Showing posts with label random thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random thoughts. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2011
another book review will be coming.
I'm reading another book that I'm going to write a review on. One of the author's said "nice review" on the Rework review. Considering the author is another one of the people I look up to in the Hacking community, I hope to do his book as much justice.
Friday, September 11, 2009
3 things
1) TGU with the 16kg, is suffering the same problems with stablity on the left as the 24kg. I used to be able to do these in my sleep. I might have to take a video and post it for the few RKCs I know to critique.
I did 5 rounds of warm up, 7 sets of left right TGU
2) I've been doing some light running lately. Yesterday was the latest bit. Ran from my parking lot to another one after work to see what was going on. Lots of cop cars (resident passed away). Ran from the golf course to my apartment and back last night. I had my telescope out, and ran back to get the moon filter. My buddy Tom was with the scope. Spent about 2 hours out side looking at the night sky, wish it was a little darker.
3) (this item cross posted)
I think I made some people mad last night. We had our community watch meeting at the Apartment last night. What was supposed to be a 45 to 60 minute meeting turned into an hour and a half complaint-fest. There were people there to sign up their kids for the after school program, and I dragged them into the complaints as well. They started to have them.
Also turns out the security service we're paying for, only has ONE "courtesy" officer at night and not all night, or every night. I basically tore into both management and security with problems and concerns. Both the owner of the security company and the operations manager gave me they're business cards last night. I also raised enough complaints that the site manager is supposed to contact me (not going to hold my breath).
I'm also taking over the coordinator position for the community watch. There are going to be some changes made to how it's ran, and availability of access to information. Right now, the only way we know anything is IF we're told anything. I'm going to pester people. I'm going to provide snacks. I'm going to set up a website with the data. Only thing that's going to really cost me anything is the snacks, and the new domain name.
Between now and the meeting next month I want to try to:
- Read Machiavelli's The Prince (half way done), Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals, and Bruce Schneier's Beyond fear, and figure out a revised version of Robert's Rules of Order to run the meetings (Not a big fan of the RRO over all, but think it's a good frame work).
- Set up one of my spare computers (saved to use as cheap home servers anyway) to run word press with a domain name for the community watch.
- Figure out security related guests to have come and talk to people about things (instead of "body magic" sales people they tried to push off on us last night). I might just take the first one and do a small topic on Online Safety.
I did 5 rounds of warm up, 7 sets of left right TGU
2) I've been doing some light running lately. Yesterday was the latest bit. Ran from my parking lot to another one after work to see what was going on. Lots of cop cars (resident passed away). Ran from the golf course to my apartment and back last night. I had my telescope out, and ran back to get the moon filter. My buddy Tom was with the scope. Spent about 2 hours out side looking at the night sky, wish it was a little darker.
3) (this item cross posted)
I think I made some people mad last night. We had our community watch meeting at the Apartment last night. What was supposed to be a 45 to 60 minute meeting turned into an hour and a half complaint-fest. There were people there to sign up their kids for the after school program, and I dragged them into the complaints as well. They started to have them.
Also turns out the security service we're paying for, only has ONE "courtesy" officer at night and not all night, or every night. I basically tore into both management and security with problems and concerns. Both the owner of the security company and the operations manager gave me they're business cards last night. I also raised enough complaints that the site manager is supposed to contact me (not going to hold my breath).
I'm also taking over the coordinator position for the community watch. There are going to be some changes made to how it's ran, and availability of access to information. Right now, the only way we know anything is IF we're told anything. I'm going to pester people. I'm going to provide snacks. I'm going to set up a website with the data. Only thing that's going to really cost me anything is the snacks, and the new domain name.
Between now and the meeting next month I want to try to:
- Read Machiavelli's The Prince (half way done), Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals, and Bruce Schneier's Beyond fear, and figure out a revised version of Robert's Rules of Order to run the meetings (Not a big fan of the RRO over all, but think it's a good frame work).
- Set up one of my spare computers (saved to use as cheap home servers anyway) to run word press with a domain name for the community watch.
- Figure out security related guests to have come and talk to people about things (instead of "body magic" sales people they tried to push off on us last night). I might just take the first one and do a small topic on Online Safety.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
I'm jumping on the band wagon...
...I'm just late that's all.
So I'm thinking about passwords lately. With Black Hat and Defcon this week, the report that some big name Infosec people had their accounts broke into, a friend's tweet on getting 400 followers, and me having to change my FB password today, I thought I'd share how I come up with passwords.
Now for fun the other night, driving back from Tang Soo Do on a long and lonesome highway east of Omaha... I came up with about 15 or so passwords based off a tv show I liked. They were between 8 to 10 characters each.
So there are a few ways I do it. There are 2 examples in each.
Method One:
I'll take a phrase, the longer the better, and modify it.
The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog (a well known pangram , ie uses all the characters in the English language) or I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick arse and I'm all out of bubble gum (mainly because I'm fond of quotes).
I'll take the phrase, and use camel case (mixed case), with numbers, special characters (anything over the number keys), and letters. I'll then mix them up like below:
Th3Qu!ckBrownF0xJump3s_Over_the_L2zy_red_dog
I'm_h3r3_2ch3w_BubbleGum&kick@rse.&I'm@ll0ut_ofBubbleGum
I can mix them other ways too. For example, I swapped brown and red, just to make it a little different.
