Table of Contents

Our Principals:

Our Creed:

Explorer Post 369:

Our Web Page:

Our E-Mail Addresses

ExpNews

Calendar of Events:

Softball Tournament

Sun named to White House advisory

Solaris "Best Intranet Platform"

Novell makes Java technology available

Mohican Wilderness Adventure

Warner Cable Offers InterNet Services.

Ameritech 3-Way Calling

Typical Hours SAs Work

Computers in the Movies

Quote of the Month

Up-an-Coming Post Expenses

Up-an-Coming Member Expenses

Post Finances

Calendar of Events:

June 20  ExpNews Deadline

June 29-July 5  Summer Camp

July 25  ExpNews Deadline

July 28-Aug5 1997  BSA Jamboree

August 22-24  Campout

August 22  ExpNews Deadline

September 12-14  Canoeing Campout

September 26  ExpNews Deadline

October 24  ExpNews Deadline

October 24-26  Campout

November 28  ExpNews Deadline

December 12  ExpNews Deadline

December 30  Leave for Australia

January 2-10, 1998  Australian Jamboree

Softball Tournament

Saturday, June 14 (No Rain Date) 10am to 7pm Olentangy High School 675 Lewis Center, Ohio: Post must supply own bats balls, food, drink, & Canopy.

Sun co-founder named to White House advisory Committee

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems' co-founder and current vice President for Research, has been named Co-Chairman of U.S.A. President Clinton's Advisory Committee on High Performance Computing and Communications Information Technology and the Next Generation Internet.

Solaris wins "Best Intranet Platform" title

The Solaris 2.5.1 operating environment beat out Microsoft's Windows NT, Novell's Intranet WareTM, and Apple's MacOSTM in a product comparison appearing in the February 1, 1997 issue of Network Computing magazine. The feature-by-feature comparison examined the scalability, flexibility, management, web services, net management, integration, strategic future, and cost of each operating system. Recognized as the "Best Intranet Platform," Solaris won in the areas of scalability/flexibility, management/administration and net management. The reviewers stated, "We found SunSoft's Solaris best suited to large-scale Intranet use because of its high-end scalability.

Novell makes Java technology available to all Intranet Ware users

On March 24, 1997, Novell announced that it was licensing Project Studio Java development technology from Sun, to be integrated with future versions of Intranet Ware, Novell's full-service intranet and Internet access platform.

Mohican Wilderness Adventure

Saturday & Sunday, July 12-13 Mohican Wilderness, Glenmont, Ohio $42.00 per person.

Tent Camping, 10 Mile Canoe Trip, 5 Mile Tubing Trip, Horseback Riding, Campfire Dinner & Breakfast, Hay Ride, Softball, Volleyball & Basketball, Miniature Golf, Recreational Hall Games, Obstacle Course.

Activities will start at 1pm on Saturday.

Ameritech 3-Way Calling

For those of you that the "flash" 3-Way Calling is messing up your modems and fax machines, or those that simply want their flash function restored to its original use on your cordless you can call Ameritech and have the 3-Way Calling disconected.

Warner Cable Offers InterNet Services.

I spoke on the phone with Warner Cable, and found out some very interesting things about the Cable Modem service, which I thought some of you might want to hear about. It is officially named RoadRunner, and is going to be available in Columbus in early fall. They were not able to give me pricing information, but I have been told that it is somewhere around $30-40 per month, which includes rental of the cable modem. It is 24/7 connection to the net. If you want more info, check out the page at:

The Columbus, OH office only wanted to pay their UNIX System Administrator $35,000.00 a year. How reliable do you think their network will be when the going rate for a Sr. Dude is between $100.00 & $145.00 an hour?

In my opinion, ToHellaVision is killing our youth. I should know, I am a reformed TV aholic.

Our Scout Troop has a bunch of un fit youth that are not capable of doing push-ups and/or sit-ups. Many have put off achieving their First Class Rank because of the Swimming and Physical Fitness requirements. However, this same group have an addiction to TV and Sega.

Moreover, my last two trips to Australia have shown me that other countries view The United States of America by its Television. Hence, their opinion of us is that which is broadcast by Sally Jessie what's her face, Montel, Cops, etc. What is said, many of our youth are being corrupted by the sensationalism portrayed by our news media. The news currently tends to only show what is bad in America. When is the last time you saw a congratulatory news cast? When is the last time you saw a New Eagle Scout on the news?

