ramblings of a {sys,net}admin…

Yay, new MacBook!

Early last week I mentioned to $boss that I’d like to have a MacBook. I’d already been looking at them and have been thinking about getting one. I made a joking remark about $work getting one for me, made a half-hearted sales pitch (”I know lots of other people in the same role who have one and they say {they love them|it makes them more productive|etc.}”). That was pretty much the end of the discussion; I never expected anything further to come of it.

Thursday morning I’m sitting in my office working on who knows what and I get an e-mail from $boss:

Can you please “shop around” for what you want and send me the link?

Hell yes, I can! I surfed around on the Apple Education Store site for a while, explored the options, and came up with the following: MacBook 13-inch (White), 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2×512MB, 250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm, Superdrive 8x (DVD+/-R DL/DVD+/-RW/CD-RW), Apple Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter. 4GB of RAM will be ordered from the vendor that we always purchase RAM from ($130 there vs. $765 at Apple).

I’ll go ahead and justify my choice, since I’ve already been asked about it more than once. For a few years, I carried around a Dell with a 15.1″ screen. After that, I sometimes carried a Toshiba with an even larger screen. Both are much heavier than the MacBook. To be honest, I wanted something small and truly “portable”, so I chose the MacBook over the MacBook Pro. I also don’t need the higher graphics capability of the MBP. The 2.2GHz C2D is slightly faster than my primary workstation (WinXP) and the 4GB of RAM will be double what’s in it as well. My goal was to replace the XP box completely with this MacBook. I put together a “Web Proposal” on Apple’s site and sent it off to $boss.

Friday morning $boss approves it and signs a purchase order. At this point, there’d probably be about a two- to three-week delay because the purchase order actually made it around, got signed by everybody who needed to sign it, and then made it back to our A/P department to actually get ordered. By this point, I was anxious and excited and decided to take matters into my own hand. I took the PO and physically marched my way down to the office of the $boss of my $boss, walked in and said “Hey, sign this PO for me.” She signed it and asked what I was getting. I told her and explained that I was in a hurry to get it, which is why I brought the PO down for her signature. She says “Can’t you just go to the Apple Store and get it?” We looked at each other for a few moments then walked together to the office of the guy who’s over all the finance stuff. (Coincidentally enough, one of his employees also needed to sign the PO, so I got him to sign instead while I was there.) He explained that I couldn’t just go to the Apple Store and buy it with a credit card for a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with. That idea shot down, I walked the PO over to Purchasing and headed back to my own office.

A few moments later, I’m on the phone with the Apple Education Store, company credit card in hand, placing my order. A few minutes after that, the order is completed and in progress. w00t!

Expedited Shipping

Friday evening after I get home from $work, I’m looking up the order on apple.com. It shows that “Standard Shipping” was included in the order and lists two dates. I’m informed that the MacBook should ship between December 19-21 and arrive December 24-27. THAT’S NOT QUICK ENOUGH! I, of course, want it now. I call the Apple Education Store back. I finally get connected to a guy named Paul Flowers. I explain to him that I placed the order earlier and I want to change the shipping on it. He says “no problem” and asks how I want it shipped. I finally settle on “Overnight”. =)

The shipping date won’t change; the laptop will still be shipped anywhere from December 19-21 because it has to be “customized” (250GB SATA drive instead of the standard 120GB). Okay, I can deal with that. Sorta. Whenever it does ship, I should have it the next day. I’m really hoping that it arrives by Friday, since after Friday we’re going to be closed until Wednesday. So unless I want to camp out in our Shipping & Receiving department and wait for UPS to show up, I’ll be out of luck. PLEASE let it get here by Friday!

Let it snow…

Originally uploaded by jeremygaddis

Lack of planning on your part…

Originally uploaded by jeremygaddis

Trying something new

Originally uploaded by jeremygaddis

Just testing this “take a picture on the Blackberry, email it to Flickr, and have it automatically posted on my blog” thing…

Jeremy L. Gaddis

We all know the impact that Ham radio can have in emergencies, but that often slips by the public and the authorities. Not so in Oregon, where a day after getting inundated with torrential rains and winds and suffering from the usual calamities those cause, Oregon’s Governor called the local Ham radio operators heroes. When discussing how the storm affected communications, the governor stated: “I’m going to tell you who the heroes were from the very beginning of this…the ham radio operators.” Kudos to the Oregon Ham operators for helping out in a bad situation, and getting the recognition they deserve.

