I have never once personally had any dealings with a properly implemented Nagios system. Every single time it was obviously tossed up by someone who had minimal knowledge of how to properly monitor the infrastructure.
The biggest complaint I hear is "too many alerts". So set your dependencies properly! You say you did that but you still get 600 alerts when the router dies? That's because you told it you wanted the alerts. See that "u" in "notification_options". That means "unreachable". You want to be alerted when the box can't be reached. You probably wanted "d,r", not "d,r.u".
The next complaint. It's so much work to add a system. Huh? It takes me about 30 seconds to add another system and all the tests I need. The trick is using host groups to automatically assign tests to a system. For example, using a generic LAMP type server. What can we assume about this? It's running Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl or PHP. That's a bunch of tests right off. In my world, SNMP is assumed on all systems (because I made it that way, that's why). So we define a bunch of service checks using SNMP, but instead of using "host_name some_hostname", we use "hostgroup_name lamp-servers". Now when I add a new server, I add "hostgroups lamp-servers" to the definition and like magic it gets all the tests I need: snmp port responding, ssh access, apache daemon running, mysql daemon running, web page accessible, disk space good (defined in snmpd.conf), CPU usage, load average, plus sone automatic dependencies: all snmp tests depend on the snmp port responding. Web pages are dependent on the apache daemon running, etc. I even have some simple graphing included automatically. Even the O/S icons are defined by the hostgroups. Each distro has its own hostgroup which takes care of that detail (e.g. centos-system and ubuntu-system).
Ten simple lines to define a new hosts can result in 20 service checks. I rarely need to define a new service check. And when a router goes out? One alert for the router.
Not every system is going to be generic like this, but any time I have more than one system require a specific service check, I create a hostgroup to handle it.
I read a few weeks ago that one of the ex-BBCers quit al-Jazeera because he got tired of being a terrorist sock puppet. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it, so I guess it's not true.
Sura (2:191-193) - "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]...and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah."
Sura (2:244) - "Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things."
Sura (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."
Sura (3:56) - "As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help."
Sura (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority".
Sura (4:74) - "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward."
Sura (4:76) - "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah..."
Sura (4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."
Sura (4:95) - "Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward,-" This passage not only criticizes "peaceful"
Sura (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..."
Sura (5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"
Sura (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"
Sura (8:15) - "O ye who believe! When ye meet those who disbelieve in battle, turn not your backs to them. (16)Whoso on that day turneth his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intent to join a company, he truly hath incurred wrath from Allah, and his habitation will be hell, a hapless journey's end."
Sura (8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah"
Sura (8:57) - "If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember."
Sura (8:59-60) - "And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah's Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy."
Sura (9:5) - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."
Sura (9:14) - "Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace..."
Sura (9:20) - "Those who believe, and have left their ho
Funny thing is that Islam has an even stronger moral code against killing innocents than Christianity, yet they are the ones which have the least problem with targeting purely civilian populations.
Easily explained. "Innocents" is defined as "muslim". Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc, don't count. And they are killing each other off because they tend to not extend the the definition of "innocent" to other muslim sects. Or they are just murdering assholes who are complete nut jobs. Religious extremism tends to do that to people.
I read a paper by some muslim cleric justifying the murdering of civilians in Israel. Jewish babies grow up and everybody is Israel is required to server time in the military. Therefore, they are fully justified in killing future "zionist" soldiers. Sick fucker. I'd say that cleric needs killing.
You mean it's wrong for me to expect an employer to treat me with respect? Not bloody likely! I have an impressive enough resume that I can pretty much work anywhere I want. Some companies are run by assholes. I won't work for them (one of the reasons I won't work in banking). Most companies are at least reasonable in their treatment of employees. A small percentage treat their employees like family. Those are the companies I prefer to work for. One thing I left out of my top-post, when a company treats me especially well, they will get more out of me. I will work the overtime because I know the company will make good on it, maybe with additional time off or maybe a fat bonus. It's the companies that demand unpaid overtime and don't offer bonuses or some other compensation that get on my shit list. I worked 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week for over 6 months on one job. At the end of it, the "bonus" was an extra week of vacation, which didn't even come close to being reasonable. I quit that job. That's when I adopted my current policy.
