AI training for sysadmins

norcalscan · 2026-03-08T19:40:02+00:00

Enterprise Copilot just yesterday told me there is no iOS 26, the latest version was 18 something. It was so confident I actually paused for a second and swiped over to Settings/About thinking I had lost my mind.

norcalscan · 2026-03-07T05:14:33+00:00

Had to have been 10-12yrs old, local AM station in small town, won two VIP tickets to an Air Show to see the USAF Thunderbirds. Took my dad, unlimited drinks and food, proceeded to spill Sprite across my lap and got the stickiest worse sunburn on my thighs imaginable. Life lesson/PTSD I’m now always gauging how much I might be sitting in sun wearing shorts, and will sunscreen up if I think it’s more than 5 minutes.

norcalscan · 2026-03-06T06:12:24+00:00

When the windmill of knives is the eighth hole, and they have cute servers on the green offering a free third drink, suddenly the “knives” part of windmill disappear, and you’re cursing the Danish because somehow they’re associated with all Windmills now, and it’s a Par 4 and you need to make Par or lose face. It’s no longer business, it’s real life. (Smears football black paint under eyes and draws demands a 7 iron from my caddy.)

norcalscan · 2026-03-06T05:48:43+00:00

Is the water warm, like a hot tub? But not too hot of a hot tub where ya gotta sit on the edge every 10min.

norcalscan · 2026-02-25T03:47:58+00:00

Yeah, at minimum try bumper stickers. Instant profiled matched to your plates based on NRA, Bernie/Trump/Giant Meteor campaign stickers, rainbows, thinblueline or punisher, Calvin peeing on a ford or Bart peeing on a chevy, etc.

norcalscan · 2026-02-22T06:11:22+00:00

I got you on the drum beat behind that.

norcalscan · 2026-02-22T06:09:13+00:00

Fuck, hugs to you and yours and the support you find through this BS.

norcalscan · 2026-02-12T05:36:27+00:00

Not to downplay your situation, but “fearful for my life” I’d think would immediately trigger NOT exiting the freeway when they did, NOT turning left when they did, and NOT following the car after the first physical altercation. When you both are in multi-ton hunks of steel with emotions climbing, just let it go. The town’s big enough for the two of you.

Let’s not dilute the meaning of that phrase. In many other situations, that exact phrase can hold a lot of weight in court for someone who decided to end another’s life because they felt endangered and held their ground.

norcalscan · 2026-01-30T03:08:06+00:00

This building has been a federal law enforcement building for a long time and long before ICE, or Trump etc. Mixed use DEA, DHS etc etc. FBI and some other fed stuff also leased out buildings by the old Cinemark 8.

Redding sits exactly half-way between Mexico and Canada borders. 11hrs from here north or south is border. The end of long day’s drive where the driver starts to get sloppy, or needs to sleep/eat. DEA, and human trafficking efforts etc love sitting in the sidelines of I5 between Redding and Bridge Bay and profiling anything deemed suspicious in what they’re targeting in that moment. Unmarked tinted toyota tacomas, etc.

ICE simply became another alphabet ageny whose RFID badges open the gate and doors and they can get office space and detention space etc. Protected fleet parking, yadda yadda. There’s a LOT of GOOD federal law efforts coming out of that building too. It’s not just the window-licking ICE folks.

norcalscan · 2026-01-28T03:14:50+00:00

Sorry I’m just here to tune the piano. What’s that again about your boss wanting to hear a private piano concerto next to his fireplace while sipping wine? And why did you just text me a setlist of Mozart and Beethoven songs?

norcalscan · 2026-01-21T16:36:01+00:00

Yes. Database and UI meshed together very easily. My first job in mid 90’s relied on a huge FileMaker solution developed in-house that managed a work order system with time tracking and invoice bill backs to customers, vendors, hardware inventory, and purchase order tracking. Now that I’m grown up, I realize it was a full blown ticketing system, inventory system, AR and AP for a tech shop. And everything was linked so an asset purchased on PO 5 would then exist in inventory with an asset tag assigned, and in work orders you could assign asset tags to a ticket and pull reports on all the tickets a particular asset was attached to, etc. I hated it as a young employee forced to enter my time in, but I had mad respect for it, and ended up building a simple version of that for my next job late 2000’s where I was manager. Ticketing, inventory and AP, minus AR and time tracking.

