– The Practice of System and Network Administration, Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan.

Bingo. But can there be a third hybrid model?

I currently represent the decentralized model and I must agree with these two fine authors that the benefit of my close working relationship with the individual department/group is that the service provided is highly customized and focused. The central IT department(s) are understandably focused on large-scale issues (“Infrastructure”, “Communications”, “Collaboration”, “Applications”) and as such do not always represent the most ideal channel for delivery of IT services to the various research groups and departments on campus, often with more nuanced, specialized and micro-level issues.

One of my developing long-term goals is to (warning: business jargon) “bridge the gap” between the focused local support that I currently represent and the value proposition(s) of centralized IT services. I’m not yet entirely certain of how to accomplish this but I am certain that there is a way to improve the delivery of IT services to researchers across all our campuses and I want to be involved.

Does such an approach warrant the definition of a third hybrid model or is this so-called bridging of the gap already encapsulated in the model of centralized vs. decentralized?

Some of the challenges I face specifically as a “standalone” decentralized sysadmin on campus are:

• Dealing with all IT needs from desktop support to infrastructure development to data security
• Developing and maintaining vendor contacts and relationships
• No immediate peers in our environment to bounce specific ideas around with
• Weak purchasing power and negotiation leverage
• Duplication of effort
• Career progression is potentially limited
• All too easy to develop a “King of the Castle” attitude
• Complacency

Some of the concerns I hear about when introducing researchers to the idea of centralized IT support:

• General lack of trust/faith in the centralized IT department
• Perceived lack of personal attention and focus (turn around times, site knowledge, etc.)
• Perceived lack of “control” over their environment (and data!) under the centralized model
• Charge-back models for IT services are viewed as grant-unfriendly
• Physical hardware ownership appears to remain important for many researchers

Of course, this is but a snapshot of the challenges I face and the concerns I’ve been hearing but they do serve as decent examples. It must also be noted that I am seeing great progress is many of these areas already because there are very bright people here already working on these challenges. My interest in this field is absolutely not unique.

For the immediate future, I’m focusing on improving my collaborations and communication with centralized IT services by helping them out where I can and leaning on them more often for our localized problems. My hope is that by constantly forging a closer working relationship will increasingly expose me (and in turn, our group) to the benefits of the centralized IT model while providing the central IT group with greater insight into our environment and how we work.

The next steps are still a mystery to me but I’m keeping my eyes open for new opportunities to bring better IT to research.

No related posts.

Today, I’m on the brink of making another significant career move and career development is front and centre in my day to day thoughts. Hence, rant.

Thinking About the Future

Back in the day, it was just about working with cool gear, being a geek and having fun. Moving forward, I really don’t want to end up making decisions that marginalize how awesome working with cool gear, being a geek and having fun really is so I’m forced to think about what I want and how I can attain it. When I was 24 I was lead on purchasing, installing and managing a 1/4 million dollar cluster, a definite highlight of my career thus far… but building that cluster wasn’t building my career because career development wasn’t on my radar and I didn’t use that experience effectively as a career building tool.

My focus has shifted somewhat and I’ve been thinking about what matters to me. To build my career, I need to accept some cons along with the pros of changing positions. I need to know what I want and go after it. Mitigating the cons through smart decisions and knowing what I truly want is going to be very important moving forward for me to build my career while remaining technical.

The One Man Shop and Beyond

Thus far in my career I’ve always been the one man shop. There are some really nice things about that kind of situation which I find are easily glossed over by those working in big IT shops whom enjoy other luxuries that I do not. I get to set a large portion of my own hours, as necessary. I can make the decisions I think are right without the pressure and politics of a large organization. I can be more nimble and react to changing needs much faster. Of course, all those things come with their own downsides as well and one challenge I want to face is being able to bring my skills and experience working in these one man shop environments into a more classic IT organization with a positive impact.

Now I just need to figure out how I can achieve the smooth transition from the one man shop to the IT organization while both improving myself and the IT organization. For me, being part of a team is about contributions. What can I contribute? How can I help? Where can I leverage my skills to better the whole team?

