endperform.org

As some of you might have noticed from my recent tweets, there’s a gentleman in the office who is whining about the burn ban in the area. Apparently he’s attempting to get a burn permit to burn some things on his land, but is being denied due to the ongoing drought conditions. There’s a part of me from my volunteer firefighting days that wants to go over and tell him the reasoning behind things, but based on what I can’t help but overhear, he’s not going to take no for an answer. As of right now, he’s called three different agencies at last count and isn’t giving up. I wish he’d at least have the courtesy to step outside and talk, but instead we’re treated to hearing him get upset at things. What he needs to realize is that one little spark, one little ember that gets away from his burn could cause a lot of damage due to the dry conditions. It’s not just the immediate area that is the concern here.

It’s amazing the things you overhear in the office. I leave you with this gem:

“Well, they took the thermometer and stuck it up my butt”

Once in a while, the HVAC system in the cube farm takes a dive. Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours. On one occasion during an extended downtime, someone walked by my fabric-covered box. While that may not be so bad, the fact that it seemed like said person took a bath in cologne made the air in my general area a little less than good. Ok, a lot less, since once the airflow stops here this place gets stuffy. At any rate, I’m sitting, trying to do some work and doing my very best not to choke on the fumes. Fast forward to two hours later. You would think that by now, the odor would have somewhat wafted out of noseshot. I could only wish that were true this day. Eventually the HVAC system came back online and I could breathe again.

The following week, some people from other offices were onsite. My cube is right near the door, so people tend to congregate around it. Again, not too bad when done in moderation, but on this particular day someone once again decided perfume was a better substitute than water. If the fragrance weren’t so bad it wouldn’t have been too unbearable, but the odor was just so sweet and ungood++ that again, I found myself almost choking. The group of people were standing around talking with no end in sight. Finally, as I was about to begin a round of well-timed coughs, the crowd dispersed and along with it the odor.

I could go on about the lunchtime odors around here, but there’s far too many to mention. I am a culprit as I do eat at my cubicle and work through lunch a lot, but usually anything I eat is not as odorous as some of the other more ethnic offerings around here.

I was inspired to write this based on an idea over at the Ubuntu Brainstorm. The idea was to add X11 and graphical configuration tools to the Ubuntu Server install. The main reason, the poster said, was to get more switchovers from Windows 2003, and allow for less mistakes when a server is set up. I don’t really agree with this sentiment. Personally, my feelings on Linux servers is based on real life experience. I feel that you should know something about configuring your server via the configuration files before deploying your server. Why? Consider the following scenario:

Bob is typically a Windows server administrator, but he’s heard about Ubuntu Server Edition with Gnome and managed to get his boss to agree to allowing him to install a box to host an instance of a popular web application. Bob is familiar with GUI configuration tools since he’s coming from a Windows background, so he figures he can install this machine pretty easily. Bob starts to configure the server using some of the nice GUI utilities provided. He then decides he wants to reboot the machine to make sure the changes he made continue to work. Much to Bob’s chagrin, his beloved GUI doesn’t come back up. Unfortunately while mucking with the configuration, Bob disabled GDM, and thus disabled his GUI. Bob now has a black screen with a login prompt. Bob may know enough to log in, thinking his GUI comes back up, but he finds that he’s at another prompt: [bob@server:/home/bob]$ Since Bob is unfamiliar with Linux, he now has to spend time trying to figure out what he needs to do to get his GUI up and running.

Now, what would happen if something failed on that server and the GUI couldn’t be restarted easily? Bob would have no clue as to where to start, and would have to find someone to help. I had a similar experience back up in PA where someone had messed with some settings via a GUI on a Linux server and inadvertently disabled X and changed permissions on key files. Ever since then, I’ve advocated X-less server installs. In my mind, if you deploy a server, you should know what to do in the case of a failure and not rely solely on GUI tools to hold your hand throughout an installation. Maybe I’m too old-school or just short-sighted, but I feel that if you’re going to run a Linux server, you best at least know where to find configuration files and how to navigate via the terminal.

Don’t get me wrong, GUI admin tools do make life easier, but one should really know the underlying configuration before rolling a server out into production.

Tales from the Cube Farm is a new series where I write / rant about some of the people and issues I deal with at my job. For their protection, I’ve changed the names of the guilty.

My Stress is not a Comedy
I came into work this morning and dove right into emails only to find a lot of confusion and frustration. Being it’s pretty early in the morning, I tend to just vent to the monitor and get it out of my system. A co-worker wandered by and asked how I was doing. “Not good”, I replied, “I’m tired of people not reading what I write”. “Well, you should just relax and get happy!” Look, you might not be dealing with idiots first thing in the morning, so you don’t understand my frustration. It’s not hard to copy/paste commands from an email into a terminal. At any rate, the co-worker annoyed me to no end with the “You should get happy” mantra. Let me vent, let me get it out and I’ll be fine, but ten minutes later, the same co-worker stops by and asks if it’s getting better. “No, it’s not” I respond. My response got a laugh from the co-worker who again told me I should be patient and understanding in these matters. Patience and understanding is one thing, but laughing at my stress just serves to aggrevate me more. I guess if this person were in my department they’d realize what we deal with here.

Just because you’re old school doesn’t mean I am
A few weeks ago I brought Bethany into the office with Emma for a visit. The visit went fine, and my coworkers were happy to see my love and my child, which was cool. A couple of days later, I came across my boss in the hallway and got to talking about him and the upcoming trip to get married. He turns to the receptionist (whom we shall call OnE for Old and Evil) and mentioned that I was getting married to her. Her response? “Well, I guess they don’t have a choice since they have a child together”. It took me back a bit and I went to sit in my cube. I thought about that comment for a while, and it upset me a bit. Ok, so we had a child before we were married. Nevermind the fact that we were getting married anyway, or that maybe.. just maybe we loved each other and that was why we were getting married.

Religious implications
Here at the office, I have some rather religious co-workers, a couple of which are in my group. I have no problems with people believing what they want to, but I do have a problem with people trying to sway me to their side, or trying to ’show me the power of Jesus’. I used to go to church when I was younger, but I eventually got tired of it and outgrew it. Since then, I haven’t really searched for a religion as I don’t feel I need one to be complete. At any rate, one morning I’m sitting in my cubicle when one of my co-workers begins a speech about ‘how God has a plan for everyone, how great God is and how powerful he is’. Unfortunately since I’m the first one on the team in the building, I usually get to hear it first, then I get to hear another rendition later on during the morning. I smile and nod, giving the occasional ‘uh-huh’ in hopes that it would soon be over. Part of me wants to sit in my cube and utter “hail Satan” every once in a while, but the last thing I need is to start a holy war.

If you remember the guys from MST3K, I think you’ll really like what they’ve come up with now. Mike Nelson (Mike), Bill Corbett (Crow, Brain Guy) and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) have gotten back together to produce more movie riffing goodness. Beth and I took in ‘Killers from Space’ and ‘The Wild Women of Wongo’. All in all, it’s very funny stuff, and you’d almost think you were watching an episode of MST3K. I can’t wait to see what else they have in store. If I don’t post again before, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday :)

Website: www.filmcrewonline.com