Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, folks!Bacteria use IRC
It turns out bacteria are big users of IRC.
All bacteria hang out on two IRC channels. First, all bacteria hang out on #HO+OH+O+O. Second, each species of bacteria has their own, private, channel that only bacteria of that kind hang out on (#species-NAME).
If you aren't sure if two bacteria cells are the same species, do a /whois and see which 2 channels it is on. When a bacteria species has evolved enough to be different than their their parent species, they start using a different species-specific channel.
Now that we know this, it is easier to classify bacteria.
And if you don't believe me, watch this TED.COM talk by Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University.
Survey on professionalism in system administration
I'm doing research about professionalism in our industry. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Please take 5 minutes to answer this simple survey.
Please spread this survey around to your friends, email lists, and twitters. I'll be collecting data for one week.
Thanks!
Make Lists. Not Too Much. Mostly Do.
TM4SA encourages people to make lists. I've met readers that have gone too far. Here's a great article from Grad Hacker about reaching balance:
How to make a product "sysadmin-friendly"?
CHIMIT (2007,2008,2009) is a conference for researchers that study the habits and workflows of IT workers in an effort to find ways to make them more productive (they call this "human factors in IT"). Anyone trying to make my work easier is alright in my book.
At the most recent conference I moderated a panel of system administrators who had been in the audience watching the first day of presentations. It was our turn to "speak up" about what we had seen.
One of the useful things that came out of this panel was a list of "signs that a product was designed to be easy for system administrators to install and maintain."
Here is a short version of the list:
- as a command line interface
- has an API so it can be remotely administered
- has a "silent install" mode so it can be cleanly deployed
- has a config file that is ASCII so it can be stored in a revision control system; and the same file can be input INTO the system.
- has a clearly defined way to do backups and restores.
- has a clean way to monitor for up/down issues (know when there is an emergency) AND vital statistics that relate to scaling/latency (know how to debug slowness) AND historical monitoring (be able to predict far in advance when we need to buy more capacity)
What would you add to this list?
New Jersey IT Community Conference planning
Save this date: May 7-8, 2010 (Fri/Sat)
My local (New Jersey) LOPSA chapter has decided to have their own local mini-conference. There will be speakers, talks, training and "unconference" tracks. We want to have people there that come from all backgrounds: Windows admins, Linux/Unix sysadmins, network admins, storage gurus, and so on.
Interested? Live and/or work in/near New Jersey? Active in a User Group that would like to be involved?
Want to be involved in planning this conference? It is a great way to meet people and network. Our next planning meeting is Monday night (Dec 14, 7pm). Email me (tal at everything sysadmin dot com) for more info.
Update: Original post listed the date wrong... oops! I'm an idiot.
Feeling vindicated
The latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine has an article called The Science of Success which can be summarized:
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people.
I've always felt that it was wrong that ADHD, ADD and hyperactivity are often treated as diseases, disabilities, or defects.
I feel that these are misdisagnosed special skills. What's wrong with a person that is so skilled at multitasking that they can't not do it? What's wrong with a person that is so full of energy that they "just can't sit still". Maybe a child (like myself) is easily distracted in school because school is so damn boring.
In this TED.COM talk, Ken Robinson mentions a girl who couldn't sit still. The doctor didn't put her on pills, he said, "You need to become a dancer". She became one of the most successful dancer/choreographers of all time. We need more doctors like that.
When I was little home computers only ran one program at a time. As a hyperactive child years of using two Commodore 64 computers side-by-side didn't seem so unusual to me. I felt like someone had finally made a computer for me when the Commodore Amiga arrived. It had a mouse, windows, multitasked like no computer before it. I would be on a BBS in one window, writing code in another window, and formatting floppy disks in another. It was awesome.
Last September Dana Blankenhorn wrote in his blog post titled, "Now we know why Ritalin works":
...I believe therapy is still highly recommended. The real answer lies in self-awareness, using ADHD's gifts to concentrate and create, while being aware of its downsides and treating yourself more gently as a result.
We treat children with AHDH wrong. Teachers shouldn't take a "wait and see" attitude when the early warning signs appear. Instead, they should be trained to spot the early warning signs even earlier and then, instead of putting the child on a typical "lowered success criteria" Individualized Education Program, start assigning work that captures their attention. Assign more reading, not less. More homework, not less. Develop habits that take advantage of their special skills. Enhance their life by emphasizing their special abilities. Build their confidence by teaching them dangerous things. My first pocket knife was a seminal event in my life. I gained confidence because I had been trusted with something dangerous. I learned to be careful. I learned responsibility, not TV-simulated "after school special" tripe.