Since I’m really a GNU/Linux guy at heart, I consider this to be one of my key areas of knowledge and where I can contribute the most. The organization that I may join has some Linux prowess but they are, for all intents and purposes, a Microsoft/VMware shop. However, as they ramp up year after year taking on new clients on campus, I believe there is an opportunity to embrace the research environments and their marriage to Linux from a big IT organization point of view and this is where I see myself making a strong impact if I do indeed end up transitioning my career.

As I work things out in my head, I start to paint of pretty picture of what could be. In this pretty picture I retain what I’ve always loved about my current and previous jobs in academia while gaining a whole new set of skills that revolve around working with technical peers and managers, something I’ve never had working the one man shop. I can help not just one research group, but research groups all across the Faculty. I can fundamentally enable the progress of science on a larger scale. That means a lot to me because when it’s all said and done, the only reason I have a job and the only reason I’m motivated to do what I do is to enable others to do even more amazing things.

Reservations

All that said, I’m not without reservations. I’ve seen what can happen to people in larger IT organizations. They become another cog in the wheel. They become jaded. They skirt responsibility and project their own mistakes and failures onto others. I reassure myself that these things won’t happen to me because I won’t let them. I hope that’s enough.

But I not only have reservations overs these personal issues that can arise from being part of a bigger team. I have reservations regarding how much good I can possibly do with an organization that seems unlikely to be able to react and move as quickly as science and research. How can I effect positive change for researchers and faculty when I’m in meetings for 50% of the day? These reservations are starting to feel more and more like challenges and I generally enjoy being challenged. It’s my hope that I can be part of figuring out how to resolve these concerns and not allow them to put a damper on the good that can potentially be done.

Wish me Luck

When it’s all said and done, I’m quite exited for this career opportunity to rear its head. I’m finding more and more that the business relationships I build are powerful. I wouldn’t be thinking about a career move today if I didn’t forge a relationship with a key individual over the last three+ years that I’ve seen make leaps and bounds in his career. He’s made the right moves for himself and now we’re talking about the right moves for myself, enabled through our relationship and common goals. It’s powerful stuff, friends.

So please dear readers, wish me luck in the up coming year! I’m either going to need a lot of it or none of it.

No related posts.

Let’s describe my relationship with Oracle for a moment:

• In seven years as a sysadmin, I’ve never had a business relationship with Oracle
• I’ve never run an Oracle product in any of my shops
• I’ve never directly or indirectly inquired about Oracle products with Oracle or their resellers
• I’ve never once feigned interest in anything Oracle has done until the day they bought Sun Microsystems

So what was the cold call about? They wanted to sell me on Oracle Unbreakable Linux and Oracle VM. They were targeting our RedHat (well, CentOS) installations and wanted to get a foot in the door for their virtualization product (Xen) Thanks, but seriously… No thanks!

I’ve been approached by vendors before at trade shows or expos or even via existing reseller relationships but this out of the blue cold call is entirely new to me. I can ignore the fact that Oracle’s representative had less than stellar English skills. That’s not paramount, although it made for lengthy repetitions where it otherwise wouldn’t have been necessary. It’s that cold call tactic that has me fired up! Are they seriously trolling my employer’s public directory in which my name and number is listed to see if anything bites?

Overall, I’m really turned off by Oracle’s slimy cold call tactics. Please don’t call again, Oracle. Your rebranded-and-slightly-modified RHEL and Xen clones be damned!

No related posts.

There are two really annoying and critical bugs that have been sitting around, unresolved for too long. One revolves around the NFS client. Apparently there was a regression in the mainline kernel at version 2.6.27 that causes NFS lockup/freeze. Both 10.04 and 10.10 have been affected but Ubuntu has yet to release the fix although it’s been available since august in the mainline kernel. The second bug revolves around Network Manager and autofs maps in LDAP. Basically, you have to get Network Manager to “autofs reload” every time it brings up or down the network interface. No big deal as this can be scripted, but I would really expect an official fix for this.

