Well, I've been a senior sysadmin for a fair while now, I've always done stuff at home like pascal programming and the like before I went to college. I dropped out after a while because it just didn't keep me interested in anything, so I decided to go work. First job was as a helpdesker to support people in an office with their windows problems (seeing as how I had enough experience with that just from putzing about with windows at home).
From there I went to an ISP in my local town because I was one of the few people who (at that time) knew Linux existed (think kernel versions in the 1.1.x range), and could use it. Picked up Perl there too, even though I was just the helpdesk dude.
The Perl programming sort-of got out of hand at home so figured I might as well make a career of it, which I did at a few places, only to find that whenever I mentioned I could admin any *nix box without too much problems, I got the sysadmin duties as well.
Eventually just decided, fsck it, I'll just sysadmin and save the programming for home projects.
I have been lucky with my employers, even though I have no certificates, and only graduated highschool. They just looked at the whole "what can you do, for real" picture instead of the "your certificate claims you can do X" one.
Yup, I used to live a few minutes outside of Irvine (I'm Dutch, and my only form of ID is a passport) and I had the same problem. Couldn't get a beer, because apparently a passport wasn't an "official" form of ID. Even after going through a throng of managers trying to explain that in the country I'm from, it's the *only* form of photo ID we have (at that time anyway), still no go.
I came back last year to visit friends, and now being in posession of a Dutch drivers license, I brought that.
Passport: hard to fake, even multi-lingual, somewhat universally recognised as ID: DENIED! Drivers license: a pink bit of paper with my picture and some dutch on it: ACCEPTED.
I asked the server if she even knew what a Dutch license should look like, and the answer was no. I then asked her how she could be sure I had shown her a real Dutch license. "Well, I don't, but it *looks official*".. right. I asked her about my passport and the reason given was that it was easy to fake, and blah blah blah.
I got into the same argument once when trying to buy cigarettes. My passport wasn't good enough to prove my age, yet my drivers license was. Even though for all they knew it was something I tinkered together at home.
Just disallow anything that isn't text/plain content type and there you go, no more image spam. Stupidest move ever to allow HTML in e-mail.
On my own mailserver I discard any text/html messages, and mixed messages get the text/html bit stripped out of them. So sorry if I didn't get your important e-mail, send it to me in plain text, without the cute corporate background, without the cute corporate mandated font, and without the 10 attachments that make up the various bits of your signature and corporate disclaimer. And do include a text/plain representation of your e-mail, or I won't receive it, and will not now, or ever, give a crap:D
I've been on both sides of the hiring fence a few times, and most "vague" questions from interviewers are usually meant to see what your reaction will be to it, whether you blithely accept it and start mucking about or whether you will ask more questions to figure out what exactly the issue is.
Ofcourse there are also interviewers that shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
When doing the hiring (haven't in a while to be honest) I like to ask a few "easy" questions first, mostly centered on "how would you do X" just to see whether someone has the basic knowledge needed. If they can't answer them, it's not an immediate "no hire" but it does tend to weed out the bullshit artists. I also like to drill down. One of the last interviews I did was for a perl programmer position, so I put together some questions, some code, tossed that on a laptop, gave the interviewee the laptop and asked him to go ahead and solve my questions (implementation of a logfile parser that'd auto-update an iptables firewall for people dictionary-bombing ssh), and to fix my broken code, or suggest ways in which it could be done better.
That usually gets you a clear picture of whether someone is actually capable of performing, and doing some thinking on the spot. They are allowed to Google to their hearts content, and they can grab the big bad Perl book as well. I'm satisfied if people can't necessarily tell me things from memory, but they know where (and how) to find the information they need.
After that I try to see how they'd fit into the team as far as personality goes. How that's done depends on the applicant, and the team itself. Usually I'll take them on a little tour past the team first, show some things they're working on, then ask the applicant what he thinks and see whether he's either going to be the diplomatic type, or be honest and maybe suggest other ways to do things. I'll leave them with the team for a while and see how the discussion ends up going. This also gives the team an idea of what the applicant does or doesn't know.
Afterwards I'll usually ask the team what they thought, and take that into account as well.
I figure it's a fair way to do an interview, because people do get the chance to "show off" what they know, and I get to see whether they could work with the team.
Being the applicant myself, the absolute worst experience is when you're asked a question, you don't know the answer, but your answer of "I don't know how to do this, but I know where to find the information that will teach me how to do it" is classified as being totally wrong. I've forgotten a lot of things in the past 10 years, and often don't memorize the obscure details of certain function calls, but I know where to find all the information that I'd need to make it work.
I for one love BF1942 and a good round of Enemy Territory - in those games, sniping actually *does* take skill. Yes, anyone can grab a sniper rifle - but to be good at it, consistently good, requires skills.