A friend of mine worked a high tech job that required lots of flying to other cities and living out of a hotel room. He would spend weeks away from home, fly home for a weekend on occasion, then fly out again. One day he realized he was missing his little girl growing up and he was becoming a stranger to his family. After completing a particularly grueling job that took several months, he chose to take two weeks off and spend it with his wife and daughter. His boss thought otherwise because they had already booked him for another job. He flat out refused to go to it. They fired him. He took them to the labor board. They lost big time. My friend had documented every minute he had spent waiting in airports and in the air. Under California law those were paid times (at least they used to be). As he had never been paid for the travel time, they not only had to pay him, they had to pay a penalty to him. He's now much happier with a local job. He gets to have dinner with his family and sleep in his own bed. The pay is only slightly lower and he is much happier (and so is his family).
So what is your time worth to you? If you are willing to work unpaid overtime, then you put a very low value on your life. I flat out refuse to work unpaid overtime on a regular basis. Yes, I've occasionally put in a couple of extra hours, but this is the exception, not the rule. Typically, if an emergency requires me to work late, I'll leave early the next day (or come in late). If a project consistently requires overtime, management has not done their job. Either they didn't assign enough people to the project, or they set too short of a deadline. Improper planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on mine. One or two days of crunch time isn't a problem. Shit happens. But weeks or months of it is not acceptable and your project is NOT going to be on time because my life is worth far more. You say you'll fire me if I don't work unpaid overtime? Not a problem. Go ahead and fire me. We'll talk further in a hearing.
I should repeat this. Emergencies happen and require extra time. Failure to set a reasonable deadline (or changing the requirements at the last minute) is NOT an emergency. Also, if I'm expected to carry a pager and be on call, my salary better reflect that requirement. I don't get up at 3am to fix your server for free. At one job, they decided to stop authorizing overtime pay, so I changed nagios to never send out alerts outside of work hours. Five nines of uptime aren't free. In this case, management didn't have a problem with it. The systems did not need to be up 24/7. Oddly enough, an ecommerce job, where 24/7 uptime was essential, was least willing to make the investment to keep things running (thus one of the reasons I no longer work for them).
1. Elected officials ignore the will of the people. 2. People turn to ballot initiatives to do the work the assembly should be doing. 3. Assembly says, "Screw you. We'll just vote to overturn your initiative." 4. People say, "Screw you back, we're giving them the power of the Constitution." 5. Elected officials say, "oh, shit!" 6. People say, "Cool, that was easy, let's give guaranteed funding to 'Lesbian Vegan Poets for Pet Rocks'." 7. Government says, "Uh, guys, we're broke." 8. People say, "WTF is wrong with you assholes!?"
That concludes today's lesson on California Government.
I'm glad you mentioned the per diem, I didn't think of it. I agree. Not one cent when there is no budget and no retroactive payments.
Doing some quick math. 80 assembly members at 116k/year and no budget for 90 days (roughly). 116k/365*80*90 (salary/days_in_year*assembly_members*days_without_budget) = $2.29 million dollars (rounded) so far. And that's not even taking into consideration their per diem.
Uhm, it doesn't matter how much they raise or lower the taxes in California. There will always be a shortfall because non-discretionary spending is set (by law) at something like 103% of the state budget. Idiot people kept voting in mandatory money for their pet projects. 3% here, 5% there, and now we are required to spend more than will be available.
That is what Ahnold meant when he said the budget is inherently broken. Fixing it is proving impossible. No one is willing to cut even one dollar from anything. I'd like to see a (state) Constitutional amendment that penalizes the members of the assembly by not paying them for the periods when we don't have a budget. I think we're up to three months now. A 25% salary cut across the board for all assembly members sounds like a damn good idea. Alternately, we could just lynch a few of the bastards. Either way works for me.
