 5.25" floppy for over a decade.) It's got an old (can't even remember the interface) 10Mb hard drive which also still works. I've thought of getting Linux to run on there several times, just for S&G, but never got around to it due to lacking a proper interface card or an easy way to get it on there.
And then there's the pile of a dozen or so IBM Model M keyboards, dating from 1980 through 1992. Yes, 1980. Maybe it wasn't technically a model M (according to wiki, the Model M came out in 1984), but the ones I've got from 1980 and 1981 are identical and part compatible, as near as I can tell, with the post-1984 "Model M" keyboards which are marked as such on the back.
I also have my original NES, which was mid-1980s. Hardly old, but there you have it.
No kidding. I'm pissed off.
Not only had I essentially decided that my first netbook purchase would be an Eee, and that I'd recommend them to friends and family (I have been - that changes today), but I just bought an AM3 board and video card from Asus (both automatically set up via Ubuntu 9.04 installer, of course).
I've been a fan of Asus in the past, but I did specifically go Asus this time around because of their Linux support (whether it was specifically for the hardware I purchased at this point or not). Now I think I'll go MSI for hardware purchases - and likely go for that Dell Mini instead.
They better have gotten one hell of a deal from MS. They're going to lose a lot of business. I guess there goes the hopes of the next Eee being ARM based, too.
Society - all of them - is inherently sick. It's composed of people, who are all imperfect, fucked in the head, retarded, etc. etc.
What, do you think some sort of Utopian society can actually exist? Name for me one society which has not been "sick". Failing that, can you present a logical argument as to why one might even be possible?
Honestly, if you think it's possible, you've been reading too much fiction. Our society (western society) is notably less fucked than most throughout history, and the majority of the other ones on this planet, at this time. Can it improve? Yes. But not fitting in isn't a "bad" thing. And not fitting in -does- mean you're unsociable.
(Said the unsociable person who's willing to face reality.)
Let me guess: you're a somewhat-forward white male. That's like being Hitler in a progressive, coastal campus these days.
They won't need to. They'll just diagnose them as bitter due to the likely lack of a job - which was caused by their 'cynical' outlook on life.
If you are in the server room, and you have:
A: a spreadsheet that your predecessor made.
B: a post-it note on the switch saying it what it does.
Which one do you trust?
If that's all the information you have, then neither. There is an out-of-sync issue, and you have no idea which documentation source (if you can call a post-it documentation - I prefer a ledger on each system, or a clipboard w/ diagram).
Personally, if I'm doing a two-source documentation, I will label -everything- with a date (as you recommend). Disk fails? I'll label it and put it away for disposal. System gets an upgrade or hardware change? Log it in the ledger with a date.
Everything gets documented with when it happens, what happened, and what was done to fix/change it. If I reference something as having been done somewhere, it should be easy to find documentation on the specifics (or the abstract, depending on where the reference was) elsewhere.
Eg, taped-down post-it says "hostname 3-3-2008" and spreadsheet says "hostname2 3.5.2009". In this case, the newer reference is the one you trust. Ideally, your ledger should also detail when and why hostname transitioned to hostname2. (And even more preferably, you shouldn't rely on hostnames, as those change - there should be an asset ID associated with the equipment that remains with that equipment until it's thrown in the bin).
Basically, the idea is "document your documentation". To be useful, it needs to be one level more functional than the systems it documents.
Where do you get your information on "best practice"? Is it merely experience, or is there some industry standard(s) you refer to? Everyone seems to claim "adhere to best practices" and so on, but what exactly does that mean (and who defines it)?
Have your beer, but do your damn job first.
Would a bridge builder get away with saying "don't worry too much" or "odds are no truck over $tonnage will use this bridge"? No, they are paid to make a proper spec bridge to perform a specific tasks, and they need blueprints before they can even start.
You are an amateur, unprofessional hack if you do not document, not a system or network administrator. Maybe that's what your title says, but it doesn't make it true.