Method Two:
I'll take a song lyric or a line from a movie, tv show, or whatever and I'll modify it by using just the first letter of each word, and the some of the other steps above. Examples I'll uses are Seger's Turn the Page, and a line from Cool Hand Luke.
"On an long and lonesome highway east of Omaha" becomes:
0@L&lh3oO!
"What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it"
Wwgh!F2c.SmUjcr=SugWwhHlw,W!twhWi_whg!! (to be honest, I'd modify it a little more, and weighing in around 30 characters, I'd use that for a pass phrase for my encrypted hard drive).
There are some other rules I use, if you notice, I have 2 characters side by side, 1 will be cap, 1 will not be. I tend to use the 2 interchangeably at home and at work, so we have phrase on some boxes, and the vegitable soup on others.
Lastly Method 3, which I only use on rare occasions is:
pwgen (password generator) from the linux command line. I'll add options like at least 1 special character, 1 upper case, 1 number and set it to be 10 to 12 characters long.
and finally...
I tend to use password safes, with things divided in them. Keepass and Password Safe.
I have had a few users complain when I give them a 10 to 12 character password based on something they said in the conversation. 1 about being long, and 2 about being so random, but when I tell them I use 24 to 26 character passwords regularly they tend to think it's not that bad and they seem to remember what they got fairly well.
There are other ways to make passwords too, and if you google them, I suggest googling site:lifehacker.com
Have fun, be safe online and for extra credit, figure out why I think this is a bad password. BwDn$b! (there are 2 reasons I don't like it).
So I'm thinking about passwords lately. With Black Hat and Defcon this week, the report that some big name Infosec people had their accounts broke into, a friend's tweet on getting 400 followers, and me having to change my FB password today, I thought I'd share how I come up with passwords.
Now for fun the other night, driving back from Tang Soo Do on a long and lonesome highway east of Omaha... I came up with about 15 or so passwords based off a tv show I liked. They were between 8 to 10 characters each.
So there are a few ways I do it. There are 2 examples in each.
Method One:
I'll take a phrase, the longer the better, and modify it.
The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog (a well known pangram , ie uses all the characters in the English language) or I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick arse and I'm all out of bubble gum (mainly because I'm fond of quotes).
I'll take the phrase, and use camel case (mixed case), with numbers, special characters (anything over the number keys), and letters. I'll then mix them up like below:
Th3Qu!ckBrownF0xJump3s_Over_the_L2zy_red_dog
I'm_h3r3_2ch3w_BubbleGum&kick@rse.&I'm@ll0ut_ofBubbleGum
I can mix them other ways too. For example, I swapped brown and red, just to make it a little different.
Method Two:
I'll take a song lyric or a line from a movie, tv show, or whatever and I'll modify it by using just the first letter of each word, and the some of the other steps above. Examples I'll uses are Seger's Turn the Page, and a line from Cool Hand Luke.
"On an long and lonesome highway east of Omaha" becomes:
0@L&lh3oO!
"What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it"
Wwgh!F2c.SmUjcr=SugWwhHlw,W!twhWi_whg!! (to be honest, I'd modify it a little more, and weighing in around 30 characters, I'd use that for a pass phrase for my encrypted hard drive).
There are some other rules I use, if you notice, I have 2 characters side by side, 1 will be cap, 1 will not be. I tend to use the 2 interchangeably at home and at work, so we have phrase on some boxes, and the vegitable soup on others.
Lastly Method 3, which I only use on rare occasions is:
pwgen (password generator) from the linux command line. I'll add options like at least 1 special character, 1 upper case, 1 number and set it to be 10 to 12 characters long.
and finally...
I tend to use password safes, with things divided in them. Keepass and Password Safe.
I have had a few users complain when I give them a 10 to 12 character password based on something they said in the conversation. 1 about being long, and 2 about being so random, but when I tell them I use 24 to 26 character passwords regularly they tend to think it's not that bad and they seem to remember what they got fairly well.
There are other ways to make passwords too, and if you google them, I suggest googling site:lifehacker.com
Have fun, be safe online and for extra credit, figure out why I think this is a bad password. BwDn$b! (there are 2 reasons I don't like it).
Monday, July 13, 2009
I'm a slacker
232 lbs
For the last 3 weeks I haven't been working out. It started because of my shoulder (which is still a little tender, or was when I was on the floor filling out the oversized calender, I chart my workouts on).
Last week I worked lots of long hours. mostly because the day was flying by, and I didn't realize how much time had passed. At one point I'd look at my watch and it'd be 9pm (12 hour day).
The thing is, that's just all excuses. I think I worked out 3 times last week. It should have been more.
I made the calander, something I didn't do the last 2 weeks, I just put it off.
today's list (restarting all programs at week 1):
100 push-up challenge
ETK
pull-ups 5 sets of 3 reps
Yoga
Thinking about it, I don't know what I'm going to do about it.
For the last 3 weeks I haven't been working out. It started because of my shoulder (which is still a little tender, or was when I was on the floor filling out the oversized calender, I chart my workouts on).
