Monday, October 02, 2000
Resumés
My roommate, Rob, had mentioned a job openening for third shift (midnight to 8:00 am) at the company he works for, The Company (that's not the real name of the company, and in no way refers to The Company from Alien, but I wish to refrain from actually naming the company, in tradition of other online journalists doing the same. Primarily it's to protect themselves (and myself) from possible retribution from The Company). I whipped up a resumé (which is fairly plain I admit). I told Rob about it last night and he said he would mention it to E, the head of the department with the job opening.
Human Resources from The Company called me this morning at like 9:30 am to give me an initial interview. I managed to talk my way through it and they said they'd get back to me in a few days.
One hour later they called back, wanting to schedule an interview Wednesday at 9:00 am.
I manged to get it pushed back to 10:00 am.
Why such insane hours, I don't know.
Wanted Man
When I talked to Rob about HR calling me and I already had a job interview he was somewhat amazed. Rob thought I was way over-qualified for the job in question and that I might not get hired, but that E, the manager of the department, said he didn't care. He wants me for the position.
I have the feeling I have the job already.
Microsoft Secondary? Yea, right …
I set up my client Chris with DNS on his server so he can handle DNS himself and went through the trouble of re-registering his domains to use his server for primary, and his hosting company for secondary.
But it seems that his hosting company, being a Microsoft Solutions Company that it is, uses Microsoft for everything, including DNS.
And the Microsoft DNS server can't (or won't, which amounts to the same thing really) do secondary DNS. And of course they add primary records with the wrong IP address for his domains.
That kind of defeats the purpose of them handing secondary DNS if they can't query my client's DNS server for the info.
Sigh.
Wednesday, October 04, 2000
An interview at a company
I arrived at the ungodly hour of 10:00 am for my interview at The Company. I ended up parking my car on the grass next to some other cars as the parking lot in front was filled to capacity. I figured that as long as there were other cars on the grass I was as safe as they were.
The security guard just inside the door handed me both a visitor's badge and the job application to fill out. I sat in a plush chair filling out various forms when C from HR showed up. She was the person I talked to the other day and she would be conducting the preliminary interview and tests before handing me off to E, the department head.
She introduced herself and then lead me inside the bowels of The Company. After walking around the maze for a bit she sat me down at a computer, started Netscape and loaded a page.
“This
Update on Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
Hmm … it seems I didn't finish this entry. Heh!
captain-napalm.com
Update on Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
Yet another unfinished entry. At the time I was writing these entries,
the blog wasn't quite public yet (if you knew the address, you could get to
it, but I not many people had the link). So now, twenty-one years later, I
have no idea what I was thinking of doing with the domain name
captain-napalm.com.
Go figure.
Monday, October 09, 2000
called at 9 — hired, get in here now
Tuesday, October 10, 2000
more orientation—learned I'm on first shift for the rest of the week
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
general killingnesss of first shift.
uhg.
Friday, October 13, 2000
learned I work first shift next week. uh.
learned from Kim I have a rep as hating Windows at The Company. Funny thing is, I haven't, to my recollection, said or done anything that would warrent this.
My reputation preceeds me, and is larger than life
Sunday, October 15, 2000
An Economic Theory of Moore's Law to win Nobel Prize
But the rate at which we approached these thresholds and correspondingly how quickly we will move past them is a question of Moore's law. While it may seem as if it took forever to get to this point, innovation will accelerate exponentially. The music industry should take heed of the following: “If you think it's bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.”
Digital Music: The Real Law Is Moore's Law
In a little over a decade I could have a copy of every piece of music ever made in human history. Let's say 15 to get vinyl records that won't be converted to CD online.
My prediction (along an entirely different line): the first economist to describe a credible theory of making money in an environment of overabundance will win the Nobel Prize.
Scratch that: the winner will be the first economist to propose what amounts to a potlatch economy to the global scale will be the one to win the Nobel Prize.
Potlatch, the New Economy
Potlatch is a system of giving to obtain social status. It was a system practiced by the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest (and possibly elsewhere, although I'm only familiar with it in the Pacific Northwest).
It's not the accumulation of wealth that conveys importance to a person or family in a potlatch system, but distribution (or destruction in some cases) of wealth that makes a person or family influential.
