Escape from the Activity Room
Escape from Microsoft
On the morning of September 17, 2014, in the conference room on the 12th floor of Microsoft Research Asia. The boss just returned to Beijing after a month-long international conference, and I nervously reported the unsatisfactory progress of the past month at the group meeting. In the previous few days, my heart was beating wildly, fearing that the boss would see through my nature of not working hard. Unexpectedly, the boss did not scold me after the report, but said that my model has made great progress compared to a month ago. However, we both clearly realized that our work could not catch up with the NSDI conference deadline on September 26.
Microsoft Building in the early morning of September 17 Microsoft Building in the early morning of September 17
Microsoft Building in the early morning of August 25 Microsoft Building in the early morning of August 25
One by one, the students in the group ended their summer internships and returned to campus, and the intern area of the research institute became increasingly empty. Seeing everyone on social media sharing all kinds of fun things, I was eager to return. In the afternoon, I chatted with the students in the group about the progress of their respective projects, and I felt a sense of “being in the same boat”. The next night, I chatted with a netizen about some academic matters, and felt that it was time to return to school to make up for the basics. In the afternoon of the third day, after completing the resignation procedures, I hurriedly boarded the train back to Hefei (actually, the hurry was due to underestimating the traffic congestion in Beijing, don’t mind these details…)
SFD Hefei Station
Just as I was quietly preparing to “escape” from Microsoft, a group of people were busy in the USTC campus a thousand kilometers away. September 20 is International Software Freedom Day. As one of the 198 sites worldwide, Hefei will share and communicate with people who love free software around the world. However, this time, I wanted to be an audience, so only a few people knew that I returned to school in advance. I haven’t participated in LUG activities for more than a year. I heard that the LUG buddies are quite powerful now, and there is even a female host Zhang Jingning (just joined LUG 12 days!).
The night before SFD, I sent a message in the LUG QQ group, showing off the CAS SFD schedule in Beijing (at that time, the buddies didn’t know that I was already lurking in the dormitory). After participating in the Hefei station event in the afternoon, I found out that USTC LUG can also organize events so professionally and wonderfully. Five sponsors, several boxes of prizes, jameszhang and Yan Feng seniors appeared on the scene, HTML5 lottery applet… What is particularly worth mentioning is that although there are as many as five speeches, the time control is very good and it ends on time. (For details, go to the LUG official blog)
Picture source: LUG official blog Picture source: LUG official blog
Perhaps because I was a bit excited, in the last two speeches, I deliberately made things difficult for Zhang Guangyu and Zhang Rongwei during the question and answer session. Looking back, I feel quite inappropriate. I really should change this habit of liking to black others.
New Base—East District Activity Room
Because LUG developed and maintained the query machine system for the library, a long time ago, the library gave us a very nice activity room in the West District. After Yang Boyuan’s sorting, the originally cluttered West District activity room has become much more comfortable. However, the West District activity room does not have air conditioning, the heating is not strong, there are only a few small fans with some history and a few desktop computers that have been in service for nearly ten years, and the network also occasionally fails. In most seasons, only one or two hard-working students are stationed in the West District self-study room, and the buddies, including me, only go when there are activities.
A corner of the West District Activity Room A corner of the West District Activity Room (old base)
Although Zhang Cheng and other seniors once envisioned a duty system, the West District activity room still did not become active. Man proposes, God disposes. The new library in the East District was completed, and the library generously gave us a new activity room in the supercomputing center on the first floor. To put it in a big way, this is thanks to the wise decision of President Hou, who built several large teaching buildings and experimental buildings as soon as he took office, and the pants in the poor and remote areas can finally look directly at other 211 universities in terms of architecture.
A corner of the East District Activity Room A corner of the East District Activity Room (new base)
When I just arrived at the East District LUG activity room after participating in SFD, there was simply no place to stand, and there were SFD things everywhere, and there were not enough chairs. However, the buddies were very powerful and cleaned up quickly, but the problem of chairs was not so easy to solve, and the chair war would start when there were more people at night. An interesting phenomenon is that the chairs in the activity room always maintain a nearly full state. When everyone comes to the activity room, it seems that they will rank the activity level of LUG members. If they think they can’t get a chair, they will visit the activity room less. Therefore, all club people, it is very necessary to have a spacious activity room!