The concept of "lowered success criteria", while well-intentioned, is wrong. A child with ADHD will grow up to be someone that has to work twice as hard to be as successful as other people. Get them used to working twice as hard now. (This will also end any stereotypes of kids trying to get on IEPs because they are lazy. Right?)
I was hyperactive as a child. I couldn't sit still, and other kids picked on me. So I built worlds of my own, first with LEGO, then with computers. As an adult I do that with computers and networks and books. I was lucky to find such an outlet. We should help kids find such outlets.
Now science is showing that there is an evolutionary advantage and a genetic reason to having a certain percentage of society being a little bit different. The problem, it seems, is that society doesn't take advantage of their special skills.
In Time Management for System Administrators I wrote about multitasking and took a big risk by saying that some people are better at it, possibly people with ADHD are just differently skilled.
Now I feel vindicated.
P.S. Another surprising tidbit in "Now we know why Ritalin works" was the author pointing out that he doesn't, "react well to praise. Tell me you like this article and I may just shrug it off. Tell me you hate it and we can have a good argument -- well an argument at any rate. Praise doesn't give me the hit it gives you -- I need a lot of it to feel it.
Do I have a similar problem? Hmm... let me think. During my first performance review in my first job out of college my boss's #1 feedback was: "Learn to take a compliment better. When you get a simple compliment you spend more time refusing it and deferring it than anyone I know." (paraphrased).
Confused, I asked, "So what should I do instead?"
He replied, "How about just saying 'Thank you.'"
I remember being completely shocked by this. It took me years to develop this into a habit. To this day it is an conscious effort to remember to do this.
AT&T
AT&T's De la Vega is getting in trouble for saying that they want to find ways to discourage people from using their data plans. It turns out that AT&T's data network is overloaded and rather than fix the problem, they think punishing their users will help.
As an AT&T customer, it makes me sick.
As an ex-AT&T employee, it just reminds me of why I was so happy to leave.
This is what you get for having salespeople run the company instead of engineers. Engineers would have budgeted for appropriate growth to match customer growth.
AT&T's mindset is that bandwidth is scarce. Every bit is so impossibly costly that it must be measured, counted, monitored, and charged for. On my first day as an employee I had to watch a 30 minute video that did nothing but explain that I can't make a single personal phone call from the office; it looked like it has been made when phone calls were still $3/minute. Don't waste their precious, precious bandwidth.
Bandwidth was expensive for the first 100 years of their history, but it certainly isn't true now. What made the internet great was thinking in terms of plenty, not scarcity.
I remember when "the web" (HTTP) was new. A friend at a different division of AT&T told me their engineers were fearful of HTTP and didn't want it to catch on because their network could never handle such a graphic-rich system (this was 1992 or 1993). I couldn't figure out why they weren't thinking, "Yeah! An opportunity to sell more bandwidth!" If you sell apples, don't you want to freely distribute apple pie recipes? If you sell paint don't you want to encourage everyone to repair their house? Ugh. If AT&T was selling bacon they'd be encouraging everyone to become a vegan.
At the time UUNET (the first commercial ISP) was giving away free Usenet feeds (at this time this was a HUGE amount of bandwidth) and paying people to develop open source Usenet software: all to make it easier for people to need more bandwidth. I thought UUNET's way was much smarter.
It also annoyed me, as an employee, that AT&T kept acting as if Moore's Law didn't exist. This is odd because the Moore revealed this observation during a presentation at AT&T's Bell Labs. Maybe they have to remember that Nielsen's Law makes similar claims about bandwidth. Pushed on by cheaper electronics, bandwidth gets cheaper too.
The biggest innovations in computing have come from brashly using more resources, usually slightly ahead of the supply curve. Textual user interfaces were a "waste of CPU" when first seen by batch computing people. Graphical user interfaces were a "waste of CPU" at first, but now it is what enables billions of people to use computers. RAID was a "waste of disk" but now I would never build a server without it.
The other attitude that I saw at AT&T was sheer shock and surprise that anything changes. "What? We built this thing for our customer base and... there are more customers a year later? They want new features? How could anyone have expected that?" Combine that with an intentional ignorance of Moore's Law and you have a disaster.
A disaster called AT&T.
Yes, AT&T, you have the best selling phone. People use it for data more than voice. The data apps are what make it such a success. Why do I get the feeling that when you negotiated with Apple you thought, "Sure, we'll throw in flat-rate data plans... it isn't like anyone is going to use that stuff!"