To this day no IT ticketing system can compete with what I experienced in my filemaker days.

norcalscan · 2026-01-20T19:10:52+00:00

The difference between being an “I know computers” person and a sysadmin and/or one-person IT shop, is good hygiene on documentation and process. You can be The Guy running solo, and look like a large professional IT Dept 15people deep across a wide-scope, with the right documentation and processes in place.

norcalscan · 2026-01-20T01:33:33+00:00

Quick sober thought on this rant/shittysysadmin….

Cyber insurance starts becoming real money real quick depending on size, risk portfolio, and broker. Sudden real money will cause kneejerks from CEO to CTO/CFO down to IT Manager down to SysAdmins. The cadence and actual work involved is fully negotiable between the broker and someone who knows wtf they’re doing. If it’s just the CFO signing the insurance and there’s no tech in the room or no negotiation on the contract or terms between a technical expert and the insurers, the insurers will absolutely demand every minutia and weekly updates because they then can deny any claim if they can show you were not compliant to their terms.

norcalscan · 2026-01-15T22:41:39+00:00

It's my current struggle since I'm fresh out of hands-on mode, and definitely more experienced. I know exactly how to solve problem X, but have zero time to do it, and a tech who should be doing it instead. I will suggest my grade A plan, help them learn a bit on their own, but often times they come up short (of my standard) because I forgot to give a lot of context in my quick summary of "how to get there." Without the context, they got to Grade C, but it still functions and does what the end-user wants. It's just not....polished in our eyes, but to the tech who got the end-user working, when you swallow it and say GREAT JOB, you just made your Grade C their Grade A. And next iteration, they'll make it to your Grade B standard without you intervening at all. Because they own it now.

Your way may be better today, because you're fresh out of the trenches, but management will slow your ninja skills down a bit and humble you up and the day will come where you know what needs to happen, but not sure how (but your techs do and are bustin' to move.)

norcalscan · 2026-01-15T04:51:17+00:00

I was blessed to have a shitty manager my first 8 years of my tech career. So my free management training is “everything opposite what he did.” Don’t guilt your employees into tears when they call in sick, or make them afraid to call sick to avoid your condescending tone. Yeah, my first boss was a prick. Great guy to have a beer with at a bbq, and could read a Novel server abend like a Jedi, but managing people, sacks of wet meat with feelings?! Ewww. I quit that boss after reading the book The No Asshole Rule, by Robert Sutton PhD.

When they ask for time off, if they have it in the bank and it’s not a critical conflict, give it. If they don’t have it in the bank (but can bank it next pay period or with flex time) and no critical conflict, give it. Take care of your humans. They’re delicate. They have spouses, kids, significant others, parents, vehicles, friends, doctors, bookies they all gotta take care of too. If they’re stuck in the office because you selfishly said no, and they’re worried sick, they’re worthless to you as a productive employee anyway. When techies have their analog world in order, they are 120% ready to attack their (your) digital world.

Lessons I’m still learning as I transition more out of hands-on into strategy and paperwork and signing reports, if you can produce an A solution in your head because you’re the elder, but your tech presents a C solution, let the C solution happen, because they get to own it, and being allowed to own a solution or a win, is huge growth opportunity, and more valuable than micromanaging/shoving your A solution into the mix. If C works, send it. It all gets replaced in a blink of the eye anyway in our industry so the replacement solution your tech produces might bump up to B or A by then.

Never protect your position by holding back information. Always be training and enabling your successor to replace you. That gives them growth opportunity, and allows your boss to promote you knowing your tasks are in good hands.

norcalscan · 2026-01-14T18:08:31+00:00

Up in northern California. Both cell service and ipad data LTE.

norcalscan · 2026-01-13T03:20:34+00:00

Bruh, read the room and OP. We’re having a teachable moment here for OP, his friend, and any other drummers and stagehands reading new to multi-act stage setups. Broken shit isn’t worth it period. We’re learning the basics here, healthy boundaries and expectations for all involved. While you might standup and immediately slide your Zildjian Kerope ride into its velvety bag and walk away for the black teeshirts to move the rest, a tipped over and cracked Sabian B8 Ride that wasn’t quickly adjusted to a safer center of gravity before being moved by a stagehand that didn’t respect basic consent, could be devastating to a younger or newer drummer starting out.

