Erik V. Olson
Just this guy, ya know?
Our Intrepid Hero
Our Intrepid Hero
Born in Chicago, Il, Mr. Olson was raised in a combination of North–side Chicago, suburban Chicagoland, and what he considered rural North Carolina, but it was in fact the fourth largest city in the state. This upbringing has had a definite effect on Mr. Olson, including an allergic reaction to NCAA basketball and a nearly unidentifiable accent.
Throughout his life, Mr. Olson has done a number of things, mostly involving technology, and mostly now unactionable due to statute–of–limitations and weak Bolivian extradition treaties. In his life, he has installed glass, hung flies (and other stage paraphernalia) actually used the phrase “Would you like fries with that?” in a professional capacity, served beer good and bad, hauled many barrels of trash and spent an inordinate percentage of his life making good bands louder and and bad bands, well, louder, alas. Not to mention all that computer related stuff he does professionally, since that appears in a section below.
Currently, Mr. Olson lives in the Independent City of Saint Louis, Missouri (seriously) and spends not nearly enough time hiking and far too much little time working. He is working hard on correcting that. Well, looking at that sentence again, “those” is a better word than “that.”
Wondering what sort of noise Erik's network encounters? Check out the Annoyances page for today's network annoyances.
A list of Erik's current projects is available on the Résumé & Such page.
The one that works for you. For me, that’s a long list. Work and the ways of the world mean that I do have a copy of Windows 98. Otherwise, I find FreeBSD and Mac OS X to be the answers of choice for me.
Whatever you choose, make sure you keep it updated. Almost every worm and intrusion that gets into a computer hits a flaw that was not only known about, but fixed. Patching isn’t the best answer, but, right now, it is the only answer.
It would help if people didn’t buy bug–ridden operating systems and applications. But they do, so I’ve given up on that rant.
In general, people who think there is a simple answer to this question are wrong. Operating Systems are merely tools. Some tools are good at one thing. Some are good at another. You will not be an effective repairman if all you carry is a Swiss Army knife. No, not even that one.
I could. I do so professionally. But, at home. I don’t have a large UPS, fall over servers, or redundant wires. So, I let an outfit do all that work for me (and have multiple MX records) and I just suck it down to a FreeBSD box, and let it filter the spam and hold it for me. That way, my email always works.
Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. I can change brakes on cars. I generally, however, pay a reliable mechanic to do so. Why? I’ve usually got other things to do, and paying the mechanic means the brakes get fixed.
In our current political and economic climate? None. Get a good filter.
Yep. Economically, spam works. Why? Because sending email is so fantastically cheap, it costs more to filter who you send to than it does to send it. So, spammers don’t. Direct marketing came about because it is very expensive to send physical mail, and by directing it, you can get more responses out of less mailed pieces. Email, however, is so cheap that any time you spent editing your lists is wasting money. So what that a million addresses bounce, and another million just drive people to complete anger? It costs you almost nothing to send those two million emails. It would cost you plenty to cull them out.
Your average piece of junk mail needs about ten thousand responses to cover the mailing cost. Your average spam needs five. So, economically, you’re a fool if you don’t spam.
So, how do we stop spam? Normally, when the markets produce a bad outcome like this, we turn to political solutions. So far, that hasen’t happened, and I don’t see effective anti–spam legislation happening. So, that’s out.
So, your only option is technical. Filters. Of course, filtering doesn’t stop the spam from flowing, or stop the spam from clogging email servers. All it does is make it easier to deal with in your inbox. I find SpamAssassin works well, so long as you can deal with UNIX. You Windows users will probably have to buy SpamAssassin Pro. I've heard the Mac OS X’s “Mail” program has effective spam filters, but I don’t use it — I just point Eudora at my FreeBSD box, which runs SpamAssassin.
If we ever get a better answer, I’ll let you know. I think political is our only hope, but enough disagree with me that it’ll be a long time before we test that.
:0
* ? /usr/bin/fgrep -i -q -f $HOME/.procmail/killfile
/dev/null
Yeah, it is simple — but sometimes, it is the simple things in life that give us such joy.
Well, no. I'll admit there are days I’ve lovingingly looked at the Burleigh & Stronginthearm Mark 47 repeating LART when someone has (again) tried to run cheap labels through the printer/copier and basically glued the mechanism shut. But, my friend, you need to check your attitude at the door. I’ve news for you.
Companies don’t want to hire netadmins and sysadmins. They do, because they have to, but we make exactly zero dollars for the company, and we cost them a considerable amount. On a strict dollar basis, we're a waste. So, why do they hire us?
Because, if we’re good at our jobs, we make it easier for those who actually bring in revenue to do so. We’re not a revenue generator, we’re a revenue multiplier. And, if all you can do is hate your users, you’re not a very large revenue multiplier. And, suddenly, you’re not working there anymore.
So, leave the LART on the wall, and go fix the laser printer. And, realize, that when you get the laser back online fast, and they can get that document into the mail, and they get the contract, they'll remember you at review time.
Okay.
I was the network administrator at Physicians’ Edge, Inc., a healthcare information provider. Alas, though we exploded late, we joined the dot.bomb on October 31, 2002. So, right now, I’m working hard at finding a new job.
If you are looking at this web page because of my résumé, you’ll find all the electronic versions over here.
If you haven’t seen my résumé, and your looking for a competent netadmin or sysadmin who keeps the machines running and understands that, alone, he adds nothing to the value of the company, unless he can keep the network up so other people can be productive, please, take a look.
What I do — I build, maintain and upgrade networks. I’m fluent in Windows (most versions), Macintosh (all versions, but there isn’t that many of them) and UNIX (concentrating mainly on FreeBSD and AIX, but I've done quite a bit with various Linux distributions and some HP/UX. I’ve only briefly played with SunOS (yes, before Solaris, alas) and SCO, but I learn fast.) I’m also good at securing them, and keeping them secured, and logging, so I can prove that they are secure.
As a hobby, I help run various Science Fiction conventions. The hard part is explaining why I think doing all this extra work is fun, but, honestly, it is. Some of them are very small, some of them are much larger.
I hike, quite a bit. I do some photography (and need to do more.) I like really good beer. And, finally, I’m fond of standard compliant HTML.
You can reach me by email, at eriko@mvp.net. I’d worry about spammers harvesting that mailto: link, but SpamAssassin works well.