I've never run NT on Alpha, but my understanding is that Microsoft took the easy way out and ran NT basically as a 32-bit OS. Linux, OTOH, fully supports 64-bit and has done so ever since the Alpha port matured. Microsoft finally had to bite the bullet and fix their 32-bit-isms when then came out with Win2k for ia64, but that was years later
It's very possible that it went that way.. I know it was painful to run NT4 on there, which would explain a bit.
The Alpha also gets you on unaligned memory accesses - if you and your compiler are not careful, you can force some very slow OS traps. I wouldn't be surprised if your applications were slow partly because of this.
We were just running Microsoft apps on there (IIS, and the domain controller stuff), so if they were slow, it was Microsoft's fault.
Hmmm, what's not to like about Digital Unix? I always thought it was quite nice, as proprietary Unixes go. It was slower than Linux, due to its microkernel layer.
It was just little annoyances.. Like, we had to do some creative work to get the GUI not to load, and it didn't do virtual terminals, so when I was on the console, I couldn't switch between tasks very gracefully. If I wanted to do stuff in two windows, I had to go back to my desk and SSH in.. There were other things, but I can't remember them now.. I do remember it was an absolute pain in the ass to get a DPT RAID controller installed, even with DPT's help.
This reminds me of something similiar. One particular federal security had beautiful high fences and armed guards.. So, driving around to the back, down some dirt trails, and walking a few hundred feet into the woods, we found the back fence, which was at the top of a cliff, that overlooked the facility.
We followed the fence down a little way, and found that it simply ended. Well, it was close to the side of the cliff. But not so close that you couldn't just hang on to the last pole, and swing around.
Around we swung, and down the face of the cliff we climbed. Took about an hour. By the it was like 4am. We wandered around the grounds of the facility, and checked out it's dishes from ground level (it was a US Gov't satellite ground uplink center).
Then we got bored and left.:)
I understand how hard places like that are to protect though.. Every day you come to work, and watch an empty cliff with no one on it.. You very rarely see anyone coming on, and most that do follow normal routes (driving up to the front gate).
So, you've worked there for 10+ years, and then some genius crosses the back fence and brags about it.:) I'd bet they had patrolled the back fence lines for years, and decided it wasn't worth it.
Kind of like Microsoft security. If no one's broken in that way, why secure it?:)
.voyeurweb.com. has 218 A records in it. .microsoft.com. had thousands of A records. I did a recursive lookup on them once. It was funny. It's obvious there are some people over there with a sense of humor.
voyeurweb.com. itself has 14 A records, but we've had up to 22. We did overrun the packet size when we had more A records (25) in there, but only some clients were failing because of it. They could easily add another root server, without breaking things. Well, assuming everyone would update their hints. I don't think most people optimize their hints file for their location.
> dig voyeurweb.com A
;; QUESTION SECTION: ;voyeurweb.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION: voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.97 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.14 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.15 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.16 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.17 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.84 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.85 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.86 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.87 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.23 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.25 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.62 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.64 voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.84
{sigh} I think I'm hitting every posting violation today.. "Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted." "Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
Mmmmm.. Your dialogue is sounding like one of my fantasies.. You forgot about the part where after work, she takes off her glasses, and lets her hair down, and the clothes come flying off.. hehe
Ok, I'll confess. I was one of the WinNT 4.0 Alpha users.. This was years ago, when WinNT 4.0 was current, so excuse my memory if I have some little details wrong.
I worked for a hosting company that wanted to migrate from BSDi to Windows ({sigh}).
The boss heard that DEC Alphas were fast, and they'd run either OS, so he bought 8 Alpha workstations, and one Alpha Server.. (It's been years, don't ask the models). I believe the AlphaServer was 500Mhz, and the workstations were 333Mhz, but I could be mistaken.
So, we ran Digital Unix on them for a while. Then pulled them out of service and started putting WinNT 4.0 on them..
Windows was pathetically slow on those machines, in comparison to them with Digital Unix, or in comparison to my Pentium 133Mhz workstation. Even in comparison to Pentium 166Mhz machines running BSDi 3.0, the Alphas were very slow, even though the Alphas were stuffed full of memory.
They were too slow to do anything significant with. I believe all the workstations were put into service as PDC and BCD's.. The AlphaServer was left in service as a Digital Unix fileserver.
As I remember, Microsoft had a falling out with Digitial, and Microsoft dropped the support for the Alpha's.. If I remember right, they stopped supporting them at WinNT4 Service Pack 3.
I *BELIEVE* all the Windows software was ported to Alpha. Everything else had to run through an emulator that they included. Well, it tried to. Most programs would crash it, or hang the machine. I don't know what to blame, Windows, the Emulator, or Digital.:)
I was never particularly fond of the DEC Alphas. I didn't like Digital Unix much at all, and the power-that-be wouldn't even let me consider Linux on them.
I didn't stay there long. I got into a shop changing FROM Windows to Linux.. We're a happy Linux network now.
It looks like all the big Linux distributions have gotten together to support the IA-64 Linux development.. This was the first hit on search "Linux IA-64" on google.
http://www.linuxia64.org/
Working distributions date back from 03/2000
Straight from their page:
IA-64 Linux Distributions # Caldera Systems (initial release 8/4/00) Download at ftp.caldera.com/pub/OpenLinux64 # Debian (initial release 8/10/01) Download at www.debian.org/ports/ia64 # Red Hat (initial release 5/17/00) Download at ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/ia64 # SuSE (initial release 6/13/00) Download at ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ia64 # TurboLinux (initial release 3/13/00) Download at www.turbolinux.com/ia64.html
Their short list of representative companies include: Caldera Systems, CERN, Debian, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Linuxcare, NEC, Red Hat, SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux, and VA Linux Systems.
If you search their site, you'll see a few emails from Linus in their mailing list archives, so he's obviously involved at least to a degree (I couldn't imagine him not being involved). I dare say he's educated in the matter, and would know all the in's and out's of say putting together an OS.:)
I'm sure support will be included eventually.. Well, maybe not.. I know Linux will run on SGI, DEC Alpha, ARM (I'm running Linux on a Compaq iPaq with an ARM CPU), so maybe they'll leave it as a patch and let folks do seperate distributions.
I guess it's all in how widely used a processor is.. Not the average Joe has an SGI, Alpha, or Itanium at their house. (I'll keep quiet about the 150Mhz SGI Indy that we use as a doorstop).
From what I've read in the articles and people's posts here, it sounds like Salon is being yet another dot-com failure..
The open huge offices, pay huge salaries, and they're probably paying Verio a few big bucks for hosting too..
It really reminds me of a small company I used to know.. It was a publishing company that wanted to get into the Internet business. They hired a dozen or so huge-salary executives, and twice as many staff (everything from support to programmers)..
Once a week, they'd have a team of masseuses come in to help relax the staff.. There was huge money spent on silly things, like overpriced servers. I was particularly impressed by the 10' tall neon logo in their lobby.. It wasn't very practical, since only the staff really saw it..
They signed into absolutely huge contracts.. One was a contract for a billboard at a football stadium. one million dollars per year for 12 years.
Their company name wasn't particularly memorable, and had no association to their purpose. We'll just say the name of the company was a motion of farm animals, and the company was an Internet development company.. I still don't quite understand why they picked the name.
Within a year, the staff found their 401k money had never been invested (the company "forgot" to send it). Their insurance lasted for exactly one month before the insurance company cancelled all their accounts for non-payment.
The sales staff had no technology knowlege, so they couldn't sell anything.
The lead programmer took over the job of sales, because sales sucked. But that left a hole where lesser programmers were handling all the large projects now..
If they had skipped the 12 million dollar debt with the billboard, millions more on other billboards (which never returned a single sale), waste like neon billboards in the office, and expensive office space, they could have done really well.
I'm kind of sorry I never participated in the whole dot-com era.. I never had a pool-table in my office, or really exotic furnature.. But I've had a job for years in an Internet company that thrives because we do what we do well, and we keep on tight budgets.
With two servers, and IP's on both networks, even if they're both on his same local network, he'll remain up, regardless if one of the lines dies..
