The Comms Room

HopelessN00b

00:07

Hmm. What's the plan for use case, as in how beefy or power-conservative do the specs need to be to get the job done?

I saw something not too long ago with a single core atom, some piddly amount of RAM and the rest of what you need for about ~400, IIRC, but didn't get it because it didn't have nearly enough RAM or CPU power for what we needed to do with it... I'll see if I can find it.

Zoredache

It basically just a linux firewall with squid running.

The Internet connection is broadband (40-50MB) there will be two internal networks.

Right now I have some 7 year old Dell desktops performing the task.

HopelessN00b

Oh, might work for that... still digging through old internet history... some pervert's been downloading a lot of porn from this machine, but that's not what you're looking for...

Zoredache

And the hard drives have been dieing in them, and it is time to upgrade, and preferably go with something a bit more professional.

HopelessN00b

Ah, I think it was a branded version of this guy I was thinking of... now to find the retailer selling it...

Andrew

00:23

@Zoredache we run pfsense in esxi, works OK

HopelessN00b

Oop, sorry @Zordache , out of stock and up in price to over $600. Nevermind...

Zoredache

@Andrew This is basically a router/firewall/filter for our remote offices, that have no local servers, so ESXi won't really help me there.

@HopelessN00b what was the price? I am not seeing it on the web site.

HopelessN00b

@Zoredache They're just the manufacturer, they sell it to OEMs in large-quantity batches to brand it, maybe throw some software and purty stickers on it, and resell it at a markup. Reseller that quoted me $449 a unit couple months back is now saying out of stock and up to $649 a unit. Must be a popular little box.

Zoredache

Who was the reseller?

HopelessN00b

Lemme pull that tab back up....

Zoredache

00:31

There are a couple boxes at axiomtek.com that look like they could work for me, if I can find someone with good pricing.

HopelessN00b

"Avnet PartBuilder" @ embeddedsoftwarestore.com

Dunno if they're actually any good or what their rep is... one of the helper monkeys on helldesk ended up pointing me at them after stupidly commenting that he was bored one day.

Alright, time for the weekly FireFox shutdown... why must having 100 tabs open for a week bring the damn browser to a painful crawl? It's only using 800 meg of RAM... c'mon, there's a whole 5,549 megs free, you dumb app! grumble

Zoredache

@HopelessN00b, anyway, thanks.

Andrew

@Zoredache >2 NICs is the hard part of your spec, lots of "industrial" stuff around with 1 or 2

including VIA x86

makes me wonder if the "no shopping!" scope could be adjusted to allow "manufacturers for obscure stuff"

HopelessN00b

@Andrew yup, embedded/appliance boxes with only 2 Gb NICs are easy to find cheap... but also won't work well as a firewall spanning two networks. :)

Journeyman Geek

01:12

@Andrew: the obscure stuff rule was mooted by Atwood at some point

but more often, chat is what people use for it

@HopelessN00b : see if you can get a jetway motherboard - they have dual lan, atom based.

HopelessN00b

Yeah, chat's also good for the types of questions that will only ever need to be asked once as well, like "how can I discretely dispose of a body created as a byproduct of SA-rage from a 5th floor office building in Colu..." I've said too much already, nevermind.

Journeyman Geek

@HopelessN00b: mechanical or 'organic'?

;p

HopelessN00b

It was @Zoredache asking about such a device, not me.

And organic. Mechanical bodies don't attract life sentences. :o

Journeyman Geek

@HopelessN00b: hmm, lots of bleach, and acetone for the big chunky bits

getting rid of the acetone is a bit tricky tho

my bad, just woke up ;p

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek Common misconception. Lye's much better. And use a large plastic tub/container you can burn, or something porcelain, like a bathtub. Bath tub's best because the evidence washes away down the drain.

Journeyman Geek

01:18

@HopelessN00b: hmm, and easier to get rid of

Not that I have needed to get rid of any bodies untracably that i can speak of.

HopelessN00b

Yeah, the trick is usually carriying 100+ pounds of deadweight from the... "incident site" to the... "lye processing site" discretely, without a bunch of cops screaming and pointing guns at you.

@JourneymanGeek Well, better to know and not need than find yourself needing to, and not knowing, right?

Journeyman Geek

Yup

tho here, we've had a spate of people killing themselves in a specific spot

'It was suicide. He fell out of a 3rd story window. Twice.'

