Posting comments to this blog now works. It had been broken.

The problem was that the captcha protection was activated but the codes displaying them were not in the template. All fixed.

The problem had gone unnoticed because captchas weren't required for registered users (which I am one of). I've added this test-case for future server upgrades. Thanks to all that sent email about this. We wouldn't have noticed the problem without your help!

In Arthur C. Clarke's book "2001, A Space Oddessy" he predicts that world peace is achieved with the help of the phone company.

There is a subtle point made that international phone calls became flat rate or "free" (monthly fee, dial all you want) and that with people freely able to communicate, they do communicate; and with this people around the world understand each other better and as a result world peace breaks out around the world. World peace, thanks to free phone calls.

That hasn't happened yet. Yet.

However, with the internet we freely communicate with people around the world. Email with people around the world. Meet people in chat rooms from countries you've never heard of. Skype and IM without knowing a country-code or area code. With YouTube, we see each in real-life situations without the filter of how Hollywood, the film industry, or the government want us to see each other. With the power of wikis, blogs, and social networking sites people collaborate without borders or limits.

Imagine an entire generation growing up in such an environment. Kids are using wiki's to plan events and social networking sites to start movements. How many generations before people think of international borders as old fashioned and out-dated as rotary phones and carbon paper.

I'm starting to believe more and more that Clarke's vision of people inspired by communication is coming true.

In the late 1900s it was believed that no two capitalist countries that did trade ever went to war with each other. Trade is more valuable than war. Or as one PhD thesis put it, "Now two countries with a McDonalds have ever started a war with each other."

I think the power of free communication can achieve even more.

If you need more convincing, how could a generation that coordinates something like this ever want to go to war? How could you support a politician that wants to wage war with your friend that simultaneously danced "Thriller" with you on October 25th?

Yes, I said it. Thriller.  Around the world.

(video by www.ThrillTheWorld.com)

[ This is still "first draft" quality but I'm posting it rather than keeping it bottled up. Feedback appreciated.]

There are those that believe that the history of system administration will follow a similar path to electrical engineering. Broadly categorized, there are 3 types of careers in that area:

• Electricians: People that have limited scientific education, but though apprenticeships and certifications they do the majority of the work in buildings, both deployments and repairs. They "follow the building code" (the building and safety guidelines for their state or country) but couldn't write new build codes (and would never try). Inspectors are paid to check their work for conformance to the "building code". 80% of all electrical work is in this category, and it is usually thankless and boring.
• Electrical engineers: People that have university degrees and understand both the theory and practice of what they do. They specialize in specific areas (construction, circuit design, chip design, etc.). The design new products. More advanced EEs write the building codes that electricians follow.
• Researchers: People (typically with PhDs) that are advancing the science of electrical engineering. They may invent entirely new ways of doing things, rather than just new products.

The field of system administration is already following this kind of trajectory. There are people in that first category: they have Cisco, MS, and LPI (Linux) certifications, they are mostly deploying vendor-approved architectures and design patterns (known as "best practices"). When they get creative you should be as scared as you would if an electrician installing a new circuit in your house told you he "got creative"). We don't have the auditing or inspection system yet, but SOX is the closest we have.

System administration has that second category too. They usually are the senior sysadmins in a company, and often are employed by vendors to create the best practice documents and certifications used by the first category. Sadly they often have the same titles as people in the first category which creates confusion.

The third category is quite rare in system administration. How often in our lives will something be invented that radically changes the way we do IT? There are a few that I can think of: Local storage vs. remote storage NFS. Individually managed accounts on each machine to NIS (laterLDAP). Waiting for users to complain vs. monitoring for outages. Keeping machines in sync by hand vs. cfengine (later Puppet).

All of these were major changes to our industry (and I profess that 80% of the industry doesn't do most of those things yet, so there is plenty of work to do).

There are very few schools that have Masters or PhD programs in system administration. Some call it IT, and dilute it with a lot of research around what we used to call MIS. A lot of the innovation in system administration comes from industry, which is usually good, but sometimes taints the research.

I believe there are many interesting areas of research that need more effort:

• Why are good practices so rarely adopted?
• What prevents a constant number of sysadmins from administrating growing populations of machines or users?
• Why is debugging so complicated?
• How to organize teams of system administrators to maximize macro efficiency and personal efficiency?
• How to delegate to users without expecting users to be system administrators?
• What traits do successful system administration organizations share?
• Are we asking the right questions?

These are the same questions we've always asked yet the need for research grows as system administration becomes more complicated and society becomes more dependent on technology.

Maybe we need to write less code and spend more time thinking.

Today is the first day of October. If you are using The Cycle system from Time Management for System Administrators don't forget to review your life- and long-term goals and do any other monthly routines.

Being the first of the month, sites running mailing list software like Mailman will be sending you reminder notices about which mailing lists you are subscribed. Take this time to pick a few lists to remove yourself from. What high-volume list have you been filtering off to a folder and ignoring? What low-volume list did you join ages ago and aren't getting any value from? What technology mailing list are you on for sentimental reasons even though you no longer use that technology? Today is a good day to unsubscribe from these mailing lists.

Both The Practice of System and Network Administration and Time Management for System Administrators can be read on-line by subscribers of O'Reilly's Safari Books Online service.

I got a demo of Amazon's Kindle the other day and was very impressed. I hadn't realized that it had a built-in cellphone-based data connection so you could always download more content. The speed was a little slow, but for reading a book I think it was perfect. I'm considering getting one.

Today I got email from Amazon reminding me that if I shill for them on my blog, readers can get a $100 discount. You just have to apply for an Amazon credit card and use this link.

Do I feel bad about shilling for Amazon? Well, not if it gets my readers a $100 discount. It is a product that friends of mine are happy with and I'm impressed by the demos I've seen.

Andrew Hyatt's blog mentions his merger of TM4SA's "The Cycle" with the GTD methodology.

I like GTD but don't think it is optimal for busy system administrators or software engineers. His addition to The Cycle is a great variation on the theme. That's how I hoped The Cycle would be used: a good system that people could adopt then customize for their own use.

Read the complete blog post here.

A time management problem that people often ask me about is how to get started on a new big tasks (NBT). With a heavy number of interruptions, meetings, and so on it can be easy to get distracted and never actually start that important NBT. Starting a NBT is also a bit intimidating; it's emotionally easier to continue with checking email, answering tickets, and (this is the big one) work on less important, but easier, tasks.

When I need to start a new big task I hide. I really do. I find a small conference room, hide, and work for an hour disconnected from the internet. I'm not ashamed to admit this. Hiding really works.

I'm not completely hidden. I don't cover the windows. People can find me. My immediate coworkers know where I am.

• Interviewing/Hiring Technical People: 8 registrations
• Time Management for System Administrators: 31 registrations
• "Help!  Everyone hates our IT Department!": 24 registrations

Tom will be presenting 3 tutorials and a keynote at SAGE-AU 2008. Register today!