You do understand the definition of "the boss" right? As long as it is legal and I am being paid then I really can't complain. However if my role were to devolve into a janitor or something completely off then you better believe I would look for new work.

I think the original analogy is really pretty close to accurate, however with the distinction being that he has window washer on the corner on contract to perform "windscreen cleaning services" at which point he pulls up to the corner and the window washer points out the dirty windscreen and offers to clean it for $10.

As a Senior Systems Administrator, he can expect to do a little bit of code slinging as well, especially considering that they are a "Small Trade College". Additionally it sounds as if the OP is a W2 employee, which means that his job is whatever his manager says it is. This is true as long as he is not a contractor with a defined SoW (Statement of Work). If he has a SoW and this is not in it, then he can sell away, but it doesn't sound like they have the money to buy it.

For the most part I agree with the parent, though I will be more blunt (though not necessarily short-winded).

You took it upon yourself to develop *something* which makes your (and your team's) job easier. However the only way I see you getting paid for this developed application is so effective that it actually renders you redundant, if it does (and I were in charge) I would not pay more than .5x your salary for the "application" however realistically probably not more than 1K or so, since realistically you can't provide a proper support structure so they would be buying it as/is. If it renders you and your entire team redundant then maybe it would be worth closer to 1x your salary (again lack of a proper support structure really kills the deal at this price point)...

Now bottom line... You did this for a reason, you got something out of it, be it knowledge or what-have-you. Also keep in mind that unless you have a contract which is VERY clear on who owns what property your state might already have laws which sell out your work-product regardless of whose time it was produced on. Even if your state isn't one where they can claim your after-hours work product, if they wanted to make a play for it then you would have to hire a lawyer to prove that (1) you created it without company resources (2) you created it on personal time (3) you had a personal reason for creating it. The third one might be hard to make the case for since it makes your PROFESSIONAL life much easier which would be a professional reason. Either way you are already at a disadvantage. They already have a lawyer (although he/she might not be the top of their class), you will have to find one who thinks you have either (1) a case and a little bit of money (2) no case and a ton of money.

So basically as for actual monetary compensation... It is out of the question... Won't happen. That said these are also the kinds of things which show your value to the business and frankly can be used to justify a promotion, assuming one is due and you weren't being a total schlub at work while developing this application in your "off-time".

Now in the future... If you are developing an application for work in your personal time. Please have a friend slap you. If the application is for work then either know you are working for free or clock the hours worked, this way they can object immediately if they don't want you working on the application in question.

Finally... When did "Senior Systems Administration" stop including at least a smidgen of development?

The premise here is that somehow you will be happier with the job if it were a government job in a war zone. The US Government is actually the most depressing places I have ever worked (I actually had a pretty _cool_ job). With the exception of being in the military, it was not _the most_ depressing places. Malaise will not be resolved by a switch to the government, I would say it would get worse... Now if you simply want to do it for the money then more power to you, but make sure you know why you are doing it...

-matt

I agree with what you have said, however with one minor caveat...

Based on this - "I assumed the position of programmer and sole IT personnel at a thriving e-commerce company." I am assuming...
1) He says he "assumed" the position which would imply that he worked elsewhere in the company and was made the de-facto IT person based on having an Android phone or a PS3 or whatever other metrics they decided to use. I am going to give the Poster the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is not in over his head.
2) If the company is a thriving e-commerce company, which means that they make their money off of this e-commerce platform. Which should mean they are wanting to protect the investment that they have already made.

Now the problem here is that there are all kinds of red flags for doing things on the cheap, which is why you are finding all of these band-aids. If the company is thriving they should have no problem hiring a second person. Regardless of your level of skill mistakes will be made and these can be reduced if you have a sounding board. Someone to logic check things with.
As for actually identifying and making changes the parent has that part spot on. I am just concerned that may not be effective in this organization.

In my experience, I have found more incompetence in folks who were _taught_ than with folks who were _self taught_. Now obviously there are people who use the _self taught_ as an explanation as to why their resume looks like they belong in front of a fry basket. However if someone is legitimately _self taught_ then it means that 1) they probably love what they are doing 2) they have a higher aptitude for learning 3) they won't default to the easiest and/or quickest fix - they will generally find the best fix. These are all fantastic qualities which will reap benefits for the company which hires them. Also keep in mind _self taught_ doesn't always mean no schooling, after all what do you actually learn in a comp sci program which is applicable 10 years down the road (other than the maths and what not) tech changes and if you cannot change with it you are done (or management).

As for this...

You can gauge an individuals ability to learn in an interview, it is a cop out to say that just because someone received some sort of degree that they can learn through a 2 week course - it could have taken 8 years at a full load to get that 4 year degree, the paper makes no distinction. From a business perspective why pay for courses when the individual will learn the same or more with a book and/or community involvement. I have learned far more by getting drunk with really smart people than by taking any courses.