The only concern that I could immediately see, would be more complicated stuff, like database work. But, that's easy enough, since he can tell each machine that both networks are local, so he doesn't go outside of his network for the connection.
It's possible, but when we change our DNS, users stop hitting it after an hour.. It could be that the users open and close their browser frequently, or the newer browsers are better behaved.
This is a note from myself, from yourself in 17 years.
You are 12 years old now, hating 7th grade. Your teachers think you're a slacker, even though you try hard. You've already come to the realization that the "teachers pets" mysteriously do better, but you refuse to be one. "Hair" bands are in..
Over the next few years, things will change subtly. You'll be changing schools, and have a whole new set of friends.
My advise to self is:
* Enjoy the hair bands.. Get an electric guitar, and learn it well.
* That girl in band really is worth chasing after (not the one you hopelessly chased for years). She's more impressed by this kind of talent.
* Playing with computers like you are now *IS* productive. Keep it up. Continue learning everything you can about all aspects of it.
* Persue the girl in drama.. She really likes you. If you don't now, you'll never see her again.
* Don't date blondes. They're all nuts.. If you don't listen now, you'll seriously regret it in the mid 90's. This isn't a single warning. You'll be burned by no less than three of them before you're 30.
* Don't date girls who are obviously unstable. One of the most unstable ones, you'll start seeing next year. It'll be very obvious to you when she shows up to the school dance drunk, and tries to start a fight between you and the football team. Don't worry, they think she's nuts too.
* In 1991, you'll have a traumatic life changing event. Prepare to be self sufficent, and the pillar of the family. Everyone will be depending on you. You probably won't be ready, but you'll do fine.
* In 1992, when someone local gets internet connectivity, help him out. This will expand your knowlege tremendously. If you don't, you won't get another chance for years.
* Follow your gut instinct.. If anything in you questions being with someone, drop the relationship them. Trust me, it's for the best. You'll fail to do this a few times, and wish you hadn't.
* When you meet someone in mid 90's just after your divorce, you'll find out over the next year that you truly love her.. Don't ever let this love go away.. If you do, you'll regret it forever. While you're together, you'll feel on top of the world. It'll never get any better than this. You'll be with her on and off for years. If I knew how to make you stay with her, I'd be with her now.:(
* Think twice about questionable acts.. It may seem like fun, but you may get caught. Quite likely as a matter of fact.
* Drugs are good and fun.. Don't give in to the media's portrayal. They'll give you lots of enjoyment, and experiences with new friends. Save it for only weekends. Recreational use is fun. Habitual use isn't.
* Finally, put more of your ideas down on paper. Combine the ideas into books. When possible, make the inventions you're dreaming of.. Practice will let you make some really interesting things in the future.
I know this method will get flamed by quite a few people, but it works very well.
We want 0 downtime. There's no way to guarantee that any equipment is without failure. Something can/will always break. That's something you have to accept.
voyeurweb.com is located in colo facilities in both New York and Tampa. Each facility has it's own network drop. The size doesn't matter, but for reference, it's 1000base fiber in each location.
We have at least 5 machines in each location. Each machine has it's own IP, and in some cases multiple IP's just to increase it's load (faster machines can handle heavier loads).
You put multiple A records in your DNS. When a customer browses to your site, they get any one of the IP's randomly. Here's what an 'nslookup' returns for voyeurweb.com
The 209.247.59 IP's are in New York. The 63.208.2. IP's are in Tampa. We're favoring the New York network a little bit, because we have some other specialized sites running in Tampa, and want an equal load between the cities. Right now, we're pulling about 450Mb/s per city at peak time. Just half of our 1000Mb/s drop. We've just added 1Gb/s fiber in Los Angeles, to increase our redundancy. How redundant you make youself is really up to how much the bosses want to spend, and how safe you want your site. Like I said, we want 0 downtime, and we achieve it.
The nice part is, if a machine fails, the client hangs for a few seconds, and then goes off to the next IP. If all the IP's in a city fail, the client can potentially hang for up to 30 seconds, before going to a server that works. Your browser will continue to use any IP that works.
We use a relatively short ttl in our DNS records, so if we decide to shut down all the servers in a city for any reason, within an hour all the traffic stops to them. I've done this many many times now, I'm 100% sure it works.
If we have a known problem (say a server has a hardware failure), you take it out of your DNS, and within an hour, no one is even trying to hit it.
We've done this with pairs of machines, or in the case of voyeurweb.com, up to 25 machines.
It's so simple it shouldn't work. I've been told by quite a few people that it won't work, but then I'll prove to them that it does..
Before we did this (before I was admin), if a machine failed, thousands of viewers would write in complaining immediately. Now, I can take a few machines down for maintaince, and no one notices. If we have a mystery crash at 4am, it's not fatal, we fix it when we can..
If you're a viewer, you probably didn't notice that we shut down all of Tampa for voyeurweb.com, for a week because of provider problems (lack of available bandwidth). You probably didn't even notice when we swapped out all the New York servers.. We were polite with some of them, but got bored with it, and just started yanking cables after a while.. We didn't receive a single Email asking why the sites were down. When a server went down, we did notice an increased load across the rest of them. It's nice having a *LOT* of servers running. If you have 10, you only get a 10% load increase across all the other servers when one goes down.:)
We don't depend on BGP. We don't depend on expensive load balancing equipment. We don't depend on anything other than the fact that people use browsers, and they resolve IP's through DNS.
In your case, you should have two ISP's providing you bandwidth. Each ISP should issue you a block of IP's from their available pool (like, it's hard to be on the Internet without it).. I'd say, if you want a site that stays up, set up a pair of mirrored servers. Give the first one an IP and gateway of the first ISP, and the second one an IP and gateway of the second ISP.. I could name off over a dozen sites that do this now, but I won't.:)
If you want to get real fancy, get one machine, put two IP's on it (one from each provider), and have a script monitor each gateway. If one fails, switch to the other. But this doesn't do anything for redundancy if one server should fail.
I hope I've explained this well. I've never seen it well documented anywhere. It's in the BIND documentation somewhere, but they have a real convoluted method of CNAME's and A records, which other documentation says are completely against some of the RFC's, so you shouldn't do it.
BTW, yes we get constant DoS attacks against us.. Sometimes I entertain myself by watching the logs.:) But, it's pretty hard to take down 10 servers that can each push out 150Mb/s (dual NIC's bound together with teql).
To the script kiddie that "took down" one of our machines the other night.. Ummm, you didn't. I was annoyed at seeing the logs, and dropped all traffic from your network.:)
But 180 days is very good, you should have been bragging it.. I rarely hit it with regular computers myself.. My home machine will get a kid tugging out the power cable, ir I'll upgrade the kernel to get a new sound card or something going (last time was USB and my Logitech joystick)...
My workstation is frequently abused with testing kernels, and abusing the insides for giggles.. The last time it went down (about a month ago), was to move it to a new office.
We have some Cisco switches with over 2 years, mainly because they just sit there and direct traffic.. Unless I'm in a rare mood, they don't get rebooted.:) Upgrades usually come first. I'm about to loose our longest uptime switch in a couple weeks, when we move it's servers to another colo facility.:(
--- Switch#show ver Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software IOS (tm) C2900XL Software (C2900XL-HS-M), Version {SNIP}
Switch uptime is 1 year, 42 weeks, 3 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes System restarted by power-on {SNIP}
cisco WS-C2916M-XL (PowerPC403GA) processor (revision 0x11) with 4096K/640K bytes of memory. Processor board ID 0x0C, with hardware revision 0x00 Last reset from power-on ---
Microsoft should take a clue though.. Us Unix people all can talk to each other about 6months to multiple years of uptime, and consider it perfectly normal. But with Windows, it's considered the rare exception.
{sigh} That was an old one.. The message was dated Nov 4, 1995.. Good to see Slashdot is keeping up with the times...
I honestly do understand Bill's answer though. At the time, I'm sure 99% of their support calls were people not having a clue how to work Windows.. He had just taken something that most of his users could work, and turned it inside out.. At the same time, I had everyone asking *ME* how to work it..
"What's a Start Button, and why do I click there?"
