I'm with you. I'm a UNIX admin in a really big company now. The smaller comany I was in was recently purchased by said big company. It's been like swimming though syrup trying to get things done anymore.
One way to make things happen fast is to say that NOT doing X will incure a risk to the company. You say, we need RAM this week or production app X may break. Every day send out an email to the effect of "6 days until system failure..." The countdown of doom.
Another is to use process management judo. Attach your need to the success of a project, make installation of that RAM a line item in MS Project. Then just sit back and let the project manager drive. When he asks about that item you say, "I have been unable to get a response from IT on that. Oh my, I hope it doesn't hold up our project." The project manager will go nuts.
Learn to use your bosses to your advantage. You boss calls there boss and things will happen.
Remember that in IT you're dealing with a bunch of geeks. Aspergers syndrome, mild Autism in individuals is par for the course. Learn to recognize those people (hint, they're the ones with all the talent and strange personality quirks). The communication skills of those folks can be terrible. Get over that and make a friend that can be a resource for you in the future.
Everyone is accountable for their actions. It is OK to call the boss of group or person in question and politely say, "Hi, I put in this request some time ago and haven't heard anything back, can you help me figure out where this got dropped?" No manager wants his team to be percieved as dropping important tasks.
Finally, be sure you're not asking for things you have no authority to ask for. If you're asking that company money be spent then you should have written approval. If you're one of those people who constantly insists they need things that cost money or require major time commitments from others then they are right to ignore you without an approved project and management buyoff.
Get a 16 port 10/100 Ethernet SWITCH (not hub... do they still sell hubs?) Make sure every PC has a 10/100 card in it.
At that point just test. I don't think that bandwidth is going to be the problem. I wouild be more worried about CPU since the machines are so old.
So just spend a little bit to upgrade the network and then start testing. Get some streams running first, then try to hammer the network with file transfers. See how much it takes to break things. You may find that the simple upgrade is all you need. If you can beef up the buffering on the destination for the streams it would help, but if you have to do that you're pushing the limits already.
Worst case:
2 network switches and 2 network cards each for the PCs. Do the file transfers on one network and the streaming on the other network. Segregating the traffic guarantees they will not interfere with each other on the network layer... I would make a "streams only" network and put all other office traffic, including the file transfers, on a normal office lan.
Hey there. I'm also a UNIX Admin for a Fortune 500 company. Recently I was promoted to "lead" and I just got slammed with tasks to track.
I went out and bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100. Google it. They're a great PDA, clamshell design with a real keyboard you can actually use. You can get one cheaper if you look at the SL-C3000 or SL-C1000 models.
I'm using the K/OPI package todo function to do all my task tracking. It includes start dates, percent completed, etc. I blieve you can sync it with KDE and if you want to fuss with it even Outlook.
Every week I look at my list of completed tasks and copy that information down as my weekly status report.
Putting the PDA on WIFI gives me ssh access and I can actually get into boxes and look at things to answer question during meetings.
They can't make you do jack. You can leave tomorrow with now warning, just don't come back.
However, sounds like you have a great opportunity to make some money. Figure out how much you're willing to suffer and then make them an offer.
You'll be "on call" and will do other work for them in your off time at $75/hr. If they don't like it, shrug, smile, and say "Best of luck to ya. Oh, and it's 80/hr tomorrow. 75 was a one time only offer." Now get up and leave.
Bet they stop you on the way out or call you at home soon after. You are in a great bargaining position. Do not let them intimidate you and if they try to fuck with you at all keep raising your rates. Be polite and professional the whole time.
Just be careful. I'd hate to see you on the darwin awards for burning to death from an out of control popcorn fire.
Look into those large, clear box, popcorn machines theatres use. You can fill a garbage bag in 2-3 batches. It might take a week or two, but if you're really serious you can get your popcorn.
Cron is your scheduler. man cron & crontab for more info.
mplayer will playback many streams. Give mplayer the option to output the raw audio to a file which is a named pipe. Have lame take the named pipe as input and encode to mp3.