Ok, so it’s not Ubuntu’s fault there was a mainline kernel regression regarding NFS client code and it’s not Ubuntu’s fault that Network Manager behaves the way it does. However, I do expect a Linux vendor that considers themselves ready for the Enterprise to be able to backport critical kernel fixes so that their users don’t have to sit around waiting with their thumbs up their asses until the fix makes it’s way into an official kernel release and then into an Ubuntu kernel update. As for the autofs maps in LDAP/Network Manager issue, I would not only expect an enterprise ready distribution to have tested this functionality before release but also that once it’s reported that a real, official fix released quickly that everyone can use instead of having to follow bug report comment suggestions to get things working.

I realize Ubuntu is mainly a desktop OS. That’s ok. But all this “Ubuntu is ready for the Enterprise!!! GO CANONICAL!!!!” stuff simply can’t be justified when two official releases in a row come up with show-stopping bugs and there still isn’t a fix nor an official recommended workaround.

</rant>

Related posts:

1. LVM filters and initrd

I’m going to try to address various talking points I’ve been reading in articles, comments and blogs but don’t sue me if I miss anything.

It’s Just a Big iPod Touch

And you know what? That’s a big part of what makes it different than previous generation “tablet” devices, which have all decisively under performed in the market. The iPod touch brought the PMP to the masses. Yes, the PMP market existed long before the iPod touch, but only geeks were really paying attention. Archos is a novel french company that makes some compelling products but unless you’re an Internet superstar, you probably haven’t even heard of them. Cowon? Taiwanese company but lump them in with Archos as they are basically selling the same PMPs with small feature and form differences.

The iPod touch (and the iPhone) brought tasks that used to require full fledged computers into the pocket. It defined a different way to do old things. Apple didn’t invent any of this, they just brought it to the masses which is something I think the geeks and nerds truly resent. No longer was handheld computing reserved for those “in the know” or clever enough to figure out how to jump through all the hoops to get value out of the gadgets.

The iPad takes this simplification to a larger form factor. The iPad wasn’t the first product to bring computing to this form factor, it was just the first to bring the simplification of the iPod touch to this form factor. I think this is a great idea, considering the proven appeal of the iPod touch. It represents an increasing disconnect between the desired outcome and the complex processes needed to get there. The simplicity of the iPad (because it very much is like a big iPod touch) is a strong differentiator from previous “tablet” efforts.

I’ve read lots of fans raving about how it can’t be just a big iPod touch because of all the new use cases, how it changes the paradigm of computing and how it makes the device vanish and truly connect you to content. I’m not into these emotional arguments, thought they very well may ring true for many people. I’m just a bit more pragmatic than that.

Technically, the iPad is very much like a big iPod touch and frankly that appeals to me because I really enjoy(ed) my iPod touch despite my self-inflicted hardware trouble with it. People who argue that it’s not a big iPod touch are making these arguments for entirely non-technical reasons, which is fine and all but you have ignore the that technically it is pretty much a big iPod touch while making the argument that it’s not to make it a compelling argument.

Netbooks OMG

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Netbooks do X, Y and Z, have A, B and C hardware features and you can get one for dirt cheap. We all know it. Thanks for the update, Internet.

If you want a portable computer that mimics your desktop or slightly-more-portable laptop in a smaller more inexpensive package, I’m not sure what’s so interesting about commenting in iPad/tablet articles about how these devices just don’t stack up for your needs: buy a freakin’ Netbook and enjoy that Intel Atom processor and the whopping performance it provides running desktop-class software. What’s that? You can run Photoshop on your Netbook? Well shazam! Whodathunkit? Let the design firms line up at Best Buy because now that the cat is out of the bag, we’re sure to see professional designers using Netbooks instead of their over-priced, under-featured Macbooks. Puh-lease.

Netbooks do exactly what desktop and laptops do, only worse. All the widgets, task bars, window controls, menus and other desktop paradigm elements need to be packed into that 10″ or less screen. All that bloated software needs to be packed into 1-2GB of RAM. All that poorly optimized code that runs fine on the latest Core i7 needs to be processed by the underwhelming Atom.

