First Day of the Month Routine (and a tip about Mailman)
Today is the first day of October. If you are using The Cycle system from Time Management for System Administrators don't forget to review your life- and long-term goals and do any other monthly routines.
Being the first of the month, sites running mailing list software like Mailman will be sending you reminder notices about which mailing lists you are subscribed. Take this time to pick a few lists to remove yourself from. What high-volume list have you been filtering off to a folder and ignoring? What low-volume list did you join ages ago and aren't getting any value from? What technology mailing list are you on for sentimental reasons even though you no longer use that technology? Today is a good day to unsubscribe from these mailing lists.
Both The Practice of System and Network Administration and Time Management for System Administrators can be read on-line by subscribers of O'Reilly's Safari Books Online service.
Ready for LISA 2008 in San Diego!
I've registered, I've booked my hotel. Are you going to LISA 2008?
On Thursday I will be doing a 90-minute open Q&A session about Time Management. Feel free to stop by and ask me anything.
On Friday I will be presenting my newest talk titled, "System Administration and The Economics of Plenty". When we start to see how plentiful the world is, we think about our roles as system administrators differently. It affects everything from how we set policy to how we do our jobs.
Register online today!
I hope to see you there!
Tom @ Ohio LinuxFest 2008, Columbus, Ohio, October 10-11, 2008
Tom will be teaching two half-day tutorials: "Time Management for System Administrators" and "Interviewing and Hiring System Administrators". This is a rare opportunity to see these talks presented in the Ohio area. Register soon!With the economy in a down-turn, Time Management is key to being efficient at what you do. With people's hiring budgets being slashed, it is important that the people you do hire are top notch. Both of these tutorials are intended for both the new and experienced system administrator or IT manager.
The sixth annual Ohio LinuxFest will be held on October 10-11, 2008 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hosting authoritative speakers and a large expo, the Ohio LinuxFest welcomes Free and Open Source Software professionals, enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to take part in the event. The Ohio LinuxFest is a free, grassroots conference for the Linux/Open Source Software/Free Software community
The Zipper Machine
I live near the Tappan Zee bridge which crosses the Hudson River (in NYC). The morning traffic is mostly westbound and the afternoon traffic is mostly eastbound. Rather than expanding the bridge they now use "the zipper machine" to move the boundary between the two sides. (the picture here is from RoadsToTheFuture.com's article about its use on I-95 near Richmond, VA)
Watching this machine work is a delight. I've been lucky enough to see it three times. It only takes 20 minutes to move a mile of barrier so seeing it in action has a low probability.
I have to imagine the person that first proposed creating this device was thought to be crazy. I suppose they had to fight their way through nay-sayers in their company until someone believed them. However, now that the machine exists it just seems like a natual thing to do.
Every time I see this machine I think it makes a great analogy for IT projects. The more audacious an IT project is, the more crazy it looks. After it is complete and people are benefitting from it everyone thinks it is obvious.
