Diary of a Network Geek

I spent the majority of my day with the pre-sales engineer from Novell today.
And, that was a good thing. I learned a number of things today. (If you’re a non-geek or don’t feel like asking me to translate this into English for you, feel free to skip down to the paragraph break.) First, the bug I reported yesterday was totally false. The problem with Novell’s Open Enterprise Server running on SuSE Linux was that I’m so old school and security conscious. “How’s that?” you ask? Simple, I had a password that started with a dollar sign character. How’s that a problem? Well, it’s like this. The GUI installer takes the information to install eDirectory, Novell’s premier claim to fame, and throws it all at a command-line installer at a hidden console window. Sadly, in bash, the standard Linux shell, when you throw an unescaped “$” at the prompt programatically, it thinks you’re trying to define a string variable. That little misunderstanding throws the command-line eDirectory installer for a loop and it sits there, at its hidden console, prompting for a password and patiently waiting for you to supply it. Then, it misinterprets that and fails. Once the eDirectory install fails, everything afterward, that relies on eDirectory, also fails.
In other words, because I have more admin experience than Novell’s guys in the field and I’m committed to using secure passwords, I found a bug that no one thought to look for EVER BEFORE.

The other thing I learned today is that I know a hell of a lot about all kinds of strange, esoteric, varied and otherwise unrelated computer stuff. And, that is very, very cool.
Now, I’m going to go do something. No, I don’t know what and neither will you. Tomorrow, I’ll post something else. Good night.

Were you a little lonely on St. Valentine’s Day? Then, my geeky readers, I’ve got just the thing for you: The top eleven Geek Pickup lines, third edition, as stolen from BBSpot, for your Friday afternoon funny:

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 3
11. I’m attracted to you so much that scientists will begin to doubt the Theory of Relativity.
10. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a chatroom like this?
9. Resistance is futile.
8. No matter how I sort things, you’ll always be first.
7. No, that’s not a Logitech MX-100 in my pants, but thanks for noticing.
6. I think you could be an integral part of my project life cycle.
5. I’d switch to emacs for you.
4. You put the SPARC in my workstation.
3. If you have an empty slot, I have the card to fill it.
2. We’re like SLI. We’re great alone, but we’d be so much better together.
1. You got me stuck on Caps Lock, if you know what I mean.

Hey, they just keep on getting better, don’t they? Well, there are more coming, but, I like doling them out over time. You know, to build the anticipation!
Happy Friday!