I have other blogs but I thought I should really have one in which I record my professional life. By which I mean all the tips, hints, articles, notations and other ephemera I’ve learned and will forget sooner or later.
In my former life, I was a Unix system administrator, in charge of maintaining web servers (Apache) running Linux (RedHat). After the bubble burst in 2001, I had to resort to being a technical support flunky for NTT/Verio. I now work for the department of administration, state of Idaho as a Windows system administrator. I never thought I would end up as one of those poor souls but one’s got to pay the bills, no?
I used to disparage Microsoft’s OS when it was NT (3.5 and 4.0) but with 2000 Server and Server 2003, the introduction of Active Directory (AD) based on open protocols such as LDAP and Kerberos, I’ve become fond of it. Since I’ve been with the department, I’ve lost a bunch of my Unix skills (a la Napoleon Dynamite) but I hope to rekindle them.
A good many Windows administrators don’t understand AD very well but coming from a Unix background, AD makes a lot of sense to me. I do wish Exchange Server 2003 were a bit easier to maintain, like Sendmail (ahem!) and other MTAs but I understand the integration with AD complicates things tremendously.
So then, dispensing with further background material, I hope to make this blog a system diary of sorts, recording—as I have already said—tips, hints, articles, notes, system updates to the servers I run, new things I’ve learned, etc. I desperately need a place to keep all that stuff and my study isn’t furnished or big enough. I have all these little bits of paper lying around and books galore.
I wish I had the use of a pensieve, which is a device from the Harry Potter series of books. One is able to save thoughts and memories into the pensieve for later retrieval and analysis! What a great idea, no? It would be even greater if one’s able to categorize them.
All for now.
