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October 13th, 2009
jimbojones
 | 01:53 pm - How does this even happen?
$customer has some of those god awful "control panel" servers... not Plesk, but the same concept. You get the idea. $vendor is forcing him to do a migration, because they no longer support FreeBSD, so they want him to move to CentOS. $customer contracts with $vendor to maintain these things... sorta, mostly, except he's still responsible for maintaining the actual servers. Confused yet? Me too.
( don't click if you don't know or care what SQL is )
Current Mood: boggled
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August 6th, 2009
jimbojones
| 01:29 pm - Dell Mini 10v - first impressions
I recently realized that I no longer needed a "full-scale" notebook, and that since netbooks were so inexpensive, I could actually make money selling my Inspiron 6400 and buying a Dell Mini 10v to replace it. So I did that. Much like the Inspiron it replaced, I did pimp out the 10v a bit over baseline - upgraded to Dell's 16GB solid state drive, upgraded the wireless, and upgraded the battery (from 3-cell to 6-cell).
I was never a big fan of the netbook (or, formerly, "subnotebook") form factor - I thought that it sacrificed too much usability for the sake of "being tiny and cute" - but given that I no longer really needed a desktop replacement to go on long trips with me, and given the much lower cost, the netbook was suddenly attractive. For occasional, relatively brief use doing network testing, it's hard to beat.
( more detail behind the cut )
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June 29th, 2009
June 26th, 2009
June 24th, 2009
jimbojones
| 09:09 pm - OpenSolaris: first impressions
I've been benchmarking Sun's ZFS filesystem alongside more conventional ones lately, and as a result, somebody asked me to include numbers from Sun's actual operating system running ZFS. So I figured hey, why not.
I felt like that little girl from Jurassic Park. First, I sit in front of the computer, and stare at the monitor with a relieved grin. "Hey, this is Unix - I know this!"
Then the velociraptors attacked.
I suspect there must have been driver problems with the particular hardware I was using, because holy SHIT was OpenSolaris (2009-06) ever broken. First, any attempt to read from /home/export/myname severely impacted performance of the whole system - making it damn near unusable - until the read finished. Um, what? Then I discovered that if I had a terminal window open, and I fired up nano (a text editor) and then maximized the console window... suddenly, arrow keys started producing ASCII codes on the screen instead of... you know... arrowing. And once a terminal window actually crashed while I was using nano. Then I tried to install the Data::Random module from Perl's CPAN, and... well, the less said about that the better.
I could also go on about dd not understanding the "m" or "g" suffixes to blocksize arguments - despite the manpage saying that it does - or the lack of throughput report at the end of a dd run - despite the manpage saying there should be - or the lack of normally pretty-universal utilities like pv (pipe viewer) in the package repositories... hell, I think you get the picture. There may be some Very Good Reasons to go Solaris instead of BSD or Linux in the Enterprise world that I'm just not aware of, but from a smallbiz ISV's perspective, it felt like HP-UX: sorta like what you're used to, only painfully obsolescent and quirky and treacherous, with a lot of things you expect to be available inexplicably missing.
Again, I have to believe a lot of my problems must have been endemic to the hardware I was using. (Athlon64 3500+, ASUS motherboard with nvidia chipset, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, if anybody is wondering.) But honestly, from my perspective as an ISV catering to small business... that doesn't help much. I don't want to have to carefully pick and choose from a list of exotic crap to feed my OS; I need to by and large expect it to just fucking work with commodity off-the-shelf parts.
I'll put up new numbers tomorrow, including results from FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT (which includes ZFS v13, as opposed to the ZFSv6 in FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE) as well as the OpenSolaris results. But I'll save you the tension, if it's the Solaris numbers you want: they sucked. (Which may largely have had to do with the fact that OpenSolaris seems bound and determined to run X Windows, whereas FreeBSD didn't - all I really know is, from the "install it and see how it works" perspective, it blew.)
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June 23rd, 2009
jimbojones
 | 08:53 pm - ZFS and RAIDZ performance
A comment on the Ars Technica Linux Kung Fu forum a couple of weeks ago got me curious - a user there said that as far as he knew, RAIDZ was not supposed to be a performance configuration, with RAIDZ performance not much better, on average, than that of any single disk in the RAIDZ.
