« first day (185 days earlier)      last day (5082 days later) » 

20:00
yeah i reckon
@voretaq7 I have a RS232 inspector with switches so I could change signals too - VMS and VT terminal days
my desktop machine at work died today so i had to treat myself to a new one
@RobertMoir Oh the CapEx Budget!
:P
its surprising how much faster than an "original" core 2 duo those new i3s really are
yep
@RobertMoir i3, yuck
Gotta splurge for at least an i5
20:02
well i could do that but i needed a PC right then and i3s were what was in stores
@MarkM Some of us don't get to spend company money on our PCs :(
can't exactly buy myself a new machine when i have a stock of them in the cupboard
@Jacob I don't get to for my home PC
@jacob, i'm talking about my desktop machine on my desktop at work
@RobertMoir Ah, got ya. Our minimum spec is an i5 650 right now
20:03
i don't spend their money on my own computer but then my own computer is about 3 times the spec
Any by minimum spec, I mean what 99% of our stock is that doesn't go the the vice presidents
@RobertMoir still, my PC is my :work" PC
@markm well the majority of our users are students who browse the web, use office and might use autocad, photoshop or visual studio a little bit
the i3s might not be sexy but they're good enough for that
@RobertMoir Ah, got ya. We're putting i5s in our labs and we typically cycle the last generation to the general use labs where kids basically youtube between classes
@jacob yeah i get that, i guess i'm lucky to work for a larger company where its all provided
20:05
So i5s in all of the CSC/Digital Arts/Stat labs, etc and C2D E6600s in the general labs/library
i suspect most of our users are at your "general use" level
@RobertMoir I buy my own personal box (laptop), company provides a desktop.
About 25% of my laptop use is company-related, so Hello Writeoff!
@RobertMoir Could be, are you at a university, or a secondary school?
further education, halfway between the two
I've got a Core2 Duo 2.4; with plenty of RAM and a fast SSD it's plenty enough to keep up with me for all but the most intensive operations. I like it.
20:06
Ah, got ya
we're getting i5s this year i think, when i get the time to write the spec for them
or at least the higher end of the i3 range (though we got mid-range ones last time)
nice
and i may help myself to one of those when they arrive and put my new desktop back in the pool
hey @tom
20:08
hey robert
the students are writing "hello world" in VB Express and Eclipse
how goes?
I'm writing unit tests in VB 2010 ultimate. I think I can justify having one of our top end machines ;-)
@RobertMoir They need more CPU/RAM for that. Fucking Eclipse...
Our newer laptops have th i5s, they seem to like them well enough. They're not much noticeably faster than my laptop though.
20:09
not bad, but is it the weekend yet?
in my day, it was vb6
@TomOConnor Is that like a hello? or should I pull out my Chris Hansen to catch a predator opening?
@voretaq7 What's wrong with Eclipse?
@TomOConnor I've still got my VB4 box.
our 2 years old and newer machines have 4 gb of ram
20:10
@ChrisS Takes up more RAM than vi. Bloated.
:-)
older than that is 1gb and will get an upgrade if needed
@RobertMoir Console.Writeline("Hello World");
i think we should at least ask them all to write fizzbuzz
for their first programming lesson
Anyon eknow if there's a chrome extension to make tabs show in multiple horizontal rows? I used to have one for IreFox.
@RobertMoir Agreed.
20:12
actually it was scary when we last interviewed for a senior programmer. We had a few code fragments in a test, and asked people to write solutions for problems and we had a freehand section to write fizzbuzz in whatever language they chose
considering it was for a senior role, I was shocked how many applicants turned out to be even crappier at writing code than myself (sysadmin) and the other technical interviewer (a dba)
@RobertMoir fizzbuzz??
what we're gonna do here is go back... way back.
hmm
Modular arithmetic... Ahhh...
its a fairly simple programming exercise
20:17
My brain refuses to think about that... But I wrote a program to simply radicals for my TI83 that checks to see if its a integer... I digress
You should probably start them with Hello World on day one, but FizzBuzz should be day two or so... If they can't pickup for and if in two days, they're screwed.
