System/network architect, toolsmith, system administrator, programmer, technical trainer, IT manager, geek.
I am a member of USENIX, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Computer Society of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), BBLISA, and a founding member of The League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA), I have served on program committees for the USENIX Annual Technical Conference; the USENIX & SAGE Systems Administration Conference (LISA); and I have run the Advanced Topics in System Administration workshop at LISA since 1997.
At the 13th Systems Administration Conference (LISA ’99, in Seattle, WA), I presented “Budgeting for System Administrators.” You can download the PowerPoint slides (408KB) or view the HTML version. In 2002, look for an expanded version of this talk to appear in print as part of the SAGE “Short Topics in System Administration” series of booklets. At the 17th Systems Administration Conference (LISA 2004, in San Diego, CA), Tom Limoncelli and I gave a talk on “How to Get Your Papers Accepted at LISA.” if you think you might ever write a paper for LISA (and I encourage you to do so), please download the PDF file (653KB). If you have additional questions please don’t hesitate to send me email. At LISA 20 (Washington, D.C., 2006) and LISA 21 (Dallas, TX, 2007) I taught “How to Interview a System Administrator.” The notes from this course are not (yet?) publically available but I am available to come teach this course at your organization. contact me if you’re interested in having me do this. You can also contact me about the materials as I may be willing to make them available on a case-by-case basis. I do, however, have some other tips and suggestions for interviewing. I have also published articles in ;login: – the magazine of the USENIX Association: “On Choosing Usernames” (PDF, 111KB, August 2003) and “Eat Your Own Dog Food” (PDF, 181KB, October 2003).
Much of my professional activities involve programming – that is, writing computer programs. Here are some tips & tricks I’ve learned over the years; some of them are funny, a few are actually useful. I’ve also built more than my share of computer rooms and computing clusters; here are the pictures of one of them.
It’s been said that one can learn a lot about a person by looking at the books s/he reads. With that in mind, here’s a selected list of what’s on the bookshelf beside my desk.
For reasons I will never understand, more and more systems are
distributing
vim
instead of
vi
(or “nvi,” if you prefer). The result is that I find myself
having to compile vi more often than I’d like. It always seems to
take me a few tries to find the right combination of options to
configure, so now, finally, I’m going to document
what options I used on which operating
systems.