i have been sleeping relatively well (key word: relatively), but i keep waking up from strange dreams wherein i am trying to fly out of the country for vacation, but i always forget my passport. the one where i drove to o’hare in the company of several others and the route to the airport took me over a radically changed mccluggage bridge over the illinois river (it had a whole lot more lanes, and apparently a customs checkpoint) was particularly odd. if i actually had a vacation scheduled i might not find this terribly out of place to dream about, but the only “vacation” i’ve got on the horizon is the week in late april i’m planning to take off so that i can move into my as-yet-unfound new apartment. so, really, i feel that my subconscious is just being a little bitch, and rubbing my nose in the fact that i can’t take a vacation.
i wonder what freud would have to say about repeated dreaming of a forgotten passport? probably something about a crushing fear of being found unprepared or something, possibly involving penis envy. well, i’ve got my passport exactly where i know where it is — so put that in your pipe and smoke it, sigmund!Browsing Posts published in January, 2006
i wish…
- …i could raise one eyebrow at a time.
- …i could take a nice long vacation.
- …house wasn’t pre-empted this week.
- …i could play bass guitar.
- …i had a miiiiiiiiiiiiiiilion dollars.
early evening, blacklite bowling at waveland with r. did not break 100 on any game, which is very very sad, but bowled all three games with (braced) right hand, so, go bionic niqui!
from there to a little german pub in lincoln square, for to facilitate (a) drinking and (b) shooting pool. met Crazy Drunken Man obsessed with knowing if niqui was dutch, at first (wtf? hello, it’s lincoln square; if you’re obsessed with me being of any nationality it should be german!), and then later wanted to know if niqui was a “schmuck or a schmook.” /me was somewhat offended by some stranger asking if she was a schmuck. of course this was shortly thereafter followed by the bartender kicking Crazy Drunken Man out of the pub for being, well, crazy and fucking drunk. so that was all right. then 90 minutes of delightful relative solitude passed, with n. and r. shooting pool (and niqui not doing too badly at all!) then a guy with a guitar shows up. apparently there was to be live music shortly. 30 more minutes pass. another dude with another guitar shows up. they displace the jukebox. this was our final warning sign. and then…the hipsters descended. THEY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE. it was like there was some homing beacon for emaciated guys in threadbare shirts. within twenty minutes, our friendly local pub — which had previously had three patrons, counting niqui and r. — was full of idiots, apparently evenly split between ordering bad beer and drinks that the bar staff had to look up in the book, thus prompting a ten (!!) minute wait to buy two draft beers and get change for the pool table, while, adding insult to injury, niqui was forced to listen to one of them earnestly talk about garrison keillor and how he so sadly acknowledges that it means he’s “provincial” to care about tales from lake woebegone. listen up, dumbass: we know you’re trying to impress the girl with how you’re smart and sensitive ‘cos you listen to garrison keillor on NPR. nobody’s falling for your bullshit, so shut the fuck up about trying to make yourself look like a hick by intimating anyone from out of the city, like yourself, is a hick. all right? we on the same page? no one is impressed by your recounting of garrison fucking keillor! get in touch with your blue-collar roots some other way. drink a fucking pabst blue ribbon and get away. and the music! oh christ. someone save me from earnest acoustic emo guitar bullshit about how your girlfriend deceived you and now life is worthless, but you’re singing under the guise of “folk” music so it’s okay to be a tool. and worst of all, they shut down the pool table because there were too many people. the hipsters chased us out of our own damn pub. christ. if i see anyone in a striped shirt and ragged jeans tomorrow, i will not be held accountable for my actions.
# fsck /dev/rdsk/c8t1d0s0
** /dev/rdsk/c8t1d0s0
** Last Mounted on /opt/http/htdocs
** Phase 1 – Check Blocks and Sizes
^C# WARNING: /sbus@6,0/SUNW,socal@d,10000/sf@0,0/ssd@w500123412341234d,0 (ssd2):
ssdrestart transport failed (fffffffe)
meanwhile:
T3B Release 2.01.06 2003/11/06 14:59:41 (192.168.0.0)
Copyright (C) 1997-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
broken-t3:/:<1>ERROR- u1ctr XOR: Flags=B–M— Cntr=0×01 Synd=0×06 Addr=0×88001E20 WARNING – System will reset or failover… T3B-1
Starting POST
………
yes folks, i have but to fsck my volume and the goddamned t3 reboots itself. this means that this is A Guaranteed Good Time.
anyone have a spare E5500 and a handful of sbus fcal cards with gbics they aren’t using? update: oh, never mind. the 5500 isn’t at fault. the t3 fried. HOORAY FOR TAPE! alas, if only it had waited to die until after last night’s backup would have run. two day old backups suck. * niqui now knows that this is her jukebox run — because this is the first eminem that’s played all night, and she adores this song.
