forbetaorworse.com

I'm Moving/Have moved

To anyone still reading this ugly, ugly old blog: I decided that for the price, Typepad.com just isn't worth my toubles. I've moved to a Tumblr account and I'm in the process of switching this domain name over to it. In the mean time, please come see me over at http://forbetaorworse.tumblr.com. Soon to be the new forbetaorworse.com. Thanks!

Your all-in-one bootable installer swiss army drive.

Embarassing story:

I had an appointment to go on site and deal with shuffling around some users and computers at a company in downtown Boston. Unfortunately, when you go on site, a lot of the time you're walking into a mess with little information about it. To make a long story short, I found that I had forgotten my Leopard install disk and spent about 6 hours doing something that could've taken me about 3 if I had been prepared.

So, since I learned my lesson about having all my software available for my consulting gigs, I thought I'd share how I plan on dealing with this: A Leopard install, a Tiger Install, iLife and iWork '09, a crapload of other installs for 3rd party apps..

...and one bus powered firewire drive to rule them all.

SO, in the future when you plan on spending a beautiful 80 degree day inside at your computer organizing all of your software (that's sarcasm), Here's how I suggest you do it:

1) Put the install disk of your choice in and open Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app).

2) Right click on the mounted install disk and "Get Info" to find out how much space the mounted image takes up.

3) Choose your hard drive in the left pane of Disk Utility and click the "partition" tab at the top. We'll start with just a 2-partition scheme just so this post doesn't take me 4 hours.

4) Set the first partition's size to equal or greater than the size of the mounted install disk (Leopard 10.5.6's disk is a little less than 8GB) and click "Apply".

5) Switch over to the "Restore" tab and drag the mounted install disk to the "Source" field and then drag the partition you just created for it into the "Destination" field and click the "Restore" button. Now you can sit back for a minute while the data is copied.

Here's what my *almost* finished product looks like:

Just go back to the "Partition" tab and click the "+" button to add a new partition every time you want to add an installer.

Facebook users: a lesson in geekery.

As everyone whines and bitches about the new look that Facebook rolled out last week, I can't help but think to myself...

THIS?! THIS is what it takes to get people on facebook annoyed and upset to the point of protest? You'll let people "throw sheep" at you, invite you to "events" called "I got drunk and dropped my phone in the toilet what's your number?", and "bite" you with the werewolf apps, but GOD forbid they try to streamline the user interface a little!!

Rants aside, I'm noticing something. Facebook isn't doing anything new at all. Us geeks using Twitter and Tumblr in the earlier stages have been using this type of look and feel for a long time now, so why are so many people so uncomfortable with Facebook's new look? Because the average Facebook user isn't geeky enough to enjoy quickly learning about changes and mastering them when it comes to their computer. There's nothing wrong with not being a geek, but at the end of the day - the geek knows your computer better than you do. Respect that, take comfort in that and for the love of god, if you remember one thing you should remember that the geek isn't just trying to confuse you with these things! They're just trying to improve things because...

Geeks have been using these tools for a long time and whether you like it or not - a geek made the Facebook you know and love based on what he or she saw as the most efficient use of all of the features they were making available to you. Geeks spend a lot of their day talking to non-geeks and explaining how to use applications and interfaces they've been using for years. After a while they pick up on what the every day users see when they look at the user interface. Where do their eyes go? What links do they click on first? How much time do they spend using this feature instead of that feature? Geeks love this stuff, and quite frankly they (we) want you to enjoy it as much as we do. Sometimes the decisions in regards to the interface are made without your consent, but one point needs to be made here: the average end-user can't be trusted with some of these decisions. Don't take this the wrong way, but...well... non-geeks have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to what makes a service like Facebook great. Sorry, but it had to be said. Don't stop reading yet! I'm sorry! Come back! Just hang on and let me explain myself...

notice any similarities?

When I get excited about a new application or website and tell a non-geek they should start using it, my recommendation is usually shrugged off with something along the lines of "yea, but you're into that kind of thing, it sounds too complicated". Think about this for a second: Why would you not take a geek's advice on something geeky? You'd take a lawyer's advice on a court case and you'd take a doctors advice about a surgery. WHY would you not take an IT professional's opinion on something computer related?! Geeks take stock in what the people we know are comfortable with on the computer and recommend things accordingly because you know who you're going to call when you get stuck - US. We're not going to tell you to "try this new programming language" or "download the source code", because we SAW how confused you looked last time we tried to explain how that feature in MS Office worked. Trust us, we want the satisfaction of seeing you psyched about your new digital toy. It's not so scary once you've played with it a little, is it?

So the next time you go to whine and have a protest against the new look and feel (seriously, guys are you that bored? Where were you during the Bush administration?) of Facebook, find a list of the new features and poke around until you get comfortable! Don't use the SuperPoke-around app, though. I'm not accepting your friend request if you use that crap...

I will do science to it...

As everyone who follows me on any of my networks knows, I've been working a lot lately and spending a lot of late nights in server rooms, on conference room floors and killing my cell phone's battery with long, fruitless and hardly coherent tech support calls to somewhere in india. My position at this company isn't Systems Administrator, nor is it Systems Engineer. Yea, I'm just a lowly end-user support technician making less than a kindergarten teacher and serving as the IT scapegoat.

So why the hell am I doing these things? Why haven't I quit and gone on to find a new job who will fund their IT department and hold the Sys Admin responsible for the rat's nest of cat5 ethernet, fibre channel and ill-configured services fighting for control over our SAN environment? Here's why:

When I made the decision to drop out of music school and become a glorified digital custodian I knew I was going to be in for some rough times. I've lost friends and girlfriends over my dedication to what I do and sometimes over the effects of the sometimes thankless job on my attitude. I am doing this because I am passionate about what I do. I'm addicted to the high. Like a lab rat systematically making it's way through a maze to get to the cheese at the end, I am working through increasingly more complicated mazes in search of bigger pieces of cheese. Whether that cheese is a metaphor for the look of awe on the user's face when you fix their problems with what looks to them like a magic spell, or the satisfaction you get when you see the script you just wrote send 1's and 0's flying gracefully across the screen just the way you intended them to, that high keeps me looking for the next project that will get me even higher.

(sorta interesting I happen to be born in the year of the rat)

The bottom line is, people are noticing. The good people anyways. The director of IT recognizes all of this, the assistant to the CFO apparently notices and the rest of the people I respect do too. You have to stand out in this industry to be more than a code monkey or digital custodian and I aim to be the prize at the bottom of the box. This is a really exciting time in computing and IT workers like me get to be the gatekeepers. I'm not about to blink and miss it.

For beta or worse, I'll be right here. Soaking it up, taking my notes and uploading every artifact that I can use to prove I was here and it was strange and at least somewhat exciting.

I'm still alive

Sorry I haven't posted. Work has been ridiculous. I'll be posting like crazy as long as my job gives me some days off in return for my recent 100 hour work week and I get my cave finished up for realz. I got an Xbox 360 this past week. I'll be posting about that and tips on getting rid of your mobileme subscription and using better and cheaper services instead.
Stay hungry, stay cool, stay tuned...