"How do I play my DOS games?"
"Why's this so slow?"
"I have a 386/16 with 4Mb RAM. Can I install Windows 95?"
Luckly I was working in a computer store at the time, so I had the luxury of explaining to thousands how to work their computers.. {sigh}
Well, I'm still explaining the basics of Windows to people, so not much has changed.. But now it's more like only 50% of the users have no clue how to work Windows..
But, how many people call to report bugs, and how many just don't understand what they're doing? I'd *LOVE* to call and report bugs every time we experience them, but I don't have the money to pay their support fees every time.
My favorite is still when Outlook goes to collect mail from a POP3 account, and can't open a local socket. It comes up with something like "Can't open local socket for connect.....", with a whole bunch of random numbers.. The only solution is to reboot. No other fix. Trust me, we've tried. After I hear the first words, I just tell them, "reboot your computer and try again."
I love when users tell me, "I just did, and it still does it.". I call them liars to their face.. They'll finally admit they only closed Outlook, and reopened it.. I again tell them "Reboot your computer, and try again.".. Amazingly enough, when they do reboot, it starts working again.
Why do people lie to you when you're telling them exactly how to fix their problem?
I guess it would be better if Microsoft just fixed the bug, rather than leaving thousands of users wondering what a socket is, and why it can't be opened.. The users always blame the server, and it's not a server problem.
Lately, Outlook problems have been more popular than Windows locking up, so I guess they're doing something better.. Not quite right yet, but they should keep trying.:) It's not like their a big software company or anything. Just some average Joe trying to put out a piece of software.:)
May I take this opprotunity to better your uptime?
In 1999, we delivered 10 AMD K6/2 450Mhz servers to a colo in Manhatten.
06/Sept/2001, we upgraded our servers in New York. The upgrades consisted of memory, CPU fans, and a fresh OS install (the running Linux install was 2 years old).
Dec 2002, we finally pulled those same machines out of service, because they were 4 years old, and we had much faster machines to replace them with much faster machines. Most of the machines hadn't been rebooted since Sept 2001, so they were shut down with over 400 days of uptime, under heavy load.
The only exceptions to the uptime were one server that had a bad hard drive, and one with a power supply failure.
On identical hardware, we have/had Windows 98 and WinNT 4 running. I can't say we ever had more than 1 month uptime, without something going wrong.
At least you made it through the acquisition. Usually that first meeting is where they're nice enough to say "We just bought your company for it's assets, and have no need for the staff. Security will now escort you to the door."
I'm sorry abour your options. I have something like 20,000 shares in a company I worked for, that got acquired. When it was acquired, the stocks became worthless. Then the new company folded 6 months later. I still have the paper though. I'll give it to my grand-kids in 100 years, and tell them, "Don't ever let a company pay you in stocks."
Definately, protect yourself. The big company is always looking to ditch anyone they can from the little company.
Bank Of America had a similiar mess-up with a friend of mine..
Her name is Cindy Z . I won't write her last name because
1) I want to protect her privacy 2) I couldn't spell it if I wanted to.
Her brother was in another state. Well, her brother met a nice girl, also named Cindy. They got married, and she took his name (as traditional).. So now there are two Cindy Z's, in different states, with completely seperate bank accounts, which happen to be with the same bank. We'll mark this Cindy Z as Cindy Z(2).:)
The Cindy Z(2). decides to close her account, and bank elsewhere.. She takes out *ALL* the money. Not a problem, right? After all, it's her account.
Well, they pulled out of the original Cindy Z's account, and closed *HER* account. Different social security number, different state. This isn't a matter of $20 or $30. It's in the tens of thousands. Like, a life savings worth.
The original Cindy Z. had written and mailed all her bill checks, and was currently on the road. When she gets home, she finds every check had bounced, and her account was empty. "Funny that", thinks Cindy Z, "there should be plenty of money in there. (I think the real phrasing was a bit more harsh)
She goes to the bank, and they very kindly explain to her that she withdrew her money and closed her account (in the wrong state).
As she tells the story, there was a bit of screaming that went on.. It took a couple weeks to clear up. They never did cover all the bounced check charges incurred with their little mess up.
My real name is rather common (as opposed to my online name).. I know there are a whole bunch of me out there. Google finds 7690 instances of my name on pages, none of which are me. people.yahoo.com finds 65. Two of them are within 20 miles of where I used to live, and four within 50 miles of where I am now.
There's a rather good photographer in Germany with my name as his site. My name was also used by a Vietnam era pilot, and quite a few other me's.:) There are warrants out for a few of me though. Luckly there's a good age gap between me and them, so it's fairly obvious I'm not the evil me.
At one time, I banked with a bank that had another me. Different SS#, different address, same name..
I go to Bank Of America on a regular basis to cash checks that are drawn from there. It's a slow, painful process every time.. They check my ID, and see that it's out of state (I maintain two residences in very seperate states). They take the check, verify the account, check the signature, then check with a bank manager who comes over look at me, look at the ID, and verify my signature. Then they fingerprint me, and charge me $5 for the pleasure of standing there for 15 minutes while they do this process. Only once have I enjoyed it. They have one very cute teller, who I flirted with while the manager was busy doing his verification thing..
I've already reserved myself to the fact that it will take no less than 15 minutes to do a 30 second transaction, so I go in with no intention of leaving quickly.
The last time I went to Bank Of America, one of the managers asked to talk to me.. Fine, I say, talk.. He recognizes the fact that I cash large checks every time I go in, and I'm in on a weekly basis. They want me to open an account in a bad sort of way.
I have to weigh my options.. Pay the $5 BoA tax for standing in their line for 15 minutes, or simply deposit my cash in their bank, with the risk of loosing it to any one of the me's that are out there. It's a tough decision.
I'm tempted to open a free account, and keep $5 in it, so I can empty the other me's accounts. But, I'm too honest to do that, and am afraid another me will get my $5..
There's only so much torture you can give before it becomes inhumane..
I'm fairly sure N'Sync for more than 5 minutes is cruel and unusual punishment.
Tortured like that for 10 minutes, he'd probably die of an internal hemorrhage, or give up the locations of every missile in the country, and give you his 67 wives.:)
(don't get optimistic. Only two if the wives are remotely cute)
Reminds me when I was doing all the admin work for one company. My desk was in the call-center area (it was a small company).. 6 people jabbering away on the phone with customers, while I was trying to run the servers.. Pagers going off constantly, because the owner's opinion was that I couldn't change things on the network, so fairly unstable machines had to remain fairly unstable. Every 5 minutes, one of the support people would yell to me, "Can you have a look at this?" It would usually be that the user forgot to upload their files, or some such nonsense. Yet another job where I got absolutely nothing done.
I worked 80 hours/week and was paid $8/hr for only 40 hours of it (the rest was unauthorized overtime).
I took pride in my work, so I worked the extra hours to make things work. They hired all kinds of useless admin staff around us.. One management executive got kinda tweaked out about me.. She didn't like me at all. She especially didn't like the fact that I refused to clock in or out.. So, I started clocking in and out for a couple weeks.. She said "We can't pay you the overtime." So, I told her I'd just stop clocking in and out.. Took care of that nonsense. She learned not to say anything about me coming after noon every day.:) Sometimes we have to have our boundaries.. Mine starts sometime after noon.
I have my servers stable at this company, and an office. But everyone knows my phone numbers, and feel free to walk in. I tried an experement today. I jammed a chair under the door handle, so they couldn't just walk in. That lasted almost 5 minutes.
Todays delima's were:
1) Where's my server
2) Where's my 2 servers (different project)
3) Is the authentication done?
4) What's my Email password
5) Where are the 8 new servers (another project)
And a whole lot of smaller ones.
#1 and #2 are already done and at the colo running happily on the internet. Luckly no one but me knows where they are.:)
#3 ummm.. no.
#5 if CDW would ship all the parts at once, we'd have all the parts..
Let me share my current CDW experience..
We've ordered 11 servers in the past two weeks.
3 Asus servers, and 2 SuperMicro servers, in one batch, say on the 4th.
8 Asus servers on the 11th.
We get the Asus chassis drop-shipped from Asus (thanks to a great wholesaler in Florida). We get them the next day.
