Only a few hours ago, the LOPSA Board adjourned their annual face-to-face meeting. The LOPSA bylaws state that we must hold our annual directors meeting within 90 days of the elections, and this is where the newly elected board members take their seats. Since this is typically the only time in the year that the…
I’m on my way to my second LOPSA Board of Directors Face to Face meeting. The last time I was here, it was when I became a member of the board, and I really felt like a lot of my time at the meeting was spent trying to understand why LOPSA is the way that…
Last night, I was lucky enough to be able to speak at LOPSA Rhode Island, a proto-LOPSA chapter that Adam Codega has been starting. It was a really good time. Adam's employer, Swipely has a headquarters that instantly makes you feel like you're a couple thousand miles to the west, in Silicon Valley. Not only…
I sent this to the LOPSA-Discuss mailing list, and I thought that it might be nice to put up on my blog here at lopsa.org, too Your guide to throwing a great SysAdmin Appreciation Day party Hello! My name is Matt Simmons, and I like to throw parties. Any occasion, really, but SysAdmin Appreciation…
I work for a K-12 school district and we use Google Apps for EDU which is built on top of Google Apps for Business. We have tied this into our local authentication systems so when a staff or student changes their password locally it also changes their password on Google Apps. It worked pretty well…
You don't have to even have a computer to have your data compromised. AT&T stored SSN data in customer record data. This was exposed by the news article stating that AT&T Mobility (the cellular phone branch) had customer data, including SSN and CPNI exposed when three employees of a vendor with access to the records…
With the trend toward email bills, it is easy for them to get lost in the shuffle of email. It is harder to just put them on the counter and easily go through that pile looking for anything that might be a bill. I want a reminder. The problem is, Apple Mail doesn't have a…
So today I read about the I495 bridge in Delaware that was closed for major repairs. I tried to find it on Google Maps and it doesn't exist (http://bit.ly/SHxm70). I tried Mapquest and yes, there is was (http://www.mapquest.com/us/de/wilmington). Finally I put Google Maps in Satellite view and yes there it is (http://bit.ly/1ljgiuH). So, do you…
There was a discussion on the mailing list about communications, and I chimed in with a "LOPSA sucks at communications", followed by a little naive rant about how LOPSA should be using social channels. At which point Matt Simmons sniped me with a, "Hey, sounds like you want to help out!" I had spent the…
A recent discussion led me to once again revisit the whole issue that a good sysadmin team is not made up of just one role repeated several times. I may use different roles than are used in some of the standard books about the sysadmin team, but here are a few I outline: