Oct
23
*nix command of the day
Filed under technical at 8:03 pm | 3 Comments
I’m taking a few days of training this week for a specific suite of products. During class today I learned about a really simple command: pgrep. It lets you grep through running processes based on numerous attributes. For years I’ve always done something like ps auxww | grep foo when all I really needed was pgrep foo. Why didn’t anyone ever enlighten me? Think of how many fewer characters I could have typed in my lifetime …
No, it’s not earth-shattering, and it’s not like I was using cat file.txt | wc -l rather than wc -l file.txt. (Now that would be embarrassing.) Still, it’s refreshing every now and then to learn simpler ways to do things.
Oct
21
in the minority
Filed under sports at 8:18 pm | Leave a Comment
The Wolverines had a Big Ten game today. I’ve been able to see each game since moving because they’ve been nationally 
televised. Today, however, I’m in the 30% of the country that didn’t get to see the game. Notice that even Alan could have watched the game from Hawaii. (I trust he made a point to do so.) Instead, I had to stream the radio broadcast online, which is a good second option with Frank Beckmann and Jim Brandstatter calling the plays.
Rachel and I had a night on the town (thanks to some reciprocal baby sitting from Brad and Lori) so I didn’t hear the end of the game. Thankfully I was able to get the results from a trusty source back in MI soon after the game.
Oct
21
Earlier this week I was assigned my own cubicle at work. From everything I’ve gathered, that means things were fast-tracked. I’m enjoying learning about this new work culture. 
For those of you playing along at home, here’s how it breaks down:
- My company promptly submitted the request to get me setup with all the stuff a new employee needs 38 business days prior to my actual start date (not including federal holidays, mind you).
- I received a cubicle and phone a mere 48 business days after the request (again, not including federal holidays). That’s only 10 actual days of work without my own space, and is far sooner than those in the know anticipated. I was pleased.
Until I had my own space to work I was fortunate enough to be the understudy of a generous soul who carved out some space in his cube for me. Things went well enough that we never had to draw a line down the middle to define territories. I’m sure productivity was higher than usual, too.
Stay tuned for part two wherein I’ll give an update once I receive an email address, network login, and computer. (That is all helping me ease into things rather than being thrown to the wolves with new projects too quickly.)
It’s fun to joke about, but I really am enjoying work thus far. The people have been great, the environment fascinating, and the technical aspect challenging.