We get the memory from Crucial, directly. It usually comes in 2 days.
We get hard drives and CPU's from CDW. This is the interesting part.
So on the 6th, 3 of the Asus Chassis arrive.
On the 7th, all the memory arrives.
On the 10th, the hard drives arrive, so we build out the three Asus machines, and put them up. Good start.
The SuperMicro servers arrived this afternoon. Like almost two weeks after we started receiving parts.
The 8 Asus servers were ordered on the 11th. The 12th the chassis show up. Yippie. The 14th the memory and hard drives show up, so we get the OS's installed (we have a Slackware install customized to do in 5 minutes 40 seconds, from power up to power down). Today, (the 18th), 4 CPU's show up.
4 CPU's of 16?? Like, put 'em all in one big box, why don't ya.. I swear CDW has untrained monkeys packing their stuff.. I'm not making daily runs out to the colo to install machines, so they're all going to sit here til all the parts show up. My boss will flip tommorrow when he sees all these almost complete servers just sitting around. "Sorry boss, no CPU's. Talk to the guy who still orders from CDW." We're in Los Angeles. There must be at least one local vendor who could give us 16 1.4Ghz CPU's.. Intel's home office is only 5 hours from here, I could have driven up there and picked them up directly (well, if they sold direct)
A couple weeks ago, I ordered 5 GBIC's for some gig switches we have, as well as some hard drives.. They put the GBIC's unprotected in the bottom of the box, the drives on top of them, and then their packing balloons on the top of the box.. I have no idea what they were trying to protect, but it sure wasn't $1500 worth of GBIC's. If you've ever ordered a Cisco GBIC, they come in a big 8.5x11 plastic baggie, with a book on how to install it ( 1. Insert GBIC into GBIC socket. ) No wrapping, no nuthin'. It looks like they've been selling them at a flea market or something.:)
Not that I care. It's not my money.. My money is missing somewhere in an accounting black hole, right along with my IRS paperwork.. It seems they've misplaced a few thousand dollars of my paycheck so far this year, but the boss promises it'll be found.. I'd kind of like to see it in my pocket, personally..
Maybe I should just copy this message in my journal.. Yet another black hole.:)
Office space was a good representation of the office working environment. Stupid bosses who don't do anything. Idiotic tasks specifically designed to waste time. Policies enforced just to annoy you (You forgot the cover sheet on the TPS report). "Friendly" staff evaluations to randomly lay off good staff..
Been there, lived through it..
A portrayal of my life would be pretty.. well.. boring. I do a lot of nothing, and don't get what I want to do accomplished. Oddly enough, what I want to do, and the company projects, are one in the same.. Read on...
Follow me through Sunday evening and Monday..
---- Sunday Evening.
Sunday, 6pm.. Coding new authentication module for Apache..
20 minutes reading (from my personal O'Reilly library, dejanews, and the very few sites that may have clues to what I'm doing).
30 minutes writing.
5 minutes reading work
2 seconds deciding I didn't like parts of it, and deleting 90%
drink a beer.
[lather;rinse;repeat] for the next 8 hours. On the weekend. Like, when I'm not even supppose to be working.
Pager beeps at 2am. One server with 6 months of uptime is unreachable.
Log into server. It's running.
Check httpd processes, they're running.
Try browsing to server, it's unreachable.
30 seconds scratching head.
Kill all httpd processes. Restart web server, check error logs. Starts normally.
Try browsing to server. It's unrecachable.
Reboot server (for spite).
2 minutes drinking beer.
Server's back up, still can't browse to it.
netstat -a -n
Oh look, one IP has 10,000 connections from a university in Russia (212.96.201.28, for those really interested)
verify TCP_SYNCOOKIES enabled. yup.
Check logs. No entries for that IP.
Drop traffic that/24's traffic at the router.
Browse to site. It works.
Drink more beer. Go to bed at 3am ---------
Monday morning.
Wake up late.
9am Drag my happy ass into office.
9:20 discussion of what happened, and what we can do to prevent it happening again. I suggest going into used car sales.
10:00 arrive at my desk.
10:01 users start asking for their forgotten Email or FTP passwords.
10:20 start back on authentication module.
10:21 phone call forwarded from support.
10:45 hang up on support call. I hate users.
10:50 start back on authentication module.
10:51 "Urgent" help needed for other people's broken CGI's.
11:45 Finish fixing really shitty CGI's.
12:00 back to desk with sandwich in hand.
12:00.01 Can you help this guy on line 3?
12:15 get rid of guy on phone. Unwrap sandwidth.
12:16 "My computer has a blue screen, can you help me". Decision: shoot user, or hit reset for them.
12:17->12:30 listen to user cry because they had some important program open, and I lost it. I'm so evil.
12:31 pick up sandwidth
12:31.0001 phone rings. Boss wants to talk about last night. I remind him I sent an Email on it. He asks for his Email password.
12:45 I reach for the sandwich. "important" customer walks in, asking for changes to his site. I point to my sandwich. He says it'll only take a minute.
1:30 {sigh} I look longingly at my lunch. Quickly I scribble on a post it "Comitted Suicide, memorial next week", and put it on my door. Phone stays outside the door too.
1:31 the first bite of my sandwidth.. MMmmmmm.. Almost as good as street meet, with less rodent parts.
1:35 all gone? I'm still hungry.
1:36 begin work on authentication module.
1:37 boss walks in (didn't he read the note?), wants to know why I haven't finished the authentication module.. And then throws another task at me that's more urgent.
3:30 more urgent task done. Back to authentication module.
3:35 parts arrive for servers that we've been waiting for, for 2 weeks. Delegate work. Spend the next half hour explaining how to do 5 minutes work.
4:15 smoke. smoke. smoke. it's oddly quiet. No phones, no users. I wonder if I can bring my laptop down here.
4:30 authentication module. I still haven't written one line yet, but I'm trying..
4:31 Boss comes in screaming, I think one of the networks is slow. Spend the next hour justifying the fact that nothing is slow, enforced with transfer rates and ping times.
5:30 smoke.
5:45 contemplate suicide. Go back to office anyways. Start working on authentication module.
5:50 girlfriend calls. "Why don't you love me, you never spend time with me."
6:20 finish with girlfriend. Take elevator to top floor to find out roof access is locked (smart people).
6:30 go home.
So, today I accomplished exactly *NOTHING*.
That's my typical fuckin' work day.
I've gone as far as to put the phones outside my office door (including cell), put a big note explaining that I'm on an important project and to leave me alone. I then lock and barracade the door. That'll get the boss banging on the door within 5 minutes. {sigh} After asking if I'm ok, and why I did it, he then asks if the project is done..
I tried working from home one day, because there was a project that needed to be completed (the boss wanted it immediately).. The boss insisted that I keep my phone on, in case there were emergencies.. I took 68 calls from the office that day.
I can't win.
I may as well be doing TPS reports with fish flavored cover sheets.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never run NT on Alpha, but my understanding is that Microsoft took the easy way out and ran NT basically as a 32-bit OS. Linux, OTOH, fully supports 64-bit and has done so ever since the Alpha port matured. Microsoft finally had to bite the bullet and fix their 32-bit-isms when then came out with Win2k for ia64, but that was years later
It's very possible that it went that way.. I know it was painful to run NT4 on there, which would explain a bit.
The Alpha also gets you on unaligned memory accesses - if you and your compiler are not careful, you can force some very slow OS traps. I wouldn't be surprised if your applications were slow partly because of this.
We were just running Microsoft apps on there (IIS, and the domain controller stuff), so if they were slow, it was Microsoft's fault.
Hmmm, what's not to like about Digital Unix? I always thought it was quite nice, as proprietary Unixes go. It was slower than Linux, due to its microkernel layer.
It was just little annoyances.. Like, we had to do some creative work to get the GUI not to load, and it didn't do virtual terminals, so when I was on the console, I couldn't switch between tasks very gracefully. If I wanted to do stuff in two windows, I had to go back to my desk and SSH in.. There were other things, but I can't remember them now.. I do remember it was an absolute pain in the ass to get a DPT RAID controller installed, even with DPT's help.
