Just a short update; we'll be gone all day tomorrow. Nothing of interest happening today - lots of fiddling with perl, half-watching old movies (The Blues Brothers at the moment, as some of you have no doubt already guessed...) and so on. Nothing much to write about for the column, either, so I... er... called in a guest columnist...

Have fun...

Thursday, May 3 - At Which Point Do Those Days Just Become Days??

It's 10 AM here on the left coast. So far today,

• My home laptop refused to work this morning (overheated)
• I discovered a lost and crying little girl in the parking lot
• Dealing with the above two meant I got an even later start
• A large package arrived containing two smaller boxes each containing a 3 x 5 card. I cut myself getting to them.
• A perl script that I need to get working ASAP doesn't.
  • The original author never heard of comments
  • He learned Perl from crazed Iranian weasels, apparently
• I *still* have not even started the list of things to be done today. To busy with yesterday's.

Don't get me wrong with the third item above. I would have helped the little girl if I were late for picking up lottery winnings, much less getting to work. It was just one more odd happening this morning that I didn't need, that's all.

You know, most of my career, every computer worker I've met has mentioned a desire to be a contractor. More money, loads of restrictions on what your place of employment can make you do, more money, shorter hours, more money, fewer responsibilities, more money, and no entanglements - if the company dies, you just move on. I've always worked as a full-time employee, figuring that the advantages of contracting just weren't worth it yet - although there was a certain (all right, large) appeal in working for myself and selecting jobs for the short term based on interest. I suspected that the majority of contractors didn't get to do that, though, so it wasn't a big incentive.

Well, now I'm a contractor. The company that pays my salary is a pretty good one; there've been problems, but most of them have been resolved with a few phone calls. Heck, when have I not had problems at any of the companies I've worked for? And in the meantime, someone else dealt with the messes of arranging interviews and positions - I showed up, answered a few questions, explained a few points from my resume - and that's it, I got called when they needed me to sign the paperwork. No negotiating hassles (other than my salary from the contracting company, but that didn't take long), no phone tag - kinda nice.

Now I've been here, what... going on four months. Two plus months left in the contract. I'm comfortable that my position is secure, my job involves doing challenging things in a wildly varied environment (Sun E10000 servers the size of my bedroom closet to Compaq NT servers) with people who know what they're doing, and the company I'm working at isn't going away any time soon. And I don't like it.

It took me a while to realize that, because I really should like it. Like I said, it's a good job in every respect that matters, right? The pay's good, there's plenty of toys to play with, and best of all, it's not really my responsibility, right? I'm not an employee, so I'm free to leave when the going gets rough.

Oh.

Yeah, that's it right there. I don't have any responsibility towards AT&T Wireless beyond what's in my contract. When something dies in the middle of the night, I have to fix it - but there's no sense of accomplishment, because I just take the time off the end of the week and stay home or leave early on Friday. Can't work more than the scheduled 40 hours, after all. Sounds wonderful, right? Not to me. I can't take ownership of anything here, because I won't necessarily be here in two months. So while at iTOOL or Siebel I was proud of the networks I built and the systems I fixed, here it's just... work. Work that I'm good at, work I would normally enjoy - but work I can't take any pride in, because I have no responsibility for it.

So what do I do about this? Well, finish the contract, of course - and meanwhile, polish up the ol' resume, and this time realize that I'm much happier when I don't have all these added benefits.

And now, the DSL connection appears to be flaky, so I'll sign off now. Have a good one.

Tuesday, May 1 - Late Evening

Bertha is here. Jon and Sue brought it over in their van tonight, and Jon and I managed to get it up the stairs and into the apartment. It's not all that big, but it's heavy; made mainly from rolled sheet metal, and lots of it. I may be tempted to will it to the occupants of the apartment after we leave... I guess it depends on how well the project goes. <G>

I mentioned the Jargon File this morning. Well, while I waited for phone calls and information at work today (one of the most annoying things about working for a big company - pretty much any big company - is the incredible difficulty of getting things done quickly.) I decided to "thumb through" the latest version of the file and see if there was anything new. I chuckled over some of the updated entries - "All your base are beling to us" is already in the file, for example - and noted without surprise but pleasure that the latest "big hack" from the weekend is already in it - the successful implementation of RFC 1149. What's that? Heh. Well, it's the proposed standard for IP over Avian Carriers. Yep; you thought dial-up was slow, try connecting to the internet via carrier pigeon. <G>

Among other things, I finally got around to reading Appendix B: A Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Hmmm. Usually, I dismiss these sorts of things as foolish; I'm me. Oh, sure, you're sitting there saying I'm not, that I'm just another admin or just another blogger or just another Daynoter. But I know better. I'm me, see, not like anybody else. When they made me, they broke the mold. (Rumors of an angry torch-bearing mob lynching the moldmaker are vicous lies and slander.) Not only that, but I've known plenty of real hackers (I'm no more than an acolyte, most ways) and there's no way anyone could sum up their characteristics in a few sentences. For one thing, no two of them are alike.