* twork bops in spirit
* twork throws on some beastie boys. why? because they’re droppin’ science!
* niqui sings along with the bit dissing moby even though she likes moby, ‘cos it’s funny
* twork sings along when 3rd bass disses on the beastie boys.
* twork would not be surprised if the beastie boys did as well
“without me,” eminem
“julia,” the beatles
“lost in a supermarket,” the clash
“my weakness,” moby
“marching bands of manhattan,” death cab for cutie
something or other (does it actually matter?), the white stripes
“when doves cry,” prince
“ashes to ashes,” david bowie
“the KKK took my baby away,” the ramones
“violently happy,” bjork
“get on the good foot,” james brown (with a hat tip to r., wherever he is these days)
“without love (there is nothing),” tom jones
something — beck, clearly, but, what? i must have played something randomly.
“wave of mutilation,” the pixies.
and you can tell that niqui’s run of the jukebox is done because the next song is, like, bon jovi or some such shit. i barely even tolerated this shit in the eighties. oh, christ, it’s def leppard, “pour some sugar on me.” time to go to sleep.
…
i just want to be me
when i can, i will;
try to understand that when i can, i will.
i like the mighty mighty bosstones. that doesn’t make me a bad person.
* niqui is inclined to go home and listen to “the wall.” after watching it last night. this is probably not a good sign for niqui’s state of mind.* twork supposes that’s part of the point … and the devil is six — and if the devil is six?
with apologies to sherwood schwartz:
just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful host.
that started with too much spam
and a machine that passed its POST. the software’s a mighty perl-based thing,
the admins brave and true;
installer guy was kinda dumb,
or he was very new, he was very new. the spamscape was getting rough,
too much junk got through
a year in production with many fires fought
but the damn thing just was broke, the damn thing just was broke. phone calls to support and obvious problems fixed helped some
setting the shared memory,
the stupid postgres config,
the spam quarantines reindexed, reloaded
here on sabrina’s junkmail.
yes: i spent today and yesterday and monday working on problems with our puremessage system that can ultimately be (probably) traced back to the guy who came out from proserv to set it all up for us in october 2004.
i love it when you’re on the phone with support and they’re like “dude, what the…?” after you answer a question about what you’ve got something set to. seriously. i love it a LOT. It’s Amazing It Ever Worked At All. HOORAY!!! … of course it remains to be seen as to whether or not it’ll work better now… i’d settle for it ever purging its quarantine of old spam, which it’s pretty much never done. like, ever. it would be pretty sweet if that was fixed.i hate bad hold music. i’d rather have silence. or a local radio station. fuck, anything.
I HATE SMOOTH JAZZ SO MUCH. i like actual jazz. the kind that hasn’t had all of the soul sucked out of it and replaced with a manual adding machine. i can get behind some coltrane or thelonius monk, and i’m not too afraid to admit that i really like “straight, no chaser” and will often play it when i find it on a bar jukebox, especially if people are pissing me off with the worthless noise they choose. and while i don’t particularly care for acid jazz — which is all “Jazz Transfusion” on XRT’s fault, by the way — my dislike for acid jazz is a drop in the bucket compared to my loathing of the worthless pap that people seem to think must belong in any elevator and any call-service processor anywhere because it will soothe and calm us as weso i went out skating at lunch again. turns out? it’s bloody hard to skate into winds gusting from 20 to 45 mph.
but it’s crazy good fun to just stand there while the tailwind pushes you along. no kidding, i was laughing out loud and grinning like a dork, just getting pushed along, out alone on the ice. so it’s all good. winds tomorrow only 5 to 10 mph. may be too warm to skate, though (low 40s and sunny — and there were slick spots with melted water today, when it was in the 30s and quasi-sunny!). boo, hiss.as you may or may not know, we are looking for a senior unix system administrator. i’m involved in the interview committee, which is kind of interesting. i haven’t been involved with hiring since m. and i left the JFI and hired our replacements, and before that, since i hired a summer intern at fastweb.
