- Blind-sysadmins - lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Could the DevOps movement be our saviour?
by Andrew Hodgson 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

Hi, Over the last few months I have been working in the UK as a DevOps engineer for a large retail company in the UK. This is my first real DevOps job, but started to get into it before then. I am really excited about the opportunities this could bring to some blind sysadmins who are open enough to change their working practises a bit. Let’s talk about the initial stages I went through. I was given an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account on day 1 to work with some build automation servers. Now, this website is sort of ok for confident screen readers to use, but it’s not efficient. In the DevOps world, that isn’t a problem, because you aren’t really expected to use the website to manage the objects in AWS; you manage everything with the AWS API and plug-ins for various tools such as PowerShell, Linux etc. So now if I want to view AWS instances, I can use PowerShell, or mainly I use Chef’s knife commands to get and manage the instances etc. I can start, stop, deploy and manage instances with a single command. I can also script this if I want. Moving onto configuration management, instead of running lots of GUI tasks or going on a server and running loads of commands, documenting all those steps and configuration into a large document that nobody reads, and is possibly inaccurate, if we use a configuration manager like Chef to do the work for us, then we don’t need to go on the servers at all. Instead of RDPing into a server, configuring IIS, etc., I can write a Chef recipe that will do all this for me, and apply dev practises to this, such as storing the recipe in a version control system, so we all have a definitive knowledge of which is the latest version of the file. Why bother writing a recipe that actually goes through installing IIS, when I can just go and pick up an IIS recipe that someone has already written and is validated by the rest of the Chef community; programmers have been doing this for years. In case anyone thinks that this is too hard, here is an example Chef recipe that sets up a base in IIS for a website: # Cookbook Name:: My-Website # Recipe:: default # Install IIS and the ASP.Net 4.5 module to serve pages. include_recipe 'iis::mod_aspnet45' #Remove the default site as we want our new site to be served from the root. include_recipe 'iis::remove_default_site' # Create the website storage folder. directory 'D:/Websites/MySite do recursive true action :create end #Create application pool for the site. iis_pool 'MySitePool' do runtime_version "4.0" action [:add,:start] end #Create the actual site that runs from the root of the URL. iis_site 'MySite' do path 'D:/Websites/Ranging' application_pool "RangingPool" action [:add,:start] end I know I am only a beginner, and there is a lot of progress to be made certainly in Windows and the DevOps world, but I think people should be really excited about the benefits this technology could offer blind people. Thanks. Andrew.

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Spinrite drive utility
by Troy Hergert 23 Oct '15

23 Oct '15

Has anyone utilized the Spinrite drive check and repair utility? I heard about it from a Security Now podcast and wondered if it has been used by a screen reader user.

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Cisco Net Academy
by Andrew Hodgson 23 Oct '15

23 Oct '15

Hi, Reading the recent tweets that a VI specialist college in the UK has started running the Cisco courses. I emailed them at the beginning of the year enquiring how they worked and whether they were doing anything about the actual exams, and got the usual story that they were doing the academy study but not the full exams. I was intrigued to read the tweets yesterday regarding one of the students winning a paid work placement with Cisco. Now just to be really clear, I couldn’t be more happier for this guy, and I fully believe he deserves it. However, I am now wondering if and how this could benefit other blind people who are looking for jobs in this area, and have done the same courses/tests etc. in the past, and are still looking for employment in the area, or for those people who have failed to get the exams in the past through lack of access. Andrew.

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Spinrite drive utility
by Troy Hergert 22 Oct '15

22 Oct '15

Has anyone utilized the Spinrite drive check and repair utility? I heard about it from a Security Now podcast and wondered if it has been used by a screen reader user.

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A question for those on the list to answer:
by Angel 21 Oct '15

21 Oct '15

If colleges and Universities are finding it difficult, or impossible to meet the demands of advocates for legislative change to make their academic services satisfactory for their challenged students, (see the accompanying link) and if this fact is published for all who care to do so to read. How can we expect potential employers of the blind to assume we blind employees won't present to them an undue burden on their already strained resources. When they could just as easily hire an unchallenged individual to do the same job? Is it any wonder so many of us blind people are unemployed. The potential employer is just overwhelmed by assumed obstacles which may appear to him to be insurmountable. Given a choice between hiring a blind or a sighted candidate, what would provide the incentive for a potential employer to hire a blind employee above one with sight. For whom no particular accommodations would have to be met? https://www.nfbcal.org/pipermail/brl-monitor/2014/000033.html **The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.** Henry Kissinger

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question for the managers ...
by Katherine Moss 21 Oct '15

21 Oct '15

Hey all, Opinions would be great on this ... which is more powerful in hiring decisions in the IT community these days? (Especially in Massachusetts.) I have a college degree, though it's in English, so I highly doubt it was even considered when I got my helpdesk job here. Someone I know who has no college degree, no IT or industry certifications, and he's sitting here getting all the jobs he wants, while meanwhile, I know someone more talented, not to mention, better at what he does, who's been trying for years to get a job, he's got a certification, and not getting callbacks at all, even though he'd be more than qualified for what he's applying for. You think it's the blindness VS sighted battle again? Or do you think it's college VS no college education? (though correct me if I am mistaken, though aren't certifications nearly as powerful and authoritative as college degrees, especially when you've got someone like me working in IT with a college degree in an entirely different field with zero certifications?)

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Update on the PowerEdge T110 ram issue
by Katherine Moss 21 Oct '15

21 Oct '15

Hi all, Just to update you guys. Turns out I've forgotten to give that server all of his firmware updates, so I'll try that and then see what happens.

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Update on the PowerEdge T110 ram issue
by Katherine Moss 21 Oct '15

21 Oct '15

Hi all, Just to update you guys. Turns out I've forgotten to give that server all of his firmware updates, so I'll try that and then see what happens.

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Hangouts and IOS 9
by Jad Wauthier 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Is anyone else experiencing issues running Google Hangouts on IOS 9? --------- Jad wauthier | Problem Solver 512.743.9332 It's all in the perception. Sent from my iPhone

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Hardware refresher: speaking as a blind person
by Katherine Moss 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

Hello all, Just had a rather embarrassing moment yesterday when I attempted to insert some new ram modules into my server and then realized shortly afterward that either, I don't know how the heck to do it anymore, or I'm too skittish to, due to last year's events (had a particular person in my life who thought he knew it all, and for him, teaching me and nurturing my tech interests was not in the cards.) Well, so as blind individuals, how do we insert ram modules properly? (I, or rather my father, added eight gigabytes to the existing four, though now only two slots appear to be filled.) They must not be seated properly, because he, fully sighted, was struggling with it as well. If it helps, the model server I have is a Dell PowerEdge T110, and from what I've heard, that board's a pain in the butt to work with. When working with ram as a blind person, is a motherboard a motherboard? Or are they all different? And not to mention the color codes? (this particular board has black and white slots.)

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