Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 56 of 153).

Great job available for a sharp DevOps admin

The company I work for is seeking a sharp sysadmin to fill an Infrastructure Engineer role in Raleigh. We need people who have experience with DevOps tools for managing large production environments (Chef, AWS, Git, Docker, Puppet, etc.).

Here’s the job description and a link for applying. Please share!

We are seeking an experienced, self-motivated, and passionate Infrastructure Engineer to join our team. Are you someone who loves to solve big problems and who doesn’t settle for the status quo? We believe in finding the right tool, hardware, or software for the job, we don’t care if it’s open source or proprietary.

If it makes our systems faster, more secure, and scalable we want to hear about it. Because we are an Agile company you won’t be working in a silo. We need you to have broad experience in system administration, network operations, some coding experience, build and release engineering, performance engineering and site operations. We don’t expect anyone to know everything, we just need people who are quick studies that aren’t afraid to jump in with both feet and learn by doing.

An entrepreneurial fast paced mentality is critical for success in this position: a passionate can-do attitude, exceptional communication skills, and the ability to collaborate while acting as a thought leader in your area of expertise will serve you well at Rally Software. Does this sound like a challenge you’re ready for?

Once hired, here’s what we’ll need you to do:
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Apple should kill the headphone jack – Tech Insider

Tech Insider columnist and apple fanboy Alex Heath advocates for Apple’s reported nixing of a headphone jack on it’s upcoming iPhone 7. Says Heath:

The audio jack in the iPhone is based on technology intended for telephone switchboards in the 19th century. It’s an ancient port, and while it’s a common standard now, its days are numbered.

Well, yeah. We’ve been using audio through analog wires for over a hundred years. Know what? We’ve pretty-much got it perfected. Is it the best audio available? Not anymore, but it’s cheap and ubiquitous. Don’t count out cheap and ubiquitous.

Then Mr. Heath hints at why Apple might consider this move:

The main downside of Lightning-equipped headphones right now is price. Apple recently started selling a $800 pair of Lightning headphones from Audeze in its store, which only the most serious audiophile would even consider buying. Only a few companies have committed to Lightning so far, and their headphones generally run for at least $200.

Eight hundred bucks for a pair of headphones and $200 for the cheapies. Meanwhile, standard phono-jack phones are so cheap that they’re practically given away.

Oh, and there’s also this:

Lightning is also a proprietary connector that Apple owns…

Do you see where this is going? “Cheap and ubiquitous” is the last thing Apple wants. Apple can’t claim to be saving space by its switch from a phono plug to Lightning. What it really wants is to get the millions of Apple-loving drones out there used to shelling out $100+ for Apple-proprietary accessories that could otherwise be had for mere dollars through the wonders of mass-market standardization.

I once railed against Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” way of sabotaging standards. Apple has taken a play from the Redmond playbook. Apple’s refusal to play nice with the rest of the world rubs this advocate of open source and open standards the wrong way.

Remember the collective outrage when Apple removed the optical CD drive in the Mac? Or how about when Apple chose to not let the iPhone’s browser support Adobe Flash, the horrible and insecure web standard that was nearly ubiquitous at the time and basically extinct now?

They were all big changes that may have caused inconvenience and raised eyebrows at the time. But looking back, they seem like obvious steps forward.

Source: Apple should kill the headphone jack – Tech Insider

Forecasts from Winter Folklore | State Climate Office of North Carolina

How often do flakes follow thunder? The scientists at the State Climate Office ran the numbers. Science!

Along with a diverse variety of frozen precipitation, it’s not unusual to see a thunderstorm during the winter in North Carolina. At some point, that gave rise to the proverb that if you hear thunder during the winter, it will snow in 7 to 10 days. It makes some sense considering that weather systems generally take about a week to move across the country, so a strong cold front that produces thunderstorms is likely to be followed by another system within the next 10 days. But here in North Carolina, where snow is never a guarantee, how often is thunder followed by flakes?

Source: Winter Outlook 2013-14: Forecasts from Winter Folklore | State Climate Office of North Carolina

Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

Remember when I wrote about how the Confederate Memorial doesn’t belong on the State Capitol grounds? I suggested the memorial be moved to the Oakwood Cemetery, where it and the ideals behind it could be retired forever.

The only place racism belongs is in the cemetery. Racism deserves to be buried.

Sadly,  some misguilded individual doesn’t know the difference between a monument to racism celebrated with a position on public grounds and a monument on private grounds marking the graves of people who lived in those times.

This person has vandalized someone’s final resting place. This is shameful and disrespectful and off-limits. Let the racists rest in peace along with the misguided ideals by which they lived. Let everyone see that the legacy of racism ends in the cold damp earth of a cemetery.

