Work on System Overlord

On Deep Work

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I recently stumbled upon Azeria’s blog post The Importance of Deep Work & The 30-hour Method For Learning a New Skill, and it seriously struck a chord with me. Over the past year or so, I’ve struggled with a lack of personal satisfaction in my life and my work. I tried various things to address the issue, but could not figure out a root cause until I read her article, and then it clicked with me.

The End of a Chapter

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:59:59 +0000

I'm not usually one for reflective personal blog entries, but some events require a brief mention: today was my last day at KSU, and it was an incredibly surreal day. Though I've known this day was coming for over a month, it is still hard to believe that it got here. In many ways, today felt like any other day: the work was similar, things needed to get done. In other ways, there was an 800 pound gorilla in the room: everyone knew that tomorrow I wouldn't be coming to work. When I finally cleared out my office, the finality of what was going on really hit me.

My Time at KSU

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:24:58 +0000

As you might have seen, I'm leaving my position at Kennesaw State University to take a position as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google. This is something I'm very excited about, but I thought I'd take a look back at my time at KSU as I approach the end. It's worth mentioning that I'm not leaving KSU because of KSU, but because this is an opportunity I just could not turn down. For the most part, I like my position at KSU, and I really like most of the people that I work with. There's a particular group that's become three of my closest friends and one treasured acquaintance.

1 OS, 2 Servers, 5... days?

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:34:09 +0000

At work, we're switching a number of our LAMP stack applications to be hosted on Ubuntu Server. Because of its increased stability, we generally run the LTS editions, so we're currently on Lucid Lynx (10.04). In this particular case, we're moving our Drupal CMS hosting over from RHEL 5.4 to Ubuntu Server on two new servers to be configured for high availability. Turns out it took 5 days to do what would normally be done in a half a day.

AXIS IP Cameras = Fail

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:42:40 +0000

At work, we've been developing a custom camera recording solution for the past 4 months. Essentially, it's a system to provide a web-based interface to record a number of IP cameras, transcode the videos, and output the videos to a variety of the web applications we use (Moodle, Drupal, etc.) The cameras in question are Axis Q1755 cameras, which are really intended for use as HD security cameras and not in the studio-type environment we have here. (Neither I nor my department was involved in camera selection, and those who were have serious second thoughts.) In any case, these cameras are a continuous source of frustration for us.

Life Changes

david@systemoverlord.com (David Tomaschik) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:23:14 +0000

A couple of updates, since it's been a while since I've posted anything meaningful.

On March 2nd, I will be starting a new job as an IT System Support Specialist III at Kennesaw State University. Typical of a government job, the title is rather meaningless. To be specific, I will be supporting a variety of Linux and Mac OS X servers for the university and the platforms running on them (Drupal, Moodle, and other technologies.) The production servers are RHEL and the development is on CentOS.

Of course, every good turn comes with a down turn.