I've seen this before. It is always marketting and management that eat up the most disk space, and they always insist that every single byte is mission critical. They will pay lip service, and delete some stuff, but never enough to make a real difference. Even if you try to put in quotas now, they will insist on exemptions and/or huge quotas. Most likley both.
You will be better served if you breakdown usage by department and bill them accordingly. That is disk space, backup tapes, off-site storage, salaries, and so forth. Even if no money changes hands between departments, putting a cost to it is more likely to get someone to (re)act.
I'm not saying that a "let's delete old files" campaign won't work, but the ones who are most likely to do something (the engineers) are not the ones eating most of the space.
If you are going to hit it, just bump it off of the plane of the ecliptic. I haven't RTFM yet, but most objects are on the same plane, so a lot of solar system is more or less 2D. By pushing it "high" or "low" (whatever they mean), then you've added a new degree of freedom, and thus reduce the chance of impact with Earth.
<geek> Just think of the Enterprise attacking Kahn. Kirk was able to move down and out of Kahn's path. </geek>
And even if it does break up, I'd rather have Earth hit by a fragment than the whole thing.
Sure, there could be several savants. There might even be a real genius hiding out here somewhere. But most of us are no where near true genius status, even if we'd like to be. There are plenty of smarts on slashdot, I've not seen real genius and I've been looking here for a *long* time.
What does trust mean in this context? It was business, not friendship, that motivated both companies. We expect companies to be cutthroat, and this was no exception.
IBM didn't particularly care for Microsoft one way or another. With the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit and the lack of internal resources, IBM outsourced the OS of what they considered to be a low margin toy. There was no trust, nor friendship to betray. IBM used Microsoft, and Microsoft cashed some large checks.
IBM was in the driver's seat, but didn't get a contract that gave them exclusive access to DOS was the real undoing. The split betwen MS-DOS and PC-DOS gave Microsoft the chance to ween itself from IBM, and cozy up with other companies (the clone makers) and eventually stab IBM in the back.
As much as I prefer IBM to Microsoft (Dad worked there, so I'm an IBM brat), IBM blew it. Gates was just a good opportunist.
I've never been locked out from my accounts. In fact, management usually want me to work like a madman to tie up the loose ends, and to transition as much to someone else. I've heard of it in the banking sector, and other places where paranoia is normal. I think a lot of it is "control freak" thinking: they no longer have the leverage of being able to fire you, so how can they not be sure that you won't become a loose canon? It has always seemed pretty stupid to me.
As for the more general question of how to resign, I have had more experience with that than I care to think about. I've never been a true contractor, although I have worked full time for meat shop companies that have placed me with larger companies
I simply write a letter saying that I'm leaving. I typically address it to my direct manager, except at one company where the CEO made a smartass comment about "if you don't want to work these hours, give your resignation to BJ" where BJ was HR. So when I left, I addressed it to her. But in all cases, I try to speak with my manager, his boss, and so on. There is no reason to beat around the bush, and mostly they like the "personal touch". Remember, you may need these folks for references later. And this is also a good point to mention that if they get in a crunch in the near future, you can come back on evenings/weekends and lend a hand at a very lucrative rate. If they're stuck a month after you leave, they might make it worth your while to come in for a few hours on a saturday and fight whatever fire is happening. Although it has never happened to me, I have heard about it.
As much as possible, I try to pick a calm period to leave. I don't do this for my management's sake, but for the co-workers who will have to pick up the extra workload. I usually get along well with my co-workers, so I have no desire to stick it to them. But if push comes to shove, leave when is best for your. Being nice is fine, but don't get carried away.
One thing I learned to do is to specify my last date, so there is no question about that. I know of one guy who turned in his resignation without a date, and since he was pretty crappy, management decided that it was effective immedietely and showed him the door. I guess that he could have fought, saying he meant in 2 weeks, but didn't. I don't leave that open for interpreation.
One thing I don't do is cut back my hours too much. I once worked with someone who gave his notice, and then he showed up at 10am, took a 2 hour lunch and was gone at 4pm. While there was some "pay back" for all the shit he had done and not gotten anything for, that seemed mighty unprofessional to me.
