Author: Daniel

Sysadmin turned bearpuncher. Whereabouts unknown.
Work
April 29, 2016

Mariano Rivera or Aunt Jemima

I feel pretty good going into the weekend, physically and mentally. Physically I feel just about normal again. Mentally I got to talk with my guys and my boss about some stuff that had been on my mind. The business of needing to delegate more. It went over alright, probably mostly because I didn’t actually have a ton of stuff to hand over. If this had happened a month ago it might not have gone over as well.

All things considered the week is ending better than expected. I think I’ll feel like a new person going into next week.

I do like that work doesn’t generally feel like work. There’s not that resentment of spending time on stuff you don’t care about. Being happy in your work is underappreciated. It’s not a given that work has to suck, not even close.

I’m starting to accept that OneNote isn’t a 100% match for a GTD book. I found out about ZenDone fairly late in the day, but I’m going to play with it next week. It’s purpose-built to be a GTD tool, and integrates with Evernote, which isn’t bad. If it doesn’t work, I might just do the unthinkable: An analog system. That will be quite a readjustment, so I hope it doesn’t come to that. I can’t seeing it being better for me than some digital system. But, I’m also the one struggling here, so what do I know? I just find it hard to believe I’m better suited to analog than digital. It works for Stephen Covey, but he’s old enough to be my grandfather. He wasn’t surrounded by modern technology when he pioneered his productivity methods, same for David Allen. Companies like Moleskine love pointing out that plenty of 20- and 30-somethings are discovering the advantages … (More) “Mariano Rivera or Aunt Jemima”

Gaming General
April 29, 2016

1, 2, 3, Cancun

Happy Read-Only Friday. It hasn’t been a tremendously successful week. Best I can do at this point is try to close it out strong. I’m jumping between writing this and sending out some emails, delegating some things that have sat for a while.

I’m sincerely hoping skipping coffee was strictly necessary. It’s a big difference.

I’ve been torture-testing myself in Rocket League, playing a lot of 3v1 and 4v1. I win all the games at 2v1, about half the games at 3v1, and none of the games at 4v1. It’s a pretty good test, really. Playing those unfair modes means you have to really play perfect, keeping the ball in front of you at all times. If you don’t, you won’t be in position to do anything about the counterattack. It also makes for good keeper training, just staying in goal and letting 4 players fire at you. If you don’t mind losing 15-0, you can get a lot out of your five minutes.

The Boston Celtics were knocked out last night in a rather lackluster display. I’m not sure whether that was more on the Hawks playing exceptionally well or the Celtics just not making their shots. The Hawks did rack up a shitload of blocks. Dennis Schroder is better than I gave him credit for, he made four or five really nice plays around the basket. Tonight there are three Game 6 games happening. The Blazers and the Hornets both have a chance to win their series at home. Honestly, it’s going to mean a hell of a lot more to the Blazers if they advance than the Clippers. So much of the media wrote the Blazers off at the start of the year. That wasn’t an outlandish thing to do, either. They lost 4 of their 5 … (More) “1, 2, 3, Cancun”

Life Work
April 27, 2016

Prorated

Partial credit is being issued today. I spent most of the day feeling ill and the resulting work and effort kind of reflected that. I should be better about that, but I’m a simple creature sometimes. Just like I don’t regret staying home yesterday, I don’t regret going in today. I was far more capable, but it just didn’t amount to much. I could’ve accomplished an equivalent amount in probably two hours any other day.

One of the odd things I’m wrestling with is a note that came out in my first evaluation. I need to delegate more, more managing of the work and employees and less technical involvement. That’s a totally reasonable request, but it’s a tough transition. In the last gig, I was doing most of the technical work at this tier, most of the time. At the same time, I resented not getting some assistance, though honestly most of the time there wasn’t anyone else available that was capable of doing the work. Now I’ve got guys that can do the work, but I don’t want to bother them with it. I’d rather keep them fresh and relaxed for those times where I need 100% out of them. I’m fine with taking on the intervening stuff myself. But that’s counter to the direction I’m being asked to go.

