RE: LISA 2005 attendees?

  Wow! And Phil's been on the list a few years! :-)

  When I started planning my first presentation for
LISA 2000, Conserver was 10 years old, and still a
'best kept secret'. I was asking some admins why
Conserver was such a useful tool for them (how did
they find it invaluable). Many replied "How else
would you do it?" They had started out in shops
where Conserver was already deployed, and never
learned about crash carts, didn't have to wrestle
with serial settings, didn't have to walk or drive
to other sites when they wanted to check...

  Since USENIX withdrew my class, the material won't
be in the proceedings, or on the CD-ROM. Therefore, I
think I'm free to use it in other arenas. I'm not sure
if I can interest SANS in it, or some other USENIX-like
entity in another region of the world. If I don't
find any opportunities that I can take, I'd likely be
willing to let the folks here get at the PDF file
sooner than the usual 1-year waiting period I've used.
(I use the "Notes Pages" format in PowerPoint, to
include most of the talking points for each slide
as part of the class handbook. You'd still be missing
the demos and interactive portions of the class...)

  I started this thread to reach those that signed up
for LISA, but I'll probably share it with the group at
large, given that the discussion is generating attention.

     -Z- 

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Dibowitz [mailto:phil@ticketmaster.com]
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 2:26 PM
To: Christopher Fowler
Cc: Zonker Harris; users@conserver.com
Subject: Re: LISA 2005 attendees?

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> Thats because we are a dying bread.  Every young whipper snapper thinks
> that ssh or telnet is good enough.  They don't realize that problems can
> occur before the tcp/ip stack is operational.  They also don't realize
> how much it sucks to drive into downtown Atlanta at 4pm on a Friday to
> attach to the serial console of a Cisco switch because it has issues.
> Parking sucks too.  I made that trip once and that was it!

Hey - I beg to differ - age has nothing to do with it. I setup remote
console servers at a company where the machine room was next door to my
office using conserver+cycaldes. I'm 23.

One of the first thing I do at every company I've been at is setup
console servers. Everything should be able to be done remotely and
reliably. When I get called at 4am I don't want to have to drive
anywhere - that's a pain for me, and more downtime for the company.

Age has nothing to do with it. If you don't understand how and when
technology can fail, you're a poor and/or inexperienced admin. Short and
simple. I've seen plenty of 50 year olds make that mistake.

-- 
Phil Dibowitz
P: 310-360-2330 C: 213-923-5115
Unix Admin, Ticketmaster.com