If the Mayans are right, in 11 months (give or take), all our debts disappear. But since they’re not (more accurately, it’s merely the next roll point on their calendar like 2000 was for us), we have a host of things to look forward to this year and beyond: a presidential election, graduations, births, new …
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extended file attributes with ext[2|3|4]
Most Unix/Linux users, and – hopefully – all admins are familiar with the standard 9 bits of permissions typically supported on various *nix file systems: ——— rwxrwxrwx uuugggooo Where “u”, “g”, and “o” indicate “user”, “group”, and “other” while “rwx” indicates whether the item can be read, written, or executed. Also of note are file ownerships in …
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gaming expense reports? really?
At various stages in my career, I have traveled extensively – yet never even thought of “gaming” the expense reproting system the way it has been recently reported by CNN. Being terminated over charging a movie to your room? Seems harsh (getting the $9.95 back from the employee would seem to be easier) – but breaking the rule …
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defaulting pxe boots with hpsa
I recently found a very helpful nugget with regards to OS Provisioning with HP’s Server Automation product. OS Prov is most typically done using PXE (or the similar bootp process). SA provides a PXE server that gives a boot menu to network-booted systems. That menu contains a variety of choices: linux, windows, winpe, etc. In …
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1401 argentinean bistro
Wow. It’s truly that good. This week I was working in Fort Lauderdale. It’s been over 4 years since I was last in the area, and I’ve always wanted to visit Miami – at least once. As I am wont to do, I checked-out OpenTable to see what interesting food places were available. One of them was …
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go
I find it amazing how even the simplest of God’s commands can be so easily ignored by us. Starting with Adam and Eve, and running all the way through Jesus’ “Great Commission”, we have been told to “go”. And yet – too often – not only do we drag our feet, we refuse to follow …
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new host!
Woot – everything has been migrated to the new hosting provider. Hopefully it all runs right now 🙂
host migration
As mentioned recently, I am about to be switching hosts from my current VPS provider, Tektonic. I have found a non-VPS ISP that meets the requirements I’d previously outlined, and have everything but the MySQL databases for WordPress instances sync’d to the new host. With a bit of luck, the migration will be invisible to all 4 …
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doing technical phone screens
Related to a previous post on career development, I thought it could be interesting to look at one approach to the technical screen that I have used over the past few years when interviewing candidates. for folks with no “real” experience yet, I ask them to rank themselves on a few key technologies on the …
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preliminary update on kirk’s crash
All who knew Kirk Aragon are still in shock over his sudden and tragic loss Sunday. The N&O called me this week for a brief interview, and some of what I had to say is in an article published today by Aliana Ramos, along with the following preliminary information about the crash: The private-plane crash …
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netherland by joseph o’neill
I finished reading {{Netherland}} by {{Joseph O’Neill}} Tuesday. It’s a “novel” in the same sense that {{One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest}} or {{Where the Heart Is}} are novels – it’s a story. The story unfolds in a rambling fashion as a the memoirs of Hans van den Broek. It’s a story of one man’s life …
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kirk aragon – lost 25 september 2011
Kirk Aragon was a former direct coworker, and long-time colleague of mine. Kirk died Sunday doing what he loved to do. I first met Kirk a few days after starting Opsware in January of 2007. He was one of the “named resources” for dealing with our biggest customer, EDS. Kirk’s professionalism, friendliness, and over-powering happiness that …
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effective error messages
I had a recent conversation with an old classmate, and he stated that using asserts when programming Java is useless because an exception can generate more useful information. Exceptions are only “more useful” if you are a developer or perhaps supporting an application. When a bug report or support case needs to be created, supplying the “raw” …
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http is a stateless protocol
The ubiquitous protocol that enables the internet as we know it, http, is stateless. Stateless merely means that any given request has nothing to do with the previous, or the next request. This enables the world wide web, as web servers do not need to keep track of who is receiving data, nor ow much …
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apple should buy sprint
According to The Street, Sprint-Nextel is at a 52-week low with today’s closing price. Their market cap is $10 billion. Apple as $70 billion in cash on hand. Google is buying Motorola. I think Apple should buy Sprint. And they should stop distributing the iPhone via Verizon and AT&T in the US. guarantee a distribution …
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changing hosts
After several years of being hosted at tektonic, it has come time to move hosts. My current web server is running 32-bit CentOS 4.9. Eek! That is old. Since upgrading to a new release of CentOS is now becoming more urgent, and upgrading is really reinstalling a new OS, I’ve started to look at new hosts. …
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nj man suing the port authority
From NBC New York, “NJ Man Sues Over Toll Hikes, Claims Bias“. A New Jersey man has filed a federal lawsuit in New York over the Port Authority’s toll increase. Yoel Weisshaus of New Milford claims the increase is an abuse of power and discriminates against him because he is poor. Cash tolls on the …
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technical career development
Career development. Career path. Development opportunities. Taking your career to the next level. Terms and phrases we all hear and pretty much pass over in our day-to-day lives. Right up until we want to move to a new/better job or performance reviews roll around. But what do they mean, and how can you advance your …
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how intel could save itanium
It’s not news that the Itanium processor is doomed in its current incarnations. Microsoft has dropped support, as has Red Hat – meaning only HP supports it with an active platform in the US (with HPUX). The Itanim should have been Intel’s chance to totally walk away with the processor market – but they blew …
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ogsh/ogfs for fun and profit
The absolute coolest feature of HP’s Server Automation suite is the OGSH (or OGFS) – the Opsware Global SHell (or FileSystem). I worked for Opsware before HP acquired them, and the OGSH was a new feature to the product (then called Opsware SAS (Server Automation System)). It’s a fuse module that gives a [limited] bash interface …
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bglug meeting move!
Due to an unforeseen circumstance, the 1430EDT BGLUG meeting today will be at the Tates Creek Public Library. The library can be found at 3628 Walden Drive Lexington, KY 40517
the ticket smash, raw metrics, and communication – how to have a successful support organization
When I worked at Opsware, and for a while after HP bought us, we used to try to have once- or twice-a-week meetings for each support group wherein we would bring our most difficult cases (with the difficulty being determined by the case owner), and have an opportunity for everyone on the team to ask questions, …
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bglug meeting – 17 september – topic: data center automation
The September meeting of the Bluegrass Linux User Group will be this Saturday, 17 Sep. We’ll be meeting at Collexion’s facilities in Lexington at 2:30p. I will be presenting on data center automation, specifically on HP’s Server Automation platform (the tool I use on my day job). Some [limited] history of HPSA is available on the Opsware …
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reading again
Wow. It’s been several months since I last posted a book review. I have been reading in the mean time – just haven’t gotten around to posting any of them hereon. In the intervening months I’ve read {{1434}} by {{Gavin Menzies}} (follow-on to 1421) and {{The Lost City of Z}} by {{David Grann}}. I’m currently reading …
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debugging authorized_keys and ssh
I saw an interesting question this morning on ServerFault, entitled “SSH Prompts for password even though private keys are available, presented to server and known to it”. when my user is not already connected to the server (first ssh connexion), it prompts for password even though privates keys are availiable (PuTTY + Pagent). After that …
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