[arin-ppml] Stepping forward, opening my mouth and removing all doubt about

[Stewart Dean]

how clueless I am.

At some point, I joined this list because something I was doing related to it. 
In the course of time, either from membership here or because I'm the Tech POC 
for 12 Class Cs, I got the transfer policy questionnaire, and I rarely felt my 
ignorance so keenly.  I had only the vaguest idea of what the questions meant, 
much less having an informed opinion of them.  I spent some time over the next 3 
days flogging Google and www.arin.net to try to educate myself.  At the end of 
that exercise, I understood something about questions and was able to respond to 
them....but I really never did find much that spoke clearly and unequivocally on 
what they were about.  Why wasn't there a linked resource explaining the 
background of each question, the pros and cons or each side?  All the 
documentation I could find was scattered here and there and was colorless and 
passive-voiced...like reading a telephone book....yes, there was data but what 
did it mean?
What is a liberalized transfer policy?  Whose ox is getting gored?  I guess this 
is a minefield and perhaps saying anything would precipitate a flame-war, but 
what doc there was related poorly or in such an inobvious way that it didn't 
make much clear.  Like presenting a Noh play in Wichita...*whatever* are those 
people doing and talking about????

BTW, one of the problems about being sysadmin in a small shop is that you have 
to be a Shiva Nataraja generalist in a world of rapidly expanding requirements 
and areas of expertise...and unless you're a glow-in-the-dark genius with an 
eidetic memory, your ignorance grows exponentially.

:(

-- 
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Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035