12/28 Soda will be down tomorrow December 29, 2006 for maintenance
service. We hope to keep the downtime as short as possible.
- minghay (CSUA President)
\_ You hozer. What about my screen uptime and low pty IDs? - jvarga
\_ You mean like less than 3weeks this time?
\_ Hey, shut yer trap. This machine is run by volunteers. If
you want to put time into it then step up. I don't volunteer
but I don't bitch at the people who do. I appreciate their
efforts and donation of their time to a shared resource.
\_ I dropped by the office relatively early in the downtime.
No one with root was around any time that day (I was there
for like 4 hours). Mconst dropped in a bit later to check
in as well, but he had only limited access (soda root, but
not keg, etc). A few years ago, pburo nuked a number of
people from their root access. I said then it was a bad
idea. If current pburo wants to rectify that and increase
their root-base, I say more power to them. And I'd be glad
to volunteer. --scotsman
\_ Having a shorter list of volunteers is obviously going to
limit how much time is available to take care of soda. My
gripe with the person above is that they're bitching out
(however many) people there are to take care of things,
all of whom are volunteers. It's a free service, the
price is right, I'm happy that other people have maintained
it all these years with no expensve to myself and I
appreciate those efforts. When things go bad it is
frustrating but I don't feel I'm owed anything by any of
them.
\_ Exchange of money is not the only way to establish
responsibility.
\_ Money? What? Who said money? The people running this
machine are donating their time. That is what the word
"volunteer" means. It certainly isn't worth anything on
a resume. What are you talking about?
\_ You're reading the above comment wrongly. The fact
that someone is a volunteer doesn't absolve them
of responsibility to do what they've volunteered to
do; quite the opposite. A lame-ass is a lame-ass
whether he's being paid or not. -tom
\_ They're not absolved but if you don't like the
quality and performance provided by other volunteers
you have two real choices: shut up and acknowledge
whatever little you're getting is for nothing in
return or volunteer to do it yourself and do a
better job. Bitching them out without volunteering
doesn't improve the situation. It only makes it
worse. I shouldn't have to explain why.
\_ As I said above, pburo.past nuked the volunteers.
pburo.current, if they want/need the volunteers,
would have them if they say so. Get on wall,
guys. Ask.
\_ Volunteer. Send a note to pburo asking what
they need help with. If you did and they
ignored it or said they don't need any help
then that's that on the volunteer front.
\_ So what do we need to do in order to get root? (Other
than, obviously, hack in like everyone else.)
\- you know, sloda has always been run by volunteers
and by any measure the current incarnation should be
a lot less work than the apollo, sequent, vax etc
days. i could be wrong, but i dont think it's ever
been down for as long as it was ~1 mo ago. i think
people have been tremendously appreciative of mr jvarga...
and if that appreciation hasnt extended to the pburo
at large, my personal perception is there appears
reasonable basis for that differentiation.
\_ My gut feeling is that Cal students today are not
nearly as Unix proficient as they were back in the
days. Most donations come in the form of Windows
boxes and students today could care less about
Unix. So these "soda volunteers" are really just
alumni and not the current breed.
\_ Whoever the volunteers are, they are still freely
providing service to the community with zero
compensation and a lot of flack for the times things
aren't perfect. As far as proficiency goes, *nix is
a lot easier now than "back in the day" so uber m@d
sk1llz are no longer required to get class work or
anything else done on a *nix box. This is just the
nature of technology. I'll bet the average
teen/college boy in the 50s knew a hell of a lot
more about his car than *anyone* on soda/csua does
today. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.
\- my point is that maintainance should
take less time, e.g in the age of
cheep disks, a machine that doesnt have
to be racked up in a machine room,
standardized buses etc. anyway, his
standardized buses etc. anyway, this
seems to me to be mostly a leadership
failure not a technical matter ...
e.g. it's not a mostly a failure of
e.g. it's not mostly a failure of
knowledge, but of decisionmaking,
communication etc.
\_ However, those of us who have been around dealt
with the same difficulties and complaints when
we were in pburo/on root. And I can safely say
we never had a month long outage. If you don't
want to/can't actually provide the service,
scrap it. We'll survive... But IMO, and IME,
having the alumni around and happy is a good
thing for those who want the professional
networking opportunities and knowledgebase that
comes with them.
\_ http://csua.com/?entry=45397
"I'm willing to wager $100 that Soda will be up for another 3 months
or less before it is completely down for at least 3 days again."
We'll see how long soda is down this time.
\_ Are you helping with this maintenance to help make sure things go
smoothly or just bitching from the sidelines?
\_ A quick update from the ex-pres, secretary, and one of the few UGs
with any *nix-fu. (whoever said that it's starting to be lacking is
spot on). I have good news, and the good news is that our new VP
doesn't suck. He rules. He's def. reading rootmail (something Ed
never did), has a *lot* of Debian knowledge and experience, and is
preparing to, you know, GET SHIT DONE. As a volunteer. Which is awesome.
And something that Ed never did (this from being president over him).
Right now, the holdup is that apparently there's no cardkey access for
the moment but hopefully within a day or two, there will be much
tinkering. I think (and hope) y'all will see the difference :)
Take heart sodans! --michener
\- lack of cardkey access never stopped us in the old days ...
"oh look, the door is open". :-) |
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