Ugh. Four hours wasted.

I’m sitting here with a browser on one window and a text console to an installing system in another. Why? Because I’m waiting for the installation to finish. I’ve been debugging an odd bcfg2 failure during kickstart post-install for our provisioning system. It first started last night when I left the office. I’d just fired […]

Tips: See the contents of an RPM post-install script

Today I had the need to look at MySQL.com’s post-install scripts for MySQL Advanced. Unfortunately, I was lazy not having quick and easy access to the specfile, I used my blackbelt in Google-fu to figure out that it was simpler than I thought. In my case, I had already installed the RPM. All I needed […]

ComputerWorld Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks

Two quotes stick out from this article for me: Foundational (bottom-up) respect is not only the largest single determining factor in the success of an IT team, but the most ignored. I believe you can predict success or failure of an IT group simply by assessing the amount of mutual respect within it. and The […]

Four Short Links: Tues., Sept 8th 2009

Rand in Repose: Your People — Rand talks about the idea of Your People. “These are a strange lot of people you’ve discovered in a motley array of places because you were searching for them. […] while Your People may be less work, they are harder people to have in your life. These are not […]

Rands In Repose: No Surprises

In my ideal management world, a review is simply a documentation of well-known facts, your performance over the year. It also contains constructive advice and insight regarding how your boss believes you can improve on that performance. My dream is that you already know all of this information because you’ve been getting year-round feedback from […]

Not every cloud has a silver lining: Cory Doctorow | Technology | The Guardian

The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to “the cloud” – that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centres. Here’s something you won’t see mentioned, though: the main attraction […]

Seth's Blog: Spare no expense!

The way around it, I think, is to set expectations early and often. If you’re going to give me your phone number, you better answer it. If you’re going to offer a warranty, you better honor it. If you position yourself as a company with real people eager to make every single person happy–you better […]

Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine

What’s worse, because they aren’t tasked with understanding how people in different parts of a company do their jobs, IT managers often can’t appreciate how profoundly certain tools can improve how we work. Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine. At first glance, this article made me […]

Seth's Blog: Competing with the singleminded

When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A. Online, of course, this often leads to doom, since there are many organizations that are willing to get big at the expense of revenue, or writers willing to be noticed […]

"Failure is always an option."

Great video from MythBuster’s Adam Savage on the topic of failure. I’d embed it, but WP is being wonky about the code. I think the story on the film school set was very poignant. Sometimes you just have to realize that there’s nothing you can do for a failure but learn from it.