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[Keith] Welcome to the Mind Of Root. I'm Keith Albright
[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.
[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski.
[Keith] This is Episode 49 recorded on Tuesday April 29, 2008. Welcome to the show everybody...especially anyone who might be viewing on UStream?.TV tonight. Until we figure out exactly where we want to go with it, you'll be seeing my ugly mug on the video stream. I'll try not to do anything inappropriate on camera.
Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?
[Steve]
- Had a 17 hour ISP outage over the weekend... Kind of threw everything off for me.
- I also had to create some new accounts in our active directory and found that my groups had gotten a bit out of control, so I spent a bit of time the other day cleaning them up. I got some good use out of PowerShell and the AD cmdlets from Quest for that task.
[Rich]
[Keith]
Housekeeping Items
[Rich]
[Steve]
[Keith]
- We are streaming live on UStream?.tv as we record tonight. We had some requests in the past to stream live and make it interactive. Skype let us down, do I figured I'd try this. If you're around Tuesday nights at 9PM Eastern time, that is typically when we record. I'll try to post any changes to the schedule as well.
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- Techies Get a Pay Cut [STEVE]
-"The median salary for information-technology pros dropped $1,000 in 2008 to $73,000 for staffers and $96,000 for managers, according to a survey of almost 10,000 IT pros by Information Week"
-In the 12 months preceding the survey, IT jobs grew 12%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet 30% of those jobs were low-paying computer-support positions, which no doubt contributed to the overall drop.
-All this is telling me is that there are more lower end tech jobs with a lower pay base. It does not conclusively show a drop in pay across all levels.
-The increase in support jobs does fly in the face of rampant outsourcing, which the blog post addresses, though it could be a factor in lower pay for entry level tech support roles.
-"The best-paying tech jobs are analyst positions that combine tech skills with knowledge of the business. People with the title “business analyst” had their salaries drop $5,000 over the last year to $75,000. While it’s bad for these workers, it may be a sign that technology is getting to the point where business people – as opposed to tech-savvy intermediaries – can use data and system on their own."
-The decline in value of the "analyst" position is a sign of the effectiveness of business intelligence efforts. If businesses are producing data in a more relevant form to the executives and decision makers, they no longer have as much reliance on the IT savvy analyst to provide that information.
-I'm trying not to rant, but this week has been a bear with the tape drive fiasco and now I'm having trouble with Level3 disconnecting our service.
-I put in for the disconnect about a week before cutover to leave 2 to 3 weeks overlap while I worked out problems. I checked online and found they require 30 day lead on disconnects....no problem.
-First, they ignore the disconnect for a while and at 30 days, we get an email asking if we want the other service disconnected as well. Since we don't have any other service I am aware of, I rushed to email back and was concerned. I mention we are already at 30 days and they drop this now! His reply, doesn't matter. Disconnect is 60 Days because we had Genuity service (which they acquired years ago). I check again and website does indicate this. Nothing on my bill indicates I have Genuity service, etc. which is why I assumed 30 days. I should also point out that I attempted to contact our rep numerous times before I decided to switch carriers and after (alerting them of pending disconnect and asking for guidance). None of which garnered a response.
-What ticks me off is that this policy is nothing more than an effort to punish a customer for leaving. I actually gave them the opportunity to keep the business, but they were lazy and ignorant in their response when they did respond in the beginning.
- Auditing in Server 2008 [STEVE]
-Found this great blog post on Auditing in Server 2008
-If you are looking to migrate or for reasons to migrate to Server 2008, check it out.
- DLT = DLT, Right? Wrong. [KEITH]
-First off; I will admit this is my fault. As part of the upgrades I'm doing, we need to replace the tape drive. We are consistently going over a single tape capactity, so I figured an autoloader would be best. In addition, our current drive started with write errors.
-I wanted to find one compatible with our media since we had just purchased a new batch last year. So, I find the Quantum
SuperLoader? 3 w/a
DLTV4? drive. Their tape compatibility matrix sucks (lots of fancy flash animation, but not a lot of info.) If you read it, nothing is compatible with each other....apparently it is correct though. So, I have SDLT tapes w/160GB native and 320GB compressed capacity.
DLTV4? specs are exactlty the same...160/320. I dug a bit, but couldn't find anything indicating a definite no, so I jumped to the conclusion they are the same.
-Fast forward to my loading tapes into the drive (which went beautifully) and then I schedule an inventory of the loader.......Bang, tape error. Then followed more errors. Long story short...6 hours on with Quantum, them guiding me on sticking a knife in the unit to eject the magazines, finally a full removal of the drive to eject the tape. I'm ordering the new tapes now and can't wait to see the difference.
-Finally a rant. Why do they have drives with the same technology moniker, the same exact capacity, yet it is not compatible. That is what pisses me off. I think I made a common sense conclusion that they would be compatible, but obviously, I was wrong.
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Listener Feedback
From listener....Jed Reynolds who sent an email to Feedback at MindOfRoot.comAnd you can too!
I must salute you with a "Well done, old chap" for placing the Dr. Bill
trailer right after the windows Vista interview. That wee bit of "evil
empire" from planet curmudgeon keeps it real.
Cheers!
Jed
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Website Picks
Rich - http://
Steve - http://www.mesh.com
Keith - http://www.jellowrestling.com/index.htm Only in America
Check out http://silmaril.ie/cgi-bin/uncgi/acronyms When someone starts throwing our TLA's, find out what they are here.
Last Call
Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....
Closing
All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] mindofroot.com or post a comment on the main site at mindofroot.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.
Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast and the Blubrry networks. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com and Blubrry.com....That's Blubrry without the E's
Thanks everyone.
