Barnson.org

A geek, yes. There can be no question. Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, the list goes on. Escapist asction shows with a twist of impossibility, either sci-fi or fantasy. I love them. I do. many do.. but I am a fan.

I’m not a costume wearing fanatic (although I was paid to wear the costume as an actor), its not about that. Its not necessarily the action, which is cool.. but can be found anywhere. Why be a fan, why care about fictional characters who are as unlikely as vampires and androids – and why do I want all of these things, all now defunct, all now finished, to continue?

It is a conversation Rowan and I have had.. he is also a person who enjoys all these things… but not a fan. To him, these are fictional people, to be let go easily, and to allow to leave when it is time. Not so for me. I want these things to continue, and I think I know why.

The realm of fantasy, in order to suspend disbelief, requires one to leave “here”, and go to another place. You need sunnydale for Buffy… you need the future for Trek. I am someone who is not so happy with the here and now today. And today, I pulled my Star Trek nemesis DVD out of the dust it was gathering to finally watch, of all things, the interviews with the cast, to hear them say how close they feel. I went on to watch some more of it, just because, “being transported” to this familiar place felt safe, and for a little while I could go on a journey, and feel like I had people there I knew.

People like “Friends” not for the jokes, but for the relationships. Like Cheers, or MASH, people like to leave there lives, and watch the dramas of others. For me, its easy to let that go. When Friends ended.. new york was still there. For my shows, when they end.. the entire universe of the shows come to an end.

I invest in the fantastical because a lot of times in my life, it gave me a place to go to where the things that sucked for me were very far away.. and I suspect many of us feel the same way. So, I wait for the Star Wars TV show, the Spike movie, the Serenity DVD, and for Trek to somehow find its way out of the toilet. Why? Because these are universes I like to go to. ports of call that are closed to me, and on nights like tonight, I could use 42 minutes of time focusing on something else than the real world.

Clearly, we were ahead of our time back in 1995. In the tradition of Jewish hip-hop artists MC Heeb and Kid Tu’Fonqué (and Weed, our goyishe homeboy), meet Matisyahu, the Chassidic reggae rapper.

“As we say in the wetlands, ‘Ribbit-ribbit-kneedeep-ribbit,’ which means ‘May success and a smile always be yours … even when you’re knee-deep in the sticky muck of life.’

So tonight I heard a 45-minute interview with Jason Mraz, who has become famous for his tune on the radio, “Mr. A to Z”.

I was pretty impressed with the song when I heard it, but tonight when I heard more of his stuff, I was floored. That man can sing. And he can play a mean guitar. He’s got this really unique vibe going on, a combination of pop/funk/blues/rap that’s distinctive and really soars when he sings it.

The only thing I really noticed different in the live interview vs. his albums is that his voice is much “saltier”. It’s got a little bit of gravel to it, but it sounds much more like that’s a result of an exhausting touring schedule than his usual timbre.

Anyway, I’ve gotta buy the album now. Maybe for Christmas this year, or something. The surprising thing is, I’ve heard a lot of these “unplugged”-style interviews on Mix, and he’s one of the very few who, IMHO, sounds even better “live” than he does on the heavily-engineered album releases.

It’s refreshing to see a new pop artist who isn’t selected for his pretty face and muscled physique, but instead for his talent. Talent that puts mine to shame.

Buy Mr. A to Z at Amazon.

Ever wondered why there were five kids with the same name in your junior-high class? Ever wondered if you could name your baby by weighing the popularity per million babies of a given name in order to choose one that was unpopular that year?

Well, here ya go:

The Baby Name Wizard. This thing will plot the popularity of a given name over time for you. Very cool.

Of course, I had to type in “Matthew” right off the bat. It was even more interesting, realizing that the variants: “Matt”, “Mat”, “Mathias”, and “Matteo” have variously ranked in the top 1000 at certain times. “Mat” died out in the late 1800’s, and while “Mathias” did, too, it began a resurgence in the 1990s.

