Python likes to make programming efficient: that is, to make programsfast and easy to write, and eliminate the tedious drudgery. Prettymuch all dynamically typed languages do, since static typing is a lotof effort (except in languages with a lot of type inference, where itis only some effort).

After writing yesterday's entry ,it's struck me that exceptions are a form of efficientprogramming, because they let you aggregate error checking and errorhandling across a large block of code.

Without exceptions

A few weeks ago I discovered that only 220 different IP addresses sentus actual email over the course of a week. This naturally raises thequestion: was this just a slow week, or is this typical? The answerturns out to be 'maybe'.

On the system I usually run my stats on, I only have logs going backabout 28 days; looking at the entire time period, there was email from443 different IP addresses. Not surprisingly, the distribution of howmuch

A while back I wrote about FutureSysadminJobs and suggested thatpeople who wanted satisfying careers as system administrators overthe long term should develop the skills to be troubleshooters. Whichbegs the question: what are those skills?

The first and most important skill is: you have to find all thisinteresting . Enjoying being a curious packrat is not entirelyrequired, but I think it helps a whole lot, especially as you'llprobably need to learn a number of things on your own time.

Other than that, based on my

I can't call this a review or even first impressions of Fedora Core 4,because I haven't used it enough yet (and may not for a while). So thisis my first irritations with Fedora Core 4, gained from banging my headagainst it repeatedly in the process of preparing our new OS load fora planned late-August upgrade/reinstall of a bunch of workstations.

• The Anaconda installer is buggy .(Still with no sign of an update.)

• Once X starts, it kills