Looking for October presenters for PLUGdev

Thu Sep 30 00:29:02 MST 2010

James,

Point taken, I hope you didn't take that as a personal message towards you.
I just have the fun little habit of typing what immediately comes to mind
and pushing 'send' too fast. I must say I enjoy your posts, James.

Oh and when you mentioned you were mixing MS Office products with 'anything'
I cringed. I once had to populate a MS Excel spreadsheet with 1000's of
products, descriptions, prices, images, image_thumbnails, it took weeks.
Then we had to make a macro to kick it all out in a csv file so we could
read it into a custom program to make it an acceptable format for x-cart.
When you mentioned that I was right back in the thick of those long,
horrifying spreadsheets. It went like this:

data entry > Excel > Run Macro > products.csv > then open custom program
import into Access. Then run a query over it to remove unrecognizable
characters and other weirdness I vaguely recall. Finally, we imported it the
x-cart admin area and it would fail because of one little thing like a
trademark or something then it would be on the sight and then manage the
changes to the product on the x-cart admin site.

I quit that job before I went postal.

-Mike

 Mike

>
> I'm a Civil Engineer and spend much of my day buried in AutoCAD drawings,
> writing engineering reports in MS Word, analyzing projects using MS project,
> We run macros and calculations in Excel and convert things back and of forth
> between AutoCAD and MS Office products by importing and exporting things
> through XML.  I am also building the company intranet among other things.
>
> I will always have a CAD workstation running Windows, AutoCAD and MS office
> and other higher end software on my desk at work.  So I understand.  I have
> switched to Linux at home because I cannot afford to maintain all of the
> computers in my home with Windows products.  I am counting on Linux to fill
> the need at home and to build a web development environment at home were I
> do most of my intranet development.
>
> Although I have some experience professionally doing IT with some of the
> companies I have worked for, it has never been my primary job.  When I turn
> on my computer it is to develop web pages and dynamic content.  My family
> will use their systems to surf the web, right home work reports, do basic
> accounting, listen to or watch media content and doodle.
>
> With this perspective on my use and needs I hope that it becomes a little
> more understandable that I don't plan on trying to know how to tweak Linux
> to run on 30,000 blade servers in a data center, or to build  and maintain
> high end load balanced virtual servers or an enterprise level LAN or WAN.  I
> want to know enough about Linux to configure a moderately basic LAN at home
> with decent security for it.  That is the first real milestone.  After 3
> months of pouring through books and researching the net I still cannot tell
> you if my file permission is really talking to Samba correctly or if I have
> set up the file mount points with the right settings.  (Drupal was having
> file access issues on a test install just the other night).
>
> What is my point?  I am not your average computer user but the average ones
> would have been scared off by know.  And they aren't going to go pay to go
> school to learn an OS unless they are planning to go into IT.  Because
> frankly they aren't in to computers to learn OS's.  Case in point:  AutoCAD
> (basic) has more than 4,000 commands  Civil3D has double that and runs on
> top of a GIS graphical engine tied to a database structure the rivals
> an Oracle database engine.  To be competent in Civil Engineering and to
> build engineering models with that one application will take 6 years minimum
> (that does not include the engineering degree or becoming licensed)  That is
> a total of ten years of a person's life devoted to learning a highly
> technical field and use one program.
> Because although you are technically correct about Linux vs Windows vs OSX,
> human beings hate change, and it is our nature to judge negatively the
> things we don't understand, regardless of the accuracy of our assessment.>
> > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Mike Hoy <mhoy06 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm very grateful for PLUG. Dennis and Der.Hans and Preston (ASULug) are
> the ones that really got me going on it. I actually make my living with
> Linux 100% now. PLUG has gotten me over that initial phase and that 'initial
> phase' what I wanted to point out.
> >> I think there is harm anytime we make a big deal out of things or when
> we make a novelty out of them. Not everything is that important. It's just
> code that runs hardware afterall. You really want access to the disk and
> other resources right? Well both OS's can do that much so one can't be that
> much worse than the other.
