Just posting a quick note. Dokuwiki is my wiki of choice, and one of the plugins I use is called “Highlight”. The problem is, it’s kinda hard to get ahold of anymore, and it hasn’t been updated in forever.
The Dokuwiki plugin page for Highlight is here.
I have a copy that I have fixed to include the anti-XSS code posted on the plugin page. You can grab a zip of the plugin code here.
Thanks.
Title: Time management for System Administrators
Author: Thomas Limoncelli
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Published: Nov 2005
Amazon link: Paperback
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Having owned this book since early 2006, I can say I’ve read it a few times, which helpfully is what the author suggests in the book (multiple readings). I first found out about the book via a review on Slashdot (here). The book, by and large, has changed the way I work every day. While I can’t say I’m the best at following the suggestions, I do try.
The biggest point of the book, and what any SA should walk away with, is the notion that brain power is better used doing your job, and not keeping track of tasks. So, use something “trustable” to manage your tasks. In the authors case, a “PAA” or Personal Analog Assistant (a day planner). Write everything down, so that you don’t have to remember it for more than a few seconds. Carry it everywhere. I tried this, since when I first read the book, Palm was the only real PDA available, and they didn’t work nearly as well as one would like. So, I bought a Franklin Covey planner, and used it. Never worked very well, being a lefty. Stopped trying within a couple months. I pretty much gave up on a lot of the process until I got an iPhone 3G. Once I had one of those, things really started coming together. Largely due to one set of programs, one a desktop app, and one an iPhone app: OmniFocus. At that point, keeping track of items became as easy as pulling out my iPhone to add an item, or adding something on the desktop. Now, I don’t have to keep track of “to-do’s” in my brain. OmniFocus does it for me.
After reading the book the first time, we also implemented RT at the office. This has since been merged into a campus-wide RT system, but either way, the ability to have Troubleticketing is another step toward working more efficiently.
Between those two items, there is a missing part (I think) that a Wiki fills. I personally really like Dokuwiki, but any wiki will work. It allows for easily documenting processes, documenting systems, etc.
The only part(s) of “The Process” I haven’t been able to enact have been the mutual interruption shield, and planning my day in the first 5-10 minutes I’m at work. Both of these are due to my placement in the office (being right next to the door). This is going to be changing in the coming weeks, when I’ll actually be in the back of the office, and people will have to work past several others before getting to me.
All and all, the book has greatly increased my productivity, and allows me to actually have idle time at work. I get more done, and have more time to work on “fun” projects. All and all, I highly recommend it to all SA’s, and SA bosses.
So, just a quick note. I just updated the code for the power summary (which is on the left), and fixed the “current meter reading”. There were a couple issues, one of which was a bad sql query (not sure why the previous one didn’t work, but oh well), and for some reason, 2 days of data were missing (which you’d see if you clicked the “history”, and saw two “0″ graph points.
Anyway, after fixing those problems, it turns out the “current meter reading” is dead on. I’m not sure how… and maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the meter reads exactly what the webpage says. Not too shabby. That means the drift for about 33 days is less than 1KWH, or less than about 300W per day, which given a 30KWH day, that’s less than 1% inaccuracy.
So, that’s it. Just thought I’d share. =) More actual interesting info later today, or tomorrow.
A while back, when 10.5 first shipped, my boss and I were intrigued by iCal Server. And after getting it going, we found that for some reason, we couldn’t set a calendar server for our users. We’d set the calendar in Workgroup Manager (WGM hereafter), hit save, and right after that, WGM would uncheck the box, and set it back to none. Something was weird with our accounts. My boss deleted his account and recreated it, and that fixed it. So, the problem was obviously something with the “old” accounts on the system (e.g. the accounts that had been migrated from 10.1 -> 10.2 -> 10.3 -> 10.4 -> 10.5. Some attribute didn’t get added.
At first glance, the obvious missing one was there was only one authAuthority entry in our user accounts. Just the ApplePasswordServer entry, no Kerberosv5 entry. And deleting and recreating his account remedied that. So, I put it on the back burner because we figured out that iCal Server was kinda buggy, and later found out that the iPhone couldn’t write to it, just read (no good). When 10.6 was announced, and we heard that iCal Server 2 supported read/write from the iPhone (with version 3.x+ of the iPhone software), I started thinking about it again. So, I looked at the attribute, and figured out that a single “sed” would create the attribute I needed. So, I coded up this. And figured, problem solved.
Alas, it was not. While testing a migration of 10.4 email (cyrus) to a 10.6 server (dovecot) using the migrate_mail_data.pl script, I noticed at the end, the script renames the imap spool folders after the user’s UUID. It failed to rename them for several users (like me) because we didn’t have a UUID. Then it hit me, iCal Server’s URLs contain the UUID for the user. No UUID, no iCal Server calendar. DOH! So, I took the Kerberos script, changed it a bit (using uuidgen), and batch added UUIDs for all the users that didn’t have them (Script here. Re-ran the migrate_mail_data.pl script, and viola, all the spools got renamed. Now, I’m not sure if this really fixes the iCal Server 1 problem, since I don’t have an iCal Server set up, but iCal Server 2 works (though, it works differently, so this issue doesn’t occur). I also got word from a bug I filed about the initial issue, that Apple thinks 10.6 fixed it, so I’d imagine when you upgrade your OD server to 10.6, it adds missing attributes.
More later, work related. Thought I should keep topics distinct.
It’s been a while since I posted, so there’s actually going to be a few posts in a row here.
First, just a house and home update. We just sold our bird, Pablo, to someone else in the area. $20 for all his stuff, which easily was over $100 is equipment. It’s going to be weird to not have him wake us up anymore. But, he’s a pretty noisy bird, so all and all, it’s a good thing. He is/was a probably 10-12 year old Parakeet. Yeah, they don’t normally live that long, but they can apparently live to be 20-25, so I guess we’re just “lucky”. =)
I replaced the webcam, so the image on the front page should “work” now. Though, this camera has a bad habit of making the sky purple with the macam drivers. It’s an Intel CS430 PC Camera Pro. It’s ancient, but it works. I have another camera I might try later, but at this point, it should work.
I haven’t been working on my website in a while, but I hope to start that again soon. There are some errors in the code for the summary of power data (mainly the power used since last reading).
We’re going to have the plumbing installed for a laundry sink end of this week. It’ll be sweet to get a sink down there. I hope to install an RO filter under it, so that I have clean water for plants (carnivorous plants, as well as epiphytic orchids prefer squeaky clean water). Once we have the plumbing installed Tara’s going to build a cabinet for the sink, and we’ll buy the sink (Thermocast Kensington). It’s pretty sweet, it has an integrated washboard.
All and all, that’s about it. I’ll hopefully post more tonight or tomorrow about work related stuff. Since 10.6 has shipped since my last post, and a few other things have happened.
