Monday, January 14, 2008
Death and Destruction
Reflecting back on the 8 years since my graduation having being devoted to the defense-industrial complex, it amazes me what inventive ways humans have to kill each other. If only such effort has been made to solve everyday problems, such as automating housework, we wouldn't have the need to hire domestic maids. To me that's like modern day slavery.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Management
What really piqued my interest is an article I've come across while reading other people's blog.
http://www.theunrealuniverse.com/col/2007-08-25-Knowledge.pdf (scanned weekend TODAY article)
Overglorifying technical skills. The writer probably lives in a well.
When I was halfway through university I used to think like that. Then... of course something happened.
Linux was in all in the rage and there was no setup available for students to try it out. I did some asking around and found out that it had been attempted before, but the previous person who did it ran into some problems with the university network administrators and they canned the project. Incomplete stories from affected parties accusing each other of ignoring each other concerning security / network conflict issues. After some effort, I did manage to piece the story together.
In the end I managed to deconflict the issue by promising the administration to link the username/password login to the same authentication server that the students use to access their email through the microsoft outlook system. They would also have their own local account so that they could compile, run stuff (that's what open source is for right)
Then I discovered that the tools available online were buggy and I had to break into the source code and fix several things. In the end I was able to make two computers (that's all the space they had) available for people to try out Linux and associated components.
It was a one man job, but this one man could objectively weigh the contributions of the management and technical aspects of this challenging mini project.
Without MANAGEMENT yeah, without my doggedness in chasing down the parties involved, it wouldn't have happened. Why was my predecessor not able to make things work? He was even more technically capable than me. Why was the student council so reluctant to let me do it?
In real life, the most difficult people to deal with are the customers. Can you convince the customer that your cheap sounding solution is worth the money they're paying for? When the people under you deliver a sucky solution (yes there are sucky technical people too), how do you bring the project to a closure?
Putting on a tie and getting a haircut is the easy part. Wait till you try to reason with lunatic monkeys wielding kitchen knives. You'll think that working on buggy code was alot better.
==========
p.s. eventually there was a LUG (linux user group) which took over the promotion of linux within the campus, and the student council went back to provide basic e-mail, websurf services on microsoft windows platform.
http://www.theunrealuniverse.com/col/2007-08-25-Knowledge.pdf (scanned weekend TODAY article)
Overglorifying technical skills. The writer probably lives in a well.
When I was halfway through university I used to think like that. Then... of course something happened.
Linux was in all in the rage and there was no setup available for students to try it out. I did some asking around and found out that it had been attempted before, but the previous person who did it ran into some problems with the university network administrators and they canned the project. Incomplete stories from affected parties accusing each other of ignoring each other concerning security / network conflict issues. After some effort, I did manage to piece the story together.
In the end I managed to deconflict the issue by promising the administration to link the username/password login to the same authentication server that the students use to access their email through the microsoft outlook system. They would also have their own local account so that they could compile, run stuff (that's what open source is for right)
Then I discovered that the tools available online were buggy and I had to break into the source code and fix several things. In the end I was able to make two computers (that's all the space they had) available for people to try out Linux and associated components.
It was a one man job, but this one man could objectively weigh the contributions of the management and technical aspects of this challenging mini project.
Without MANAGEMENT yeah, without my doggedness in chasing down the parties involved, it wouldn't have happened. Why was my predecessor not able to make things work? He was even more technically capable than me. Why was the student council so reluctant to let me do it?
In real life, the most difficult people to deal with are the customers. Can you convince the customer that your cheap sounding solution is worth the money they're paying for? When the people under you deliver a sucky solution (yes there are sucky technical people too), how do you bring the project to a closure?
Putting on a tie and getting a haircut is the easy part. Wait till you try to reason with lunatic monkeys wielding kitchen knives. You'll think that working on buggy code was alot better.
==========
p.s. eventually there was a LUG (linux user group) which took over the promotion of linux within the campus, and the student council went back to provide basic e-mail, websurf services on microsoft windows platform.
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