(Tho, that said, I've seen the aftermath of someone taking a jump off a fairly high window, through a metal roof. NOT pretty)

HopelessN00b

Yeah, that's a much better approach if you can pull it off. Making it look like suicide, I mean. Far less work and mess to clean up, and carrying of heavy ~~corpses~~ objects...

Adrian

01:35

Either of you fine gents have any recommendations for personal shared hosting?

Michael Hampton

You're a sysadmin. Act like it.

You will HATE shared hosting.

Adrian

I've had shared hosting for 15+ years. Of course I hate it. If I wanted to fsck around with managing my own hosting I would.

WesleyDavid

@Adrian Siteground was always good to me.

Any special needs like python or ruby?

Or interested in a VPS with a control panel? I know a decent VPS provider for $15, $20 bucks.

Michael Hampton

That's about the cost of an EC2 micro.

Adrian

@WesleyDavid Nope. PHP and MySQL.

That or just get an EC2 Micro.

Might as well pick up some familiarity with CLOUD COMPUTING providers

Michael Hampton

01:44

And hey, it's free for a year. Or it was.

Yep, still free.

Adrian

Played the Terrence & Phillip South Park scene 'Uncle Fscker' for the girlfriend last night. Apparently she'd never seen that before...

Journeyman Geek

lol

Mark Henderson

@Adrian God I haven't seen that in 10 years

Journeyman Geek

/me isn't sure how shared hosting is easier than VPS, but I have a bias ;p

Well, other than setting up mail, assuming you're fine with really outdated webclients

Adrian

@MarkHenderson She was appalled to discover that her co-worker who's my age even remembered the character names and could sing the song upon prompting.

Mark Henderson

01:51

@Adrian If I had a listen-to I'm sure it would come back to me pretty quick smart

Michael Hampton

You need headphones at work.

Mark Henderson

@MichaelHampton I actually have some in my bag

Off to youtube!

Michael Hampton

Oh, you also need to bypass the web filters.

Journeyman Geek

sigh

Parents are trying to move furniture

Mark Henderson

You're a cocksucking asslicking uncle fucker

Journeyman Geek

01:54

They can yell across the apartment for silly things, but not stuff I can help with

Adrian

@JourneymanGeek ugh. My condolences. My parents tried to talk me into moving in with them if they got a house up here. Yeah, No.

Mark Henderson

Kyle's mum is a big fat bitch the biggest bitch in the whole wide world <- Now that song I remember without needing to listen to

Journeyman Geek

@Adrian: they're at the age where they're complaining about old age pains, yet are sprightly enough to try to move a steel filing cabinet without assistance ;p

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson The prepared SA always has at least one pair in his go-bag. I have two (bluetooth), so I don't have to wait for charging time. I could literally never go a minute at the office having to actually hear anything the other employees say.

Adrian

@JourneymanGeek Hate to break it to you, that starts at 35.

Journeyman Geek

01:58

@Adrian: Oh, I'm smart enough to ask for help when I need to ;p

HopelessN00b

@Adrian Or, even earlier... for some pathetic physical specimens... sigh :(

Adrian

@JourneymanGeek We also start to get crotchety in our mid 30s.

Journeyman Geek

lol

mid 30s?

I'm crochety now

HopelessN00b

Again, earlier...

Journeyman Geek

I also have a bad ankle (thanks to the army)

HopelessN00b

02:00

Since 20, I've been complaining that I can't drink, fuck, or do most anything physical like I could when I was 16. sigh

Journeyman Geek

lol

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Just be glad that you were fucking before the age of 20 :P

Journeyman Geek

^ that

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson I guess. It still counts as "fucking" if it's not consensual, right? :o

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Your hand doesn't count

HopelessN00b

02:01

@MarkHenderson Right, I'm aware that "fucking yourself" is not the same thing as "fucking."

...though both things can be fucking painful.

Mark Henderson

More painful than having sex is not having sex and trying to walk away without wincing

Journeyman Geek

lol

Mark Henderson

Alhough, if you're having pains whilst having sex, I'd say you're doing it wrong

Michael Hampton

Or did it wrong in the past.

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson or, since we're talking about being 16, her dad woke up and discovered the two of you.

Journeyman Geek

02:04

Are we talking picking shotgun pellets out yer arse, or just a simple beating? ;p

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Now if I caught my 16 year old daughter doing a dude, I'd be more upset with her than him. Everyone knows men can't keep it in their pants if it's on offer

HopelessN00b

I agree, and have other thoughts on the matter to... defend.... my actions, but as I recall, that was not the time to be initiating dialogue on the matter.