But on the other hand, if you intend on using your Netbook for browsing the web, using IM, reading documents, writing documents or other tasks that a PII from the late 90s can handle without too much sweat then we have a more interesting discussion. More interesting because it’s no longer about what can’t be done on the iPad and other tablets, it’s about the experience of doing so. Netbooks don’t dramatically change the conventional experience of web browsing. The iPad does. Netbooks don’t dramatically change the conventional experience of reading documents. The iPad does.

If you’re not looking for a dramatic change in your basic-needs computing experience, Netbooks should be right down your alley. If you are, maybe an iPad or any one of the upcoming slew of other tablet devices just might. Netbooks fill a need for many but it’s just more of what we’re already used to in a crappy form factor with smaller screens, degraded performance and terrible keyboards… all for price to match while offering slightly improved mobility at best.

It’ll Never Sell Unless it Has X, Y and Z Features

That’s your inner techie talking and depending on who you are it could be putting false notions into your head. Apple sells plenty of products that don’t have X, Y and Z. And people love them. Blame it on marketing. Blame it on the RDF. Blame on the media. Blame it on being a hipster asshole. Blame it on whatever you’d like but it doesn’t change the fact that a long feature list isn’t what makes Macbooks fly of the shelf. It’s not what makes the iPhone 4 still have more demand than supply.

The idea that because a product doesn’t satisfy several items on a feature checklist which you’ve decided are crucially important will result in a market place flop is false, regardless of whether the product would be better if those features were included.

iPad and various Android and ChromeOS powered tablets will sell (and the iPad already is selling) precisely because they provide a usable subset of functionality wrapped into a neat(er) little package as opposed to the whole shebang. This point has been decisively proven wrong already and things are just getting out of the gates. But Windows-powered tablets didn’t sell, you say. And yet those products had exactly every feature you wanted. Funny that!

No flash, no multiasking, no replaceable battery, no USB ports, no file management all are moot for the grand scheme of sales. Could the iPad sell even more if it supported flash, had multitasking right from the get go, had a user-replaceable battery, USB ports and a traditional file browser? Maybe, but these things are simply not detrimental to sales. Even if they are detrimental to user adoption from the nerd brigade.

Where “features” really sell is where they easily translate to something joe-fuck-ass can immediately understand. The iPad has a 10 hour battery life, according to Apple. What does that translate to? You can use it constantly for the majority of a day on one charge. This is something that is easily understood and provides immediate obvious value to customers. USB ports, as fine and dandy as they are, do not provide such immediate value to the masses. People may find it desirable to pop in a USB flash drive to transfer some .docs to their iPad or tablet but this provides little value in the grand scheme of things where you just sync those files over iTunes/non-host USB port, receive them in an email or connect the cloud service de-jour. These features may very well be compelling to smaller segments but they simply won’t prevent the iPad and any other competitive product lacking them from market success alone. Nor will the including of these features immediately make any competitors a success.

The Openess of Linux on Upcomming Tablets Will Make All the Difference

It won’t. No matter how much I truly enjoy Linux and the values it is often made to represent, it really won’t make one ounce of difference because it’s been proven time and time again that openess is not something that consumers value on principle alone. If the open nature of Android or other Linux variants on the tablet will make any difference is because that open nature will directly result in an improved experience. And frankly, after 14 or so years of devoutly using and participating in all things Linux, I haven’t seen that happen. Sure, Linux itself has improved in the usability and overall experience department. But so has everything else (yes, even Windows) along the same time line.

Android does offer some compelling user experience over iOS devices due to it’s less restrictive 3rd party software practices, this I will concede. But telling me that weather apps on the lock screen or task management applications are significantly improving the user experience to the point where markets are shifting as a result is preposterous. Android is seeing significant and impressive gains in the smartphone arena but claiming these gains are a result of pissed off would-be Apple customers specifically selecting the latest and greatest Android phone instead of the iPhone because Android is rooted in the nebulous idea of openess won’t make me a believer all on it’s own. I need facts and strong arguments. I’m far more convinced that the numerous 2-for-1 deals on Android phones has more impact on Android’s adoption than the concept of openess does.