The sci-fi/fantasy genre is pretty large, so you should get your hints from the reader, not from the peanut gallery. Blasters vs. unicorns, dragons vs. starships. Space Opera, satire, philosophy: the scope is just too large.
When I was in college I tried to get various people hooked on the genre and I had the most luck with the Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh trillogy by Daley. The first one (Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds) did the trick. And for some reason, Moorcock's Elric never had much success. Go figure.
Although you do mention Pratchett in your queston, I have to bring up _Wee Free Men_. It was a fun read, the protagonist was a girl "coming of age", and was targetted to the pre-adult reader. And to agree with many of the earlier posts, LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy was another excellent choice.
The myth that garbage collection = poor performance is just that, a myth, and most likely started by people who associate Java's performance issues with garbage collection.
Sorry, but I've thought GC was slow since the 80s. Java had nothing to do with it.
- doug
The Titans were too gods. They were pre-Olympian, but they most certainly were gods. The fundamental difference between the older Titans and the younger Olympians is one of generation.
- doug
PS: Thanks for the bit about his wife being "Sharon". I had never heard that before.
I also work at a company that thinks Exchange is the ultimate tool, and host it about 1000 miles away from where I work. But it serves IMAP and LDAP, so I just use tbird from my Linux box and it works like a champ. I only fire up Outlook because of meeting notices. Poke around a bit and you might get tbird to work for you too.
No, you don't need to agree to IIS's license. But when you use someone else's site/servers, you do need to respect them. Perhaps even honor a license When someone puts something on the web just to be nice, we should be equally polite and decent about accepting it. Please remember that while Larry did do some of this to help Linus and Linux, and it helped him with marketting, it was still done pro bono.
I don't think that tridge did anything illegal here, but it was wrong. And if he tested using bitkeeper's servers, he might be guilty of unauthorized access.
And FWIW, I wish that there had been a better FOSS package for Linus to consider a few years ago and this whole issue could have avoided.
Radar wasn't quite so common back in the early/mid-80s. The Highway Patrol (State Police) had it, but the local cops usually didn't. At least that was the popular misconception back then. I was pulled several times, but only the Highway Patrol got me for speeding and my breaking without lights trick didn't work because I didn't see him until he hit his blues.
I used to use 'em to slow down because they didn't turn on the break lights. I wasn't doing so to stop, just to drop 15 MPH when I saw a police car and wanted to get below the posted speed limit. I don't know how effective it was, but I never got any tickets using that techinque.
Sometimes I think it is a miracle that we survive our teenaged years.
As the survivor of a number of layoffs, and the victim of one myself, I don't agree. Anything that lightens the mood will do the group good, otherwise you dwell on the negative and use terms like "walking dead" (those given pink slips), "angel of death" (the person who hands out the pink slips), "near miss" (being in the cube next to a visitation of the Angel of Death) and so on. This isn't a healthy state of mind. As long as the pranks are harmless, most people understand the situation, and you might even get a smile or two.
Obviously there will be a handful of people that won't get it, but they are usually well known as difficult. Admins are used to this sort of person because they have to deal with them all the time. (Note: "used to" and "like" can be miles apart.)
One thing that I do agree with is "stressed out as my livelyhood" bit. He shouldn't do things like deactivate everyone's accounts. That would get people thinking that they had been axed and hadn't been told. That would cross the line.
Have you considered installing the BSOD screen saver on every PC? Nothing bad happens unless someone panics and hits CTL-ALT-DEL. And since the three finger salute is user initiated, any problems because of this are user error, and thus beneath the concern of a short timer.
Mention them on slashdot and hope that they get slashdotted. If they have a crappy ISP then that should bring down the website for a while. While this won't get you your money back, you'll have the satisfaction of causing them headaches, and that's worth something, isn't it?
Over the years I've migrated from embedded development to configuration management. I'm more of the geek who handles packaging, versioning, and so on, and not a manager. The biggest problem with this role is that short sighted management doesn't care about these details. While they understand that this stuff has to work right, it doesn't involve any of the features that are on slides used by marketing and sales. The money side of the shop use admin services, so they have a better understanding of system administration than configuration management. Often times I end up being the odd man out. But it also means that as long as everything works right, I'm pretty much free to do things how I like.