Journeyman Geek

@HopelessN00b: Quite simply? People do stupid things on the spir of the moment ;p

HopelessN00b

More a time to zip up and run in a hurry, and be damn sure to clear the zipper before either.

@JourneymanGeek Not that I'm saying it was stupid, but a fifth of Southern Comfort also encourages stupid behavior.

Journeyman Geek

lol

Mark Henderson

02:07

@HopelessN00b Why do I have this suspicion that you're from the south and this girl was your cousin?

Journeyman Geek

Well, my one time of stupid unplanned behaviour, I was probably sober and old enough to know better.

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Put it in the wrong hole? Condolances my friend

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Pfft. I'm from Canada. I was the sexy foreigner with an exotic accent... and she... well, was willing to let me.

Journeyman Geek

And I should probably delete most of that ;p

Mark Henderson

:6131288 I seem to remember someone else in here dating a [redacted], but I don't remember who

HopelessN00b

02:09

Well, at least you got dumped before the [redacted] change, right? Things could be worse. :o

Journeyman Geek

@HopelessN00b: I suppose ;p

also, person was an ass

and we BOTH remember it being the other person's fault

(Life has a unreliable narrator)

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek That's every breakup.

Journeyman Geek

and this, indirectly, is why I'm a 28 year old still in school

oh, the breakup was definately the ex's fault

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek That's what she said too, though. :p

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Uh yeah I'd say that becoming a dude puts the ball 100% in their court

Journeyman Geek

02:11

Other ex was mine

/me was far too snarky/cheeky and the poor dear couldn't handle it ;p

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Thats' like saying "My cock was so huge that she decided that she couldn't take it and she left me"

In other words, stop showing off

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: more like, I DO have to work on my social skills

Mark Henderson

Maybe that's why my brother-in-law has never had a gf. I would be terrified if someone tried to put something that big inside me

@JourneymanGeek Well you've had at least two girlfriends, you're doing better than some

HopelessN00b

Well, there's your problem, right there. How can you expect to ever be successful with the opposite sex (or same sex, if one rolls that way) while showing **any** introspection or willingness to accept blame whatsoever?

That's a recipe for perpetual virginity.

Journeyman Geek

lol

@HopelessN00b: more like, I'm trying to learn from old fuckups

Mark Henderson

02:13

@HopelessN00b Slap a ring on it and prepare yourself for the most uncomfortable 30 minutes on your wedding night ever

Adrian

@MarkHenderson having multiple GFs is somewhat overrated.

Mark Henderson

@Adrian In parallel or serial?

HopelessN00b

either.

both.

all of the above.

Journeyman Geek

@Adrian: Well, if you're lucky enough to run into the one ;p

Adrian

@MarkHenderson parallel. Had two ladyfriends in parallel with a 3rd flirting around the edges at one point a year or so ago.

Journeyman Geek

02:14

right now though, the hell with relationships. I have a BSC to get ;p

o0

Adrian

Happily settled in with the best one now though.

Journeyman Geek

@Adrian: thats either a recipie for a 3some or trouble.

Mark Henderson

@Adrian Well that's just dumb

Journeyman Geek

probably both

Adrian

@MarkHenderson It worked ok. A wild one. One to relax with. And another one to go dancing with.

Eventually settled on the middle one after the dancing one went psycho

HopelessN00b

02:17

@MarkHenderson I dunno about that. Lotta people these days are "dating" multiple other people, and don't care that the other person is *also* slutting it up.

Doesn't bother me. "You're willing to let me me stick in you? Great, couldn't care less what else you do." On a completely unrelated note, I wonder if I should get this rash looked at...

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Yeah that last part :p I'm very concerned who else is sticking it in her if I'm going to be doing it. I don't want any weird rashes

I'm very much into monogamy. Old fashioned? Maybe, but it's worked for me and it's worked for thousands of years before me

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson They're not that bad. The rashes usually clear up pretty quick with a little cream or antibiotics. It's the warts and weird, spontaneous genital growths you need to watch out for.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Isn't all sex prefixed by spontaneous genital growths?

HopelessN00b

Predicated on the [unfounded] assumption that sexual monogamy has ever "worked" or been the de facto standard.