I like being a sniper - in BF1942 especially since there are no real "set" routes to get to a point - as a sniper, you do need to look at the terrain, find a suitable spot (i.e. somewhere you can get a shot off without immediately being mowed down), and actually hope and pray to god that those airplanes overhead didn't see you get in position.
In Enemy Territory, it's also not quite as easy as you'd like to think, it's easier though than BF1942.
Both games feature quite realistic action, it takes time to reload, and in BF1942 you actually lose your scope sight. Also in BF1942, a sniper rifle up close is useless. If someone gets close, surprises you, or otherwise hunts you down, you can bet your ass on it that if that player has any skills, they'll kill you.
And sure, you do have the advantage of the 2 shot kills in ET and BF1942 - the 1st shot is usually easy to get, but most people know damn well that if their health drops suddenly, that a sniper is busy aiming for their noggin, and will most likely take cover.
You also need to use some tactics and move around, if you just stay where you are, someone will come, find that you are peeking thru your scope, and will unload a full clip in your head because you never saw them coming.
SoE is known for not being too good in the area of customer relations. You can see that with EQ, PlanetSide, and now SW:G - the devs do talk, and often they mean well when they come and post things.
Their customer support, on the other hand, is mostly comprised of a bunch of clueless sacks of sand, who can't do anything but read from a script, and ban you if anything deviates. Generalised, but true.
SW:G has often had notices in the patcher posted if users could -please- delete their open trouble tickets (you're allowed to have.. one.. yes.. one ticket) because the poor CSR staff was overworked.
It's pretty sad if your ticket about items going missing, weird warping bugs, and your entire house just sorta up-and-disappearing sit in the queue for a week before being closed by a CSR without any explanation. Then re-filing it and having it closed again, and given a warning on your account.
I mean, if that doesn't scream "for the love of God someone send us on a customer relations training camp", I don't quite know what else to make of it.
I hate it when people start going "you freaks, wtf?".
I've played MMORPGS for a while now, and yeah, you do get to know people. Maybe not as closely as you would if they were local to you, but still you could consider them good friends.
When one good friend of mine died, I couldn't attend the funeral, but since they organised something in-game, I could still go and show my respect to not only a good player, but also a good person and a good friend.
Perhaps it seems silly to do that in an online game, but why not? It shows that we're all people, and it's just another way of mourning. Same as all those condoleance sites that popped up after 9/11 - that is just the same, except in a different form.
A few years back I worked for an ISP, and we were taking delivery of a new fully stocked 19" rack (I think it had 4 servers, a cisco catalyst and some other assorted goodies in it, we purchased it like that so we wouldn't have to rig it all up ourselves).
So the day arrives that our New Shiny Hardware(tm) is going to come in (and the tech geeks, me included, are busy salivating all over the place).
A rather tiny courier van comes driving up, and this insanely small-built guy gets out. We're already like "um, that can't be right.. noooo they didn't ship it in there did they?".
Well, they did. No packing. No strap-down. They took the rack and put it (front down) into the van. The "pick it up and shove it in" way. When it came out, at least 3 face plates were gone, our catalyst had a dent in it that unfortunately crushed a part of the logic boards inside, and the rack itself was torqued and wouldn't stand straight. If you'd try to stand it up, it'd wobble. And sway. And fall over.
We got fully reimbursed and a few people actually lost their jobs due to the way it got shipped, but it still amazes me that it was done so carelessly.
On a more personal note; I've traveled back and forth between the Netherlands (I'm a native.. fear my cheese) and the USA a few times, and shipped my trusty PC along 4 times. (there 2 times, and back 2 times).
My routine for shipping:
1) Disassemble PC. Take harddrives (3) and wrap them in bubble wrap, then pack them in a small box, add padding. Take drives with you as carry-on luggage. (After 9/11, I doubt this'd be allowed).
2) Cut out styrofoam blocks to a size where you can basically secure the motherboard (i.e. make sure at least the edges are going to stay off the motherboard, and if you can, make sure the center don't hit it either. Secure all cards, and tie-wrap all loose cables together and out of the way.
Double box this.
3) Take monitor. Take off foot stand. Double-box monitor using the original shipping materials, or basically anything else that's sturdy enough. (Styrofoam cut to decent sized blocks. For the double-boxing, use liberal amounts of foam peanuts to fill the space.
Insure the whole deal.
On my last return trip, I lacked packing material so I ended up double-boxing and having my monitor wrapped inside a real big blanket. It did work, and the only damage that I got was that apparently someone spilled their coffee on it because i got the monitor back with an interesting array of brown stains on it.
I'm still not quite sure what caused me to get booted off FIDO - I think they weren't too happy with my other networks (h/p/a/v/c like shit) and decided that I oughta go.