When I was laid off a few years ago, I'm convinced that what put me on the list was that nothing I did was on the short term "must get done" list. But to the plus side, I was able to find a job in late 2001 in under 3 weeks. Just because it isn't highly regarded, doesn't mean no one finds it useful.
Another issue with CM is that the packaging issues get interesting at release time. This means you will have to work around schedule slips because this is the last thing done before pushing the software out the door. And there are the endless "could you make a special release before 8am tomorrow" type requests. As an admin you're used to odd hours, but I hope you're not expecting this to be a 9-5 type position.
I'm not going to say if you should or should not make the jump. That is a personal choice and only you can answer that. But I will say that if they want you to do CM with Visual Source Safe, forget it. Life is too short for VSS.
Check out Brooks's "The Mythical Man Month". I don't have it in front of me, but he mentions that the number of languages known (not just syntax) is a good indicator of ability. It is much better than years of experience.
- doug
REXX isn't as much fun as Perl
on
Rexx for Everyone
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I owe a lot to REXX. I used to love REXX. Back when I was a co-op at IBM I spent two years doing nothing but REXX on VM/CMS (note to youngsters: it was an OS for the 370 family). It paid for my car and a trip to Europe. But more importantly it got me used to scripting languages. After learning REXX, it was a small step to Perl (version 4.036). Since I learned Perl, I've never looked back at REXX. I'd be amazed if REXX hadn't evolved once it got off of mainframes, but I really doubt if it can do anything that Perl can't. They are both in the same nitch, but Perl has one thing that REXX doesn't: Perl is more fun. When everything else is said and done, enjoying your time at work is a huge advantage.
Life is too short to waste on REXX. Stick to Perl have fun.
The unemployment numbers released by the feds are supposed to be everyone who is actively looking for a job. The folks who are getting benefits are easy to count, but the Feds are supposed to do some surveys and monkey around with statistics to get the right value. I am not confident in the number, but those 5 people who have been unemployed for over a year AND ARE STILL ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR A JOB should be counted.
Should folks who want a job, but aren't actively looking because they're waiting for the job market to pick up be considered unemployed or not is a different thing. That's a lot harder to measure because I know people who've stopped working to stay home with the kids, but if the job market paid them insane salaries, they'd go back. They're not looking and more importantly they don't really consider themselves part of the "work force". How do you split hairs like that?
I don't consider actively looking to be a great criteria, but since it is so much more measurable than anything else I can think of, I'm not sure what else we should use.
The only time I've heard something in the 10% range was an NPR story about underemployment. Specifically it was talking about people with specialized skills like an engineer or airline pilot only finding work at Home Depot. That story put the combined unemployment and underemployment rate at 9.6%.
Is this what you're thinking about when you say 10%?
Last time I checked WinZip could handle tar'd and gzip'd files with the exception that they didn't handle links. Since there is no need for links in something like this, I don't see where MS Windows systems would have any problems at all.
I don't know much about older Macs, but the OSX crowd shouldn't have any problems either.
I personally use tar all the time because it is such an old beast that many different programs can handle it. It is an ugly format, but it was made for tapes, so some amount of cruft is to be expected.
Actually O' comes from Ui which in Irish refers to the person's clan. Bob O'Neil comes from the Neil clan.
As for the "britons" comin along, you've lost me with that one. From context, I don't think you mean the Celts/Gauls who were there before the Romans. Do you mean the people from Brittany (Britagne) in France (home of Asterix dontcha know) and took over Wales (kinda sorta) in the 7th century? They were Gaelic/Celtic so I don't see them changing things much.
Or do you mean "the Britons" as in found in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_
ARTHUR: How d'you do, good lady... I am Arthur, King of the Britons... Can you tell me who lives in that castle? OLD WOMAN: King of the WHO? ARTHUR: The Britons. OLD WOMAN: Who are the Britons? ARTHUR: All of us are... we are all Britons.