But if works for you, great. Wish I could make it work for me, in all honesty.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b It's really quite easy. Don't put it in another girl until you're finished putting it in the first one. Done.

HopelessN00b

02:23

@MarkHenderson Maybe in Australia, but around these parts, I'm getting the hell outta there ASAP if her genitals start ballooning up spontaneously before sex. :p

@MarkHenderson Oh, well, I do that, then. Never had a threesome... though am not opposed to the idea, like you seem to be. :o

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Ok so I think you've taken me a little bit too literally

HopelessN00b

Well, I do that a lot when I prefer an alternate interpretation, yeah.

It drives a few of my wives crazy, but the other two don't seem to mind it much.

ewwhite

Looked at what I found on the street when I went to the ATM... instagram.com/p/Pf3HS6zCqb

Chris S

@ewwhite Must have needed lunch money.

ewwhite

Exactly. This was 8:30pm on the nightclub/bar strip I. Greenwich Village...

Andrew

02:34

it is slightly annoying that ATMs only dispense 20s and 50s. What if I want a 10 or a 5?

ewwhite

New York is very good at making me feel poor...

Journeyman Geek

lol

Most local ATMs only dispense 50s here

(that said, mom's having trouble cause dad drew a 1000 dollar note from the bank. And then we have 10K dollar notes...)

Chris S

@Andrew Who uses cash unless you're going to the club? In which case, the ATM should dispense $1s and $5s.

ewwhite

Most of the restaurants in this neighborhood are cash-only. I also took out $100...

Andrew

@ChrisS our $1s are coins.

and they are bigger than the $2 coins.

Chris S

02:36

@Andrew Pretty hard to slip those into a g-string, isn't it?

Andrew

and they are worth more than yours!

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite I have more than that in my bank account at the moment, but that's because we just sold our apartment

So you can't always judge a person by their ATM receipt :p

ewwhite

Coins seem to make more sense. I have to spend a moment getting used to euros every time I travel...

Journeyman Geek

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… ;p

Chris S

@MarkHenderson How do you sell an apartment? Condo or something?

We should dump the $1 bill, we have a $1 coin already. We should also dump the 1¢, 5¢, and 10¢. Keep the 25¢ for now.

Mark Henderson

02:38

@ChrisS I'm not sure what you mean. We bought it a few years ago. renovated it. Sold it.

ewwhite

I have savings, too... But my checking account is just a subset. E.g. I may only need 10k liquid... Not $180k...

Andrew

@JourneymanGeek why are they all teh same aspect ratio????

Chris S

We used to have a 0.5¢ coin a long time ago. They stopped making it when it was worth about 11¢ in today's money.

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite Did you keep the receipt? You should just write your phone numebr on the back of it next time you pick up a chick

3

Chris S

@ewwhite Not to mention you checking account isn't returning even minimal interest on that money.

ewwhite

02:39

Good idea... I left it where it was, though...

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite Ah I see. There's no real distinction about that here, you just have "an account" and it does everything. ATM, savings, offset, etc

Chris S

@JourneymanGeek I HATE money that's different sizes.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS Ours sits in an offset account. You can't get a better investment than knocking a few grand of 7% interest off your mortgage

Andrew

@ChrisS ours are same height, different width: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Chris S

@MarkHenderson Ah; we don't have those here. Thank you US Government-Grade Regulation.

ewwhite

02:41

@chriss, but blind people can differentiate between bills better when they are different sizes...

Chris S

@Andrew Ok; only half as evil.

Andrew

I have to admit that the holographic printing on the Swiss Franc was cool though

Chris S

@ewwhite 1. Currency reader machines 2. You're lucky the person is paying at all, you can't seem them walking off without paying or whatnot. 3. Who uses cash on a regular basis anymore?

Anyone else think the iPhone 5 is what the 4S should have been??

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS NFC thankyouverymuch. Contactless signatureless pinless payments for < $100

@ChrisS I find the iPhone 5 disappointing

Yay it's a slightly taller iPhone! </sarcasm>

Chris S

@MarkHenderson I didn't hear the details of the NFC, I thought they were doing the same thing as Google with the PIN for some reason.

Mark Henderson

02:49

@ChrisS iPhone 5 has no NFC. Very disappointing; it's abuot the only thing I want

Chris S

@MarkHenderson Oh; well that's why I didn't hear the details =]

Mark Henderson

The only time I actually put my CC inside a terminal is when I do a large grocery shop. Everything else is PayPass/PayWave

Chris S

Did you see the new TLS problem?

