Monthly Archives: November 2008

>System Administrator Philosophy and job search

Posted by on November 18, 2008 2 comments

>One of the system administration jobs I interviewed at told me their philosophy of being in the IT business, and I’ve been meaning to blog about mine for some time now.

My philosophy is that as a system administrator my job is to make technology work for my users. And to do that I need to be aware of their problems, be aware of how they currently use the system, and be in able to change the software to meet their needs. That last part is key and is why I have basically made it a requirement that my next job is, or will let me transition it to becoming, a Free Software shop.

In my perfect system administrator philosophy this is how things would go when a problem comes up:

  1. User has a problem
  2. System Administrator implements a solution

    If problem is reoccurring:

  3. Discuss with upstream about problem and implement a solution for the next release

Ubuntu with a 6 month release cycle and welcoming attitude is well suited for this philosophy.

But it doesn’t end there, many users end up doing a lot of extra work when the task could be automated by the computer. In my system administrator philosophy, it’s my job to make sure that the users can identify when a task could be automated, and also my job to help them automate it.

I have also noticed that many people consider doing desktop administration to be just a stepping stone in the IT world. I’m willing to bet that the desktop still has a lot of innovation in it, and is going to surprise a lot of people.

Still Searching

I really wish job sites would support OpenID

I’m still looking for a job, so if you know of anything that you think would match my philosophy please don’t hesitate to get in contact. (It doesn’t have to be system administrator)

>Book Meme

Posted by on November 13, 2008 1 comment

>So yea.. my closest books were the ones on my hard drive, but they were all in HTML, so I printed them to PDF…

So saying, Madame de Saint-Meran extended her dry bony hand to
Villefort, who, while imprinting a son-in-law’s respectful salute on it, looked at Renee, as much as to say, “I must try and fancy ’tis your dear hand I kiss, as it should have been.”

- The Count of Monte Cristo

As for my other “book” it’s only 14 pages but a great read. It’s Asimov’s favorite story that he wrote, called The Last Question. So I went to the 56th line:

“They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.”

>First things I do…

Posted by on November 5, 2008 No comments

>When installing Ubuntu:

I remove a bunch of stuff: pulseaudio, tracker, evolution, mono, screensaver and any other apps I don’t really use. I really should make an actual list, but every computer is different. Some I want to play with pulseaudio on, others have files I want to search through (tracker).

For almost every computer I add:
WineHQ
Medibuntu

Depending on hardware I might enable repositories for nightlies for nouveau (open source nvidia) or open source ati/radeon driver. They are both PPAs and not for novices.

I also enable proposed and backports, and then, finally I install just a few things:

  • powertop – program to analyze power consumption on Intel-based laptops
  • workrave – Workrave is a tool that reminds you to take regular breaks, thus pre‐ venting RSI or helping you to recover from it.
  • gthumb – an image viewer and browser for GNOME, supports videos too
  • phoronix-test-suite (not in repo) – the best linux benchmarking system
  • and usually ubuntu-restricted-extras

>Vote.. but

Posted by on November 4, 2008 2 comments

>Voting for president is of course important.

But to really make a difference research your local and state candidates. Just voting down party lines is the worst thing you could possibly do. Think for yourself America!

Projects that might help ya:
For President: glassbooth.org
For Everywhere:  VoteSmart.org