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I made a perl

May 1st, 2010
by Gillian.
4 comments

(Note: I’m back on Twitter at @shebang_the_cat, so please re-add me if we were contacts before, or if you think I’m worth listening to. The bonus on this new name is that the underscores hopefully mean the username is no longer perverted-sounding to certain immature people I know.)

I did some coding this week at work, and it had been a while. This is actually my first DBA job that doesn’t require me to do any (besides the odd bash script, which doesn’t really count), and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

I had to collect data from a bunch of database servers, each with a bunch of databases and each of those with a bunch of tables, and since grabbing all that by hand would induce homicidal thoughts rather quickly, I wrote a perl script to do it for me. I suppose I could’ve used a different language, but I know enough perl to be dangerous. Plus whenever I do use it I suddenly get this chorus of guys I know, who are a tad fanatical about the language, cheering me on. I don’t know what it is about perl, but I don’t get that encouragement if I use Java (instead, God drowns a puppy).

I’m certainly glad I stopped being a Java developer, if only for the sake of my repetitive stress pains in my right hand (it’s a really wordy language). Scripting languages like PHP and perl have been far kinder on me, as has DBA work.

Way back when I decided to go into computer science there were two aspects of it that interested me:

  1. solving problems, and
  2. actually creating something (i.e., software).

It dawns on me now that what I like best in database work is when there’s something to fix. At least when it’s not something I broke myself, though that happens often enough. If I can speed up data retrieval, or improve a query, that’s golden. Everything else is pretty lame, though, if I think about it. Documentation, installing new database servers, arguing with developers, I could leave it.

I don’t ever feel I’m creating much, though, at least not these days. And I think I’m aching for that, badly. That half-day of perl coding was the most work-fun I’d had in months. I was able to (mostly) block out the banter going on around me and focus on the code, and that’s so wonderful. I find it harder to get into The Zone with my database work, though that’s probably more because of all the multitasking involved, and having to deal with people.

Maybe it’s time I signed up for an open source project or something.

Is tech blogging for me?

Apr 20th, 2010
by Gillian.
7 comments

I still mourn the loss of a blog I once had. It was a wiki for one that I had running on my work computer at my last full-time job. I wrote everything I was doing, and what I’d done to fix things, and reminders about stuff I should do someday but never got the chance. I also wrote some neat scripts and SQL, “tricks” I’d figured out that helped me in my job.

And then I got laid off. I’d never copied a backup to my home computer, so I lost all of it. There wasn’t anything all that profound in its contents, but profundity in database administration is not something I’ve aimed for. Just remembering how to do shit, that’s a more practical goal.

I hate that I never made its contents public (removing anything company-specific obviously), because that had been my plan, once I felt there were enough posts to spread them out well over the following weeks. I was going to have a tech blog with sparkles and put it on Planet MySQL. So much for that.

I’ve since built up similar notes at my current job and am wondering about whether I should restart the whole tech blog idea, as the recent conference has me jonesing for an online presence that’s not just this silly self-obsessed brainfart of a blog. I don’t know many DBAs or database developers and it’s a lonely existence. I bet there’s maybe a handful of MySQL DBAs in all of BC, and I must be only one in Kelowna (not surprising, this isn’t the “silicon vineyard” that local businessmen were hoping to create). Sigh. I think I’ll go sit at my window and stare out at the ghetto parking lot behind my apartment, dreaming of having friends who aren’t software developers.

But back on the tech blog idea: there’s one last thing leaving me uneasy, and that’s Planet MySQL. There’s voting, a la thumbs-up-or-down on a per-post basis. That just seems, I dunno, mean, like we can’t all be nice and appreciate everyone’s effort even if we think it’s all bollocks. Most of the voting seems to be politically charged (i.e., pro-Oracle posts will get a bunch of thumbs-downs because some people are upset about their recently finalized purchase of Sun/MySQL) and if you avoid that arena you’re halfway there. But I’ve been barked at in comments sections of blog posts, too, and I wasn’t even saying “FRIST!!!111″ or trolling or anything.

I would hope that anything I produced would be read and commented on and if I was full of crap or worthy of mockery then people would at least be nice about it like my teammates are when they laugh at me at work (at least they’re smiling as I run off to the bathroom to cry). I guess I just don’t see the point of voting at all on an aggregate feed of blog posts about databases, and worry about getting commenters who are going to get all snippy at me because I don’t like master-master replication (because if so, they better BRING IT).

Any techies still reading want to comment on this?

What do you name your servers?

Jun 24th, 2008
by Gillian.
25 comments

I was watching a rerun of jPod last week, and in one scene some of the characters are walking through their server room at work. The cabinets are labeled with such names as “Mr. Belvedere”, “Punky”, “Webster”, “Gopher” and “Willis” (there were more, but I can’t remember any thank you, Tivo), all of them referring to characters from 80s TV shows.

I’ve noticed at the various places I’ve worked since university that it’s pretty common to name your servers something other than “firewall01″ and “webserver06″, but to come up with something more interesting. Also, sometimes there are themes where all servers in a local network will be names based on that theme (such as that 80s TV characters theme mentioned above). My last company, for example, had servers with nautical themes, because our websites sold boats. Another company used characters from The Simpsons.

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any interesting naming of the servers at my current company, but the sysadmin asked me to name my reports server and I suggested “optimus” sort of as a joke. I don’t think our sysadmin has even seen Transformers, but I suppose it does sound cool anyways.

Otherwise, I haven’t had the chance to come up with any cool naming scheme, really; while I had two servers running at home, I named them Cylon and Baltar (sadly, Baltar died). But I have no reason to have multiple servers at home anymore, so I won’t get the chance to do any cool naming again anytime soon.

So, I’m curious, have any of you named your servers or computers anything strange or different? Any recurring theme between computers on the same network, or in the same home? I find it interesting to hear what people have picked, and what their choices might say about them.