That said, on a purely ideological stand point I’m all for openess. In markets that are determined by the bottom line known as money I’ve yet to see openess manifest itself as anything but a talking point where it matters when talking about sales. That’s not to say openess doesn’t matter, but the claims that openess is what’ll sell is all I’m trying to debunk.

Upcomming Product X is Going to Kill the iPad

Talk to me when it’s available. Remember the JooJoo? Oh right, you don’t because it’s entirely irrelevant after months and month of Internet hype. Even with all that hype, the net result was 90 pre-orders. Seriously, 90?!? Ok, so not all competitive products are going to tank like the JooJoo. And that’s because they won’t all be clouded by strange business takeovers and court proceedings. Nor will the suck as much as the JooJoo apparently does.

But the point stands: Let’s wait until some serious competitors are shipping products and then evaluate these actual products and the companies pushing them.

There are swaths of articles about iPad competitors. TOP 15 iPAD ALTERNATIVES, TOP 9 iPAD KILLERS, etc. but not yet one credible competitive product is available and shipping besides a handful of minor semi-similar offerings from long term players like Archos or new entrants like EnTourage Edge with exactly zero mindshare which were never really touted as iPad killers in the first place.

I can accept a market with competition. In fact, I encourage it. But hyping yet-to-be-released and even better yet-to-receive-a-release date products as iPad killers is a bit like, well, all the iPod killers and iPhone killers. There is room in the market for more than just Apple, which is will evidenced by Apples incredibly minor share of the PC market and minority share of the smartphone market. And yet, even with those minority market shares, Apple still makes money and still commands significant mindshare.

I’m as eager as anyone to see how things play out, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do: See how it plays out. Not call all the shots before the competition has even loaded their guns.

Conclusion

Yeah, I finished four beers while writing this up, so what? It’s barely 2000 words and I’m not even angry yet. I’m sure there are plenty of errors in the blobs of text above, so please comment and tell me where and why I’m wrong. I need hits baby, hits! See those google ads? You don’t? That’s because they are hidden with fancy CSS for that extra secret pay out from google.

There’s probably a lot more to say but fuck it. I’m done.

Related posts:

1. iPod Touch Woes

It’s not their collection (plenty of stuff for various fields of interest) and it’s not their price (I’m using it under a campus subscription so what’s to complain about?). It’s their interface.

Could it be anymore annoying to read a book than the Books24x7 experience? Was this website designed in the 90s?

What frustrates me the most is that you cannot usefully navigate/read a book on Books24x7 without the use of a mouse. Sure, I can use Spacebar, the arrow keys or Page Up/Page Down to navigate on a single page, but because each “page” is just a small chunk of text, you need to constantly be clicking the “Next” link. Tab key link navigation, you say? There are so many links at the top of the page that tabbing through all of them to reach the “Next” link takes longer than grabbing for the mouse.

This is just a terrible book reading experience. Perhaps I’ve just been spoiled by… I dunno? PDF files and Preview.app or Stanza? I want to read some of these books but Books24x7 just makes it so unpleasant that I’d rather just find the hardcopies at the library or pay for a decent ebook version that I can read on whatever device or with whatever software that might actually be designed with some thought regarding the reading experience.

No related posts.

I was able to replace the headphone jack without too much trouble, in fact I would say it was a pretty easy fix. The old ribbon cable stub left from the snapping of the old ribbon cable came off the PCB without too much trouble at all. Just applied a bit of heat and up she came. Soldering the new ribbon cable+headphone jack assembly was very straight forward as well. I just made sure to clean the four pads off nicely, add a tiny bit of solder to each pad then put the ribbon cable down on top and apply some heat. From there I added a bit more solder to the top because the ribbon cable pads have little holes in them to allow the solder to flow through from the back to the front. All said and done, I think I did a really good job.

But, and here’s the kicker, I think ruined ANOTHER battery! Arg! These things must be ultra sensitive to shorting out or otherwise because I can’t figure out what else might have caused my THIRD battery to die on me. Yes, I’ve accidentally shorted it momentarily while fixing the headphone jack AGAIN.