It's much quicker, and easier, to have a billboard in ops with the diagram. The lazy way, if you will. Especially if things change a lot. Print out a bunch of computer, network, etc. images from dia on some 8.5x11 paper, and cut them up with a paper cutter into individual shapes. Then arrange them as they are in the real world, and use post-it notes to label the diagram. Colored string works well for network infrastructure.
It makes good 'living documentation' which everyone in a group can quickly reference, if need be. If a change is made to the physical network, it can be documented immediately with little effort by someone in the team. This works really well for an environment which has a lot of change going on and/or multiple people with similar roles who need to communicate.
(Every once in a while, make sure a digital copy of the diagram is created/updated, so you don't just have one copy.)
Nope, not exactly. There's another scenario. You've triaged the fuck out of all existing problems, and everything is running like a Swiss watch, check. But then there's the "management is stonewalling me and I can't get priority on any future-looking projects". In which case you're good at what you do, but you're also being prevented by management from getting further work done to reduce future triage/firefighting scenarios. That's a stressful situation, and you sure as hell deserve 'triage pay' for that, even if you're just administering the wall clock and a game of nethack.
I've inherited a couple jobs from people didn't document. (Or, at least, I assume they didn't document - I didn't find any that wasn't trivial, outdated, and useless). I scoured the previous sysadmin's file cabinet, desk, file drawers, and pretty much everywhere in the office. The IT Manager insisted that there was thorough documentation on the digital documentation system, but there was nothing but terse (and untechnical) work logs.
I was fired from that position - the IT Manager didn't like the way I did things, in that I was actually fixing things that needed fixing and recommending - strongly - the replacement of archaic PC systems used-as-servers which were over 10 years old - but when I left, I did leave my predecessor a small 3-ring binder with infrastructure, host, policy (according to the IT Manager - the unspoken shit which was never clarified except in write-ups), and anything else that would be useful to the new gumshoe.
When you come into an environment like that, it's good to document as you figure things out. It helps you remember, and it also helps present the information in a manner which would be directly useful (in a sequential manner) to your replacement.
Though, in guilty hindsight, I do wish I'd have reset the domain administrator password(s) immediately after I got the phone call (wtf) to come in for my firing meeting. I knew it was coming, and I -could- have done it. Common sense prevailed, thankfully.
Yes, yes, yes! A big part of a documented site is physically documenting what individual pieces of equipment are. I don't care if you're using masking tape and a pencil, label your systems (and no, not the monitors)!
Even if you've got an extensive tome of documentation detailing each individual system, it does no good if a person can't find which system it is without non-trivial digging.
Right. And I, as an employee, am going to share my personal account password with a company which, in the event of my firing or layoff, could use my account to pin wrongdoing on me by committing said wrongdoing through said account? No.
Root has its purposes. There's a reason it hasn't been removed.
Oh, and adding your account to wheel? What the hell? That's a security problem in and of itself - much worse than your shallow impression of having an available root password in the event of emergencies.
The difference between "near-maximum control" and "near-maximum wild", in terms of psychological impact, aren't all that too dissimilar. When there are known predators out there, you will pack up. And you will pack up quickly, with people who seem the most like you/the most likely to sympathize with you.
When you're stressed to make a decision, you don't have time to determine the ins and outs of the person's socio-political and religious beliefs. He's not wearing thug clothes? He's got a haircut like me? I hope he'll be my bud!
(This is, in no small part, why uniform haircuts and uniforms are often the status quo in institutions: to encourage unity and discourage tribal behavior. Limited options for allowed/possible/practical behavior means additional avenues become tenable, so the tribal instincts are squashed.)
There are templates, and maybe they work for some networks, but from what I've seen, they don't work for an 'organic' network. Especially one which has been shoehorned into working by someone competent, and then allowed to languish at the heightened state for a while before being taken over by a competent person. (It's like what happens when you hit a cluster of dandelions with a non-mulching mower, sorta.)
There are a couple basic things to document, in my opinion.
* Passwords. They go in the lock box which you and your boss have keys to.
* Configuration files. Print them out and archive them.
* Infrastructure topology and routing. BIG BIG BIG. This stuff can go left undiscovered for years and takes a long time to actually dig into, especially if you don't have a central management system.