Since the "Bush Doctrine" was something made up by the press and not something written clearly out. When she was asked about it in that interview, it was reasonable to ask for a clarification so she could be certain she was answering the right question.
And before you call me a Palin-fanboy, I don't much care for her positions on social issues. Her selection has actually made McCain a less desirable choice for me. I'm just sick of one-sided bullshit I see in the press and online. I've never seen more totally fabricated stories about any candidate for political office in my entire life (and I'm not some fresh-out-of-college punk kid).
As for privacy. If you don't believe Palin has a right to privacy in her email, then don't whine when a government agency rummages through your email accounts.
If you act nice to someone and they are rude in return, they deserve no respect. Just mention how the sixteen page report will become public if they pursue the matter. Make sure the document is placed somewhere NOT UNDER YOUR CONTROL so that a restraining order will have no effect.
That's a nice network you have there. It would be shame if something were to happen to it.
First off, I dislike Microsoft Exchange with a passion (when an employer said they wanted to use it, I told them they would need to hire a full time admin for it because I wouldn't touch it). HOWEVER, the meeting planner of Exchange+Outlook has no equal. I've seen many of the Linux packages touted as replacements. They are crap.
Do any of the commercial packages do as well? So what! You want a business to swap out a tried and (kind of) true commercial package from the biggest software company in the world with an unknown commercial package? Ain't. gonna. happen. Now if it's something I can just download, there is a tiny chance I can get management to take a look and consider it. Very tiny.
At work we use Lotus Notes. I hate that even more than Exchange+Outlook. I have a windoze box on my desk just to use lotus notes.
Which is why I no longer rely on nagios alerts via SMS. I once got some critical alerts the day after the problem. That's when we switched to text pagers for our alerts.
While many churches want you to donate a percentage of your income, they do not demand it. I can walk into just about any church in the country on a Sunday morning and sit down for the service without donating a dime. The CoS, however, figuratively charges admission at the entrance.
they do not insta-ban people just for voicing dissent.
You obviously aren't all that familiar with the DailyKos. They do, in fact, delete posts that do not tow their party line. They'll leave up hateful, obscenity filled crap up if it's far left. A thoughtful argument by a conservative has a tendency to just disappear.
Hehe, I guess I was just a bit too enthusiastic about them. How often do you run across a product or service so good that you just have to tell everyone? There are two things I rave about. My internet provider and my coffee (Jablum Jamaican Blue Mountain Espresso Roast).
The UK has the highest violent crime rates of all western countries. The cameras didn't cause this problem. It's stupidity on the part of parliament. They outlawed all firearms. That was bad enough, but then they did something so mind boggling stupid that it's a wonder the people of the UK didn't rise up and lynch the bastards. They made it illegal to use force to stop a crime. If some thugs try to rape your girlfriend/wife/daughter, and you take a cricket bat to their well deserving head, you will go to jail. It doesn't matter if that was the only way to stop them, you aren't allowed. Period. People have been sent to prison for years for trying to prevent exactly that sort of crime. They made the mistake of reporting the crime and were stupid enough to mention they fought the thugs off. The UK police have become so lazy that they take the easy way out and arrest the victim. They get an arrest on their record that helps them in promotion, and they didn't have to get off their lazy and cowardly asses.
The result of that law was the criminals had no fear. I've heard rumor that they may have just recently changed that law. I certainly hope so.
Oh, CCTV, the topic. Hi-tech was defeated by hoodies (coats with hoods on them) and (I believe) were instrumental in creating the excessively lazy police. Even when thugs were caught, the courts have a bunch of pussies for judges who would constantly let off underage violent thugs with NO CONSEQUENCES!
Except the Georgian military did not start moving into the region until AFTER additional Russian troops started invading. Despite what the Russians are saying, the Russians did not counter the Georgians. Quite the opposite. These rather important details were left out of most of the news reports I read.
