From jeff@nospam.starfall.com Sat Jan 22 12:47:02 2000 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan Subject: Re: mordin theory AKA a pissing contest From: jeff@nospam.starfall.com (Jeff Huo) Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 11:47:02 -0600 In article , jsn@concentric.net says... > On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 00:41:51 -0600, Jeff Huo wrote: > > >Okay, I know I've been living down in my lab sixty-feet > >below ground these last few months, so I have no idea what > >the ten-seventy-seven or ten-seventy-other codes mean. Could > >someone please have pity on the clueless (me) and define? > > Why would you possibly care? > > A reflexive instinct from my medical training to try to find out if there is a reasonable, logical basis for something that seems, at first glance, to be fairly absurd. To wit: often, patients will come in with problems due to actions that, at first, seem less than logical. One of the cardinal rule of taking a medical history is to try to find out why the patient thought said action was a good idea in his or her own context without prejudging; perhaps said action makes sense from a certain cultural perspective, or is a derivation from therof. Of course, in this case of the codes, post-explanation the situation still seem fuckwitted. But that happens a lot in medicine, too. (Medicine. Take your average BOFH. [1] Retain the technical, intellectual, improvisational and stress-handling capabilities, but utterly reverse the polarity on the personality and motivations. Now you have somebody who might fit in nicely in medicine. Perhaps you out there know a fellow Operator that might fit that description. That doesn't quite fit into the mold. That doesn't _enjoy_ clickety-clicking clueless lusers --or, worse yet, makes them feel better about themselves, encouraging them to call the help-desk even more often with more and more inane questions and single handedly putting an extrordinary wrench into you and your fellow Operator's efforts to properly maintain the appropriate level of fear among the unwashed masses. Perhaps this unnatural abomination might be you. Take heart! There may be another line of work just for him/her/you! That provides the same level of intellectual challenge, hands-on craftmanship, and adrenaline rush while _encouraging_ being nice to your users! Where the systems you're servicing have even less documentation, have no error logs or decompiler debuggers available to help you sort out what _really_ happened, and can be modified at will in ways bounded only by the creativity of man! Where you can experience the joy of helping people with problems big and small and not feel guilty about it! Take this quiz and help discover in what world -you- belong. ... 1) The help-desk phone rings right in the middle of a Deathmatch just as you are flying in the Redeemer for the kill. This A) Doesn't describe you because you, rather than playing Unreal Tournament, are still hunting down technical documentation that might allow you to salvage some information from the hard drive of a user who had tried to clean up the lost sectors on it with soap, water, and a wire brush. B) Causes you to forgo the "Monster Kill" by quitting and listen attentively as you try to explain to the user where the "any" key on the keyboard is. C) "What was your password again?" D) Triggers an automated script that allows you to automatically ID the lusers account and make it a mirror server for FuckingSickandHighlyIllegalChildPorn.com and helpfully cc's said account location, user's name, and physical address to Janet Reno. ... 2) When closing up lab for the evening, you find a manila envelope with a orange smilely-face sticker on it left near the scanner way in the back. There is no name on the outside, so you peek inside to see if you can figure out what is there and who it belongs to. Inside are graphic photographs of one of the people in accounting with the Boss's daughter. You lock said evenvelope in your safe, and as you are about to leave the phone rings. Said accountant is on the line. "Um, did you find a folder with a orange smiley-face on it at all?" You A) tell him you did, and that you'll wait here in the lab for him to come by and pick it up, no questions asked, and if anyone asks you never saw it or what was inside. (And you actually would keep said promise!) B) tell him you'll put it in a sealed fed-ex envelope and send it to an unmarked po-box of his choosing. C) "Let's make a deal; I -don't- send these to our mutual Boss...Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day... D) actually haven't waited for the sniveling pervert to call _you_; his first inkling that the photos were even missing was when you called _him_ to arrange for the funds transfer to the Operator's Orphans and Widows Fund, then right therafter re-hacked the system to make it appear the accountant had transfered said money into his _own_ account and dutifully reported the violation to Internal Affairs. After all, the accountant really had been under too much stress, anyway... ... 