Today is the 14th annual celebration of System Administrator Appreciation Day, as you probably know. I've talked about it a lot on this blog, there are all kinds of events going on, and whenever people have lamented the fact that there wasn't an event in their area, my answer was universally, "start one!" A lot […]

I've been under the weather, so this is something that I should have published a couple of weeks ago but didn't. Although failure on my part doesn't constitute an emergency on yours, in this case, quick action will benefit you, so read fast. I had planned on going to PuppetConf in San Francisco this year, […]

Oh, it's going to be one of these days… The director of the NSA announced that the secretive intelligence agency plans to prevent future security breaches by replacing the position once held by whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden with computers. It's a case of t-shirt turns to reality, I see. OK. With all […]

I'm very happy to announce that the winners of the PuppetConf passes are Brett Inman and Matthew Barr Congratulations guys! I have extended to them the offer of hosting a review, if they feel like writing it. I'm pretty bummed that I can't go, so I hope that they have fun and return with tons […]

A year in, and I'm still not used to the oddities of how the academic environment works. It is currently the end of August, and summer break is nearly over. Early this coming week is "Move In", when all of the students descend upon Boston and move back into their dorms after a summer full […]

I remember my first Ohio Linux Fest like it was yesterday. Well, it's been a while, so maybe like it was last week. Anyway, it was back in 2006, and I had a really good time. The conference is free to attend, it has nationwide draw, and the content is awesome. The only time I […]

Well, I'm officially a member of the LOPSA Board of Directors now. And it's entirely thanks to you all. Just as a reminder (and I'm sure that this particular warning will get tiresome, but I'm going to include it for a while until it's rote), I am not speaking for LOPSA when I write about […]

TechTarget content is either really good or really bad. In the cases of great content, it's because of great authors like Mike Laverick or Scott D Lowe. Then there are the swing-and-a-miss type articles, which I'm linking to now in order call attention to the fact that it pays to be discerning. There's a quiz […]

The profession of system administration is maturing. Slowly, yes, but even over the past ten years, I can see progress from where we were. We might not all agree on the answers, but we can at least agree on some of the problems, and that's a good thing. There is an excellent Google Group called […]

There are times I feel like I'm still a fish out of water here. I'm getting better, but the occasional event occurs that throws me for a loop because the error patterns here don't always match the error patterns that I'm used to in small business. Today, for instance, we had a student come in […]

It's times like this that I'm jealous I'm not back in Columbus. The Columbus LOPSA Chapter that I helped start is still going strong, and on September 26th, they're celebrating their 2nd anniversary with a party at the 16bit Bar and Arcade. Yes, it's a bar. And an arcade. It's like, everything you ever dreamed […]

Did you all know I had a blog? I mean, you wouldn't be able to tell it from the number of posts lately, but it's still here! Apologies for the lack of updates, if you're one of the people who reads frequently, but I've got a lot of pots on the stove at the moment. […]

Once more into the breach... I'm doing the USENIX Blog thing again this year at LISA, and my fellow Blog Team member Ben Cotton decided to interview me! How fun. You can read it on the USENIX Blog. Make sure to talk to your boss about coming to LISA this year, because you don't want […]

Almost exactly a year ago, I mentioned that Craig Constantine, LOPSA member and volunteer, was starting a sysadmin group in the LeHigh Valley, near Allentown, PA. Because of personal time issues, Craig didn't get a chance to launch, although he had interest. I'm happy to let you know that once again, he's launching the LeHigh […]

LISA is extending the Early Bird discount for a week. It's now lasting until October 22nd, and for the first time in my memory, the hotel block room rate is also being extended. So, it strikes me that a lot of people don't have any transparency into pricing on conferences or why things like "Early […]