* hostnames (and IPs if apropos) with associated services
* Critical service list (and interdependencies).. granted sorta like the previous one but a bit different)
* Things that are on the "do not touch" list - eg. legacy applications - which will cause problems or have problems with certain infrastructural changes (eg. I know of one terminal client which can not exist on a DHCP network)
* Peculiar configurations on workstations used regularly, eg. in a dept. (see the previous point)
* The location of all assets
* The physical/digital location of ALL OTHER DOCUMENTATION!
The above should be in a printed binder and reviewed every couple months for changes. It should short and to the poitn so that your incumbent (or you) can use it as a quick reference.
You should also already have some way to track licenses and control the software installed on workstations; it's part of your documentation.
There are only a couple additional things I'd document (unless you're feeling bored and want to give your employer too much of an incentive to get rid of you for some young and inexperienced blood) as a small network administrator, IMO, to get out from under the "negligent" banner. Do more as time and desire permits, I suppose.
Personally, I think it's very important to document everything remotely interesting/useful, and to make it accessible in a fashion that's more useful than figuring out the 'neat'/solution again. Keeping a daily 'script' so you can backtrace what you did is potentially useful short-term (for your incumbent in the event you get hit by a bus, or a new coworker). Keeping a daily log of what you did is also useful.
Keeping a wiki from here-on-out of problems as they crop up (as well as documenting the more important information retroactively) is what I'd call the bare minimum.
I've had two very irritating md raid issues lately (both on ubuntu 9.10 *spit*) that I've never heard of before.
I installed the system to a single disk, mirrored it to another disk shortly afterr, and then made that disk have software raid partitions. Reboot, add the first drive's partitions to the arrays.
Only problem was that I'd initially set up the swap partitions as a single raid swap device. Very silly. In attempting to fix that w/ two separate swap partitions for the kernel to stripe, I could not remove one of the partitions from the array - the boot process (initramfs, maybe? I hate that thing) kept making the second disk unavailable and joining it to the partition - and then due to hibernate functionality, would remain unable to unmount. I went through a dozen cycles of reboot, single-user, make partition table changes, format, reboot to try and get md to ignore it. It didn't matter whether the partition was in fstab as swap, or if it was in mdadm.conf as a raid device.
Ultimately I had to disable mdadm from scanning the disks for raid superblocks, AND I had to dd if=/dev/random of=swap_partition to get the kernel to leave it alone.
The second I have yet to resolve. I've got an array (the one for the system root) which is (according to /proc/mdstat) degraded, but when I --examine each disk, they all checksum, etc. properly. I'm thinking this might be traceable to GRUB root= declarations, but I've yet to sort it out.
I also once had a network with a disparate variety of Windows workstations (100+ w98/2k/xp w/ a smathering of OEM/image/etc. installs) have systems which would randomly throw up that friendly message about only one domain controller being allowed per domain (re: SBS licensing issue). It was just the XP and 2k systems, not the older crap, which gave the message. Ironically 2k3 and 2000 Server installs didn't seem to notice. The solution was to pull the 2003 SBS server out a little sooner than planned, and migrate all of its services over to the new 2k3 Server system.
"Destroying X through upgrade" has become much, much more common in recent years. It used to be (pre 2006 or so) that an upgrade meant added functionality, support, and stability. Very rarely was anything taken away.
* and other misc. hardware support or functionality. I've got a list longer than I can count with one hand of devices I've had "not work" which really should (ie not ancient crap) after an upgrade. No errors, usually - just like the devs replaced the driver functionality with an empty loop.
I blame Ubuntu's break-neck development cycle (regression control? what's that?) and the kernel's "let the distros fix it" mentality since 2.6 came out. It's a bad combination.
A helium balloon with control valves and maybe directional sails, or some such thing would do the job nicely. IE, a 'weather balloon'. Depending on air currents you could launch it quite a far ways off.
Setting: front lawn. Neighbor is watering his lawn and CBS is coming home from work.
Neighbor: Hello CBS, good evening!
