Michael Fleming’s Networked Mind

Thought I’d post a quick update seeing that’s it’s been a while.

Firstly, I am again looking for work. I’m not going to go into detail other than to say I’m extremely disappointed and will be very careful who I work for in the future. If anyone in Brisbane (or doesn’t mind a telecommuter) needs a systems architect / administrator who does some infrastructure hacking, let me know; my credentials and experience are in my LinkedIn profile (and I’m happy to send a resume to anyone requesting one :-))

I’m also considering doing some consultancy work relating to subsets of my expertise. Watch this space. Be warned, I’m probably going to be out of the price range of two-bit shops and Mickey Mouse fly-by-nighters, which is fine with me.

I’d like to get paid and work with people that take this stuff seriously; there are just too many cowboys who go into IT businesses with no experience or understanding, with the sole purpose of making big profits while paying staff / contractors peanuts (and / or hire monkeys :-P). I’ve found you get what you pay for in systems operations fields and these characters invariably give their customers sub-par service.

Secondly, updates to Fedora / CentOS are pending while the Fedora Infrastructure team sort things out. There seemed to be some major breakage (hopefully not a breach of some sort) and a lot of restoration work has been happening, but it looks like all will get sorted out. Good work there folks. Once the dust has settled I’ll be pushing out some more timely updates.

Work: Is going well. Security and fixup work at the moment, a nice mailserver build (learning a bit about I/O kernel elevators) and miscellanea.

Life: My love is back from interstate with all of her needed gear. Catching up with old friends from school via Facebook of all places. Another old wound crossed off The List (no, my name is not Earl, but thanks Louise :-))

Hopefully I’ll have paid off the flashy jacket soon, can’t wait to give it some airings out on the town.

Went down the coast with my love and her half-sister - stayed mostly sober and enjoyed it immensely. The sore head I had afterwards wasn’t so much an issue.

Tech: Qbert is in HostingShop/Dedicated Server’s datacentre. MelbIT have released thatfleminggent.com’s DNS to me, which means I’ve taken over control of the zonefile (with zoneedit.com/SAGE-AU as secondaries for this and other domains under my control). I can now add all the funky records that MIT’s notoriously under-trained techs have no idea of, like SPF and SRV records. The latter meaning I can now do XMPP/Jabber properly and I can do VoIP/SIP if I wish (and plan to). I’m fairly happy about that.

Packge-wise, just updates for standard packages (more are going into Fedora proper, but more slowly). I am packaging for CentOS now that outrun is online (see my servers page) and I encourage folks to use it if they like.

Heh, a month between posts? I must be getting slack.

Things have mostly improved. I am again gainfully employed in a systems architecture / infrastructure development type role with Dedicated Servers / Hosting Shop here in Brisbane. It means less systems admin work (and the downsides like insane hours and being tied to a pager / mobile for work purposes) and more interesting development and new-toy type tinkering.

It’s based in the CBD too so it’s a short-ish commute, and their 2 DC’s (a small one in an office block a few streets over - coincidentally where qbert is now stored  - as well as a larger one in the main office building) are easy to get to.

On the Fedora front, the Sulphur repo is chugging along, with the F7 repo now officially being retired. As I’ve got CentOS boxes I’m packaging more for that too (mainly release 5 i386/x86_64). I’ve restored sinistar to my in house network and added - lord knows why, must have been drunk - a Solaris 10 box.

Offline life -wise things have been interesting. I’ve been using Facebook for about 9 months now (my old flatmate Steve got me on to it initially, but only started using serious since I met Meisha) and have re-connected with a group of old school friends and classmates, including a few I’d not expected (one initially found me on Myspace, which I generally don’t use too much - I pointed her at Facebook so she could reach my brother)

I’m spending less time on the ‘net and PCs in general - figured I need a break. Only exceptions to this are for some gaming (Call Of Duty 4, Need For Speed, Grand Turismo 4 on the PS2) and chatting with friends who happen to see me on IM.

I’m changing my look too - I’ve grown a soul patch and am looking to get the highlights back in my hair (had blond-ish highlights after my birthday, but they’ve grown out to an extent and aren’t prevalent after a recent haircut.). I’ve also got a nice jacket on layby which I’ll hopefully pick up soon. Thanks again to Meish for all the style tips

I promise to assail you all with photos once I’ve done all this…

Downside: My 6 year old titanium glasses frame snapped this afternoon (while reading Facebook, hah) and I’m off to get another set of frames tomorrow morning. I could do without the hassle (why do these things happen on a Sunday, and when I can least afford them?) but I like being able to see..

Well - what can I say?

I’ve suddenly have some free time on my hands, however not the way I’d intended (some holidays). My employer decided - very suddenly I might add, over a coffee @4pm last Tuesday afternoon - to make me redundant as of the 13th of May.

I wasn’t given any warning and frankly it’s a right pain in the arse (having just renewed a lease on my apartment for six months and trying to fix up and sell one of my own) but I’ll hopefully survive.As those who have worked with me and know me can attest I’m not omniscient but what I know, I know well. I’ve been assured that performance was never an issue, merely one of cost (alas, some of my colleagues went with me, they finished today..)