Last week I worked lots of long hours. mostly because the day was flying by, and I didn't realize how much time had passed. At one point I'd look at my watch and it'd be 9pm (12 hour day).
The thing is, that's just all excuses. I think I worked out 3 times last week. It should have been more.
I made the calander, something I didn't do the last 2 weeks, I just put it off.
today's list (restarting all programs at week 1):
100 push-up challenge
ETK
pull-ups 5 sets of 3 reps
Yoga
Thinking about it, I don't know what I'm going to do about it.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
It's been long
got home from work last night, did ETK week 2, day 2. (Remember I dropped back 1 week after injury). Still Holding at 5 per side on my Turkish Getups.
Ate bread on PB really quickly, since I only had 10 minutes to get to power core. Yes it was a bad idea.
I was going to take my 80lbs heavy bag in a fireman's carry, and jog. However I couldn't manage the bag, the water bottle and the yoga mat at the same time. I also ended up having to postpone my leaving. So I ended up driving to the class.
Worked hard, but now that my weight is going down, I don't seem to be burning as many calories. I did a HRM test just before I stopped working out because of my shoulder.
Power Core was a good class though. We even had a 4 minute cardio set. Oh so much fun.
Then I got home, im'd a friend to see how her doctor's appointment went. She called me, and basically moaned in pain. Turns out that she went back to the ER yesterday morning and they sent her home, but she was in pain again. Her doctor's office on-call told her to go back to the ER, and she wanted me to take her. Got there at 9pm. At almost 5am the doctor came in (this is after a bunch of tests) said that they can't find anything wrong. However this was the 4th trip to the ER for this problem since Friday Night. They finally agreed to admit her.
ER exam room chairs, and waiting room chairs, are not the best place to try to sleep. My back is really sore today. I only got about an hour's sleep at the hospital, and that was because my body was at the point where it said "you pass out now".
Ate bread on PB really quickly, since I only had 10 minutes to get to power core. Yes it was a bad idea.
I was going to take my 80lbs heavy bag in a fireman's carry, and jog. However I couldn't manage the bag, the water bottle and the yoga mat at the same time. I also ended up having to postpone my leaving. So I ended up driving to the class.
Worked hard, but now that my weight is going down, I don't seem to be burning as many calories. I did a HRM test just before I stopped working out because of my shoulder.
Power Core was a good class though. We even had a 4 minute cardio set. Oh so much fun.
Then I got home, im'd a friend to see how her doctor's appointment went. She called me, and basically moaned in pain. Turns out that she went back to the ER yesterday morning and they sent her home, but she was in pain again. Her doctor's office on-call told her to go back to the ER, and she wanted me to take her. Got there at 9pm. At almost 5am the doctor came in (this is after a bunch of tests) said that they can't find anything wrong. However this was the 4th trip to the ER for this problem since Friday Night. They finally agreed to admit her.
ER exam room chairs, and waiting room chairs, are not the best place to try to sleep. My back is really sore today. I only got about an hour's sleep at the hospital, and that was because my body was at the point where it said "you pass out now".
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Life lately
Kettlebell:
So I haven't been to a kettlebell class for the last 2 weeks. Mostly because of bad timing. 2 weeks ago, I made it to class late, wasn't going to change and play catch up since they were mostly done with their warm up. Last week I didn't get out of work on time. 10 hour shift. Wasn't supposed to be but bad things happened and it took a while to get out of here.
I've played around with some on my own but nothing serious. I did some swings last night focusing on my hip snap and tightening the glutes... Man did that hurt. But in a good way. it was only 20 swings, @ 24kg but man. MAN. I might try it tonight (after I get back from the funeral home) with 32kg.
Martial Arts:
I haven't made it to the Saturday classes, I've been getting up to late to go. Usually waking up half way through the class. Otherwise nothing major going on in class. One of our Masters passed away over on Sunday. He hasn't been to our school in a long time.
The only other thing Martial Arts wise, we did free fighting again last night. I was all over the tall guy, faced him twice, and the fast guy, faced him once. T has gotten a little better at control. I only have one bruise in my arm. Not even sure it's from him though. Could be from J. I was blocking and countering as fast as T could throw things. He also got my foot stomps. I'll step on a person's foot to hold them there, while I pound. I've never been able to do that with him before.
J kept running all over the place, and having to stop to catch his breath. He's got a better body shape than I do, but I guess I'm actually in better shape than he is. Second fight, less than a minute in, he was soaked in sweat, backed off, doubled over and saying no more.
Oh, and when I give out punishments now, we do burpees not push ups. Next will be full body attacks (deck squat to a push up to a squat to a jump). Some people enjoy doing push ups, and don't care if that's the "punishment". So I made it harder.
Death:
A guy who was a black belt when I was a kid, and a master when I went back to MA as an adult, passed away over the weekend. He was pretty young, 53 years old. He got melanoma and it wasn't caught until it was already in stage 4. Meaning it was into his internal organs. Treatment didn't go to well, and he's been at home in a hospice environment for the last few weeks. He was a 6th Dan, but probably should have been 7th (Grand Master), my master (who is older and been a DAN as long if not longer (5th dan)) said he's going to refer to Master Burns as a Grand Master.