I just happened to have a RAID storage server in the shop that was due for a complete wipe anyway, so I decided to take the opportunity to do some benchmarking. Somewhat to my surprise, ZFS turned out to be quite a good performer - despite its advanced data-protection features, it was the fastest filesystem tested for single-process reads, with or without RAIDZ. RAIDZ did quite well too; on multiple concurrent reads it is significantly slower than RAID5/ext3, but still manages to nearly double single-drive performance across the board.
( specs and full-size graphs behind the cut )
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March 4th, 2009
jimbojones
 | 09:03 pm - helios - is it linux, or is it just bad stories?
So over at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) techsupport, I see a link to a blog post about a Linux advocate who supposedly got jumped by Microsoft fans in a gas station parking lot. First of all... wat? But, you know... weird stuff can occasionally happen. Who knows. But the story rings false about ten different ways. And I keep thinking... shit, I know I remember this blog. Helios, Helios...
Yeah, I remembered it all right. This is the same guy who, back in December, managed to get frontpage on slashdot for a story in which, supposedly, an elementary school teacher writes him to call linux "possibly illegal" and accuse him of "holding the children back" and nebulously threaten to sue him for putting it on "disadvantaged children's computers."
Unsurprisingly, the slashdotters congealed into a rabid mass, and demanded contact info on "Karen", the teacher. Helios guy refuses to provide it, and supposedly the slashdotters lit up Texas elementary school phone boards like christmas trees trying to find her anyway, and failing, at which point - again, according to this guy - she calls him tearfully, and he assures her he would never, EVER give up dox on her, and she Learns To See The Light and now thinks linux is teh awesome.
If this doesn't already ring kind of false in your ears, consider this: supposedly, slashdotters descended in a horde and failed to get dox. When is the last time one of the really big communities - slashdot, genmay, /b/, the goons - failed to uncover somebody, especially a non-tech, who aroused their ire?
So, yeah. That was in December. All of three months later, this dude is claiming that techs who service Windows assaulted him physically in a gas station because he is "putting them out of work". Of course there's no police report; of fucking course he tells it that the big, hulking guy got physical, threatened to "give him a tour of the parking lot" and... ::camera cut:: the big guy is on the ground! YAAAAY, our hero won teh fight!
Jesus fucking christ.
This is not the kind of publicity linux needs. I have no idea whether or not this guy has actually done much of any real work on a "distro" of his own, or how many "disadvantaged children" he's given computers with Linux on them; but I do know these stories stink to high heaven and I don't want to see any damn more of them.
Exhibit One: In Which Our Hero Schools The Schoolteacher
Exhibit Two: In Which Our Hero Triumphs At Fisticuffs
Side notes for those who don't know me personally: the only Microsoft product I own is an Xbox 360 - and that's gathering dust next to the PS3, which I greatly prefer. Every computer I own runs either Linux or FreeBSD. I service and sell all platforms professionally, but prefer when possible to use either Ubuntu Server or FreeBSD for server infrastructure. If that isn't enough to brand me "not-a-microsoft-fanboy", see http://freebsdwiki.net - that's mine.
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September 25th, 2008
jimbojones
 | 10:23 pm - unlearning a lifetime of driving habits
So, I recently bought a Chevy HHR because Jiffy Lube destroyed my beloved Mighty Neon.
The HHR was billed as getting 22MPG city / 28MPG highway. I've always tended to get significantly better mileage on my vehicles than the EPA ratings; I keep my vehicles in excellent shape and I understand where the powerband is on the engine.
So I was pretty shocked when, after the first couple of weeks, the HHR was reporting about 17MPG average. Ouch! And wtf?
After that shock, even though I felt like I knew better, I tried driving like most people do when they are trying to save gas - I babied the throttle. Creeping off the line, accelerating very lightly, et cetera. As I've always told people, this isn't the great idea they think it is - if you're accelerating outside the engine's powerband, you're wasting gas. Unsurprisingly, my couple of weeks spent babying the throttle didn't do me any good. I got up to about 18 or 19 MPG, but that was with SERIOUSLY grandmothering the hell out of EVERYTHING - not just accelerating slowly off the line, but also cruising so sedately that people kept diving in ahead of me. Very little improvement in economy, with a SEVERE decrease in the entire driving experience.
