UNIX, OSX, Linux, Solaris and iPhone Café

Guess what? I actually met someone who reads this blog. Shout out to Mr. H. and thanks for taking the time to read my rantings.
Also thank you for not laughing in my face at my Penguin Costume ;)

Mr. H. had a suggestion for an interview question which I will post here and on the interview questions list.

Q: Take a old-style coax Ethernet cable with a bunch of workstations connected. If I connect an Ohmmeter between the center wire and the
shield what should the correct reading be?
A: 25 Ohm. Hint: We do terminate on both ends right?

I read this article (login reqd.) on the NYT site today and I think they finally got it. I mean if you see something related to Rock in NYT you know it has come down for a while now.

I’ve been listening to crap on the radio for the past 2-3 years and I have been saying the same thing. There is no rock band today that is doing anything interesting. Nickelback (to pick an easy one) is on the fucking radio all the time and they fucking suck! ALl the other crap sounds the same and they all suck.

Is Rock Dead? No, of course not. It is just taking it’s time and waiting for the day when they will lash out and kick us in the balls. Just like Nirvana did, just like the Sex Pistols did and just like the Doors.

In the meantime, I’ll be listening to Led Zep.

One more thing: The article has a picture of this band called: “Hot Chelle Rae”. I went to YouTube and listened to one of their songs and let me tell you it was the worst piece of shit I have even heard! I would rather listen to RickRoll for the rest of my life than listen to their shit again.

Hot Chelle Rae, you suck. Please do us a favor and jump off a bridge or something. You fucking suck! You suuuuuuuuuck!

in a previous job (2008) I worked for a major online retail outfit. These guys had it going on. Very efficient procedures and although some people were dildos it was a rock star job.
On June, I worked for an outfit from NYC who are also online retailers. Well, I have never seen such mis-management in my entire life. My team were ok, and my manager was very cool, but the whole place sucked moose dick.

To top it off, some upper manager decided to start screaming at my team one day, so I had to read him the riot act. I mean, I dont take anybody screaming at me. Period!

I am so fucking happy to be out of there.

The whole thing was so painful that I did not even write a goodbye email. It felt like going to the gallows every day. The horror, the horror!

Well, things have been very crazy around here. I got a job with a major publisher, back in June, but it turned out to be a major horror. So, on December 5th. I went on my own. Wish me luck.

Unbelievable! Is WordPress so bad?

To the hackers: Why bother with my little site? Seriously!!!

I needed to put together some forms for my web page, and I came across this wonderful perl plugin.

However, after spending close to two days scratching my head (on how to get a complete form up and running under Apache), I had almost given up. Then, I sent a simple email to the HTML::FormFu list and I got an eye opening hint from Carl Franks (the developer). Suddenly, the whole thing came together.

Thank you Carl and thank you to all from the list!

So, here it is: All five files needed to have an example FormFu running under Apache.

First, here is each file (for viewing) only.

simple_index.shtml

cgi-bin/simple.cgi

cgi-bin/simple_get.cgi

templates/simple.shtml

forms/simple.yml

And here is the entire project in zip format:

simple.tgz

Enjoy!

I’ve been busy with work (crazy actually) but here is an item that I came across from a fellow New Yorker’s blog.

scoutingny sailing item

I just ordered the book!

Q. User calls you and says that his (Linux) computer takes forever
    to log him in (from the graphical login screen). What's going on?
A. Easy, he's probably running something that takes up a lot of memory and the login
    screen resources (plus any other resources that were used by the user, like Firefox), need to be paged back in.

Q. Why do you want to work for Google?
A. I don't. I thought this was eBay.

Q. How do you see all the linux boot details?
A. remove "rhgb" from the grub menu: "/boot/grub/grub.conf"

Q. How do you disable SELinux?
A. Edit "/etc/selinux/config" and set: "SELINUX=permissive" or "SELINUX=disabled". Then reboot.

Q. How do you disable iptables (security crap)?
A.
    To see the services: "chkconfig --list | grep tables".
    To stop the services do:
        "chkconfig --level 0123456 ip6tables off"
        "chkconfig --level 0123456 iptables off"
        "service ipv6tables stop"
        "service iptables stop"
    You're done! If you delete SeLinux you probably want to delete "iptables" as well.

Q. Why are you leaving your present job?
A. I want more money. What do you think?

Q. You have a 12x12 foot room. How many lightbulbs does it hold?
A. How about I start by sticking light bulbs up your ass. When I can't fit anymore, then I multiply by 2!
    Any stupid shit question like that, is used as a wildcard to turn down anyone
    they don't like. It is pure bullshit.

Remember: People won't hire you for any number of reasons and use BS questions like that
as an excuse.

