USPS ; job candidate
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 00:01:58 +0000
If you routinely see postal deliveries on your commute, and particularly if those letter carriers are also cyclists, you can apparently get mail delivered with an address like this:
BRENT,
ON A RECUMBENT,
c. 1015 hrs on ANNANDALE RD
USPS ROUTE 42/28
22042
Postman Dave flagged me down this morning to deliver a postcard (of Mason City, Iowa) sent from Chicago.
I interviewed a SysAdmin candidate this morning who knew remarkably little (about Unix sysadmin, anyway):
QuestionAnswer?comments
How do you see what disks are mounted?mountx
dfx
How do you check the system clock?datex
How do you see what files you have?lsY
Where are the login passwords kept?/etc/shadowxused to be in /etc/passwd*
How do you synchronize the clocks on Unix servers?NTPxnot just Unix**
How do you change the partition layout of a disk?formatxfdisk? Windows
What does "sed" do?stream editorx
We are interviewing for senior admin positions. I would expect a junior admin to know all of this (except maybe "sed"). This is basic stuff. Really basic. I would expect an experienced user (say a programmer or a DBA, working on a Unix server) to know most of this. He didn't have any script-writing experience. I didn't ask him about his preference in shells. (He might not even know what shells he's used.) Hmmm, his brother already works here (in a non-computer, admin job); this seems to account for today's interview, since he didn't impress well in the phone screening he got 2 weeks ago. And in the small-world category, our admin from Ohio recognized this guy's name and remembers interviewing him for an admin position several years ago. Of course, he wasn't qualified then either.
The guy I phone-screened (from home) last week is also in here today. One of my co-workers had a higher impression of him than I did; too bad that co-worker is out today. [Later] General consensus is that this 2nd candidate's not knowledgeable/experienced enough to be an asset for us.
I learned today that we've extended a couple of offers. One I interviewed last week, and thought he was OK, but nothing great. Maybe he'll work out. I didn't meet the other, and he's turned us down because he doesn't have a car and this isn't a great place for public transit. (How did he get here to interview?) What's stupid is that there's a frequent shuttle bus between here (the operations center) and the agency's main office, which is next to Union Station - Metro, MARC, VRE, and bus access; but it's against the rules to use the office shuttle for commuting. There's very few people housed in this building now, and I'd bet those shuttles make a lot of empty trips. (Now that I think about it, there's probably a lot of people living south of here who would like to drive to this site (first exit inside the beltway) and take the shuttle - in the HOV express lanes - downtown. If they don't want people commuting in, I guess they can't allow them to commute out either. If they allowed commuting out (and I worked normal hours, going home before the shuttle quits), I could take public transit to work too.) There used to be morning and evening shuttles to the King Street Metro station, but those were cut when they moved most of the staff out of this building.
*/etc/passwd originally contained:
**Unix, Linux, MacOS, Windows all use NTP - Network Time Protocol. Client computers update their clocks from a server, which itself (probably) updates from another server upstream. At the top of this hierarchy of servers should be a computer with an accurate and stable time source - atomic clock, satellite radio, etc. So this is not a Unix-specific question; anyone who is managing computer resources should be aware of NTP, because those resources almost certainly need accurate and coherent clocks.
Now you are all more qualified to be Unix SysAdmins than the fellow I interviewed today....
You've got to wonder....
Popular Links: 2008 Road and Bridge Standards http://www.virginiadot.org/business/locdes/2008_road_and_bridge_standards_table_of_contents.asp
[May 2017: I don't recall why I thought this link was worth including.]
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/570721.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
If you routinely see postal deliveries on your commute, and particularly if those letter carriers are also cyclists, you can apparently get mail delivered with an address like this:
BRENT,
ON A RECUMBENT,
c. 1015 hrs on ANNANDALE RD
USPS ROUTE 42/28
22042
Postman Dave flagged me down this morning to deliver a postcard (of Mason City, Iowa) sent from Chicago.
I interviewed a SysAdmin candidate this morning who knew remarkably little (about Unix sysadmin, anyway):
QuestionAnswer?comments
How do you see what disks are mounted?mountx
dfx
How do you check the system clock?datex
How do you see what files you have?lsY
Where are the login passwords kept?/etc/shadowxused to be in /etc/passwd*
How do you synchronize the clocks on Unix servers?NTPxnot just Unix**
How do you change the partition layout of a disk?formatxfdisk? Windows
What does "sed" do?stream editorx
We are interviewing for senior admin positions. I would expect a junior admin to know all of this (except maybe "sed"). This is basic stuff. Really basic. I would expect an experienced user (say a programmer or a DBA, working on a Unix server) to know most of this. He didn't have any script-writing experience. I didn't ask him about his preference in shells. (He might not even know what shells he's used.) Hmmm, his brother already works here (in a non-computer, admin job); this seems to account for today's interview, since he didn't impress well in the phone screening he got 2 weeks ago. And in the small-world category, our admin from Ohio recognized this guy's name and remembers interviewing him for an admin position several years ago. Of course, he wasn't qualified then either.
The guy I phone-screened (from home) last week is also in here today. One of my co-workers had a higher impression of him than I did; too bad that co-worker is out today. [Later] General consensus is that this 2nd candidate's not knowledgeable/experienced enough to be an asset for us.
I learned today that we've extended a couple of offers. One I interviewed last week, and thought he was OK, but nothing great. Maybe he'll work out. I didn't meet the other, and he's turned us down because he doesn't have a car and this isn't a great place for public transit. (How did he get here to interview?) What's stupid is that there's a frequent shuttle bus between here (the operations center) and the agency's main office, which is next to Union Station - Metro, MARC, VRE, and bus access; but it's against the rules to use the office shuttle for commuting. There's very few people housed in this building now, and I'd bet those shuttles make a lot of empty trips. (Now that I think about it, there's probably a lot of people living south of here who would like to drive to this site (first exit inside the beltway) and take the shuttle - in the HOV express lanes - downtown. If they don't want people commuting in, I guess they can't allow them to commute out either. If they allowed commuting out (and I worked normal hours, going home before the shuttle quits), I could take public transit to work too.) There used to be morning and evening shuttles to the King Street Metro station, but those were cut when they moved most of the staff out of this building.
*/etc/passwd originally contained:
- login name
- encrypted password
- numerical user ID
- numerical group ID
- user's full name or comment field
- user's home directory
- user's command interpreter (default shell)
**Unix, Linux, MacOS, Windows all use NTP - Network Time Protocol. Client computers update their clocks from a server, which itself (probably) updates from another server upstream. At the top of this hierarchy of servers should be a computer with an accurate and stable time source - atomic clock, satellite radio, etc. So this is not a Unix-specific question; anyone who is managing computer resources should be aware of NTP, because those resources almost certainly need accurate and coherent clocks.
Now you are all more qualified to be Unix SysAdmins than the fellow I interviewed today....
You've got to wonder....
Popular Links: 2008 Road and Bridge Standards http://www.virginiadot.org/business/locdes/2008_road_and_bridge_standards_table_of_contents.asp
[May 2017: I don't recall why I thought this link was worth including.]
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/570721.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]