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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 92 responses total. |
twenex
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response 26 of 92:
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Oct 9 17:09 UTC 2006 |
Thanks for your work mike and best of luck.
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cross
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response 27 of 92:
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Oct 9 17:16 UTC 2006 |
Sorry to hear it, Mike; I hope things get better for you soon.
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naftee
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response 28 of 92:
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Oct 9 20:13 UTC 2006 |
thanks, mike, and good luck.
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aruba
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response 29 of 92:
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Oct 9 22:32 UTC 2006 |
Mike - I hope things take a turn for the better. When you're up for it,
we'd like to have you back on the Grex staff.
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charcat
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response 30 of 92:
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Oct 10 01:51 UTC 2006 |
Always glad to hear what you have to say Mike, good luck and hope you
can return.
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keesan
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response 31 of 92:
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Oct 10 02:27 UTC 2006 |
How many staff members are left now?
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nharmon
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response 32 of 92:
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Oct 10 02:47 UTC 2006 |
It depends who you ask. Could be 3 to 33.
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cross
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response 33 of 92:
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Oct 10 03:57 UTC 2006 |
According to /etc/group:
bhoward,gelinas,glenda,i,janc,kip,mdw,remmers,srw,steve
Of those, bhoward is inactive these days; kip is inactive; mdw is inactive.
So that leaves gelinas, glenda, i, janc, remmers, srw, and steve.
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spooked
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response 34 of 92:
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Oct 10 09:05 UTC 2006 |
Out of the remainder:
'gelinas' is inactive (mostly reads confs maybe monthly)
'glenda' does not do many (any?) staff activities *that I know*
'i' does not do staff activities *that I know*, but is mainly cfadm
'janc', 'remmers' may do the odd job here and there
'srw', I think he still handles the vast bulk of staff email
'steve' is probably the most active, and even he is not that active
anymore (and is sometimes counter-active/defeatist)
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keesan
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response 35 of 92:
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Oct 10 14:29 UTC 2006 |
Who picks grex up when it crashes? Spooked, what were you doing as staff?
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cross
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response 36 of 92:
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Oct 10 16:19 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #35; That's a good question (who picks grex up when it crashes).
Unfortunately, for the most part, we don't know, since those who do it can't
bring themselves to update the motd or post in agora for the most part. Hmm.
Bummer.
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remmers
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response 37 of 92:
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Oct 10 16:32 UTC 2006 |
Yeah, I'm a real slacker.
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cross
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response 38 of 92:
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Oct 10 16:53 UTC 2006 |
A true bum. But it's not always you; a short time ago, I believe Glenda
rebooted grex.
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mary
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response 39 of 92:
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Oct 10 17:02 UTC 2006 |
I say stone 'em all.
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twenex
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response 40 of 92:
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Oct 10 17:07 UTC 2006 |
Nah, we only do that if you say "Jehovah."
Oh, shit....
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cross
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response 41 of 92:
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Oct 10 17:23 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #39; Is that supposed to be sarcastic?
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slynne
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response 42 of 92:
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Oct 10 18:04 UTC 2006 |
I say we double their pay!
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cross
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response 43 of 92:
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Oct 10 18:41 UTC 2006 |
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Really, it amazes me that some peope can't seem to get their heads around the
idea that grex has a problem, and it's going to get bigger.
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keesan
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response 44 of 92:
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Oct 10 19:06 UTC 2006 |
Grex also has a staff, which seems to be getting smaller.
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cyklone
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response 45 of 92:
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Oct 10 19:51 UTC 2006 |
Somewhere in coop I mentioned grex has a "succession" problem if a "main"
staffer goes down. McNally asked what I suggested. Here goes: Document the
hell out of the system and make mutiple copies. I'll leave it to the
techies on grex to determine what exactly should be documented and how.
Next, cross-train at least two new staffers to do the job of each "main"
staffer. This may also mean doing something akin to an ADA "essential job
functions" description. I've given this advice to friends with big
tech-reliant companies, and they thanked me, not that I expect the same
from grex. A little action in this direction by the Board would be
appreciated, though.