This was an actual survival mechanism, those who had the fortune to obtain large amounts of tradable goods would give out to those that were not so fortunate (say, due to flood, drought, or other natural disaster) with the implication that when times turn bad for them, there will be some other “big man” (to borrow a term) to give stuff out.
Note that this is an economic system based upon abundance or overabundance and might be another way for people like musicians to make a living: the more they give away, the more influence they gain.
Something to think about.
Tuesday, October 17, 2000
tcp/ip training at The Company
Wednesday, October 18, 2000
mark looses job
Thursday, October 19, 2000
DNS training
Friday, October 20, 2000
lunch with Kim and Friend—-Friend's boyfriend who taught DNS class was very impressed and wants to talk to me more.
I have this incredible rep at The Company and I've only been there two weeks.
Sunday, October 22, 2000
I catch Rob and friend just before they leave for work at The Company. I already have a rep on 3rd shift and I've yet to actually work 3rd shift.
I'm wondering if I can live up to my reputation. Perhaps I can have my rep work and I collect the paychecks.
know hoade for 20 years
Update on Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
Actually, I first met my friend Sean Hoade back in Octover of 1979, so it's actually 21 years, not 20. I just thought I should clarify that.
Tuesday, October 24, 2000
You know, I'm thinking that maybe I should start reading journals in a different way. I should assume that they're all fiction. After all, I never write Scarlett O'Hara or Buttercup or Rincewind to tell them what they're doing wrong or to offer advice.
So all of you are fictional characters, and if I meet any of the journal page authors in real life, I can think “Hey, that's the woman on which the main character in `Bad Hair Days' is based. Cool.” I won't feel like I have some sort of bizarre one-sided relationship where I know all sorts of things about you. We start from scratch, but as Columbine said somewhere else, with the equivalent of a letter of introduction.
Jette— When it's time to go. (links added)
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
The first day on the night shift and I walk into a fire storm. The entire network is doing the yo-yo fadango.
Nice.
The only job more potentially boring than the one I have is the security guard that sits in the same office as I do, watching the camera monitors.
I mean, it's somewhat interesting to watch the monitors from time to time, but for hours on end? Without a computer?
I'm under a wierd network attack. I'm seeing the following:
S:00C07B4D7D81 D:00806981001F IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00806981001F D:00C07B4D7D81 IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00C07B4D7D81 D:00806981001F IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00806981001F D:00C07B4D7D81 IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00C07B4D7D81 D:00806981001F IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00806981001F D:00C07B4D7D81 IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00C07B4D7D81 D:00806981001F IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00806981001F D:00C07B4D7D81 IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00C07B4D7D81 D:00806981001F IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038 S:00806981001F D:00C07B4D7D81 IPv4 S:163.153.172.6 D:208.26.72.31 ICMP echo request 1038
Ad nasuem. 00:C0:7B:4D:7D:81 is the ISDN unit, and
00:80:69:81:00:1F is the terminal server I have, which Mark used to dial
into, until he got IDSL. I turned the terminal server off, and I'm
still seeing echo requests from 163.153.172.6 coming in, every three seconds
or so. There's nothing in the packets (just zeros) which is odd.
I can't traceroute to 163.153.172.6 so it's probably forged source
packets.
The destination IP address is interesting—it was
Mark's broadcast address, which leads me to think this is a so called smurf
attack.
Thursday, October 26, 2000
Just before my shift ended yesturday I asked E what happens if the power goes out. I knew there was a generator so the primary data center won't lose power but I was curious about the rest of the building.
E answered that the entire building was covered with the generator and that nothing goes down.
I only bring this up because the power flickered off and on briefly this morning.
Friday, October 27, 2000
Mark picked up Writing Apache Modules in Perl and C. Or rather, as Mark pointed out, it should be called Writing Apache Modules in Perl, because you know Perl and Perl is great. By the way, Perl is written in C (of course, that title may put too much emphasis on C).
Saturday, October 28, 2000
security guard and the bible
Update on Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
You got me. This is yet another unfinished entry.
Sigh.
quiet night at work
Sunday, October 29, 2000
a wired Jamison
busy night — three cases
turning back the clock and our internal trouble tracking system problem
http://www.shanghaisteve.com/fortune/4t6-31.htm
bad day for “use cats for shark bait”
www.plif.com the comic with attitude
Monday, October 30, 2000
got source code to its