I weirded-out a couple of people once implementing fizzbuzz using a pair of counter variables instead of using a modulus. It just seemed natural to me to do it that way. (In fact, it made me think back to programming in assembler and avoiding MUL / DIV operations because of the excessive number of cycles they consume...)
ah the good old days where every byte saved...was actually worth saving
2
@TomOConnor I agree, What?
20:20
@RobertMoir It's a remarkably trivial programming assignment. And so many people BOMB on it.
MJ
MJ
@EvanAnderson gah! Bringing back some nightmares of assembly
@Jacob to the above comment.
@RobertMoir I still live in those good old days (Embedded Systems Programming)
another good one is the newton raphson method
I once wrote some code to display a string that had a bug and displayed the string backwards. I "fixed" the code and discovered it was 3 bytes longer. I put the code back the way it was and reversed the string to be displayed. Problem solved and I saved 3 bytes! Woo-hoo!
20:22
haha
that's what kills me @voretaq7, we had people interviewing for a senior programmer post who literally couldn't answer it, even when they were allowed to pick a language of their choice. What I was hoping for was a bit of recognition of how simple it was and a discussion of how they built programs and what I got instead was a mountain that 80% of the applicants couldn't get over. And remember this is the interviews after we weeded out the obvious idiots and time wasters from their resumes!
@RobertMoir LeSigh
@RobertMoir did he say why he couldn't do it
Johnny can't code. It's sad, but true.
@RobertMoir Try interviewing for a "Jr. Unix/Linux Administrator" some time
20:23
Embedded systems programming is way above my level, though i started playing with ZX81s with 1k of memory as a kid and moved on to to 48k spectrums and thought i'd hit the memory jackpot
$dayjob are recruiting for a php developer. we can't find anyone good.
at all.
@RobertMoir Our embedded device has 3K of memory. THe new ones will have 16K.
LUXURY!
we had a guy in y'day who didn't understand an inner join
I'm headed home, later mortals. And Evan.
@MarkM: Phhh... >smile<
20:24
@TomOConnor by chance need any remote admins?
(now bear in mind that about 1/3 of that is a buffer that we can't get rid of :P)
@tom there were several people who couldn't do it and not one of them could really articulate why they struggled. They seemed to think i'd set them a hard problem and were quite offended that we thought it was easy and even more so when we solved it on paper in front of them
a whole 16k! cool
@MarkM He's like the Jon Skeet of SF
@voretaq7 Dude 16K thats like 16 Kilobytes
@voretaq7 i've interviewed for more than enough jnr. sysadmins already.
I love resource-constrained programming as a play-time exercise. I don't think I'd enjoy it as work.
20:26
i think (and i hope i'm not offending anyone here) whether or not you like "playing" with computers, whether coding, messing around with setting up systems or even just fiddling with hardware is a good test of whether or not you're going to be great at your job.
Yeah, I think that was the other big problem we had with the guy in on monday
i wonder if its something your brain is either wired for or isn't
that, and the guy wanted to look at the source code without signing an NDA
but that's another story.
he didn't do aanything at home, other than play PS3 games and watch tv.
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha you threw him out, right?
yes, he was vast.
No, sadly I was in the can when that question was asked
and our Head of Software decided that he'd let him have a look
20:28
w
t
f
@TomOConnor fail,much?
I shouted at the HoS later on, because we'd had a 3 hour conversation that morning about infosec
@Jacob 16K is a lot in embedded programming still
your head of software.. were his parents a mr black and a ms decker by any chance? And is his first name stanley?
2
if you know what i mean
@voretaq7: 8-bit microprocessor?
20:29
I know what you mean.
@voretaq7 That wasn't the point :)
@RobertMoir I nearly fell out of my chair
Question: What is the functional difference between a jr admin and snr admin?
@Holocryptic About 15k/year?
about 30k
hah
@packs while that's totally nice, that's the monetary diff.
20:30
a jnr admin does stuff under direction. a senior one is responsible for their actions and those of the juniors around them
So, does a senior admin actually touch the stuff, or are they just management?
jnr is the first to take the wrap for outages, generally (or at least, when I was a jnr, i was)- -- which is why i quit :P
@EvanAnderson Hmm, not sure - might be 16
checking
@Holocryptic a good one does.