- doug
PS: It is always a good day when you can refer to both Asterix and Monty Python.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen this before. It is always marketting and management that eat up the most disk space, and they always insist that every single byte is mission critical. They will pay lip service, and delete some stuff, but never enough to make a real difference. Even if you try to put in quotas now, they will insist on exemptions and/or huge quotas. Most likley both.
You will be better served if you breakdown usage by department and bill them accordingly. That is disk space, backup tapes, off-site storage, salaries, and so forth. Even if no money changes hands between departments, putting a cost to it is more likely to get someone to (re)act.
I'm not saying that a "let's delete old files" campaign won't work, but the ones who are most likely to do something (the engineers) are not the ones eating most of the space.
- doug
If you are going to hit it, just bump it off of the plane of the ecliptic. I haven't RTFM yet, but most objects are on the same plane, so a lot of solar system is more or less 2D. By pushing it "high" or "low" (whatever they mean), then you've added a new degree of freedom, and thus reduce the chance of impact with Earth.
<geek>
Just think of the Enterprise attacking Kahn. Kirk was able to move down and out of Kahn's path.
</geek>
And even if it does break up, I'd rather have Earth hit by a fragment than the whole thing.
- doug
Sure, there could be several savants. There might even be a real genius hiding out here somewhere. But most of us are no where near true genius status, even if we'd like to be. There are plenty of smarts on slashdot, I've not seen real genius and I've been looking here for a *long* time.
- doug
Maybe that is why there are no geniuses here on slashdot?
What does trust mean in this context? It was business, not friendship, that motivated both companies. We expect companies to be cutthroat, and this was no exception.
IBM didn't particularly care for Microsoft one way or another. With the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit and the lack of internal resources, IBM outsourced the OS of what they considered to be a low margin toy. There was no trust, nor friendship to betray. IBM used Microsoft, and Microsoft cashed some large checks.
IBM was in the driver's seat, but didn't get a contract that gave them exclusive access to DOS was the real undoing. The split betwen MS-DOS and PC-DOS gave Microsoft the chance to ween itself from IBM, and cozy up with other companies (the clone makers) and eventually stab IBM in the back.
As much as I prefer IBM to Microsoft (Dad worked there, so I'm an IBM brat), IBM blew it. Gates was just a good opportunist.
- doug
I've never been locked out from my accounts. In fact, management usually want me to work like a madman to tie up the loose ends, and to transition as much to someone else. I've heard of it in the banking sector, and other places where paranoia is normal. I think a lot of it is "control freak" thinking: they no longer have the leverage of being able to fire you, so how can they not be sure that you won't become a loose canon? It has always seemed pretty stupid to me.
As for the more general question of how to resign, I have had more experience with that than I care to think about. I've never been a true contractor, although I have worked full time for meat shop companies that have placed me with larger companies
I simply write a letter saying that I'm leaving. I typically address it to my direct manager, except at one company where the CEO made a smartass comment about "if you don't want to work these hours, give your resignation to BJ" where BJ was HR. So when I left, I addressed it to her. But in all cases, I try to speak with my manager, his boss, and so on. There is no reason to beat around the bush, and mostly they like the "personal touch". Remember, you may need these folks for references later. And this is also a good point to mention that if they get in a crunch in the near future, you can come back on evenings/weekends and lend a hand at a very lucrative rate. If they're stuck a month after you leave, they might make it worth your while to come in for a few hours on a saturday and fight whatever fire is happening. Although it has never happened to me, I have heard about it.
As much as possible, I try to pick a calm period to leave. I don't do this for my management's sake, but for the co-workers who will have to pick up the extra workload. I usually get along well with my co-workers, so I have no desire to stick it to them. But if push comes to shove, leave when is best for your. Being nice is fine, but don't get carried away.
One thing I learned to do is to specify my last date, so there is no question about that. I know of one guy who turned in his resignation without a date, and since he was pretty crappy, management decided that it was effective immedietely and showed him the door. I guess that he could have fought, saying he meant in 2 weeks, but didn't. I don't leave that open for interpreation.
One thing I don't do is cut back my hours too much. I once worked with someone who gave his notice, and then he showed up at 10am, took a 2 hour lunch and was gone at 4pm. While there was some "pay back" for all the shit he had done and not gotten anything for, that seemed mighty unprofessional to me.