Fortunately it seems the jobs market for systems administrators is good, so I don’t think I’ll be unemployed for long. I would really like to look more at systems/infrastructure architecture and perhaps some product engineering (I planned, tested, wrote the backend scripts for, built, installed and configured Webcentral/MelbourneIT’s managed MySQL offerings and I’ll wager I still know more about them than many working there now :-)). If you have an opening you think might interest me (ideally in the South Brisbane/CBD area) email me. You might also be interested to peruse my LinkedIn profile.

Just as I got the bad news some new kit arrived to replace the Sempron64 kit in defender. It’s now an Athlon64 5200+, with a nice new Gigabyte AM2+/780G board, 2G of Corsair RAM and an ASUS NVIDIA 8800GS (yeah, should have gone GT, but given the circumstance the price was right). The onboard NIC has a tendency to clash with other interrupts so I’ve slotted my old GA311 in it’s place. I’m using it now so it works OK (advice: if you flash the BIOS, clear the CMOS afterwards as I’ve had the Award F4 revision lock up a bit before doing so)

The change in mobo necessitated an XP reinstall (right PITA, see my Twitter updates.) but fortunately Fedora was semi-intelligent about it; as a precaution (and because I was planning to anyway) I’m on Fedora 9. More on that in the future. I have noticed that createrepo is busted - I’ve had a couple of emails so I’m aware and have worked around it, which is also why I’ve not done F9 builds yet.

Hopefully things improve as I spend some time with my sweetheart (who has been very supportive) and consider offers/positions with a good, secure employer.

Posted to the U-Zendo mailing list:

…even comic characters understand the concept of impermanence

Me:

I’ve been doing some server infrastructure and web R&D lately; I am a fairly recent convert to the benefits of PowerDNS, especially the recursor, which I’ve now installed on qbert in place of BIND (there’s nothing wrong with BIND per se, each to their own. I just happen to like this app).

I’m also VERY impressed by the Zabbix monitoring system - all the cool things about nagios, with much less hassle, niftier and to-the-point notifications (inbuilt Jabber notifications for a start) and much less noise. I’d recommend systems admins have a good look at it if they haven’t already.

I’ve also been looking into WordPress plugins, and have packaged the OpenID plugin as a starter. I may publish more should the desire to do so take hold

I am also in a business frame of mind, which is partly driving the above. If you like the idea of integrated messaging systems using open protocols (ie XMPP) then you may be interested in a project I’m thinking up. Watch this space.

Other Minor Bits:

• Fedora 9 in 2 weeks. I will likely again package stuff for it, but as the distro gets larger there’s less for me to package that isn’t in the main repositories.
• I’ve also removed all pre Fedora 7 repository data, as it’s a) obsolete and thus b) potentially buggy and insecure. If you haven’t upgraded to at least Fedora 8 yet, do so.
• Oh, and by the way, if you like my packages and are feeling philanthropic, you can keep me in coffee and hard disk space by donating via PayPal - see my Packages page.
• I’ve also been tinkering with the blog itself; if you have an OpenID credential you can now login and make comments here using it, no need to explicitly register.
• I’ve given in to the twitterati - if you want to follow me, I’m thatfleminggent. You can probably see my tweets elsewhere on this page courtesy of Twitter Tools.

…. but not without dramas.

The move wasn’t as smooth as expected. The actual furnishings/equipment move was fine, but the technological move was not.

Thanks to the wonders of the monopoly telecommunications company here (Telstra) who, despite being privatised and made to compete with other carriers treats the public that funded their infrastructure with utter contempt, took over a week to supply me with a landline phone at my new apartment. Ergo I had no net connection aside work and only my mobile phone (cellphone to you Yanks) to keep in touch with people.

It was another four days after the landline got connected before Internode (my ISP) could get my ADSL2+ connected at the DSLAM. Again, because Telstra own the infrastructure (the exchange the DSLAM is housed in) a Telstra contractor had to do the work.

Only they fucked it up. It was another five days before Internode could get Telstra to return to the exchange and correct the fault (the ‘node tech and I determined - correctly - that the DSLAM port had been mis-jumpered). I even went so far as to talk to Telstra directly about the fault, but because I was not the one submitting the fault I was told not to call about it, despite it being on my line and affecting my job.

(If you are one of those charming folks in Telstra/Teletech callcentres: Fuck you. You piss and you moan that your customers abuse you, but you hung up on me twice, yelled at me, lied to me and had the hide to call ‘node to bitch about me rightly keeping you on your toes. This is on top of the crap I used to get at Webcentral due to your laziness and selfish desire to fuck over my team to keep your own KPIs in order. You fully deserve the shit you get from customers and the rest of the industry for your disinterest, rudeness, incompetence and sheer fucking arrogance. Burn in fucking hell.)

They eventually got it sorted - they never told me or Internode (I told them!) I just came home from work with line sync. While I was happy to get some access, the speed is lacking - around 8000 down/846 up. Considering the distance from the exchange I should be seeing more than that (~12000-13000). From some auditory investigation it sounds like I have noise on the line..