This reminds me of something similiar. One particular federal security had beautiful high fences and armed guards.. So, driving around to the back, down some dirt trails, and walking a few hundred feet into the woods, we found the back fence, which was at the top of a cliff, that overlooked the facility.
:)
:) I'd bet they had patrolled the back fence lines for years, and decided it wasn't worth it.
:)
We followed the fence down a little way, and found that it simply ended. Well, it was close to the side of the cliff. But not so close that you couldn't just hang on to the last pole, and swing around.
Around we swung, and down the face of the cliff we climbed. Took about an hour. By the it was like 4am. We wandered around the grounds of the facility, and checked out it's dishes from ground level (it was a US Gov't satellite ground uplink center).
Then we got bored and left.
I understand how hard places like that are to protect though.. Every day you come to work, and watch an empty cliff with no one on it.. You very rarely see anyone coming on, and most that do follow normal routes (driving up to the front gate).
So, you've worked there for 10+ years, and then some genius crosses the back fence and brags about it.
Kind of like Microsoft security. If no one's broken in that way, why secure it?
(I had to get a Microsoft joke in somehow).
I'm confused on point b.
.voyeurweb.com. has 218 A records in it.
.microsoft.com. had thousands of A records. I did a recursive lookup on them once. It was funny. It's obvious there are some people over there with a sense of humor.
voyeurweb.com. itself has 14 A records, but we've had up to 22. We did overrun the packet size when we had more A records (25) in there, but only some clients were failing because of it. They could easily add another root server, without breaking things. Well, assuming everyone would update their hints. I don't think most people optimize their hints file for their location.
> dig voyeurweb.com A
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;voyeurweb.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.97
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.14
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.15
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.16
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.17
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.84
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.85
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.86
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 209.247.59.87
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.23
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.25
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.62
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.64
voyeurweb.com. 3600 IN A 63.208.2.84
{sigh} I think I'm hitting every posting violation today..
"Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted."
"Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
Not a problem. They don't have Windows. :)
.. hehe
Mmmmm.. Your dialogue is sounding like one of my fantasies.. You forgot about the part where after work, she takes off her glasses, and lets her hair down, and the clothes come flying off
Ok, I'll confess. I was one of the WinNT 4.0 Alpha users.. This was years ago, when WinNT 4.0 was current, so excuse my memory if I have some little details wrong.
:)
I worked for a hosting company that wanted to migrate from BSDi to Windows ({sigh}).
The boss heard that DEC Alphas were fast, and they'd run either OS, so he bought 8 Alpha workstations, and one Alpha Server.. (It's been years, don't ask the models). I believe the AlphaServer was 500Mhz, and the workstations were 333Mhz, but I could be mistaken.
So, we ran Digital Unix on them for a while. Then pulled them out of service and started putting WinNT 4.0 on them..
Windows was pathetically slow on those machines, in comparison to them with Digital Unix, or in comparison to my Pentium 133Mhz workstation. Even in comparison to Pentium 166Mhz machines running BSDi 3.0, the Alphas were very slow, even though the Alphas were stuffed full of memory.
They were too slow to do anything significant with. I believe all the workstations were put into service as PDC and BCD's.. The AlphaServer was left in service as a Digital Unix fileserver.
As I remember, Microsoft had a falling out with Digitial, and Microsoft dropped the support for the Alpha's.. If I remember right, they stopped supporting them at WinNT4 Service Pack 3.
I *BELIEVE* all the Windows software was ported to Alpha. Everything else had to run through an emulator that they included. Well, it tried to. Most programs would crash it, or hang the machine. I don't know what to blame, Windows, the Emulator, or Digital.
I was never particularly fond of the DEC Alphas. I didn't like Digital Unix much at all, and the power-that-be wouldn't even let me consider Linux on them.
I didn't stay there long. I got into a shop changing FROM Windows to Linux.. We're a happy Linux network now.
It looks like all the big Linux distributions have gotten together to support the IA-64 Linux development.. This was the first hit on search "Linux IA-64" on google.
:)
http://www.linuxia64.org/
Working distributions date back from 03/2000
Straight from their page:
IA-64 Linux Distributions
# Caldera Systems (initial release 8/4/00) Download at ftp.caldera.com/pub/OpenLinux64
# Debian (initial release 8/10/01) Download at www.debian.org/ports/ia64
# Red Hat (initial release 5/17/00) Download at ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/ia64
# SuSE (initial release 6/13/00) Download at ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ia64
# TurboLinux (initial release 3/13/00) Download at www.turbolinux.com/ia64.html
Their short list of representative companies include: Caldera Systems, CERN, Debian, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Linuxcare, NEC, Red Hat, SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux, and VA Linux Systems.
If you search their site, you'll see a few emails from Linus in their mailing list archives, so he's obviously involved at least to a degree (I couldn't imagine him not being involved). I dare say he's educated in the matter, and would know all the in's and out's of say putting together an OS.
I'm sure support will be included eventually.. Well, maybe not.. I know Linux will run on SGI, DEC Alpha, ARM (I'm running Linux on a Compaq iPaq with an ARM CPU), so maybe they'll leave it as a patch and let folks do seperate distributions.
I guess it's all in how widely used a processor is.. Not the average Joe has an SGI, Alpha, or Itanium at their house. (I'll keep quiet about the 150Mhz SGI Indy that we use as a doorstop).
From what I've read in the articles and people's posts here, it sounds like Salon is being yet another dot-com failure..
The open huge offices, pay huge salaries, and they're probably paying Verio a few big bucks for hosting too..
It really reminds me of a small company I used to know.. It was a publishing company that wanted to get into the Internet business. They hired a dozen or so huge-salary executives, and twice as many staff (everything from support to programmers)..
Once a week, they'd have a team of masseuses come in to help relax the staff.. There was huge money spent on silly things, like overpriced servers. I was particularly impressed by the 10' tall neon logo in their lobby.. It wasn't very practical, since only the staff really saw it..
They signed into absolutely huge contracts.. One was a contract for a billboard at a football stadium. one million dollars per year for 12 years.
Their company name wasn't particularly memorable, and had no association to their purpose. We'll just say the name of the company was a motion of farm animals, and the company was an Internet development company.. I still don't quite understand why they picked the name.
Within a year, the staff found their 401k money had never been invested (the company "forgot" to send it). Their insurance lasted for exactly one month before the insurance company cancelled all their accounts for non-payment.
The sales staff had no technology knowlege, so they couldn't sell anything.
The lead programmer took over the job of sales, because sales sucked. But that left a hole where lesser programmers were handling all the large projects now..
If they had skipped the 12 million dollar debt with the billboard, millions more on other billboards (which never returned a single sale), waste like neon billboards in the office, and expensive office space, they could have done really well.
I'm kind of sorry I never participated in the whole dot-com era.. I never had a pool-table in my office, or really exotic furnature.. But I've had a job for years in an Internet company that thrives because we do what we do well, and we keep on tight budgets.
Actually, it should work fine for him..
With two servers, and IP's on both networks, even if they're both on his same local network, he'll remain up, regardless if one of the lines dies..
The only concern that I could immediately see, would be more complicated stuff, like database work. But, that's easy enough, since he can tell each machine that both networks are local, so he doesn't go outside of his network for the connection.
It's possible, but when we change our DNS, users stop hitting it after an hour.. It could be that the users open and close their browser frequently, or the newer browsers are better behaved.
Self,
:(
This is a note from myself, from yourself in 17 years.
You are 12 years old now, hating 7th grade. Your teachers think you're a slacker, even though you try hard. You've already come to the realization that the "teachers pets" mysteriously do better, but you refuse to be one. "Hair" bands are in..
Over the next few years, things will change subtly. You'll be changing schools, and have a whole new set of friends.
My advise to self is:
* Enjoy the hair bands.. Get an electric guitar, and learn it well.
* That girl in band really is worth chasing after (not the one you hopelessly chased for years). She's more impressed by this kind of talent.
* Playing with computers like you are now *IS* productive. Keep it up. Continue learning everything you can about all aspects of it.