Good luck with your next resignation.
- doug
The sci-fi/fantasy genre is pretty large, so you should get your hints from the reader, not from the peanut gallery. Blasters vs. unicorns, dragons vs. starships. Space Opera, satire, philosophy: the scope is just too large.
When I was in college I tried to get various people hooked on the genre and I had the most luck with the Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh trillogy by Daley. The first one (Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds) did the trick. And for some reason, Moorcock's Elric never had much success. Go figure.
Although you do mention Pratchett in your queston, I have to bring up _Wee Free Men_. It was a fun read, the protagonist was a girl "coming of age", and was targetted to the pre-adult reader. And to agree with many of the earlier posts, LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy was another excellent choice.
- doug
Huh?
The Titans were too gods. They were pre-Olympian, but they most certainly were gods. The fundamental difference between the older Titans and the younger Olympians is one of generation.
- doug
PS: Thanks for the bit about his wife being "Sharon". I had never heard that before.
I also work at a company that thinks Exchange is the ultimate tool, and host it about 1000 miles away from where I work. But it serves IMAP and LDAP, so I just use tbird from my Linux box and it works like a champ. I only fire up Outlook because of meeting notices. Poke around a bit and you might get tbird to work for you too.
- doug
No, you don't need to agree to IIS's license. But when you use someone else's site/servers, you do need to respect them. Perhaps even honor a license When someone puts something on the web just to be nice, we should be equally polite and decent about accepting it. Please remember that while Larry did do some of this to help Linus and Linux, and it helped him with marketting, it was still done pro bono.
I don't think that tridge did anything illegal here, but it was wrong. And if he tested using bitkeeper's servers, he might be guilty of unauthorized access.
And FWIW, I wish that there had been a better FOSS package for Linus to consider a few years ago and this whole issue could have avoided.
- doug
Radar wasn't quite so common back in the early/mid-80s. The Highway Patrol (State Police) had it, but the local cops usually didn't. At least that was the popular misconception back then. I was pulled several times, but only the Highway Patrol got me for speeding and my breaking without lights trick didn't work because I didn't see him until he hit his blues.
- doug
I used to use 'em to slow down because they didn't turn on the break lights. I wasn't doing so to stop, just to drop 15 MPH when I saw a police car and wanted to get below the posted speed limit. I don't know how effective it was, but I never got any tickets using that techinque.
Sometimes I think it is a miracle that we survive our teenaged years.
- doug
I never realized that John Kerry worked at Sun.
As the survivor of a number of layoffs, and the victim of one myself, I don't agree. Anything that lightens the mood will do the group good, otherwise you dwell on the negative and use terms like "walking dead" (those given pink slips), "angel of death" (the person who hands out the pink slips), "near miss" (being in the cube next to a visitation of the Angel of Death) and so on. This isn't a healthy state of mind. As long as the pranks are harmless, most people understand the situation, and you might even get a smile or two.
Obviously there will be a handful of people that won't get it, but they are usually well known as difficult. Admins are used to this sort of person because they have to deal with them all the time. (Note: "used to" and "like" can be miles apart.)
One thing that I do agree with is "stressed out as my livelyhood" bit. He shouldn't do things like deactivate everyone's accounts. That would get people thinking that they had been axed and hadn't been told. That would cross the line.
- doug
Have you considered installing the BSOD screen saver on every PC? Nothing bad happens unless someone panics and hits CTL-ALT-DEL. And since the three finger salute is user initiated, any problems because of this are user error, and thus beneath the concern of a short timer.
- doug
Mention them on slashdot and hope that they get slashdotted. If they have a crappy ISP then that should bring down the website for a while. While this won't get you your money back, you'll have the satisfaction of causing them headaches, and that's worth something, isn't it?
- doug
Over the years I've migrated from embedded development to configuration management. I'm more of the geek who handles packaging, versioning, and so on, and not a manager. The biggest problem with this role is that short sighted management doesn't care about these details. While they understand that this stuff has to work right, it doesn't involve any of the features that are on slides used by marketing and sales. The money side of the shop use admin services, so they have a better understanding of system administration than configuration management. Often times I end up being the odd man out. But it also means that as long as everything works right, I'm pretty much free to do things how I like.
