chris ([info]_fool) wrote,
@ 2008-03-25 19:06:00
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grab bags R us
i've been neglecting you, my pretties, and for that i apologize. i especially apologize to all of you who haven't stopped updating, and promise i've read everything on the old friends list, even if i haven't always had time to reply. i've been a busy little beaver, out having fun and maybe not saving the world, but i'm sure about the having fun part. i took tonight off from my regularly scheduled fun because, quite frankly, i was on the verge of overdoing it, and while i'm all about over the top and overeating, overdoing is a bit...overdone.

so what i have arrayed below is some of the tastier morsels of the while since you read me last. enjoy, or don't--reader's choice!

first off, i think i forgot to mention that i saw the mountain goats, sound-unheard, a few weeks ago. they were really great live; highly recommended show-experience, even if you're not into them (i literally had no idea even what genre they were).

second off, i am free! i escaped nike with no more than minor cuts and bruises, and mostly, i think, i left a decent taste in their mouth. i was no overachiever in my final days, but neither did i entirely phone it in. i turned in my badge, cleaned off my computer and cleaned out my desk, and rode out of there forever. i think i'll keep at least one of the friends i made working there, and i'm just glad i left before i started to resent the people in addition to the work and the bureaucracy that made it craptastic.

third off, i found myself on a heated toilet seat that sports a bidet on monday morning. i've never experienced a heated toilet seat that wasn't warmed merely by the previous user's backside, nor have i ever actually seen a bidet (except, oddly, in an apartment building in boston wherein the units didn't have their own bathrooms...a communal bidet?). my new building is kind of fancy. i like my new job, and i had no trouble agreeing to try not to work more than 40 hours per week when the HR lady requested it of me. i think i can get along pretty well with these kids, and their technical problems don't seem too heinous.

fourth off, we are settling into the new homeplace. [info]kdaisy721 and i have yet to peeve eachother beyond the typical peeving we did even when not living together. we're almost a month in. we still love the place. if you're in portland, me love you long time and wanna show you the place on sunday, 6 april. we'll make sushi. save the date, expect full-blown invite soonly.

on sunday, with help from [info]dark_knightly, i attached bunny ears to my bike helmet and led a group of similarly (or better!) attired folks across town to a big bunny potluck. i drank some beer, made some friends, went to a hot tub and watched "who framed roger rabbit" while drinking champagne before i returned home, many moons later. it was suggested that i really tie one on so that i might set the bar low on my first day of work. my new friends are quality =)

fifth off, i'm looking for an old used squeezebox. not the accordion or the who song. the network music player. have one laying around i could buy off you? ebay is strangely lacking. i've mailed a few craigslist people in various cities, but i can't imagine that working out well "yeah. just mail it to me. it's light. i'm good for the money!"

sixthly, i made probably the most complex, and maybe most tasty meal of my cooking career, weekend before last. mole chicken. two chickens, actually. we cooked for 5 hours straight. it was epic, tasty, and made approximate a metric fuckton of food. i finally finished it tonight. i will be cooking more with this particular partner in crime who shares my opinions about cooking Right and With Love. as many of my friends do =). I'd post a recipe, but i just couldn't do it justice. it was originally a frida kahlo recipe. authentic but with some fudging and modification, despite a largely successful effort to be all authentic (lard, 4 kinds of chiles, at least 15 spices..)

seventhly: have you had a pillowfight lately? why not? i joined a flash mob in a brief fun frenzy this weekend. whee.

lastly, courtesy [info]mhat, the best interview question ever:

you open a terminal, running bash. you type in "telnet www.google.com" and hit enter. describe in great detail what happens. really. as much detail as you can.
i could probably write a novella. i'd only need the one question, as an interviewer or interveiwee, to see if this was really the right person for a unixy job. oh yes, my pretties.


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[info]ghewgill
2008-03-26 07:47 am UTC (link)
That's an amusing interview question. Because it executes in a finite amount of time, there's a limit to how deep that rabbit hole goes, but damn it could go pretty deep before it stops.

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[info]mhat
2008-03-26 05:49 pm UTC (link)

Yup, it is largely limited by three factors: How much the person who is asking the question knows. How much the person answering the question knows. How much time is available assuming the first two factors aren't limiting.