Back in 2002, the city closed my school for the summer. We train out of the community center, and they didn't think there was enough people to justify having summer classes. So I went and trained under Grand Master Drouillard. Master Burns would pretty much run the class. The grand master would turn it over to him to run.
I'm going to the viewing tonight, and the funeral tomorrow. Even though I knew who he was, and trained under him at one point, I still feel like an impostor for going. I doubt he'd have known or remembered me, if he was healthy.
Other things:
Been working on pull ups and push ups. I can do 4 assisted pull ups with a Super Band, the 1 and 3/4 inch one. Did 5 sets of 10 pushups last night.
Captain's feathers have grown back pretty well, from his accident. Took him to get his claws trimmed over the weekend. That was fun.
Haven't been to yoga for 2 weeks now either. Yoga Mondays, kettlebell class Fridays.
Work is work.
So I haven't been to a kettlebell class for the last 2 weeks. Mostly because of bad timing. 2 weeks ago, I made it to class late, wasn't going to change and play catch up since they were mostly done with their warm up. Last week I didn't get out of work on time. 10 hour shift. Wasn't supposed to be but bad things happened and it took a while to get out of here.
I've played around with some on my own but nothing serious. I did some swings last night focusing on my hip snap and tightening the glutes... Man did that hurt. But in a good way. it was only 20 swings, @ 24kg but man. MAN. I might try it tonight (after I get back from the funeral home) with 32kg.
Martial Arts:
I haven't made it to the Saturday classes, I've been getting up to late to go. Usually waking up half way through the class. Otherwise nothing major going on in class. One of our Masters passed away over on Sunday. He hasn't been to our school in a long time.
The only other thing Martial Arts wise, we did free fighting again last night. I was all over the tall guy, faced him twice, and the fast guy, faced him once. T has gotten a little better at control. I only have one bruise in my arm. Not even sure it's from him though. Could be from J. I was blocking and countering as fast as T could throw things. He also got my foot stomps. I'll step on a person's foot to hold them there, while I pound. I've never been able to do that with him before.
J kept running all over the place, and having to stop to catch his breath. He's got a better body shape than I do, but I guess I'm actually in better shape than he is. Second fight, less than a minute in, he was soaked in sweat, backed off, doubled over and saying no more.
Oh, and when I give out punishments now, we do burpees not push ups. Next will be full body attacks (deck squat to a push up to a squat to a jump). Some people enjoy doing push ups, and don't care if that's the "punishment". So I made it harder.
Death:
A guy who was a black belt when I was a kid, and a master when I went back to MA as an adult, passed away over the weekend. He was pretty young, 53 years old. He got melanoma and it wasn't caught until it was already in stage 4. Meaning it was into his internal organs. Treatment didn't go to well, and he's been at home in a hospice environment for the last few weeks. He was a 6th Dan, but probably should have been 7th (Grand Master), my master (who is older and been a DAN as long if not longer (5th dan)) said he's going to refer to Master Burns as a Grand Master.
Back in 2002, the city closed my school for the summer. We train out of the community center, and they didn't think there was enough people to justify having summer classes. So I went and trained under Grand Master Drouillard. Master Burns would pretty much run the class. The grand master would turn it over to him to run.
I'm going to the viewing tonight, and the funeral tomorrow. Even though I knew who he was, and trained under him at one point, I still feel like an impostor for going. I doubt he'd have known or remembered me, if he was healthy.
Other things:
Been working on pull ups and push ups. I can do 4 assisted pull ups with a Super Band, the 1 and 3/4 inch one. Did 5 sets of 10 pushups last night.
Captain's feathers have grown back pretty well, from his accident. Took him to get his claws trimmed over the weekend. That was fun.
Haven't been to yoga for 2 weeks now either. Yoga Mondays, kettlebell class Fridays.
Work is work.
I've been busy, computer stuff.
So one of the things I wanted to do when I created this blog, was make it more professional than my live journal account. That failed. But I do tend to try and cover an array of things here, besides just working out. Which is what lead to those other two posts earlier. The ones about U-verse and Knoppix 6. I took longer entries that I saw people going to via google (in my site tracker report) and made 2 condensed versions so they wouldn't have to hunt through longer posts for them.
Two weeks ago, my laptop at home suffered bad things when I tried to upgrade my installed version of Sidux to the latest version via apt-get dist-upgrade. It resulted in me having no GUI to use. All the data was still on the drive, and as long as I didn't want to do anything that required a Grapical environment, I was ok. Sadly that made surfing the web and watching videos hard.
To fix it, I bought a new hard drive. 320gig for about $70.00 USD + shipping. After installing it, I tried the latest CD ISO of Sidux, only to have it do the same thing up the software upgrade. No GUI. Next I tried Gentoo, after 2 failed installs I said screw it. Then I tried something else, I don't remember, and didn't care for it either, so I tried Gentoo again. 2 more installs later, I finally had a working system. As long as I didn't want to use a GUI. Trying to install the GUI would cause the system to shut down. It'd be in mid compile, and the next thing I know, it's turned off.