So I got thoughtful, and I flipped the HUD on the car to "instant MPG" mode and really paid attention. And I figured out what was biting me in the butt: modern (meaning within the last 2 or 3 years) automatic transmissions are very different from the ones I grew up with.
Traditional automatic transmissions leave the car in gear when you idle. What this means is, when cruising at a relatively stable speed, the best fuel economy you can get is to feather the throttle precisely to what's needed to keep the car moving at that speed - the less surging, the better. Trying to coast by taking your foot off of the gas entirely is generally a mistake, as the drag of "engine braking" with the vehicle still in gear will slow you down rapidly, so accelerating back again is a net waste of fuel.
The automatic in the HHR, however, actually puts the vehicle in neutral when your foot is off the gas. This makes for a very different picture when it comes to maximizing fuel economy: suddenly, coasting and accelerating makes a lot more sense. You have to remember, again, that an engine is most efficient inside its powerband: when it is accelerating pretty strongly. So in the case of a vehicle with a transmission that goes completely neutral when your foot is off the pedal, the most efficient driving profile becomes one in which you accelerate smoothly but fairly strongly off the line to cruising speed, then take your foot off the throttle until you start to slow down, then accelerate again fairly strongly but briefly, then coast... wash, rinse, repeat.
It's an odd way to drive, to my sensibilities. And it requires considerably more skill and attention: the idea, after all, is not to make it obvious to other drivers that you're accelerating in surges; you don't want to vary your speed more than 1mph or so while you're "cruising". But the results of trying it speak for themselves: I went from averaging 17-19 MPG to and from work to averaging 24 MPG on the same route.
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September 14th, 2008
jimbojones
| 11:15 am - data retention
So I was preparing for an operating system reload today, and decided that since I no longer use Windows, there's no reason to maintain the rather large set of install files for Windows software that I used to keep onhand. Going and getting rid of that led me to tooling around some REALLY seldomly travelled areas, which was kinda cool - trip down WAAAYYY back memory lane. Interestingly, Ubuntu plays the old Amiga MOD files - 4-track compositions sort of like MIDIs, except using digital samples (like WAVs) embedded into the file itself - right out of the box, so I could listen to the music I thought was amazingly rich and high-tech in the old MS-DOS days. Heh.
And on the serious electronic archaeology tip, I found this:
Note the "Modified" timestamp - I've had that file in live storage without a break for more than TWENTY YEARS.
Can anybody else top that? =)
Current Mood: lol
Current Music: Pogo - Alice
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July 24th, 2008
jimbojones
| 04:25 pm - iPhone 3G clearly aimed at college kids
While texting my fiancee today, I used the word "strong".
After typing the "str" part, the iPhone helpfully tried to auto-correct my text to "STD".
I have never used the word "STD" on this phone, which arrived from the factory to my cell store only two days ago.
o_O
Current Mood: boggled
Current Music: Banco de Gaia - Desert Wind
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July 21st, 2008
jimbojones
| 09:51 am - DRM = "Dishonestly Released Media"
Ubisoft, the makers of the Rainbow Six series of games, recently released a patch for Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 which broke the game for some customers. After the patch, customers who had purchased the game via the Steam service were subjected to a "disc check" when they tried to play the game.
This is a problem, because when you buy a game via Steam, you don't have a freaking disc.
So what was Ubisoft's response? They officially distributed a copy of a warez group's no-DVD hack. See where "RELOADED" is underlined, in the image of the hex-edit to the right? That's the name of the warez group.
Now, it's "mildly embarassing" that Ubisoft resorted to using a warez group's hack to fix their own DRM problems here. But the really important thing to take away from this is that they stole code... to fix an issue caused by their draconian efforts to, you guessed it, keep people from stealing their code.
This DRM bullshit's gotta go.
Current Mood: pissed off
Current Music: Tupac Shakur - (You Ain't Gotta) Lie to Kick It
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March 25th, 2008
jimbojones
 | 02:20 pm - Microsoft, seriously, fuck right the hell off
So I'm doing a major hardware upgrade for a customer. They've got a box with a single-core processor, they want a dual-core processor; they're gonna need a new motherboard to go with it since they're going from the older 939 socket to AM2. No big.