It’s part of that professional transition that I summarized as “making it.” Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea of how everything here works, I need to step back and let the sysadmins work. My focus needs to be in keeping track of all the work they’ve been tasked with, triaging the severity thereof, and letting them know what should get worked on at what time, and that’s the primary responsibility. The secondary responsibility is being the “Tier … (More) “Prorated”

Gaming Life
April 27, 2016

Regularly Scheduled Interruptions

It hasn’t been a great week. I ended up running late on Monday, missing not only the regular train but the late train. I was having a lot of abdominal pain Monday night and yesterday morning so I called in sick yesterday. It got a bit better throughout the day but worsened at night. So I woke up this morning feeling ill again, and missed the train. I’m on the late train. Saying I still don’t feel great is quite an understatement, but I’ve gotta go. I really need a few months of good health here, it’s a real pain to be right on the cusp of no sick leave all the time.

Since I was home yesterday, and I just got my 27″ monitor in the day prior, I spent most of the day gaming on it, running through a bunch of games. I ended up spending quite a bit of time on Rocket League and the new Hoops mode. It’s always fun to get in on the ground floor of a competitive game, when everyone’s on about the same footing as far as experience. The 2v2 setup is ideal for such a small court, and it leads to some very intense matches. Two of the first three games went to overtime, the first one being sent to OT with a bank from three-quarters court with no time left on the clock.

I also decided to try some ranked 1v1 play. When you’re playing an evenly matched opponent, 1v1 is a blast. For reference, I’ve been playing Rocket League a bit longer than most. I picked up the predecessor game, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars on release day in 2008, and I’ve got about a thousand hours logged on it. Rocket League plays pretty much identically in every manner. … (More) “Regularly Scheduled Interruptions”

Gaming Life Nerd Stuff
April 22, 2016

Ready Up

I really couldn’t ask for a better Friday. No alerts in the morning, couple emails to plan stuff for next week, got my evaluation from the boss, got my one-on-one meetings with my direct reports done, and nothing broke or caught fire in that timespan. It left me from 1:00 to 5:00 to plan and do a thorough weekly review.

It’s a really good feeling knowing that you have tracked everything going on at work, and know exactly where everything is at. That you don’t have to think about those things just for the sake of remembering them. You can actually relax.

So, the evaluation. I indicated it would have a lot of influence on how I felt going into the weekend and in general. I’ll just read off the relevant line out of the eight paragraph evaluation:

Daniel is a very skilled technical supervisor. The right person for the job.

The right person for the job. Validation. It’s a wonderful world.

I was initially joking about bringing decaf coffee with me on the train on the way back instead of gross lightly coffee-flavored cold water. I had a decaf pod in a variety pack. Guess what I’ve got today? It would be better if it wasn’t quite so warm out. But it was still a good idea, I stand by it.

All the Nutanix migrations so far have either been flawless or invaluable learning experiences on non-production boxes. My systems guy has done about a dozen machines, and we have about two dozen to go. If we can get about another dozen done in four days next week there’s a half-day off on Friday there for the taking. There actually is a train that leaves at about the right time, 1:07. I think we want this.

I ordered some … (More) “Ready Up”

Life Work
April 22, 2016

I perform better while drinking out of a coconut.

Closing out the week is less arduous than it felt last time around. I feel more fresh than last week, despite (or, because of?) more booze being drank this week than last. I did get a full 8 hours of sleep last night, and I’ve gotta say, I’m at a point in my life where I really appreciate sleep. It’s the best.

Today I get my first evaluation from my boss. The timing is pretty good, Nutanix is ready for production as of yesterday and that’s one of my deliverables for the year. There is one more interim evaluation some time in July or August and then the final evaluation in November. I feel like this could put me in a great mood for the weekend, if nothing else. I want to be told I’m on the right track so far. I think that might just happen.

I finished reading Time Management for System Administrators yesterday on the train, hence the no new articles. All in all, I’m not terribly impressed. I thought it was going to be a GTD clone, but it doesn’t do any of the things GTD does as effectively. It boils down to “capture everything, and make a new schedule every day with all the stuff you have to do, then prioritize each item and estimate how long it will take.” The problem with the second half of that is that it doesn’t solve the problem the book set out to do. Limoncelli mentions “The list of doom,” which is a book where you write your tasks in and cross them out when they’re done, and eventually you end up with open issues scattered throughout the book. So instead, you’re to build the list up every day, rewriting the same junk every morning until it’s completed. … (More) “I perform better while drinking out of a coconut.”