3) Your manager would like to show a group of new secretarial hires around the machine room. This A) Is just fine with you, as you have an open-door policy on people visiting and always enjoy explaining the various parts of the system and how come the Reality Monster doesn't have a disk drive and why the Unix log-on console has no icons. B) Is another unavoidable part of the job, because, after all, he is the Boss. C) "You want to bring in _who_ to see _my_ Machine room?" D) Doesn't happen anymore, not after the last group of people who visited your machine room somehow accidentally managed to trigger off the Halon systems, being unable to escape before asphyxiating because somehow the electronic lock system decided to suddenly switch into lock-down mode and fuse shut. ... 4) You're just about to leave for the day, when a user comes up to your desk holding a floppy. "Excuse me," he asks, without any concern for the late hour or your fatigue, "I have a Microsoft Word file on here and I really need you to help me print it out." You A) Go over to the users terminal and help him through the various steps of discovering that it's not a Word file, it's a Enable 2000 file, going through the laborious steps of trying to convert it, and take him through a two-hour tutorial on spell-checking, margins, grammar, how to form a coherent sentence, and mouse use. B) Tell him that you really need to leave, but that there is another computer site in the Library where he can get help. C) "Let's see that disk." c:\delete a:\*.* "Funny, I can't find a file here..." D) "You realize that those Word Processing programs are merely tools of control by the Illuminati.." and launch into a forty-five minute acting-tour-de-force of bullshit leavened with Idiot Mode technical jargon until the user is so scared shitless of modern technology he not only chucks the disk, he chucks his clothing and runs screaming from the site, yelling "My God! I won't let the nanites in my polyester make me a slave!" until psych services catch up with him. ... 5) On your favorite newsgroup, a clueless, un-capitalizing, unpunctuating, sniveling little dolt, after two weeks of insulting all of the male regulars, hitting on the female ones, and proclaiming himself expert on things he has no clue about, fires off a series of posts complaining "yu ARE al so meen to newbeezz!! Fuk u all!!!" You A) Patiently write a personal e-mail to the poster explaining the standards on the group and advising him how he can post in a way that does not demonstrate an IQ lower than the average spin on a quark. B) Ignore the poster, because writing him back only encourages him to write more. C) "Updates on Maggie's RASFWR-J Humor Archive: A newbie gets flamed so hard even Novak is in awe..." D) The Department of Energy has no idea why it's been instructed to move the country's high-level nuclear waste from Yucca Mountain to the bedroom of one particular 15-year old acne-pocked teenager, but all the computer records seem in order... ... 6) You notice that someone is printing fifty copies of his thesis on the lab's printers, essentially monopolizing all the lab time and causing massive complaints, as well as requiring constant paper and toner switches (which of course, he can't do himself.) You A)Helpfully redirect the print job to the super-high-speed printer in the Operators room, thus allowing this user to finish his job (after all, he's paying for the job from his own account) while allowing everyone else to do theirs. B) Shoot a stern suggestion to the user that he try using a copy place, while apologetically pointing out to the other angry users that he does in fact have the right to do this. C) Kill the job, and the thesis file, _and_ the backups, __and__ the user's system account, ---and--- the financial aid files and registrar's records... D) Activate the auxilliary toner cartridges installed in the laser printers such that each sheet, after being fed through the primary, is now fed through the secondary which prints, in time-lapse invisible ink that becomes readable after two days, appropriate death threats against certain high public officals as footnotes to a thesis being sent _tomorrow_ to the Central Intelligence Agency... ... 