NOTE: This post is in the process of being updated due to being used in a presentation. Please let me know if there’s anything that you believe requires updating by leaving a comment, sending me an email or poking me on Twitter! (Before I launch in, try saying the title three times fast…sorry, couldn’t help myself :P) So, we recently… Read more »
In light of this being published on Sysadmin Appreciation Day (psssst, HAPPY SYSADMIN APPRECIATION DAY! ^_^), I thought I’d do a post aimed at us – system administrators! Doing some recent reading, lurking in a few forums and floating about on Twitter, I’ve noticed a number of gripes from other admins regarding things their fellow admins didn’t know that they… Read more »
Realised it’s been a while since I’ve done an update on where my home Lego collection currently stands, so thought I’d throw up a few photos. (Top of the bookcase above my desk) (Top of my Ikea 5×5 Expedit bookcase) (In the Ikea 5×5 Expedit bookcase) (The pieces that won’t fit anywhere else so they have to go on the… Read more »
I don’t understand why passwords and password management are so difficult for people…truly I don’t. Passwords are part of our every day lives. We use passwords for so many things in our day-to-day lives – to access our email, to access social media websites, to log on to our personal and work PC’s, to buy goods using our debit and… Read more »
So, one of the requirements of my current job is being on-call. I won’t call it an upside or a downside, because it really is a bit of both. The downside it means I have to have my work phone on me at all times when I’m on-call, make sure my laptop is with me when I plan on going… Read more »
This was going to be a very different post originally…but it’s morphed a bit due to the fact that my view on how I’ve seen events over the last few months has changed. So the draft that was a few weeks ago is very different to the post that’s published here. I’m sorry I’m not who you want me to… Read more »
So – I wanted to get Splunk but in my organisation that was never going to happen (you want something that costs MONEY?! Ludicrous!) So we had to come up with a compromise. A colleague of mine went hunting for some open source logging software and found that the combination of Elastic Search, LogStash, Kibana and nxLog worked well. He… Read more »
I recently noted (and replied to) a post in /r/sysadmin regarding the fact that someone received (Holy Didn’tExpectThat Batman!) some thanks for a job well done. It’s something I’ve noticed in the jobs I’ve been in and the bosses I’ve had. Systems administrators generally don’t get thanks. They don’t get the same level of praise as the front line, who… Read more »
Okay, this will be a pretty boring post for those of you who don’t like hearing about weight loss/getting health etc. etc. My apologies, but I figured I should put some of this information out there for others! For the past few years, my better half and I have been trying to lose weight – mainly because we both knew… Read more »
There are a great number of things that irritate me at work and while I do spend a fair bit of time ranting on Twitter, there are some things that do require more than the average 140 characters. I have a hard time controlling my anger and frustration, something that I am working on trying to fix (and I’ll address… Read more »