The so called Russian peace keeper troops also supplied arms to the rebels.
I wish they would expand their fiber offering down my way (Dublin). I'd kill for that.
Sonic tech support is the best I've ever seen. When I first signed up and was on the phone for basic info (like ip address, dns, etc) they asked "what operating system are you running?" I gritted my teeth and answered honestly, "Linux." Instead of the usual "we don't support that," the response was, "Cool! What distro?" When they lost one of their major switches, I called to ask them if the problem was on my end or their end (at this point I didn't know it was a dead switch), the owner of the company took my call! They didn't act stupid or pretend nothing was wrong. They told me they had a hardware failure and expected everything back to normal in 30 minutes to an hour. The had things back up nearer to the low end of the estimate. I'm sure you know all this since you are a customer. I'm telling this for everyone else's benefit so they will consider signing up with sonic.
Finally, they never pretend everything is perfect and they never have a problem. Information about problems and outages are always published on their website. I don't expect perfection. I love a company that is honest. I will stick with sonic for a long time.
I don't get my connectivity through a major provider. I get dsl through sonic.net. They are a AT&T reseller, but with huge advantages. They have not once ever mentioned bandwidth limits. I have static IPs, and I am allowed to run servers (mail, web, etc). Of course, I pay more than the average joe-user. About $70/month, but I feel it's worth it.
I've never measured my usage, but your question has me curious. I'll install a meter and get back to you in a month. LOL
Maybe they wronged the open source community in the past, maybe they didn't (I personally don't know). Let's show them that we are forgiving of past mistakes and fully welcome them and their donated code into the FOSS world. They made things right, let's not dwell on the past.
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I have never once personally had any dealings with a properly implemented Nagios system. Every single time it was obviously tossed up by someone who had minimal knowledge of how to properly monitor the infrastructure.
The biggest complaint I hear is "too many alerts". So set your dependencies properly! You say you did that but you still get 600 alerts when the router dies? That's because you told it you wanted the alerts. See that "u" in "notification_options". That means "unreachable". You want to be alerted when the box can't be reached. You probably wanted "d,r", not "d,r.u".
The next complaint. It's so much work to add a system. Huh? It takes me about 30 seconds to add another system and all the tests I need. The trick is using host groups to automatically assign tests to a system. For example, using a generic LAMP type server. What can we assume about this? It's running Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl or PHP. That's a bunch of tests right off. In my world, SNMP is assumed on all systems (because I made it that way, that's why). So we define a bunch of service checks using SNMP, but instead of using "host_name some_hostname", we use "hostgroup_name lamp-servers". Now when I add a new server, I add "hostgroups lamp-servers" to the definition and like magic it gets all the tests I need: snmp port responding, ssh access, apache daemon running, mysql daemon running, web page accessible, disk space good (defined in snmpd.conf), CPU usage, load average, plus sone automatic dependencies: all snmp tests depend on the snmp port responding. Web pages are dependent on the apache daemon running, etc. I even have some simple graphing included automatically. Even the O/S icons are defined by the hostgroups. Each distro has its own hostgroup which takes care of that detail (e.g. centos-system and ubuntu-system).
Ten simple lines to define a new hosts can result in 20 service checks. I rarely need to define a new service check. And when a router goes out? One alert for the router.
Not every system is going to be generic like this, but any time I have more than one system require a specific service check, I create a hostgroup to handle it.
I read a few weeks ago that one of the ex-BBCers quit al-Jazeera because he got tired of being a terrorist sock puppet. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read it, so I guess it's not true.
The Qur'an:
Sura (2:191-193) - "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]...and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah."
Sura (2:244) - "Then fight in the cause of Allah, and know that Allah Heareth and knoweth all things."
Sura (2:216) - "Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not."
Sura (3:56) - "As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help."
Sura (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority".
Sura (4:74) - "Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward."
Sura (4:76) - "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah..."