Voila, You have a system that downloads and converts your streams straight to mp3 without any intermediate steps.
Looks something like:
/usr/local/bin/mplayer -ao pcm -aofile/tmp/myfifo rtsp://real.npr.na-central.speedera.net/real.npr.n a-central/fa/20040316_fa_01.rm & Then run: lame -a -m s --abr 44 --nohist/tmp/myfifo npr-show.mp3
-Locating bomb making instructions on the internet... -How to disable parental controls on your web browser... -Bit Torrent, free games and movies and you... -Keystroke Loggers, how to watch what daddy is doing online... -Free porn resources... -Encrypting your.jpeg and movie collection...
First off, let me warn you. Do whatever you can to make someone else support this. The tangled web you weave becomes a nighmare after a few years.
We use a software package called Control-M. It works on mainframes, unix, and windows. Jobs can be scheduled to run within windows of time, and can depend on out conditions of one or many other jobs. You can specify thing like the second tuesday of the month, etc. Jobs on UNIX can depend on successful status of jobs on the Mainframe, etc. It really does it all.
A few problems from the sysadmin perspective:
The user interface, job naming conventions and client/server/gui server model appears to have been designed by drunken crack smoking mainfame geezers. (ALL CAPS ABRVTDJBNMS) It is one of those interfaces where you'll find yourself randomly clicking on buttons and menu items while praying and cursing.
Developers see it as a crutch (why check dependencies when the scheduler is supposed to do it?) and a nice place to point fingers when things don't work. They can get away with writing little scripts and then inserting them into this tangled mess of jobs and dependencies. That mess is your problem.
You'll get hammered with requests to add/delete and change jobs for whatever reason. It will become this central time clock from which most major business processing is done. Once everything is migrated from cron (*heh*) then you're very vulnerable to problems. Oh yes, have a problem late at night and the execs precious, TPS reports don't arrive on thier desk every morning. Heads roll....
It's hell to manage and support. It's really a half time position for a large organization. Send some poor sucker to the class and then make them responsible for the whole thing.
Support is decent. As good as most vendors.
So Control-M, does everything you could need, but is probably the most miserable application I've ever had the displeasure of managing.
Oh yeah, and it is expensive $$$$$$$
Best of luck. If you're really THAT bound by resources buy more severs and spread the load.
Just because the new instruments capture in InfraRed, doesn't mean you won't get nice images. Scientists will be happy to apply false color techniques to thier data to make it all pretty. Most of the space images you already see are enhanced to bring out or add in the color.
If you are near Portland, OR check it out. Nicest place I've ever worked.
Highlights:
7 Acre reflecting lake Covered walkways down the rows in the parking lots Covered walkways between all buildings Bronze satatues of atheletes just scattered around like they're doing thier thing Sweet landscaping Earth mounds hiding trafffic on surrounding streets and blocking noise A feeling of seclusion Cubicles who's back wall WAS a floor length window Cubicles made of wood and glass in pleaseing colors On site: Coffee people, cafe sandwich place Normal Cafeteria nice resturaunt Occasional sightings of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods Black granite bathrooms that made one feel like your were crapping in a freaking palace. Lots of well cared for plants inside ART, not motivational posters, just decent art on the walls. Good desktop systems, nice printers The most drop dead hotties I've ever seen sitting in the lobbies to greet you. Cheap nike gear at the employee store
Seriously though. Do as much as you can to make people feel like they're not in a cubicle farm. Don't use those damn beige cubicles at all. Arrange them in interesting ways. Go way overboard on plants Have a designer come in and paint interesting colors, everywhere. Make the carpets plush.
The game took place before pitch black in the timeline. The only real similarity was the Riddick charactor.
It had it's own plot, storyline, etc. I think it did well because it didn't even try to be a movie game. It stood on it's own and was just a good console shooter.
Use your credit card for small purchases, make sure it has some kind of fraud protection. If you get ripped off, just do a chargeback.