i do enjoy sitting down and brainstorming interview questions. it’s kind of fun to exercise your brain to see what you can come up with, not just for the quibbly technical details but also coming up with questions that present some sort of gauge of the respondant’s technical skills — i.e., not just “yes” or “no,” but giving them something where they have a chance to demonstrate their comfort level with something. as an example (and a freebie for anyone reading this who might happen to interview with me), i often like to ask people to describe some of the differences between berkeley style and system V style UNIX — you can say something as basic as “csh vs. bourne shell” or “the options to ps,” or you can get just as complex as you like, and whatever your answer is, it’s going to tell me about what you’ve had experience running up against. but this is not a blog entry wherein i tell you how to ace all of sabrina’s interview questions! although i do have a list of some interview questions that people suggested on the sage-members list ages ago — mostly just because i stashed them there against the next time i would be interviewing candidates. and maybe i’ll even update it someday, once this round of hiring is done, with the new questions i’ve been using lately. but no, today’s entry is a few tips inspired by the resumes i’ve looked at and the people i’ve talked to. i may add more thoughts as the interview process slogs on. hope they help someone.- applying:
- be realistic. if you have never run any sun equipment, maybe applying for a senior unix system administrator in an environment consisting of over 70% sun gear is a waste of your and our time.
- on the same note, if you cannot even tell me whether your usual login shell is a sh-alike or csh-alike, you’re not right for a senior position. this is like not knowing whether your car uses gasoline or diesel — it’s fine if you’re not the only driver and someone else can help you when you get to the gas station, but if you’re on your own you’re going to be screwed.
- your resume:
- SPELLCHECK IT, FOR GOD’S SAKE! if you say you worked in “Los Angles, CA,” you can be pretty sure i’m going to be impressed unfavorably. especially if this is the sort of resume that was copied and pasted from your format onto the recruiter’s letterhead, which means NOBODY caught that stupid mistake.
- three pages AT MOST. one is great, assuming you can actually convey useful information in that amount of space. two is good. three is approaching “you need an editor” territory. four or more is unreasonable and i’m not going to read it.
- if you have half a page of certifications, it’s time to summarize: turn that twenty-line bullet point list into a one-liner, such as “Certifications: 12 relevant Microsoft system and application certifications, 6 Sun hardware and system certifications, and 2 RedHat Enterprise certifications, all current as of 6/2005.” boom! that’s what i care about: what areas you were trained in, and whether or not they’re recent. i don’t actually care at this point that you took both Solaris Administration I and II.
- please, please, please give me a list of what tools and applications you’re familiar with. saying in your description of a former posting that you were “responsible for installing, updating, and running common open source utilities” means less than nothing to me. are we talking emacs or sendmail, here? give me a nice four-line section that says which operating systems and versions, which hardware architectures, which tools you are most comfortable with or most commonly use, and what languages you use.
- your interview:
- if you come in and you are willing to honestly answer “i don’t know” with good humor when we ask you hard questions, that’s okay.
- … unless you answer “i don’t know” to everything.
- … and you decline to guess when we ask you to throw something out there.
- you’re going to be interviewed by a group of techheads, and we’re going to be scattershot with our questions — each person will bounce around their individual priorities, and we’ll ask you some really hard and some really easy questions. we don’t expect you to ace everything. we expect you to try, though.
- if i ask you something like “cubs or sox,” or “vi or emacs,” that is a question designed to give you a minute to decompress. relax and enjoy answering a question nobody’s grading you on.
- don’t expect that unix is all you’re going to have to know:
- i’m going to ask you networking things. i expect someone with six years of unix to understand the difference between classful and CIDR networking, if only in the context that you know you have to update your netmasks map.
- likewise, if you claim you have experience running a datacenter, i’m going to ask you about BTUs and power.
- everything else:
- yes, of course i’m totally gonna google you.
- i probably do not, however, have the CFT necessary to stalk your web page through the ages using the Internet Wayback Machine. do with that knowledge what thou shalt.
