| location: |
| Lawrence, KS |
| site: |
| Department of Mathematics, University of Kansas |
| servers: |
| On the order of 10^1 |
| workstations: |
| On the order of 10^2 |
| sysadmins on staff: |
| Two. My supervisor and me |
| site overview: |
|
We're currently a 100% Linux/*BSD/Mac OS X shop, except for the Virtual
PCs that run Windows. All clients are Linux or Mac OS X. We are also
getting a Windows Server 2003 machine to be a Terminal Server.
|
| job title: |
| Student Assistant |
| time at this job: |
| I've been here since August 2005 |
| | |
| years as a sysadmin: |
|
I have something over 2 years of full time equivalent sysadmin
experience, but I've been a sysadmin (i.e., for someone other than
myself) since 1999 at least.
|
| first computer: |
|
When I was in kindergarten, my Dad bought an IBM XT with two 5.25" disk
drives. We played games with CGA graphics and my Dad used WordPerfect
and some spreadsheet software.
|
| first OS: |
|
MS-DOS. (3.x, if I remember correctly) |
| favorite OS: |
|
It's hard to say... I've been using Linux since May 1997; I'd have to
say Linux. My ideal personal computer would be a notebook that runs
Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows simultaneously. Ideally that will be
possible later this year with Xen or similar on an Apple laptop.
|
| first computer with root/administrator access: |
|
Gateway 2000 486/66 running Slackware Linux.
|
| first programming language: |
|
QBASIC
|
| favorite programming language: |
| (or 'Scheme 'Haskell) |
| most often used programming language: |
| Perl |
| first sysadmin job, computer and os: |
|
It was for a webhosting company; we started out with a Pentium III 500
MHz with 256 (512?) MB of RAM, and a 9 GB SCSI disk. We ran Red Hat Linux.
|
| ideal sysadmin job: |
|
I'd like to work for a research group at a university. It's where I've
spent much of my time as a sysadmin so far.
|
| favorite sysadmin tool: |
|
Probably vim. I learned it early on and it has stuck with me. I like
using an editor that has nice features like color syntax highlighting
and nearly the same key mappings as vi, which you can find installed
nearly everywhere.
|
| most interesting sysadmin tool: |
| strace/ktrace |
| sysadmin tool I couldn't work without: |
| Typical Unix tools (e.g. sort, cut, sed) |
| education: |
|
B.S. in Computer Science (anticipated graduation May 2006)
|
| when I was growing up, I wanted to be: |
| An "MEC", a Mechanic-Engineer-Carpenter |
| If I wasn't a sysadmin, I'd be: |
|
A monk? Though I guess I could be a monk-sysadmin -- don't suppose I
could be on call.
|
| when friends and family ask me to
“fix” the computer or
“fix the internet”, I say: |
|
Is there an error message? What does it say? Did something change
recently?
|
| when I first meet someone,
and they ask what I do, I say: |
| I'm a System Administrator. |
| system administration is ...: |
|
As my former boss said, “wrangling computers.”
He also started calling himself a
“computer (or is it server) wrangler.”
|
| advice to a junior admin: |
| Search first, ask questions later. |
| advice to a senior admin: |
| Psst, tell your boss to hire me :) |
| | |
| favorite food/cuisine: |
|
I don't think I have one favorite; I love Indian food, Mexican food (try
the Chicken or Beef Suicide at Rosa's in Topeka, KS -- if you don't
finish it, it's attempted suicide), Italian food. Actually, as a
student, I do have a favorite -- Free food.
|
| pizza topping: |
| Why stop at one? Supreme pizza. |
| work music: |
|
Classical, Chant (Gregorian, Church Slavonic, and now some Melkite),
Polyphony
|
| crisis music: |
| Often I'll opt for no music. |
| ___ gets me through the work day: |
|
“The reward of a job well done” -- I appreciate
getting paid money to
help people with their computer systems
|
| hobby/other job: |
| Student |
| | |
| my office is: |
| Reasonably sized, but cramped with computers. |
| co-workers say my desk is: |
|
In the past, my desk has been described as obsessively clean;
99% of the time, though, it is a mess.
|
| learned the most from: |
|
Google, KULUA (Kansas Unix & Linux Users Assocation),
Peg Schafer, and SAGE/LISA
|
| wish list: |
|
I want to get better at my job, better at my time management, more
organized, more motivated. I want to improve every day.
|
| daily web sites: |
|
slashdot.org,
macslash.org,
appleinsider.com,
macosrumors.com,
thinksecret.com,
cnn.com,
news.google.com
ljworld.com,
kansan.com
|
| hot standby/failover or redundancy: |
|
I haven't needed to choose one or the other for anything terribly
important yet.
|
| editor: |
| vim |
| mail user agent: |
|
I used mutt for a while, but I switched to Thunderbird. It's nice but a
little slow. It makes viewing HTML email and pictures and movies and so
on easier. I can always switch back to mutt, since my mail is in IMAP,
though.
|
| web browser: |
|
Firefox. Sometimes I use Safari or Internet Explorer.
|
| gui or cli: |
|
Both. I almost always have a terminal window open; it is
nice to have a GUI for web browsing and other
graphical applications.
|
| computers at home: |
|
Three (four?) that actually run. Several more old ones at
my parents's place.
|
| (primary) home computer and OS: |
|
I'm typing this on an iMac Core Duo 1.83MHz with Mac OS X Tiger. It's
supplanting an iBook G3 500MHz with Tiger and a dual Celeron 366MHz
machine running Fedora Core 4.
|
| oldest hardware in your garage or basement: |
|
In my parents's basement I am keeping some really old Macs;
I think they are Mac II-something-or-others.
|
| anything else? |
|
Class is in half an hour, so nothing else but this:
Rock Chalk Jayhawk, Go KU!
|
delicious
digg
technorati