Alas, perhaps it was not meant to be. First battery died because I tore the casing by accident, second battery because I got the damn thing wet. And now the third battery because I appearently cannot keep the red and black leads apart at all times…

At this point I’m not sure what to do. Give another battery a short? These things are cheap, so why not?

Related posts:

1. iPod Touch Woes

What this practically means is that for a PC to qualify for a Windows license under the Campus Agreement one must have purchased that PC with an OEM version of Windows installed. How is that not double dipping, Microsoft? Is it simply because you call the CA license an upgrade? Why not apply the same rules to Office or would that be too obvious of a rape for your customer base to handle? I also find it humorous that if you buy a Mac from Apple, apparently the upgrade clause doesn’t apply! I wonder why that is? Perhaps it’s because Microsoft would like keep Mac users dependent on their software by offering it under the CA without the big “gotcha” you’ve snuck in for other manufacturers PCs because it’s impossible without Apple selling OEM copies of Windows? Why wouldn’t Microsoft want to “convert” some Linux geeks with whitebox or custom built PCs back to their platform the same way as Mac users? Not a big enough install base to care?

Am I the only person that thinks this is double dipping? Am I missing something here?

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Nomenclature
2. Fresh Win2k Install and Windows Update Error

First, I took it snowboarding and it decides to get wet and short the battery somehow, killing it. Bad iPod! I told you not to get wet but you wouldn’t listen! At first I wasn’t sure if the battery really was dead or if the iPod itself had died. I quickly found out the battery was at fault when plugging it into my Macbook and seeing it come alive… too bad it was demanding that I restore it.

So, I tried to restore it. Turns out you can’t restore an iPod touch that doesn’t have a working battery. Part way through the restore, the iPod would die, presumably because it would disconnect from the USB power momentarily. Fine, I bought a new battery and soldered the three tiny little wires in and tried to restore it… and BAM! same problem! Ok, my fault, I didn’t let the battery charge enough. Once charged, I was able to perform the restore.

Now after waiting quite some time for the iPod backup to restore and my music to sync, I try plugging in my headphones to listen to some music. Nothing. The software volume slider is there and I can turn up the volume all the way but nothing. Some jiggling of the jack allows for one channel to come through all muddled. Open the iPod back up and I notice how I destroyed the ribbon cable going from the board to the jack during the battery replacement! Noooooooo.

I actually spent time trying to run four cables to jump the broken ribbon cable, but I didn’t heed my friend’s advice: There was no space for four wires in that tight case. Absolutely no way I could put the back on with those four “jumper” wires crudely soldered in. I also ended up shorting out at least two of the four leads, making my iPod think some kind of remote volume control was plugged in and preventing the display of the software volume controls! I decided to remove my failed attempt at fixing the headphone jack ribbon cable.

I’ve now ordered a replacement jack and I’m going to learn about the joys of soldering a ribbon cable to a tiny PCB. Wish me luck for when it arrives!

Related posts:

1. iPod Touch Woes – Part Deux
2. Microsoft Nomenclature
3. Migration Weekend

Community building is hard and I’m lazy. What more can I say?

Techslaves is now powered by WordPress because it’s just so much better for doing what I want to be doing with the site from now on (which is dumping my brain contents onto the web) than SMF + TinyPortal. At this point, I’m trying to port some content over from the previous version of the site. I don’t expect to port all the content over, especially content contributed by other people. Also, from regularly checking my logs, I noticed that I would receive a decent amount of traffic for posts I won’t be bringing over. It’s time to move on anyways…

So what’s the end-game of dropping the bot-magnet community forum model and converting to WordPress? I’m hoping that the much better tools for writing and managing the content, plus the simplified presentation will coerce me into writing down some of my thoughts a bit more often. I’m hoping to present those thoughts more clearly and with less distraction from download pages, galleries, forums, etc. No high hopes, just a change of scenery to shake things up a bit.

Enjoy and feel free to leave comments.

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1. A Tiny Milestone For techslaves.org!