stutefish's Articles In Life Journals
March 18, 2005 by stutefish
Have you ever been frozen out by a woman? Guys, you know what I mean. You say or do the wrong thing, and suddenly POW! She won't talk to you. She won't even look at you. She just sits there, saying nothing, radiating massive, pummeling, icy waves of anger and frustration. There's nothing you can do about it, except bundle up against the cold and wait for the chill to pass. At times like this, you find yourself wishing for an argument, a shouting match, anything to warm things up a bi...
May 17, 2005 by stutefish
The first installment (http://stutefish.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=75620) Unit 2 Running Commands + Syntax: command [options] [arguments] + Each syntax item is space-delimited + Options modify the command's behavior (e.g., "ls -l", "ls -a") + Full-word options usually preceded by "--" + Single-letter options usually preceded by "-" (e.g., "-a, -b, -c" or "-abc") + Arguments are additional info like filenames that the command requires (e.g., "ls -l /bin", where "...
May 18, 2005 by stutefish
If you've gotten this far, you should see all the previous installments on the right. Don't bother reading them, though. They're amazingly boring. This installment won't be much better. Unit 6: Users, Groups, and Permissions Oh my! The Linux Security Model + Users, Groups, and Other + root is not a normal User, nor is it Other. root sits above most security features. + Every process has a User and Group association. Processes can only access resources that ar...
May 17, 2005 by stutefish
The third installment . (http://stutefish.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=75646) Unit 4: The bash Shell Whoohoo! (the bang denotes sincerity) + Backward compatible with the Bourne shell (sh) + Apparently the de facto Linux standard shell Some bash Features + Command line completion: TAB + Command line editing + Command line history: history history has a 1k-command buffer and remembers your previous session(s), too. Use bangs to invoke previous commands by n...
May 17, 2005 by stutefish
The second installment (http://stutefish.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=75633). Linux File Hierarchy Concepts + Single-rooted, inverted-tree structure + "Root" is represented by a "/" symbol. + Case sensitive element names + Slash-delimited paths (e.g. "/usr/home/asshat") Some Important Directories + Home directories (e.g., "/root", "/home/ ") + Binary directories (e.g., "/bin", "/usr/bin") + System binary directories (e.g., "/sbin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/local/sbin"...
May 17, 2005 by stutefish
Yeah, so I'm in Red Hat training, finally. I've only been supporting a major Linux-based project here at work for over six months now.[1] So here's some notes, taken during class. Unit 1 UNIX History Bla bla bla. UNIX Principles + Everything is a file + Including hardware (!) + Configuration data is stored in text (files) + Small, single-purpose programs + Avoids captive user interfaces (whatever that means) + The ability to chain programs together to per...
December 19, 2005 by stutefish
So I watched the new War of the Worlds movie this weekend. Spoilers! As far as I can tell, the best part of the movie comes at the very beginning. Tom Cruise is working in a shipyard, using a crane to move giant shipping containers around. It's hard, exacting work, and he seems to be incredibly good at it. When his shift ends, at the end of the scene, his foreman pleads with him to stay and work another shift, since he's the only crane operator that can keep up with the workloa...
August 11, 2005 by stutefish
One of my favorite LiveJournal communities is Customers Suck! . It's often a fun and exciting read. It's also really helped me to better understand, respect, and help the clerks who handle most of my real-world business transactions. I strongly recommend it to anyone who works in customer service. Or anyone who sometimes needs customer service. Seriously. Anyway, if there's one thing I've learned from the C_s community, it is this: If the customer is wrong, but refuses to...
August 10, 2005 by stutefish
This is just a note to myself that I've promised kingbee I'd revisit the question of women's rights in Afghanistan and Iraq, once the Iraqis have ratified their new constitution. He thinks women's rights have not improved, nor will they improve, as a result of recen U.S. foreign policy in these countries. I think he's being impatient, and that these things take time. I also think that over time, women's rights in both these countries will continue to improve, and that most of bee 's...
July 27, 2005 by stutefish
The Founder and President of my company is uveiling a new product today. He's been working on developing this product for quite some time, and is incredibly enthusiastic about its potential. This product will require a "seed" database of opinions, prior to its public release. He has called a series of meetings, in which he hopes to motivate us employees, and encourage us to seed the database and stay actively involved with the product as it enters the world. This product is about as f...
June 16, 2005 by stutefish
The main problem with the Multi-Ethnic Workplace: Your co-worker's lunch always smells really good... to him . Chernobyl is open for business... as a tourist destination. So is an old prison in Sri Lanka. As usual, Lileks says it better than I ever could.
June 10, 2005 by stutefish
Behold the published agenda for my department's next "All Hands" meeting: Introduction - Department Director and Department Vice President (30 minutes) Work Simple Session - VP of Work Simple Department (2 hours) Strategic Direction - Department Director (45 minutes) Demand & Delivery - Director of ... Some acronym nobody can expand for me. (1 hour) Now, from the top: I'm sorry, but it shouldn't take thirty minutes of my life to say "Hello, I'm the director of this department,...
May 19, 2005 by stutefish
We'll come back to Unit 11. Unit 12 is shorter, and we can get it done before lunch, says the instructor. Unit 12: Introduction To String Processing + head displays the first 10 lines (default) of a file. + tail displays the last 10 lines (default) of a file. + wc ("word count") counts words, lines, and characters in a file. + sort sorts text to stdout, on a line-by-line basis. + uniq filters successive duplicate lines in a file. You will need to sort a file ...
May 19, 2005 by stutefish
The class is still interesting. The notes are still boring. Previous installments can be found by searching my JU blog. Don't bother, though. Unit 10: Advanced Topics in Users, Groups, and Permissions User and Group ID Numbers + User names map to UID numbers. + Group names map to GID numbers. + Data is associated with UID and GID, not Username and Group name. + More importantly, two different usernames with two different passwords can have the same UID. In that case...
May 30, 2006 by stutefish
I used to watch TV. Of course, I couldn't watch regular broadcast TV, because the reception is bad. So I had to get Cable. Now, Cable TV is interesting. With broadcast TV, the shampoo manufacturers pay for your TV programs, you pay for the shampoo, and you get shampoo commercials on TV. For premium cable, you pay for the shampoo, and you pay for the programs, but you don't get shampoo commercials. And with regular cable, you pay for shampoo, you pay for programs, and you still get...