Change the hardware, reinstall Windows XP Pro, and of course it doesn't want to activate over the internet. No big; you call the number, you give the computer on the other end of the phone a bunch of numbers, it gives you a bunch of numbers, life is good. Done it a jillion times. Give the machine my numbers. It says "this product has been activated before, I'm going to have to ask you some questions." Well, this is a change; last time I did this they forwarded me from the machine-lady to a call-center-in-India-lady; but okay. How many machines is this copy of Windows installed on? "One." Is this the first time you've activated this copy of Windows? "No." Has there been a major hardware change since the last time you activated this copy of Windows? "Yes." Have you replaced the motherboard in this machine since you last activated this copy of Windows? "Yes." Was the motherboard defective? "No."
I'm sorry, I cannot activate your copy of Windows. When you purchased Windows, you were subject to certain licensing restrictions which you are not in accordance with; please contact your vendor to purchase a new copy of Windows.
Are you fucking SHITTING me? Well, fine goddammit, this is some serious bullshit highway robbery given that a new copy of Windows costs literally every PENNY as much as the new hardware does; but it's not like it's my money. Call the customer, explain that Microsoft would like to insert penis in their ass, get their approval to guide Microsoft's cock all the way in (aka spend $150 on a completely bullshit new copy of Windows), buy new copy of Windows, click "Change Product Key", put in new Product Key from new copy of Windows. Internet Activation Successful.
Install Windows Update from the website. It wants to reboot. Okay. Computer reboots. "This copy of Windows will need to be activated before you can log on." What the FUCK? You already activated! Well, okay, fine. "This copy of Windows has already been activated." No shit, sherlock. AND IT LOGS ME BACK OUT. Click the username to log on again... "This copy of Windows will need to be activated before you can log on." ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS. Endless loop. No, rebooting doesn't help.
So, now, I am reinstalling Windows from fucking scratch again on this goddamn machine, three hours of my life down the goddamn drain. Fuck you, Microsoft, I was one of your staunchest advocates from the mid-nineties through the early 2000s, but at this point I cannot wait for you to die in a goddamn fire. Nothing but people's dependence on third-party software you did not develop is mooring anyone to your DRM-riddled crapware platform anymore, and it will fucking please me IMMENSELY watching more and more people realize this and get the hell rid of you like I did.
location: work
Current Mood: GEEK RAGE
Current Music: Nine Inch Nails - Happiness In Slavery
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March 3rd, 2008
jimbojones
 | 02:11 am - here's a nickel, kid, go get a real computer.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pantsnotneeded is a Mac user. We've been back-and-forth on that one, largely pretty good-naturedly, for quite some time now. Before he was a Mac user, he was a Linux user... but that was many moons ago, and he really didn't realize that I wasn't just bullshitting him when I said Linux now is verrrry different and more usable as a desktop OS than Linux four or five years ago was.
In fact, I think in damn near every way possible, Ubuntu linux in particular is considerably easier to use than either of the Big Two commercial OSes. The kicker, of course, is that if you have to use any of a bajillion different niche applications for business - Quickbooks, AutoCAD, blah, blah blah - you're still tied to Windows, even if it sucks. Nobody really needs Windows, but an awful lot of people need applications - which Microsoft didn't write - that were only developed for Windows.
Anyway, I threw a fresh copy of Ubuntu on my laptop the other day, largely for the purpose of showing him, yes, I am not kidding, Linux not only works well now but it's pretty. And fast. This had the intended effect of starting to make Chris get Linux envy... but it also gave ME linux envy. So I also threw a copy on a spare box I had lying around, and really started seriously investigating it again, and goddamn if I didn't end up deciding I was - finally - ready to make the switch myself. To tell Microsoft, you know what? I used to be a fan, but fuck you.
... and I'm lovin' it.
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Big Daddy Kane - Ain't No Half-Steppin'
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February 21st, 2008
jimbojones
 | 02:51 pm - It's always Caturday on the Drunkternet!
So, it all started when pantsnotneeded started fucking with my FreeBSD wiki. "Do not fuck with me, for I admin your internets," I said. "Hah, you think you could stop me?" "Yes... yes I could. For a beginning."