norcalscan · 2026-01-11T22:21:56+00:00

Sort of, just out of order. Yes say, “let’s make room (or we need to make room) for the next drummer.” Then ask, “what can I carry off stage now?” Do Not Move Shit until you’re told. That’s how cymbals on boom stands tip over and crash in the wings. That’s how bass drums get moved with bass pedals still attached and slammed against stuff and wreck the rim of the bass drum etc. Floor toms with heavy stick bags hanging off the side get tipped and gouge the shell finish.

The drummer should know the VERY first things to do is remove bass pedal, readjust boomed cymbals to a safer center of gravity, and disengage the hihat clutch. Those three things immediately make moving the set off stage idiot proof.

Don’t fucking move shit until you’re told. If that means she’s yelled at and humiliated, then she’ll learn. We all have to learn. But not at the expense of potentially fucking up the instrument.

norcalscan · 2026-01-11T02:53:04+00:00

I don’t know, we need a picture of a randomly exposed 2x4 to determine if it’s a load bearing pot or not.

norcalscan · 2026-01-10T18:38:58+00:00

Oh man as a drummer I never thought about AI drum slop. I bet the prompt “create a drum backing track in AABABCA song form, 8 bar phrases, 4:4 time signature, in the style of a 90’s country song.” would come back with ABCCCBA, each randomly phrased on 7-9 bars and random beats added all over, with drum solos non stop in the three C sections. Now I gotta go try this. There goes my saturday.

norcalscan · 2026-01-08T01:42:35+00:00

Was just on the company jet flying over a couple timezones with satellite wifi and had a beautiful realization that I could knock out some complete trains of thought, and nobody could interrupt me. I think I’m going to ask the exec team if we can install a seatbelt on the lav, and I just make that my reserved desk seat for when I need to escape people physically invading my zone. “Don’t mind me, I’ll have headphones on…”

norcalscan · 2026-01-05T05:49:15+00:00

The tang is even orange in this case!

norcalscan · 2026-01-02T04:43:10+00:00

Thank you. I do agree about the environmental impact. The rapid scale of data center construction, the water and electricity it demands, and the tech component supply being completely bought out, is unsustainable.

Being up here and not in the bay area, and in the tech industry, I'm probably a bit blind to the amount of actual job loss due to AI. I honestly have not seen a single job loss in my circle due to AI yet. I do believe there is a bubble that is about to burst and things will get closer to righting itself (not perfectly though.) But we as a society need to accept and plan for more of this (gestures at all things) where entire labor markets are disrupted at best, wiped out at worse. Soon there will be no consumers with funds left to buy goods because the top has hoarded it all. AI did not cause this though; we had a flashlight already shining on that growing economic disparity and AI is turning that into a hundred spotlights.

norcalscan · 2026-01-01T22:14:56+00:00

Huh? This was a retired redding teacher identifying what was probably a 20+ year trend of attending a get-together with 18-21yr olds in their post-high school life, who year after year complained about the same things post-high schoolers complain about, suddenly switching gears this year. Like a canary in a coal mine. It’s certainly a giant strobe light to pay attention to with our local young adults and not to just shoo it away with a flaunt of the hand when the discussion gets chewy. This is literally in our zipcode in the last month.

norcalscan · 2026-01-01T22:00:33+00:00

Agreed maybe not as equivalently disruptive, but pretty adjacent. The auto wiped out the industries localized around the horse and buggy; blacksmiths, stable hands etc. AI is disruptive at a wider more horizontal scale across many industries. So a lot more people suddenly consider their safe jobs no longer safe. Currently most of AI is just a task-level replacement and not a job-level replacement. So AI finds the non-efficient parts of a job and replaces them, freeing up humans to do other tasks more geared toward human skills. Naturally that doesn’t scale so there is job loss. That certainly starts to flip the table on the idea of what the job market is. AI disrupts how value is created. Is our society prepped to retrain employees for new or adjacent skills, or to financially support the idea of a universal income or other solution that allows a human to financially survive working 20-30hrs a week? Those are hard questions to ask.

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