The total so far

203.79

2 cisco 2501
2 cisco 1924
1 cisco 2507
1 cisco 2924

mounting brackets for all of them. AND I scored a freebie.

Free Rack. Don't know about that though, I don't know if it will be free standing, or if it will be short enough to fit in the space I need it to.

really cheap

What I have bought so far for my lab:
2 switches for less than $37.00
2 routers for less than $45.00

Everything else I'm bidding on, but waiting until last day bids to do get them.
So far:
1 router (which will finish my collection for the lab, until CCNP time) looking at less than $30.00

Still need one more switch, cables for everything (power, cat5, serial to serial for the routers), a network rack (going to be the most expensive part), a switched PDU, and mounting brackets.

The really neat part. Looking at pre-built kits on ebay, they want between 400 to 500 for them, I'm building mine piece by piece, including a rack, for less.

Detroit vs Colorado

So back to the hockey brackets from the other day. I hinted at how it works in hockey, but I never really said how it worked.

In the hockey play off system, the highest rank team plays the lowest rank team. So round one looks like this:
1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5

In round 2, they play again highest vs lowest, out of the remaining teams. This year it looks like this:
1v6, and 2v5.

Round 3: the winners of those two match-ups. Then it's off to the finals where the West beat, I mean meets, the East.

Games start tomorrow.

nice and cheap

So I've been thinking about putting a cisco lab together. For CCNA training. Since today was slow at work I spent a large part of the day looking at parts and pricing it out.

The places I was looking had really, really good deals. I'm going to be getting at least 2 switches tomorrow. I'll also have to order a serial port adapter for my laptop. But that won't be that big of a deal.

Hockey playoff brackets

Small nit-pic, but I need to rant.

So Detroit won the first round against Nashville today... Finally. So the question came up who does Detroit play next. The answer wasn't on NHL.com it wasn't elsewhere either. The person I was with said look up 2008 hockey brackets on the net and see. So I did...

AND THEY WERE ALL WRONG!!!

Before I did, looking at the standings I said it will be either Colorado or Calgary. Because those are the lowest 2 teams still in round one. Colorado already won their match-up, so it's just a question of who wins Calgary vs San Jose. (The ticker below T.V talking heads about 5 minutes later said the same thing).

But the brackets on the net were not set up that way. Just pathetic. If you don't know how to do the brackets for the sport, Then maybe you shouldn't try to fake it and get it wrong.

blast from the past day

So while standing in the help desk room at work, talking to the helpdesk people, I spotted a :c (cue cat).

For those that don't know the cue cat was a hand held bar code scanner that didn't do so well. I remember when Radio Shack was giving them away for free. However that is part of the reason they didn't do so well. The company sent them out to people for free, most through a mass mailing to magazine subscribers, one of the biggest being Wired.

It was a blast from the past.

SiCKO

So I watched SiCKO, finally. It was really good. I did laugh pretty hard at the going to Cuba bit, but I guess that's just me.

It brings up some interesting things. Other countries have Socialized Health care and it's not as bad as they sell it to be. I have a friend in Canada that said, yes it is hard to get to see the specialist, because he's so busy.

France, 35 hour work week with 5 weeks vacation.

Then it hit me. I know why the Congress makes a big scare of "Socialized Health Care". It is not about the money they get from the lobbyists. It is not because of things like the Red Scare.

The sad truth is, the Congress, the President and lots of other people in government have really great health care. It is paid for by taxes.

I think the most striking truth from the movie however... Was the Old British Parlement member who said the US Government doesn't Fear the Citizens the Citizens fear the Government. However at the same time, he was only half right. The rich bastards running things do fear the poor and down trodden. Why else are they purging the voting rolls of people they know won't vote the way those in power want.

Lastly, to everyone else who thinks government ran things are bad and we shouldn't do it. Remember that the next time you're in a car accident and an ambulance shows up from the Fire department. Remember that the next time your house catches fire.

Remember socialized things are bad, when you need a cop to help you. You are threatened or attacked and you file a police report.

Lastly remember you want to do away with government paid agencies when you send your next bill out in the mail. Or check your mail box for your tax return.

Sometimes I like what I do

I'm sitting here reading the firewall book, and looking around in the firewall at the same time. It's nice. I know not to make changes, but my understanding of the tool has increased like you wouldn't believe. And I'm only on page 8 of the book. It's just nice to see what I've been doing with the firewalls and actually know what I'm doing instead of being a trained monkey.

While looking at that. I realized I've hacked a couple of boxes in the last month, with the sole purpose of getting administrator level access. One firewall, one Linux server. The linux server scared me though, since xen source doesn't use shadow passwords. I'll let you figure out why that scares me.

Once again, I realize I get paid to do what I like to do (most of the time).