"Hey, I just tried to pkill a service and I got disconnected from the machine and now I can't reconnect." a co-worker just said.
"What'd you kill?" Jim asked.
"Um... oh, I used -v instead of -f. What does -v do?"
PGREP(1) Linux User’s Manual PGREP(1)
NAME
pgrep, pkill - look up or signal processes based on name and other
attributes
...
DESCRIPTION
...
pkill will send the specified signal (by default SIGTERM) to each
process instead of listing them on stdout.
OPTIONS
...
-v Negates the matching.
OH. Worst, option, ever. To be fair, I suspect that that option exists because pkill is probably just a thin wrapper on pgrep. But still.
It probably didn't help matters that he ran pkill via sudo.
Joel on Software - Bionic Office
A9 just moved to a new office with a lot of interesting angles, and I was reminded of this article about a neat looking office space.
Published on Wednesday March 16, 2005 .
Yesterday, A9 launched OpenSearch, which I'm incredibly excited about. DeWitt already summed up the possibilities this has for exposing "the long tail of search," and I couldn't agree more.
What does this mean for you as a search consumer? Well, if you use A9.com (or any other future OpenSearch aggregator), you can now simultaneously query 56 search services (and counting) with one search.
Standard Issue Disclaimer: I work for A9. Speaking of which, we're hiring.
Published on Monday February 7, 2005 .
"You didn't tell me this thing gets spam at four in the morning," I told my co-worker as I was giving him the pager. "Is that just something you let people be surprised by their first week on call?"
Apparently, it was news to him, and at lunch, another team was also complaining about a recent deluge of spam on their pager. Spam sucks a lot more when 1. it wakes you up at 4 am, and 2. you can't ignore it and you can't turn the phone off because it might be a work call. I guess I could have figured out how to set it up so it only rings for known text messages, but I couldn't figure out how to use that phone at all, and now it's not my problem. At least, not for another two weeks.
So is anyone else have text message / "Net alert" spam problems? These are Nextel phones. My personal phone is AT&T Cingular, and I haven't had any problems near as bad as I had with that work phone.
Published on Thursday October 2, 2003 .
The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
Ah, now this makes me miss being unemployed already. Last spring was really pretty damn awesome, in retrospect.
I cleaned out my box at ResComp yesterday, and except for a few niggling pieces of documentation I need to write, that's pretty much that. I start my new job on Monday, July 7th.
It's a good thing the BART to Caltrain connection at Millbrae is open now, because instead of a 2 hour trip to San Mateo, with 3 transfers, it'll only be a 1.5 hour trip with ... 3 transfers (BART to BART to Caltrain, instead of BART to Muni to Caltrain -- there's no Richmond/Millbrae BART train). I'll have to leave by 8:15 to get there by 10. But that'll only be for the first week or so... until I get a car. Oh god.
(By the way, if anyone has any car suggestions/advice, I'd be happy to hear it. I'll probably be getting a new car, unless I come across some incredible used deal.)
And of course, still no DSL at home. New target date is July 8... more than a month after we were supposed to get it in the first place.
Published on Thursday June 19, 2003 .
As a person who may soon have the option of commuting somewhere where CalTrain would be useful, I admit I'm excited by the new Millbrae BART station (Or here's CalTrain's version of the story) that opens this weekend. Being able to transfer directly from BART to CalTrain will be a big deal going both ways, and this article discusses why it'll be more significant than the SFO connection that's part of the same package. Now that BART connects to CalTrain on the Peninsula, there's really no reason for them to continue expansion there.
By the way, still no (good) net at home, and I'm going out of town this weekend. Updates will continue to be ... nonexistent.
Published on Thursday February 27, 2003 .
As April draws closer, I've been worrying more and more about finding a job. Accordingly, I've been working on my resume and sending out feelers, one of which resulted in this quote:
"I'm not sure if I want to work for someone who wants my resume as a .doc."
-- me
Published on Saturday January 4, 2003 .
I'm back in Berkeley, thanks to a project due Monday at work. Well, at least I got most of the project done today.
Benjy: Oh heaven help my soul, I have to go log into Windows.
Stealth Josette: oh god no
Benjy: Stupid IE compatability testing. Where are my minions to delegate this sort of thing to?
To be fair, my "delegating" usually only consists of sending a Windows-using co-worker a URL on IM and asking them if it looks alright. It's not like I'm asking them to get up instead of me or anything.
Published on Tuesday August 6, 2002 .
So at work, I've been doing a lot of work with Mac OS X's NetInfo database. In particular, I'm generating password and group files to import into the database via the niload command. Since I wanted "old" accounts to be deleted from my OS X clients, I looked at man niload, and found the following option:
-d: Delete entries which are in the directory, but not in the input.
Exactly what I wanted, right?
Heh, after I spent an hour tonight beating my head against `niload -d` not deleting entries that weren't in the input, I absent mindedly typed `niload --help,` and here's what I saw (emphasis mine):
-d: delete (override) existing entries from NetInfo when the input contains a duplicate name
-m: merge new values into NetInfo when the input contains a duplicate name
Note: only one of -d or -m may be used. If neither is given, existing entries in NetInfo will be unchanged if there are duplicate names in the input
Gah! Inconsistent documentation is the bestest! So this means that I've got to iterate through each entry currently in the NetInfo database, and if that entry isn't in the in the input (and isn't some form of "local" account), then use `niutil destroy ...,` which makes me sad.
YAFHW = Yet Another Hour Wasted.
Published on Wednesday June 26, 2002 .
Today I renamed my work notebook from "triage" to "bsii's virtual memory," because it's where I put things I can't think about immediately.
So after my initial decision to pass up that great deal on that PowerMac G4 bundle, I did a lot of questioning of my decision. A lot of my co-workers were going in on the deal, and I tried to figure out how I could afford it and afford Whistler... But in the end, I came back to my decision that it wasn't worth cleaning out my bank account for because I didn't really need the computer.
But then, this afternoon, I got to my office and found an email me telling me that I hadn't picked up my January paycheck.
"That's impossible," I thought to myself. "There's no way I could have as much in my account as I do if I'd missed a paycheck..."
So I wandered over to payroll, and there was my January paycheck. And I went back to my office and looked at my bank account, and sure enough, I hadn't deposited a paycheck in February.
The check by itself was for more than enough to cover the PowerMac bundle. Yay!
Except, they already sold out of the PowerMac bundles. D'oh!