Pither.com

As we're now just over 22 weeks in, we got to visit the hospital again for our second scheduled ultrasound. Here's the proof:

Unfortunatley none of the pictures from this scan seemed to be nearly as clear as the last one. The equipment was just the same, although the baby was being very awkward and not moving into any helpful positions! I guess it must be harder to get good images now that the baby is larger too.

Photos aside, everything is going well. The baby is roughly the right size and we could see two leg, two arms, a spine, brain, intestines and heart. Only another 4 months to go!

Following on from the last post, here is my favourite failing answer (so far)...

Details of how I formatted test.csv

Highlight I1 -> Insert Function -> Proper -> Text A1 -> Highlight Col I -> filldown
Highlight J1 -> Insert Function -> Proper -> Text B1 -> Highlight Col J ->filldown
Copy and Paste Special Col I into I using values
Copy and Paste Special Col I into J using values
Sanitise manually and then provided with an empty Col H
Copy and paste Col D into H
Copy and paste Col E,F and G to Col L & M
Delete columns D-G

Don't know how to do the last comparison

Apart from the "fixed" CSV they attached that was the complete response!

What's wrong with this answer...

• it doesn't tell us what application to start clicking around
• it (by self confession) doesn't answer the entire question
• "sanitise manually" may work wonderfully for our small sample file, but we sepecifically state it's a sample from a larger file - I'd like to see someone manually sanitise a 6 million line logfile
• we don't specifically ask, but do hint at wanting a script to solve this task (that is infact it's entire point, to test the candidates scripting abilities), even if we hadn't though, surely the fact that you're applying for a Linux sysadmin role should strongly suggest a scripted answer over a point and click one?

This is one of the homework questions that Digitalbrain has recently been giving out to prospective candidates for a Linux system administrator role.

Working with a large, complex application with many thousands of users, we very often have to manipulate significant amounts of textual data. Perhaps as part of a process to create new student accounts within a school, or to feed to one of our management tools to delete or relocate a collection of user files, or maybe to collate data from one of the many log files.

So this question is based on the kind of work that is a core (if not very interesting) part of the role. I would have expected it to be a core part of any Linux sysadmins knowledge too.

The question:

Attached is a CSV file (a sample from a much larger file). This file needs cleaning and altering in the following ways:-

• capitalise the first letter of the two name fields
• sanitise the formatting
• move the username column to the beginning of each line
• the phone number is missing the area code - look up the city in the following table, and add it to the beginning of the phone number column

Please detail what you did, how, any scripts involved and provide the corrected CSV.

The CSV file

Our recent experience seems to suggest that being able to answer this is a rare skill, even for people who advertise themselves as experienced Linux system administrators (and are applying for such a job)!

Are we being unfair?

Are we expecting too much?

Digitalbrain has been looking for new systems administrators for it's main platform services (Linux based) since the first of the old team resigned in April. During this time we've hired two new people. Ie it seems to take over two months to find each sysadmin!

Digitalbrain is still looking at least one more systems administrator.

So where are all the Linux sysadmins?

Digitalbrain is based in the lovely city of Brighton, commutable from London and anywhere in between. The salary being offerred is reasonable and we have enlisted the help of several recruitment agencies.

Yet we get few CVs. Fewer still get to start our interviewing process (which is initially two simple 'homework' questions). Practically no one seems to make it beyond that, only about 5 in the last four months.

I can't see that we're doing anything wrong. So perhaps the IT skills shortage that I keep reading about is real?

Or are our standards too high?

I shall be publishing one of our 'homework' questions in my next post and will then also publish a few (nameless) submissions that we've had, so you can judge for yourselves.

One other result of this recruiting difficulty is that I will now be staying on at Digitalbrain until Christmas!

Yesterday I met up with two of my good friends from university, John and Claire. They had been down in Brighton for the wedding of John's sister so it seemed an ideal oppurtunity to catch up with. Not to mention it being a great chance to scare Liz with some more of my friends (I've so far escaped meeting too many of hers!).

They even brought the baby their first ever hat and socks:

Thank you. :-)

I had my first commercial (well, paid and for the entertainment of others) dancing experience yesterday. Once we got started and my nerves subsided (actually quite quickly) it was fantastic fun and a great afternoon.

Thanks to some encouragement from a good friend (Rachel) I started salsa dancing at a club in Redhill (Mondays, 8pm - 10pm in O'Neils) in January 2005. Since then I've peaked at three salsa classes in a week! I am now just back to the Monday night classes for salsa, but have added the occasional jive (modern/ceroc/leroc and 1940s) class as well.

Intermittently, since around November 2005 I have been doing 1940s jive (apparently known by lots of names including Jitterbug and East Coast Swing).

The event on Saturday was a staff party day for a large company. Over 3,000 guests were expected to be attending. The entire event had a 1950s theme, complete with custom built 50s diner, old cars driving around and of course a group of 50s jivers! We were only one of many, many entertainments taking place but for the afternoon we had our own little stage (actually a very nice wooden floor with a good spring to it), DJ and a reasonable audience!

The entire event was in Osterley Park and hence outdoors. The weather wasn't perfect for over three hours of dancing, being rather warm and sunny, but thankfully the weather didn't include any rain at least.

There were 16 of us who were dancing and during our 3.5 hour period we put on several demo dances and lessons of both jive and strolls. A surprisingly large number of people actually joined in - easily more than 30 at times.

It was really a very pleasant day. I hope the audience enjoyed it as much! :-)

A few friends and family (who I clearly don't talk to often enough) have recently asked me who Liz is. Not that a photo can really introduce someone, but as a start here is a snap of Liz and myself taken in April.