[ Click here to continue reading… ]

You have to hope that this study is flawed, but the evidence is irrefutable. Several months ago, scientists at Europe’s annual human reproduction conference suggested that the results of a recent analysis revealed the presence of female hormones in beer, and suggested that men should take a look at their beer consumption. The theory is that drinking beer makes men turn into women.

To test the theory, 100 men were each fed six pints of beer within a one-hour period. It was then observed that 100 percent of the men gained weight, talked excessively without making sense, became overly emotional, couldn’t drive, failed to think rationally, argued over nothing, had to sit down while urinating, couldn’t perform sexually, and refused to apologize when wrong.

No further testing is planned.

Just a heads up… I moved this web site to a new server this evening. I think I got everything straightened out and working properly, but if you happen to find some broken links or other issues, please do leave a comment and let me know so that I can get it fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Recently, I have been — often without realizing it at the time — doing a lot of reflection and reassessment about myself. Only during the last few days have I realized what I was doing. I am now officially committing myself to do some of the things I’ve been meaning to for quite a while as well as “getting my priorities straight”.

Getting organized is at the top of my list. For as long as I can remember, I have always been one to write things down and/or “make lists”. I usually have so many things going on in both my private and work lives that I have to — if I don’t, I’ll forget things. I’m also guilty of using my Inbox as a task list, which is a bad thing. For the past year and a half or so, I have gotten fairly involved with “Getting Things Done“. “GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks. What distinguishes GTD from other time- or action-management systems is the idea of grouping tasks by the context (defined as a place or set of available resources) in which they are to be performed.” (–Wikipedia).

About the same time I started getting involved with the GTD methodology, I picked up a copy of “Time Management for System Administrators” by Thomas A. Limoncelli. I was able to relate tremendously to the book — I’m a system administrator as was Mr. Limoncelli. The book outlined the unique aspects of a sysadmin’s daily work life and ways for a syadmin to become better organized. “Time Management for System Administrators” was the first book I’ve read cover-to-cover in a number of years. The things it talked about really hit home and I was determined to put them into practice. And I did. For a while. Then I quit.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop, it just happened slowly over time. Over the last week I’ve really been devoting myself to becoming better organized and most of that centers around GTD. I’ve spent countless hours trying out and evaluating a number of online, web-based systems that are designed around GTD: Vitalist (I have a premium account), Toodledo, and Remember the Milk (RTM). I also took the time to install Tracks on a test box at work, but wasn’t all that happy with it. I think I’ve finally decided on RTM — both for its features and because it has a nice API. I currently have 42 tasks entered into RTM, 30 of which are active (i.e. “uncompleted”). I currently have RTM set up to send me a once-per-day reminder e-mail of all my tasks due that day, and I get notifications via Twitter as well. If I can just stick with it, I think it’ll help tremendously.

Continuing my education is the next thing on my list. I currently have somewhere around 69 credit hours completed and have decided I want to continue my education. I’ve decided on pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology from Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio (home of the Ohio Linuxfest). I’ve spoken to the folks there and every one of my 69 credits will transfer, which is awesome! For the classes I have to complete, a number of them can be taken at my local Community College and Franklin will give me credit towards the B.S. The remainder have to be completed through Franklin, of course. I know firsthand that working full-time and attending school part-time is not the easiest thing in the world to do — especially when I also teach and volunteer for some non-profits in my “spare” time. It will simply come down to being able to effectively managing my time, which goes back to GTD (above). It might be a little on the optimistic side, but I’m confident that I can complete the B.S. in three years. I’ve reviewed the requirements, completed all the necessary paperwork, and have a telephone appointment with a “Student Services Associate” at 2pm on Tuesday to finish things up. At that time, I’ll get signed up for the first course, PF321, “Learning Strategies”. I’ll begin in January.

Obviously, my job is still a priority of mine as well. I don’t spend every waking moment of my “free time” VPN’d in and working on things like I used to, but I still love my job and (a majority of) the people I work with. Building on my skillset is something that I want to continue doing as well, to benefit both myself and my employer. In that regard, I have plans to also add to the list of certifications that I have and will probably start by completing the requirements of the MCSA (I’m already an MCP).

