More yelling

November 8, 2004 D. H. McKee

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More getting yelled at by my customer. This time, they were on handsfree, with a loud IBM server in the background. They would say something and I couldn’t hear, so I’d repeat my question, and they’d yell (angrily) at me. To make matters worse, they’d yell leading questions at me, in a mode similar to how partisan reporters grill presidential candidates: “So you’re saying that if we disconnect the console it won’t work?”
From what I can tell, here’s what went down. Dude boots up three servers. They are all on a remote command console, so no keyboards or monitors are connected — only dial-in/terminal connections are possible. These servers are humming along happily, and dude decides to check one to make sure it’s OK, so he connects a keyboard/monitor, and it’s “apparently” hung at a FreeBSD boot prompt — boot -Dh — which is technically correct behaviour. Since the machines are on a console, the only thing the monitor should see is the prompt. All other output is going to the console. All other control is *also* going to the console instead of the keyboard. Dude gets freaked out by this and hard reboots all three servers (without unmounting any of the hard drives). Now the -Dh prompt is still showing on the monitor, and the consoles are hung at an fsck prompt. So he reboots again, 3-6 more times. Then he calls me up and yells at me for a while.

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About This Site

As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

Writers often treat the bio like it’s an interview or something. Maybe like they’re having a conversation with you, the reader. While it may work sometimes, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

I’m like those writers, and I’m talking to you directly, unlike the common way to do a bio. You should see my About page. It makes sense to me, since this is a bit which describes my blog’s website. When I get famous enough that I don’t have time to talk to you, I’ll have an intern write everything in 3rd person. Until then, you get to talk to me.

Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.