B-b-b-b-bad, bad to the bone -or- We’ve got your UNIX right here.

It has been my experience that certain departments at my client site don’t actually employ any non-managers. This is a fascinating phenomenon, because when you look at it, the lowest manager on the foodchain doesn’t actually really manage anyone. So, when I’d learned that the client had hired another manager in the web (hosting) department, I chuckled. Another manager?

Lo and behold, I was introduced to this new manager, and I knew the guy, to whom I’ll refer as M. In fact, I was impressed; I’d worked with M (on other projects) in the past, and he was good. Since I interface with the web (hosting) people probably 30-40% of the time, it’s good that some upper manager had the insight to fortify the department with a clue-by-four. Yes.

Today, M dropped by — for what I thought — to kibitz. I was wrong. We had a conversation that went like this.

M: Nate, I have a question about our web (hosting) environment…
Nate (noting that open questions like this frequently lead to bad things): Okay, shoot.
M: Well, I was wondering who I should talk to about UNIX performance issues, or UNIX issues in general? Is that you? Or someone else?
Nate: Sure, you can talk to me about it.
M: That’s what I thought. I heard that you were a real bad ass.

!!!!

!!!

!!

!

Did M just call me a bad ass?

Seriously?

Am I sitting here in a pair of buttless chaps?

Ummm. Bad ass?

Actually, I really liked the application of the “bad ass” label to myself, but I wanted to confirm what my ears had just heard. I wanted to confirm that I wasn’t wearing some kind of sports jersey. I wanted to confirm that I did not have mulletude.

Nate (laughing): Ummm, did you just call me a bad ass?
M: Yup.
Nate (more laughing): Heh, that’s cool!
M: Yeah, you have a reputation upstairs, for knowing everything about UNIX, and then there’s that whole “Perl in a Nutshell” thing.
Nate: That’s super. So, let me guess, the person who said this is under 40, probably even under 35.
M: No, actually not.
Nate: Daaamn. Really?!
M: You’d be surprised.

I could feel the bubbles circling my head. I thought that I was going to faint.

When I’m slogging away at work, and dealing with its baggage, I feel very unimportant. In fact, to the man, I am certified unimportant. This is not to say that bookwriting makes me any different than anyone else. In fact, the act of sitting in a chair for 9-12 months and spending every waking moment producing words and coherent thoughts is a pretty ridiculous thing to do. It’s just nice to have a grain of appreciation every once in awhile.

UNIX Conspiracy, Volume 1

When it comes to working in computing, you get to work with people who have a varying degree of skill (or lack thereof). That, in and of itself, is fine. The problem really appears when you work with people who overestimate their knowledge of computing environments. In the end, egos are bruised, and UNIX is blamed.

This is not to say that UNIX is a great operating system with which to work. It’s very complex, in fact, and more than a little bit of it leaves something to be desired, when you don’t take into consideration its overall reliability. But if you put enough efforts into learning UNIX, it’s actually pretty easy, and you’ll find that UNIX-related jokes are always well-received at parties that are attended by geeks.

“UNIX isn’t unfriendly. It’s just choosy about who its friends are.” happens to be one of my favorite UNIX-related quotes.

A few weeks ago, I was flying solo at work. Flying solo almost always leads to production failures, not because our environment sucks, in as much as it’s that confounded Murphy’s Law kicking in. The result was that I worked feverishly to online this application that suddenly had bitten the dust. It was a bad day, but got somewhat better once we spoke to the right support person at the vendor of the software. Of course, due to a production outage of this length, people were frustrated, work fell behind, and myths were mongered. About two hours after the application came back online, one of the web support people approached me.

Web Person: So and so thinks that the server still isn’t working.
Me: (logging into server) Oh? Well, it’s checking out OK.
Web Person: Well, they’re having problems with their shell.
Me: Uhhh, what kind of problems?
Web Person: There’s getting “this” error.
Me: Ohhh.

So, I went over to speak with the developer, who was already in a lather about this. In fact, after we were introduced, he began rambling on and on.

Developer: So, here’s what I think is wrong…
Me: OK, go ahead.
Developer: Well, you see, I think that there’s something wrong with this UNIX system.
Me: What do you mean?
Developer: Well, I can do this and this, but not this.
Me: So, what leads you to believe that there’s something wrong with the system?
Developer: Because I can’t do this, and when I wasn’t able to do this in the past, there was something wrong with the system, and since we were down for so long today, there must’ve been a system problem.
Me: Oh. Well, the system is functioning correctly.
Developer: It can’t be. I can’t do this. And I can’t do this. Let’s just copy this system file from that system over to this system.
Me: Umm, let’s not do that, OK?
Developer: So, how else are we going to test that the system is working?
Me: Well, think of it this way… as the system boots, it executes “this”. If “this” wasn’t working, the system wouldn’t have booted correctly at all.
Developer: (with blank-looking face) But the system isn’t working. I’m sure of it.
Me: I don’t have any reason to believe that’s the case.
Developer: (blank face changing to a doubtful look) Well, I’m going to copy “this” over, then, if you’re not going to.
Me: Okay, well…
Developer: Dammit! “This” doesn’t work on this system, either!
Me: So, it’s not the system, then.
Developer: Well, I think that there’s a problem on BOTH systems.

Spam spasm.

Spam conjures images in my head of how one might expect prison sex to be. “You block it, and block it, but sooner or later, you become its bitch.”

Spam, of course, won’t let you buy it off with cigarettes, but maybe that’s another discussion entirely?

