Category: Computing

6.16 For Relief from Anxiety

Dear Sistertech,

I’m a new sysadmin for [company name redacted]. This is my first time conducting major updates across our network. What’s worse is that we’re also changing the operating system to [name of OS redacted]. I can’t get any sleep! I’ve never been so nervous in my life. I’m not sure what to do to get my mojo back.

Please help!
Anxious in Albany

Dear Anxious,

This is indeed a potentially terrifying time in the life of both the network and the system administrator. Sistertech implores you to take three deep breaths. For some reason one deep breath is never enough. Here is a prayer that should help.

Grant me, O One In Charge, not to be anxious about earthly things, especially about new program updates and operating system changes. Help me now, even as I face these momentous choices, to make those choices that will avert the cascading failure of my computer and the entire network.
Amen.

from The Book of Uncommon Prayer, p. 153.

Yours faithfully in service to The One In Charge,
Sistertech

PS: If you need a more specific prayer, simply contact Tom the Intern at: tomtheintern@sistertech.com.

.16 For Relief from Anxiety

Grant me, O One In Charge, not to be anxious about earthly things, especially about new program updates and operating system changes. Help me now, even as I face these momentous choices, to make those choices that will avert the cascading failure of my computer and the entire network.

Amen.

Muzzle it, please!

Will no one rid me of this troublesome client?

I show up, precisely at 7:15 am, as promised. Yes, it is certainly earlier than most of my first calls of the day. But seeing as though this client had begged, yea, implored Tech Support for someone with extensive knowledge of blade servers, I relented and agreed to show up at that un-divinity like hour.

Continue reading “Muzzle it, please!”

Apple tablet

Sistertech is keeping her head down on this one. The guys in the Public Communications Dept always get touchy about any changes in the text distribution chain of The Document. They’ve even got a Google alert for any mention of revisions on The Document or anything claiming to rival The Document. What caught my eye was this doozy:

Not since biblical times has the arrival of a tablet been greeted with such anticipation.

Continue reading “Apple tablet”

Nvidia in cars

Too cool. Nvidia hooking up with Audi. Nvidia processors will be in all new Audis starting with the 2012 model year.

Update:

Here’s a fuller treatment of the benefits and risks of in-car computing from the NY Times:

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the neon-drenched annual trade show here, these companies are demonstrating the breadth of their ambitions, like 10-inch screens above the gearshift showing high-definition videos, 3-D maps and Web pages.

The first wave of these “infotainment systems,” as the tech and car industries call them, will hit the market this year. While built-in navigation features were once costly options, the new systems are likely to be standard equipment in a wide range of cars before long. They prevent drivers from watching video and using some other functions while the car is moving, but they can still pull up content as varied as restaurant reviews and the covers of music albums with the tap of a finger.

The not news news

I think this development is a good thing. In fact, it ought to make it easier to help my clients, but I still don’t take this to be anything close to news. Intel’s chief Paul Otellini’s keynote address to the CES 2010:

After the era of the mainframe and the PC the industry was now undergoing a third evolution into the age of personal computing, where individuals used multiple, interconnected, personalised, online computing devices.

“I believe we are on the cusp of a new era of computing – personal computing,” he told delegates.

“It is an era of many devices per person and will change our lives. We want seamless personal devices that work anywhere and are customised to us, we want to make computing personal.”

Algorithm so complex no computer can use it

Just my kind of project. An algorithm only a quantum mother…um, quantum computer would love (or use).

The newest algorithm, developed by Aram W. Harrow of the University of Bristol in England and Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd of MIT, tackles linear equations, which is something many students run across in high school or college. An example of such an expression is 3x + 4y = 12, with the variables and the constants on each side of the equation. Although it’s relatively easy to solve an expression with only two unknown values, it is another matter entirely to solve systems with billions of unknown values.