I’m sure you remember the car crash I got into last summer. Well, that really led to some changes. My knee still doesn’t work right which pretty much takes me out of my previous career.

While I was laid up on the sofa after the crash, I put in an application with a web-hosting company. I’ve never worked in the IT field and in fact have never worked in an office building. With no relevant work history and no certifications or documentation proving I know my stuff, I didn’t expect much.

Well, the next morning I got a call asking me when would be a good time to come in for an interview. Hey, I thought, maybe I’ll get a chance to explain how I know what I know. Well, it turned out that the “interview” was a hands-on test. They simply sat me down in front of a terminal and gave me a list of tasks to perform. It wasn’t much of a difficulty.

When I was done, I was asked the basic questions: If you were hired, when could you start? What shift would you be comfortable working? and then …. How much would you expect to be paid?

Fuck. The money question.

Fortunately, I currently had a job so I simply told them how much I was making at my current job and that they would have to get damned close to that to get me to leave it. It was still too early to know that my knee was not going to get much better. I’d have been much more nervous about the whole thing if I’d known I was not going to be able to go back to my previous job.

So that’s how it ended. They said I’d hear something by the end of the week.

I got a call the very next morning. I was asked if I was still interested in coming to work for [COMPANY] at a pay rate of [EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR] working [THE SHIFT I ASKED FOR].

I said, Uh, yeah, ok. Sounds good.

It turns out that this is pretty much just the way this company does things. It is worth the money to them to pay someone for two weeks of training to see if they’re worth a damn. I guess since you can’t really tell much from a job interview, they just make the interview two weeks long.

So, I knocked out the two weeks training and started on the floor.

I was terrified.

A gift for those that read this far

After about a week of getting the feel for things, I started to make numbers. After a couple of weeks I was hitting quota. About the same time I started hitting the bonus range for my ratings. I hit bonus three pay periods in a row.

I now realize that the bonus is a mechanism for determining who needs to be doing harder work.

I was rather innocently told to go sit with another admin to get some training in another area. Harder tickets. It didn’t take long before I was working those harder tickets exclusively. A short while later and I was told to start “cherry picking” out of the Level 2 tickets. “Just look around in there and pick the ones you can do.” “Sure, no problem.”

Then it happened.

I got an email from the boss telling me I’d been approved for Level 2 training and that I’d get my “checklist” and expanded access later in the week.

So that’s where I’ve been.

Monday morning I was informed that my training checklist was 100% complete (including the tests) and that now its in the hands of the higher-ups to decide whether or not to promote me.

Wednesday marks six months with the company. Six months of work in the IT field. Six months of work as a Linux System Administrator.

Some of you know the name of the company I work for, but I’d rather it not be said here. I do owe them. They gave me a shot at proving myself with no experience, no education and no certifications. They just owe me a bigger paycheck. I’ve worked my ass off for them.

So, there is the story of where the hell I’ve been.

In other news, H&B Football is done. While myself and a few others fell out during the season, I have to hand it to those who kept their picks going and really did put up some impressive numbers.

Congratulations to the botnet and really for all the leaders on that board.

This is just a sampling. The guy never did learn how to shut up.

Swiped creatively borrowed from our friend SanyoSoup

UPDATE!! Because I ♥ y’all:

The things I do for y’all…

Basically, it expresses the wish for Whirled Peas™, even though the first religion portrayed is out to destroy the rest, and the actual sticker is directed at the last religion portrayed in an attempt to paint it as intolerant. It wasn’t long before we saw the evolution of it to a more acceptable sticker:

And now, the geekdom version of the “COEXIST” sticker!!!

You better believe I’m getting one of those

UPDATE:

Courtesy of The Feral Irishman.

Then, around 12 years ago, I bought and installed my first fully working desktop Linux.

I suspect maybe one or two of you just had a flashback. Most of you have probably never seen that and maybe have never even heard of Red Hat but back then Red Hat was one of (if not the) biggest players in the Linux world. Really, they still are, just not so much at the consumer/hobbiest level.

Anyway, back then running Linux was like owning a car back when they were new. They were amazing machines but they required an awful lot of tweaking, fixing, babying to get them working and to keep them working.

I guess the actual point of this post is to say how surprised I am at how many of you are running Linux these days. Non-geeks, just regular folks, some of who don’t know the first thing about how these machines work are running Linux desktops or laptops. Of course these days there are probably a lot of you running Linux in one form or another without actually being aware of it. A great many of your gadgets have penguins* in them. Your DVRs and your streaming media boxes and your phones and your routers.

The website you’re reading now is running on a Linux box. Yours very likely is too.

The distros I run sometimes change from one day to the next. Right now, I’m on Fedora 15. Years ago Red Hat got out of the “free” business and got into the business business. What was once the free Red Hat is now Fedora. I still switch back occasionally to Ubuntu 11.04. On my servers, which run this website (and others) and my email and the H&B chat are running Debian 6.

Those of you running Linux, what distro are you running and how did you get started with it? What are your thoughts on it? To those not running Linux, what are you running? Is this the first you’re hearing of this “Linux” thing? Don’t be shy. We won’t make fun of you (much).

* that would be a reference to Tux, the Linux mascot. The concept of the Linux mascot being a penguin came from Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. Tux was created by Larry Ewing in 1996.

It’s the World’s Smallest Political Quiz.

Here are my results for 2011:

The last time I took this little quiz, it was 2007, and I was right above the letter “R” in “Right”. Quite a difference, n’est pas??

The times, they are a’changin’

Creatively borrowed from iOWT.

Update[ArmedGeek]: Here’s mine.

Update[ArmedGeek]: Ok, I think I have the bugs worked out so the server upgrade will probably happen sometime late tonight or early morning. I’ll wait until no one is around. If you idle in the chat, don’t be surprised if you get disconnected. After the upgrade is complete you should be able to connect normally.

Sometime today the chat server will be down for an upgrade. I’ll try to take it down at a slow time during the day and I’ll post a time here when I know what that time is going to be

Don’t fret, the server should only be down for a short while and might have a feature or two y’all will like when it comes back up.

Some problems jumped up testing the upgrades so it’ll probably be put off for a bit.

I’ll leave you the Hooker though.

Until then, here’s a Hooker…

Ah yes, the mating call at a bar: the pick-up line. My sister told me men used that line on her more than any other. It was funny the way guys would try to pick her up. I remember one time we went out on a sister’s night out, sans hubbies, and a guy coming up to her and saying seriously, “You look so damn sweet, it’s giving me a toothache.” She looked at me with this exasperated look, and I told the guy, “Oh, well consider me the Novocaine, buddy.” Needless to say, he left well alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAVUrq7jvtM

So, what are some of the best and worst pick up lines you’ve ever heard, or used??

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Frank Lloyd Wright translated into Legos. WANT LIKE BURNING!!!!

I’m glad my love of Legos has not dissipated with semi-adulthood. And I am sure that most of you still manage to transmogrify into children when it comes to a favorite toy or game. What are your favorites to this day? And yes, videogames count