Diary of a Network Geek

Be kind to your IT staff.

Don’t do this to them. Do not walk into their office and ask questions like “Are we having a problem with the server?” or “Is the Internet down?” Asking us questions like that result in responses like “No, the server is fine. But why don’t you tell me about your problem now?” and “No, I’m on the web right now and it’s fine. Do you have an error message?” or even “Why don’t you tell me if you’re having a problem?”

I swear by all I hold sacred, there is nothing more frustrating than having someone who really has no idea whatsoever how anything on a computer or network works wander into my office with that special stunned cattle look on their face only to ask me very specific questions about a problem they’re having. Even when I answer their question with another question in the voice I normally reserve for precocious toddlers, for the fifth time, they come and waste our collective time doing this, instead of simply describing their problem to me.

Don’t do this to your IT staff. Just tell them what the problem is. Don’t make them guess what you really want. Please.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"A hero is no braver than anyone else. A hero is only brave five minutes longer."
   --Anonymous

Have Laptop, Will Travel.

Once, when I started at a new job, someone jokingly suggested that I should have brought my own “tools”, since they didn’t seem to have a workstation for me. I ended up building one from spare parts my first day, and that should have been a warning of things to come. But, now, it seems, that this is a more common thing, at least in Australia. According to this article on AustralianIT, there’s a growing trend down under that employers requiring new hires to supply their own laptop, and the new users seem to prefer it! Frankly, it seems like a security and resource management nightmare, but, whatever works, I guess.
I wonder how long before that happens here in the States?

Maybe I shouldn’t post after work as much…

You know, people might start to get the idea that I’m looking for work, even though I’m not. I guess it’s just that time of year when all the IT people change jobs, so everyone starts talking about career stuff.
Well, whatever, here are two more links to news/blog stories about tech resumes and researching a prospective employer from TechRepublic.com.

Enjoy!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When in doubt, don't."

Two things for two different kinds of geeks.

Back when I was a one-man IT shop the first time, I read a book called “Time Management for Dummies“. I know, I know, one of those damn Dummies books, but it really wasn’t bad. The best thing it taught me was about ToDo lists and how to manage one and prioritize it and all that. Well, over the years, I’ve used a lot of different software to try and manage my various ToDo lists. Mostly, I used Lotus Organizer and synched it to my cranky, old PalmIII. (That was back before I had the New, Improved, cranky, old PalmIIIc!) But, it was always a hassle to deal with formating and I never could quite get all the little bells and whistles just the way I wanted. Then, I found ToDoTxt.org
It’s a shell script to manage a simple, text-based to do list.
You can run it via Cygwin, or even as part of your user profile on, oh, say, a Linux server. And, you can add in code to automate the insertion of future events that you don’t want to worry about for several days, weeks or months. In fact, there’s a bunch of extra code and even a little user community that’s sprung up around this super cool shell script.

Anyway, I thought it might appeal to the truly “hardcore” geeks who still read this blog the way it appealed to me.

Now, for that other thing…
It’s a book for bloggers. I figure if you’re reading this blog and you aren’t one of the aforementioned hardcore geeks, then you’re still a blog-geek. Now, sooner or later, all of us who write blogs have an embarassing, little “problem” called Writer’s Block. And we prattle on about whatever silly thing comes into our head, like, say a todo list organizer. Well, I haven’t gotten the book myself, but it sure sounds like it might just help us with those sad, lonely times when we can’t think of anything more interesting to write about than the sandwich we had for lunch. It’s No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. And, based on the table of contents, I might just pick it up!

Seven Steps to a Sharper IT resume.

I always think about stuff like this after a hard day at work.

Okay, this is probably old news to everyone by now, but since everyone is talking about the VMWare IPO, I figured it was a good time to bring it up.
In case you geek readers out there haven’t see this, you can still download the VMWare server for Linux for free. TechRepublic has an entire article about downloading and installing VMWare. (Yeah, yeah, okay, it’s a beta version, but from everything I hear, it’s good to go.) Now, I’ve used the full, very expensive, version of this and it pretty much rocks. If you absolutely must run Windows server in an otherwise Linux envrionment, this would be the way I would choose to do it.

