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Friday, March 14th, 2008
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12:11 pm - Just an FYI...
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I've let this LJ account lapse out of paid status. This means that the embedded style whereby my most recent few entries appear in the center of the main page of my shakal.org website no longer functions.
This is part of my Clever Plan to get my personal web presence updated and shoved over to a new site which will be running WordPress with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hugwill's OpenID plugin, and transition shakal.org into more of a family-tree and historical interest sort of website for my extended family, rather than an exclusively personal one. I've been working on this project/effort for a while.
It would have been more convenient for me if my LJ paid status lasted another couple days, to let me have Saturday to finish a couple things on my new personal site, but hey, if things look broken on a Friday? Why is anyone noticing? Go skip class or work and play in the big blue room for a while! Shoo! Go be outside!
Me, I'm in the office, being my usual workaholic self, but I'm looking forward to going home a little early. Yay for the big blue room!
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| Thursday, March 13th, 2008
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11:14 am - upcoming travel
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I'll be attending the EDUCAUSE Western Regional conference in San Francisco March 31 - April 2. I should be arriving in time for lunch on Monday, and am leaving early afternoon on Wednesday.
I'm considering organizing a Birds of a Feather session for Project Managers doing Google Apps for Education rollouts... I've never been to an EDUCAUSE conference before, so I'm not sure how those are done, but it can't be all that different from LISA, right?
My co-workers Brendan Bellina and Will Norris are each giving presentations... rowan_redbeard, did you say you were giving one, too?
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| Thursday, February 7th, 2008
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7:17 am - Two very cool conferences this weekend in Los Angeles
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SCaLE 6x, the Southern California Linux Expo, is this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Friday there's a one-day miniconference on Women in Open Source, and another on Open Source in Education, and yet another on Open Source in Health Care.
SCaLE 6x also just added two LOPSA training classes for Friday! Open-Source Email Systems: One Approach to Spam Fighting, and Introduction to Virtualization on Linux. I adore LOPSA.
My posts about last year's SCaLE are here and here and here.
I'll be helping out with the Women's miniconf on Friday, and I'll be working the registration desk on Saturday. Come on by and say hello!
If I weren't attending and helping out with the SCaLE conference, I'd be attending the 24/7 DIY Media Summit that is happening this weekend. There are a bunch of different academic panel and workshop tracks, but there are also screenings open to the public.
Political commentary, activist media, independent arts, machinima, US media vidding, video blogging, anime music videos... and some of the most fabulous people presenting, curating, and discussing and receptioning about emerging patterns as well as the history of these new media... what's not to love?
http://www.video24-7.org/ has complete info.
I'll probably also wind up prowling around ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) diyvideo later, which has information on some of the webcasts associated with that conference.
And if I ever get more free time (ahahaha, shut up) this note is to remind myself to prowl around in the videos on In Media Res.
I wish I could be in two places at once.
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| Friday, January 11th, 2008
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10:49 pm - Where has Adele been? At work!
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| Thursday, November 8th, 2007
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9:12 am - Recommended reading for IT SA PM helpers
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I'm brainstorming this morning to put together a recommended reading collection for a potential student helper with an engineering background who may start working with me on information technology project management and system administration documentation tasks.
(Oh, and I joined twitter.com last night -- username naturedance.)
( This got a bit long... )
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| Monday, October 8th, 2007
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1:33 pm - Women's Technology UnConference in NorCal
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I won't be attending this one, but I did want to spread the word: http://shesgeeky.org/
At the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. It starts at noon on Monday, October 22, and goes 'til 6pm on Tuesday October 23. Sounds quite nifty!
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| Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
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8:27 am - Clickable activism: Burma/Myanmar.
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8:09 am - Want to work university IT in sunny southern California?
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Various groups in our department at USC are hiring, everything from a senior Unix sysadmin, a midlevel Windows/Mac sysadmin, a hardware specialist, three programmer/developers, and three NOC folks of varying experience levels and shift schedule.
http://www.usc.edu/bus-affairs/ers/
Search for Information Technology Services, and if you find something you're interested in, email me your resume so I can get it under the right noses, OK?
We have a grand new building, we're all moved in, we've got exciting projects going on, friendly geeky folks to work with, an environment which is encouraging work/life/study balance, and we have cold breakfast and hot lunch plus salad bar food service available on our floor (there are disturbingly-high-powered energy drinks in the vending machines if you're into that sort of thing, too). If you want to walk to lunch there are tasty restaurants in at least three directions from the office. We've also got free coffee, hot chocolate and tea stations scattered around the office. Getting to and from work is very doable... we're across the street from the off-campus parking center, and if you take mass-transit bus, light- or heavy-rail to LA's Union Station, there's a USC shuttlebus that goes between there and campus, and then you can either take the parking center shuttle or walk the short distance from campus to our building.
