Most commented posts
- Foreman on Debian – Install issues — 2 comments
- Coincidence — 2 comments
- Don’t Panic — 1 comment
- Centralized Logging — 1 comment
Author's posts
Apr 03
Dell PowerEdge BIOS Update
Wow, that was painful. So much more painful than it needed to be. My Home lab environment is made up of four servers: A Dell PE1950 II with 4x1T drives — this runs the VMs for my home network. A Dell PE1950 III with no drives — this will run the VMs I need for …
Jun 20
Linus being Linus
Linus Torvalds is a name that is well known within many tech communities. As the creator and maintainer of the Linux Kernel, he is revered by many users oblivious to his behavior. Behavior that is certainly effective, but also frequently highlighted as unprofessional and unnecessarily abusive towards volunteers whose only interest is to help continue …
Dec 22
False Alert Frustration
For those of us who endure the regular on-call schedule, one thing is more frustrating than anything else: the so-called “False Alert.” It comes at the most inconvenient of hours, it requires getting things out of bags and connecting and the whole rigmarole of engaging, and then you find that the server isn’t really down, …
Jun 22
Simple Mail Testing
Insert a witty comment about how it’s been so long since my last post. In my travels, I came across a handy file which I felt was share-worthy. Have you ever had a need to quickly test an SMTP connection via telnet or netcat? I have. If you don’t have a file like this already, …
Jan 15
Get Training Done Right
Training people on new concepts is difficult. This is not a new idea. Employers could save significant sums of money, and also keep employee morale up if they did a better job of understanding and accounting for this. Training should be relatable When you train someone on a new concept, it is critical that they …
Jan 09
Setting up New Employees to Fail
Some readers of my rambling are IT managers, some are lower level IT staff, some stumble upon them from Google or elsewhere. Just about all of you have, or will, at some point, be involved in the hiring and onboarding of a new employee whether it is as their manager, their colleague, or their underling. …
Nov 16
Logitech Modifier Keys for Mac
I started a new job last month, and they issued me a MacBook Pro — the other choice was a smaller Windows laptop, and since I prefer the *nix environment I chose the Mac. I could make plenty of arguments or even just observations, since it’s been close to ten years since I last used …
Sep 29
The Times, They Are a-Changin’
“Changing was necessary. Change was right. He was all in favour of change. What he was dead against was things not staying the same.” — Masklin (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) Today marks the end of a moment. The end of an era. The end of my employment with an organization that has seen much change itself …
May 24
Re-Architecting from the Ground Up
Well, nearly the ground. I think one of the most enjoyable experiences in my line of work is when I get to design and build an environment from almost nothing, with a handful of requirements and design constraints. We do it with some regularity for customers as part of our support agreements, and I’ve now …
Apr 15
Everything Good Must End
At one point it was scribed… Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. It’s true. Everything that begins must one day end, it is necessary for all progress. It’s not always big things, though this is true. Lives end, marriages end (either by divorce or death), jobs …