News (a.k.a. My Blog)
Here's the part of my site where I get to let you know what I've been up to,
what I'm currently about, and what I may be doing down the pike. If you
see something here and have questions or thoughts that you'd like to
communicate to me, you can use the contact form or look up my contact info
here.
Note that dates and times for posts are listed using the U.S. Eastern
Standard time zone.
Post Index:
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2010
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16 Apr,
08 Aug,
11 Sep)
2009
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02 Sep)
2008
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06 Feb)
2007
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07 Jan,
20 Feb,
22 Apr)
2006
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02 Nov,
07 Dec)
Sat, 11 Sep 2010
Google's Diminishing Greatness as a Search Engine
I don't like Google futzing with the search engine home page. The folks
there seem to be doing that a lot lately, and it's ticking me off! The
latest change has been especially annoying. It's some kind of instant
search that fades in while you're entering search terms. Today I got
fed up and decided to tell the folks at Google that I'm getting tired of
their shenanigans. I found their feedback page and sent them my complaint:
http://www.google.com/quality_form?q=google+feedback&hl=en&prmd=ivn
If they want to give folks a way to have a "Google Home Page" with all sorts
of "features", that's fine with me. But why can't they just stick to using
domains, sub-domains, and sub-pages, and put a link on the search home page?
It worked fine for Gmail and Google Apps. I shouldn't need to keep turning
things off. Fancy new "features" should be opt-in, not opt-out! If this
kind of "suckage" continues, I'm afraid I'll have to find another search
engine. Google is starting to lose it's greatness, and is becoming just
another crappy big business, and it makes me sad to see it happen.
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Sun, 08 Aug 2010
New Projects
Although I've not found a new job yet, I've been keeping busy. In addition
to looking for work (of course!), I've been working on various computer
projects:
- I replaced a previously-created Linux embedded system with OpenBSD. It
acts as my LAN's internal DNS, DHCP and NTP server. I originally came up
with the idea to create some more-reliable NTP servers for iContact.
One of the problems I had with using OpenBSD for this type of system is
that OpenBSD's ability to edit ramdisk contents appears to rely on a
custom kernel recompile. However, the OpenBSD maintainers will only
support the stock kernels. I cooked up a unique innovation that
implements a RAMdisk-based system without altering the standard
OpenBSD kernel one bit. I'll post the details
here.
- I purchased a MikroTik RB750G router for $70 and started learning how to
configure it. It's the same as the RB750 that's been advertised lately
in Linux Journal, the one that provides "MPLS for the masses". The only
reason it costs an extra $30 is that the ethernet ports do 1000G in
addition to the 10/100 of the RB750. When I'm confident I understand it
properly, I plan on making it the gateway router for my LAN.
- I've been hosting this web/mail server from my home LAN for ages, running
on an old Pentium 400MHz with a mere 128 Megs of RAM. When I set it up,
the hardware was already ancient (an old small-footprint Compaq Deskpro),
but the Debian version was the newly-released Sarge (3.1). Other than a
security update or three, the OS went pretty much untouched. So a new
OS version was way overdue. And because there have been a number of
relatively long power outages at my home lately (>1 hour), I started
getting rather tired of having to restart the server when the power came
back on. Even though I've got it on a UPS, there's only about an hour
it can run before it has to shut down to keep from draining the battery
completely dry. Now that VPS hosting is an inexpensive commodity, I
decided to go with the smallest virtual server that
Linode provides. It only costs about $20 a month, and with 512MB of
RAM and 4 virtual 2.27GHz CPUs it far outweighs what my old server could
do! I installed the latest Debian on it, and the hardest part was all the
configuration updates that were needed to get the web and mail services
properly migrated. And in order to have a smooth and quick cutover, I had
to keep all the e-mail and web data synchronized while testing. But all
went well (as you can see by the fact that you're reading this :), so I'm
happy.
- I'm also in the middle of creating digital copies of my collection of
music cassette tapes, which although aren't many (some 100 or so, total),
is a time-consuming task, because each song on each tape must be played
and re-recorded in real time.
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Fri, 16 Apr 2010
Layed Off!