@Holocryptic In most of the companies I've worked for the jr/sr distinction is for no reason other than to justify differences in pay.
20:32
@EvanAnderson 8051 (8-bit)
basing it on where i've worked a senior admin is very much hands on but they also manage projects and people, and define goals to at least some degree
hmmm. Good to know. Thanks
@RobertMoir that's always been my take on it. A Senior Admin should be doing Real Work, not just pushing paper.
@RobertMoir That's along the lines of what I would expect. Ideally they should be technical team leads, without all the excess management garbage.
Our job titles at work are totally arbitrary.
20:33
If you want to push paper you want a title that has Director or EVP in it
I'm senior systems engineer.
there's a head of software (who's a tit)
i'd agree... having said that i find the more responsibility and money i get the more paper i have to push and the more work i have to pass down to others
there's the head of projects (glorified tech lead)
MJ
MJ
Yea, it's Project Engineer here. the paper pusher is the vCIO
one senior developer.
we don't actually have any jnr devs
we're looking for some, but all the ones we get are hopeless.
20:34
@MJ v = Vice or Virtual? :)
or Foreign, without visa
MJ
MJ
@voretaq7 Virtual :)
I wish I could get a junior SA -- don't have the systems workload to justify it :(
I need to get my domain and software side sorted.
the MD wants manageability for printers, software and users, but doesn't wanna fork out for domain controller(s)
we have a "technical services manager", my boss; then a "Senior systems engineer", me; then a "systems engineer" and a "systems operator" in my team and 3 helpdesk technicians who answer to the manager
20:36
@RobertMoir what is your job title?
above him we have a director who is in charge of us, the developers, and the people who "own" and manage the data
"Senior IT Systems Engineer"
Chief Cat Herder?
cool
@TomOConnor That would be you....
it feels like it sometimes when i'm interviewing coders and going to meetings about our "building management system" which suddenly became IT's problem the day our site team found out they could plug it into the network and control it via a webppage
20:37
@TomOConnor His titles include Chief Warlock of the Brothers of Darkness, Lord of the Thirteen Hells, Master of the Bones, Emperor of the Black, Lord of the Undead, Lord of the Dance (nominated by himself on a whim), Mistress of Magma (gained by killing the former holder of the title), and mayor of a little village up the coast.
2
Tom has a lot of titles it seems
@RobertMoir Do I?
or did voretaq mean someone else?
he meant you, @RobertMoir
20:39
I think..
Well, A local hosting company (which will remain nameless) has an opening for a jr admin... but they owe my fathers HVAC company a decent amount so I can't work there :( POOP!
i was confused because i thought i was only lord of twelve hells. And Candy mountain
ayup
PureFTP or ProFTP... decisions decisions. =|
Candy Mountain is Hell #13.333333
@WesleyDavid FTP Is the remaining 2/3 of a hell.
20:39
it makes sense now
@Jacob It's ok if you and your father are seperate entities.
@voretaq7 "I'd like to thank the Academy..."
@TomOConnor Well no it's not as they'll recognize the name...
fixed :)
I liked it better the first way. @voretaq7
20:41
although if you would like to be nominated for the Portions of Hell awards for 2011 all you need to do is mismanage a few projects, down a couple of core routers, and if possible totally bugger DNS for at least one continent.
@voretaq7 I'm in!
"Fails PCI Compliance testing on FreeBSD systems." -- mmkay. Sounds good to me...
@WesleyDavid hmm?
@WesleyDavid whut?
Apparently pure-ftpd "Fails PCI Compliance testing on FreeBSD systems."
@WesleyDavid Why only on FreeBSD?
20:43
@voretaq7 I can Kill some of Verizons transit routers, but it would require me to rack up a lot of felonies..
@WesleyDavid you need PCI for...?
AND what does it have to do with PCI compliance, if you have an appropriate firewall?
@voretaq7 That was my question. How does the OS change things sufficiently to make the applicaiton fail PCI complaince.