* Persue the girl in drama.. She really likes you. If you don't now, you'll never see her again.
* Don't date blondes. They're all nuts.. If you don't listen now, you'll seriously regret it in the mid 90's. This isn't a single warning. You'll be burned by no less than three of them before you're 30.
* Don't date girls who are obviously unstable. One of the most unstable ones, you'll start seeing next year. It'll be very obvious to you when she shows up to the school dance drunk, and tries to start a fight between you and the football team. Don't worry, they think she's nuts too.
* In 1991, you'll have a traumatic life changing event. Prepare to be self sufficent, and the pillar of the family. Everyone will be depending on you. You probably won't be ready, but you'll do fine.
* In 1992, when someone local gets internet connectivity, help him out. This will expand your knowlege tremendously. If you don't, you won't get another chance for years.
* Follow your gut instinct.. If anything in you questions being with someone, drop the relationship them. Trust me, it's for the best. You'll fail to do this a few times, and wish you hadn't.
* When you meet someone in mid 90's just after your divorce, you'll find out over the next year that you truly love her.. Don't ever let this love go away.. If you do, you'll regret it forever. While you're together, you'll feel on top of the world. It'll never get any better than this. You'll be with her on and off for years. If I knew how to make you stay with her, I'd be with her now.
* Think twice about questionable acts.. It may seem like fun, but you may get caught. Quite likely as a matter of fact.
* Drugs are good and fun.. Don't give in to the media's portrayal. They'll give you lots of enjoyment, and experiences with new friends. Save it for only weekends. Recreational use is fun. Habitual use isn't.
* Finally, put more of your ideas down on paper. Combine the ideas into books. When possible, make the inventions you're dreaming of.. Practice will let you make some really interesting things in the future.
I know this method will get flamed by quite a few people, but it works very well.
:)
:)
:)
:) But, it's pretty hard to take down 10 servers that can each push out 150Mb/s (dual NIC's bound together with teql).
:)
We want 0 downtime. There's no way to guarantee that any equipment is without failure. Something can/will always break. That's something you have to accept.
voyeurweb.com is located in colo facilities in both New York and Tampa. Each facility has it's own network drop. The size doesn't matter, but for reference, it's 1000base fiber in each location.
We have at least 5 machines in each location. Each machine has it's own IP, and in some cases multiple IP's just to increase it's load (faster machines can handle heavier loads).
You put multiple A records in your DNS. When a customer browses to your site, they get any one of the IP's randomly. Here's what an 'nslookup' returns for voyeurweb.com
> nslookup voyeurweb.com | grep Address
Address: 63.208.2.23
Address: 63.208.2.25
Address: 63.208.2.62
Address: 63.208.2.64
Address: 63.208.2.84
Address: 63.208.2.97
Address: 209.247.59.14
Address: 209.247.59.15
Address: 209.247.59.16
Address: 209.247.59.17
Address: 209.247.59.84
Address: 209.247.59.85
Address: 209.247.59.86
Address: 209.247.59.87
The 209.247.59 IP's are in New York. The 63.208.2. IP's are in Tampa. We're favoring the New York network a little bit, because we have some other specialized sites running in Tampa, and want an equal load between the cities. Right now, we're pulling about 450Mb/s per city at peak time. Just half of our 1000Mb/s drop. We've just added 1Gb/s fiber in Los Angeles, to increase our redundancy. How redundant you make youself is really up to how much the bosses want to spend, and how safe you want your site. Like I said, we want 0 downtime, and we achieve it.
The nice part is, if a machine fails, the client hangs for a few seconds, and then goes off to the next IP. If all the IP's in a city fail, the client can potentially hang for up to 30 seconds, before going to a server that works. Your browser will continue to use any IP that works.
We use a relatively short ttl in our DNS records, so if we decide to shut down all the servers in a city for any reason, within an hour all the traffic stops to them. I've done this many many times now, I'm 100% sure it works.
If we have a known problem (say a server has a hardware failure), you take it out of your DNS, and within an hour, no one is even trying to hit it.
We've done this with pairs of machines, or in the case of voyeurweb.com, up to 25 machines.
It's so simple it shouldn't work. I've been told by quite a few people that it won't work, but then I'll prove to them that it does..
Before we did this (before I was admin), if a machine failed, thousands of viewers would write in complaining immediately. Now, I can take a few machines down for maintaince, and no one notices. If we have a mystery crash at 4am, it's not fatal, we fix it when we can..
If you're a viewer, you probably didn't notice that we shut down all of Tampa for voyeurweb.com, for a week because of provider problems (lack of available bandwidth). You probably didn't even notice when we swapped out all the New York servers.. We were polite with some of them, but got bored with it, and just started yanking cables after a while.. We didn't receive a single Email asking why the sites were down. When a server went down, we did notice an increased load across the rest of them. It's nice having a *LOT* of servers running. If you have 10, you only get a 10% load increase across all the other servers when one goes down.
We don't depend on BGP. We don't depend on expensive load balancing equipment. We don't depend on anything other than the fact that people use browsers, and they resolve IP's through DNS.
In your case, you should have two ISP's providing you bandwidth. Each ISP should issue you a block of IP's from their available pool (like, it's hard to be on the Internet without it).. I'd say, if you want a site that stays up, set up a pair of mirrored servers. Give the first one an IP and gateway of the first ISP, and the second one an IP and gateway of the second ISP.. I could name off over a dozen sites that do this now, but I won't.
If you want to get real fancy, get one machine, put two IP's on it (one from each provider), and have a script monitor each gateway. If one fails, switch to the other. But this doesn't do anything for redundancy if one server should fail.
I hope I've explained this well. I've never seen it well documented anywhere. It's in the BIND documentation somewhere, but they have a real convoluted method of CNAME's and A records, which other documentation says are completely against some of the RFC's, so you shouldn't do it.
Even our evil nemesis does it...
>nslookup microsoft.com | grep Address | sort
Address: 207.46.134.155
Address: 207.46.134.190
Address: 207.46.134.222
Address: 207.46.249.190
Address: 207.46.249.222
Address: 207.46.249.27
Two different networks, splitting the load.
If CNN does it, it must be good.
> nslookup cnn.com | grep Address | sort
Address: 64.236.16.116
Address: 64.236.16.20
Address: 64.236.16.52
Address: 64.236.16.84
Address: 64.236.24.12
Address: 64.236.24.20
Address: 64.236.24.28
Address: 64.236.24.4
BTW, yes we get constant DoS attacks against us.. Sometimes I entertain myself by watching the logs.
To the script kiddie that "took down" one of our machines the other night.. Ummm, you didn't. I was annoyed at seeing the logs, and dropped all traffic from your network.
But 180 days is very good, you should have been bragging it.. I rarely hit it with regular computers myself.. My home machine will get a kid tugging out the power cable, ir I'll upgrade the kernel to get a new sound card or something going (last time was USB and my Logitech joystick)...
:) Upgrades usually come first. I'm about to loose our longest uptime switch in a couple weeks, when we move it's servers to another colo facility. :(
My workstation is frequently abused with testing kernels, and abusing the insides for giggles.. The last time it went down (about a month ago), was to move it to a new office.
We have some Cisco switches with over 2 years, mainly because they just sit there and direct traffic.. Unless I'm in a rare mood, they don't get rebooted.
---
Switch#show ver
Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software
IOS (tm) C2900XL Software (C2900XL-HS-M), Version {SNIP}
Switch uptime is 1 year, 42 weeks, 3 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes
System restarted by power-on
{SNIP}
cisco WS-C2916M-XL (PowerPC403GA) processor (revision 0x11) with 4096K/640K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID 0x0C, with hardware revision 0x00
Last reset from power-on
---
Microsoft should take a clue though.. Us Unix people all can talk to each other about 6months to multiple years of uptime, and consider it perfectly normal. But with Windows, it's considered the rare exception.
{sigh} That was an old one.. The message was dated Nov 4, 1995.. Good to see Slashdot is keeping up with the times...