Then again my boss never notified me, just cut the whole feed off. Which sorta blew since at that time I was also a hub to 20 nodes (ISDN line bay-beh, back in those days I could suck down all of FIDO in 5 minutes). Oh well.
I think if I'm going to re-do the BBS it'll basically be a community thing, probably a MUD attached to it or some door games. Citadel/UX comes to mind as the software of choice:)
Heh I ran a 2 line BBS in the Netherlands in '95 - got my ass kicked off FIDO too for some reason or other. Not that it mattered since I had another 7 networks I was exchanging mail with.
Desqview never got on my machines, first I ran on OS/2, later on I went to 2 computers, and as of late I've had the urge to re-start the thing but then on Linux. Lord knows what could happen:)
The first step is to try to get it into one department - working together with others is fine, but you do need the final authority on the website and anything you need for the site(s).
Seeing as how that's problematic, your best bet is to nudge it in the direction you want it to go in small steps, and not in one big shove.
Make sure you have the people you need. At the least one server wiz, one perl wiz, one graphics/content wiz and someone who can make them work as a team.
The place I now work at (a whopping 2 employees, yes yes, startup) already has this on paper - except that I'm doing all 4 of those things right now. In the future (read: when we make money) there will be people hired to focus on specific needs - thankfully I managed to get a sensible structure going from the get-go.
It's been what, a few years since Columbine, and nobody, not the schools, not the directors, not the teachers, not the students, not the parents, have learned anything.
Parents need to step off their "but my son/daughter would _never_ do that" horse. Teachers need to step off their "I'm just here to teach, not to protect my students wellbeing" horse. School boards and directors need to step off their "Look at us, we've got preventive measures in place!" horse.
And society in general needs to learn - then again, all the above would pretty much constitute a miracle, and they don't happen.
So I guess we're all fucked after all.
Thankfully I dropped out of the whole education loop when I was 18, and started educating myself. At 23, I can only say that for me, it was the right thing to do - I've got a great (geek) job, I make good money, and I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want to do it.
When the Challenger exploded I was still in grade school (I think that's what it's called here in the US) - one thing that I remember is that at the time it was just as devastating for people in Europe as it was in the US - but one thing I do have a bit of a gripe about is that everyone in the US seems to have forgotten about it.
Most people have this "Oh, it went boom.. so what" reaction to it these days, and that's sorta wrong.
7 people died, that's worth remembering. They died a shitty death, and that's worth remembering too.
Ofcourse I joked just as hard as everyone else about needing another 7 astronauts, and the muffled laughter about the wish it was our teacher in there, but those sorts of jokes are made just to protect your own sanity.
Hell, some of my friends (RNAF pilots) can crack a joke about a near miss with another plane or a flyby-gone-wrong - they do that to stay sane:)
I guess the point is that the Challenger tragedy is worth remembering, and worth thinking about for a while. And if you don't want to do that, just think about the 7 people who died trying to realise the dreams of this world - space flight.
Amen to that. Thankfully I'm in a position where my boss - he's tech-savvy but don't ask him about databases and programming, although you can explain algorithms to him and he'll get what you mean - actually lets me do what I think is best. That's one of the first things I told him when he hired me; "you hired me to code, and solve problems. so let me code and solve problems, don't get in my way, don't drag your feet, and if I say it's broken, that means it's broken".
I got that way after too many bad experiences in $VBC. I guess on an experience level I'd be considered a junior programmer still; since there is a lot of things I have yet to learn, but dammit, I do know when something's broken or not, or is in need of some work to either make it work better, faster, or just make it more readable so the maintenance bit is easier.
(Ok so this topic is something I can get all fired up about.. sue me:P)
Ok replying to myself sucks but just to illustrate a point where you can go from either fixing things or rewriting things.
I wrote a rather sizable bunch of mod_perl modules, interfacing with a mysql database to keep track of a partnership system (pay-for-clicks/signups/whatever). Now, the company that runs it is quite small, and has limited resources (one db server, one web server, that's it). The first week, everything worked fine. The second week, everything still worked fine but it got slow. The third week, it took so long to load a page that you could get yourself a frappucino at the nearest Starbucks.
Was it a design mistake? Not quite, it had more to do with MySQL not being able to deal with 50+ queries per second. (AFAIK/. has a distributed db backend). So, with the limited resources, something had to be done there. Switch to PostgreSQL (7.1beta3 FYI, it's fast). This involved a good day rewriting some core modules (I like OO stuff) and another few hours dumping data out and restoring it piece by piece. (so I made some table changes too).
That's a pretty clear-cut case where code that isn't broken is in definite need of rewriting.
If you encounter code like that, and you are confident that you know what it's supposed to do (learn the code first, then fuck with it - don't fuck with it and then learn about major fuckups.) then you go and fix. If you don't know what it does, or what it's supposed to do, it's best to leave it alone for a while.
