LOPSA is now offering all of its members the opportunity to receive savings of up to 40% on health insurance, life insurance, long-term care insurance and more!

All members who participate in the program will receive special premium rates and enhanced insurance coverage for yourself, your family, or your company. These benefits can extend to part-time and full-time employees of companies.

We are pleased to offer significant association value to our members on programs including:

• Health Insurance for Groups and Individuals
  
• Life Insurance
  
• Long-Term Care Insurance
  

The Chuck Yerkes Award is presented annually in recognition of outstanding individual contributions in online forums over the past year. It was created after Chuck Yerkes' untimely death in 2004 to memorialize the mentorship he provided countless system administrators through his helpful and accurate posts to system administration mailing lists. Each year, an awards committee selects someone who followed Chuck's example in the prior year in their contributions to system administration online forums—whether mailing lists, web forums, or chat rooms.

The LOPSA awards committee presents the 2009 Chuck Yerkes Award to Luke S. Crawford. Luke's writing has shown the patience, insight, and helpfulness that we should all strive to emulate in providing mentorship online.

LOPSA is pleased to present this award and congratulates Luke on this recognition from the community.

The seventh Ohio LinuxFest is happening very soon, September 25-27, 2009, in scenic Downtown Columbus, Ohio. This will be the third year that LOPSA will offer classes in partnership with OLF.

I'm a proud and active member of LOPSA but I'm also an organizer of the Ohio LinuxFest. Wearing my OLF hat I'd like to beg you FOR HELP!

We need to get the word out about OLF. It's kinda last minute, sure, but our registration numbers are horrifically off. Is it the economy? Did we miss crucial marketing? Are people preferring to visit the G20 conference in Pittsburgh? Is it a health care crisis conspiracy? Space aliens?! I don't know!!

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         The League of Professional System Administrators
 
                     September 2009 MEMO

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Please email board@lopsa.org with any questions, comments, or ideas.
            We always want to hear from our membership.

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In this memo:

1. Welcome aboard, New Board
2. Ohio LinuxFest University is nearing.
3. Call for OLF Volunteers for the LOPSA Booth
4. LOPSA Membership discounts for Usenix LISA 2009  

Wow! I just looked at the speaker list for the Ohio Linux Festival and I am really excited I will be there. (I am embarrassed that I had not looked closely at the program before.) LOPSA will be there offering some great training. We will also have a booth and we could use some help with volunteers there helping to explain LOPSA and sign up new members. If you are going to be there and can help please let me know. I have always found it fun to spend an hour or two hanging out at the LOPSA booth and chatting with people. You can reach me at lois at lopsa.

Do we do a disservice to young sysadmins by teaching them important rules of thumb as if they were incontrovertible truth?

When I was starting out, I heard a lot of these, especially in security. For example, "a login server is always crackable". I was dubious, because I didn't understand the complex thought being expressed. What I heard was something like: "There are these invisible über-crackers who can take over any machine, any time, just give them a login and they'll get root, so you might as well give up and stop offering login service. What? Your employer won't let you stop? Too bad, you're just screwed, and you're probably a bad junior sysadmin for not threatening to quit over this."