If you know anyone else you think might be interested, please pass the info along... thanks!
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| Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
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2:05 pm - Professional resources for project managers
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1:56 pm - Professional resources for webmasters
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1:49 pm - Professional resources for system administrators
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The League of Professional System Administrators... I am currently a member. This is all-OS-inclusive.
http://www.lopsa.org/
The System Administrators Guild (a special interest group within USENIX)... I suspect I need to renew my membership. This is all-OS-inclusive.
http://www.sage.org/
"LinuxChix is a community for women who like Linux and Free Software, and for women and men who want to support women in computing. The membership ranges from novices to experienced users, and includes professional and amateur programmers, system administrators and technical writers." http://www.linuxchix.org/
The Systers mailing list is rather more... venerable, and it's all-OS-inclusive. I joined as a member of the mailing list back in February... I only lurk, reading and soaking up information and conversation like a little sea-sponge. :-)
http://anitaborg.org/initiatives/systers/
There are local computing user groups (LUGs) in the LA area, they're an excellent place to network among local sysadmins, especially Unix ones; I don't know what resources each group has to offer, but I collected links to many of the local Unix/Linux ones in a blogpost after I helped out at the SCALE 5X conference back in February: http://shakal.livejournal.com/91747.html
There are local Mac groups which might be handy for OSX sysadmins, too:
http://www.lamg.org/
http://appleusergroups.com/locator/find/locate.cgi?zipcode=90089&Submit=Search
I'm still rather clueless about Windows-specific sysadmin professional resources. I asked a friend of mine to send me some links a couple years ago, and they're buried in my to-do email box, I suspect. When I get a moment, I'll find them and post them here, too.
In addition to jobs lists and boards at those organizations, aside from http://www.monster.com/ two other big techie jobs sites seem to be http://www.dice.com/ and http://www.techcareers.com/
These books are must-haves (and must-reads):
Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli
The Practice of System and Network Administration (2nd Edition) by Tom Limoncelli, Christina Hogan, and Strata Chalup
For Unix, "the purple book" aka UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition) by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, and Trent Hein
For Linux, "the pink book" aka Linux Administration Handbook (2nd Edition) by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent Hein
plus whatever O'Reilly, Peachpit, and No Starch Press books are appropriate to your immediate job and/or sanity needs.
Do you know of more good ones? Please enlighten me!
current mood:  busy
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1:43 pm - Professional resources for IT tech writers and documentation specialists
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1:39 pm - Professional resources for those of us working in academic IT
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| Monday, August 6th, 2007
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5:21 pm - My project manager metamorphosis continues...
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I wasn't able to figure out a way to attend LOPSA's awesome Sysadmin Days training today and tomorrow on the east coast (too much else going on!), but I will be attending the Southern California Coalition Technology Conference August 24th and 25th.
It's two days of project management meets quality assurance, apparently, and sponsored by three of the local PMI chapters, along with other local IT and QA professional organizations.
In other news, I'm really looking forward to the new second edition of yesthattom's (and Strata's and Christine's!) sysadmin book. I've ordered it, and now can't wait for it to reach my grabby hands! *obsessively refreshes shipping tracking site*
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| Friday, August 3rd, 2007
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12:48 pm - Know any SoCal IT tech writers looking for a job?
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I work at USC's ITS department these days, and we're looking for a full-time tech writer. If you know anyone who's interested, could you please have them either comment here or drop me an email (adele at shakal dot org) with their resume, in addition to filling in the online app?
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| Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
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8:27 am - A fleeting thought on project management
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If a project was never clearly defined at the start, it is nearly impossible to define its completion conditions, nor conclusively state (or convincingly defend the statement) that it is actually done.
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| Sunday, April 8th, 2007
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7:55 am - Solvang wine review: Royal Oaks Niagara and Royal Rose
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Niagara: Meh, for me this one's OK. Not bad, not great, not really memorable.
Royal Rose: Oh, wow. I really, really like this one. Supposedly it's made with "white grapes, cranberry juice, orange flavors and cloves" and the spices and sweetness blending together the way they do makes me very happy.
http://www.royaloakswinery.com/
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| Sunday, March 25th, 2007
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5:32 pm - Solvang wine review: Royal Oaks Noir Blanc
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| Monday, March 19th, 2007
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12:33 pm - Aebleskiver for all!
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Note to self: If you have the opportunity to attend the Taste of Solvang weekend again, Just Do It.
