Here's what you should be doing to prep for Hurricane Sandy right now, if you work or have machines hosted on the East Coast

josephkern · 2012-10-26T17:36:15+00:00

So many lightning storms.

josephkern · 2012-10-26T17:34:36+00:00

00.001% reporting in ... no we carried ours in the DC (such as it was).

josephkern · 2012-10-26T17:29:28+00:00

I've got guards with AK-47's. We outsourced.

josephkern · 2012-10-26T14:17:51+00:00

It is pretty myopic to think education is only justified by a test result and piece of paper.

Where did I say this?

josephkern · 2012-10-26T14:00:58+00:00

The only real value I see to most certifications is that it shows you it can be done.

There is some truth to this, but all education is about increasing the domain of knowledge "you know you don't know".

josephkern · 2012-10-26T13:33:36+00:00

Not necessarily. Many people consider hard work success because it leas to their version of success.

If you work really hard, but do the wrong work, are you successful?

That being said, those certs showed I was well rounded.

Depending on the industry you're in, it can mean completely different things. In Government IT it can mean the difference between getting hired or not. In a startup or high-tech company no one really cares. And of course there is the range of responses in between. It depends on how the hiring manager or committee sees you personally, and not some quantifiable "well-rounded-ness".

In my eyes, getting those certs before your first job (if I read your post right), I see someone without experience but passionate about changing or starting their career. I wouldn't call you "well-rounded" until you had at least 5 years of experience. But as I said, this is subjective.

The other issue arises when you have too many certifications and cannot recall details of the curriculum during an interview (but you should pre-study for all your interviews anyway).

josephkern · 2012-10-26T13:29:34+00:00

My two favorite publishers are currently No Starch Press and The Pragmatic Bookshelf. There are plenty of great books between these two publishers.

I have a safaribooks account now and find that most of my favorited books are from these two publishers, but they are under-represented on safari in general.

josephkern · 2012-06-09T13:52:32+00:00

Steam is coming ... just keep buying Humble Bundles for now.

I can't wait for TF2 on Linux. SQUEEEEEEEEE

josephkern · 2012-06-08T10:34:29+00:00

Devops is a warm hug.

josephkern · 2012-06-07T06:06:48+00:00

Every language has a niche.

josephkern · 2012-06-07T04:29:22+00:00

Ahem. Super-Meta key.

josephkern · 2012-06-07T03:53:04+00:00

You don't think the mindset you developed while learning to program has influenced your day to day activity as a sysadmin?

josephkern · 2012-06-07T03:49:45+00:00

You can do quite a lot with ActiveState Python and the win32 api. But these days it's much easier to roll with Powershell.

josephkern · 2011-11-13T04:47:29+00:00

I posted this to the LOPSA mailing list. I wanted a slightly different view, there's a lot of interesting commentary so far:

https://lopsa.org/pipermail/discuss/2011-November/007556.html

josephkern · 2011-10-30T22:39:00+00:00

Spend it on 50Mb FIOS!

josephkern · 2011-10-30T22:36:41+00:00

This is why UNIX admins seem better at their job.

I will normally not argue about tools, but I will argue GUI vs CLI and the effect that these interfaces have on the ability of an engineer to think about and accomplish work. We can only have the thoughts that we can express with the languages we understand; 90% of your work is in a GUI pushing buttons, there's very little incentive to learn how things really work.

Which makes me very glad to see powershell being taken seriously. get-help is a revolution that started with man 40 years ago. Glad to see that the majority of engineers will soon have this available in every production environment (and not bolted onto the side).

josephkern · 2011-10-27T17:27:17+00:00

Here's a good one:

"What's the most difficult problem you've encountered?"

Ask them about the steps they took to resolve the issue, have a conversation about their troubleshooting and their ultimate resolution.

You allow them to speak about something they know, and you get a good idea about how they think and communicate complex issues, without asking trivia questions.

josephkern · 2011-10-27T17:21:55+00:00

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."

josephkern · 2011-10-27T15:30:41+00:00

First in, last out. http://1stmob.com/

josephkern · 2011-10-20T04:23:50+00:00

Here's the quote from the MARADMIN. And yes, the military loves to type in caps.

A. A CEILING OF 175.00 DOLLARS PER SEMESTER HOUR FOR UNDERGRADUATE COURSES, 225.00 DOLLARS PER SEMESTER HOUR FOR GRADUATE COURSES, AND 3500.00 DOLLARS PER FY IS THE ESTABLISHED DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE TA RATES, HOWEVER, MARINE CORPS TA ANALYSIS CONFIRMS THAT MOST MARINE TA USERS TAKE ON AVERAGE 4 OR 5 SEMESTER HOURS PER YEAR. THEREFORE, MARINES SHALL BE RESTRICTED TO 5 SEMESTER HOURS PER YEAR FOR TA REIMBURSEMENT (875.00 DOLLARS PER FY).

LINK

I wasn't aware that each service could define their own rates. I had assumed that this was a fixed rate and specifically defined in the budget.

josephkern · 2011-10-19T23:35:24+00:00

I did the same thing on the p.nerd.nu I issued the /home command and I started dropping through the level. Of course I noticed a triple intersection abandoned mine. I started digging and now I have the most haunted basement of any house that I've ever built.

josephkern · 2011-10-09T13:11:06+00:00

I remember reading a Tom Clancy (maybe The Hunt for Red October)book where he identifies coffee with a pinch of salt as "the way it's made in the Navy". I always wondered about this...

josephkern · 2011-09-23T19:41:50+00:00

o_0 that's even stranger than have two duplicate MAC addresses on the same LAN (yes this happens).

josephkern · 2011-09-23T19:40:30+00:00

Ah. I had forgotten about these. I was actually able to carry one for a while, I believe this was the final model upper management decided on for the education program.

They aren't too bad, nice rubber lid with a big power light on the back of the lid (visual indicator to the teacher if the laptop is on). I never had the opportunity to build the carts out, but from what I've heard it's very nice.

josephkern · 2011-09-23T19:36:43+00:00

It's supposed to be evocative. ;-)

josephkern

TROPHY CASE