Winding down...
Aug. 2nd, 2000 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI unearthed a copy of the UNIX System Administration Handbook (a.k.a. `The Red Book') that I bought for Lee a while back. She thought she'd be interested in learning to do system administration, and it was her birthday, but to cut to the chase, it became one of those books that finds itself semipermanently in a box, as it's a pretty hard read.
I have to admit, when I bought it, the content was beyond my understanding, but historically, my reaction to such challenges has been to sit down and (try to) unravel the complexity. No so in Lee's case. Anyway, she's now about halfway through to getting her MCSE ticket and today was her first day on the job as a contractor helping British Petroleum undertake its mass desktop migration to Windows 2000. More power to her, though it means Galina and I will see less of her as she tries to balance both a job and school. But that's life, I suppose.
At any rate, I still find the Red Book intimidating, but in picking it up a couple of days ago, I notice with some small satisfaction that the level of intimidation is reduced. (Hell, I remember back when I started playing with Linux, my favorite method of "undoing" various reconfigurations, etc. was to reinstall the distro. Needless to say, I really didn't do much of interest in those days.)
Over this past weekend, I modified the source to the VenomBoard, which uses PHP and MySQL to implement threaded discussions, and it seems to work well, even on an old, slow 486 serving Apache. I put together a quick-and-dirty memo for the staff to encourage them to play with the setup, and a few of them have done that. There are a number of enhancements I'd like to implement, but time is at a premium, and, well, this ain't really my job, if you know what I mean! However, it'd be nice to have something working by the middle of the month.
First day back at work was fine. Met with some defense security folks in the morning (everyone is very export control conscious these days; can you say "Los Alamos"?) and then with Andra in the afternoon to plan out what we can say to MOD with regard to their requirements for future mission support.
On the home front, I am pleased to see things such as carpeting and wall start to emerge in my office/room. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the shelf that I put in Lee's room, which has allowed me to clear so much of this stuff, but still...
Cleaning out the file cabinet was a big help! And let's not forget the serendipitous appearance of a screwdriver next to the stereo; removing the side wall of the unit revealed that the CD player lens was coated with a significant layer of dust. Was this dust preventing the unit from playing CDs? You betcha! So now the whole system is on top of the bookcase, and I'm currently listening to Roy Orbison belt out It's Over.
Which kinda describes the status of this day. Time to turn in.
Cheers...
I have to admit, when I bought it, the content was beyond my understanding, but historically, my reaction to such challenges has been to sit down and (try to) unravel the complexity. No so in Lee's case. Anyway, she's now about halfway through to getting her MCSE ticket and today was her first day on the job as a contractor helping British Petroleum undertake its mass desktop migration to Windows 2000. More power to her, though it means Galina and I will see less of her as she tries to balance both a job and school. But that's life, I suppose.
At any rate, I still find the Red Book intimidating, but in picking it up a couple of days ago, I notice with some small satisfaction that the level of intimidation is reduced. (Hell, I remember back when I started playing with Linux, my favorite method of "undoing" various reconfigurations, etc. was to reinstall the distro. Needless to say, I really didn't do much of interest in those days.)
Over this past weekend, I modified the source to the VenomBoard, which uses PHP and MySQL to implement threaded discussions, and it seems to work well, even on an old, slow 486 serving Apache. I put together a quick-and-dirty memo for the staff to encourage them to play with the setup, and a few of them have done that. There are a number of enhancements I'd like to implement, but time is at a premium, and, well, this ain't really my job, if you know what I mean! However, it'd be nice to have something working by the middle of the month.
First day back at work was fine. Met with some defense security folks in the morning (everyone is very export control conscious these days; can you say "Los Alamos"?) and then with Andra in the afternoon to plan out what we can say to MOD with regard to their requirements for future mission support.
On the home front, I am pleased to see things such as carpeting and wall start to emerge in my office/room. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the shelf that I put in Lee's room, which has allowed me to clear so much of this stuff, but still...
Cleaning out the file cabinet was a big help! And let's not forget the serendipitous appearance of a screwdriver next to the stereo; removing the side wall of the unit revealed that the CD player lens was coated with a significant layer of dust. Was this dust preventing the unit from playing CDs? You betcha! So now the whole system is on top of the bookcase, and I'm currently listening to Roy Orbison belt out It's Over.
Which kinda describes the status of this day. Time to turn in.
Cheers...