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spooked
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response 46 of 92:
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Oct 10 20:23 UTC 2006 |
What was I doing? Very little apparently. And, when I did do something,
I was screwed over - with no apology. I did, however, besides the odd job
here and there manage to highlight serious problems with the auto(bi)cratic
management of staff and it's non-visionary/sheep culture. Which to me is
invaluable given the current predicament that is staff. However, seems to
me to go in one ear and out the other of most of the flock.
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cross
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response 47 of 92:
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Oct 10 22:56 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #45; That's a good idea, but how do you get people to follow it?
Jan made a good first effort stab at this: he put all the configuration for
grex into a single CVS tree, wrote scripts to apply updates to the base
system, documented things, etc, etc, etc. Unfortunately, the CVS tree was
hosted on a server that was NOT grex itself. So, for a staff member to modify
it, a staff member must also have access to another host. I never had such
access (though remmers was in the process of creating me an account on the
CVS machine when I quit staff). Further, there's one copy of grexdoc (the
configuration hierarchy) checked out under /grex/grexdoc. Unfortunately, it
was checked out by jan, and consequently hard for anyone else to update. I
lobbied to get the CVS repository moved to grex itself, but got shot down
under the (reasonable) counter-argument that hosting the repository elsewhere
made more sense from a backup perspective. Only, that just shifts the point
of failure away from grex to another machine: you still have a single point
of failure. I then argued that another solution would be to host the
repository on grex, and rsync it to another machine, but that was just
ignored. Of course, an even better solution would be to set up the CVS
repository on grex, and then set up a CVSupd on grex so that anyone could
mirror the CVS repository elsewhere. If, say, HVCN ran cvsup out of cron once
an hour or so, sucking down grex's CVS repository, you'd get pretty good
backup coverage without the hassle of an off-site repository. HVCN already
provides a few services for grex (and vice versa), so it wouldn't be an
administrative or political stretch. In particular, grex nominally provides
shell and dialup services for HVCN, so it isn't much to ask them to return
the favor not just by mirroring grex's staff and board mailing lists, but also
by mirroring the small amount of data in grex's essential configuration files.
But I digress. Another problem with grexdoc was that not everyone even used
it. Some of the long-time staffers just sort of ignored it and did their own
thing. Often, this was just because they weren't familiar with it.
Sometimes, it was because it was easier. I suspect in one or two cases it
was just because they did't want to be hassled with it and it wasn't the way
things had always been done up to that point.
So, in summary, there's a rudimentary but functional change control and
documentation process in place. It's just not always followed.
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slynne
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response 48 of 92:
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Oct 10 23:08 UTC 2006 |
All I can say is that while I think it is an excellent idea to have
people document things and train others, I can tell you that even in my
place of employment where people are *paid* to do those things, it
never gets done to a standard that makes the training/documentation
useful.
Of course where I work a lot of that has to do with people's fears
about losing their jobs. No one wants to make a really good set of
documents because as soon as one exists, it makes it a lot easier for
management to fire everyone. Since they have demonstrated with their
actions in the past that such a worry is well founded doesnt help get
things documented.
Naturally, no one will fire any grex staff simply because things are
documented. But then there is the fact that writing documentation is
kind of a pain in the neck. It is great when people do it but actually
getting people to do it is another thing altogether.
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cross
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response 49 of 92:
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Oct 10 23:14 UTC 2006 |
But they will fire them if they don't `get along' with certain other staffers,
as has happened in the past. But that won't keep them from pimping certain
work out to those former staff members (while talking shit about them behind
their backs).
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cyklone
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response 50 of 92:
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Oct 10 23:58 UTC 2006 |
No offense, lyunne, but if you are going to import your negative experiences
with one employer to grex, then perhaps you are not well-suited to being a
board member. While I certainly hope that board members draw on all their
experiences when making decisions about grex, I don't think grex needs board
members with an "it didn't work there, so it can't work here" attitude.
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