Sura (4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."
Sura (4:95) - "Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward,-" This passage not only criticizes "peaceful"
Sura (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..."
Sura (5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"
Sura (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"
Sura (8:15) - "O ye who believe! When ye meet those who disbelieve in battle, turn not your backs to them. (16)Whoso on that day turneth his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intent to join a company, he truly hath incurred wrath from Allah, and his habitation will be hell, a hapless journey's end."
Sura (8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah"
Sura (8:57) - "If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember."
Sura (8:59-60) - "And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah's Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy."
Sura (9:5) - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."
Sura (9:14) - "Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace..."
Sura (9:20) - "Those who believe, and have left their ho
Not all religions preach against killing people. The muslims are told very specifically they must either convert non-believers or kill them.
Easily explained. "Innocents" is defined as "muslim". Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc, don't count. And they are killing each other off because they tend to not extend the the definition of "innocent" to other muslim sects. Or they are just murdering assholes who are complete nut jobs. Religious extremism tends to do that to people.
I read a paper by some muslim cleric justifying the murdering of civilians in Israel. Jewish babies grow up and everybody is Israel is required to server time in the military. Therefore, they are fully justified in killing future "zionist" soldiers. Sick fucker. I'd say that cleric needs killing.
You mean it's wrong for me to expect an employer to treat me with respect? Not bloody likely! I have an impressive enough resume that I can pretty much work anywhere I want. Some companies are run by assholes. I won't work for them (one of the reasons I won't work in banking). Most companies are at least reasonable in their treatment of employees. A small percentage treat their employees like family. Those are the companies I prefer to work for. One thing I left out of my top-post, when a company treats me especially well, they will get more out of me. I will work the overtime because I know the company will make good on it, maybe with additional time off or maybe a fat bonus. It's the companies that demand unpaid overtime and don't offer bonuses or some other compensation that get on my shit list. I worked 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week for over 6 months on one job. At the end of it, the "bonus" was an extra week of vacation, which didn't even come close to being reasonable. I quit that job. That's when I adopted my current policy.
A friend of mine worked a high tech job that required lots of flying to other cities and living out of a hotel room. He would spend weeks away from home, fly home for a weekend on occasion, then fly out again. One day he realized he was missing his little girl growing up and he was becoming a stranger to his family. After completing a particularly grueling job that took several months, he chose to take two weeks off and spend it with his wife and daughter. His boss thought otherwise because they had already booked him for another job. He flat out refused to go to it. They fired him. He took them to the labor board. They lost big time. My friend had documented every minute he had spent waiting in airports and in the air. Under California law those were paid times (at least they used to be). As he had never been paid for the travel time, they not only had to pay him, they had to pay a penalty to him. He's now much happier with a local job. He gets to have dinner with his family and sleep in his own bed. The pay is only slightly lower and he is much happier (and so is his family).
So what is your time worth to you? If you are willing to work unpaid overtime, then you put a very low value on your life. I flat out refuse to work unpaid overtime on a regular basis. Yes, I've occasionally put in a couple of extra hours, but this is the exception, not the rule. Typically, if an emergency requires me to work late, I'll leave early the next day (or come in late). If a project consistently requires overtime, management has not done their job. Either they didn't assign enough people to the project, or they set too short of a deadline. Improper planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on mine. One or two days of crunch time isn't a problem. Shit happens. But weeks or months of it is not acceptable and your project is NOT going to be on time because my life is worth far more. You say you'll fire me if I don't work unpaid overtime? Not a problem. Go ahead and fire me. We'll talk further in a hearing.
I should repeat this. Emergencies happen and require extra time. Failure to set a reasonable deadline (or changing the requirements at the last minute) is NOT an emergency. Also, if I'm expected to carry a pager and be on call, my salary better reflect that requirement. I don't get up at 3am to fix your server for free. At one job, they decided to stop authorizing overtime pay, so I changed nagios to never send out alerts outside of work hours. Five nines of uptime aren't free. In this case, management didn't have a problem with it. The systems did not need to be up 24/7. Oddly enough, an ecommerce job, where 24/7 uptime was essential, was least willing to make the investment to keep things running (thus one of the reasons I no longer work for them).
