----- Original Message ----- > On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Atom Powers <[email protected]> > wrote: > > A good SA knows what information > > s/he needs, what to ask the Google, and usually s/he knows how to > > find the > > information without Google. > > My only counter to that statement, which is addressed by you saying: > > Google will not, usually, give you the answer if you don't know the > > question. > > My counter is that there *are* times that it is extremely helpful to > know if the problem you're seeing with the Dell PERC card, as an > example, is unique to *your* specific environment of if others are > running into it too. > > I've been finding way too many cases of stuff that if I didn't check > to see how widespread the problem was *before* I dove into the > solution I'd have never been able to dig myself out of the quagmire.
We once hired an SA that bragged in the interview that he was really good and find SA answers using Google, often getting the answer using "I'm Feeling Lucky". Probably won't make that mistake again. But, Google has its place, as do other conveniences of technology. Like our manager purchased Safari Bookshelf for the entire group. Some people have been reading books using it. But, so far for me its just another place I can search for answers...that's faster than going through the stack of O'Reilly books I keep buying but rarely ever read cover to cover anymore. Can't recall the last time I read a complete book for professional or personal reasons.... and yet I own 4 kindles :) [and my employer got me a 3rd Gen iPad w/Verizon, when I had asked about getting a Kindle for work....] At the time I had a Kindle 2 and a Kindle Fire, and the docs I wanted to reference called for Kindle Fire...I had considered the possibility when Amazon has newer Kindles that I might bring one in to use at work....but so far I haven't done that. Aside from the problem of setting a Kindle Fire HD 8.9" somewhere and not being able to find it again for months.... Now its my Kindle Paperwhite that I don't remember where I've left it.... Though there are other times I find Google to be very frustrating....namely where most of the results are other people asking the same question in forums (or its the same post to a mailinglist that is then presented at many different sites), with no responses or no solutions. It is even more annoying when the only results are me. Or where Google combines a word that occurs at the beginning of the page and another word at the end to be the same as the phrase I'm looking for. Or when the result doesn't contain a word at all....often the important one, that's supposed to tell it that I'm looking for a Unix answer.... Then there's those sites that mysteriously have the exact same thing you're searching for, as the search of their site...with no results or a collection of similar searches....or aggregate other people asking the same question with no answers....which I had already found.... Of course, products with cute names to make it impossible for them to be used for internet searches.... Like Chef, Cookbooks, Recipes....yield nothing but irrelevant (to me) results. Just as I lamented once on how do you search for 'home' versions of something.... _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