Now can someone pass me my caffeine IV? My 48 hours-of-being-awake are catching up to me...
I've come across some truly horrific code in my days (I'm self-employed now, I still come across horrific code but it's mine dammit..) in $VBC and well, I had management refusing to allocate time and some people to fixing it up.
My view on it; if you think that code is going to break in new and interesting ways in a few weeks/months - fix it anyway. Do it on your own time if you have to, but keep track of how much time you do spend on it. Fix it on the side, but don't actually implement the fix. yet. Wait for the original code to break, watch management panic and basically walk in and say "i can fix it in (2*the-time-it-really-took) [days|weeks] -if- i get time, resources, and oh.. some days off".
first of all you already have the code waiting so you can now legitimately read slashdot all day (doing research), and you got your name in the good books - not to mention you're on your way to having a reputation as a miracle worker.
okay so some of you might not agree with this approach, but it's worked well for me, and it's a good way to pretty much tell your manager "you suck" without getting your ass kicked. (besides i like watching people squirm and having to explain to -their- bosses why stuff broke in the first place).
I wouldn't know about that, I think the longest 'rush' I ever went on was 10 days long with an average of a 30 minute nap each day. After that, ofcourse, it takes 3 days of solid sleeping to recover but it was worth it:) (this was when I was working for myself)
When I was working for a medium-sized accounting firm (in the IT department that is) they had a rigid schedule of 'be here at 8am, leave at 4:30pm' - since I'm a night person, if I have to be there at 8, I stumble around like a zombie until at least 2pm, then I get started and my 'best' time is pretty much from 4pm thru midnight.
I quit there - then moved on to an ISP where I did sysadmin duties and some tech support. All they had policy wise is "just make sure you work 40 hours a week, we don't care when you come in". Because everyone had a cellphone and a pager, it wasn't a problem. So on some days I'd come in at noon and work till 9pm and hike on out to home, some days I'd come in at 9pm and work till 6am the next morning. There were more people like that:)
All in all I think it depends on the 'corporate' environment on whether or not flex time is a good idea. I work for myself now, so it's not a big deal anymore - I work about 8 to 10 hours a day, and I'm happy as can be:)
I wouldn't know, if one blatantly copies the exact layout (e.g. color schemes, button/banner placements, etc) that's a bad thing. Personally, for some of my own sites I've been inspired by other sites, for example a certain page layout done with tables. I loved it, looked at their code (a 9x9 table grid, sorta news-papery like) and used that on my own. But with my own buttons, text, colors and all that. You can't really put a copyright on a layout mechanism. For example, Slashdot consists of 3 vertical segments - there are plenty of other sites that use this type of layout.
It's sort of an iffy question really whether one can copyright a website layout - it's possible that 2 people on opposite ends of the world end up building 2 websites that look similar, and beyond that you can get down to the nitty-gritty of 'can you copyright a 3 column 6 row table layout'. You can't because it's a method of achieving a certain look, not 'the look'. The look itself is dictated with what you put -in- the table cells, and more importantly, where you place it.
I doubt it's really faster - even if it is kernel level, it still compares to apache/mod_perl as far as speed is concerned. The fact that the webserver is part of the kernel might make it faster, but for CGI scripts an external application still has to be spawned. I doubt M$ has integrated a perl interpreter in their kernel. If they have they need a beating with a GPL license:)
Anyhow, does it really matter right now what they run? The key point is it'll be good to find out whether Win2K has any balls. If it has, well, I'll swallow my pride for a minute and say 'nice job M$' and if it fails, I'll just say 'typical' and go on with life.
What works for me is to just zone out for a while and watch some TV, then get back to the computer, fire up your mp3 player, and play some music that makes you want to get up and dance. Sounds silly, but it works.
Listen to some good trance or techno and for some reason after 15 minutes you'll start to feel pretty energetic. Then just start coding and before you know it you'll be done.
Over the years I've seen JP and AntiOnline get torn down. And with reason. JP is basically a backstabbing sack of s**t who really is only concerned with making money for himself.
I used to go to AntiOnline when it was still new, but after the first few 'fake' stories I decided there were other sites more worthy of my time there. Then JP shut down Packetstorm and that is one thing that made sure I'll never visit AntiOnline again.
Now watch JP sue Rob because everyone posting negatively about him is 'slandering' him. *snicker*
One thing I've noticed is that many geeks also suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. I know I have problems with high anxiety; meaning I get very nervous or very upset without really any reason, which explains the fact (for me at least) why I definitely don't like being around people much.
The article itself did have some very good points, some of which apply to me and some don't. I'm just not the most sociable type of person I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember coming here due to Enlightenment news. And I do love my 3 digit user id... love it very much :D
Well, I've been a senior sysadmin for a fair while now, I've always done stuff at home like pascal programming and the like before I went to college. I dropped out after a while because it just didn't keep me interested in anything, so I decided to go work. First job was as a helpdesker to support people in an office with their windows problems (seeing as how I had enough experience with that just from putzing about with windows at home).
