Linux nerd and consultant. Sci-fi, comedy, and podcast author. Former Katsucon president, former roller derby bouncer. http://punkwalrus.net/
About 20 years ago, I used to keep Lego Bionicles at my desk, but had to stop because pranksters would do this, and then HR would make negative comments.
I was burned afoul by a former admin who, instead of diagnosing why a mail service was failing, labeled a script as a /etc/cron.d file entry as "..." (three dots) which, unless you were careful, you'd never notice in an "ls " listing casually. The cron job ran a script with a similar name which he ran once every 5 minutes. It would launch the mail service, but simultaneous services were not allowed to run on the same box, so if it was running, nothing would happen, although this later explained hundreds of "[program] service is already running" errors in our logs. It was every 5 minutes because our solarwinds check would only notice if the service had been down for 5 minutes. The reason why the service was crashing was later fixed in a patch, but nobody knew about this little "helper" script for years.
Until one day, we had a service failover from primary to backup. Normally, we had two mail servers servers behind a load balancer. It would serve only the IP that was reporting as up. Before, we manually disabled the other network port, but this time, that step was forgotten, so BOTH IPs were listening. We shut down the primary mail service, but after 5 minutes, it came back up. The mail software would sync all the mail from one server to the other (like primary to backup, or reversed, but one way only). With both up, the load balancer just sent traffic to a random one.
So now, both IPs received and sent mail, along with web interface users could use. But now, with mail going to both, it created mass confusion, and the mailbox sync was copying from backup to primary. Mail would appear and disappear randomly, and if it disappeared, it was because backup was syncing to primary. It was slow, and the first people to notice were the scant IMAP customers over the next several days. Those customers were always complaining because they had old and cranky systems, and our weekend customer service just told them to wait until Monday. But then more and more POP3 customers started to notice, and after 5 days had passed, we figured out what had happened. And we only did Netbackups every week, so now thousands of legitimate emails were lost for good over 3000 customers. A lot of them were lawyers.
Oof.
"... I was now... a fem-MAN!" [Orchestra music swells]
I hate to be honest, but I used Amazon Prime a lot because:
- I cannot drive. Thus, getting to the store is difficult.
- I must bring in 3-4 items a week, so yeah, I save on shipping.
- Auto-subscriptions save a little.
- I have priced a lot of stuff over the years, and while Amazon is not always the best, the convenience is impressive.
- They have, multiple times, been incredibly helpful with customer service. Like above and beyond.
- COVID and nobody masks around here. I have an autoimmune condition, so it's important that I not leave unless it's a medical appointment or similar need.
- They just have stuff I can't find anywhere. Yes, as some have said, caveat emptor, but that's true for all the stores.
I also save a shit ton of money. When I used to browse Walmart or Target, I used to buy a lot of shit I didn't need. I don't get as distracted with focused buying. I also order from Aliexpress if I can wait 30 days, and I have only been ripped off three times in several years, for a total of maybe $35.
I'm not saying my way is better, and certainly not if it's better for you, but it's been a godsend to the house-bound.
I married my first wife when she was 18 and I was 20. We went through a lot of hardship. It should not have worked out: we were both poor, from broken homes, in an LDR from different worlds. She was the popular girl, I was a shy and awkward nerd. When we got married, we had only been in one another's presence for a few weeks total. I went into the marriage not expecting a path or plan, as my parents were toxic which ended with my mother's suicide, and my mother in law had been married 4 times before she became single for the last time. None of us had healthy marriages to draw from. At our wedding, her relatives even said, "I give it two years, tops." We were desperately poor, and struggled most of our marriage with health and money issues.
But we made it work for 25 years. We'd still be married, but she passed away ten years ago. We became "foxhole buddies," us against the world.
Yeah my childhood sucked, and knowing I'd have another 12 years of abuse with nobody taking me seriously because I'm a kid? No thanks. I could put $10mil to good use right now.
When I used to run a book store in the 80s, two magazines were the largest (and 99% ads): bridal magazines and Computer Shopper.
I got all of that except "shag ye x," because it sounds like "shag (fuck) you x," where "x" is the subject that is a bit vague. Like, "I'm trying to shag you, love?" or "Fuck your ex," as in, the last person you broke up with?
I had an older cat that had broken hips that healed wrong. So when he laid down, he did this weird sploot on his belly that cats normally don't do. One of my younger cats imprinted on him, and also did the sploot. The first cat died, the other one splooted that way the rest of her life
I can answer this: my son was born in 1990. We were extremely poor.