:) It's not like their a big software company or anything. Just some average Joe trying to put out a piece of software. :)
I honestly do understand Bill's answer though. At the time, I'm sure 99% of their support calls were people not having a clue how to work Windows.. He had just taken something that most of his users could work, and turned it inside out.. At the same time, I had everyone asking *ME* how to work it..
"What's a Start Button, and why do I click there?"
"How do I play my DOS games?"
"Why's this so slow?"
"I have a 386/16 with 4Mb RAM. Can I install Windows 95?"
Luckly I was working in a computer store at the time, so I had the luxury of explaining to thousands how to work their computers.. {sigh}
Well, I'm still explaining the basics of Windows to people, so not much has changed.. But now it's more like only 50% of the users have no clue how to work Windows..
But, how many people call to report bugs, and how many just don't understand what they're doing? I'd *LOVE* to call and report bugs every time we experience them, but I don't have the money to pay their support fees every time.
My favorite is still when Outlook goes to collect mail from a POP3 account, and can't open a local socket. It comes up with something like "Can't open local socket for connect.....", with a whole bunch of random numbers.. The only solution is to reboot. No other fix. Trust me, we've tried. After I hear the first words, I just tell them, "reboot your computer and try again."
I love when users tell me, "I just did, and it still does it.". I call them liars to their face.. They'll finally admit they only closed Outlook, and reopened it.. I again tell them "Reboot your computer, and try again.".. Amazingly enough, when they do reboot, it starts working again.
Why do people lie to you when you're telling them exactly how to fix their problem?
I guess it would be better if Microsoft just fixed the bug, rather than leaving thousands of users wondering what a socket is, and why it can't be opened.. The users always blame the server, and it's not a server problem.
Lately, Outlook problems have been more popular than Windows locking up, so I guess they're doing something better.. Not quite right yet, but they should keep trying.
May I take this opprotunity to better your uptime?
In 1999, we delivered 10 AMD K6/2 450Mhz servers to a colo in Manhatten.
06/Sept/2001, we upgraded our servers in New York. The upgrades consisted of memory, CPU fans, and a fresh OS install (the running Linux install was 2 years old).
Dec 2002, we finally pulled those same machines out of service, because they were 4 years old, and we had much faster machines to replace them with much faster machines. Most of the machines hadn't been rebooted since Sept 2001, so they were shut down with over 400 days of uptime, under heavy load.
The only exceptions to the uptime were one server that had a bad hard drive, and one with a power supply failure.
On identical hardware, we have/had Windows 98 and WinNT 4 running. I can't say we ever had more than 1 month uptime, without something going wrong.
MMmmmm.. Mach 3.8... That's a number I can live with.. Now if only they'd let me take a ride.
At least you made it through the acquisition. Usually that first meeting is where they're nice enough to say "We just bought your company for it's assets, and have no need for the staff. Security will now escort you to the door."
I'm sorry abour your options. I have something like 20,000 shares in a company I worked for, that got acquired. When it was acquired, the stocks became worthless. Then the new company folded 6 months later. I still have the paper though. I'll give it to my grand-kids in 100 years, and tell them, "Don't ever let a company pay you in stocks."
Definately, protect yourself. The big company is always looking to ditch anyone they can from the little company.
Good luck.
Bank Of America had a similiar mess-up with a friend of mine..
:)
:) There are warrants out for a few of me though. Luckly there's a good age gap between me and them, so it's fairly obvious I'm not the evil me.
Her name is Cindy Z . I won't write her last name because
1) I want to protect her privacy
2) I couldn't spell it if I wanted to.
Her brother was in another state. Well, her brother met a nice girl, also named Cindy. They got married, and she took his name (as traditional).. So now there are two Cindy Z's, in different states, with completely seperate bank accounts, which happen to be with the same bank. We'll mark this Cindy Z as Cindy Z(2).
The Cindy Z(2). decides to close her account, and bank elsewhere.. She takes out *ALL* the money. Not a problem, right? After all, it's her account.
Well, they pulled out of the original Cindy Z's account, and closed *HER* account. Different social security number, different state. This isn't a matter of $20 or $30. It's in the tens of thousands. Like, a life savings worth.
The original Cindy Z. had written and mailed all her bill checks, and was currently on the road. When she gets home, she finds every check had bounced, and her account was empty. "Funny that", thinks Cindy Z, "there should be plenty of money in there. (I think the real phrasing was a bit more harsh)
She goes to the bank, and they very kindly explain to her that she withdrew her money and closed her account (in the wrong state).
As she tells the story, there was a bit of screaming that went on.. It took a couple weeks to clear up. They never did cover all the bounced check charges incurred with their little mess up.
My real name is rather common (as opposed to my online name).. I know there are a whole bunch of me out there. Google finds 7690 instances of my name on pages, none of which are me. people.yahoo.com finds 65. Two of them are within 20 miles of where I used to live, and four within 50 miles of where I am now.
There's a rather good photographer in Germany with my name as his site. My name was also used by a Vietnam era pilot, and quite a few other me's.
At one time, I banked with a bank that had another me. Different SS#, different address, same name..
I go to Bank Of America on a regular basis to cash checks that are drawn from there. It's a slow, painful process every time.. They check my ID, and see that it's out of state (I maintain two residences in very seperate states). They take the check, verify the account, check the signature, then check with a bank manager who comes over look at me, look at the ID, and verify my signature. Then they fingerprint me, and charge me $5 for the pleasure of standing there for 15 minutes while they do this process. Only once have I enjoyed it. They have one very cute teller, who I flirted with while the manager was busy doing his verification thing..
I've already reserved myself to the fact that it will take no less than 15 minutes to do a 30 second transaction, so I go in with no intention of leaving quickly.
The last time I went to Bank Of America, one of the managers asked to talk to me.. Fine, I say, talk.. He recognizes the fact that I cash large checks every time I go in, and I'm in on a weekly basis. They want me to open an account in a bad sort of way.
I have to weigh my options.. Pay the $5 BoA tax for standing in their line for 15 minutes, or simply deposit my cash in their bank, with the risk of loosing it to any one of the me's that are out there. It's a tough decision.
I'm tempted to open a free account, and keep $5 in it, so I can empty the other me's accounts. But, I'm too honest to do that, and am afraid another me will get my $5..
But do you have the "Psycho Ex-Girlfriend" t-shirt?
:)
http://psychoexgirlfriend.com
I'm a proud owner of the "Booze it up" shirt.
Q: What do you do when your ex-girlfriend goes psycho?
A: Simple, You booze it up.
There's only so much torture you can give before it becomes inhumane..
I'm fairly sure N'Sync for more than 5 minutes is cruel and unusual punishment.
Tortured like that for 10 minutes, he'd probably die of an internal hemorrhage, or give up the locations of every missile in the country, and give you his 67 wives.
(don't get optimistic. Only two if the wives are remotely cute)
Reminds me when I was doing all the admin work for one company. My desk was in the call-center area (it was a small company).. 6 people jabbering away on the phone with customers, while I was trying to run the servers.. Pagers going off constantly, because the owner's opinion was that I couldn't change things on the network, so fairly unstable machines had to remain fairly unstable. Every 5 minutes, one of the support people would yell to me, "Can you have a look at this?" It would usually be that the user forgot to upload their files, or some such nonsense. Yet another job where I got absolutely nothing done.
:) Sometimes we have to have our boundaries.. Mine starts sometime after noon.
:)
:)
:)
I worked 80 hours/week and was paid $8/hr for only 40 hours of it (the rest was unauthorized overtime).
I took pride in my work, so I worked the extra hours to make things work. They hired all kinds of useless admin staff around us.. One management executive got kinda tweaked out about me.. She didn't like me at all. She especially didn't like the fact that I refused to clock in or out.. So, I started clocking in and out for a couple weeks.. She said "We can't pay you the overtime." So, I told her I'd just stop clocking in and out.. Took care of that nonsense. She learned not to say anything about me coming after noon every day.
I have my servers stable at this company, and an office. But everyone knows my phone numbers, and feel free to walk in. I tried an experement today. I jammed a chair under the door handle, so they couldn't just walk in. That lasted almost 5 minutes.
Todays delima's were:
1) Where's my server
2) Where's my 2 servers (different project)
3) Is the authentication done?
