Recently in Blogging Category

To honor the arrival of Spring, I am breathing new life here. The original content is still available, and most urls should redirect without any trouble.

I have a few longer articles in the pipeline rather than a bunch of my usual mini posts. This new format should accommodate that approach better than the old.

I am also planning on importing the content and comments from Michael On Security in the near future. Those longer articles will be comfortable here.

For those that are curious, this new version rides on Textpattern Movable Type.  It gives me a little more flexibility than the excellent Wordpress and is a little easier for me to get things done in than the powerful Drupal.

Commenting is disabled for the time being, but if you'd like to converse, contact me here.

...are emails like this one:

Hi,

I look after about a dozen Unix boxes (mainly Fedora Linux, but also
Solaris, HP-UX and Digital Unix). I came to the conclusion after reading
your article that I need to formalize updates and document everything on
the wiki a bit more comprehensively. I also came to the conclusion that
anytime I update any system configuration files on any of the servers I
should check them in to the corporate CVS.

You can't have too much documentation :-)

Thanks again for a useful resource.

Cheers,
Jan.

You can't beat that! It is fantastic encouragement, and really makes me feel like I may be able to do some good here.

Wanting to do things right around here, I have decided to summarize why I started this weblog and what I really want it to become. I have run a number of sites in the past, but have had a very hard time keeping them on track. This one is different, as the domain name itself doesn't leave a whole lot of room for variance. ;-)

Every day reminds me that no matter how many years I can claim to have worked in the IT industry, I'm still a beginner. Twelve years ago I was a beginner to Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and to the still young GNU Linux. Four years later, I was a learning how to keeping my head in a large environment. Five years from then, I had to figure out how to lead a large team of systems folk in an even larger organization and keep my soul. I'm still not sure I made it all the way out of that one.

Today, I'm the sole systems guy in a thriving software development company. I have my hands full with keeping up with day-to-day issues, managing risk, planning for the future, being continuously on call, and trying to build a capable operations team from the ground up. I am regularly amazed that a company so young and so small can challenge me like this - but it is doing a damned good job.

One of the most frustrating realizations is that there isn't a guidebook to lend a hand. There are shelves full of operations management books out there, but none of them give you any idea as to what the hell you're going to do come Monday morning. The same can be said about a lot of the technical books out there: it is easy to find a book on your favorite Linux distro or a guide to implement Active Directory, but that doesn't solve the core problem of how you keep ahead.

Sometimes I think that the technical books on the wall behind me are just pleasant distractions from the mess I live in. It's far easier for me to tinker with something new or arcane than it is to face up to the more immanent and difficult problems.

So this is what is going on: I am going to build a guidebook of sorts on how one can truly take charge of their environment. It will be concise, and it will be living. I'm going to use my posts to cover the topics, and I will write revisions as necessary. I expect to make mistakes. In the end, I'll have a process that I trust and can use on a daily basis to not only keep things running in a safe and sane manner, but to keep making improvements.

Now, I will drift from time to time to keep things fresh and interesting. I'll ramble about code and and related news here or there. As an example, I have a small series of articles detailing typical stack smashing techniques that will be fun to polish and publish. This is a blog, after all - it is allowed to wear different hats.

There you have it, folks. Now you know who I am and what I am up to here. Time to get back to writing.