- if you answer my questions by looking at my male counterparts in the room, as though they asked the question, and won’t look at me — just so you know, (a) yes, i will notice; and (b), yes, you’ll lose credibility.
a short miniskirt and uggs over bare legs are never fashionable.
also, just looking at your poor bare legs in january temperatures makes me shiver.…if my pager does not stfu any time soon.
pop culture and niqui:
- i love the film back to the future so much that i’m not even too annoyed that i accidentally bought the fullscreen version, instead of widescreen, after spending a good minute in the store examining the packaging for that (and somehow missing the BIG ORANGE STICKER on the plastic which said it was fullscreen), because, hey, $21 was a good price and it’s not like i didn’t go through the eighties watching it in fullscreen a hundred times anyways.
- i got a spongebob squarepants poster and calendar as a birthday present from my friend’s son. he’s the one who got me addicted to spongebob. my god, he’s my pusher and he’s only 11!
- i really want baseball back again. following the post-season contract negotiations and speculation about lineups is not as awesome as actual ballgames, even if i am happy about crede.
- i live a life of unparalleled excitement: i am currently several chapters into the Haynes Ford Engine Overhaul Manual
. dude has a serious hard on about his wrenches, in addition to a really terrible haircut (assuming that’s him on the cover). perhaps i shall next read How to Rebuild Small-Block Ford Engines
! you cannot stop the fun!
- i love the song “When My Boy Walks Down The Street” so very much.
i cannot imagine why it was that i gave up ice skating, but i’m pretty sure it can just be chalked up to having more stuff to do in high school and giving up my saturday skating sessions for things like swim meets and whatever else. nonetheless, i’m now reminded of how much i enjoyed it, and damned if i don’t still really enjoy it, and now i’m totally going to skate the shit out of that rink on the midway until it gets too warm.
fell down only once today (wearing gloves today, so no hand damage was sustained — hooray!), and landed on my knees, which are going to have lovely technicolor bruises tomorrow morning, but i also skated for about an hour and a half and kinda got the hang of it mostly again. i am far better at using my left foot for leverage without using the toe pick than i am the right (i tend to use the pick there), though i’m working on that. i even tried swizzling backwards a couple of times, though with only very limited success and so i went back to skating frontwards. also, my birthday-gift-to-self skates totally rock. they fit perfectly and support my (poor sad wobbly) ankles nicely, though i admit that i can’t wait for the leather to ease slightly and conform better to my foot. plus, if i continue to skate downtown, they will be justified much more quickly than if i was just skating on the midway, since the rental fee there is $7 for crappy, ill-fitting hockey skates instead of $3 at the midway. r. and i were totally going to take treo photos and blog them, but my treo decided to run down its battery all the way, so you’ll just have to imagine us skating around millennium park gracefully and skillfully. well, notfallingfully, anyways. i had vast awesome amounts of fun. i can’t wait to go again. probably going to go out friday at lunch if anyone on campus would like to join me. i believe that i am highly critical of other drivers, but that that’s okay because cars are very capable of causing death.
i believe in the manual transmission.
i believe in using my turn indicators scrupulously, even in parking lots.
i believe that heated front seats are the best automotive accessory invented since the rear defroster.
i believe in maintaining a steady speed by use of the speedometer and the accelerator pedal. i believe that relying on the cruise control leads to becoming a lazy and inattentive driver, and laziness and inattention are not qualities i want while piloting a machine that is capable of killing me or others for hours on end at 80 mph.
i believe in watching for deer in the country for self-preservation purposes, not in order to enjoy nature’s beauty.
i believe that if i am stuck in traffic the least they can do for me is to have a ballgame on the radio, even if it is only the mud hens.
i believe in stopping before the thick white line, and i believe that “rolling stops” totally don’t count.
i believe in taking the #6 home if i go drinking right after work, even though the #6 kinda sucks.
i believe in keeping only ripped copies of CDs in my car, so they don’t get scratched or i don’t lose a significant investment if my car is ever stolen.
i believe that when i can see the sears tower’s spires, that means i’m home, and that the lift i get is one of the greatest natural highs.
i believe that wearing my seatbelt makes me safer, and it makes me anxious that some people in my family won’t wear theirs.
i believe in taking I-80 to 180 to Route 29 to peoria on occasion, because it’s much prettier than 55 to 74.
i believe it’s probably a good idea to check my tire pressure often, though i usually don’t.
i believe that states that don’t give you free road maps at the rest areas are substandard.
i believe that the passengers shouldn’t notice when i make lane changes, except for the sound of the blinker.
i believe that the indiana and ohio turnpikes handle toll collection far better than the illinois tollway authority.