So I started fucking around with proxies, and quickly discovered that most of them really won't *do* what I want them to do - fuck with people, that is. The guy who did the upside-down-ternet was close, but to be honest while I found his inspiration to be divine, his method was crude to the point of active pain: he wasn't even REALLY proxying stuff, he actually had a script in the background downloading images, saving them, fucking with them on the hard drive, then serving THEM off of... yeah, you don't care. But, I knew I could do better - rather than saving stuff and screwing around on the command line, I wanted to edit the TCP stream live, just like the xkcd comic. Only without the oven mitts.
A day later, I'd learned a fucking ton about proxies in general, the Perl HTTP::Proxy CPAN module more specifically, and I finished my project: the Drunkternet, where it's ALWAYS Caturday. I originally intended to inflict it on pantsnotneeded just before heading out to work - without comment, and without any way to avoid it - but his hard drive crashed this morning, so I figured he'd had enough of a bad day and just showed it to him instead.
But maybe you've been having a better day than he has! Feeling brave? Or maybe, just too goddamn sober? Either way, set your browser's proxy setting to 64.15.152.73 port 3128, and get on the Drunkternet!
( Help with your browser proxy settings is available behind the cut. )
Shoutouts go to the Upside-down-ternet guy (for a large part of the original inspiration), Psyci from the Pen forum (who originated the sine/cosine derived "bob and weave" routine used by a lot of the elements), and Thomas Cattimus (who is showing your sorry ass how to WIN).
(obligatory disclaimer: the Drunkternet is currently limited to 30 concurrent clients, so if your internets quit working after you set your proxy, just set it back and try again later. the Drunkternet may also not function at work, depending on how hard-ass your office's network security is.)
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: ZZ Top - Heaven, Hell, or Houston
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December 28th, 2007
jimbojones
| 02:53 am - if you're into that kind of stuff...
I spent the last couple of days doing a pretty thorough write-up of performance testing the Nvidia MCP-5x RAID controller, the Promise TX-2300, and both FreeBSD and Linux software RAID arrays.
The full article has even more pretty pictures, raw data if you want it, methodology, notes, and commentary. (Protip: both FreeBSD and Linux will double drive throughput - or better - if you tweak their read-ahead cache settings... even using a single vanilla drive, much less a RAID array.)
Current Mood: accomplished
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November 11th, 2007
jimbojones
 | 11:45 am - yes, they really do come from Nigeria... *still*
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:40:27 -0200 (BRST)
Subject: FOR YOUR ATTENTION(Inheritance Fund)
From: "Hugh gareth" <g[redacted]@yahoo.de>
Reply-To: gareth_[redacted]@yahoo.de
For Your Attention.
Sequel to your non response of our earlier letter to you on behalf of the
trustees and Executors to the Will of our late client. I wish to notify
you that we are listing you as a beneficiary to the total sum of 3.5M
pounds (Three Million Five Hundred Thousand pounds) in the codicil and
last testament of the deceased.Until his death he was a major share holder
in big companies which include textile and truction companies.
[snip] Even though he was a foreigner living and working here he requested
before his death that he be buried here in his words, "I regard here as My
home and the people as my people" [snip] we request that you kindly forward
any proof of identities of yours, your current telephone and fax numbers
and forwarding address to enable us file necessary documents at our high
court probate division for the release of this sum of money.
I await your reply soon.
Yours faithfully,
Hugh Gareth.
Ah, the classic Nigerian scam. Note the lack of mention of who "he" my deceased benefactor is, or where "here" that he wishes to be buried might be. But is it really from Nigeria? After all, unlike the Nigerian scams of old, there is no mention of anybody actually IN Nigeria... and the email address is Yahoo! in Germany... well, let's look at the headers.
Received: from unknown (HELO rbr17.dizinc.com) (66.7.193.66)
by mail.tehinterweb.net with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 11 Nov 2007 10:47:07 -0500
Received: from oficinas by rbr17.dizinc.com with local (Exim 4.68)
(envelope-from <g[redacted]@yahoo.de>)
id 1IrEvD-0006Le-OK; Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:40:27 -0200
Received: from 41.219.208.12 ([41.219.208.12])
(SquirrelMail authenticated user iklovey2k@[redacted].info)
by 66.7.193.66 with HTTP;
Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:40:27 -0200 (BRST)
That IP address in boldface is the last one in the chain of mail: ie, if not the one that the user actually sitting in front of the computer had, then at the very least his last proxy before actually sending an email. So, where in the world is 41.219.208.12?
address: Starcomms Nigeria Limited
address: Plot 1261, Bishop Kale Close, off Saka Tinubu
address: Victoria Island, Lagos Nigeria
Yes... Nigeria. STILL. Sigh.