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS I did. I also didn't understand it :p

Chris S

I know IBM was talking about heuristic analysis of data properties a couple years ago, surprised it took this long.

@MarkHenderson The compression used in TLS is pretty simple. So let's say you've got a malicious script on your computer, nothing "virus" worthy...

It wants to know something that's in the headers of requests to/from a server, but for whatever reason it doesn't have access.

Well it sends a chunk of known data followed by unknown data.

So lets's say the header is Header: 1234

Mark Henderson

02:53

Yep

Chris S

I send Header: 8765

The size will be 5 bytes, one for each number and one for "Header :"

Mark Henderson

Yep

Chris S

Then I send Header: 1678, and it's comes out as 4 Bytes, 3 "wrong" numbers and the rest got compressed as a single chunk because it appears in the header.

Mark Henderson

Ahhhhh

Chris S

Then I send Header: 1267 and now it's down to 3 Bytes compressed. I must have 1 byte of back-reference and 2 "wrong" number.

It's actually more complicated than that; but you get the idea.

Mark Henderson

02:55

Interesting

I assume that to do anything particularly useful with it though would be a long process?

Chris S

Yeah; you have to be targeting something specific. The suggested use right now is Cookie IDs, which are "relatively" short and usually identify your session as being authenticated, like to your bank...

HopelessN00b

Not all apartments are rentals, especially in big or dense cities, just like not all houses are resided in by the owners.

That said, If @MarkHenderson managed to sell an apartment he didn't own for six figures, I'd like to be read in on the secret myself. :)

Chris S

@HopelessN00b Around here, an "apartment" that you own/sell/etc is called a "Condo".

HopelessN00b

@ChrisS Ah, just another of the many deficiencies resultant from living in Michigan. :o (Said the guy who went to OSU)

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS So those 10,000-digit cookie session ID's that do the rounds on TheDailyWTF are now valid? :P

Chris S

03:01

@MarkHenderson That'd still be only 100,000 operations max (50,000 on account of Birthday) if they're decimal. How long does it take to send that make packets?

Mark Henderson

Hmmmmm

So what's the solution?

Don't use compression on TLS sessions?

Chris S

Their suggestion right now is to disable Compression

Yikes... I'm way braindead tonight.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS I was gunna say, pre-edit, disabling TLS seems like it might be even worse ;)

Chris S

I just finished the movie Chronicle, it was much better than I expected.

ewwhite

@ChrisS @HopelessN00b I'm still trying to understand who buys in NY.

Mark Henderson

03:06

@ChrisS Saw it a few months ago, I felt the same way. Went in not expecting much

But for a teenage movie, not nearly enough boobs

Journeyman Geek

@ChrisS easier to tell what money it is ;p

Mark Henderson

As in, there was a hot chick who had boobs but you never get to see them

Chris S

@MarkHenderson I thought the exact same thing.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Anyone with a spare million or so burning a hole in their pocket, I think.

Chris S

That and the ending was more "realistic" than I was hoping for... Weird word to use for that sort of movie.

ewwhite

03:07

@HopelessN00b there's an $8 million loft in the building next door to my office. It sold last week.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS In that tthey all end up dead? I agree :p

Chris S

@MarkHenderson The one guy didn't die...

And I never saw his gild get axed, but he left her behind for Tibet?!

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Yeah, but damn... I thought you were talking about "normal" apartments. Not apartments with more square footage than my house, in an exclusive building at a great location in the city.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b There's a penthouse there that's twice as much...

but for normal places in the city, $500k+ is a starting point, it seems.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Yeah, and from the little I've seen of the housing market out there, it seems that 1 million is about the starting point for what a well-educated, white-collar skilled worker (like an IT geek) would want to live in.

Seems a bit crazy to me, but so does paying 3 grand a month in rent for a 500 square foot studio apartment, so... yeah.

ewwhite

03:17

@HopelessN00b I surveyed the people at work. Only one lives nearby.

Everyone else is in Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey.

oh, two... The owner is 2 blocks away.

HopelessN00b

Yup, Manhattan is hella expensive. But I love it. I'd definitely do the sucker thing and B/B/S enough for a million dollar mortgage on an apartment if I got a good job out there.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b B/B/S?

HopelessN00b

Plus, the idea of a 90 minute commute each way from one of the other islands or New Jersey just makes me cringe.

