I've put up my Rails app on the Internet for those interested.  Here is the URL:

http://www.c-m.us.com:3000

You can login as:

user: demo

password: secret

demo is set up as an administrative user.  It is in the "sysadmins" group.  Please leave "demo" in the sysadmins groups.  Otherwise you will disallow access to the application.

I decided to finally learn Ruby on Rails.I am an old C and Perl programmer and have done a lot of Perl OO programming. I knew that Ruby was similar to Perl in some ways, so I figured learning it would not be too difficult. I also had some experience with administering Rails in a previous life and I was familiar enough with the framework.

If you have a dedicated Internet pipe, please participate in the NTP Pool project.  It is easy to do.  Go to http://www.pool.ntp.org and follow the instructions.  I joined the pool a few months back.  Here is the server section of the NTP configuration on my Linux box:

server dewey.lib.ci.phoenix.az.us
server ntp3.linocomm.net
server reva.ziaspace.com
server timekeeper.isi.edu
server tick.cs.unlv.edu

As I continue to look for contracting work in the current down economy, I am struck by how specialized IT functions have become in most businesses. The job boards continue to have jobs with specific skillset requirements. Personally, I think looking for specific and narrow specialized skillsets is a mistake anytime and is more of a mistake in a down economy, since it is possible to get folks with a more diverse set of skills which can perform multiple functions in an organization.

Several years ago I wrote a white paper about the commodization of the IT infrastructure.  In that paper I wrote about datacenter environments becoming less diverse and systems would be either Windows or Linux based systems.  Much of that prediction is rapidly becoming true.

It still astonishes me that technical interviewers still ask inane and stupid questions.  I was recently on the receiving end of such an interview.  I got questions like "How do you determine the release number of a Red Hat Linux operating system?"  My answer was to look at "uname -a".  Apparently, that answer was not good enough. It turns out the release version is kept in /etc/issue which I had forgotten, because such knowlege is used infrequently.  But I knew how to find out the answer which I think is more important.

Since I was laid of by WebMD in December 2008, I have been in job hunting mode.  Emotionally, it has been a rollercoaster ride.  Fortunately, I found a wonderful job support group called Scottesdale Jobs Network (http://http://www.scottsdalejobnet.com).  It has proved to be a wonderful resource and a great place to network.  The volunteers are friendly and open and I have met some really nice people.  I recommend SJN to anybody in the Phoenix metro area.

As a long time Linux/Unix consultant and administrator, I have found the underlying Unix paradigm to be a very enduring model for system operation and maintenance.  Unlike many other operating systems,. simple Unix tools can be built relatively quickly because some key operating system primitives are exposed to the shell user interface without the need to resort to a lower level language. Here are the key primitives which are exposed to the shell:

SSH has some nifty tunneling features which I have found to be extremely useful.  Some of the handy uses I have found are:

• Tunnel VNC connections
• Allow X-Window forwarding
• Tunnel POP or IMAP connections which are behind a NATed firewall

First here are some SSH tunneling basics.  You can only tunnel TCP connections when the remote SSH server permits tunneling.  The configuration option for the OpenSSH server is:

AllowTCPForwarding yes

Several years ago a friend told me about pdumpfs which is a small Python script modeled after the backup system used by Plan 9. Not being a Python guy, I found a Perl script which has similar behavior called glastree. I use it along with rsync and a 1TB Iomega Network StorCenter Disk to do nearline backups of my systems on my home network.