Recently in LISA Category

So once upon a time, there was an organization called USENIX. Then, along the way, they formed a sort of "sub-group" called SAGE, the "System Administrators' Guild".

Over the years, there's been a lot of... discontent... among some undefined percentage of SAGE members, feeling sort of like the red-headed stepchildren of USENIX. USENIX, as a 501(c)(3) organization is not capable of offering a lot of the professional-services types of things they believe the organization should be providing. Doing so would make them into more of a "trade union" type of non-profit, which is something that would jeopardize the particular tax-free status USENIX presently enjoys (one which makes donations to it tax-deductible).

There was a lot of talk about USENIX spinning SAGE off into its own entity, to live on its own two feet. That seems to have gone nowhere in particular. In the end, the SAGE Interim Board, who had been put in charge of leading the direction for SAGE to go, and in working with USENIX to do that, were told that this was not going to happen.

And so, LOPSA - the League Of Professional System Administrators was born.

As a couple USENIX members pointed out, in tonight's public forum at LISA, there is room for both USENIX (which may borg SAGE completely into nothingness within the USENIX entity) and LOPSA, as they both excel at completely different things, some of which are things that one of them at least cannot even legally attempt to offer.

USENIX excels at putting on technical conferences and establishing a community around them. I get one-hundred times more value out of a week at LISA than I would at any three O'Reilly conferences combined, and I include in that the MySQL Users Conference where I generally see a crapload of our book get sold bringing direct revenue my way.

At the same time, though, LOPSA -- while its ability to perform these tasks is yet untested -- is much better positioned, legally, to do things like advocacy, or represent sysadmins in general to a larger audience as a trade organization (like the AMA or ABA does for doctors and lawyers). USENIX can't even get into those areas without risking IRS trouble, and there's a lot of demand in the sysadmin community for that type of representation. An organization that can attempt to generate some sort of "standards" for sysadmins "do", establish a code of ethics, and represent to some extent a stamp of legitimacy, can be an invaluable organization to have.

So, I see the SAGE "membership" going away within USENIX, with USENIX continuing to do what it does good, and LOPSA doing what it can do well. I don't see a lot of potential for conflict, especially now that LOPSA is just deciding to "start out fresh" and not necessarily depend on USENIX's good graces for its start. It's off to a great start already, and I can only believe that the membership drive they are on this week at LISA will give them a firm footing going forward.

OK, here is my golden advice for anyone who ever attends LISA again. Are you ready? Seriously? OK, click below for the inside scoop....

Got in some poker playing up at Pechanga today? Check.

Remembered to bring my swim trunks for the hot tub? Errrrrrr..... shit.

Made my "Mandatory Required By Law" pilgrimage to In-N-Out Burger? You bet your ass I did.

Remembered to get in touch with Chris so I could possibly hook up with him while I was in his neck of the woods in Orange County? Oops.

Set up my Earthlink dial-up account again so that I could dial in from the rooms which don't have in-room high speed internet? Check.

Found out on arrival that despite what the people told me on the phone, the hotel is no longer in the Dark Ages and my room has hotel-provided (not the conference-provided) WiFi available... Sweet.

Made friends with the conference staff by bringing them what appeared to be much-needed food and drink while they were stuck at the registration booth? Check.

Now to get some late dinner and watch some TV, and get to bed (somewhat) early. Anyone who thinks "going to a conference" means "doing nothing" has never been through six days of LISA, believe me.

Tonight was a busy night. Tomorrow I leave for San Diego, to attend LISA '05. The last time I was in San Diego for LISA, the entire surrounding area was on fire.

But tonight, before I can go to bed, I had to run to Sears and buy some new luggage (during the move, one of my cats decided to piss all over my really nice extra-large Eddie Bauer duffel, rendering it pretty much useless for clothes-carrying from that point forward (because, let's face it, the smell never really comes out, and that's the last thing you want to cram clothes into afterwards).

Combine that with my growing dislike of my briefcase as a "carry-on" bag, and I was off to get some luggage. For the laptop, et al, carryon, I got myself this rolling tote, and then to replace the main bag, I bought the matching pullman.

I had considered spending the same amount of money for one of the 5-piece sets instead, but every one of them I could find, the carry-tote was either too-small, or it was hard-sided, and I really like soft-sided totes, because they are easier to cram under your seat on the plane (thus preventing you from having to get up out of your seat to get stuff out of the overhead compartment).

Once I got all that home, I had to do (and am in the middle of doing) a metric ass-load of laundry. If I don't, my new pullman will be empty when I go to California, because what I wore to work today was the last of the clean clothes. Heh.

Combine that with all the usual pre-flight stuff (where's my passport, where's my headphones, what DVDs do I want to pack, where the hell did I put the airline-power adapter for my laptop, etc., etc.) and it makes for a busy evening.

Tomorrow, before the LISA festivities begin, it is my plan to go to Pechanga for a 10AM Texas Hold'em tournament. My last experience at a poker tourney had me right on the cusp of being in the money, so I think I have a pretty decent shot at it on Saturday if I don't panic like I did last time around.

If you're going to be at LISA, give me a shout. Maybe I'll see you at the Casino, or we can hook up at some point during the week and swap war-stories.

Unlike OSCON, where I gave daily updates, I've found myself in a whirlwind at LISA. LISA is absolutely the best conference I've ever been to. Unlike the OSCONs I've been attending for years prior, I don't know nearly as many folks at LISA, which has given me an opportunity to meet some new people, get different perspectives on things, etc.

The tutorials I attended? I can't say enough about how great they were. I got more out of the sessions I attended than the sessions at at any other conference. The invited-talks and such were likewise excellent. The BOFs in the evening were either entertaining or enlightening depending on the topic.

