User Support, Intrusion Detection, and Broken Firewalls. Kids, don't try this at home

I want to start by thanking everyone who has taken the IT Admin Job (dis)Satisfaction Survey. I've gotten around 250 responses in the couple of days it's been up, and that's great. I'm seeing some interesting trends, and I hope to continue to receive responses for the next couple of weeks before publishing results. I'm leaving a link to the survey in the top right hand corner of the blog's homepage (http://standalone-sysadmin.blogspot.com for those of you who use RSS readers), so if you haven't taken it yet, please take a moment and go for it.

I've been very busy at work in the past couple of days, which explains the lack of blog entries. I've been hip-deep in user issues while I've been trying to work on building a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) using Snort. Then I had a firewall cluster member die and try to take the remaining member down with it. It's just been a fun week so far ;-)

If I don't get to write another entry till the end of the week, I apologize, it's just that I usually write my blog entries the night before, and I've been beat and haven't had the energy.

If any of you have killer Snort tips, my ears are open. I'm using the extensive documentation that is available on the Snort site, and also Network Security Hacks, a very fun book to leaf through, and absolutely worth the $20 sale price.