Somehow, over the last 3 months, I’ve become spam’s bitch. It started with a couple — maybe 1 or 2 pieces of spam per day — but escalated into probably several hundred per week. Now, I know that those of you who receive thousands of pieces of spam are probably not crying for me. But that wasn’t the point of this blog entry, anyways.

I decided that I really wanted to take only minimal steps to filter it, since obsessive spam filtering is kind of a pain in the nuts, or the teeth, depending on your current sexual or dental health. I decided to actually look at the spam and see if there was a way to stop it from going Attica on my tender INBOX.

I came up with the following, which is bound to change in a quarter or so when spammers come up with some new and irritating way to bulk email everyone and harvest addresses:

1. Lots of spam comes from whatever-address@list.some.domain.
2. Most forged addresses are from a domain that doesn’t exist.
3. Most fake email from a legitimate-appearing address is actually relayed through some unrelated email server.
4. Most spam contains some kind of ‘garbled text’.

Yes, so I repeated the obvious. That’s what you get for looking at spam.

Rush, eh?

S pointed out that my blog entry about Rush probably got more comments than any of the other blog entries that I’ve ever written. I think that I agree with her.

But that begs an interesting question: since Rush (and maybe even the other one) is pretty tiresome, why does a critique of the tiresome bring more of a response than anything else? Am I reading too much into nothing?

I’m listening to the song “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John right now — for reasons that I cannot explain — so I’m a bit emotional. Well, that and I have to work tomorrow. *sniffle*

Rush Sucks.

If you had to identify a blasphemous tongue, would you do it based on color? Taste? Length? To a geek, a technically-inclined individual, I’ve known very few (males) who’ve not been fans of the band, Rush. For years — I admit it — I was a huge fan of Rush. I mean, a huge fan.

One day last week, I took a break from my morning Jarvik-11 mix and metal-fest and opted to revisit a few of my (recalled) favorites from my Rush collection. You know, I hadn’t listened to Rush in probably 6-8 months, or maybe more. Recently, it had been about power. Well, it had been about power and groove. To me, groove makes music go. It’s funny when you hear a song that’s 4/4 @ 120bpm and you think it’s faster or funkier than another song that’s 4/4 @ 120bpm. Why is that? My guess is that it’s groove, or lack thereof.

I was disappointed, actually, to realize how bad of a band Rush really is. Sure, every time I listen to a Rush disc, I’m in awe of how good a drummer Neil Peart is. But by the same token, I wonder where the heck the groove is. Sure, this is a neat, little 4/4 @ 120bpm song, and you’ve got one of the best rock drummers in the world… so where’s the groove? Where? It’s almost like you spent your time doing something else whilst their 3-minute song played in the background. That’s a way to grab an audience. Good job, Rush!

Further, I realized that the playing on many of these songs was completely, well, un-tight. The bass was loosely following the drums, such that I heard downbeats being missed entirely, and the guitar was following the bass. The result, of course, was cacophony, or boring songs, or both. I know that after listening to “Subdivisions” and “New World Man” a few times, I basically scuffled my way through work the entire day. Bogus.

I guess that I can’t figure why I even bothered with Rush after, say, “Moving Pictures” or “Hemispheres”. To recap: Bad “poetry” (saying reaction, action, paralax, function, and form over and over again don’t scream poetry to me — sorry), awful singing, lifeless songs, and un-tight playing just don’t do it for me.

Anybody want to buy my Rush CD collection?

Tina Tina Brass Balls

Earlier today, I had Part I of my Dental Experience, which left me surly as fuck. Part II, a root canal, is on for Tuesday. I can only imagine what Part II will bring. Best guess says “nothing good”, and probably also “fuck you, too”. Let me also note that I’ve known about this dental problem since the early summer, but was working 6-7 days per week @ 12 hours per day, so I didn’t really have time to deal with it. You can imagine my, uhh, disappointment, when I looked at this one cavity, and it had grown large enough (over the summer) for a pencil eraser to fit inside.

That aside, after having returned from the dentist earlier today, numb on novocane, I received this email in my work INBOX. It was from Tina Tina.

	Hi, all,

	I'll be taking a day off on Monday, 11/10, in preparation
	for my son's birthday on 11/11, the Veteran's Day Holiday.
	Will be back in-house on Wednesday, 11/12.

	Regards,
	Tina Tina

Bear in mind that Tina Tina sent the above to a pretty large distribution list, perhaps to as many as a couple hundred people. And on this list, many of these people actually work for a living. No, scratch that. Many of the people on this distribution list are real, skilled, system administrators who work for a living. My initial thought, while feeling my left cheek beginning to pulse with pain, was to buy a collection of white bath towels and bars of Ivory soap so that we could re-enact a certain scene from Full Metal Jacket on Tina Tina.

But then I realized that doing such a thing would be akin to punching a corpse. Unless that’s your kind of thing, in other words, it’s kind of pointless.

The more that I thought about it, the more that I realized that Tina Tina has been promoted — in my own mind — from the Ranks of the Ridiculous to having gigantic, brass balls. He doesn’t do a lick of work. He knows, I’m sure, that managers and co-workers are aware that he doesn’t do a lick of work. He had a meeting with FMM, if I recall, to reiterate that he should do some work, and he’s now decided to tell just about everyone who’s overworked that he’s going to spend time eating grocery store cake and pinning the tail on Lord-Knows-What. WOW.

Better yet? The IBM team wants him to be on my team. Fuck that. I smell sweet revenge. Uhh, I mean, sweet, legal revenge. Make that cheap, antiquated, sweet, perfectly legal revenge. Details forthcoming.