Jerry Taylor VS CentOS...What was this guy thinking?

I read, and reread over the course of the weekend the interesting Tuttle and CentOS articles and emails.

Yeah, Yeah I know. But seriously I had nothing to do this weekend anyway other than catch up on my reading.

When I first read about this story I felt bad for Jerry A. Taylor. However, I do have an issue with the way he handled the problem. This is a man who obviously had no clue as to where to turn or as to what was wrong with his web servers. Especially since he states he allegedly contacted the hosting company responsible for the site he was unable to access and according to them they do not use CentOS nor have they even heard of it.

Well if this part of the story is true, then I would have to say that the hosting company should take some of the responsibility. Not all, but some. Of course there is no way to verify if this part of the story is true; but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

While Jerry Taylor may well have 22 years under his belt as a project manager for Raytheon, specifically with E-Systems, this as we all know does not mean he has first hand knowledge about technology. Then again he does hold a BSEE. Which probably places him in the category of being one of those dangerous people with a little bit of knowledge. Clearly, most of his professional career is the management of people and projects, not the technology itself. Personally I think this is a bad mix, but this is not the issue here.

Here is the real issue, someone in a position of power that has obviously no clue as to what they are doing with certain technologies making threats to someone who is trying to help rectify the problem. Jerry Taylor states in one of the emails that he is “computer literate” and has “22 years in computer systems engineering and operation” I mean common. The only thing this has done is make this guy look like a complete idiot.

I mean this guy probably has not even read an article on current technologies, never mind the fact that he probably hasn’t touched a computer in a technical capacity since he graduated after getting his BSEE. Anyone on the planet can see this just by reading what Jerry Taylor has allegedly said of all this.

I fully understand the position he takes currently on this issue as well and I think he is correct. This apparently is not the most pressing issue the City of Tuttle has. I am glade to see that it is not. I do think that it was Wrong of Jerry Taylor to make this statement however. The statement is taken from The Tuttle Times online.

“This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don’t have anything better to do,” he said. “When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands.”

Quite frankly I do not think this was appropriate and not very friendly for such a supposedly friendly place. Such is life and life goes on however.

I would like to reach out and say Kudos to Johnny Hughes of CentOS however. I think he did a fine job in handling the situation and helped to resolve the issue.

I do think though that regardless of how Jerry Taylor has acted we should all remain professionals. The next time someone misunderstands the technical issues at hand, let’s just do our best to resolve it. Although it is hard when you are trying to do that and the other person is not cooperating, but let us all just do our best. The results will speak for themselves.

BTW...Congrats to the Tuttle football team.