What fun!

Before I issue my observations, I would like readers to know that I consider myself an expert in going to the bathroom. Since birth, I’ve had to purge excess waste from my body an estimated 35,328 times. Plus, the older I get, the more I get fixated on this process and the timing of this process. You see a lot of guys in their 30s and 40s talking about the phenomenon associated with having to get up a couple times a night. It’s a main topic of conversation with old people.

Which brings me to my observations, which could also be considered phenomenon. Since the turn of the century, I’ve noticed the emergence of two strange phenomenon with men’s urinals in public bathrooms. These two phenomenon are hereby expertly classified as “advertising

So from my mailbag today, I present to you three bizarre movie previews and one simply weird video you might be interested in (thanks to Brian and Jena for the links):

Warning: the trailers are movies, so they are kind of large for people on dialup.

First we have the Romantic Comedy “Shining”, looks like a great file to take the wife/girlfriend to. (not at the same time though)

http://waxy.org/random/view.php?type=video&filename=shining_redux.mov

Then the Zombie Horror file “West Side Story”

http://www.ps260.com/Trailer/westsidestorytrailer_small.mov

An to top it off. A real scary movie… “Titanic”

http://www.ps260.com/elfollador/Scary%20Titanic.mov

Happy Halloween (not a movie trailer, but kind of funny):

http://www.zippyvideos.com/3829129851407416/whatwouldyoudo/

I’ve participated in a yearly salary survey sponsored by Usenix, a UNIX-advocacy group every year since it first came out. Usenix runs another group called SAGE, which is dedicated to covering issues related to systems administration.

I’m a sysadmin for a career, so I have a vested interest in participating. Although I’m not a member of SAGE (too expensive!), I like doing the survey and getting the results. This year, they had over 3000 people participate, which is large enough to be statistically significant in various parts of the US.

Here are the results that most interested me from the 2004-2005 salary survey. I’ve mixed in my comments with their statistics, so don’t take it as gospel.