If you’re absolutely married to Windows and want to try VMWare, you can either download the server version or the “player“.   Now, the thing to keep in mind is that the player will run virtual machines that were created with the full product, but, as far as I can tell, won’t create its own virtual machine.  So, if you don’t already have virtual machine files somewhere, you’ll have to Google for them.

Oh, and if you’re looking for something to play with on this, but don’t feel like Googling for a good virtual machine? Why not try the free Mono VMWare image from Novell?

Or, the lack thereof.

Okay, so, those of you who know me and my professional career know that security is near and dear to my heart.  Now, I’m no hacker or even a full time security professional, but I’m very, very aware of security and how important it is.  In my last post, I mentioned how much I love having so much wifi connectivity and how nice it was when I was in the hospital to have that easy access.  Well, that’s still true, but I also know how open and insecure that wireless connection is.
This year at DefCon, there was a very popular demo that showed just how easy it was to get information off a wireless connection and exploit it.  In fact, some poor attendee, who should have known better, got his Gmail account hacked, in public, because he didn’t secure his connection properly.  And, earlier this year, some German security experts went on at length about how insecure the WEP protocol is and why that shouldn’t be your only line of defense on wireless networks.

Now, as much as I enjoy my wifi, I’ve also been very vocal about how insecure wifi networks are, by their very nature, for years.  In fact, I got into a rather heated “discussion” with a co-worker and our mutual manager about that at a former job.  Somehow, neither of these gentlemen quite understood how throwing packets out all over, where anyone could snoop them, was an inherently insecure system, even if you used advanced encryption.  Encryption, as the hackers say, is meant to be broken, and sooner or later, it always is.  Again, this is all just logic and reason, but, in a world where anyone who manages a website and a handfull of PCs can call himself a Director of IT, the practical application of logic and reason is a rare thing indeed.
So, enjoy those free wifi connections at your favorite coffee house, but, keep in mind how easy it is for a hacker, or even a script kiddie, to pull vital information off that wide open connection.

(And, if you’re going to DefCon, check out their “Be Prepared” guide, or the DefCon survival guide at the Register.)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
   --Frank Scully

Hey, the site name says it all, so I’m just going to link to it: welovewp.com
For those of you who don’t know what WordPress (aka WP) is, it’s the software that runs this blog. It also kicks butt. The site I linked to is a collection of sites that also run and, well, love, WordPress. Check them out.

So, nothing’s changed.

I had this argument once, with a manager who essentially fired me for not knowing when a drive would fail, about how it was impossible to predict if, or when, a drive would, in fact, fail. Guess what? When I told him it was impossible to tell before it happened, I was actually right. At least, according to this blog entry on ZDNet, I was. Gee, I guess I really did know what I was talking about all those years ago and was, in fact, a subject-matter expert who was actually paid to know more about a technical subject than the guy who managed him. Now, if only he had figured that out then gotten out of my way to let me do what I do best…
Ah, well, water under the bridge now.

Besides, it taught me that being right isn’t always the most important thing.  Especially when I’m being loudly, stridently right with witnesses.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"I don't know the secret to success but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
   --Bill Cosby

Microsoft has a new advertising campaign.

“People drive business” is their theme and they’re trying to get bloggers to include specific text in their blogs that include that “people ready business” message, along with links to the Microsoft marketing website, of course. Here’s the text they seem to have wanted people to include:

People drive business success. Human imagination creates the ideas that move business forward. Human conversations and human effort shape those ideas into products and services for the market. The unique ability of people to listen, respond, persuade, and think for themselves enables companies to sell effectively, serve their customers, and work together with their business partners in rich, satisfying ways that create lasting, high-value relationships.In an era where some see technology as a force that promises to make people subservient to highly structured or automated processes, Microsoft sees a better way to unlock the potential of every person. Systems can only create efficiency: It is people who create value. And the more people can do in their roles, the more value they can create. When Microsoft looks ahead, we see a world where organizations succeed by empowering people to harness information, expertise and the possibilities of complex networks with tools that give them insight, reach and opportunities.

Naturally, I’ve included all that just to screw with the search engines that will be spidering my website this week. Why? Well, I figure it’s got to make things worse for Microsoft and might actually boost my own rankings with all those highly-priced keywords that the marketing drones are no doubt shelling out for over in Redmond. I could be wrong, but, even if I am, it’s probably not going to do any damage to my Googlerank or my blog.