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ghamrick's comments

ghamrick | 8 years ago | on: Why does man print “gimme gimme gimme” at 00:30?

I worked on an (now obscure) OS named CTOS back in the 80's. In an error message file, the error message that would be delivered in the unlikely event that the correct error message could not be found was "Pressed Rat and Warthog closed down their shop". This was an even more obscure reference to a Cream song that Ginger Baker sang lead on

ghamrick | 9 years ago | on: Digging in the Trash

if they know you. I recently visited the town my dad grew up in, deep in the bowels of WV. Every single person there, at the stores, restaurants and gas stations said to me "You're not from around here, are you?" When I told them my name there was some modicum of welcome. If I had just been a regular tourist I would have just left because of the rudeness

ghamrick | 9 years ago | on: Orphaned by America's opioid epidemic

I question the ethical culpability of big pharma. Taken from the article "Drug companies had bombarded West Virginia’s rural towns with record numbers of narcotics, according to court records: 300,000 tablets of hydrocodone to the mom-and-pop pharmacy in the town of War, population 808; half a million oxycodone pills to Kermit, population 400. During a five-year period ending in 2013, a single drug company had shipped more than 60 million doses of hydrocodone into a state with fewer than 1 million working-age adults."

I would prefer to use the term 'criminal liability' but I suspect there is none for this crime

edit - IANAL - to be defined as a crime it would have to violate a criminal law, and while this is ethically odious, it is most probably not criminal

ghamrick | 9 years ago | on: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

I've worked most of my career in cube farm configurations and had little reason to complain. At my last job of 15 years, the 26 yr old newly appointed manager announced that we were moving to 'an open, war room atmosphere'. Exit imminent, fortunately I ended up working from home. Privacy, natural light, open ended schedule to be productive. Best thing to ever happen to me

ghamrick | 9 years ago | on: Deconstructing the DAO Attack: A Brief Code Tour

I don't participate in virtual currencies because I am not smart enough to understand all the nuances, or at least I don't take the time to try and understand them. Plus, I don't have money to throw away. However I find the discussions about the DAO fascinating because of the intersection of technology, law, ethics, morality and government.

ghamrick | 10 years ago | on: Silicon Valley Asks Mostly for Developers with Degrees

Formally uneducated developer here. Due to the circumstances of my youth (foster homes, boys homes), I did the usual service level jobs (construction, restaurants) until I stumbled into a data entry job back in the day and managed to leverage myself as a unix sysadmin, then C, perl, Java dev with some fairly prestigious companies. Pretty much all self taught. Despite my adverse origins, I managed to not freak out or commit a felony. That being said, I do think I would be a better developer if I had access to some formal education, and I think that the bar is higher today and it's not as easy to sneak your way in like I did.

ghamrick | 10 years ago | on: An administrator accidentally deleted the production database

In prehistoric times on an OS named CTOS, a distributed client/server OS, I was charged with making tape backups of user's local workstations, IVOLing (formatting) the disk, and restoring from tape. The contract specced that 2 tape backups were to be made, but of course in the interest of expediency, I only made one. And then I encountered the user's tape that wouldn't restore. I remember thinking that losing a user's data is the biggest crime a sysadmin can possibly commit, and it taught me a great lesson on the value of backups and their integrity. Fortunately, I swapped out tape drives like a mad man until one managed to restore the tape.
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