So I went back to Debian, haven't ran straight Debian for a while. Set up and encrypted hard drive, which is nice, and Debian so far is the only one I've seen that give the option on install. Of course it took about 5 hours to erase and encrypt the drive. I got a working system, with a GUI, but didn't like that some of the software was old. Debian Lenny had verison .8 something of VLC, and Open Office 2.4. Which trying to upgrade to 3.0 was what caused the problem to start with on the laptop.
I told the system to update itself to the Unstable branch, I tend to run something based off Unstable or Testing anyway, and it removed my GUI and wouldn't give it back. I got the Debian Testing Nightly build install, and it installed fine. I told it to install KDE, my preferred GUI. It did. KDE 4. Which was ok, because I wanted to try KDE 4 out.
I don't like KDE 4. It's too Vista like for my tastes. I don't see why they have to chase what Microsoft is putting out for the GUI. I can't turn off Plasma (or if I can, I haven't found out how yet) so I can install non-Plasma themes from the theme site. I don't like the desktop widget. I like to store some files on my desktop. It's the way I am. They're files I refer to regularly, things like what episode is next in a series I'm watching, a list of commands, etc. I don't like the bars at the top of the windows, I'd like to change those. And lastly, I don't care for the slowness. Even scrolling / page up / page down in Ice Weasel (Debian's Firefox fork) is slow. It shouldn't be and wasn't under Gnome.
I'm thinking of installing XFCE and LDXE on the thing and see how those deal. I also have to find a way to get my old data off the old hard drive. I've gotten most of the tweaking done though.
Two weeks ago, my laptop at home suffered bad things when I tried to upgrade my installed version of Sidux to the latest version via apt-get dist-upgrade. It resulted in me having no GUI to use. All the data was still on the drive, and as long as I didn't want to do anything that required a Grapical environment, I was ok. Sadly that made surfing the web and watching videos hard.
To fix it, I bought a new hard drive. 320gig for about $70.00 USD + shipping. After installing it, I tried the latest CD ISO of Sidux, only to have it do the same thing up the software upgrade. No GUI. Next I tried Gentoo, after 2 failed installs I said screw it. Then I tried something else, I don't remember, and didn't care for it either, so I tried Gentoo again. 2 more installs later, I finally had a working system. As long as I didn't want to use a GUI. Trying to install the GUI would cause the system to shut down. It'd be in mid compile, and the next thing I know, it's turned off.
So I went back to Debian, haven't ran straight Debian for a while. Set up and encrypted hard drive, which is nice, and Debian so far is the only one I've seen that give the option on install. Of course it took about 5 hours to erase and encrypt the drive. I got a working system, with a GUI, but didn't like that some of the software was old. Debian Lenny had verison .8 something of VLC, and Open Office 2.4. Which trying to upgrade to 3.0 was what caused the problem to start with on the laptop.
I told the system to update itself to the Unstable branch, I tend to run something based off Unstable or Testing anyway, and it removed my GUI and wouldn't give it back. I got the Debian Testing Nightly build install, and it installed fine. I told it to install KDE, my preferred GUI. It did. KDE 4. Which was ok, because I wanted to try KDE 4 out.
I don't like KDE 4. It's too Vista like for my tastes. I don't see why they have to chase what Microsoft is putting out for the GUI. I can't turn off Plasma (or if I can, I haven't found out how yet) so I can install non-Plasma themes from the theme site. I don't like the desktop widget. I like to store some files on my desktop. It's the way I am. They're files I refer to regularly, things like what episode is next in a series I'm watching, a list of commands, etc. I don't like the bars at the top of the windows, I'd like to change those. And lastly, I don't care for the slowness. Even scrolling / page up / page down in Ice Weasel (Debian's Firefox fork) is slow. It shouldn't be and wasn't under Gnome.
I'm thinking of installing XFCE and LDXE on the thing and see how those deal. I also have to find a way to get my old data off the old hard drive. I've gotten most of the tweaking done though.
Monday, March 23, 2009
scales
the scale at home, before my shower said 237.0. The one at work (an old Toledo shipping scale), after showering, dressing, and having breakfast (without my shoes) says 238. I have a feeling I'm wearing more than 1lbs of clothing.
part of the problem at home, is the weight changes based on where I put the scale. I know the floor isn't the most even at home.
Oh well.
part of the problem at home, is the weight changes based on where I put the scale. I know the floor isn't the most even at home.
Oh well.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
What ever happened to standards?
Last week I had to go down to our plant in Ohio to run cable. While there, I found out that we didn't have an plugs for the face plates. These are the female ends that sit inside the wall for network cabling.
So we ran over to a couple of stores to find some. The first two stores didn't have any. The third one did. When we got back to the plant, I found that the receptacle that I got didn't fit the face plate.
Now this caused 2 problems. 1, it looked half-assed. Which I feel is a direct reflection on my work ethic (even though that is how I was told to leave it). 2, it left the cable too short for the need. I ended up putting a male end on the cable, expecting the equipment to be moved over closer to the wall, which it wasn't. I had only ran enough cable for the run to reach the wall.
What the problem really shows though is a problem with patents. They've destroyed standards. When I was younger, I could go into a store, and get a face plate, or a plug, or anything else, and know that even though they were from different manufacturers, they'd fit together no problem. As long as they were not meant to be decorative.