Reasons for not being hired (in no particular order).

* You are too old.
* You are too young.
* you are too fat.
* You are too skinny.
* You didn't smile enough.
* You smile too much.
* You are the wrong color.
* You are the wrong sex.
* You won't have sex (applies to entertainment industry).
* You remind the interviewer of the guy who fucked his girlfriend in high school.
* You remind the interviewer of the guy who used to beat him up in high school.
* You smell.
* You smell nice.
* You are way too good looking. Ok, this has never happened to me, but I know of people...
* You are waaaaay too smart. This HAS happened to me and I am not very smart.

I have interviewed many people in my professional career. These are the reasons why
I personally did not hire someone.

* The guy "shared" too much. Sorry dude, I don't really give a shit about your
    sister's drug habit. Too much info.
* The guy tried too hard to be my friend. Yo, this is an interview. I will NOT get a drink
    with you afterwards. Fuck off.
* The guy had a fact wrong and kept sticking to it even after I proved to him
    that he was wrong. Motherfucka, you gonna be a smart ass?
   Guess what?
* The guy was very smart but was an asshole about it.
    Again: Motherfucka, you gonna be a smart ass?
* The guy did not know what port Telnet was.
   Motherfucka look: If you know nothing else about computers, even
    if you don't even know what a fucking computer is, you better know that
    Telnet, is port 23. Got it?

Reasons that people say you won't be hired for, but is pure BS.

* You showed up late. This is BS. Everyone knows shit happens. Interviewers are usually cool.
* You did not wear a tie. Who does? I have never worn a tie and I always got the job.
* You showed up drunk. This is not an immediate show stopper. Depends on the dude/chick
    doing the interviewing.

More soon. Good luck to all the poor individuals looking for a job in a nasty economy, like this one.

Personally I always had 3 monitors attached to my computer. Linux supported it and so did Windows.

Matrox had some nice video cards and they had full support
for Linux and Windows. So I was always happy. Although I only had 21″ tube monitors!!!

When I switched to Mac, first thing I did was get 3, 30″ monitors to hook up my Mac Pro.
I was very happy and a bit later I even added a fourth, smaller monitor.

Lately it seems everyone is going to 3, 30″ monitor setups. These articles say it all:

Apple Insider

and check out this wild setup for 3, 30″ monitor gaming monster from Techspot.

I knew this would happen. Humans can use 3, 30″ monitors, very easily, and make a huge increase in their productivity.

WARNING: Once you have all that screen real estate you will NEVER go back!!! EVER!!!

In the interest of helping my friends get a job, I am posting all interview questions that I know.
I will also post comments and impressions from my interviews.

These will be from UNIX, OSX and Solaris but I will post any questions from anyone who sends me
an email: xaos@xm5design.com

Enjoy!

1. What is UNIX?
A. It is an operating system. In the 1970s Brian Kernighan coined the project name Unics as a play on Multics,
(Multiplexing Information and Computer Services).
Unics could eventually support multiple simultaneous users, and it was renamed Unix. Wiki for UNIX

2. Name the 7 layers of the OSS model. Anyone asking this is setting you up to fail. You probably lost the job already. Anyway, here goes:
A.
    Application (Layer 7)
    Presentation (Layer 6)
    Session (Layer 5)
    Transport (Layer 4)
    Network (Layer 3)
    Data Link (Layer 2)
    Physical (Layer 1)

3. Why do you think you deserve this job?
A. I was just delivering a pizza to someone called: asshole. Is that you? These questions are such BS....

4. We need someone to take it to the next level. Are you ready for the challenge?
A. Fuck off dickwad. Next level? Really? Who even says shit like that... What BS....

5. Name 5 ways of deleting a file called: "-r". It exists in directory /tmp/junk. You are in /tmp/junk now.
A.
    1. rm -- -r
    2. rm `pwd`/-r
    3. rm ./-r
    4. cd /tmp; rm -ir junk
    5. unlink -r

more soon...

6. What is your greatest weakness
A. Coming to this stupid fucking place and getting interviewed by an asswipe like you.

7. What is your greatest strength?
A. Telling you to go fuck yourself.

8. Why are you leaving your job?
A. So I can go on interviews and have assholes ask me stupid questions. Duh!

9. What is a zombie process?
A. A process that can't be killed.

10. How do you create a zombie?
 A.
    A process in which the parent process did not wait for it to properly terminate.
    A process that is blocked for I/O. If you start I/O on a bad disk it could hang forever.

11. List all free inodes on the file systems.
 A. df -ik 

12. How would you go about establishing your credibility quickly with the team?
 A. I whip out my 12" ... nevermind...