Are you still thinking that the internet is a "fad" like CEO Robert Allen?
My AT&T/iPhone contract is over in a few months. Maybe when it ends I should help De la Vega's bandwidth problem by not using his network at all.
P.S. I have a lot of pent up anger bout my AT&T service because twice a day as I take the train from Bloomfield, NJ to New York City and back I am faced with dead-spots at key locations such as the Secaucus transfer station, Watsessing Ave, and others locations along the way. It is frustrating to be on the train and see other passengers using Verizon and T-Mobile able to talk on their phone (and I presume surf the web) at all the points that I can't. It is my twice-a-day reminder to leave AT&T that I could be doing better with a different vendor.
A "tinyurl" service for your domain
Update 2010-01-26: There is a follow-up article to this here
Update 2009-12-20: Enabling the service wasn't working for a few days. It is now working again. It does not require Premier service. Any Google Apps customer should be able to use it.
Where I work we have a service called "go" which is a tinyURL service. The benefit of it being inside our domain is huge. Since "go" (the shortname) is found in our DNS "search path", you can specify "go" links without entering the FQDN.
That means we can enter "go/payroll" in your browser to get to the payroll system and "go/lunchmenu" to find out what's for lunch today. That crazy 70-char long URL that is needed to get to that third-party web-based system we use? I won't name the vendor, but let me just say that I now get there via "go/expense".
Creating a new shortlink is "self-service". You go to "http://go", fill out the form, and you are done. You don't have to open a ticket. You don't have to wait for your system administrator to create a link. A person with little or no web skills can create a "go" link, mention it in an email or on a sign in the hallway and everyone knows what to do. As a result it has transformed the corporate online culture.
Control-freaks may be appalled that we don't have an official librarian that dictates and enforces a naming standard. But just like Flickr "tags" it just works. People self-organize. "Best practices" organically evolve. When there is a name conflict it tends to get resolved by people talking directly to the owner and negotiating. I'm very happy about that.
What really impresses me is that where I work the "go" service was never officially announced. The people that invented it started using it and people noticed. The idea spread virally. Within a month everyone was using it. People thought to just type "go" (alone) in their web browser and were happy to find a web site that explained what to do.
Wish you had this at your company? If you are a Google Apps customer there is a "labs" app that gives you this kind of thing for your users. You can call it "go" or "t" or "shortlink" or whatever you wish. You, as the system administrator, has to enable it (Dashboard, Add more services, Short Links). Update DNS as the system directs you. Configure your DNS search path needs to be properly configured, which it should be already. However, people can specify the FQDN for links if they are traveling. For example http://go/tom-picture works if your DNS search path is correct, and http://go.whatexit.org/tom-picture can be used if it is not.
What about security? Links may be "public" or "private". Private links don't work unless the user has logged into their Apps domain. "Public" links always work. I set up a private link on my personal domain you can see: http://go.whatexit.org/internal-secrets
There are a few more features. A user can edit their own links. The system can suggest a short link name (hash) if you are feeling uncreative. You can transfer ownership of a link to another user of your domain. There is a search capability. It keeps counts on how often a link is used and therefore can tell you which are the most "popular" links.
The administrative control panel has a large number of optional features: Enable the service for multiple domains. If a link is used more than x times, only an administrator can delete it. Restrict the feature to certain IP subnets. Enable API access (yes, it has an API). Restrict who can create new links. Restrict public shortlinks to a specific list (probably a good idea). And many more.
Some features that I wish it had: The search feature searches the shortlink name, not the destination URL. Therefore I can't search to find out if someone has created a shortlink already. It doesn't give a warning if I'm about to create a public link to a private (internal to my domain) URL.
There are two caveats: First, it is a "lab" product (did you know that Google Apps now has "labs" features just like Gmail?). It is implemented in Google App Engine (did you know that Google Apps can now have privately hosted apps?). Secondly, in the name of transparency I should point out that I'm a Google employee and therefore could be biased. However, I've been using this for eons and have been waiting for the day that I'd be able to talk about it publicly. It is so simple and "just works". If you don't use Google Apps, you might consider writing a simple redirector service for your users. (Or enable Google Apps and only use this feature!)
For more information or to add it to your Google Apps domain, here is the home page.
As with all hosted apps, check the privacy policy and terms of service before use.
If you use this feature please let me know (post a comment) and share your experiences with it!