The process in this mess was as follows.
1. Elected officials ignore the will of the people.
2. People turn to ballot initiatives to do the work the assembly should be doing.
3. Assembly says, "Screw you. We'll just vote to overturn your initiative."
4. People say, "Screw you back, we're giving them the power of the Constitution."
5. Elected officials say, "oh, shit!"
6. People say, "Cool, that was easy, let's give guaranteed funding to 'Lesbian Vegan Poets for Pet Rocks'."
7. Government says, "Uh, guys, we're broke."
8. People say, "WTF is wrong with you assholes!?"
That concludes today's lesson on California Government.
I'm glad you mentioned the per diem, I didn't think of it. I agree. Not one cent when there is no budget and no retroactive payments.
Doing some quick math. 80 assembly members at 116k/year and no budget for 90 days (roughly). 116k/365*80*90 (salary/days_in_year*assembly_members*days_without_budget) = $2.29 million dollars (rounded) so far. And that's not even taking into consideration their per diem.
I still like the lynching idea.
Uhm, it doesn't matter how much they raise or lower the taxes in California. There will always be a shortfall because non-discretionary spending is set (by law) at something like 103% of the state budget. Idiot people kept voting in mandatory money for their pet projects. 3% here, 5% there, and now we are required to spend more than will be available.
That is what Ahnold meant when he said the budget is inherently broken. Fixing it is proving impossible. No one is willing to cut even one dollar from anything. I'd like to see a (state) Constitutional amendment that penalizes the members of the assembly by not paying them for the periods when we don't have a budget. I think we're up to three months now. A 25% salary cut across the board for all assembly members sounds like a damn good idea. Alternately, we could just lynch a few of the bastards. Either way works for me.
I take my nautical history rather serious. Don't believe me? Check out my website: http://bookoseadogs.org/
--
Will program for grog
Since the "Bush Doctrine" was something made up by the press and not something written clearly out. When she was asked about it in that interview, it was reasonable to ask for a clarification so she could be certain she was answering the right question.
And before you call me a Palin-fanboy, I don't much care for her positions on social issues. Her selection has actually made McCain a less desirable choice for me. I'm just sick of one-sided bullshit I see in the press and online. I've never seen more totally fabricated stories about any candidate for political office in my entire life (and I'm not some fresh-out-of-college punk kid).
As for privacy. If you don't believe Palin has a right to privacy in her email, then don't whine when a government agency rummages through your email accounts.
How is looking at project and deciding that the cost was too high, thus rejecting it based on new information saying that it never happened?
By your logic, Obama is and always has been for war in Iraq since he did vote for funding it (one of the rare occasions he didn't vote "present").
If you act nice to someone and they are rude in return, they deserve no respect. Just mention how the sixteen page report will become public if they pursue the matter. Make sure the document is placed somewhere NOT UNDER YOUR CONTROL so that a restraining order will have no effect.
That's a nice network you have there. It would be shame if something were to happen to it.
Blackmail is a dirty word. I prefer extortion.
First off, I dislike Microsoft Exchange with a passion (when an employer said they wanted to use it, I told them they would need to hire a full time admin for it because I wouldn't touch it). HOWEVER, the meeting planner of Exchange+Outlook has no equal. I've seen many of the Linux packages touted as replacements. They are crap.
Do any of the commercial packages do as well? So what! You want a business to swap out a tried and (kind of) true commercial package from the biggest software company in the world with an unknown commercial package? Ain't. gonna. happen. Now if it's something I can just download, there is a tiny chance I can get management to take a look and consider it. Very tiny.
At work we use Lotus Notes. I hate that even more than Exchange+Outlook. I have a windoze box on my desk just to use lotus notes.
