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Password Myths
XKCD always has something interesting and funny to say. This one made me think a bit: We all know longer is better than more funky, but we rarely do it in practice. I've seen plenty of passwords in my time and they are almost always 6-8 chars. Why? Least common denominator of course, the truth is that most people (even IT people) re-use the same password ...
Happy SysAdmin Day
Its here again, your favorite day of the year: SA Day. Several fun things to check out today, Matt has a good list of them in his blog today. From Cuddletech, have a good day watching YouTube videos and feeling good about yourself for once, put down the ticket queue and plan your next vacation, and drink some really good beer tonight. Here's a picture of ...
Nothing New Under the Sun: An Introduction to Operations Management (OM)
8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before ...
Three Aspects of DevOps: What’s in a word
Cloud. DevOps. Both are in the fad category, but both are very popular and everyone is grasping at what they really are. There is a subtle difference however. "Cloud" is ambiguous, this leads to the never ending line of questions "What is Cloud?" and yet more as the concept evolves such as "If cloud means in the cloud, then isn't private cloud an oximoron...
Using Graphite to Graph DTrace Metrics
If you haven't heard of Graphite you are missing out on a serious operations power tool. Let me make a gross over simplification and slightly inaccurate assertion to get you in the ballpark of understanding what it is: it's RRDtool reimplemented for the web. Let me be more specific for those new to it. Graphite is really made up of 3 components. The first ...
Consolidated Alerting Using PagerDuty
There are a lot of interesting SaaS offerings available today but not many that get me all excited. I recently blogged about Duo Security, they get me excited. Another of my favorites is Mint. The most recent has been PagerDuty. I met the PagerDuty team at Velocity & DevOps Days this week and they are a really awesome bunch of folks and so I thought I'd ...
Who You Are & Who You Wish To Be
The following is the video of Conan O'Brien delivering the 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address. Watch it, if your time is short, skip to 19:40. This is an incredibly insightful point that Conan makes: the difference between who you want to be and who you actually are is what truly makes you special and unique. This profoundly resonates with ...
Duo Security: Two Factor Auth for the Masses
Smart Cards, OTP, Hardware Tokens like SecurID... 2 factor auth is an old standby and considered mandatory for any high security installation. But lets face facts, there are a myriad of problems involved. SecurID is complex and expensive and now has destroyed its credibility following the Lockheed break-in. Smart Cards are really sweet, especially solutions ...
Ars Gratia Artis
Ars gratia artis: Art for the sake of art. It goes to bad places... you end up here with this famous piece: If you don't know the story, the picture is of a famous art piece named The Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. If you are an artist or great lover of art, it is an important work that has a bold place in arts history. However, if you are outside that circle ...
Personal Must-Haves in the Data Center
When you go into the data center, either for rack'n'stack or maintenance, there are a couple of things that can make your life easier. You want to go light, of course, but also have everything you need so that your not going to have to post-pone work due to lack of gear. Common must-haves include: A very capable laptop. This is your primary tool. I ...