So why all the "redacteds", you ask? Why protect the privacy of, god forbid, a 419 scammer? Well, 'cause it's been years and years and YEARS since the last one I got. And it makes me kinda nostalgic. And even though it's so passe, makes me wanna indulge in a little... baiting.
Dear Sir:
I am confused. What was your client's name, and where did he live? Please respond soonest.
Yours in Christ,
Jimbo Jones
Most likely his german Yahoo! account will get shut down before he can get a reply anyway, but if I get any nibbles back I'll let you know.
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Muse - Assassin
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September 20th, 2007
jimbojones
 | 11:26 am - if I could declare a national event, it would be
... national spam awareness day.
I am so freaking sick of users who first do stupid shit and then want to argue with you about it though they haven't got the slightest idea of what running a mailserver is like. The same user that gets 50x the volume of spam of any other user on that domain is the user that whines to you because, hey, surprise surprise, s/he gets spam. More often than not, that is also the same user that whines to you when their idiot friends who use mail clients that embed advertisements at the bottom of every email get their shit blocked. And don't think that same user won't argue with you about whether or not Vipul's Razor is what blocked one particular worthless email somebody sent them, despite the fact that until the beginning of the conversation they never heard the term and ten minutes later they'll have forgotten it again. Oh no. That user will immediately tell you how a collaborative filtering agent triggering from embedded ads can't be the problem because their OTHER idiot friend with the half-page sig block is also getting their mail bounced. Um, yes, genius, that's exactly right. Your idiot friend is sending one line of content and twenty lines of boilerplate non-information; what exactly do you think filtering agents are designed to DETECT in the first place? Large quantities of mass communicated non-information. Hello?
And, finally, that same user is going to be the user who thinks that the five spams a day that make it to their inbox are just awful and appalling and can't understand why you can't just "do something about it." Yeah my heart fucking bleeds for you having to look at those five fat pill spams, after my server had to invest all the work in automatically filtering 83 more that also arrived for you this morning. But of course those five you saw are the only ones that happened. And of course the fact that you sign up for EVERY GODDAMN WEIGHT LOSS NEWSLETTER IN THE WORLD regardless of how fly-by-night and shady it is has nothing to do with anything. Neither does you registering using your unobfuscated email address on ten different fat forums with the address displayed on every single post you ever make. No, obviously it is something *I* am doing wrong that makes OMG FIVE SPAMS JUST TODAY make it into your inbox whereas your coworkers got none and neither did I, even though I've been using the same email address for ten fucking years now.
Odds are even pretty good that that same user actually BUYS fatass pills from some of the spam s/he gets. But, you know, again it's not his/her fault. Why doesn't my email just goddamn work. Why do I get so much spam. Why do I sometimes not get mail from people. Email is simple, how come the people who run it never get it right. Woe.
So, yes, in my perfect world I'd like to just have every single mailserver admin turn off all spam filtering and just deliver EVERYTHING right to the inbox for a day.
Since midnight on one of my mailservers:
48,969 SMTP connections blocked by rblsmtpd
4,374 spam mails filtered by spamassassin
1,329 phishing/malware mails filtered by clamav
2,661 messages delivered to local users
Welcome to my fucking world.
Current Mood: angry
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August 25th, 2007
jimbojones
| 10:52 pm - holy shit... I do matter
In the course of getting variously scoffed at, called a liar and a shill, interrogated and otherwise treated rather rudely on a rather large tech forum that's got a heavy and prevalent Microsoft bias (complete with a few MS-employed astroturfers) I wound up explaining my business model as a consultant and my volume of business to a guy who works on the enterprise side of things and isn't at all familiar with the small biz sector (an awful lot of the IT industry isn't). Honestly, I normally kind of feel a little... well, like I'm less than I should be, or could be, in terms of my business success. Like I'm maybe a little too lazy. I'm just not that aggressive or ambitious about growing my business; as long as I'm making good money I'm generally happy and prefer to let whatever growth may be, be, and the hell with the rest.
