Helping with BASH scripting

Had a question in one of my tech communities about needing a BASH script to split a bunch of CSV files into two halves with appending a 1 or 2 to the filenames. Below is one way to do it that I wrote in a couple minutes. Watch for line-wrap in the next to last … Continue reading Helping with BASH scripting →

Memories of being a university sysadmin

Early in my career I had to maintain the Windows servers but was specifically not allowed to use the SysInternals tools because "third-party free utilities you can just download are unsafe and prohibited." Late 1990s and early 2000s Windows management without those tools - with only what MS provided with the OS and what was … Continue reading Memories of being a university sysadmin →

Book: The Meritocracy Trap

If this were bread I would say it was over-risen and under-baked. The same ingredients with better process would yield a far better product. In this post I am focusing on criticisms. The book presents a lot of good and useful data, though I'm not certain any of it is unique to this book. Facts … Continue reading Book: The Meritocracy Trap →

The Bazaar 1999 (tech conference)

This was a conference that ran one time, December 14-16, in NYC. LWN.net's archives list it as "attendance is light" and there's a good chance this User Friendly webcomic is in reference to the event. The big features of the show were VA Linux Systems, who had recently had their IPO, and Andover's ".NET Pavilion" … Continue reading The Bazaar 1999 (tech conference) →

The DEAD_EATER

Tech memories from a former job. A past employer was a big DEC OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix shop in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and mostly on AlphaServers. It was also a school owned by a Christian religious order and physical plant took advantage of a short break in the spring academic calendar afforded … Continue reading The DEAD_EATER →