If it is a large purchase, seek out one of the internet's escrow companies. They are used all the time in these matters. You can even have them independantly verify the authenticity of your purchase before money is actually transferred.
Time to get the nice 10db 802.11 antenna up on the jeep, park nearby and soak up the packets!
1.) Park Car/hangout with laptop, with linux->kismet->dsniff 2.) Soak up logins/passwords, web surfing (pr0n), instant messaging habits of congressmen, aids, lobbyists etc 3.) PROFIT!
Yes. The amount of ice above the surface, converted to liquid water, combined with the ice below the water line, is enough to raise sea levels. Water is not just removed by sea water freezing. Precipitation also piles up ice on top of already formed ice sheets, removing even more water from the oceans (and leaving the salt content of that water behind.)
I think the change in the amount of salt in the seas is a bigger issue in the near future as it has the potential to alter the currents in the oceans, as ice melts and dilutes the salt content.
My take on the whole thing is that it's normal for the earth to go through large climate changes and that many coastlines have been above and under water, even in human history. What I'm not convinced of is that mankind is too blame, or through changing our behavior can actually do anything to alter what just may be a natural cycle. We may be as much at the mercy of climate change as we are to tornados and hurricaines.
It's so easy too illustrate:
Imagine holding two small magnets next to eachother. You can feel them pulling on each other and if you get them too close, they snap together.... so that's electromagnetism
Now hold two unmagnetized chunks of the same weight/material. Feel the force of gravity pulling them together? What you can't feel it? It is there, it's just THAT weak... compared to electromagnetism.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you. I'm a UNIX admin in a really big company now. The smaller comany I was in was recently purchased by said big company. It's been like swimming though syrup trying to get things done anymore.
One way to make things happen fast is to say that NOT doing X will incure a risk to the company. You say, we need RAM this week or production app X may break. Every day send out an email to the effect of "6 days until system failure..." The countdown of doom.
Another is to use process management judo. Attach your need to the success of a project, make installation of that RAM a line item in MS Project. Then just sit back and let the project manager drive. When he asks about that item you say, "I have been unable to get a response from IT on that. Oh my, I hope it doesn't hold up our project." The project manager will go nuts.
Learn to use your bosses to your advantage. You boss calls there boss and things will happen.
Remember that in IT you're dealing with a bunch of geeks. Aspergers syndrome, mild Autism in individuals is par for the course. Learn to recognize those people (hint, they're the ones with all the talent and strange personality quirks). The communication skills of those folks can be terrible. Get over that and make a friend that can be a resource for you in the future.
Everyone is accountable for their actions. It is OK to call the boss of group or person in question and politely say, "Hi, I put in this request some time ago and haven't heard anything back, can you help me figure out where this got dropped?" No manager wants his team to be percieved as dropping important tasks.
Finally, be sure you're not asking for things you have no authority to ask for. If you're asking that company money be spent then you should have written approval. If you're one of those people who constantly insists they need things that cost money or require major time commitments from others then they are right to ignore you without an approved project and management buyoff.
--Chris
Get a 16 port 10/100 Ethernet SWITCH (not hub... do they still sell hubs?)
Make sure every PC has a 10/100 card in it.
At that point just test. I don't think that bandwidth is going to be the problem. I wouild be more worried about CPU since the machines are so old.
So just spend a little bit to upgrade the network and then start testing. Get some streams running first, then try to hammer the network with file transfers. See how much it takes to break things. You may find that the simple upgrade is all you need. If you can beef up the buffering on the destination for the streams it would help, but if you have to do that you're pushing the limits already.
Worst case:
2 network switches and 2 network cards each for the PCs. Do the file transfers on one network and the streaming on the other network. Segregating the traffic guarantees they will not interfere with each other on the network layer... I would make a "streams only" network and put all other office traffic, including the file transfers, on a normal office lan.
Hope this helps.
--Chris
Hey there. I'm also a UNIX Admin for a Fortune 500 company. Recently I was promoted to "lead" and I just got slammed with tasks to track.
