To clear your DNS cache on Mac OS X, open a terminal and type:


lookupd -flushcache


This can come in kinda handy if your a server administrator and are moving sites all over the internet and changing DNS on the root servers. Despite all of my experience, I was literally on the edge tonight trying to figure out why some sites weren’t resolving even though DNSstuff was pointing to the new server and running dig on the domain name showed the new ip as well. But in a browser, it would resolve to the old one. Clearing my browser cache, closing them and even rebooting did not help. Finally I got smart, logged into a server I have access to in a London datacenter and when I ran a ping on the domain, it resolved to the new ip.

Ran the command above and voila! I had this problem a long time ago and figure OS X must hang on it’s DNS cache for 12 hours. Now I just have a cron that runs that command every 30 minues.

Job: Project Manager for a large wireless comapny in Bellevue, WA
Compensation: $65-80 per hour depending on experience and availability
Hours: 8-5 PST

Description: I won’t put this here because I’m considering a different position with this company after my current gig is up at the end of Nov.

Minimum Requirements:
(text emphasis added by me but otherwise unchanged)

1) MS Office Tools (Word, Excel, Project, PowerPoint, Visio)
2) Sound understanding of infrastructure and software development project lifecycles within company.
3) Ability to effectively manage time, prioritize work, multi-task across many assignments with no direction.
4) Proven experience in producing results with varying requirements and ambiguous directives.
5) Strong communication skills, both written and oral.

I literally laughed myself out of my chair at home after bullet number 4. Decent pay, but no friggin’ way. Talk about a recipe for failure. I couldn’t believe they actually put that in the job description but at least management is being honest. There is no way to win in that job. I’ve been a project manager and managed them and let me tell ya, they are really there only for blame. If a project goes well, the executives never hear about it genrerally don’t care. If the project fails, it’s the project manager’s fault and the manager is spared.

This might have been a slightly more accurate description:

Candidate will manage a highly technical project of which he or she knows nothing about. The candidate will be responsible for, yet have no requisite authority of a group of engineers who do not understand said project either. Candidate will be humiliated on weekly conference calls and meetings with executives who do not understand said project. Upon failing to deliver the unreasonable, under funded and vague deliverables in a timely fashion, the candidate agrees to take all blame for failure.

Thanks but no thanks dear large wireless carrier based in Germany. That’s a damn funny job description though!

How good are you at U.S. Geography? I did scockingly bad on this one but accidentally released the mouse button way to early when dragging Florida down to it’s spot (I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be west of Minnesota, eh?). I also went to get a soda out of the machine during the middle of this game so it shouldn’t take you longer than 180 seconds.

Try it yourself at http://www.addictinggames.com/50states.html

Though I’m a hardcore geek, there’s always something I have to lookup or learn when it comes to new techologies. Usually, this means a trip to Borders Books or some serious googling before I can grasp the subject and there’s not always time for that. I coworker today showed me Techtionary, a site dedicated to short but to the point tutorials on everything tech. To test it’s breadth, I searched for SS7 (old but pretty much only used in proprietary telephony networks) and found:

Check it out at http://www.techtionary.com
The interface is written entirely in Flash and could use some work but it’s not bad, especially when trying to teach your non-techie friends in a hurry. Most of the information is very high level but a good place to get started on a topic of interest. This would also be a resource for technical project managers who are managing projects they know nothing about ;)

Firefox 2 was released today (not yesterday as reported by most of the tech news sites). Get it for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (I’m having a problem compiling it on my Gentoo Linux box though).

Notable Improvements that I think you’ll notice:
1) Page rendering speed (I actually noticed)

2) Visual Refresh: Firefox 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.

3) Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button. Power users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll back and forth between their tabs. The History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.

4) Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash. This is already a feature of Opera but is incredibly annoying at work as it tries ot authenticate 15 pages at once upon startup.

5) Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms (like this one) without having to use a separate application.