Several years ago, I was out to dinner with some people from work, and this one guy ordered the aptly named “suicide” wings. The waitress stooped down to eye-level (no doubt for dramatic effect) and warned him profusely about how insanely hot these things were. Her warnings were met with the usual male bravado and insistence that he was accustomed to spicy food from living in Trinidad. And so, of course, when they finally arrived, he took one bite, and his eyes teared up as his entire head turned bright red, sweat literally dripping off his face. So the waitress chided him, “Pretty hot, huh?” Rather than admit defeat, he responded that he must have touched his eye (he hadn’t) and asked her to wrap them up, so that he could enjoy them later at home!
Hahahahaha. I love watching people do that. The thing is, spicy food releases endorphins and that feels good, but you also have to moderate the spiciness level. If it’s making you sweat and cry, it’s probably too much. Last week I had dinner with a friend who ordered vindaloo so hot he could barely stand to smell it, but he just would not ask for some yogurt to mix in!
Frakking SAN. One agencies “home” directories are getting the permissions reset to “read only” for some reason. Having to manually go through about 400 home folders and reset permissions on sub-folders. AAAAHHHH!
She said “read-only”, so it sounds like a windows set-up. So you can’t just chmod -R. You may actually have to physically click “yes” “no” dialog every time. :eek:
You can’t script with command line batch language, but it’s possible to script in other languages. I used to have python installed on deployment Windows NT servers for this specific reasons, to script away annoying tasks like this.
The better question is, why are you resetting permission on everything?
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Windows is the preferred deployment in business and you can’t script something that simple without an additional install?
My last and only experience working with Windows server environment was with NT, so it was a while ago. There were a lot of complicated task that need to be performed 20~50 times a day, and it’d be impossible to do this with built -in batch language. There’s no control structures of any kind to speak of, and variable handling was atrocious at best. We thought of using Visual Basic to write scripts… after all it’s a Microsoft product, so it must work nicely with Windows environment. The shocking thing we found was, there was no way to asynchronously invoke another executable file from within VB environment! There are MFC work-arounds using Win32 native calls, but it was highly clumsy solution at best.
In the end, we concluded the best system scripting language for WinNT environment was… Python! In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that there was no SQLSever access module for python, I would’ve like to build the whole damn system in Python.
I give Win guys a hard time (I sort of have to) but that dumbfounds me. I always thought there was some equivalent (however awkward* it would be) to do anything on that platform.
I’m amazed it has such loyal support, unless the “it protects the jobs of IT guys” thing isn’t actually a joke.
Ahem…anyway…
I called out of work today because I was invited to meet with a guy who owns a production studio and might help me find a “real” job. At the last minute, he canceled. So I’m out a day of work and will have to miss another if I want to try to meet him again.
On the other hand, I didn’t have to go to work today.
Well, WinNT and Win2K are not all that bad… I remember that the stability was just as good as most *nix environments I’ve worked with… when things went wrong, it was usually because of a poorly written app, which could happen on any environment. Extremely poor scripting tools were a cause for concern, but like I said, I found Python (or PERL works fine too) to be a great fit. I don’t have experience with WinXP or Vista server environment, so I don’t know how much things are better/worse now.
Main reason a lot of IT managers like to stick to Wintel platform, because of support and budgetting issues. If you’re a business, using free open source tools on free open source operating systems is not actually free. Because you have to hire someone to design/setup/deploy the said environment. And by and large, the ability to download, make, compile, make install a source code, or to even yum install or apt-get, these are rarer skillset than the ability to double-click on an msi installer.
Obviously I’m simplifying things here, but finding equivalent skillset on *nix platform is far more difficult and therefore more expensive. Worse yet, they don’t know what might go wrong and how much it’ll cost them when it does, whereas the cost structure of maintaining a Windows environment is very well defined. Knowing these numbers make budgeting easier, and puts managers’ minds at ease. The fact that it might overall come out cheaper on *nix does not matter, if they can’t forecast the number at the beginning of the year, or at the beginning of the projects.
I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “if Linux had a commercial vender, who’ll tell me upfront that he’ll charge me this much money to support me for one year, then I’d buy Linux. I don’t care if it’s more expensive or not, I just need to have a number.” The fact that a certain task may be easier or harder on a certain platform does not concern the IT managers. That’s for guys like you and me to worry about, the guys in the trenches. Managers like to reduce uncertainties, nice number they can quote when billing clients, and someone to blame(preferably in India) if things go wrong.
Ok, sorry about my IT rant of the day. That is all. You may all now return to regularly scheduled programming.
Each user has a “home” folder. Underneath that is a “work” folder. We connect to the root so we can see all the home folders and then we’re navigating to work and adding the “change” option to the file permissions. And not all the home folders have the same naming scheme (don’t even ask) so we ended up doing it by hand. Luckily it was only for 1 agency and not the entire population of state government.
In any case, it only took 2 of us 1 1/2 hours to get it fixed. Which means Shellie gets to leave early on Friday…
Or the “that’s what comes pre-loaded so we’re using it” train of thought. Face it, Microsoft is the younger sibling of Skynet and it is already taking over the world…
Or some idjit in the server maintenance group didn’t know what clicking that box would do…
Main reason a lot of IT managers like to stick to Wintel platform, because of support and budgetting issues.
And let’s face it, governmental bodies don’t like to spend any more than they have to.
If you’re a business, using free open source tools on free open source operating systems is not actually free. Because you have to hire someone to design/setup/deploy the said environment. And by and large, the ability to download, make, compile, make install a source code, or to even yum install or apt-get, these are rarer skillset than the ability to double-click on an msi installer.
And yet, even that gets messed up on a regular basis.
Managers like to reduce uncertainties, nice number they can quote when billing clients, and someone to blame(preferably in India) if things go wrong.
Life is teh suck today because I’m feeling like I’m coming down with something–a fever or something.
Ever have one of those in-between feelings where you feel crappy, but not quite crappy enough to blow off work and take a sick day?
That’s where I’m at right now.
I thnk a nice cup a tea with honey, some Advil and some GWC Forum will make me feel better.
Not sure why, but that made me think of the “Have a cookie” line from The Matrix. Which I just haven’t been able to hear quite the same way since I met GR.