I went out and bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100. Google it. They're a great PDA, clamshell design with a real keyboard you can actually use. You can get one cheaper if you look at the SL-C3000 or SL-C1000 models.
I'm using the K/OPI package todo function to do all my task tracking. It includes start dates, percent completed, etc. I blieve you can sync it with KDE and if you want to fuss with it even Outlook.
Every week I look at my list of completed tasks and copy that information down as my weekly status report.
Putting the PDA on WIFI gives me ssh access and I can actually get into boxes and look at things to answer question during meetings.
It's a great solution for a UNIX admin.
--Chris
I use a technology credit union.
http://www.1sttech.com/
If I have a problem I call them and fax in a chargeback form. The money is returned the next day. I've only had to do it twice but it was very easy.
--Chris
They're called cyanide tablets and they will remove your ability to kill another human being quite effectively.
They can't make you do jack. You can leave tomorrow with now warning, just don't come back.
However, sounds like you have a great opportunity to make some money. Figure out how much you're willing to suffer and then make them an offer.
You'll be "on call" and will do other work for them in your off time at $75/hr. If they don't like it, shrug, smile, and say "Best of luck to ya. Oh, and it's 80/hr tomorrow. 75 was a one time only offer." Now get up and leave.
Bet they stop you on the way out or call you at home soon after. You are in a great bargaining position. Do not let them intimidate you and if they try to fuck with you at all keep raising your rates. Be polite and professional the whole time.
Best of luck to you.
--Chris
Forget reading the data.
Format the whole thing with fat32
Fill the entire drive with gay porn.
Reinstall in car.
Just be careful. I'd hate to see you on the darwin awards for burning to death from an out of control popcorn fire.
Look into those large, clear box, popcorn machines theatres use. You can fill a garbage bag in 2-3 batches. It might take a week or two, but if you're really serious you can get your popcorn.
--Chris
Here is how I did it.
Cron is your scheduler. man cron & crontab for more info.
mplayer will playback many streams. Give mplayer the option to output the raw audio to a file which is a named pipe. Have lame take the named pipe as input and encode to mp3.
Voila, You have a system that downloads and converts your streams straight to mp3 without any intermediate steps.
Fine, YOU go first.
Police Phalus?
-Locating bomb making instructions on the internet... .jpeg and movie collection...
-How to disable parental controls on your web browser...
-Bit Torrent, free games and movies and you...
-Keystroke Loggers, how to watch what daddy is doing online...
-Free porn resources...
-Encrypting your
First off, let me warn you. Do whatever you can to make someone else support this. The tangled web you weave becomes a nighmare after a few years.
We use a software package called Control-M. It works on mainframes, unix, and windows. Jobs can be scheduled to run within windows of time, and can depend on out conditions of one or many other jobs. You can specify thing like the second tuesday of the month, etc. Jobs on UNIX can depend on successful status of jobs on the Mainframe, etc. It really does it all.
A few problems from the sysadmin perspective:
The user interface, job naming conventions and client/server/gui server model appears to have been designed by drunken crack smoking mainfame geezers. (ALL CAPS ABRVTDJBNMS) It is one of those interfaces where you'll find yourself randomly clicking on buttons and menu items while praying and cursing.
Developers see it as a crutch (why check dependencies when the scheduler is supposed to do it?) and a nice place to point fingers when things don't work. They can get away with writing little scripts and then inserting them into this tangled mess of jobs and dependencies. That mess is your problem.
You'll get hammered with requests to add/delete and change jobs for whatever reason. It will become this central time clock from which most major business processing is done. Once everything is migrated from cron (*heh*) then you're very vulnerable to problems. Oh yes, have a problem late at night and the execs precious, TPS reports don't arrive on thier desk every morning. Heads roll....
It's hell to manage and support. It's really a half time position for a large organization. Send some poor sucker to the class and then make them responsible for the whole thing.
Support is decent. As good as most vendors.
