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Yeah – one of those posts.  But I’m not talking about the latest blockbuster, and I’m not even talking about anything even remotely “Matrix-Like” (though it does make the list)

I’m talking about the movies us techie-types hate to admit that we loved.

Here they are:

Honorable Mention: Short Circuit – campy but loveable.  Good movie for the kids.

10. Weird Science – John Hughes at the height of his mediocrity.

9. The Net – Love me some Sandra Bullock, but who believes that hackers are going to take over the world with Macs? (or that Ms. Bullock is going to be the one to stop them?)

8. Independence Day – See “The Net”: Jeff Goldbloom isn’t believable as a hacker/nerd/geek in the first place.  Hacking an alien species with a Macbook is beyond bad.

7. Hackers – Angelina Jolie before she really was anyone, and yes, we get to see her websites.  Plot-line was fun, dialog was horrible, tech was sadly misrepresented – the scary part though is I’ve known people like Cereal Killer….

6. Tron – So nerdy even the nerds won’t own it.  Stay tuned – rumors of a Tron2 running around, I saw a pirated preview on youtube (Link – Here)

5. Real Genius – Val Kilmer plays a slightly left-of-center genius.  Great laughs, good teen/college movie.

4. Stargate – ok, not so much a nerd/geek show but the scientist saves the day every time. (and gets the cute slave-chick in the process)

3. The Matrix (Any one of them) – There is something to be said for the ‘willful suspension of disbelief’ – I thoroughly enjoyed the movies and one day want to learn kung-fu by ramming a needle into the back of my head.

3. Blade Runner – Can’t hate anything with Harrison Ford in it, but it took a lot of hemming and hawing over whether this went above or below The Matrix.  It is a serious marvel.  Just got it on Blu-Ray and it’s SPECTACULAR.

2. Wargames – My inspiration.  That and when I was growing up I was about as nerdy as Matthew Broderick…well…..is.  (And he still managed to get Sarah Jessica Parker)

1. Star-Trek – Didn’t think I’d forget this did you?  Most of the movies were great, once you got past the ones that sucked (Voyage Home, anyone?).  The movies are here as an afterthought because they were pure marketing.  An attempt to capitalize on the popularity instead of furthering the idea.   The series rocked though, and I will always have a warm-spot in my heart for Gene Roddenberry.

Can you believe it?  they actually asked me why I didn’t do more documentation during my year there.

Let’s see.  During the course of the past year, we designed, installed, implementated, moved, migrated, redesigned, reimplemented an entire corporate infrastructure.

My part in this was fairly simple.

Primary role:

Storage Design (Clariion/Symmetrix), Implementation, Management
Backup Design (Veritas NBU 6.0), Installation, Management
SAN Design (Cisco), Implementation, Management
NAS-Design (Celerra), Implementation, Management
Plus I was doing a good portion of the server builds, OS installs, partitioning, application installations, etc.  I also became the defacto Linux administrator (because the only other person capable of doing it didn’t have time either), managed the external DNS servers, did some exchange design and build, migration, printers/scanners, SMTP Mailscanners,  well the list goes on and on.

And of course fire-fighting was a big part, this was in fact a Windoze shop so we spent a lot of time figuring out what Microsoft was trying to accomplish and what we really wanted it to accomplish.

So I guess I should have tacked another hour or two onto my 16 hour days to make sure everything was documented.

Nigel is right in his comment that storage people are a different breed.  Whether your HP, Hitachi, EMC, NetApp or whatnot.  Every “storage-centric” person I’ve ever met has been unique in their ability to look at every moving part in an environment and conceptualize “the fundimental interconnectedness of all things.”  (With apologies to the late Douglas Adams)

In short – storage people get it. 

There is one of my co-workers at work who also gets it.  I see the faint glimmer of a storage admin in him, and have spent the time we’ve worked together trying to cultivate it while the powers-that-be tried desparately to keep the status-quo.  (Maybe they know that once he can put “EMC” or “SAN” on his resume the $$ shoots up – who knows?)

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my documentation.