From there I went to an ISP in my local town because I was one of the few people who (at that time) knew Linux existed (think kernel versions in the 1.1.x range), and could use it. Picked up Perl there too, even though I was just the helpdesk dude.
The Perl programming sort-of got out of hand at home so figured I might as well make a career of it, which I did at a few places, only to find that whenever I mentioned I could admin any *nix box without too much problems, I got the sysadmin duties as well.
Eventually just decided, fsck it, I'll just sysadmin and save the programming for home projects.
I have been lucky with my employers, even though I have no certificates, and only graduated highschool. They just looked at the whole "what can you do, for real" picture instead of the "your certificate claims you can do X" one.
Yup, I used to live a few minutes outside of Irvine (I'm Dutch, and my only form of ID is a passport) and I had the same problem. Couldn't get a beer, because apparently a passport wasn't an "official" form of ID. Even after going through a throng of managers trying to explain that in the country I'm from, it's the *only* form of photo ID we have (at that time anyway), still no go.
.. right. I asked her about my passport and the reason given was that it was easy to fake, and blah blah blah.
I came back last year to visit friends, and now being in posession of a Dutch drivers license, I brought that.
Passport: hard to fake, even multi-lingual, somewhat universally recognised as ID: DENIED!
Drivers license: a pink bit of paper with my picture and some dutch on it: ACCEPTED.
I asked the server if she even knew what a Dutch license should look like, and the answer was no. I then asked her how she could be sure I had shown her a real Dutch license. "Well, I don't, but it *looks official*"
I got into the same argument once when trying to buy cigarettes. My passport wasn't good enough to prove my age, yet my drivers license was. Even though for all they knew it was something I tinkered together at home.
Just disallow anything that isn't text/plain content type and there you go, no more image spam. Stupidest move ever to allow HTML in e-mail.
:D
On my own mailserver I discard any text/html messages, and mixed messages get the text/html bit stripped out of them. So sorry if I didn't get your important e-mail, send it to me in plain text, without the cute corporate background, without the cute corporate mandated font, and without the 10 attachments that make up the various bits of your signature and corporate disclaimer. And do include a text/plain representation of your e-mail, or I won't receive it, and will not now, or ever, give a crap
Works fine.
Hmm, guess I'll make "youarealltossers@goscrewyourself.com" and insist they check it for validity :P
I've been on both sides of the hiring fence a few times, and most "vague" questions from interviewers are usually meant to see what your reaction will be to it, whether you blithely accept it and start mucking about or whether you will ask more questions to figure out what exactly the issue is.
Ofcourse there are also interviewers that shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
When doing the hiring (haven't in a while to be honest) I like to ask a few "easy" questions first, mostly centered on "how would you do X" just to see whether someone has the basic knowledge needed. If they can't answer them, it's not an immediate "no hire" but it does tend to weed out the bullshit artists. I also like to drill down. One of the last interviews I did was for a perl programmer position, so I put together some questions, some code, tossed that on a laptop, gave the interviewee the laptop and asked him to go ahead and solve my questions (implementation of a logfile parser that'd auto-update an iptables firewall for people dictionary-bombing ssh), and to fix my broken code, or suggest ways in which it could be done better.
That usually gets you a clear picture of whether someone is actually capable of performing, and doing some thinking on the spot. They are allowed to Google to their hearts content, and they can grab the big bad Perl book as well. I'm satisfied if people can't necessarily tell me things from memory, but they know where (and how) to find the information they need.
After that I try to see how they'd fit into the team as far as personality goes. How that's done depends on the applicant, and the team itself. Usually I'll take them on a little tour past the team first, show some things they're working on, then ask the applicant what he thinks and see whether he's either going to be the diplomatic type, or be honest and maybe suggest other ways to do things. I'll leave them with the team for a while and see how the discussion ends up going. This also gives the team an idea of what the applicant does or doesn't know.
Afterwards I'll usually ask the team what they thought, and take that into account as well.
I figure it's a fair way to do an interview, because people do get the chance to "show off" what they know, and I get to see whether they could work with the team.
Being the applicant myself, the absolute worst experience is when you're asked a question, you don't know the answer, but your answer of "I don't know how to do this, but I know where to find the information that will teach me how to do it" is classified as being totally wrong. I've forgotten a lot of things in the past 10 years, and often don't memorize the obscure details of certain function calls, but I know where to find all the information that I'd need to make it work.
Just my 2 cents.
I for one love BF1942 and a good round of Enemy Territory - in those games, sniping actually *does* take skill. Yes, anyone can grab a sniper rifle - but to be good at it, consistently good, requires skills.