But in actually quantifying what I do in terms of customers and machines in order to explain to a third party who I didn't know and who didn't know me, I realized that I'm single-handedly responsible for administering over 60 different servers, not including my own personal or even my own business's servers - and that's only among my most frequent "core" customers. A couple of those customers are (internet hosting) service providers themselves, with a few hundred businesses apiece relying on them. And I also handle an average of probably ten desktop machines per server. And all the networking equipment required to keep all that stuff talking to each other. And a tremendous chunk of the general end-user support needed at the sites in question.
A tremendous chunk of the downtown areas of my city has been getting heavily torn down and reconstructed for a few years now. Several of those same customers of mine have been directly responsible for the planning, engineering, and architecture of a lot of that work. Which makes me feel like an important part of that.
Shit. I'm not saying my city would stop functioning if I tripped in front of a bus, but I'm more important than I realized I was. Go me.
(In unrelated but also gratifying news, I got carded buying an "M" rated video game tonight. It's been a kinda gratifying day.)
Current Mood: uplifted
Current Music: Cypress Hill - Rock Superstar
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October 17th, 2006
jimbojones
 | 09:37 pm - RAH was right
In the last 24 hours, I have:
- explained the difference between GFI and two-prong circuits (and why just ripping the third prong out isn't any less safe than buying a "converter")
- troubleshot and resolved DNS issues with several hundred domains
- banged about a thousand lines of C++ code
- troubleshot an electrical problem in my car, "fixed" it without parts long enough to get to a parts store
- fixed the problem for real once I had the replacement parts I needed
- troubleshot and resolved problems on several mailservers
- banged a few hundred lines of Perl code
- transparently migrated several gigs of live websites and email accounts from one server to another
- troubleshot and resolved VPN connectivity problems between two offices, without ever setting foot in either
- banged about 50 lines in Bourne shell script
- repaired the latch on a door that wouldn't stay shut
- shot some pretty decent games of pool
Specialization is for insects.
On an unrelated note, after looking at that (incomplete) list - why the hell do I always feel like I'm not getting enough done?!
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Mighty Diamonds - Never Get Weary
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October 4th, 2006
jimbojones
| 01:32 am - helping people with C++ can be surprisingly entertaining
(21:06:48) Jimbo: why not just say Sequence* temp(c);
(21:07:00) Lucie: coffee!
(21:07:07) Jimbo: pour me a cup!
(21:07:22) Lucie: haha...seriously though, that's what it shows me!
(21:07:30) Lucie: Sequence* temp COFFEE
(21:07:48) Jimbo: it was giving you hexadecimal somehow?
(21:09:37) Lucie: can you say Sequence* temp ( _c_ ) underscores so it doesn't turn into coffee for me!
(21:09:41) Jimbo: OHHHHH... so it's a smiley on your end?
(21:09:46) Lucie: yes!
(21:09:49) Jimbo: I was so confused... I thought it was giving you the literal value of a pointer
(21:09:52) Jimbo: C0 FF EE |
and then:
(23:39:53) Lucie: haha, the compiler does not like my ostream at all
(23:40:13) Jimbo: that is because your ostream does not wash and smells funny
(23:40:24) Lucie: maybe so! or maybe because I say when j hits 59 then: out >> '\n'; which is surprisingly not correct
(23:41:57) Jimbo: the only word in that sentence I have a problem with is "surprisingly" =)
(23:42:11) Lucie: yeah, I was SHOCKED
(23:42:30) Jimbo: the compiler is not a big fan of the "never mind what I said, you heard what I meant!" school of communication
(23:42:33) Lucie: well, you use IN for istream
(23:42:50) Lucie: so why can't I use OUT for ostream
(23:43:01) Jimbo: I think the compiler should just shut up and cram the stream into the constant like you asked it to
(23:45:29) Lucie: I did do that?
(23:45:56) Jimbo: yes... you said, take this stream named out, and stuff it inside the constant value '\n'
(23:46:00) Jimbo: I like that
(23:46:07) Jimbo: you think like someone with POWER
(23:46:17) Jimbo: why make x equal to 2, when you can just change the value of 2 instead? |
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Daft Punk - One More Time
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