When I was laid off a few years ago, I'm convinced that what put me on the list was that nothing I did was on the short term "must get done" list. But to the plus side, I was able to find a job in late 2001 in under 3 weeks. Just because it isn't highly regarded, doesn't mean no one finds it useful.
Another issue with CM is that the packaging issues get interesting at release time. This means you will have to work around schedule slips because this is the last thing done before pushing the software out the door. And there are the endless "could you make a special release before 8am tomorrow" type requests. As an admin you're used to odd hours, but I hope you're not expecting this to be a 9-5 type position.
I'm not going to say if you should or should not make the jump. That is a personal choice and only you can answer that. But I will say that if they want you to do CM with Visual Source Safe, forget it. Life is too short for VSS.
- doug
Check out Brooks's "The Mythical Man Month". I don't have it in front of me, but he mentions that the number of languages known (not just syntax) is a good indicator of ability. It is much better than years of experience.
- doug
I owe a lot to REXX. I used to love REXX. Back when I was a co-op at IBM I spent two years doing nothing but REXX on VM/CMS (note to youngsters: it was an OS for the 370 family). It paid for my car and a trip to Europe. But more importantly it got me used to scripting languages. After learning REXX, it was a small step to Perl (version 4.036). Since I learned Perl, I've never looked back at REXX. I'd be amazed if REXX hadn't evolved once it got off of mainframes, but I really doubt if it can do anything that Perl can't. They are both in the same nitch, but Perl has one thing that REXX doesn't: Perl is more fun. When everything else is said and done, enjoying your time at work is a huge advantage.
Life is too short to waste on REXX. Stick to Perl have fun.
- doug
SCO is the back side of the open source movement.
The unemployment numbers released by the feds are supposed to be everyone who is actively looking for a job. The folks who are getting benefits are easy to count, but the Feds are supposed to do some surveys and monkey around with statistics to get the right value. I am not confident in the number, but those 5 people who have been unemployed for over a year AND ARE STILL ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR A JOB should be counted.
Should folks who want a job, but aren't actively looking because they're waiting for the job market to pick up be considered unemployed or not is a different thing. That's a lot harder to measure because I know people who've stopped working to stay home with the kids, but if the job market paid them insane salaries, they'd go back. They're not looking and more importantly they don't really consider themselves part of the "work force". How do you split hairs like that?
I don't consider actively looking to be a great criteria, but since it is so much more measurable than anything else I can think of, I'm not sure what else we should use.
- doug
The only time I've heard something in the 10% range was an NPR story about underemployment. Specifically it was talking about people with specialized skills like an engineer or airline pilot only finding work at Home Depot. That story put the combined unemployment and underemployment rate at 9.6%.
Is this what you're thinking about when you say 10%?
- doug
Last time I checked WinZip could handle tar'd and gzip'd files with the exception that they didn't handle links. Since there is no need for links in something like this, I don't see where MS Windows systems would have any problems at all.
I don't know much about older Macs, but the OSX crowd shouldn't have any problems either.
I personally use tar all the time because it is such an old beast that many different programs can handle it. It is an ugly format, but it was made for tapes, so some amount of cruft is to be expected.
- doug
Actually O' comes from Ui which in Irish refers to the person's clan. Bob O'Neil comes from the Neil clan.
... I am Arthur, King of the Britons ... Can you tell me who lives in that castle? ... we are all Britons.
As for the "britons" comin along, you've lost me with that one. From context, I don't think you mean the Celts/Gauls who were there before the Romans. Do you mean the people from Brittany (Britagne) in France (home of Asterix dontcha know) and took over Wales (kinda sorta) in the 7th century? They were Gaelic/Celtic so I don't see them changing things much.
Or do you mean "the Britons" as in found in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_
ARTHUR: How d'you do, good lady
OLD WOMAN: King of the WHO?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
OLD WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: All of us are
- doug
PS: It is always a good day when you can refer to both Asterix and Monty Python.