I like being a sniper - in BF1942 especially since there are no real "set" routes to get to a point - as a sniper, you do need to look at the terrain, find a suitable spot (i.e. somewhere you can get a shot off without immediately being mowed down), and actually hope and pray to god that those airplanes overhead didn't see you get in position.
In Enemy Territory, it's also not quite as easy as you'd like to think, it's easier though than BF1942.
Both games feature quite realistic action, it takes time to reload, and in BF1942 you actually lose your scope sight. Also in BF1942, a sniper rifle up close is useless. If someone gets close, surprises you, or otherwise hunts you down, you can bet your ass on it that if that player has any skills, they'll kill you.
And sure, you do have the advantage of the 2 shot kills in ET and BF1942 - the 1st shot is usually easy to get, but most people know damn well that if their health drops suddenly, that a sniper is busy aiming for their noggin, and will most likely take cover.
You also need to use some tactics and move around, if you just stay where you are, someone will come, find that you are peeking thru your scope, and will unload a full clip in your head because you never saw them coming.
Oh well, just my 2 cents.
SoE is known for not being too good in the area of customer relations. You can see that with EQ, PlanetSide, and now SW:G - the devs do talk, and often they mean well when they come and post things.
Their customer support, on the other hand, is mostly comprised of a bunch of clueless sacks of sand, who can't do anything but read from a script, and ban you if anything deviates. Generalised, but true.
SW:G has often had notices in the patcher posted if users could -please- delete their open trouble tickets (you're allowed to have.. one.. yes.. one ticket) because the poor CSR staff was overworked.
It's pretty sad if your ticket about items going missing, weird warping bugs, and your entire house just sorta up-and-disappearing sit in the queue for a week before being closed by a CSR without any explanation. Then re-filing it and having it closed again, and given a warning on your account.
I mean, if that doesn't scream "for the love of God someone send us on a customer relations training camp", I don't quite know what else to make of it.
I hate it when people start going "you freaks, wtf?".
I've played MMORPGS for a while now, and yeah, you do get to know people. Maybe not as closely as you would if they were local to you, but still you could consider them good friends.
When one good friend of mine died, I couldn't attend the funeral, but since they organised something in-game, I could still go and show my respect to not only a good player, but also a good person and a good friend.
Perhaps it seems silly to do that in an online game, but why not? It shows that we're all people, and it's just another way of mourning. Same as all those condoleance sites that popped up after 9/11 - that is just the same, except in a different form.
A few years back I worked for an ISP, and we were taking delivery of a new fully stocked 19" rack (I think it had 4 servers, a cisco catalyst and some other assorted goodies in it, we purchased it like that so we wouldn't have to rig it all up ourselves).
So the day arrives that our New Shiny Hardware(tm) is going to come in (and the tech geeks, me included, are busy salivating all over the place).
A rather tiny courier van comes driving up, and this insanely small-built guy gets out. We're already like "um, that can't be right.. noooo they didn't ship it in there did they?".
Well, they did. No packing. No strap-down. They took the rack and put it (front down) into the van. The "pick it up and shove it in" way. When it came out, at least 3 face plates were gone, our catalyst had a dent in it that unfortunately crushed a part of the logic boards inside, and the rack itself was torqued and wouldn't stand straight. If you'd try to stand it up, it'd wobble. And sway. And fall over.
We got fully reimbursed and a few people actually lost their jobs due to the way it got shipped, but it still amazes me that it was done so carelessly.
On a more personal note; I've traveled back and forth between the Netherlands (I'm a native.. fear my cheese) and the USA a few times, and shipped my trusty PC along 4 times. (there 2 times, and back 2 times).
My routine for shipping:
1) Disassemble PC. Take harddrives (3) and wrap them in bubble wrap, then pack them in a small box, add padding. Take drives with you as carry-on luggage. (After 9/11, I doubt this'd be allowed).
2) Cut out styrofoam blocks to a size where you can basically secure the motherboard (i.e. make sure at least the edges are going to stay off the motherboard, and if you can, make sure the center don't hit it either. Secure all cards, and tie-wrap all loose cables together and out of the way.
Double box this.
3) Take monitor. Take off foot stand. Double-box monitor using the original shipping materials, or basically anything else that's sturdy enough. (Styrofoam cut to decent sized blocks. For the double-boxing, use liberal amounts of foam peanuts to fill the space.
Insure the whole deal.
On my last return trip, I lacked packing material so I ended up double-boxing and having my monitor wrapped inside a real big blanket. It did work, and the only damage that I got was that apparently someone spilled their coffee on it because i got the monitor back with an interesting array of brown stains on it.
*shrug*
I'm still not quite sure what caused me to get booted off FIDO - I think they weren't too happy with my other networks (h/p/a/v/c like shit) and decided that I oughta go.