• 96.2% of respondents were male. The rest were female. This jibes with my long-time observation of the industry: about 1 in 20 sysadmins are women.
• 11% of sysadmins had been unemployed at some point during the year. It’s an unfortunate fact: sysadmins get the hatchet early. They are an expense which companies think they can do without, until they can’t.
• The average increase in pay for 2004-2005 vs 2003-2004 was over 6%. This beats inflation!
• National sysadmin average pay: $68,195 for males, $64,016 for females. This average number, of course, does not reflect experience in the industry. Those with more experience may make significantly more, those with less make much less.
• Systems administration is still a young person’s game. Most respondents were in the 25-34 category. Only 15% of respondents were over 40. This, also, jibes with my observations: there are very few sysadmins over 40. On the plus side, those who are and have been playing a while tend to be very good.
• 2/3 of respondents have some kind of informal supervisory duties (like “team lead”), while about a quarter have official management duties.
• SAGE classifies admins as level 1 through 4. Very few respondents called themselves a level “1” (entry-level). IMHO, this means one of the following:
  1. Sysadmins overstate their work experience and/or responsibilities.
  2. Few entry-level admins participate in salary surveys.
  3. There are fewer sysadmins entering the field.
• The mean experience of admins in the survey: 7.91 years.
• What’s weird is, the bell-curve distribution of “amount of time in the field” has stayed at five years since the inception of the survey. You’d expect that to go up! Since it doesn’t, it strongly suggests that there are as many people getting out of the field as getting into it at any given time. Interestingly,the statistic for women is longer than men, suggesting that system administration jobs may represent a “glass ceiling” position for females.
• 53% of sysadmins have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
• Younger admins tend to have college degrees in the field, while older admins don’t. This jibes with my experience: when I was in college, there was no such thing as a degree in systems administration.
• Sysadmins spend about 25% of their time keeping up-to-date on their education and technology developments. This is a HUGE training expense, but IMHO absolutely essential for the good admin. If you are a sysadmin, you live and die by how well you keep up on new technology in your field.
• Sysadmins generally don’t travel much.
• Full-time admins average 45-hour work weeks, with 10% reporting longer than 60-hour work weeks.
• Over a third of admins telecommute at least one day a week.
• Median time at any given job: 3 years.
• Most admins get 15 days off a year.
• The heart of the survey: the salaries!
  • Newbie: $32K
  • 1-2 years: $44K
  • 3-4 years: $48K
  • 5-6 years: $57K
  • 7-8 years: $72K
  • 9-10 years: $78K
  • 11-15 years: $87K
  • 16-19 years: $93K
  • 20+ years: $93K
• Unsurprisingly, major metropolitan areas and technology hubs pay much more than positions out in the boonies. It’s kind of a “duh!” moment, but a position in a large city might pay $94K, while the same position in the country might pay $40K.
• Washington, D.C., New York City, and Silicon Valley positions pay the best out of the major cities in the US. My little town of Salt Lake City wasn’t even listed 🙂
• The sysadmin jobs, in order of pay by best to worst, are:
  1. Management
  2. Security
  3. Tech lead
  4. Database
  5. General
  6. Project Management
  7. Server Management
  8. Networking
  9. Help Desk
  10. Desktop Support
• Sysadmins at big companies get paid much more than sysadmins for small companies. Large companies also employ more admins per user than small ones. It’s kind of a “duh”, but good to know!
• The worst-paying industry with statistically-valid results? Education. Bottom of the barrel, pay-wise. You get more money being a government contractor.
• The top things syadmins like about their jobs:
  1. Casual dress
  2. Challenge
  3. Co-workers
  4. Learning on the job
  5. Flexibility, freedom
  6. Job security (in the sense of everyone needs sysadmins, not the “I’ll have a job with this company tomorrow”, I think!)
  7. Flexible hours
  8. Salary/compensation
  9. Fast internet, nifty high-tech gadgets, cool computers, etc.
  10. Fun
• The top things sysadmins hate about their jobs?
  1. Beaurocracy, paperwork
  2. Poor compensation
  3. Incompetent management
  4. Understaffing
  5. Politics
  6. Poor leadership and communication
  7. Infrequent salary increases
  8. Ceiling on advancement, or low advancement speed
  9. Budget, funding
  10. Salary, benefit issues
  11. Boredom
  12. Conflicting demands
  13. Poor respect or low value placed on job; little visibility
• IT and software development companies far and away lead the pack on creating unemployment in the industry.

Well, I hope that was interesting for you! It was interesting reading for me, for sure. I’m pretty certain this won’t appeal to the average barnson.org reader, but I bet there will be plenty of folks looking for salary info on Google that will find this page helpful 🙂

— Matt B.

So you have a neighbor who is neglecting their dogs: leaving them to sit outside in all kinds of conditions, never allowing them in the house, not feeding or watering them enough. Leaving them to whine outside the house all night long, and then when the pet is noisy enough, they come out to shout at them to “shut up!”.

Thoughts that have crossed my mind are:

• To call animal control and report the abuse
• To wait until they get out of their yard (again) and then get animal control to come get them
• To secretly feed the animals

I dunno, though. I really, really am not interested in having a dog as a pet. I mean, I like dogs, but don’t want to own one. Our neighbor used to secretly feed the dogs before she moved, but now that she’s not there anymore, they do seem to be getting pretty skinny. And it’s winter, with no dog house. Argh. Perhaps we should do nothing, but I hate to see any animal mistreated.

What would you do?

OK, I realize this may upset the sensibilities of people who really like George Bush, but the ragdoll setup and “wow, that looks cool!”-ness of this just kicks:

Left-Wing Political Therapy.

I must have wasted a half hour dragging the doll around earlier. Great fun!