@MarkHenderson beg/borrow/steal

ewwhite

But at the $1 million mark, I don't think people are buying.

they're just renting

I hear a lot more $5k/month rents than $1 million mortgages.

WesleyDavid

@Adrian Siteground would be fine.

ewwhite

03:23

@hopelessn00b would you be interested in the job ad here?

I left before you responded.

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite $5k/month would be about the same as mortgage repayments, wouldn't it?

ewwhite

Yes

Mark Henderson

My repayments are $3k/month on $500,000

(but our interest rates are higher than yours)

ewwhite

except no downpayment, and flexibility to move.

It's just crazy here. I could live like a king in Chicago with a $1 million place.

In NY, that gets you a 2 bedroom condo.

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite It's the same here. Friend of mine has a sub-penthouse in North Sydney. 3br, about 1500sqf, he bought for $2.5m and 5 years later his neighbours sold for $4.5m

ewwhite

03:28

oh wow... good investment

Mark Henderson

32nd story, views of the city, harbour bridge, opera house, etc

@ewwhite Yeah. He bought off the plan when before the building was even started construction, which is fairly risky cos you can lose your entire deposit

Hence the good price

HopelessN00b

I really want to say "yes," but I know my Linux skills aren't good enough, and we just kicked off a major infrastructure project (replace all the infrastructure with modern shit that works, basically) so leaving to take another job now would be a **serious** dick-move anyway. Especially for reasons of "Ohio sucks, I wanna live in Manhattan."

In ~18 months though, I'll definitely be scoping jobs in NYC and Denver and maybe Vegas.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b Search Careers.SE for "Rightscale"

HopelessN00b

Sr. Linux Engineer at Logicworks

linuxvirtualizationstoragenetworkingsysadmin

Do you enjoy engaging, important work with a wide array of technologies? Is problem solving a personal hobby and the bigger the problem, the better? We’re…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on August 21, 2012

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite I've been a follower of Rightscale's stuff for a few years. Not bad.

HopelessN00b

03:34

@ewwhite That one? I noticed it in my fantasizing/window-shopping NYC IT jobs a couple weeks back, yeah. Thought, "damn, wish I could pass myself off as a Sr. Linux Admin, instead of a guy who probably wouldn't mess up too badly on Linux."

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid I don't know anything about it..

@HopelessN00b everyone here is cross-functional, it seems

Very little of what I know about finance and such applies...

so I'm taking a back seat.

my hardware expertise with HP and such isn't useful here either.

HopelessN00b

Hehe. Yeah, I often find my humanities degree to be less useful than I'd hoped when everyone's talking about Flex-fiber switches and SANs and the like. :)

ewwhite

there are several jobs open here.

And the thing is, I know a lot about some things... but very little applied... so there's training.

It's EMC and Isilon for storage...

but there's a NOC position... and a Linux position...

and a Windows position.

But it's loose... people float... The Windows guy is the VMWare person... one Linux guy is the database expert.

Another Linux guy is the hardware and storage guru.

I'm not sure what I bring...

yet

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite A very disturbing avatar on the inter-company chat?

ewwhite

Oh, they've yet to see it

Andrew

03:41

@eww according to your tags, proliant vmware linux hp esxi etc.

ewwhite

Yeah, but they use SuperMicro... and HP isn't an option.

HopelessN00b

Oh, I **love** those environments. A bunch of bright people who could be high-level experts at anything, but are allowed/made to generalize into other areas... *drool* Like a playground for my inner geek.

18 months, 18 months.

Andrew

being a generalist is not bad

ewwhite

so all of my fun HP-specific stuff is useless.

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite SuperMicro? Ghettocity.

Mark Henderson

03:43

@WesleyDavid Why all the SM hate? I have a few SM servers

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b They sold it as "engineering is the core of the business"

Mark Henderson

They have some really smart chassis designs

ewwhite

There seem to be thousands here.

WesleyDavid

@Andrew Not bad at all, but it's nice to specialize in one thing for a few years.

Mark Henderson

Well ok these days their design isn't so smart, because everyone else is doing it now too

ewwhite

03:44

The servers are low-end to me... but they know the product and can keep spares...

and for the cost, HP would be silly

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson Not so much hate, but they seem shaky when compared to HPs. Get a rack full of them and it'll wobble. Not so with the better engineered stuff. SM is fine, I like 'em and have priced out projects with their stuff.