:)
Then again my boss never notified me, just cut the whole feed off. Which sorta blew since at that time I was also a hub to 20 nodes (ISDN line bay-beh, back in those days I could suck down all of FIDO in 5 minutes). Oh well.
I think if I'm going to re-do the BBS it'll basically be a community thing, probably a MUD attached to it or some door games. Citadel/UX comes to mind as the software of choice
(as long as it runs on OpenBSD)
Heh I ran a 2 line BBS in the Netherlands in '95 - got my ass kicked off FIDO too for some reason or other. Not that it mattered since I had another 7 networks I was exchanging mail with.
:)
Desqview never got on my machines, first I ran on OS/2, later on I went to 2 computers, and as of late I've had the urge to re-start the thing but then on Linux. Lord knows what could happen
The first step is to try to get it into one department - working together with others is fine, but you do need the final authority on the website and anything you need for the site(s).
Seeing as how that's problematic, your best bet is to nudge it in the direction you want it to go in small steps, and not in one big shove.
Make sure you have the people you need. At the least one server wiz, one perl wiz, one graphics/content wiz and someone who can make them work as a team.
The place I now work at (a whopping 2 employees, yes yes, startup) already has this on paper - except that I'm doing all 4 of those things right now. In the future (read: when we make money) there will be people hired to focus on specific needs - thankfully I managed to get a sensible structure going from the get-go.
It's been what, a few years since Columbine, and nobody, not the schools, not the directors, not the teachers, not the students, not the parents, have learned anything.
Parents need to step off their "but my son/daughter would _never_ do that" horse. Teachers need to step off their "I'm just here to teach, not to protect my students wellbeing" horse. School boards and directors need to step off their "Look at us, we've got preventive measures in place!" horse.
And society in general needs to learn - then again, all the above would pretty much constitute a miracle, and they don't happen.
So I guess we're all fucked after all.
Thankfully I dropped out of the whole education loop when I was 18, and started educating myself. At 23, I can only say that for me, it was the right thing to do - I've got a great (geek) job, I make good money, and I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want to do it.
Perhaps more people should try this.
When the Challenger exploded I was still in grade school (I think that's what it's called here in the US) - one thing that I remember is that at the time it was just as devastating for people in Europe as it was in the US - but one thing I do have a bit of a gripe about is that everyone in the US seems to have forgotten about it.
:)
Most people have this "Oh, it went boom.. so what" reaction to it these days, and that's sorta wrong.
7 people died, that's worth remembering. They died a shitty death, and that's worth remembering too.
Ofcourse I joked just as hard as everyone else about needing another 7 astronauts, and the muffled laughter about the wish it was our teacher in there, but those sorts of jokes are made just to protect your own sanity.
Hell, some of my friends (RNAF pilots) can crack a joke about a near miss with another plane or a flyby-gone-wrong - they do that to stay sane
I guess the point is that the Challenger tragedy is worth remembering, and worth thinking about for a while. And if you don't want to do that, just think about the 7 people who died trying to realise the dreams of this world - space flight.
Amen to that. Thankfully I'm in a position where my boss - he's tech-savvy but don't ask him about databases and programming, although you can explain algorithms to him and he'll get what you mean - actually lets me do what I think is best. That's one of the first things I told him when he hired me; "you hired me to code, and solve problems. so let me code and solve problems, don't get in my way, don't drag your feet, and if I say it's broken, that means it's broken".
:P)
I got that way after too many bad experiences in $VBC. I guess on an experience level I'd be considered a junior programmer still; since there is a lot of things I have yet to learn, but dammit, I do know when something's broken or not, or is in need of some work to either make it work better, faster, or just make it more readable so the maintenance bit is easier.
(Ok so this topic is something I can get all fired up about.. sue me
Or the H1B that touched it last.
:P Doesn't mean us foreigners can't code :)
Bah
Ok replying to myself sucks but just to illustrate a point where you can go from either fixing things or rewriting things.
/. has a distributed db backend). So, with the limited resources, something had to be done there. Switch to PostgreSQL (7.1beta3 FYI, it's fast). This involved a good day rewriting some core modules (I like OO stuff) and another few hours dumping data out and restoring it piece by piece. (so I made some table changes too).
I wrote a rather sizable bunch of mod_perl modules, interfacing with a mysql database to keep track of a partnership system (pay-for-clicks/signups/whatever). Now, the company that runs it is quite small, and has limited resources (one db server, one web server, that's it). The first week, everything worked fine. The second week, everything still worked fine but it got slow. The third week, it took so long to load a page that you could get yourself a frappucino at the nearest Starbucks.
Was it a design mistake? Not quite, it had more to do with MySQL not being able to deal with 50+ queries per second. (AFAIK
That's a pretty clear-cut case where code that isn't broken is in definite need of rewriting.