There is a undesirable direction in our country to migrate our phone service, cable-tv, InterNet, and data processing onto one wire. On the top this looks good.

Poor People have always said that Time=Money. The truth is Data=Money. The data on how to make money, on how to get out of debt, on company takeovers,... Data=Money! Your personal data is worth money to someone. If you don't believe this, then why do they sell mailing lists.

By centralizing data communications you are unknowingly empowering one organization with the ability to make detailed demographics on your life-style. This type of information is currently being used by our Government to track criminals. By watching the utilization of ones credit cards it is easy to see any patterns and/or frequency of patronage towards a particular establishment. Therefore, the law enforcement agencies know that Scar Face goes to Denies Restaurant every Tuesday Evening, and can meet him there at the appropriate time to apprehend him.

Most of us would agree that this is a good and ethical usage of this information. Now, due to privacy of information laws within the credit business only companies like TRW, GE, GM, Dun&Bradstreet can accumulate this information. "yea right" Give this ability to a corporation that is known for its endeavor to sell such demographics one can see the onslot of the misuse of this data.

Though I have nothing against this technology, I am against granting any one company with this much power. Therefore, I truly believe this to be a bad thing...

Typical Hours SAs Work

Grant Lowe wrote: What are the typical hours people put in? 50? 60? 40? It seems to me that without working tons of overtime, how can you meet the needs of all possible users. Any thoughts?

It depends on how good you are and how good your company is.

A well known financial planner paid $10,000.00 for the advice: "If you can't do it in 40 hours a week, then you are doing it wrong!"

The last company I worked for had over 1,000+ Sun Stations. Over 200 Servers... [Sun, Dec, IBM, HP...] [Ok, they had over 15,000PCs but we didn't touch them:-] We had 1.5 UNIX Help Desk, 3 UNIX SA Interns, 3 Lead SAs, 12 SAs, and one Sr. SA "me".

I kept the hours to an average of 37.5. I don't believe in overtime, unless you are paid for it. I gave comptime. You might work 60 this week but only 20 next. The 19 SAs being higher on the totem pole than the 1,000+ programers set the schedule.

The SAs & Servers & Workstations where divided between internal departments. Therefore, if on SA was better than another s/he had less work to do. If the workload grew they could ask the others for help... I set up a self managed team of UNIX System Administrators... it was great:-)

The SAs and Lead SAs where in the on-call rotation. Therefore, once every 10 weeks you had to carry the 24x7 emergency on-call pager. Ok, you got an extra $300.00 that week in your pay. Any employee calling the 24 hour help desk that wanted the SA called knew that we where going to call their VP. Therefore, if we where to wake a VP it must be an emergency...

Vince Kluth San Diego CA, USA: Regarding meeting user needs: don't deal with them until after their second or third phone call. I'm serious. Many common problems that hit a sys. admin are in the `ignorant user' category, dealing with generic questions like "Why is my system slow?" (Answer: your software is slow; you're swapping like mad because you've 50 different apps running, etc.); or the `lazy-bones-want-a-quickie-fix' category, dealing with trivial issues.

If people want higher priority on their list, ask them to complain to management to elevate it above `the-bonfire-of-the-day'.

Vince, this gives System Administrators a bad name:-(

Interns are cheep. We paid $12.50 an hour for our Interns from OSU. The cost to us was $15.62 [taxes and stuff]... This is the best of both worlds. It is a win-win!!! The Interns get "real" System Administration training, not that college stuff... We get cheep labor. You get to dump things that are a waste of time for the SAs off on the interns... The Interns Love it, The SAs Love it, The employees love it...

I left, for my task was done:-)

Computers in the Movies

off the net

• Word processors never display a cursor.
• You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
• All monitors display 2 inch high letters.
• High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.
• Those that don't will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
• All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
• Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.
• All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward.
• People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
• A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
• Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.
• Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.
• When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
• If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file.
• If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.
• No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into.All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
• The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labeled.
• Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.
• Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.
• Whenever a character looks at a monitor, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.
• Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.
• Programs are fiendishly perfect and never have bugs that slow down users.

Quote of the Month

Never give up on wht you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts!

Up-an-Coming Post Expenses

Up-an-Coming Member Expenses

Post Finances