Archive for May, 2005
Walmart and Linux
Maybe this is old news to everyone — but last night while visiting my local Walmart, I happened to notice that the machines that allow you to preview a CD were broken — displaying some random text on the screen. I walked over to them to take a closer look at it and low-n-behold, it appears that they are running Linux.
Admitedly it could be some other *nix variant — since I could only see a small part of the boot messages, but until I hear otherwise, I’m sticking to the story that it is Linux. I grabbed a few pics with my camera phone. The quality on my camera phone blows — so my apologies — but it was all I had.
UPDATE: JustBill has confirmed that indeed the WalMart MMS Server is running some flavor of *nix. JustBill works for a company which is a leading global technology company that does service work for Walmart and others. (so he knows!)
Sys Admin Job Description
Implicit in our job descriptions, I postulate these concepts for your approval;
1. We fix everything we can, given the inventory of our tools and components.
2. We cover our supervisor’s posteriors by giving them detailed worst-case scenarios of the potential costs associated with failures of what we are give to work with, and recommendations of what would prevent that. (Don’t forget to mention putting retreads on a Ferrari).
3. We cover our posteriors by keeping copies of such documents in our “Pearl Harbor” file — ESPECIALLY if they don’t cover our posteriors by giving us what we need to prevent those scenarios…
If we don’t detail the consequences of their failure to help us keep the systems reliable, IT IS OUR FAULT – not theirs.
– Someone sent this to me a few years ago — I can’t take credit for it, but I don’t remember who sent it so I can’t fully give them credit.
Hello World!
Well — I guess I’m going to give blogging another try. My initial foray into blogging involved this very software WordPress, but I was plagued with comment spam and didn’t feel like putting the effort into fighting it.
So here comes entry number 1:
Today is our first anniversary — May 15th, 2004 was the day that Jess gave up her peaceful quiet life to live in my rambunctious noisey clumsy world. I’m sure at times she seriously wonders just what the hell she was thinking. I don’t.