Well, but wait; all the hackers I've known had one thing in common - they were all hackers. Very well, how did I know they were? What about them said "this person is a hacker" and separated them out from crackers, skr1pt k1dd1es, or simple computer enthusiasts? If they were so different, how did I know they were all alike?

I hate it when I stump myself. <SEG>

All right, let's see what ESR has to say on the subject. Go ahead, go read it; I'll wait.

Finished?

OK. First of all, everything in that appendix is generally true - but it has nothing to do with the definition of "what is a hacker". It defined the general characteristics, something like a field guide for birds or a census summary. No criticism is intended for ESR and the other Jargon File editors; they made a magnificent effort at an incredibly difficult, if not impossible task. After all, what is a hacker?

Well, let's start with something simple. What is a chair? Something you sit on. Well, right now I'm sitting on the floor - is that a chair, then? No, a chair has legs. All right - I've gotten up and I'm now sitting on the coffee table. (Don't tell Keri.) Is that a chair? No. It's a coffee table.

OK. Well, my chair has a back on it. So something with a back, legs, and that you can sit on must be a chair.

Uh-oh. The couch has all of those things - but it's not a chair.

Something in the human brain allows us to recognize the inherent characteristics of chairs. We can say with confidence to a stranger "have a seat" and be certain they won't perch on the entertainment center. Well, reasonably certain. You can never be sure what someone like me will do, but we're talking about normal people now. What is it, how does it work, and does the information get transferred? That's a tougher question. Send me any thoughts you might have on it; I'm only certain that *I* don't know. There's a definite ability to transfer that definition from person to person - but how is it accomplished?

Tuesday, May 1 - Busy Busy Busy

Spent most of last night alternately working on the Conestoga website (almost ready to launch, in fact I'd hoped to do it today - but I didn't quite make it) and trying to determine what the problem was with THOR. The upshot so far is that I still don't have any idea. There's nothing in the log to indicate that anyone tried to break in (and that would be really, really hard to do - the only services available to the outside world (confirmed with nmap) are, starting from port 1, SSH, SMTP, DNS, HTTP, POP3, and the high-number web interface to CommuniGate. User only; administrative interface is only available from the inside. All of those services are updated to the latest revision, with all the security patches installed. I suppose it's possible - but there are plenty of easier and more interesting targets.

The kernel is 2.2.19, with ResierFS for the file system and nothing exotic for the hardware - and all the hardware is well and thoroughly stress-tested. At this point, I think I'm going to blame it on the server pixies and forget about it - except that I'm going to keep a much closer look on it from now on. Oh, and move the monitoring script to another box. <G> I may take the easy way out and install it on two boxes - on the other hand, it would be an interesting experiment to add a port socket to the script so that each machine would monitor itself and a central client would pull the data in and integrate it - with any server in the group able to take over as the central client in the event of a failure in the master... hmmm... well, put it on the "maybe someday" list.

Or I could just leave out a saucer of milk for the server pixies. <G>

Interesting story here today from Eric S. Raymond; he's updated The Jargon File again. Those of you who've ever been a member of - or even on the fringes of - the hacker community are probably already familiar with this file. Those of you who have husbands, wives, kids, or pets who are or have been members of the hacker community, this file might help explain what it is they're talking about and how they think. If, that is, you can figure out the Jargon File.

While you're at it, if you're in need of a new computer, short of cash, and have an annoying tendency to spell common words using numbers and puncuation marks instead of the correct letters, go here. Cylant Technologies is testing their new system security system by making a server available to the 'Net with just about every possible vulnerability open on the server. The only security the box has is their new system. If you can get root access to the server, according to their rules - which are perfectly reasonable - they'll ship the server to you. Granted, it appears to be a single-processor Athlon system - more of a workstation system than a server - but hey, what do you want. It's free.

Well, I think that'll do it for now. Maybe more later. TTFN.

Monday, April 30 - It's Monday. Joy.

Woke up this morning to find that THOR was dead. Completely. Couldn't ping it, couldn't load any of the sites, couldn't get email. Nothing in the logs, other than that the last cron to run correctly was at 1 AM. This does not help much, as the next doesn't run until 6 AM. The monitoring script doesn't report any errors. Nothing in /var/log/messages. OK, connect the monitor and keyboard... nothing. Normal prompt, nothing evidently wrong - but the keyboard doesn't do anything. OK. Hit the power button and watch as ReiserFS sorts itself out in a few seconds compared to several minutes of fsck'ing under Ext2. I guess computers are advancing.