People keep using the term "PCI Compliance" - I do not think it means what they think it means!
@WesleyDavid The auditor may not have known what FreeBSD is.
I had someone ask me whether it meant "doesn't fit into a PCI slot"
20:44
@packs "Those BSDs! They be communicstic - always givin' there stuffs out for free!"
@Jacob Maybe only one felony. Depends if they consider each router a separate count or not.
@TomOConnor oh dear sweet jumping jesus - SERIOUSLY?
that BSD. It's a tool of the devil, just like the metric system. Far better to use MacOSX instead
@voretaq7 I'd have to physically damage them
@voretaq7 yep.
Can we just eject people from the profession for gross stupidity?
4
MJ
MJ
20:45
@voretaq7 I wish!
Yes, because then job opportunities show up feel free.. :)
@voretaq7 Perhaps, but I'd be prime candidate for a speedy catapulting. So no. =)
@RobertMoir humor.beecy.net/geeks/free-bsd-shirt <lolcat>THIS IS RELEVANT TO YOUR COMMENTS! </lolcat>
your views are intriguing to me, @voretaq7, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
@WesleyDavid Nah. the abject cuteness of your kittenface will protect you.
2
20:46
@TomOConnor <xkcd> xkcd.com/231 is relevant to YOUR comments! </xkcd>
@TomOConnor D'AAWWWWW
@TomOConnor And I'm Chris Hansen... Dateline NBC
@voretaq7 I resemble that comic
ahhh them darn texans
MJ
MJ
Sigh, I hate cleaning up the mess of our client Sysadmins. They wanted to block facebook, so they denied access to: 69.63.*.*
20:48
@MJ HAHAHA
are your client sysadmins a pack of howler monkeys, by any chance?
MJ
MJ
ugh
@MJ . . . . and next because people keep accidentally zapping their X sessions we will epoxy all the Control, Alt and Backspace keys so they can't be pressed?
@RobertMoir Remember Top Gear vs Hillbillies?
again, can't we just eject people from the profession for gross stupidity? PLEASE? I promise I'll aim for the pillow truck when I toss them off the roof :-)
20:49
oh ayuh
@TomOConnor That was a painfully depressing episode.
that texan link thang reminded me of the hillybilly episode for sure
@packs amused me
MJ
MJ
..."I just thought facebook owned all those IPs"
facepalm
presses CTRL - ALT - BACKSPACE to see what happens
@voretaq7 You should blog more.
20:51
oh noes. wesley broke the internet. that's worse than googling google
@RobertMoir Every System Admin ever will soon attack him... :)
oh yes
@WesleyDavid i probably should :P
now i'm watching IT crowd clips on youtube. They're always relevant
@voretaq7 I'm sure you'd polarize people. But haters gon' hate. Just do your dance and let the good times roll.
20:55
@MJ So I gather they're too stupid to just block AS32934?
Not that that's not incredibly heavy-handed in and of itself, but still.
0118 999 881 999 119 7253
@WesleyDavid Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller
d Filler textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller textFiller
@Jacob Methinks you protest too much. It's a sure sign you've got it bad for dear Rebecca.
20:56
@WesleyDavid that one looks like she's about to vom'
@WesleyDavid No comment
7am waking up in the morning...
MJ
MJ
@voretaq7 Oh yes, way too stupid.
21:12
Whoever removed that animated gif is letting the terrorists win.
And is likely a Nazi.
and punches kittens.
@WesleyDavid thats slightly offensive...
Sorry, I was aiming for extremely offensive.
Go on, something about Japan. Dare you
@WesleyDavid the terrorists have already won if you are in fear of them winning
oh no, its getting tense.. need to break the spell

PI is EXACTLY 3!
21:17
@RobertMoir Thats new
hehe
a great way to silence a room full of maths and computer science lecturers who won't shut up and let you talk, by the way
@Zypher It should make it a challenge, If I can knock out SE for >5 seconds I should get the internship(that doesn't yet exist) :)
@Jacob If you knock out SE for >5 seconds, Jeff Atwood will be your daddy and not in a loving paternal way.