Even now looking at power strips, they all do the same thing. They all have roughly the same amount of outlets, but they're all shaped different and have their own patent numbers.
I thought the point of the patent was to make people create new things, not use it as a way to get rich, and lock the end users into one company's equipment.
Basically now if I want to replace a cable or outlet; I have to go and buy the part, the "proper" face plate, and maybe even a new outlet box for mounting the cable into the wall.
And if I'm adding cable to the existing box, but can't get the female adapter, that means I'll have to buy more, replace the ones ran previously (which could be a problem depending on how many times they've been cut back to replace the adapters, and how much extra cable length was ran), and then buy the proper parts to make it fit and be presentable.
Maybe it's just me but I think there is something wrong with this picture.
So we ran over to a couple of stores to find some. The first two stores didn't have any. The third one did. When we got back to the plant, I found that the receptacle that I got didn't fit the face plate.
Now this caused 2 problems. 1, it looked half-assed. Which I feel is a direct reflection on my work ethic (even though that is how I was told to leave it). 2, it left the cable too short for the need. I ended up putting a male end on the cable, expecting the equipment to be moved over closer to the wall, which it wasn't. I had only ran enough cable for the run to reach the wall.
What the problem really shows though is a problem with patents. They've destroyed standards. When I was younger, I could go into a store, and get a face plate, or a plug, or anything else, and know that even though they were from different manufacturers, they'd fit together no problem. As long as they were not meant to be decorative.
Even now looking at power strips, they all do the same thing. They all have roughly the same amount of outlets, but they're all shaped different and have their own patent numbers.
I thought the point of the patent was to make people create new things, not use it as a way to get rich, and lock the end users into one company's equipment.
Basically now if I want to replace a cable or outlet; I have to go and buy the part, the "proper" face plate, and maybe even a new outlet box for mounting the cable into the wall.
And if I'm adding cable to the existing box, but can't get the female adapter, that means I'll have to buy more, replace the ones ran previously (which could be a problem depending on how many times they've been cut back to replace the adapters, and how much extra cable length was ran), and then buy the proper parts to make it fit and be presentable.
Maybe it's just me but I think there is something wrong with this picture.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Said something today, so unlike me.
"Doing documentation SUCKS!".
Saying that is so unlike me. I'm usually one of the first people that not only calls for the documentation, but also one of the first do it. When I write code, my comments in the code usually take up more lines than the code itself. I usually volunteer to write the documents for programs and projects because I enjoy it.
However for some reason, while doing the documentation for the network changes I did yesterday in our plant in Wooster Oh, I turned to the person I share my office with and said the above statement. I think part of it is because I'm tired. 2 road trips to Wooster in under a week, and not sleeping well is starting to wear on me.
After the documentation was finished I was happy and happy with it, but doing it I couldn't stand it.
Saying that is so unlike me. I'm usually one of the first people that not only calls for the documentation, but also one of the first do it. When I write code, my comments in the code usually take up more lines than the code itself. I usually volunteer to write the documents for programs and projects because I enjoy it.
However for some reason, while doing the documentation for the network changes I did yesterday in our plant in Wooster Oh, I turned to the person I share my office with and said the above statement. I think part of it is because I'm tired. 2 road trips to Wooster in under a week, and not sleeping well is starting to wear on me.
After the documentation was finished I was happy and happy with it, but doing it I couldn't stand it.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
what's going on...
Bad news yesterday at work... But in all fairness to the people that pay me, I'll say no more until later. I have always stated my loyalty goes only as far as my paycheck. Very mercinary like of me, but that is the way I roll. I feel that today's companies don't care about the workers and only care about the $$$ in the bank. BOA showed us that, after they got the bail out and trying holding a conf call with right wing nutters, trying to block people's right to chose (Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)).
Last night I went to Martial Arts early. Got there a few minutes before 18:00 and dropped of the class' fit decks. Then went and changed. Did lots of push-ups in the kids class. I did somewhere around 150 or more last night. Plus my normal class workout, plus some planks (because I was tired of push ups and the person being punished can't do them anyway). 8 plank, 2 side planks. :)
Today more grind at work. I think most of us are still dealing with what was said yesterday. I expect some people to start looking for new jobs, but others don't. I know updating my resume has moved up on the list of things to do. Might actually start applying to them. I was talking about a job posting I saw today on Dice, manager and office mate were there. Manager asked why I was looking for a new job. Office Mate asked "Were you at the meeting yesterday did you hear what they said?" I shouldn't complain too bad I have a job.
I know, I'm being an ass right now... but it's a fine line and while this is supposed to be my space to vent, and the like, and I keep my employer's name out of it, I don't want to risk being fired.
Since I hadn't heard any thing back yet from the apartment complex, I went to the office today and talked to the coordinator. Her GM has been out sick, or so I was told, and she had yesterday off, so she was trying to catch up. It is looking like we're on to start NEXT WEDNESDAY!!! I have so much to do to get ready. However I'll get final word before 5pm tomorrow. Right now it looks like the first class (women's self defense) will be at 7:30, and co-ed self defense will be at 8:30. Which means i'll get done at 9:30. I feel bad for my parrot. He'll be stuck in his cage all that time. :(
My workout tonight was push-ups from the 100 push up challenge. Week 2, day 2. I cut the rest down to 60 seconds instead of 90. Might not be a good idea, but I wanted them done with.
