| location: |
| Pittsburgh, PA USA |
| site: |
| Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science
|
| servers: |
| 560+ |
| workstations: |
| 4000+ |
| sysadmins on staff: |
| We have a 45 person support staff organization
|
| site overview: |
|
Carnegie Mellon University School of
Computer Science has 2500 users (faculty, staff, graduate students, &
others). We are a large school within a small private research university.
www.cs.cmu.edu
|
| job title: |
| Unix Systems Engineer |
| time at this job: |
| 5 years and three months |
| | |
| years as a sysadmin: |
| ~9 years. I worked my way through school in various
IT support positions
|
| first computer: |
at home: IBM PS/1 486SX 25mhz 4megs of ram 150meg HD
at school: Radio Shack TRS-80
|
| first OS: |
at home: DOS 5 with Windows 3.0
at school: whatever OS was on the TRS-80 floppy
|
| favorite OS: |
| Linux |
| first computer with root/administrator access: |
| a whitebox I built myself
so that I could have Linux at home (AMD K6-2 300mhz, 4gig HD, 64megs of
RAM)
|
| first programming language: |
| BASIC (on said TRS-80) |
| favorite programming language: |
| C |
| most often used programming language: |
| bash scripts |
| first sysadmin job, computer and os: |
| I was a help desk tech at the local
community college. They had 30 Windows 95 boxes, 50 Windows 3.1 boxes, 20
with just DOS. Authentication was handled via a Netware server.
|
| favorite sysadmin tool: |
| Knoppix |
| most interesting sysadmin tool: |
| Nagios |
| sysadmin tool I couldn't work without: |
| a screwdriver |
| education: |
| BS Information Science University of Pittsburgh December 2000.
AS Computer Information Systems Community College of Allegheny County
August 1999.
|
| when I was growing up, I wanted to be: |
| working behind the scenes on
something interesting and important.
|
| If I wasn't a sysadmin, I'd be: |
| going to film school |
| when friends and family ask me to
“fix” the computer or
“fix the internet”, I say: |
| What happened now? |
| when I first meet someone,
and they ask what I do, I say: |
| I meet
interesting people and dodge robots
|
| system administration is ...: |
| a tough job but somebody says I have to do
it -- says the T-Shirt
|
| advice to a junior admin: |
| take the time to learn the obscure. It may be
useful and/or lucrative later.
|
| advice to a senior admin: |
| take the time to mentor your junior staff. You
will retire someday. |
| | |
| favorite food/cuisine: |
| seafood |
| pizza topping: |
| white pizza with tomatoes, feta, spinach and shrimp |
| work music: |
|
Eizan, one of our systems programmers, happens to be the
keyboardist for Adam Evil and the Outside Royalty. They're pretty good.
|
| crisis music: |
| Crazy Train by Ozzy Osborne.
When things get really bad I
like The Message by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five
|
| ___ gets me through the work day: |
| chocolate |
| hobby/other job: |
| I do a lot of Linux advocacy work. I am on the board of
Western PA Linux Users Group and Ohio LinuxFest
|
| | |
| co-workers say my desk is: |
| cluttered with SGI keyboards, papers, pens, a
dying plant, and misc. computer parts
|
| learned the most from: |
| RTFM-ing and my former officemate
Jonathan Billings
|
| wish list: |
| round tuits in all sizes and colors |
| daily web sites: |
|
|
| backups to tape or disk? |
| tape. More likely to survive if a
work-study drops it. |
| editor: |
| vi |
| mail user agent: |
| evolution and pine |
| web browser: |
| firefox |
| gui or cli: |
| I don't use OSes that lack clis |
| computers at home: |
| 5 in use. I don't care to count the others. |
| (primary) home computer and OS: |
| homebuilt amd 64 bit system with FC4 |
| oldest hardware in your garage or basement: |
| a Commodore 64 in it's original box |
| anything else? |
|
Those who met me at LISA05 might recall that our machine room flooded on
the Monday of that week. We are still waiting for replacement air
conditioners as our current units just barely keep things cool. To this
day, we are still finding water under the floor in adjacent offices. Any
who, here are the
photos at our worst
|
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