Apparently this is a once-a-year thing that happens in March, and a friend and I stumbled right into it after deciding about a week ago that we needed to get out of LA this past weekend. We spent the weekend wandering around Solvang (which apparently means "sunny field" in Danish, and is about 140 miles west and north of Burbank), shopping, stuffing ourselves silly on wonderful food, and greatly enjoying the Saturday evening wine tasting room walking tour. All of the wine-tasting rooms on the tour were staggering distance from all of the local hotels, so no one had be a designated driver in any of the groups who wandered and mingled on the sidewalks and in the 14 different tasting rooms that stayed open late for us.
My friend and I didn't book ourselves for all of the organized Taste Of Solvang weekend activities, choosing instead the wander-and-explore approach to everything but the wine tasting. Though in retrospect the Friday dessert reception sounds like it would have been nice, there was absolutely no way we were making it out of LA in time for that, thanks to our crazy!busy! work schedules.
We stayed at the Solvang Inn and Cottages, which like many of the local hotels is walking distance from pretty much everything in town.
( I am not a wine expert, I just know what I like. )
In conclusion, Solvang is kitschy and touristy and fabulous in that dorky-yet-pretentious way that some places are... it's a great place to walk one's feet off poking around into interesting shops, and has the most wine-tasting rooms in such a small area I've ever seen. Also, the drive up the 101 to get there is a fun drive, and the ocean beaches are lovely.
I was away from the internet for a whole weekend, which was strange and a much-needed decompression from work stuff lately.
current mood:  cheerful
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| Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
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11:51 pm - So this is what jazz fusion from Peru sounds like...
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...and I'm very impressed. Tonight I saw Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet perform at the REDCAT theater in LA. I don't know diddly nor squat about jazz, and everything I know about Peru I learned from nature documentaries on public television and a few local new age Andean and/or Incan musical groups that perform in Montrose and Burbank at the arts festivals, so this was a very welcome eye- and ear-opener. :-)
http://www.gabrielalegria.com/ has all sorts of niftiness, including information about two summer tours in July and August where, rather than the musicians touring the US to come to you, you go to Peru to tour with the musicians, seeing all sorts of local stuff and incredible sights, good food and wonderful music, putting the band's own music in broader and more in-depth context. It looks like fabulous fun and if I had a spare ten days off work and a couple thousand dollars, it sounds like it would be an amazing time.
I bought two CDs at the show, but you can preview/listen (and download/buy for $1) songs here. The entire sextet looked like they were having a great time, and I particularly enjoyed the saxophist... *consults program* ...Laurandrea Leguia and the astonishing percussionist Freddy "Huevito" Lobaton. The whole group was just delightful.
Because I don't know how long they'll leave these blurbs up, I'm quoting here ( a description from the REDCAT website and a review from LA Weekly: )
The REDCAT theater is actually fairly small, by the way. Great venue. I'd thought it would be big, since the Disney concert hall looks huge from the outside, but it's a little side-stage sort of thing and it has a very different feel from the main areas. Parking was easy once I figured out the one-way streets around the concert hall; for $8 I could park in the security-patrolled, well-lit structure right underneath the hall from the little stub of 2nd street accessible from Grand. I'd be happy to attend other performances at the venue, that's for sure.
But now I'm tired, and tomorrow morning will come too early...
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| Friday, March 2nd, 2007
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11:12 am - Yay for my new cube-office!
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USC has put up the the official blurb about our office move. I'm in my new cube already! *twirls around gleefully in new comfy chair*
Now I'm trying to decide if I want to put little fake terrarium-style displays in between the glass panes along the top of my cube walls. There's about two and a half inches of space between the panes, and I have two 38" panels shared with the cubes on either side of me, and two 20" panels that are all mine along the aisle. The panels are all about 11" tall inside.
Poll #938696 cube-top-panel terrariums
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWant to help me decide what to put in my terrarium-windows?
current mood: busy
current music: the sound of other folks moving in
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| Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
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12:34 pm - Greening Los Angeles
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| Saturday, February 17th, 2007
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8:56 am - Flashback: Oci preparing for the Oscars, 1999
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I'm remembering the good times, bear with me for the next few days...
Oci had to stay with my parents for a while during 1998-99... and while she was there, they introduced her to the idea of dressing up to watch the Oscars. All fabulous glamourpusses must be properly coifed for the red carpet, after all, and Oci was absolutely glam when she wasn't busy being a total goofball.
Spending the day at the salon
Ready for the red carpet
(And before you ask, yes, that's my beloved cat being blown dry after a bath. Indiana was a cold place for a California cat, and she apparently was willing to put up with the noise because she loved the warm air. And this was pretty much another confirmation that my eccentricities are most likely genetic. *grin* Love you, Mom and Dad...)
Oci the fabulous glamourpuss, ready for her closeup...
current mood: calm
current music: Narada Decade, Memory in the Snow
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| Friday, February 16th, 2007
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7:30 pm - She was a very good kitty.
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| Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
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9:14 am - Posting In Opposition
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determined
2 (18.2%)
drained