14
16
12
12
20
___
74 total.
Last night I went to Martial Arts early. Got there a few minutes before 18:00 and dropped of the class' fit decks. Then went and changed. Did lots of push-ups in the kids class. I did somewhere around 150 or more last night. Plus my normal class workout, plus some planks (because I was tired of push ups and the person being punished can't do them anyway). 8 plank, 2 side planks. :)
Today more grind at work. I think most of us are still dealing with what was said yesterday. I expect some people to start looking for new jobs, but others don't. I know updating my resume has moved up on the list of things to do. Might actually start applying to them. I was talking about a job posting I saw today on Dice, manager and office mate were there. Manager asked why I was looking for a new job. Office Mate asked "Were you at the meeting yesterday did you hear what they said?" I shouldn't complain too bad I have a job.
I know, I'm being an ass right now... but it's a fine line and while this is supposed to be my space to vent, and the like, and I keep my employer's name out of it, I don't want to risk being fired.
Since I hadn't heard any thing back yet from the apartment complex, I went to the office today and talked to the coordinator. Her GM has been out sick, or so I was told, and she had yesterday off, so she was trying to catch up. It is looking like we're on to start NEXT WEDNESDAY!!! I have so much to do to get ready. However I'll get final word before 5pm tomorrow. Right now it looks like the first class (women's self defense) will be at 7:30, and co-ed self defense will be at 8:30. Which means i'll get done at 9:30. I feel bad for my parrot. He'll be stuck in his cage all that time. :(
My workout tonight was push-ups from the 100 push up challenge. Week 2, day 2. I cut the rest down to 60 seconds instead of 90. Might not be a good idea, but I wanted them done with.
14
16
12
12
20
___
74 total.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The last few days
The last few days at work have been hectic and a blur.
I remember the best developer we have coming to me a lot. The first time was to ask me about 2 linux boxes on our network I knew nothing about. The rest of the time, to fix the things that were broken on them, because the windows admin and jr network engineer built them, without understanding how to build linux servers. No fault of their own. They're used to linux on the desktop, linux on the server is a whole new beast.
I remember digging through proxy related activities on the network. I remember finding out that while I was busy with high-profile projects, people have been making changes to the network without checking with me first. And thus, throwing future projects that will improve productivity and enhance the network. I only even found out because JNE asked me a question, thinking he was impressing management, and checking his facts after the fact. At which point started a shit storm yesterday between me, my manager, up to my director, to the director of manufactoring and down the other side. It was a mess.
Which has lead to 2 days of doing network redesigns in my head, having people ignore what I say, because the JNE with the cert and NO to Little experience disagrees with me. A lot of it is because they're thinking departmentally and not company-wide.
At one point, my manager who has been "robbing Peter to pay Paul" said that we couldn't rob Peter to fix the issue. I said we're not. We're going to kill Peter and just be done with it. By the way, robbing Peter to pay Paul, is part of what led to this problem.
Last night in twitter, I said I couldn't wait to go beat someone up. Which is my way of saying I'm looking forward to going to Martial Arts, and distressing while working out. I ended up kicking a lower belt in the back of the head during warm ups. It wasn't meant to happen, my mind just was not in the right place. The 30 self-imposed punishment push-ups afterward weren't very pretty either, since about some of the class dropped to do them with me.
tonight's 100 push challenge, week 1, day 3.
11
15
9
9
20
I remember the best developer we have coming to me a lot. The first time was to ask me about 2 linux boxes on our network I knew nothing about. The rest of the time, to fix the things that were broken on them, because the windows admin and jr network engineer built them, without understanding how to build linux servers. No fault of their own. They're used to linux on the desktop, linux on the server is a whole new beast.
I remember digging through proxy related activities on the network. I remember finding out that while I was busy with high-profile projects, people have been making changes to the network without checking with me first. And thus, throwing future projects that will improve productivity and enhance the network. I only even found out because JNE asked me a question, thinking he was impressing management, and checking his facts after the fact. At which point started a shit storm yesterday between me, my manager, up to my director, to the director of manufactoring and down the other side. It was a mess.
Which has lead to 2 days of doing network redesigns in my head, having people ignore what I say, because the JNE with the cert and NO to Little experience disagrees with me. A lot of it is because they're thinking departmentally and not company-wide.
At one point, my manager who has been "robbing Peter to pay Paul" said that we couldn't rob Peter to fix the issue. I said we're not. We're going to kill Peter and just be done with it. By the way, robbing Peter to pay Paul, is part of what led to this problem.
Last night in twitter, I said I couldn't wait to go beat someone up. Which is my way of saying I'm looking forward to going to Martial Arts, and distressing while working out. I ended up kicking a lower belt in the back of the head during warm ups. It wasn't meant to happen, my mind just was not in the right place. The 30 self-imposed punishment push-ups afterward weren't very pretty either, since about some of the class dropped to do them with me.
tonight's 100 push challenge, week 1, day 3.
11
15
9
9
20
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
And to top it all off, I need to get some blue thread.
Today sucked. Really really sucked.
