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Category Archives: Work
Sorry. Procedures.
I’m reading an excellent book right now that’s discussing how we surrender our judgment to detailed rules and procedures: The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, by Philip K. Howard. These problems plague any large organization, not … Continue reading
To Those of You Paging Out for On-Call Support
You’d better have a damn good reason for waking me up. Ask yourself this: “Is somebody dying?” No? Then it can wait until morning.
Posted in rant, Work
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What do the Professionals Bring to the Table?
With the office abuzz with rumors that IBM might purchase Sun, I’m tempted to ask myself if I really needed any reminders why I don’t read trade publications.
Handicapped
I’ve found that I put off going to work because I know the Internet connection there is limited.
Newlines
What do the text utilities on AIX have against following the manual and manipulating newlines properly? Is it just that AIX is from IBM, and IBM software is half-assed? $ uname -a AIX myhost 3 5 00C2D2804C00 $ echo ” … Continue reading
Posted in rant, Work
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Winnowing
The reduction in force has started. I wish I could see what the pattern is, but we’re kept in the dark.
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($/yr)÷(hours-worked/yr)
Zimran, thanks for linking to Michael Lewis’s piece on Sarkozy’s attempt to make the French more productive. It is funny, but given my circumstances at the moment, I would pull out this quote. Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French president, has … Continue reading
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Tired
One of Rick Klau’s shared items in Google Reader suggested that journalists today will need to know Photoshop, HTML, and a bunch of other crap to get a job. That may be so, but remember that computers are just a … Continue reading
Posted in rant, Work
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Beautiful Day
It’s a beautiful day out today. The wind chases fluffy white clouds across the sky. Leaves whisper in the breeze, counterpoint to the bullfrog’s basso. I can hear the sounds of baseball from the park. The girls are out playing … Continue reading
Superluser
I’ve been running without root access to systems for nigh on two years now, and I must say that it is very annoying, even with sudo in order to start some web servers and such. The basic UNIX security model … Continue reading
Snow Days at Google
Avinash Kaushik posted a list of ten things to envy about working at Google, which are, oddly enough, similar to the reasons Joel Spolsky says I would love being a sysadmin at Fog Creek. Both companies place a lot of … Continue reading
Posted in Place, Work
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HAL
Y’know, the puzzling thing about 2001: A Space Odyssey is why Dave Bowman didn’t beat HAL to pulp with a monkey wrench immediately after meeting it. Obviously the man had not had much experience with computers.
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Ready for Vacation?
Ever have one of those days where you feel like your job is making you dumber by the minute? I am. I have this recurrent daydream where I’m independently wealthy and volunteer my time to work on the transportation systems … Continue reading
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Sensitivity Training
The HTTP specification defines the method of a request in section 5.1.1. This definition dates to 1992. The Method token indicates the method to be performed on the resource identified by the Request-URI. The method is case-sensitive. Various cookbooks for … Continue reading
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Real Work, in the Real World
Back in May I was elected to the board of directors of the Dalton Farm Homeowners Association, and became co-chair of the grounds committee. What that means is that I’m responsible for ensuring that the grounds are maintained — that … Continue reading