Even in the evenings, after the BOFs when I was in the terminal room (trying to avoid crappy hotel-room dial-up), just hanging out with other people, helping them solve minor issues, etc. (and getting the same in return) was great.

The last day is here (not yet completed, but mid-way through). I sat in David Blank-Edelman's "Through The Lens Geekly" talk, which I admittedly attended because I was curious to see which stereotypes from film and TV he found for sysadmins. I was intrigued by how much the "film portrayal" of SAs is indicative of not "parody", but in many cases how non-geeks actually view us. David made a lot of good points to the effect of how we need to try and reverse that mindset in people.

Overall, I can't believe I haven't made it to LISA before, and it's now officially on my annual "must-do" list for years to come. I'm glad to finally be working for a place that understands the value that conference-attendance provides (even at my last gig, I was never able to convince management to pay for a conference, although if I could worm my way in for free, they might occasionally agree to pick up hotel and food or something, but that was the only way). I've learned a bunch of stuff I can't wait to bring back and start working with to try and improve the way things work.

I noted once before how fed-up I was with the essentially useless nature of Slashdot.

Someone here in the terminal room mentioned "we could probably eliminate the network issues if we just put up a Slashdot-cache here, so everyone hit that," to which I glibly replied, "You mean there are still people who read Slashdot"? And much to my surprise, a large number of seemingly intelligent folks said they did.

This is amazing to me, considering that (to me anyway) the Clue Value of Slashdot had plummetted into the realm of the useless, and (as noted in the above-mentioned entry) there were horrible problems with the way they handled aggregators.

I'm trying to figure out how to explain the mental discrepancy this forms for me... intelligent people adamantly deciding to read something completely puerile.

What is there to do in Tijuana if you are interested neither in drinking nor in spending an inordinate amount of time at a low-price strip club?

Dave says he's thinking of going across the border this evening, and (for obvious reasons) wants to go tag-team with someone. But by the same token, I'm not terribly certain what the appeal would be for me, other than having never been to Tijuana (or anywhere in Mexico for that matter) before.

I just have this vision of it being like a certain day-trip the wife and I took to Paris, where we were there ten minutes, and then rebooked our train fare back and went back to London on (literally) the same train we arrived on.

So what does someone who doesn't drink or really get into the rampant strip-club carousing thing do in TJ?

Today I woke up to the morning news telling me "Stay inside, don't go out driving, don't use your water, the firefighters need it."

It was eight in the morning (after daylight savings time had been removed) and the sky was the dismal color pictured to the right. As you walked outside, it was as though it was a crisp January morning, with light flurries falling, and the ground covered in that morning dusting that blows away. Except these weren't snowflakes, and they weren't going to melt away. There were thousands upon thousands of acres on fire a short drive away, and the sky was the worse for it. I took a couple pictures to share.

As I write this this evening, twelve hours later, nothing much has changed. It's still smoky out, everyone and everything smells like ash. I've seen employees wearing dust-masks to keep themselves from inhaling ash all day.

But, most of the day I was indoors, attending the Seven Habits of the Highly Effective System Administrator tutorial. I cannot express enough how great this session was. Lots of good information, great audience participation so other points were brought up, you name it.

Dinner at Charlie's was less than stellar. It feels like I'll be dealing with that issue later this evening in some greater depth.

Time to hang out in the server room (and avoid the crappy hotel $.95/30-minute service charges), and recharge the batteries and suck down some high-speed access.

6:30 ... arrive at Charlie's, no acknowledgement from the wait-staff that we're waiting for a table.
6:50 ... Comment to Dave "5-minute warning... in 5 minutes, if I'm not at a table, I'm going back to my room and ordering Papa John's"
6:55 ... steal a table from someone who left. Still dirty
7:00 ... comment to Dave "If I don't see a server in 5 minutes, I'm outta here."
7:07 ... Dave summons a server
7:08 ... we order our drinks and dinner
7:20 ... still no drinks, no sign of server
7:22 ... My drink arrives. Dave's doesn't. They're out of Mountain Dew. He orders a root beer.
7:24 ... food arrives. No drink for Dave, no ranch dressing (they're out)

... this can't be a good sign... we'll see how it goes...

Registration was painless. Dave arrived last night, well after I went to bed (he boned himself and missed his flight, so he had to come into LA, and then drive down to San Diego).

Today was my one day to myself (with the orientation scheduled for tonight, I wanted to make sure I got in last night so I wouldn't miss it). Travelled over to Sea World this afternoon with Dave and his sister... Of all the times I've been to San Diego for OSCON, I never got over to Sea World. It was fun. Went to almost all the shows (and definitely all the ones I had any real desire to go to). It was pretty fun. It was pretty neat feeding the rays...

We ate at Kelly's tonight (I had eaten there last night, and it was really good, but I was also very tired so I didn't really enjoy it as much)... had the very tasty filet mignon again tonight, and this time got to actually savor it instead of just wolfing it down and heading to bed.

I don't feel so bad ordering a meal in the hotel restaurant that costs $30-40 when I realize that cabbing over to anywhere else would push the total cost of dinner right back up into that price range.

Went to the "LISA Newbie" orientation session this evening. Turns out I didn't need to... much of what they talk about in the orientation was very similar to something a regular OSCON attendee would already know.

Now hanging out in the terminal room. Hopefully I'll be able to leech enough 802.11b and terminal-room time that I won't need to subject myself to the crappy in-room situation... no high-speed internet, and any local call is $0.95 per 30 minutes. Oh, and the lines are crappy enough that I only get a 26.4k connect. Suck.

Well, should probably head off to bed soon. More tomorrow, I'm sure.