7) You're going to a team meeting with free food. On the way there, a user interuppts you, asking for help on why the electric stapler keeps jamming when he tries to feed 400 pages to it at once. Dealing with this delays you enough that by the time you get there you see a guy from Marketing snag the last sandwich. You A) ...well, actually, you snagged the last sandwich and the Marketing guy came in behind you, but he looked more hungry so you let him have the sandwich. And helping the user was more important. B) think, Hey, first come, first served. Annoying, but such is life. And this is why you carry food around with you anyway. C) smile two days later as the Marketing person fires up his mpeg video presentation for the Board of Directors --which he foolishly stored on the institutional file servers _you_ run-- and the screen comes alive with "Carnal Knowledge VII --Old McDonald Did a Farm" and gosh if the Esc, Cntrl, Alt, Delete, and power buttons don't seem to do anything... D) smile as the green indicator light next to his name comes on in your HUD concealed in the mirror shades you perpetually wear, indicating that the limpet bug you planted into his, and everyone else's sandwich, has come active, homed in on and implanted itself into the underside of the hippocampus, and is awaiting mind-control instructions from you, these happy thoughts puncuated only by the roar of the Skybolt Orbital Defense Laser somehow deciding said previous user with the stapler problem's brand spanking new BMW E- series with 400 monthly payments left on it was a clear and present danger to the security of the NATO alliance. ... 8a/b) (Score each half separately) You have a new assistant in the Operator desk. By the time you come in that morning, that operator has already successfully botched by sheer incompetence all the registry files and File allocation tables, including introducing several nasty viruses onto the system when he tried to use root to download porno. Granted, being a careful man, you have backups of all the systems, but with the viruses this is a class of foobar even the most paranoid BOFH couldn't have prepared for. (No matter how smart the idiot proofing is, Nature can top it.) You're staring at a nightmare of two days worth of repairs. To make matters worse, the system has to be repaired immediately, right_the_frick_now, causing you to miss your date with that super-hot someone because A) the users depend on you and you don't want to let them down B) it's your job and you're going to get in big trouble if you don't C) you can't risk somebody else with your skills and mindset would be called in to do the job, find your survellence bugs and blackmail files, and use them to hold _you_ up for ransom D) your Armies of Darkness are just about to pour forth from the Stygnian Abyss and without the system being operational they won't know which people are on and off the List (tm) so you A) clear your schedule, thrash through the damage in a series of all-nighters that somehow get the job done in a day and a half, and then sit down with the new hire to go about teaching him how to actually do his job. B) Fire the mother on the spot. Anyone that stupid doesn't deserve to be working here. C) LART the mother on the spot. Anyone that stupid doesn't deserve to be consuming your oxygen. But only after covering your terminal with plastic --no need to be messy, after all. D) Anyone remember Tom Clancy's book _Without Remorse_? Remember the scene with John Kelly/Clark, the murderer of his girlfriend, and the Decompression Chamber? Or William Gibson's _Neuromancer_, Case, and what his employers did to him after they caught him stealing from them that caused Case to end up in Tokyo for Armitage to find? This assistant only _wished_ he was so lucky... .... Score -2 for each A, -1 for each B, +1 for each C, and +2 for each D. -13 and above: You belong in Medicine. While your technical skills and intelligence would serve you well in any profession, your heart is too compassionate for the arts of Sysadmining. More to the point, your fellow Operators are probably lining up to kill you now. -4 to -12: You're either new to sysadmining, are a pre-med undergraduate sys-admin, or do sys-admin work for the MIT Media Lab, Abilene Network Operations at IU, or NCSA Urbana- Champaign, all symptomatic of having higher-than-normal levels of tolerance and/or disconnect from reality. In time you will gravitate towards one pole or the other. -3 to +7: You are confused and unsure. Your paths diverge and confound. Especially if you are really lazy in pruning your directory tree structures. +8 to +14: Your emotions beatray you. Your skills are weak, or your skills are strong but you are still retain naive hopes for the salvation of common man. Hear the Call. Embrace it. Let the hate flow through you... +15 to +18: "Well, I would have gotten +18, but I would have never bothered to repair the system in 8a because I'd never be so stpuid as to store the List (tm) on any system _anyone_ else could ever access..." Remember, the life you might be saving is your own. -Jeff [1] Bastard Operator (Sysadmin) From Hell. See http://www.iinet.net.au/~bofh/ -- Jeff Huo | jeff@nospam.starfall.com U. Michigan Med | http://www.starfall.com/~jeff New to the group? Welcome! Please read http://www.landfield.com/faqs/sf/robert-jordan-faq/