Speak about out our contiuning to celebratie these legacies on public grounds while advocating that the proper place for these legacies is six feet under.

 

Vandals spray-painted anti-racist graffiti on nine monuments inside Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood Cemetery, mostly damaging the graves of high-ranking officers in the Confederate Army but also defacing the stone of North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, whose racial views in the early 1900s have found increasing criticism.

The attack caused roughly $20,000 in damage on Wednesday night and is thought to be the first of its kind on private property, said Robin Simonton, executive director at Oakwood. Cemetery officials reported the crime to Raleigh police during the weekend, hoping to spare further destruction during the holidays.

Source: Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted

This is a fascinating interview with the founders of AOL Instant Messenger, a trailblazing messaging tool that had its spectacular rise and fall under the largely-clueless leadership of AOL.

When we think about the spectacular collapses of once untouchable Internet properties, companies like MySpace and Pets.com come to mind. The rise and fall of AOL Instant Messenger rivals them all. Once the dominant force in digital messaging and a source of innovations other companies spun off into billions of dollars of businesses, AIM is now mostly dormant. Mashable sat down with three of the early engineers of the program to learn about its origins, why AOL never quite embraced the concept of a free messaging service, getting hacked by Microsoft and the features that never quite made it to users.

Source: The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted

Happy New Year

Today is the first day of 2016 and it finds the Turners doing very well. Twenty-fifteen was a very good year for us with plenty of notable events, some sad but most happy. I will be posting my usual highlights over the next few days in an effort to capture the moment.

Astute readers might also notice that I am testing out new WordPress themes for MarkTurner dot Net. Your reader experience might change a bit here and there but the content and links will remain the same. If you like or don’t like a particular theme choice, please let me know in a comment.

At the time of this writing I am using the Gateway theme.

15 for ’15: Counting down to Top 5 online

A friend alerted me to this tweet that the News & Observer sent out this afternoon, prominently featuring Hallie:

Hallie represents tenacity in the N&O top stories list.

Hallie represents tenacity in the N&O top stories list.

It turns out her lawsuit story was the second most-read story on the N&O website. Pretty stunning, especially coming so late in the year.

We’re all still a bit surprised that Hallie’s activism has gotten as much attention as it has. If it helps change minds and get the state moving in the proper direction again this would be enough.
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Craftsmen restore old train cars in Madison for luxury travel on nation’s rails : News

A great story about a St. Louis company restoring old railcars for private use. I’ve always wanted my own railcar (called “private varnish” in the railroad vernacular).

It’s a different story inside the tidy workshops nearby, where skilled craftsmen meticulously restore old rail cars for private owners, from wealthy railroad enthusiasts to excursion lines. An occasional specialty job for major railroads helps pay the bills.

“Some people think we’re just a scrap yard,” said Roger Verbeeren, president of Gateway Rail Services. “Truth is, we don’t scrap anything.”

Since 2000, Gateway has operated on part of a former Union Pacific yard next to Illinois Route 203 near the heart of this old railroad town. The company has about 140 old passenger and baggage cars, a few from the 1920s, on its 10 tracks. Many are salvage from Amtrak, the nation’s passenger service since 1971.

Source: Craftsmen restore old train cars in Madison for luxury travel on nation’s rails : News

Septoplasty at 5 hours, so far so good!

Well, five hours after sinus surgery I’m pleased to say the most annoying thing at this point is my dry throat from all the breathing though my mouth. My nose is still bleeding but that seems to be tapering off. The Percocet is working, I’ve got a humidifier cranked and a small hill of pillows to keep my head up tonight. I’m moving around normally, thinking clearly, and looking forward tonight to digging into the excellent bio of the Wright Brothers, The Bishop’s Sons. Very happy with how things are going so far!

The surgery began about 30 minutes past schedule due to the previous patient being a little long in shaking off his or her anesthesia but once they got me in it all happened so quickly. I will blog more about the process as I’ve been recording some thoughts as I go but for now I need to get some rest.

U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers | Computerworld

This doesn’t surprise me. Electronics has been transformed into whole computers on chips, while computers themselves have become capable of supporting nearly unlimited creativity. Today anyone can perform on a smartphone what was once considered miraculous work, without knowing anything about circuitry or how to solder. Software is the new electrical engineering.

Two occupations long associated with innovation — electrical and electronics engineering — has stopped growing, according to the U.S. government.T

he Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in an update of its occupational outlook released Friday, said that the number of people employed as electrical and electronics engineers is now at 316,000, and will remain mostly unchanged for the next decade.

Source: U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers | Computerworld