-matt

Don't take my subject as an indication that you do not have any experience. I am merely stating that you _no longer_ have any experience (or provable at least - since you said most of your projects have come offline). Since you have some decent LAMP experience I would say that you could go with a large hosting company. Rackspace comes to mind. They are paying relocation to San Antonio for Linux Administrators, and they have a heavy emphasis on Apache MySQL. This can give you a few years to get some experience on paper. Then you can start looking for something fun. Of course the other option would be to continue doing your own thing, but either way you will need a portfolio in order to win customers.

I do not work for Rackspace, but I did recently interview with them.

-matt

That article simply documents the theories around the study of ice cores. However considering that we have no way to reproduce the results in a controlled environment (read: manufacture ice cores where the variables are known, so that we can decipher the results) the theory of these markers that they look for in ice cores cannot be proven. Which of course just reinforces my point, theories are not fact until they are proven definitively (which without the ability to reproduce in a controlled environment won't be possible). This theory may be true but until it is proven such we should not treat it as fact, that is how science is supposed to work, if we divorce ourselves from this rule than we are operating within the confines of a religion.

How exactly do ice cores tell us the specific temperature and/or the rate of temperature change at any given point in time? I don't suppose they have little ancient thermometers frozen in them (hmm not sure that would work either)...

This is all conjecture, but the bottom line is that climate change is real. Every day the climate changes sometimes by a little sometimes by a lot (winter vs summer). In addition to this there could be additional broader scale changes that are taking place, which may or may not be caused by the actions of humans (or bovine flatulence). Either way the only set of data that is conclusive is that which was recorded by humans in the present tense (in other words as long as they have been measuring and documenting the weather) any ice core samples must be regarded as less than factual (not that they are not factual it is just based on a partial understanding).

Now either way if it is real or not we all have a responsibility to take care of that which is ours to ensure that it is available for our children, our children's children, and on and on. This part of it is not debatable. So lets all just do that. This doesn't require sweeping policy decisions. This simply requires that you don't dump irresponsibly, you do recycle, and you don't buy wastefully. If everyone did these three things then we wouldn't have to worry about these broader policy decisions (this would of course have a negative impact on the economy so you must be prepared for that - since our economy is based on people buying and throwing away stuff that they cannot afford in the first place). I think that environmentalism can be a good thing, it has just been co-opted by hypocrites the likes of Gore and ELF/ALF which see themselves as the exception and don't realize that they are only hurting their cause.

I personally don't use Red Hat for my hypervisors, but I have not seen this issue in my environments. Currently I run them on Ubuntu 11.04, no real plans to take them to 11.10 since they are more than stable now, and we manage them with libvirt directly. We have been very happy with KVM for both Linux and Windows. We also would consider RHEV if it didn't require a Windows host and if it could manage non-RedHat hosts.

-matt

Well technically almost no one uses KVM, so you really aren't too far from the truth on almost NO ONE using KVM for Windows (since almost no one uses KVM to begin with, and to use it requires a familiarity with Linux). That said, the only issues I have run into with our production and test stacks (over the past year) is with networking dropping out on the Windows guests if they get over burdened. This was resolved by the latest version of the VirtIO drivers, also there were some timing issues with Domain Controllers, but those are sorted with a client-side command.

-matt

Not sure what you mean by this... Linux-KVM works fantastic with Windows Guests. I haven't had the need to test the BSD's on it but I can't see why it wouldn't work. I am of course assuming that you are talking about guest support, since it really doesn't matter what a hypervisor runs when you are talking about type 1 hypervisors.

Now fact of the matter is that VMWare does have a proven history, and that history is only compounded by their acquisition into EMC. Both of those companies are horrendously expensive, and frankly abuse their customers with the constant licensing changes. Frankly Microsoft at least has the licensing portion of their hypervisor free, and honestly they are closing the gap when it comes to features and performance. Though they still can't properly support Linux Guests, which is a shame.

-matt

Assuming you are using this at home... You ought to be able to get away with the family plan, which lets you backup unlimited data from "every computer in your house" for $6/month. Though you could also look at using ZFS send and receive to another ZFS box.

-matt

Parent and GP are correct, I think you are looking at this all wrong.

Now I personally use a Solaris 11 Express box at home for my storage needs, you can serve iSCSI, FC, CIFS, NFS, whatever you need. I plan on switching to OpenIndiana when that is released, combine this with Crashplan (as a cloud backup provider with Solaris binaries) or a form of local offsite backups then you shouldn't ever have an issue with total data loss again.

I have documented a lot around ZFS and KVM on http://blog.allanglesit.com./ -matt

I recommend pfSense 2.0 RC3 to be specific. It has a new ability to use Multiple WANs, you can even weight them based on which has a better connectivity and balance traffic over both. Giving you load balancing and failover between both connections.