> >> When I use Windows I use Windows and when I run Linux I use Linux. I no
> longer get excited when I boot into debian or whatever and depressed when I
> feel like I am forced to use Windows. It's just how my computer rolls.
> >> Let some time pass, absorb what you can and incorporate it into your
> life. You won't escape Windows most likely, so why try? Just use what you
> want. The right tool for the right job. I will go so far as to say this: I
> prefer to use Linux for everything except gaming. And I don't give credit to
> windows or blame for that. Not everything needs to be 'good' or 'bad'. I
> think we tend to get a little too excited about the divide between the two
> camps.
> >> But then again a lot of what I'm talking about is just who I am as a
> person.
> >> Just wanted to pass on my experience over the last years.
> >> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Phillip Waclawski <
> waclawski at mesacc.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I can understand that all too well, I remember when I started out with
> Linux, and especially vi, I spent an hour trying to remove all the "~" that
> vi had put in there ;)
> >>>
> >>> Course, in addition to the PLUG, which is a great source of information
> (wish I could make more of the meetings, but I teach until 10pm at night
> M-Th), there are classes out there that cover that material. At Mesa
> Community College (and others ;)  we teach CIS126DL which is intro to the
> Linux OS, and covers much of that material. I teach it at MCC, along with
> Der Hans, Dennis Kibbe as well.  Let me know if you have any additional
> questions,
> >>> Phil Waclawski
> >>>
> >>> ________________________________
> >>> From: "James Dugger" <james.dugger at gmail.com>
> >>> To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> >
> >>> Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 6:21:41 PM
> >>> Subject: Re: Looking for October presenters for PLUGdev
> >>>
> >>> I am new to the group and to linux and thought I would give a newbie's
> opinion here.  I am not concerned right now about kernel issues (directly) I
> am trying to resolve basic fundamental issues.  Things like file and
> directory permissions, configuring your system for network connection (i.e.
> network addressing, setting up your domain, hostnames, nameserver resoltuon)
> >>>
> >>> While I know that any one of these can get very very complex, even just
> the first few steps have been pretty huge.  But I want to learn.  There is
> only so much you can learn in a linux forum depending almost entirely on the
> disposition of would-be experts and how they can communicate.
> >>>
> >>> My perspective is that even though I have worked in a highly technical
> field as a power user in Windows it is obvious pretty quickly when making
> decisions to configure even the smallest of home network systems that I have
> relied heavily on Microsoft to help me configure things.
> >>>
> >>> Consider that most homes in the US have more than 1 computer and many
> have more than 2.  While just about anyone can download Ubuntu or (other
> distro) follow instructions and have a system up and running in 1/2 hour the
> minute they have to network 2 or more computers life just got way more
> complicated.  In today's world were every home may have some sort of
> network, the amount of things I have had to learn and do to network my home
> systems would make Linux a deal breaker for many people.
> >>>
> >>> The frustration is that there is no place to go to get a general
> overview of what needs to be configured, and how to do it.  I know there is
> no one answer, but there are best practices and they are going to differ
> depending on the need.
> >>>
> >>> I have been "mapping net work drives" in Windows for 15 years and never
> new until 3 months ago what SMB/CIFS was or Samba, or NFS,  Having to
> understand Samba alone just to get Linux/Unix to talk to Windows or MAC can
> cause many to run screaming back to $MS with there wallets open.
> >>>
> >>> Maybe there needs to be a PLUG beginners group or a CONFIGFEST if this
> is too braud to tackle in presentations.  But after the last 3 months of
> trial and error configuration problems in my network at home I would eagerly
> sit through a 4 hour hands on well prepared discussion on file server
> configurations with SMB/CIFS and understanding how to get smb.conf and fstab
> and file permissions to work together.
> >>>
> >>> Sorry of the length.  $MS is an addiction I am trying to beat everyday.
> >>>
> >>> James
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Mike Hoy
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ---------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > James
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------
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>
>
>
> --
> Mike Hoy
>
>
>
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