@WesleyDavid doubt full,
@WesleyDavid I'm too l33tz
In your Serverz, hackzoring your codez
I'm in your routerz, inflating your BGP tablez.
21:25
@voretaq7 OH NOES... NOT MY BGPZ TableZ thats like worse that geto-colos security.
@Jacob GiggleSnort
Pure gold right there.
I am starting to hate drupal
@coredump Thats OK, Drupal hates you too.
@Jacob apparently yes
:P
21:31
@coredump Welcome to the party! You're a bit late, but there's plenty of crap wrong with Drupal, so you'll be able to catch up on your hate and Drupal-bashing in no time!
hehe
our LB of 5 drupal instances simply died today
after the dev commented half code and disabled all modules and enabled one by one, he discovered that the responsible was a module that simply puts a caption on photos that are on a js caroussel on the front page
no error, no warning
silently failed
@coredump similar thing happened to me with a Joomla install last week. Gantry module died, knocked out the whole website. Joomla's PHP error reporting was set to maximum. NO errors printed to the page.
If you hate Drupal, switch to Joomla and then you'll appreciate Drupal better.
Is there any CMS that doesn't suck?
@Zoredache My suspicion is that each CMS is actually awesome for a certain type of content delivery situation, its just people's faults for trying to shoehorn their preference into every situation. That and buggy developers not making plugins/extensions to spec. Oh, and misconfigurations by noobs. And leprechauns.
@Zoredache I can list you the ones that suck and I have worked with them
Liferay sucked, Joomla sucked, Plone sucked less but not much, Drupal sucked...
I like Django, tho
If anyone knows something:
0
Q: Squid 3 reloading makes it stop serving requests

coredumpSo, we use Squid 3 here (3.0.STABLE8-3+lenny4), pretty standard configuration (no dansguardian or similar) + NTLM authentication with LDAP background, circa 1000 users on a busy day, and our acls reference some external files (allowed/blocked sites/ip addresses). On Squid 2.X we used to be capab...

21:45
I haven't switched to Squid3 yet. I sure how that isn't normal.
I was thinking about switching as we upgrade to Debian 6...
@coredump Solution:
1. Make your own CMS that doesn't suck
2. Make Open Source CMS Empire
3. Fund the development of light sabers
4. Help the rebels fight the empire
5. Profit!
All Software Sucks.
The key is finding software that sucks orthogonally to your use case.
@voretaq7 it's annoying. We have to wait for after-hours to apply rules because squid stops serving requests.
@coredump the fact that it dies for MINUTES (not seconds) is a major suck
I've never used Squid honestly -- one site but it was all configured by my Divine Predecessors and never needed to be touched
so I wisely kept my grubby little fingers out of its pudding
I am also a bit concerned that a reload is taking 2 minutes. A reload seems to be nearly instantaneous on my systems...
Are your external databases huge?
21:51
Myeep. Server load just hit 144, and the OOM killed a bunch of apaches
@Zoredache nope, none are more than 20 or 30 urls/addresses
@TomOConnor badly dimensioned MaxClients?
seriously bad memory graph.
@coredump no, i think it was a new module that our Head of Software installed
mod_xsendfile
it's the only thing that's changed
Someone did a 'select * from table1, table2' maybe?
21:52
and until now, apache's been perfect.
nope, mysql was fine.
does this xsendfile use memory to keep the data from files being sent? :P
Something like that.
@voretaq7 @Zoredache 2 minutes for a reload is enough to people start screaming THE NET IS DOWN OMG OMG FARMVILLE
@coredump 2 minutes for a reload is long enough for my monitoring system to page me.
21:54
@coredump, well a squid restart seems to take a couple minutes in squid 2, but I have never seen that happen with just a reload.
Just out of curiosity, how long does it take if you do a kill -KILL squid and then restart?
@TomOConnor YOWZA!
Hey @Tom what are you using to generate this graphic? Ganglia?
I can see memmap()ing a huge file (or a bunch of smaller ones) doing that... OUCH though
@Zoredache let me check. 4 seconds for a restart.
it's actually better restart than -k reconfigure it

« first day (185 days earlier)      last day (5082 days later) »