Bjarne Verschorre

Quick Message

These should help wether you’re a system administrator, developer, or just a casual user.

Taking Notes

This sounds like BS “taking notes”, that’s something the bored teacher would say to someone who’s failing classes. For example, if you’re a system administrator, it’s handy to document everything you’ve done on your servers. It’s handy to have a clear overview (in your own words) of what you’ve done, how’ve setup services, configured other things, etc.

When you run in to a problem it, you can save yourself in the future by looking back at your notes. Writing down solutions to problems you’ve encountered is almost always faster than googling it again.

This doesn’t have to be anything programming or administration related, could be as simple as writing down how you setup your new phone/computer, how you made that thing work that is a pain in the ass for no reason to setup, etc. Add links, refferences and documentation to make it easier to gather more information later on.

Taking Backups

This goes hand in hand with taking notes: it’s very handy to have a clear and consise overview of how your system is setup. This makes planning and making - and recoverying from backups a lot easier.

It’s important to take good care of your data, especially if there are other people depending on it. Taking backups is a good way to ensure that you can recover from any disaster.

Automating Tasks

Using scripts to automate tasks is a great way to save time. It’s also a good way to learn new things. For example, if you’re a system administrator, you can write scripts to automate the installation of software, or to monitor the health of your servers.

Repairing Broken Electronics

If something if broken there is almost zero harm with opening up and maybe even try to repair it, if it works perfect, if it doesn’t no harm done.