On the upside: I have as of Monday got my Fedora 8 repository up and running, it’s almost fully populated and ready to go and you can find it in the usual place

It’s a little delayed due to a) the above move b) getting an F8 install here to work with and most importantly c) the lovely (and loving) Meisha keeping me happily distracted from all things geek I couldn’t wish for a more wonderful lady and I love her dearly

Still keeping the “aww that’s schweet” theme going, a huge congratulations to my friend and former work colleague Vesna on her engagement. You know who to grab as the wedding photographer and try not to wear the poor lad out on the honeymoon. Happy for you Ves!

The lease on my apartment here in Fortitude Valley has expired and my landlords have opted not to offer me an extension (well, they DID but then rescinded it after I agreed to it, lusers). I’ve not settled on anything else as yet - still going over a whole raft of units / apartments close by - but I hope to have something settled in the next few days.

This will probably mean that I and the site will be offline for a few days once all is confirmed, as I’ll need to get Internode to relocate my connection to (hopefully) another Agile ADSL2+ exchange. If you mail me during this time don’t panic, I will get it (I’ve got a box at work acting as a backup)

In other matters:

I’ve finally been convinced to sign up for Crack^H^H^HFacebook by my old flatmate Steve. It’s actually not bad especially compared to MySpace and the developer APIs are tempting. Plus more of my old friends and colleagues are on it - as well as fewer spammers, whiny emo kids and creepy stalkers.

You know my name, have a wander over - there’s even some photos of me as a sprightly 19 year old music student.

Fedora:

I’ve been packaging like mad again - updates to the Courier suite, ndoutils and some Perl packages. Last night’s upgrades pulled in mock 0.8.4 and it’s damned noisy. I tried compiling an mt-daapd nightly release and it failed on all arches and versions - unfortunately the logging is cranked up so much I can’t see where or why under all the debug cruft *sigh*. I’m sure I’ll suss something out.

I’ll elucidate more later (all this househunting + work etc. has left me exhausted) but I’d like to finish up with a plea to my old friend Tina Wallmann to please cheer up and remember you will always have people around who care and want what’s best for you.

Michael.

Why yes, it has been a little while since I’ve posted anything of note. Hope the quote from Sean tided over the tragics who just couldn’t stay away.

There has been quite a bit happening, most of it good.

Dad has come back from Bangkok after his stem-cell operation and the results have been excellent. He’s got far more energy than before, is far more capable physically and mentally - it’s also done wonders for his state of mind and self esteem (he’d been losing the will to live prior to the op, I must admit. Not a pleasant thought..)

To those who doubt the uses of such research or think it’s an offence against their invisible sky person, I say toss your bias aside and look at the wider research. Not all is fetal - Dad’s procedure involved the use of some of his own healthy cells. It was done under local anaesthetic all in the space of an hour and most importantly it has worked - the man has been suffering for years and at this stage it’s lessened that suffering significantly - and that’s the most important thing.

I also had the all-too-brief pleasure of meeting up with my old friend Tina Wallmann at the Regatta Hotel the other week, which pleased me no end as I’ve not seen her for at least a couple of years. It’s always great to see her and I’m proud and impressed by what she’s achieved over the years I’ve known her. Sadly she’s moving to Sydney so our meeting may be the last for a while. You will be missed terribly up here by all of us that have known you.

It was also nice of her to introduce me to her friends Michelle and Lynda (who won 3rd @ Miss Regatta, congratulations and well done). Nice girls and I wish them well; if they stick with modelling they’re well set as they’ve learnt from a master (mistress?) of the art.

I’ve not been to the Regatta previously (Toowong is a little out of the way for me, but it was for a friend so the effort is worth it) but it’s a good pub, well presented and spacious, drinks not too pricey either. If you’re in inner-western Brisbane it’s worth a visit.

I’ve not spent too much time at the PC of late - reading in my quieter moments, visiting family or just getting out and about. I’ve done a little bit though.
I have been impressed by Eclipse Europa for PHP (PDE) and Perl (EPIC) development - no I’m not a Java developer - and am using them heavily especially at work where I sorely need them.

My ADSL2+ has been rock solid and quick, a boon to folks grabbing my RPMs and browsing the site in general.

Speaking of RPMs, I’ve not built too many lately as the new release of RPM (4.4.2.1) has caused a hopefully temporary glitch vs rpmdevtools, so no builds until this is fixed and my local mirrors sync. I have new arpwatch and asylum packages waiting. Good news is that perl-Geo-IP has finally passed review and will be in the main Fedora repository Very Soon Now.

I’ve also purchased a camera, finally - A Canon PowerShot A550 (on Russ’ advice) primarily for the Miss Regatta Final (but the shots were fairly poor, I should have RTFM) but it will come in useful elsewhere of course. I also replaced the old and busted webcam with a little QuickCam IM; Linux users should try the gspca driver as it works quite well with it.

One for the lazyweb: I’m looking at a new monitor when my pay comes in: suggestions for a 19″?