So Control-M, does everything you could need, but is probably the most miserable application I've ever had the displeasure of managing.
Oh yeah, and it is expensive $$$$$$$
Best of luck. If you're really THAT bound by resources buy more severs and spread the load.
Just because the new instruments capture in InfraRed, doesn't mean you won't get nice images. Scientists will be happy to apply false color techniques to thier data to make it all pretty. Most of the space images you already see are enhanced to bring out or add in the color.
If you are near Portland, OR check it out. Nicest place I've ever worked.
Highlights:
7 Acre reflecting lake
Covered walkways down the rows in the parking lots
Covered walkways between all buildings
Bronze satatues of atheletes just scattered around like they're doing thier thing
Sweet landscaping
Earth mounds hiding trafffic on surrounding streets and blocking noise
A feeling of seclusion
Cubicles who's back wall WAS a floor length window
Cubicles made of wood and glass in pleaseing colors
On site: Coffee people, cafe sandwich place
Normal Cafeteria
nice resturaunt
Occasional sightings of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods
Black granite bathrooms that made one feel like your were crapping in a freaking palace.
Lots of well cared for plants inside
ART, not motivational posters, just decent art on the walls.
Good desktop systems, nice printers
The most drop dead hotties I've ever seen sitting in the lobbies to greet you.
Cheap nike gear at the employee store
Seriously though. Do as much as you can to make people feel like they're not in a cubicle farm. Don't use those damn beige cubicles at all. Arrange them in interesting ways.
Go way overboard on plants
Have a designer come in and paint interesting colors, everywhere.
Make the carpets plush.
Good Luck.
It just had the same title.
The game took place before pitch black in the timeline. The only real similarity was the Riddick charactor.
It had it's own plot, storyline, etc. I think it did well because it didn't even try to be a movie game. It stood on it's own and was just a good console shooter.
--Chris
don't you mean:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge x11-base/xorg-x11
You see, this is still in "unstable"...
Make everyone work in a shielded metal, enclosed cubicle and change the name of the contest to:
"Code in a Can"
--Chris
Use your credit card for small purchases, make sure it has some kind of fraud protection. If you get ripped off, just do a chargeback.
If it is a large purchase, seek out one of the internet's escrow companies. They are used all the time in these matters. You can even have them independantly verify the authenticity of your purchase before money is actually transferred.
Good luck.
--Chris
Time to get the nice 10db 802.11 antenna up on the jeep, park nearby and soak up the packets!
1.) Park Car/hangout with laptop, with linux->kismet->dsniff
2.) Soak up logins/passwords, web surfing (pr0n), instant messaging habits of congressmen, aids, lobbyists etc
3.) PROFIT!
Yes. The amount of ice above the surface, converted to liquid water, combined with the ice below the water line, is enough to raise sea levels. Water is not just removed by sea water freezing. Precipitation also piles up ice on top of already formed ice sheets, removing even more water from the oceans (and leaving the salt content of that water behind.)
I think the change in the amount of salt in the seas is a bigger issue in the near future as it has the potential to alter the currents in the oceans, as ice melts and dilutes the salt content.
My take on the whole thing is that it's normal for the earth to go through large climate changes and that many coastlines have been above and under water, even in human history. What I'm not convinced of is that mankind is too blame, or through changing our behavior can actually do anything to alter what just may be a natural cycle. We may be as much at the mercy of climate change as we are to tornados and hurricaines.
Did anyone else misread that the first time?
Circuit breakers are labled by how much current they'll handle before they blow. Find out which circuit(s) are for your office and just take a look.
--Chris
Geeks are excellent tool makers/tool users. Bigger brain = better weapons. Spear wins out over club.
It's so easy too illustrate: Imagine holding two small magnets next to eachother. You can feel them pulling on each other and if you get them too close, they snap together.... so that's electromagnetism Now hold two unmagnetized chunks of the same weight/material. Feel the force of gravity pulling them together? What you can't feel it? It is there, it's just THAT weak... compared to electromagnetism.