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Keeping a Worklog
Keeping a personal worklog can be a great help for any system administrator. A worklog will track changes you make and become an excellent resource while troubleshooting problems or trying to justify...
View ArticleSQL Fuzzing with Performance Data
I've been asked to test the replication and fail-over procedures at work. Since we have several large databases on as many servers, this is an important part of our Disaster Recovery program.The...
View ArticleWorking Under the Influence
Let me just say this first: I like coffee.I assumed that every other system administrator drank coffee/caffeinated beverages as well. Caffeine has become part of the larger (computer) subculture; Jolt,...
View ArticleA New Way to look at Networking
I've started watching a google talk by Van Jacobson on networking. It's two years old ... I need to start watching more google talks. Most of the ones I've seen are amazing. This is no exception.Google...
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Making a Thermal Map
I have to admit, HVAC is a bit of a mystery. While I have some experience with this topic, much of it is unknown to me. Rather than waiting for something to break, I decided to investigate my server...
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Building The Narrative
Pictures build narrative. Building the narrative of your network is learning to tell a truthful and richly illustrated story. This narrative will help you display your best work, and to help others in...
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108 Things a Systems Administrator Might Do
When I meet new people, and they ask me what I do for a living, I usually just respond with "computer stuff". This is about as far as most non-technical people want to take it. But its always bothered...
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Sysadmins And The Turbulent Waters of PEBKAC
Cory Doctrow's recent story Epoch (commissioned by Mark Shuttleworth), has a brilliant passage about sysadmins:I will tell you a secret of the sysadmin trade: PEBKAC. Problem Exists Between Keyboard...
View ArticleHousekeeping
I switched my RSS feed to feedburner, http://feeds.feedburner.com/semafour/blog. Enjoy! Please resubscribe, if I decide to change blog platforms, there will be no need for you to change RSS feeds again.
View ArticleHow To Become A Hacker for the New Year
I'm getting a jump on my New Year Resolutions by reading How to Become a Hacker by Eric Raymond. From this beautiful essay comes a list of things every hacker (or sysadmin) should know how to do...
View ArticleA Well Tempered Sysadmin
There is no single path to becoming a good sysadmin, this process takes time, talent, and dedication. There is no easy place to begin this discussion, and there's an amazing amount of controversy...
View ArticleRSS and Computer Security Intellegence Gathering
A short time ago, I created an OPML of computer security related RSS feeds. I hand this file out to all of my students and show them how to use google reader as an intelligence aggregation and threat...
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