Which is why I no longer rely on nagios alerts via SMS. I once got some critical alerts the day after the problem. That's when we switched to text pagers for our alerts.
While many churches want you to donate a percentage of your income, they do not demand it. I can walk into just about any church in the country on a Sunday morning and sit down for the service without donating a dime. The CoS, however, figuratively charges admission at the entrance.
You obviously aren't all that familiar with the DailyKos. They do, in fact, delete posts that do not tow their party line. They'll leave up hateful, obscenity filled crap up if it's far left. A thoughtful argument by a conservative has a tendency to just disappear.
Hehe, I guess I was just a bit too enthusiastic about them. How often do you run across a product or service so good that you just have to tell everyone? There are two things I rave about. My internet provider and my coffee (Jablum Jamaican Blue Mountain Espresso Roast).
The UK has the highest violent crime rates of all western countries. The cameras didn't cause this problem. It's stupidity on the part of parliament. They outlawed all firearms. That was bad enough, but then they did something so mind boggling stupid that it's a wonder the people of the UK didn't rise up and lynch the bastards. They made it illegal to use force to stop a crime. If some thugs try to rape your girlfriend/wife/daughter, and you take a cricket bat to their well deserving head, you will go to jail. It doesn't matter if that was the only way to stop them, you aren't allowed. Period. People have been sent to prison for years for trying to prevent exactly that sort of crime. They made the mistake of reporting the crime and were stupid enough to mention they fought the thugs off. The UK police have become so lazy that they take the easy way out and arrest the victim. They get an arrest on their record that helps them in promotion, and they didn't have to get off their lazy and cowardly asses.
The result of that law was the criminals had no fear. I've heard rumor that they may have just recently changed that law. I certainly hope so.
Oh, CCTV, the topic. Hi-tech was defeated by hoodies (coats with hoods on them) and (I believe) were instrumental in creating the excessively lazy police. Even when thugs were caught, the courts have a bunch of pussies for judges who would constantly let off underage violent thugs with NO CONSEQUENCES!
Except the Georgian military did not start moving into the region until AFTER additional Russian troops started invading. Despite what the Russians are saying, the Russians did not counter the Georgians. Quite the opposite. These rather important details were left out of most of the news reports I read.
The so called Russian peace keeper troops also supplied arms to the rebels.
All kinds of background information and details can be found here: http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/the-truth-about-1.php
I wish they would expand their fiber offering down my way (Dublin). I'd kill for that.
Sonic tech support is the best I've ever seen. When I first signed up and was on the phone for basic info (like ip address, dns, etc) they asked "what operating system are you running?" I gritted my teeth and answered honestly, "Linux." Instead of the usual "we don't support that," the response was, "Cool! What distro?" When they lost one of their major switches, I called to ask them if the problem was on my end or their end (at this point I didn't know it was a dead switch), the owner of the company took my call! They didn't act stupid or pretend nothing was wrong. They told me they had a hardware failure and expected everything back to normal in 30 minutes to an hour. The had things back up nearer to the low end of the estimate. I'm sure you know all this since you are a customer. I'm telling this for everyone else's benefit so they will consider signing up with sonic.
Finally, they never pretend everything is perfect and they never have a problem. Information about problems and outages are always published on their website. I don't expect perfection. I love a company that is honest. I will stick with sonic for a long time.
I don't get my connectivity through a major provider. I get dsl through sonic.net. They are a AT&T reseller, but with huge advantages. They have not once ever mentioned bandwidth limits. I have static IPs, and I am allowed to run servers (mail, web, etc). Of course, I pay more than the average joe-user. About $70/month, but I feel it's worth it.
I've never measured my usage, but your question has me curious. I'll install a meter and get back to you in a month. LOL
Still running Windows 95?
Maybe they wronged the open source community in the past, maybe they didn't (I personally don't know). Let's show them that we are forgiving of past mistakes and fully welcome them and their donated code into the FOSS world. They made things right, let's not dwell on the past.