Listening to someone else being put on hold for a tech call, I hear through the speakerphone…

“Become a QuarkXpress Certified Expert“.

I had to say out loud, “Yeah, and that’s when the big bucks start rolling in.”

Quark. They haven’t gone out of business because God has a sense of humor.

Who else could have written this?

So, if these infections were all completely preventable, why are IS and IT heads not rolling. Why are these people NOT being fired for incompetence??

If they requested that technologies be in place or implemented but approval from above was refused, then why are the VP or CEO heads not rolling??

Boy, there’s some serious venom. Wonder what brought this on?

Some staff members can make a simple mistake that costs a company a bit of money (like a user not following a policy, infecting their own system with a virus, and they get fired for it). Yet, these preventable virus / worm outbreaks cost some corporations millions of dollars in down time and lost business, yet no one gets fired?

Oh, I get it. Gee, I wonder who “some staff members” could be.

45.) What is the line entered into systems /etc/dfs/dfstab to enable root access to maps system?

ANSWER= share -F nfs -o root=client -d “home dirs” /etc/auto_master
explanation: root=client gives root access to /etc/auto_master
(/etc/auto_master is just an example to where some maps are)

47.) What is the term used when 1 data structure is included with another, and the 1st data structure is hidden?

ANSWER= encapsulated

Shoot. Me. Now.

63.) What do you use to get the Ethernet address from the IP address?
ANSWER= Use the protocol called ARP (address resolution protocol)
(maps a 32-bit IP address to a 48-bit ethernet address)

As part of my job, I find myself participating in a number of technical mailing lists. It keeps me off the streets so for that I am grateful.

Tasty!

In any event, I’m starting to get email off list asking for my help with Solaris problems. So far I’ve been lucky, since the questions asked have been well in my comfort zone and I haven’t had any difficulty in answering them. I think it’s kinda funny though that quite a few of these questions have been sent from India. You know India, it’s that place with all the top-notch IT people. You know, where the techs are just so far and away more brilliant than poor schlubs like me could ever hope to be. I mean, how could any corporation do anything but send thousands of IT jobs over there. Not only is it full of brilliant people, they can survive on a fraction of the average American IT worker’s salary. Those questions I get have nothing to do with the possibility of some of these firms in India being hi-tech sweatshops where you can get quantity over quality when it comes to doing IT work. Of course not.

As it stands right now, I figure I’m responsible for .00000068 % of all the IT solutions provided by Indian firms. You are pwn3d India. Bring me vindaloo.

Yes, I’ve not been posting here for a bit. This goes doubly for The Bower, which as we all know is the greatest group blog ever.

Oddly enough, there is a really good reason for this. I’ve just gotten done decompressing from taking my first Solaris Certification Exam.

I passed.
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I work with Mac people, and I’m ok with that.

One of the offshoots of working with Mac people is, of course, receiving emails relating to Mac news. I received one such case in point today and have been pointed to an online review of the latest version of Mac OS X. I’m talking about “Tiger” which was released this past April 15th. Coincidentally, that’s also the day the frikking Titanic sunk.

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I saw this on Veritas’ Backup Exec support site. I just stared at the screen, stupefied by what I was reading; then I just started to laugh. Let me pull up the relative sections. I’m sure there are going to be like, eighteen people tops who will ever read this and find it funny.

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Gah! The stupid Sun Ultra 2 is flaking out, and now I’ve got to replace the ten thousand external drives with a nice, new D1000. That’s a JBOD, so I’ll have to still whack disks around if they break or need replacing. With any luck, we’ll see less SCSI drive freakouts, and it will be a bit cleaner in the closet. Next time, I want an A1000. I want some hardware RAID action! At least we’ll have some better mirroring, and should be able to keep the DB up while we do nightly backups. Long story short, if I promised anyone to help out with anything this weekend, well..there goes my weekend.

Speaking of JBOD’s, I saw the usual JOBW’s (Just a Bunch Of Weenies) yesterday at the corner of St. Francis and Cerrillos. I guess it was time for the next “Five people holding up signs for ‘Peace’ Day.” Yo, Hippy! I bet if you wave that “Bush Lied, Kids Died” sign a little higher, he’ll pull our troops out of Iraq. Yeah, that’ll do it.

Note to Crayola: in your next box of crayons, you need to add the color “Aging Hippy Gray”.

It’s true, there is an exact shade of gray that denotes “aging hippy”. Ronald Reagan never had that shade of gray. Frank Rizzo never had that shade of gray. I can spot that precise shade and say to someone, “So, you were at Woodstock, right? When you went to San Francisco, you put a flower in your hair, didn’t you?” They usually answer, “Mpohmfr ttrjfiow hr” Which is “brain fried on acid” for, “Power to the people, man.”

I’m really not liking Best Practical’s Request Tracker. It’s like, the closer to getting it compiled and configured I get, the more mind-numbing the problems become. The documentation could be better, as well.

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