*cbs jumps over fence and grabs Neighbor, dragging him to the closed garage door, and and slams him against it
cbs: Where are the weapons?! WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS?!
Neighbor (flabbergasted): weapons? What are you talking about?
*neighbor starts to fall down the garage door as Bauer^Wcbs pulls him back up and slams him against it, pulling a USP and pressing it into Neighbor's nose
CBS: The weapons, god damn it, the WEAPONS! It's over, my partner found your collaborators. They were here twenty minutes ago!
Neighbor: Twenty minutes? There were girl scouts here selling us some Ginger Snaps about 20 minutes ago.
CBS: Yes, the cookies! Terrorists are using them to disperse dangerous nerve
Neighbor: They're just cookies, you crazy fuck!
* Neighbor kicks cbs in the nuts takes the gun off the ground, and uses his cell phone to call 911
Not so. My son (who is 5) enjoys 2D Mario games on the Nintendo better than he does Mario 64 on the N64 (the first of the genre to have full 3D, IIRC). And he enjoys the "mini-game" Donkey Kong throwback in SMB3 better than those.
Hell, when I was a kid of 10-13 I remember spending quite a few hours playing old Atari games when I had newer stuff available to me. The games had to be better because the graphics didn't compensate for a poor game experience by 'distracting' the player.
This is clearly impossible. Everyone knows that racism has been isolated to the ruling white class in the West.
$deity forbid someone with brown, yellow, or black skin could do such a thing. There's no historical precedent, I tell you! Surely this is the fault of Western society distorting their pure cultural values.
You, and your friends, are like the people who "tried $drug a couple times; it was OK, but didn't do anything special for me". You were a user - you enjoyed it - but you weren't addicted.
Addicts of all stripes are addicted for reasons more than physical. A person who relapses after years of not using does so largely for psychological reasons, not physical. A person drinks, smokes, does pot, meth, whatever for psychological reasons the first time. IIf they're not physically addicted after that, they continue doing it for psychological reasons.
A psychological addiction is often harder to fight than a physical one because you're not fighting the drugs, you're fighting yourself at a much more existential level.
Maybe because "Office of Public Liaison" sounds somewhat like "Office of Public Lying" - and because its largely a propaganda post. Combine this with the fact that Kal Penn was a financial and personal supporter of Obama and there is a disconcerting potential for sectarian preference and 'selective memory'.
Because MS will set the specs. Since some customers will only buy Windows, all the hardware manufacturers will build within those specs. And those specs will be with us for the duration of Windows 7.
*yawn*
People have seen and appreciated functional netbooks for the past year and a half in the sub-$300 range. That was kind of the Whole Point. What makes you think people will be willing to spend $100-300 more for the same device (to them)?
If Microsoft requires that as their max (target? minimum?) CPU TDP, and that's where things get targeted, then companies like Asus will go ahead and make a $200-300 netbook with Linux, again. (Consider, 15 watts for the CPU is crazy high when you consider the TDP for the first Asus Eee was in the 14.5-18 watt range.)
That's a freaking steal. You realize that you could, with a little know-how, use that as a platform for your own personally-made netbook? You wouldn't even need to know that much in that many domains.
Provided that's the same hardware (I didn't see any specs, board looked a bit bigger than what could fit in a wall plug), all you'd need would be:
* Get one of those 7" USB LCDs for $130
* take an older, thin steel case and bend the metal to make a case
* get a couple misc. pieces from the hardware store, and/or salvage an old x86 laptop's hinge
* use one of the various USB 'micro keyboards'
* fashion a battery pack with some AA lion cells (I'd personally go for 'replaceable' and not a pack, so you could just pop them into a charger and swap in some fresh ones after a day or so)
Preliminary "guess work" tells me that it'd be able to get roughly 5-6 hours on the same battery pack that the original Asus Eee used (based on the Eee 7" with the Celeron using 14.5 - 18 watts and the sheeva using 3-7 watts at full use, I'd guess the LCD might bring it up to 10 watts).
BTW, there's the board + power adapter for $150 on the same site. That's closer to doable.