[SGVLUG] Upcoming stuff (was introduction)

[James Neff]

Emerson, Tom wrote:

>  
>
>>In stead of becoming a Son of Neptune, you 
>>become a Son of Tux.  The original can feature such rough 
>>play as being shaved with a sharpened barrel-hoop with tar 
>>for shaving cream and being towed on a line behind the 
>>ship--is that elaborate and embarrassing enough for you, or do 
>>you desire more liklihood of bodily harm? :-)
>>    
>>
>
>Hmmm... A true test of tux-worthiness would be to remove Microsoft
>Windows from a "hardened" system and replace it with Linux, but that
>could lead to bodily harm of the onlookers more than anything else...
>
>We could, however, place him up on the podium as the main speaker for
>the evening -- nothing gets more elaborate [and potentially
>embarrassing] than that around here, however I recall he said something
>about being (conveniently) "out of the area" -- oh, wait, Dustin: you
>have experience setting up h.243 or whatever it's called, right?  Maybe
>we could video-conference him in as the speaker...
>
>My point here being that I don't think we have a /confirmed/ speaker for
>this month -- anyone care to contradict me? [please!!!]  And while I'm
>at it, who is up for next month?
>
>
>  
>

Well, if I had a choice between being shaved and tarred, or speaking in
front of a group, I'd take the first option.

Unfortunetly I havn't done anything cool with linux in quite a while. 
All I do now with Linux is basically systems administration for an
application that someone else manages. 

Back in the day, the first cool thing I ever did was set up a Hylafax
server.  I had it set up so that a windows user would print an invoice
from the order management system.  The print driver was Adobe PS and the
device was a printer set up on my linux box.  When the file would be
printed to the linux box, I set up the queue to run a script that used
Hylafax to send the PS file, and then convert it using ghost script to a
pdf.  I then moved the pdf file to a home directory where users could
browse using IE (with the adobe reader plug-in).  Thanks to Samba set to
domain security, users could only browse their own faxes.  Hylafax was
set up to send e-mail notifications back to the user if the fax went
through or not.

Now, all this might sound simple, but it was my first real business
problem that I solved using a purely Linux solution.  The problem was we
had customer service people who would waste too much time getting up
from their desk, walking to the printer, walking to the fax machine and
back.  So I saved them a bunch of time.  Management basically considered
IT a necessary evil and wern't willing to spend money on a commercial
fax server.  The other cool thing was I knew nothing about Linux print
queues, Hylafax or how to manage permissions in Samba before I started this.

The kicker is this company called me back 3 years later asking me what
the root password was (because they had gone through 3 IT people since
then) and still using the fax server I set up.  This was a headless box
that sat quietly in the corner.  I put a note on it saying "if you have
problems, turn off, then turn back on, wait 30 seconds".

Ahh, the good old days.

-- 

James Neff
Technology Specialist

Tethys Health Ventures
4 North Park Drive, Suite 203
Hunt Valley, MD  21030

office:  410.771.0692 x103
cell:    443.865.7874

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