[Lincs] List Politics (Allows / Banned topics)

[iain Baker]

On 3/29/07, James Taylor <jt at imen.org.uk> wrote:
>
> >>
> >> * notable exception is that I've acquired a machine on Friday. It hasn't
> >> been broken yet. I say yet, I've only had six days, however to counter
> >> ballance that one, the machine given to me on my first day at my
> >> programming job 1) didnt have the cd drive plugged in and 2) didnt have
> >> the right kernel modules for its network card (or rather , it did when
> >> it was running redhat but when I installed debian it didn't). Notably,
> >> on my third day at that job, I truncated the customer database.
> >
> > LOL... well done, that sounds like the type of luck i have!
> >
> Well let me get this straight - I break computers because I push cheap
> computers to the edge and I *use* them. What do you mean you can't have
> four webcams on Usb1.0 - why not? this robot I'm building NEEDS to be
> able to look in four directions at once - Why Can't i make them all just
> talk at a lower rate? Why can't I ssh into the computer that I have
> stashed at my parents and x-forward over that - what do you mean my
> mother wants to use her bandwidth? Pah! What do you mean that you can't
> expect a virtual machine to be able to run a heavy apache server, the
> mysql server, the pg server, the mail server, the spam assassin stuff,
> the custom cron scripts, the auto updater, the radius server and the
> authentication server AND occasionally a civ-server not to mention
> ventrillo and then do stupid maths puzzles in its spare cycles?
>
> Then you have the inquisitive side of me - One bad example is we had
> these Lego robot bricks (some fancy electronics in there) and we had to
> keep care of them, and we where writing in a language called Not Quite
> C, or as well called it, Nothing Like C. Well the OS on the brick was
> useless, and unbeknownst to me at the time, that its memory allocation
> sucked. What should have been a General Protection Error (BSOD) it
> actually allowed me to do, and because of a daft memory arrangment, I
> could overwrite the operating system with my current data that I was
> saving. I thought I was being clever organising my array in memory and
> starting my memory off from position 0 (or as I thought, my virtual
> memory 0, not the REAL memory 0).
>
> Then you have the stupid side of me. There are times when I've worked
> all day and done a few more hours at night for my personal stuff. Theres
> been times at three in the morning where I've, just fixed the server,
> everythings gone ok and typed sudo shutdown -h now into my local host
> and wondered why all I see is "connection disconnected by remote"... oh,
> you have to log out of live before commands work on local. Tiredness
> causes more programming bugs, and more Server Admin mistakes then
> stupidity, and we expect admins to fix problems on a friday night when
> they've had a crap week and just need to sleep. So the more computers
> you work with, the more stories you have, and the faster you learn. Any
> Sys-Admin who refuses to admit he's made mistakes just means he isn't
> good enough to realise that they've cocked up.
>
> And finally you have the honest mistake. I planned a deployment
> including 12 steps, but steps four and five where backwards, and that
> broke the system and cost the company real cash, something that couldnt
> go back on and restore from backup, we're talking really bad stuff.
>
> I'ld like to state that working has calmed me down a *lot*. I now
> document and keep a lab book. I plan my programs, and try to be an
> engineer rather then a hacker [code wise dont start an argument about
> meaning of the word]. I used to rush into a project and get a solution
> then worry about the user experience, and would evolve the project as it
> went along. And, saying that I've written more code, that's both better
> and won't require re-writing this year then I've ever written, even
> though I seemly waste months at a time just "writing".
>
> So yeah, I've got time for people who make mistakes or don't know what
> they're doing as long as they're honest about that and respect that.
>
> JT

Oh i just play with things when i should be learning how it works first...