But... they're still ghetto. =)

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid I seem to remember seeing a photo of a cloud DC that had literally thousands after thousands of SM servers

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Well now I want to know what this place does.

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid Go to the website.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson Wouldn't surprise me. For massive, mix-n-match applications like that, just rack up SM and be happy.

Mark Henderson

03:46

It looked like this:

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite But I don't know where you work now. =(

Mark Henderson

Only literally thousands and thosuands

HopelessN00b

Ooo, even better, a business where IT isn't the cost center. That's where you wanna be, in the profit-center of the business.

I'll make bookmark these guys for when I'm job searching down the road.

Mark Henderson

(that photo is of Etsy's rack, apparently)

ewwhite

@hopeless Apply... see what's up.

Adrian

03:46

As long as the stuff can run VMWare without too much pain, fuck it. I'll run anything.

ewwhite

if it's a long lead-time, that's fine.

Yeah, this is a big VMWare environment... I'll see it Friday... but since storage is centralized, the host machines are unimportant, as long as the RAM and connectivity is there.

@wesley Managed Service Provider.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite I don't do that until I'm actually close to being on the market. Plus, I gotta figure waiting until I have the Enterprise level MS 2012 certs and my VCP5 (and mbe even one of my database ones) would be strongly in my best interests.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b I have none of those.

And nobody's ever asked.

And I know jack about databases... Except for Postgres to run OpenNMS...

@hopeless I say put the feelers out and make the relationship connections. Job timing never works well. I took this job and got three interview requests from places I wanted to work at in Chicago... Just bad timing.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Good to know, but certs to me... are like "cute shoes" to women (at least as one of them described it to me).

They may not actually make a bit of difference, practically speaking (any guy focused on a woman's shoes is not likely to be interested in women), but they give me a big boost of confidence that help me feel comfortable in my ability to do what needs to be done and sell myself as the man for the job. And come in useful in negotiating salaries... or covering holes in the wall, or what have you.

But, yeah, putting out feelers sounds like a good idea... I could do that when I get a couple hours away from the office here in a few days...

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b I think at this level and scale, anything you know in one environment is going to require retraining and a different approach in another. An organized firm like this one didn't hire me because they had a problem. It was to support growth.

Journeyman Geek

03:53

@ewwhite: schoolboy level knowledge here (literally!) but unless you're designing databases, they're quite similar once you get past the tiny differences, until you get to the really deep stuff. We did a MS SQL db last term, and oracle this term, and the interfaces we're expected to use are scarily similar

ewwhite

so there's someone who can do my job... several people can... I can offer some new approaches to a few things... but I'm really just an escalation point.

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, for SA/DBA and even db programming purposes, all relational databases are the same. And for the differences, you keep a shortcut to a little cheat sheet handy anyway.

ewwhite

but maybe it's better to go somewhere where the routine issues have been worked through.

I've done way too many jobs where I have to come in and fix everything

Andrew

@HopelessN00b occasionally you get "here's a TSQL solution with rownumber()" stuff that doesn't work in MySQL though

Mark Henderson

Holy fuck, we've just asked a company for a CSV dump of a simple SQL Where from their database. They've quoted us 7 days of work at $1200/day

HopelessN00b

03:57

@ewwhite Oh, absolutely. I'm just big on "the big picture." Get intimate with that, learn the concepts inside-out (as one must for any certification worth having), and the details sort themsleves out, or are easily found in TFM, or on Google.

Andrew

@MarkHenderson that's for 10 secretaries to hit printscreen and transcribe it to Excel

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Yeah, that gets old surprisingly fast. Or surprising to me. I used to love being the hero like that, and now it's more along the lines of "sigh, can't you asshats do this for yourselves already????"

ewwhite

I don't think the VMWare expert here is a VCP. He may be. Training is probably available. I dunno...it's probably a good opportunity for NY.

versus a trading firm or startup here

Not $300k, though :(

Mark Henderson

@Andrew What worries me is you're probably right

HopelessN00b

@Andrew Applies to anything. Few code-specific or step-by-step guides are gonna work across any platforms, which is why you know your fundamentals inside and out, have your cheatsheet, and enable yourself to translate the solution into something that works on your specific platform or implementation.

Mark Henderson

03:59

Except it would be "Print screen, print, scan in, OCR, re-type into Excel, save as CSV"

Sr. Linux Engineer at Logicworks

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