Nobody leavz...
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.
Work has been going fairly smoothly since Spring term ended earlier this month (Jun 13th). Since that time, usage has been way down on the servers, so AFP has been crashing a lot less (once every few days). I’ve been having continued progress with Applecare Enterprise on the issue, but so far, looking at leaked Seed notes from 10.5.8, it doesn’t look like it’s addressed. I really can’t comment outside of that.
All and all, I’ve been spending a LOT of time documenting various things at work. From our Xsan topology, port layouts, service topologies, backups, etc. This has been something I’ve needed to do for a while, and going on vacation week before last really made me realize that if I’m out of cell range, and something breaks, work is kinda boned. Needless to say what would happen should I get hit by a bus.
To do the documentation, I’ve installed dokuwiki at work to handle it. Plone just doesn’t accomplish the collaborative aspect as well as a wiki, and Dokuwiki is just so damn simple, and yet extremely flexible. We used it briefly at work before Plone as an eportfolio experiment. So I knew it easily integrated into LDAP, which was necessary, and it stores all it’s data as flat files, making backups and moving stuff around a breeze. So, that’s pretty much taken up a lot of my time.
I would really like to get a code repository of some type up on this site in the near future to keep track of my various scripting/coding projects, and in a way, force myself to go back over that code, and comment it, as well as clean it up. I have so many scripts I’ve written at some point that I use once or twice, then forget about.
*sigh* svn is easy to set up, but I don’t have a ton of experience with it. But, I’m giving it a shot.
This week at work is short (holiday), and I’m going to leave early on Thursday. Because the Fiscal year starts Wednesday, we can start ordering hardware tomorrow. Basically, as long as we don’t receive the hardware until Wednesday or later, it’ll go onto the next fiscal year budget. So, here comes a new Mac Mini, and a Nehalem Xserve. And an extra PS for one of our other servers (we accidentally ordered it with only one). Once I have that server, I can update our ldap server, and secondary metadata controller (I’m merging the two together, since the secondary MDC never does anything anyway, and it’s actually how Apple suggests with smaller setups). The Mini is going to become a test server, which will run VMWare Fusion, and allow us to easily test different things (like a test web server, development web server, linux testing, windows web testing, and something to run OS seeds on).
Can’t wait to try out the Nehalem 8 core server (which has hyper-threading, so shit will see it as 16 cores). Handbrake, or better, Xgrid will be just awesome (Xgrid sees all 16 cores). 2.26ghz x 16 = 36ghz. From one server. crazy! That with the GeForce GT 120, should give us crazy performance. Hell, I’m just going to run SETI on it for a week. =)
So, other than waiting for all of that, this week will be a lot more documentation, and writing more of the quota reporting website. I need to implement quotas over the summer, which means just turning on quotas for those under, but some more special stuff for those that are over. Sending emails, setting soft and hard quotas, and timelimits. Hope to get that mainly done this week… at least the basic website functionality for students, and enabling quotas for those that are under quota. Once I get the secondary MDC upgraded, I’m hoping to turn on Spotlight on the SAN.
That’s all for now. More later when I get SVN up, or when I have more to talk about in some other way. I might post a “home” update in the next day or so.