4) What's my Email password
5) Where are the 8 new servers (another project)
And a whole lot of smaller ones.
#1 and #2 are already done and at the colo running happily on the internet. Luckly no one but me knows where they are.
#3 ummm.. no.
#5 if CDW would ship all the parts at once, we'd have all the parts..
Let me share my current CDW experience..
We've ordered 11 servers in the past two weeks.
3 Asus servers, and 2 SuperMicro servers, in one batch, say on the 4th.
8 Asus servers on the 11th.
We get the Asus chassis drop-shipped from Asus (thanks to a great wholesaler in Florida). We get them the next day.
We get the memory from Crucial, directly. It usually comes in 2 days.
We get hard drives and CPU's from CDW. This is the interesting part.
So on the 6th, 3 of the Asus Chassis arrive.
On the 7th, all the memory arrives.
On the 10th, the hard drives arrive, so we build out the three Asus machines, and put them up. Good start.
The SuperMicro servers arrived this afternoon. Like almost two weeks after we started receiving parts.
The 8 Asus servers were ordered on the 11th. The 12th the chassis show up. Yippie.
The 14th the memory and hard drives show up, so we get the OS's installed (we have a Slackware install customized to do in 5 minutes 40 seconds, from power up to power down).
Today, (the 18th), 4 CPU's show up.
4 CPU's of 16?? Like, put 'em all in one big box, why don't ya.. I swear CDW has untrained monkeys packing their stuff.. I'm not making daily runs out to the colo to install machines, so they're all going to sit here til all the parts show up. My boss will flip tommorrow when he sees all these almost complete servers just sitting around. "Sorry boss, no CPU's. Talk to the guy who still orders from CDW." We're in Los Angeles. There must be at least one local vendor who could give us 16 1.4Ghz CPU's.. Intel's home office is only 5 hours from here, I could have driven up there and picked them up directly (well, if they sold direct)
A couple weeks ago, I ordered 5 GBIC's for some gig switches we have, as well as some hard drives.. They put the GBIC's unprotected in the bottom of the box, the drives on top of them, and then their packing balloons on the top of the box.. I have no idea what they were trying to protect, but it sure wasn't $1500 worth of GBIC's. If you've ever ordered a Cisco GBIC, they come in a big 8.5x11 plastic baggie, with a book on how to install it ( 1. Insert GBIC into GBIC socket. ) No wrapping, no nuthin'. It looks like they've been selling them at a flea market or something.
Not that I care. It's not my money.. My money is missing somewhere in an accounting black hole, right along with my IRS paperwork.. It seems they've misplaced a few thousand dollars of my paycheck so far this year, but the boss promises it'll be found.. I'd kind of like to see it in my pocket, personally..
Maybe I should just copy this message in my journal.. Yet another black hole.
Hmmmm.. The Slashdot Credit Union. How would that be written?
I used to date a female bi-sexual programmer.. *THAT* was a plus... She was smart, beautiful, and we could go chase girls together.
I think there's only one of her in the whole world.
{sigh}
What I wouldn't do to be with her again.
Office space was a good representation of the office working environment. Stupid bosses who don't do anything. Idiotic tasks specifically designed to waste time. Policies enforced just to annoy you (You forgot the cover sheet on the TPS report). "Friendly" staff evaluations to randomly lay off good staff..
.. well .. boring. I do a lot of nothing, and don't get what I want to do accomplished. Oddly enough, what I want to do, and the company projects, are one in the same.. Read on...
/24's traffic at the router.
Been there, lived through it..
A portrayal of my life would be pretty
Follow me through Sunday evening and Monday..
---- Sunday Evening.
Sunday, 6pm.. Coding new authentication module for Apache..
20 minutes reading (from my personal O'Reilly library, dejanews, and the very few sites that may have clues to what I'm doing).
30 minutes writing.
5 minutes reading work
2 seconds deciding I didn't like parts of it, and deleting 90%
drink a beer.
[lather;rinse;repeat] for the next 8 hours. On the weekend. Like, when I'm not even supppose to be working.
Pager beeps at 2am. One server with 6 months of uptime is unreachable.
Log into server. It's running.
Check httpd processes, they're running.
Try browsing to server, it's unreachable.
30 seconds scratching head.
Kill all httpd processes. Restart web server, check error logs. Starts normally.
Try browsing to server. It's unrecachable.
Reboot server (for spite).
2 minutes drinking beer.
Server's back up, still can't browse to it.
netstat -a -n
Oh look, one IP has 10,000 connections from a university in Russia (212.96.201.28, for those really interested)
verify TCP_SYNCOOKIES enabled. yup.
Check logs. No entries for that IP.
Drop traffic that
Browse to site. It works.
Drink more beer. Go to bed at 3am
---------
Monday morning.
Wake up late.
9am Drag my happy ass into office.
9:20 discussion of what happened, and what we can do to prevent it happening again. I suggest going into used car sales.
10:00 arrive at my desk.
10:01 users start asking for their forgotten Email or FTP passwords.
10:20 start back on authentication module.
10:21 phone call forwarded from support.
10:45 hang up on support call. I hate users.
10:50 start back on authentication module.
10:51 "Urgent" help needed for other people's broken CGI's.
11:45 Finish fixing really shitty CGI's.
11:46 decision: module or smoke.. Choose smoke. Can't find cyanide cigarette, choose cloves instead.
12:00 back to desk with sandwich in hand.
12:00.01 Can you help this guy on line 3?
12:15 get rid of guy on phone. Unwrap sandwidth.
12:16 "My computer has a blue screen, can you help me". Decision: shoot user, or hit reset for them.
12:17->12:30 listen to user cry because they had some important program open, and I lost it. I'm so evil.
12:31 pick up sandwidth
12:31.0001 phone rings. Boss wants to talk about last night. I remind him I sent an Email on it. He asks for his Email password.
12:45 I reach for the sandwich. "important" customer walks in, asking for changes to his site. I point to my sandwich. He says it'll only take a minute.
1:30 {sigh} I look longingly at my lunch. Quickly I scribble on a post it "Comitted Suicide, memorial next week", and put it on my door. Phone stays outside the door too.
1:31 the first bite of my sandwidth.. MMmmmmm.. Almost as good as street meet, with less rodent parts.
1:35 all gone? I'm still hungry.
1:36 begin work on authentication module.
1:37 boss walks in (didn't he read the note?), wants to know why I haven't finished the authentication module.. And then throws another task at me that's more urgent.
3:30 more urgent task done. Back to authentication module.
3:35 parts arrive for servers that we've been waiting for, for 2 weeks. Delegate work. Spend the next half hour explaining how to do 5 minutes work.
4:15 smoke. smoke. smoke. it's oddly quiet. No phones, no users. I wonder if I can bring my laptop down here.
4:30 authentication module. I still haven't written one line yet, but I'm trying..
4:31 Boss comes in screaming, I think one of the networks is slow. Spend the next hour justifying the fact that nothing is slow, enforced with transfer rates and ping times.
5:30 smoke.
5:45 contemplate suicide. Go back to office anyways. Start working on authentication module.
5:50 girlfriend calls. "Why don't you love me, you never spend time with me."
6:20 finish with girlfriend. Take elevator to top floor to find out roof access is locked (smart people).
6:30 go home.
So, today I accomplished exactly *NOTHING*.
That's my typical fuckin' work day.
I've gone as far as to put the phones outside my office door (including cell), put a big note explaining that I'm on an important project and to leave me alone. I then lock and barracade the door. That'll get the boss banging on the door within 5 minutes. {sigh} After asking if I'm ok, and why I did it, he then asks if the project is done..
I tried working from home one day, because there was a project that needed to be completed (the boss wanted it immediately).. The boss insisted that I keep my phone on, in case there were emergencies.. I took 68 calls from the office that day.
I can't win.
I may as well be doing TPS reports with fish flavored cover sheets.
WhooHoo! And according to MapQuest, she's only about 1/2 hour away from where I live..
But her current bio doesn't say anything about Unix.. {sigh} She must have been faking for the movie. I'm heart broken.
Have you tried:
http://cia.gov/backdoor