Month: July 2005

System Administrator Appreciation Day

I just found out that yesterday (the last Friday of July) is the System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Quote: "Let’s face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It’s the least you could do. Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business."

Oh well, if I just found out about this, it’s not a wonder that other people didn’t know about this either. 🙁

Some fun things to read (well, at least they are fun for me) and i hope all the people in my workplace can read:

Happy SysAdmin Day to all SysAdmins out there.

Salary Survey

I am initiating a salary survey for research purpose. If you are a System Administrator (SysAdmin), I’d appreciate it if you email me your annual salary information at [email protected]

It is entirely up to you whether you want to be anonymous or not. SysAdmins include Linux administrators, network administrators, etc. It would be helpful if you provide a little bit of information on your tasks and workscope as well.

Important details that are needed:

  • Exact position title
  • Location
  • Currency
  • Also let me know are you satisfied with your current salary and whether you feel underpaid/overpaid/don’t feel anything. 

I shall post the results here periodically. There’s no expiry date to this survey… the longer the better so that I can see the changes within time.

Thanks! 

Where Did My Disk Space Go?

Although I am a Linux user, I do enjoy from time to time strolling around Windows. Especially since my Windows XP price was included with my notebook 😉

For the last few weeks I have been puzzled why my free space on drive C: keep decreasing eventhough I have not installed anything. Yeah I know, temp files, cache, etc. are in drive C: but the decrease was big!

After ransacking my notebook for a while, I finally found the culprit. It’s Google Desktop data!!! Anyway it’s OK I still love it, just that I have to free up some space. Google Desktop is a great utility for you to find stuff hidden away inside your computer. Oh well. Prove? Here you are:

googledesktop.png 

As fragmentation is becoming worst and worst, I later tried to format a partition, (actually I was saving up this partition for Solaris 10, just didn’t have the time to install it) and I was so lazy that I decided to use Windows’ Disk Manager. The next day back from work I was planning to uninstall and install software to the newly formatted partition but… my Linux partitions were all corrupted (and grub wouldn’t boot)! At that moment I immediately regretted my decision of using Window’s Disk Manager. Oh anyway lucky that my /home partition is still safe, and a knoppix CD lying around.

I booted up knoppix and used qtparted to reformat the corrupted drive. All is safe. However this has brought into attention this matters, which I have discussed in my previous posts here: Debian unstable immediately install Xorg so no need to manually update packages to make use of dri anymore! Cool.

So now I have my notebook all healthy again. As for Google Desktop, it’s still there, serving me when I am using my Windows XP 😀 

How To Ask Smart Questions

As an old player in the Open Source Community (PHP and Linux in particular), lots of people tend to ask me a lot of questions. Some are worthy enough to be answered, but some questions are pure crap and irritating.

While looking for the fetchmail official site, I stumbed upon this HOWTO created by Eric Raymond. It’s called How To Ask Smart Questions. This may sound not important to certain people, but believe me if you want your questions to be answered, read the article. It’ll help you and the person you are asking.

As I have also been asked on how to hack certain things, you might also be interested in another article How To Become A Hacker.

Also, I have seen a lot of people confused on the difference of the word hacker and cracker. Read this and you’ll find out the difference.

Training Materials

Due to popular demand, I have created a page in my home server for you to browse through the training materials / courseware I have created at http://ady.homelinux.net/training/

There you can browse through all of the slides I have created for training sessions. You can’t download them unless you want to capture the screen individually – I exported my PowerPoint presentations to be able to be viewed using an application written in Macromedia Flash. Someone named emre was nice enough to put in the source of his Flash application, and I have modified it to suit my needs 😉

Please take note, that however I will have to shut down my home server if I leave home for more than one day. Oh yes, please bear with the speed as it’s only a normal ADSL line after all. I can’t put the materials on my current hosting as I am running out of space. 🙁 Anyone wants to donate disk space or hosting?

*Macromedia Flash is a registered trademark of Macromedia.
*PowerPoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Cooler Disk

My journey to Low Yat plaza last weekend (or was it the weekend before that?) was worth it. I installed new disk brackets and fans to cool off my system and the temp actually dropped quite significantly:

Disk 1
Disk 2

Cooler disks! 🙂

*The fluctuation you see is because I can’t keep my air conditioner turned on 24 hours a day 🙁