Hmm, I guess I'm doing somewhat better at keeping this up to date, being an
entire year hasn't gone by yet since my last post. :) Quite a bit has
happened though, so I really need to catch up here. On the 8th of this past
December, I was laid off at iContact, along with three other guys from the
same work group, all of us on the same day. The layoff consisted of three
Sysadmins (including me), a Senior and a Junior Database Admin, and a
Database Engineer. They kept the Junior DBA and the most-recently-hired
Sysadmin, and let the rest of us go. In November they had laid off one of
the IT group guys, and they later let another one of them go in January,
from a group that had grown to a total of seven people. As I write this it
occurs to me at eight out of thirteen people, that is more than half of
the two groups laid off from iContact in less than three months time!
When I started there back in July of '08, the Internal IT and the
Infrastructure IT staff were all one group. Heck, we were only three and a
half guys, so of course it was one group: the Senior DBA (who doubled as a
Sysadmin), the Junior DBA (who at the time only worked part-time -- he's the
"half guy" in the count), the IT/Help Desk guy, and me. There was supposed
to be another Sysadmin, but right after I was hired he moved on to another
job elsewhere. During the first few months, most of my time was spent with
the IT/Help Desk work back log by helping with the new phone system (one
that I'd had no prior experience with), and with internal mail and file
server issues. I've never been calendar-minded, so I'm can't put firm dates
on when we picked up the other team members, but between late in '08 and the
middle of '09, we had hired another Sysadmin, a Junior Sysadmin, a Network
Admin and a group Manager, and the part-time Junior DBA became a full-time
DBA. This brought the IT team head count up to eight, including the
manager. Our IT team was a part of the company's Technology Department,
which included the Development, QA, Operations and Project Mgmt teams, and
those teams were all growing as quickly as well, and around the summer of
last year the IT team was divided into two groups: IT and Infrastructure.
The IT team got the Junior Sysadmin, and then picked up another couple of
Help Desk guys, a Data Analyst and a Salesforce Admin. On the
Infrastructure side, we got the team Manager and later hired a couple of
Sysadmins, but unfortunately one of them only lasted a couple of weeks
because he was offered a better position elsewhere.
And when I thought we finally had enough people to start getting ahead of
the game rather than just barely keeping our heads above water, the groups
started shrinking again. The Team Manager was let go, and maybe a month
later the Network Admin was sent packing. After that, it was the Junior
Sysadmin. And on the morning of the 8th of December, four of us received an
e-mail with a subject line saying something about an upcoming scheduled
maintenance window, that asked us to attend a meeting at 10:30 later that
same day. When we walked into the meeting, we were met by the Director of
Technology and, much to our surprise, the HR Director. As soon as we sat
down, the bomb was dropped: We were told that we were being let go
immediately, but that we were being offered severence packages (provided we
agreed to the terms therein, naturally). As you can imagine, this came as a
bit of a shock, and was definitely no-one's idea of the best Christmas news
ever. During the meeting, the words of Dickens' Tiny Tim kept echoing
ironically inside my head: "God bless us every one!" It was totally unreal.
After the meeting, we were walked back to our desks to get our personal
belonging, and then out the front door. I guess you could say we were all
in shock. Three of us just stood outside, looking at each other in
unbelief and watching as the DBA stormed off in his car. Not knowing what
else to do, I asked the other two: "Hey, you guys want to go somewhere and
get a beer, so we can sit down and figure out just what happened?" Being
that it wasn't even lunchtime yet, we decided to just buy some sixers and go
hang out at the house of the one who lived closest.
It wasn't all that bad though, once the shock wore off. Although I
naturally can't go into any detail about the severence (you know how it is:
mum's the word), I decided I could afford to take a much longer "Christmas"
vacation than usual. It's been great being able to spend time with my wife
and son. As well, when my brother recently came to visit (during the week),
I was able to take the time to enjoy hanging out with him and my two young
nieces. When it was time for him to leave, I got to ride with him to D.C.
and spend a couple of days there as well. And you know how we all have
"around-the-house" projects that never ever seem to get done? Mine are all
finished! In the past, my wife and son have spent vacation times together
when he's been out of school, while I enviously went to work. But just last
week, we took a road trip together to see Ellis Island and the Statue of
Liberty, and to see NYC for the first time.
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