I’ve also made a conscious decision to pay off some of my debt. I don’t have a lot of it, but I usually look at my bills, see what the minimum payment is, double it and round off. I could pay things off a lot faster than I have been — it’s just a matter of doing it, which hasn’t really been a priority for me. That said, I’ve decided to cut down on some of “leisure activities” and put the money towards the debt. Tuition at Franklin will be much higher than at the local Community College (where my tuition is paid for), so that’s another bill I’ll have that I don’t have now. I put together a “Net Worth Worksheet” and have set some pretty realistic goals with regard to my finances. Christmas is getting close, though, and I always blow lots of money this time of the year… maybe I’ll wait until January to start on this. =)

Oh, and I sold my motorcycle too. I’ll miss it, but to be quite honest, I’d probably just end up getting killed on the damn thing. That wouldn’t really be good.

Aside from all of this, I have took the time to take some goals that I’ve had (many of them for years) and put them down on paper where I can review it often. Keeping those sorts of things fresh in my mind is the only way to keep myself motivated towards completing them. The months ahead will definitely be interesting, that’s for sure…

A few weeks ago, I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an applications such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.” (–Wikipedia).

If you’re reading this on my web site (as opposed to reading my RSS feed or my Facebook notes), you’ll notice a section in the top right entitled “Jeremy is…”. The items that are underneath it come from my updates to Twitter.

Normally I wouldn’t spend much time updated some web site what the latest details of what I’m doing, but Twitter has made this exceptionally easy via their Twitter API. By using the API, third parties can write their own applications to interact with the Twitter service. Shortly after signing up, I wrote my own “client” that would update my Twitter status from the Linux shell. It was easy and useful, but meant I had to stay logged into a Linux box to quickly and easily do updates. Eventually, I found OutTwit and Twitterfox.

“OutTwit is a add-in for Microsoft Outlook with lets you send and receive tweeter messages (tweets) without leaving Outlook.” I work in I.T. and I have Outlook running 24/7, both at home and at work. OutTwit integrates with Outlook by putting a small “toolbar” on the main Outlook interface. Updating my Twitter status is simply a matter of entering my update in the textbox and hitting enter. It’s very quick and easy which means, of course, that I’m more likely to update my status at random times. You can also choose to receive your friends’ updates in your Inbox as e-mail messages, though I chose to turn that option off.

“TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets of Twitter.” By installing the extension, you also get quick access to update your own status as well as being notified of your friends’ updates as well.

If you are a “twitterer”, like me, and you have either Outlook or Firefox running most of the time, definitely check ‘em out.

Perhaps a year or so ago, I discovered the book “Time Management for System Administrators” and, after reading just a few pages, could definitely relate. It is the first book that I read cover to cover in the last several years. Newly motivated, I began implementing some of the things that Limoncelli wrote about.

Now, several months later, I find myself again in the same spot. My interest in “Getting Things Done” seems to come and go. Having recently taken the time to sit down, evaluate a number of things in my life, and making some decisions, I know that I will have even less time in the near future to get done all of the things I need to do. It is time, once again, for me to focus on getting organized and making the most efficient use of my time.

One thing that I remember from “Time Management for System Administrators” was unsubscribing from mailing lists. Like most other sysadmins, I’m a member of a large number of mailing lists, both at work and at home (though there’s a very blurry line between the two). At work, there’s only a few mailing lists I could really remove myself from without affecting my job (and those are very low traffic as well). My “personal” e-mail address is subscribed to a number of mailing lists, however — I intentionally keep my work address off of “non-work” mailing lists (even though some of them are definitely related to work: security lists, “new version” announcements, etc.).

A good example would be the Fedora Project mailing lists. I’m a Fedora Ambassador but, to be quite honest, I don’t really do much in that regard. I set up a Fedora booth at the IU Linuxfest and have mailed out a number of Fedora CDs and DVDs as a part of the Fedora Free Media Program. I promote and use Fedora in the courses that I teach and to the other folks who have to work around me. Other than that, however, I don’t do much else and yet I am still subscribed to a number of mailing lists related to this, even though I delete probably 75% of the e-mails from those lists without even reading them. In an effort to save a few moments out of my day, therefore, I just unsubscribed from every “non-essential” Fedora mailing list.

This is nothing against Fedora, of course. It’s simply a matter of time (literally!). Fedora just happens to stick out as the majority of e-mail to my “personal” account is from those lists. There are a number of other lists that I’m on that I don’t really need to be, and those will be going away as well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a number of unsubscribe requests to confirm.