To be honest, after more than a year away from school, there are many active members in LUG that I am not familiar with. I once said that the activity room is not suitable for self-study, but during that time, the activity room was quite quiet, and I gradually got used to moving my homework to the activity room. Every night, we go to the playground to run together; when we don’t know how to do homework, everyone will help. Brother Zhang Cheng also greatly appreciates the little friends living and studying together in the activity room.
A week after returning to school, I understood the reason why server maintenance was difficult to promote: on the one hand, some students were not interested, and it was not appropriate for everyone to go into battle; on the other hand, there were not enough documents and guidance, and they didn’t know where to start; in addition, everyone has classes and homework, and it is impossible to stay by the computer at all times to respond. So, I no longer give difficult problems to the server maintenance group, this matter still needs to be done quietly.
This reminds me that I must not assume that others’ interests are the same as mine, and there is no right to speak without investigation. If I hadn’t returned to school and didn’t understand the real situation of the activity room, I might continue to promote “server maintenance” in an unpleasant tone like the working seniors, and complain about the “inaction” of the students in school.
The Crystal Head Craft Passed Down
The last time I went to the Shao Yuan computer room was four months ago. At that time, I returned to school to defend my graduation, and by the way, I looked at the servers and network equipment I loved. Perhaps because I had been to Shao Yuan too many times before, the Shao Yuan uncle who “read countless people” every day did not forget me, but started talking as soon as we met. The wiring in the master control room is the same as when I left the Shao Yuan technical department two years ago, except that the dust is thicker. Some of the labels I put on the network cable have faded, and the technical department wiki containing sensitive information has been allowed to access the public network for some reason, everything is still familiar.
On October 3, I returned to the Shao Yuan computer room master control room. Today my task is to familiarize my junior sister Zhang Jingning with the server room and make crystal heads. The junior sister is really great, she remembered the line sequence in one go. From the outside, the company’s servers are no different from Shao Yuan’s servers, but the age and performance of the machines inside are not comparable at all. However, for familiarizing with servers and network equipment, these old machines are enough.
Company's server Company’s server
freeshell server freeshell server
The next day, we came to the Shao Yuan computer room master control room again. Zhang Jingning passed the skill of making crystal heads to Cui Hao, Cui Hao passed this black technology to Yang Boyuan, and I took another apprentice Zuo Gefei. The skill of making crystal heads is passed down in LUG in this way.
Zhang Jingning teaches Cui Hao to make crystal heads Zhang Jingning teaches Cui Hao to make crystal heads
Cui Hao teaches Yang Boyuan to make crystal heads Cui Hao teaches Yang Boyuan to make crystal heads
The task of the second day is of course not just making crystal heads. The disk space of Freeshell is getting tighter and tighter, we need to add hard drives to these servers. Since the server does not support hot-swapping of hard drives, every time a hard drive is plugged in, a node is hung up, which is simply the biggest man-made destruction in the history of freeshell. However, what is more memorable is that October 4 is probably the first time in the history of LUG that a girl physically touched the server.
QQ Group, can have!
I rarely use QQ originally. When the former president Zhang Guangyu created the QQ group, some of us old stubborn were very dissatisfied. A senior once said, how can LUG be called LUG with only QQ group! The implication is that the primary means of communication for LUG (Linux User Group) must be the mailing list. Coincidentally, on September 20, someone asked on the Shanghai LUG mailing list if there was a QQ group, and was spit on by the old people. This is partly because the mailing list is more formal and easier to archive, and on the other hand, it is to raise the threshold and draw a clear line, not to let the tea egg sellers come in. However, now the little friends in LUG obviously want to be normal people, not weird programmers.
I didn’t join the group in the first month when the QQ group was established. Later, I don’t know how to join, and found that the discussion in the group is quite fun, so I developed the habit of hanging QQ. The old predecessor who was most opposed to the QQ group spoke the most in the group, often sending several large paragraphs of text, teaching us some philosophies of life as an elder. The QQ group does speed up the solution of technical problems, and allows us to use fragmented time to communicate with LUG friends in a relaxed and happy way, unlike the deep and cold mailing list, which makes newcomers dare not speak.