Gaming Life Nerd Stuff Work
April 20, 2016

The 28 Year Old Rookie

Twice the last two weeks I’ve made the big rookie mistake of train-riding. I’m currently seated on the wrong side of the train, so I either get a delightful glare from the monitor or a face full of sun. By the time I realized (about five seconds) all the correct seats were already gone.

I ended up getting a reasonable amount accomplished today. Nutanix is one staged patch away from being ready, and we have a migration plan ready for tomorrow morning. I’m working on some of those carrots that are viable now, like a new backup target for some hosted web servers. Joining a Linux machine to an AD domain is easier than ever in CentOS 7, and I left off at a good point. Tomorrow I’ll have logons restricted to a security group and sudo restricted to a different one.

I spent my lunch break remoted home, organizing my storage, moving files around to more logical locations, cleaning up names with Filebot, and generally setting this new array up for success. I also downloaded some 250 games between Steam and Origin, and boy am I happy we’re not doing data caps on residential internet yet because that was about a terabyte of data right there.

I’m going to be really happy to have the system back in a usable state. This has been quite the homework project but it was a lot of fun, too. I’m happy I’m going to be able to game again tonight. I’ve got an odd juxtaposition of game styles I want to play. I want to keep playing FIFA 15, I’ve really been enjoying it. But I also want to play something very difficult like an XCOM or Dark Souls. The thing is, they are difficult through entirely different mechanisms. XCOM uses a … (More) “The 28 Year Old Rookie”

Life Nerd Stuff Work
April 20, 2016

It’s like 802.1p for your innards.

So I have titles again now, I ran through my countdown (or countup, I suppose) of ten days. No nicotine and I’m over that mental hurdle now of ten days. Truth be told, everything after that jittery first day was easy. I threw away all my remaining gear over the weekend. At this point I’m ready to enter that “I used to” phase of my life and be more selective, if only a little, about what’s coming into my body.

The hard drive saga appears to be laid to rest. The final topology is 4x5TB drives in a RAID 10, with the 128GB SSD still to be swapped out for a larger model. Those replace 2x3TB in a RAID 1 and 2x1TB in a RAID 0. So my usable space has doubled, but it’s all resilient storage. I took one of the 3TB drives and put it in one of the enclosures that the 5TB drives came in, and connected it to the PC over USB 3.0. With write caching enabled, it’s fast enough to be the data store for Steam, even NBA 2K16 didn’t see a change in load times and it’s probably the biggest game I have in terms of shit to load. I took the 1TB drives and fed them to the PowerEdge server, to bring me up to 8x1TB drives which I’m reconfiguring to an 8-drive RAID 10. That leaves one 3TB drive that I’m unsure what to do with. All my Steam and Origin games fit fine on one 3TB drive. And these drives have a 94% failure rate? Nothing important’s going on it, anyway. I’ll think it over.

We also bought a Keurig and a water filter/dispenser deal over the weekend. I didn’t grasp how much I disliked our tap water until we got … (More) “It’s like 802.1p for your innards.”

Nerd Stuff
April 19, 2016

232/240

Over the weekend, I found out that the 3TB drives I’d been using in a RAID 1 at home have had a 94% failure rate from Backblaze. So, you know, good job to myself for finding the news a year after it was released. I ended up buying 4x5TB Seagate drives at they represented the lowest cost per usable GB out of the field. I wanted to use a Storage Space, but mixing SATA and USB 3.0 in a Storage Space led to some abysmal write speeds. So I broke my 3TB mirror, put one of them where my optical drive normally is, and moved all 4 5TB drives into the case, in a RAID 10. That takes me from 5TB usable (2x1TB RAID 0, 2x3TB RAID 1) to 10TB usable, so it’s going to be nearly halfway full out the gate. Here’s hoping there are some higher densities on the horizon before I fill up the other half.

Copying 5TB of files blows. But it’s gotta get done, and it was a good opportunity to reorganize anyway.… (More) “232/240”

Work
April 15, 2016

146/240

The one day since I started this job that I don’t bring a jacket and it rains. Heh.

Lots of planning on this Read-Only Friday left me with no time for a weekly review. Gotta take care of that now so it doesn’t pile up.… (More) “146/240”