i believe that the left lane is for passing, the right lane is for driving, and that changing lanes keeps you awake and concentrating on what you’re doing.
i believe that if you can read that bumper sticker, you are too fucking close.
i believe in just getting in the car and going.
i believe in using my lights to signal when it’s safe for a trucker to get in front of me, and using my hazards to say “thank you” if he does so for me.
i believe than taking I-57 south from chicago all the way through illinois is one of the most boring damn roads i’ve ever driven.
i believe that when it’s nice out, it’s okay to do yoga on the lawn at the rest area to raise your energy even if people look at you funny. actually, i think it’s even more worthwhile when people do look at you funny.
i believe in filling up my tank at the last gas station before i get home.
i believe that tennessee has some of the nicest rest stops, and louisiana the absolute sketchiest i have experienced.
i believe i’m going to get popped for a speeding ticket one of these days, and it’ll make me really sad when it happens because it’s been five years since my last one at this point.
i believe that one day i will stop confusing 290 and 294. until then, i’ll just talk about the north-south and the ike.
i believe in listening to music while driving, although i’ll note that around toledo, ohio, you can get really good NPR reception.
i believe in checking my blind spots even when i think it’s unnecessary. i believe that relying on my side mirrors would make me a bad driver.
i believe in dimming high beams the first instant you see a sign of an approaching car, or the taillights of someone you’re approaching, and that to leave them on where they interfere with other drivers makes you an asshole.
i believe that it’s one tank of gas to kim’s, half to my dad’s, two to my cousins’, and another half on top of that to my mom’s.
i believe that i am brave enough, but not crazy enough, to drive in southern california.
i believe truck stop coffee beats out tollway fast food coffee any goddamned day of the week.
i believe that parking in the loop on weekdays is fucking overpriced.
i believe in writing down my mileage every time i buy gas.
i believe that new york state’s interstate mile and exit numbering scheme is stupid and was implemented specifically to irritate me. i believe pennsylvania changed from new york’s scheme to everyone else’s scheme because they knew i was coming and wanted to get on my good side.
i believe that i lost one of my two car keys a while ago, and i’m still kind of hacked off about it.
i believe that knowing how to change one’s own oil and tires should be part of the driver’s license exam. i believe that anyone who calls triple-A to change a flat because they’re afraid to try is weak.
i believe in keeping ponytail holders around my shifter so i can keep my hair out of my face while driving.
i believe long-haul transport belongs on the rails, not the roads, and i believe that i might have one more uncle today if it wasn’t for truckers sharing needles to make ends meet.
i believe in using those sticker protector thingies that turn my city sticker into a static-sticker instead of a permanent-gluey-sticker.
I believe that the carburetor is better than the fuel injector because it’s mechanical and not electronic, even if it is less efficient.
i believe that my car is happiest in fifth gear cruising at about 3300 rpms, and i drive accordingly.
i believe in parking by setting the brake and leaving the car in neutral, not by leaving it in gear.
i believe that automatic transmissions are responsible for the near-complete lack of modern driving etiquette.
i believe that tailgating is a sign that you are an irredeemably rude person. i believe that if you tailgate with your high beams on you should be shot.
i believe that i should be able to install a voluntary governor, so that i can leadfoot all i like but i still won’t do more than 85 unless i specifically disable it.
i believe that people who don’t change to the left lane to let someone merge, when they have room to do so, are jackasses.
i believe in pulling off the road to take pictures if i feel like it.
i believe that my lead foot is going to get me in some real trouble someday, partly because i also believe that radar detectors are cheating.
i believe that in illinois, unmarked country roads have a speed limit of 55 mph. i believe that unposted speed limits are irrelevant, unless the corn is too high to see the cross roads.
i believe in road trips to nowhere just for the sake of driving.
i believe everyone else is a bad driver, grated on a scale of “i’m content to ride in your passenger seat” to “mom, why don’t we take my car?”
i believe in toll gates as a means to let me entertain myself.
i believe that one day i’ll finally take that Route 66 trip i’ve been wanting to do for so long.
i believe that the time i had my car up to 105 mph was bloody fast enough.
i believe in open roads, rolled-down windows, and loud rock ‘n roll music.
oh, i upgraded my dream job, i think. i went from “work in a used record store” (not own one; that would be too much paperwork. i want to be jack black in high fidelity except without the assholeiness.) to “own a pub in the uk.”