If you encounter code like that, and you are confident that you know what it's supposed to do (learn the code first, then fuck with it - don't fuck with it and then learn about major fuckups.) then you go and fix. If you don't know what it does, or what it's supposed to do, it's best to leave it alone for a while.
Now can someone pass me my caffeine IV? My 48 hours-of-being-awake are catching up to me...
I've come across some truly horrific code in my days (I'm self-employed now, I still come across horrific code but it's mine dammit..) in $VBC and well, I had management refusing to allocate time and some people to fixing it up.
My view on it; if you think that code is going to break in new and interesting ways in a few weeks/months - fix it anyway. Do it on your own time if you have to, but keep track of how much time you do spend on it. Fix it on the side, but don't actually implement the fix. yet. Wait for the original code to break, watch management panic and basically walk in and say "i can fix it in (2*the-time-it-really-took) [days|weeks] -if- i get time, resources, and oh.. some days off".
first of all you already have the code waiting so you can now legitimately read slashdot all day (doing research), and you got your name in the good books - not to mention you're on your way to having a reputation as a miracle worker.
okay so some of you might not agree with this approach, but it's worked well for me, and it's a good way to pretty much tell your manager "you suck" without getting your ass kicked. (besides i like watching people squirm and having to explain to -their- bosses why stuff broke in the first place).
I wouldn't know about that, I think the longest 'rush' I ever went on was 10 days long with an average of a 30 minute nap each day. After that, ofcourse, it takes 3 days of solid sleeping to recover but it was worth it :) (this was when I was working for myself)
When I was working for a medium-sized accounting firm (in the IT department that is) they had a rigid schedule of 'be here at 8am, leave at 4:30pm' - since I'm a night person, if I have to be there at 8, I stumble around like a zombie until at least 2pm, then I get started and my 'best' time is pretty much from 4pm thru midnight.
I quit there - then moved on to an ISP where I did sysadmin duties and some tech support. All they had policy wise is "just make sure you work 40 hours a week, we don't care when you come in". Because everyone had a cellphone and a pager, it wasn't a problem. So on some days I'd come in at noon and work till 9pm and hike on out to home, some days I'd come in at 9pm and work till 6am the next morning. There were more people like that :)
All in all I think it depends on the 'corporate' environment on whether or not flex time is a good idea. I work for myself now, so it's not a big deal anymore - I work about 8 to 10 hours a day, and I'm happy as can be :)
I wouldn't know, if one blatantly copies the exact layout (e.g. color schemes, button/banner placements, etc) that's a bad thing. Personally, for some of my own sites I've been inspired by other sites, for example a certain page layout done with tables. I loved it, looked at their code (a 9x9 table grid, sorta news-papery like) and used that on my own. But with my own buttons, text, colors and all that. You can't really put a copyright on a layout mechanism. For example, Slashdot consists of 3 vertical segments - there are plenty of other sites that use this type of layout.
It's sort of an iffy question really whether one can copyright a website layout - it's possible that 2 people on opposite ends of the world end up building 2 websites that look similar, and beyond that you can get down to the nitty-gritty of 'can you copyright a 3 column 6 row table layout'. You can't because it's a method of achieving a certain look, not 'the look'. The look itself is dictated with what you put -in- the table cells, and more importantly, where you place it.
I doubt it's really faster - even if it is kernel level, it still compares to apache/mod_perl as far as speed is concerned. The fact that the webserver is part of the kernel might make it faster, but for CGI scripts an external application still has to be spawned. I doubt M$ has integrated a perl interpreter in their kernel. If they have they need a beating with a GPL license :)
Anyhow, does it really matter right now what they run? The key point is it'll be good to find out whether Win2K has any balls. If it has, well, I'll swallow my pride for a minute and say 'nice job M$' and if it fails, I'll just say 'typical' and go on with life.
What works for me is to just zone out for a while and watch some TV, then get back to the computer, fire up your mp3 player, and play some music that makes you want to get up and dance. Sounds silly, but it works.
Listen to some good trance or techno and for some reason after 15 minutes you'll start to feel pretty energetic. Then just start coding and before you know it you'll be done.
Over the years I've seen JP and AntiOnline get torn down. And with reason. JP is basically a backstabbing sack of s**t who really is only concerned with making money for himself.
I used to go to AntiOnline when it was still new, but after the first few 'fake' stories I decided there were other sites more worthy of my time there. Then JP shut down Packetstorm and that is one thing that made sure I'll never visit AntiOnline again.
Now watch JP sue Rob because everyone posting negatively about him is 'slandering' him. *snicker*
One thing I've noticed is that many geeks also suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. I know I have problems with high anxiety; meaning I get very nervous or very upset without really any reason, which explains the fact (for me at least) why I definitely don't like being around people much.
The article itself did have some very good points, some of which apply to me and some don't. I'm just not the most sociable type of person I guess.