Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

9/20/2013

Pretty SciFi Art

Filed under: Art,Fun,Life, the Universe, and Everything,Personal,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:53 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is a Full Moon

No, not mine.

I got nothing this week.
I’m out of creative ideas and pretty much feel like a spent shell casing.
But, I have a good excuse.  In just over a week, I’ll be getting married.  So, this is the last Friday post you’ll see from me for a little bit.  Just kind of how that goes.  Next week, I’ll be busy with family and last minute details for the wedding.  The week after, I plan to be still recovering from the…
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9/13/2013

Photography Fundamentals

Filed under: Art,Fun,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:42 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

So, yeah, I’ve got pretty much nothing this week.

Pretty much every bit of time and energy is going into either getting married (in just over two weeks!) or getting my fiance’s business, The Organizing Decorator, more customers.  So, that means I have little left to come up with too much that’s interesting here.  As it turns out, that’s okay because Haje and Daniela over at Photocritic have plenty to keep you amused, at least if you’re a photographer.  In particular,…
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9/11/2013

IT Dreams

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Life Goals,Life, the Universe, and Everything,Personal,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:48 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

You know what I’d like to do?

I’d like to run a large-ish IT shop with a clear and well-defined budget.  I’d like to plan for rolling upgrades so that no one had a workstation or laptop that was older than five years old.  If the budget allowed for it, so that no one had equipment that was older than three years old.  And, I’d like to take that old, retired equipment and donate it to worth causes, like the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or the Red Cross or Goodwill or something like that.  Local charities, too, but all causes that would use that equipment to better someone’s actual life.

I’d like to have servers that were under-utilized for a change, instead of always headed toward being out of resources.  Servers with so much room to grow that they still were running smoothly even after a five or six year period, but that were upgraded before they were ten years old anyway, just because that’s the right way to do it.

I’d like to have staff that I could develop and grow and train to be the best IT personnel that techs could imagine being.  And, I mean that both through having a training budget to send them out for classes, but also on a personal level.  The one thing I really, really miss about being more than a department of one is that chance to teach someone how to do it the right way.  (And, yes, there are many ways to get IT stuff done, but, honestly, there are some ways that are more right than others.)

I long for a neat wiring closet again.  And an orderly server rack.  I miss having a dedicated server room with it’s own A/C and raised floors.  Can’t there be a way for even small companies to do that?  Shouldn’t we find a way for that to be a thing?

Okay, Universe, there it is.  I’ve said it.  Now, go make it happen!

9/10/2013

Against Digital Sharecropping

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Fun,Ooo, shiny...,Pressgram,Rotten Apples — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Rooster which is in the early evening or 6:16 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

I like being free and independent.

I like the idea behind Instagram, but not the proprietary nature of it.
I don’t like giving up my rights to work I create.   Even when it’s just a little photo of a little moment captured with my iPhone.  I dislike, as Nicholas Carr called it on his blog, “digital sharecropping”. And, of course, now the ads have finally started on Instagram, solidifying my discomfort with it.  Why should I let them profit from even the smallest amount of my work without compensation?

Well, now, there’s a new program called Pressgram, that’s a free iPhone app, which allows an Instagram-like experience, but uploads the photos to my WordPress blog. You can upload them to your WordPress.com blog, or, as I do, to my self-hosted WordPress blog.  Word has it that there is an Android version in the works, too.  It’s a new app, so there are some on-going refinements, but it really is a great start, I think.

Obviously, I’ve been using it here and at my other site, JKHoffman.com, so I believe in it.  Yes, it took me a little fiddling to get the setting just the way I want and to sort out a couple other things, but, now that I have, I think this is going to work just fine.  I can already see the difference in my site stats!
Anyway, worth checking out if you’re leary of another ad-supported system that lets you share, but not much else.

Drive Adaptation

Filed under: Pressgram — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Monkey which is mid-afternoon or 4:36 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

Finally got the IDE adapter for that super cool external USB drive device.  When it’s so open, it’s hard for me to think of it as an “enclosure”.  So, now I can wipe all those old drives I found while Sharon and I cleaned up my office two weeks ago.

Published via Pressgram

9/6/2013

External USB Drive Array

Filed under: Geek Work,Pressgram — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Monkey which is mid-afternoon or 4:48 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

My favorite new tech toy!
Recently, I cleaned up my office (by hiring my fiancé), and found a lot of older hard drives that needed to be wiped before I could dispose of them. [amazon_link id=”B003WV5DLA” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]This little guy from Startech.com[/amazon_link] has really done the trick! I just pop a drive in, hit the power button for that slot, and I have a fresh, new drive available on my machine to format clean! Just that easy!

(You can find my fiancé’s business at The Organizing Decorator, by the way!)

Published via Pressgram

Camera Porn

Filed under: Art,Fun,Personal,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is in the early morning or 7:19 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

By now, dear readers, you both should know that I’m “into” photography.

Now, I’m not really into collecting cameras, though, I will admit that I have several.  And, I only shoot digital, because, frankly, film is kind of a hassle these days and I just never really had the time, patience or money all at once to learn enough about film to develop my own.  And, let’s face it, if I’m not developing my own photos, it seems like a waste…
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