I love the question because it is applicable to both developers and systems administrators. It might even work for a network administrator but it might take some doing to get from the "system" side to the "network" side. Then again that is easy to solve by reframing the question.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]hexapod
2008-03-26 12:15 pm UTC (link)
WHAT IF YOU DON'T HAVE BASH!?!!!!1111

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[info]obsqurity
2008-03-26 01:31 pm UTC (link)
I dig the hexapus, I only recently discovered it's existence.
And that was only after buying a glass pipe resembling one in Mexico.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

So what does happen?
[info]obsqurity
2008-03-26 01:29 pm UTC (link)
I'm only minimally linux-y...

My guesses are
(1) Nothing happens because you wouldn't telnet to a www address to begin with
(2) They wouldn't be stupid enough to present you with anything like a logon prompt
(3) You'd be logged and evil Google henchmen would immediately make you disappear forever.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: So what does happen?
[info]6opou
2008-03-26 02:41 pm UTC (link)
Heh. You're thinking like a user, and not, say, an OS programmer.
One could go into detail about the telnet handshaking protocol, the network paths, the levels of network traffic, and the interactions of bash, telnet, and the OS, etc. As [info]ghewgill said above, the rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: So what does happen?
[info]mhat
2008-03-26 05:42 pm UTC (link)

As 6opou points out, you're being a little user centric but that's okay. If I was interviewing you and you said (1) I'd respond. Okay, so the www is significant? You would probably say something like "Well, it is informational and implies what the server does" and I can respond: Does the telnet program use the name to decide if it can connect? You might say "Well no, the name is simply a dns entry to make life easier for humans, telnet runs on port 23 while http runs on 80." ...

(2) Assuming you mean we wouldn't give an interviewee a login prompt, sure why not. Though netboot and/or xen it's pretty easy to create a OS image that a user can't do /much/ harm from. Alternatively, if you mean www.google.com wouldn't be running telnet; I can ask "Why not? Is telnet insure?" "Yes" "Tell me about that... how can you determine if a service is listening or not. What about if there is a firewall there, what might happen?" ... and on, and on.

(3) What might you do to make it so the Evil Google henchmen can't trace you easily.





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Re: So what does happen?
[info]decibel45
2008-03-26 07:59 pm UTC (link)
Ahh, ok.. I totally missed what was meant by "great detail".

I like it! :)

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Re: So what does happen?
[info]uthrom
2008-03-26 08:18 pm UTC (link)
And this is skipping some detail:

execve("/usr/bin/telnet", ["telnet", "www.google.com"], [/* 79 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x555555679000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2b3efabbf000
uname({sys="Linux", node="...", ...}) = 0
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=73033, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 73033, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x2b3efabc0000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib64/libncurses.so.5", O_RDONLY) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\240*\2\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=407240, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2b3efabd2000
mmap(NULL, 1452776, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x2b3efacc1000

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Re: So what does happen?
[info]mhat
2008-03-27 06:27 am UTC (link)

Yup, the trick is to keep the person you're interviewing talking. I've found this to be one of the better ways to get someone to tell you exactly what they know.

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[info]xacat
2008-03-26 02:21 pm UTC (link)
our old squeezebox fell and stopped working, but you are welcome to it. you can probably fix it in less than a minute, sustaining only minor burns, if you have a soldering iron and some soulder.

(Reply to this)


[info]bluejayway
2008-03-27 03:01 am UTC (link)
aaahaha! telnet! telnet is the device with which I once mudded. siblings gone by used it for pine email in cawludge, and I used it for text based role playing. yeah!

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Guess who's visiting Portland?
[info]snaxxx
2008-05-15 04:28 pm UTC (link)
Hi, stranger!
I'm going to be in Portland for the CCMA Conference http://www.cgin.coop/public/food-coop-info/ccma , and in order to get my free plane ticket I'll be there from the evening of Monday, June 9 through Monday, June 16th. I'll be staying at the hotel Thursday - Sat night, and looking for a place to crash the other days. Let me know if you've got some space!

Looking forward to a bike ride, but won't be up to your speed. :)

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Guess who's visiting Portland?
[info]_fool
2008-05-15 08:42 pm UTC (link)
hey hon! i bet we can hook you up somehow, though i've got another austinite houseguest during those days. i'll ask around amongst friends at happy hour tonight to see if anyone's got a more convenient guestroom.

worst case, there's always another couch or sharing my bed, so you won't be on the street or having to pay for a place to stay =)

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