We had midwives help us out as best they could, to the tune of about $3200 at the time. The birth got complicated due to a variety of health factors, and both my son and wife almost died (not because of the midwives). Luckily the midwives had a direct line to Georgetown Hospital, and the cesarean was done there. The total hospital bill was $58,000, or $138k in today's money, although hospital costs have rose much higher vs inflation, so maybe it would be in the $200k range now. She was in the ICU for a week, hospital for another week, our son for about 3 weeks.
My wife job didn't have health insurance, because it wasn't required back then. Because she was gone a week, her job fired her for an unexcused absence. Oddly enough, this made her unemployed and Washington DC had some law (or rule or something) that immediately dropped the hospital bills because of her unemployment. In the end, we had to pay $15k to about two dozen practices who individually sued us, which took 7 years to pay off and a lot of court visits and wage garnishments. It financially ruined us, pretty much. Both suffered a lot afterwards because we just couldn't afford minimal care. It was hellish. I can't imagine how much worse it would be today. We got evicted from our apartment, and lived in government housing for six years.
So, yeah. Don't have a baby in America unless you can guarantee it will be healthy and you have a lot of money. Most of my friends don't have kids, they simply can't afford it and look at it like the previous generation looked at concepts like summer homes and yachts. Nice luxuries, but way out of affordabilty.
Worked a job where I had to be a Linux admin for a variety of VMs. To access them, I needed an VPN that only worked inside the company LAN, and blocked internet access. it was a 30 day trial license on day 700somthing, so it had a max 5 simultaneous connection limit. Access was from my heavily locked down laptop. Windows 7 with 5 minutes locking Screensaver. The ssh software was an unknown brand, "ssh.exe" which only allowed one connection at a time in a 80 x 24 console window with no ability to copy and paste. This went to a bastion host, an HPUx box on an old csh shell with no write access to your home directory due to a 1.4mb disk quota per user. Only one login per user, ten login max, and the bastion host was the only way to connect to the Linux VMs. Default 5 minute logout for inactivity. No ssh keys allowed. No scripting allowed, was like typing over 9600 baud.
I quit that job. When asked why, I told them I was a Linux administrator and the job was not allowing me to administrate. I was told "a poor carpenter always blames his tools." Yeah, fuck you.
This right here. I have worked with a dozen PMs in 30 years, only two were any damn good. One managed an IT team, and she didn't know tech worth squat, but God damn, did she keep the flow going and know how to get shit done without being an ass about it.
On the other hand, I faught with a PM once because he didn't understand the concept of priorities or how to manage a crisis. "You want me to fix the outage or attend a meeting about it?" "Both." "Pick one. You have a choice. I can fix the issue in the data center, or join a blame session in the meeting room. Which one?" "BOTH!" I got to the meeting room, and he demanded we put down our laptops and pay attention. He invited EVERYBODY regardless of whether they were needed or not. Twenty seven people all bitching about the outage and not a single person fixing it. No meeting moderation. Just chaos until he had a panic attack. Just useless.
I worked with a client where their router got hacked, but the site manager insisted that it wasn't, because he had an "unhackable" Macbook. Like, no, buddy. No. Every Windows 98 client, the Windows NT 4.0 server, and your router are totally, totally hacked, and pointing to Chinese DNS. "UHHH NOOO?? IT's a MAAAAAC! Hello? Anyone in there, Windows guy? I HAVE A MACBOOK!" With a patronizing chuckle. Then he mocked deaf people accents to re-explain, I guess, to make the point I was retarded.
Thankfully, his boss fired him on the spot. This was the THIRD time I was sent out there to wipe and reinstall, and my attendance of his firing was a mere formality. He was being hacked by an open Apple AirPort Base Station with no password or encryption that was inside the network, and refused to believe it because it was an Apple product. His boss understood, though.
Note: this is not meant to mock or deride any Apple product or fans thereof. Just this specific dweeb.
The thing is that for a majority of cases, this is all one needs to know about git for their job. Knowing git add, git -m commit "Change text", git push, git branch, git checkout , is most of what a lone programmer does on their code.
Where it gets complicated real fast is collaboration on the same branch. Merge conflicts, outdated pulls, "clever shortcuts," hacks done by programmers who "kindof" know git at an advanced level, those who don't understand "least surprise," and those who cut and paste fixes from Stackexchange or ChatGPT. Plus who has admin access to "undo your changes" so all that work you did and pushed is erased and there's no record of it anymore. And egos of programmers who refuse any changes you make for weird esoteric reasons. I had a programmer lead who rejected any and all code with comments "because I like clean code. If it's not in the git log, it's not a comment." And his git comments were frustratingly vague and brief. "Fixed issue with ssl python libs," or "Minor bugfixes."