Why does QQ group have such a great charm? This requires a review of the dark history. In August 2002, QQ group was born. The employees of the Goose Factory needed to have lunch together at noon, and it was inconvenient to organize. At that time, QQ could only chat individually, and the efficiency of emails was low. The city lions naturally thought of IRC. However, IRC relies on a public channel, which is not only insufficient in privacy, but also the name of the channel is not easy to remember. Therefore, the QQ group identified by a number was born, which is also the most valuable patent of the Goose Factory, without one.
Although QQ does not support Linux is a hard injury, the impending closure of SmartQQ and WebQQ also makes us angry, but now it is the era of mobile Internet, even if the Linux desktop is inconvenient to use QQ, the mobile phone is always possible. Compared with the era when there was only a mailing list, the QQ group has greatly improved the communication efficiency of LUG buddies, and also made LUG exceed the cold technical exchange, share life and grow together. Those technical communities that still have a hostile attitude towards QQ groups should take medicine!
Escape from the activity room, tomorrow will be better
The buddies in the activity room are really awesome. Two-thirds are OI (Informatics Competition) winners, and two-thirds have come into contact with Linux before entering university (the two-thirds intersect…) No one can solve all problems, but almost all problems can be solved under everyone’s consultation. For example, my SSD used to install Win8 will have strange problems. A few days ago, Zuo Ge, a junior college student in 14, helped me solve it with WIM Installer and bcdedit. Now my Win8 finally enjoys the high-speed SSD.
The good times are not long. When it comes to night, the noise in the activity room becomes louder, not only the students who keep asking questions (it’s time to look at the art of asking questions!), but also people who always find something interesting to share with everyone. The consequence of so many interruptions is that almost nothing can be done in the activity room.
At the beginning of the semester, the initial state of the activity room was a group of boys and two girls. Everyone thinks that the environment of the activity room is good, spacious and there are girls, so they run over when they have no class, and there are often not enough chairs in the activity room at night. In fact, our efficiency in the activity room has been very low in the past month, but because the novelty has not passed, we are still rushing to it. As time goes by, more and more buddies find that they are going to fail in this way, so they reduce the frequency of coming to the activity room. Some annoying things have become the fuse for escaping from the activity room. Without any agreement, everyone tacitly completed a collective escape today.
In terms of teaching new people technology, I also started to reflect. When a newcomer encounters a problem, especially when a junior sister encounters a problem, we will swarm to the front and kill the problem in a mess. But this method may not be conducive to the long-term development of new people’s technology. The ability to try to solve problems by oneself is necessary. The art of asking questions tells us that when encountering problems, first Google (the effect is better in English), and ask if you really can’t solve it. This trial and error process is inevitable.
In fact, there is no need to think about learning Linux so hard. When I entered the University of Science and Technology, I didn’t know a command, but the administrator of the junior college computer room gave me the task of building a website with LAMP and Discuz! I also built the Gewuzhizhi Forum after a week of struggle (although there are naive practices such as file permissions 777). I think a better way to guide newcomers is to tell them what problems they have when they use particularly complicated or unreasonable methods, and there is a simpler and more harmonious way.
Today is exactly one month since I came to the activity room, and it is also the first day I escaped from the activity room. With few interruptions, I can do things more efficiently and get things done. I will still go to the activity room, but at an appropriate frequency. Thank God for his favor to me, allowing me to experience a new way of life every year, as if the waves are pushing me forward.
A few days ago, Lao Zhu proposed a point of view: there are only a few circles that can toss in the University of Science and Technology, the core members of these circles highly overlap, and radiate influence around. Outside the radiation range of these circles, there are all academic masters who are full of GPA and going abroad. I deeply agree. “Gently wake up the sleeping soul, slowly open your eyes, and see if the busy world is still spinning lonely”, let us look forward to a better tomorrow~
Note: The photos in this article have not been agreed by some of the parties involved. If there is any disturbance, please forgive me.