I woke up sore and tired again. My back was hurting again. Not as bad as last week, but sore enough that I really really really thought about calling in sick today.
Then I get to work. Long story short there, a piece of networking equipment died, and took us off line for about 8 hours. The first 3 hours, you could reach the company websites, but that was it. At 12:30, we rebooted a piece of equipment. Before I did it, I said I didn't think it would fix the problem. I was right. It made it worse. I said worse case, we'll be dead in the water. Close enough, we didn't have any external presence on the ineternet.
In kicks the adrenaline, because shit just hit the fan, and it was my job to fix it. Trying to do 3 or 5 things at once, and making little headway on any of them. Finally I focus on one of them, get the websites back up, even if it's limping along, so the outside world could see us. About an hour later (note this is about 2 hours after the reboot), I got the system up. Changed ip address, monkeyed around with the firewall, ran cables over the floor. All while waiting for Cisco to deliver a new part to us.
Around 3:30, I ran out for comfert food. Regardless of the fact that I had steamed colliflower and broccli, 2 pergoies, and half a chicken breast for lunch at 12:15. I went and got 2 Double cheeseburgers minus onion plus bacon, large fry, large dr pepper, and a large frosty from wendy's. Got back, ate the first burger, felt like crap. After washing my face and hands, to free them of ketchup and mayo (note this around 4pm now, and the part isn't due until after 6pm) I see a car parked on the sidewalk in front of the door. I go out to the lobby, and it was Cisco's delivery team with the part. I don't think the guy thought I was authorized to sign for it, but my name was on the package too, or was supposed to be.
Opened the boxes, and the adrenaline kicked back in, as I flipped the power switches on the equipment. Meanwhile my frosty is melting. Replace the bad card, and everything comes back up... Except the web sites because of the changes I made. So I quickly run off to change the firewall, reconfig the box I changed, change DNS, and all other kinds of fun things that took me an hour to do the first time (un-did it in 15 minutes), and life was happy.
However after running on adrenaline for so long, I'm now exhausted. I was going to come home and just go to bed. Skipped Martial Arts... Of course I diddn't leave work until 6pm. Got bird out of his cage, since it's going down to around -5f tonight, I stopped to retape my bed room window. If I had the tape I'd do the other one, and I really need to get some more weather tape, and replace all the duct tape I used. But it's not as drafty in here. Still some drafts but not as bad.
In the process I cut a line in my blue blanet on my bed. Stupid razor knife. I know it was my own fault. I didn't see the cut (and I looked at the time) until I got in bed. I hope it doesn't get worse between now and the weekend, so I can get some thread and sew it back up. Yes I know how to sew. Which does surprise people. Nothing fancy, but I can make small repairs, and put patches on clothes, I did all the patches on my martial arts uniforms myself. Although next time, I'm going to pay someone.
I was going to skip ETK tonight. but I wanted something to make me feel better than I when I was getting ready to go to bed.
Warm up: 10 minutes.
10x wall squat
10x halo (16kg, 5 to the right, 5 to the left)
10x pumps
Total: 4 sets, could have done more, but I stopped to get the kettlebell off my bookshelf, take off my sweat pants, change my shirts, get my water from the kitchen, etc.
Workout: 24kg, 5 minutes
5 left, 5 right Turkish Get Up.
Had enough time to do a 6th one on the left, but decided against it.
I woke up sore and tired again. My back was hurting again. Not as bad as last week, but sore enough that I really really really thought about calling in sick today.
Then I get to work. Long story short there, a piece of networking equipment died, and took us off line for about 8 hours. The first 3 hours, you could reach the company websites, but that was it. At 12:30, we rebooted a piece of equipment. Before I did it, I said I didn't think it would fix the problem. I was right. It made it worse. I said worse case, we'll be dead in the water. Close enough, we didn't have any external presence on the ineternet.
In kicks the adrenaline, because shit just hit the fan, and it was my job to fix it. Trying to do 3 or 5 things at once, and making little headway on any of them. Finally I focus on one of them, get the websites back up, even if it's limping along, so the outside world could see us. About an hour later (note this is about 2 hours after the reboot), I got the system up. Changed ip address, monkeyed around with the firewall, ran cables over the floor. All while waiting for Cisco to deliver a new part to us.
Around 3:30, I ran out for comfert food. Regardless of the fact that I had steamed colliflower and broccli, 2 pergoies, and half a chicken breast for lunch at 12:15. I went and got 2 Double cheeseburgers minus onion plus bacon, large fry, large dr pepper, and a large frosty from wendy's. Got back, ate the first burger, felt like crap. After washing my face and hands, to free them of ketchup and mayo (note this around 4pm now, and the part isn't due until after 6pm) I see a car parked on the sidewalk in front of the door. I go out to the lobby, and it was Cisco's delivery team with the part. I don't think the guy thought I was authorized to sign for it, but my name was on the package too, or was supposed to be.
Opened the boxes, and the adrenaline kicked back in, as I flipped the power switches on the equipment. Meanwhile my frosty is melting. Replace the bad card, and everything comes back up... Except the web sites because of the changes I made. So I quickly run off to change the firewall, reconfig the box I changed, change DNS, and all other kinds of fun things that took me an hour to do the first time (un-did it in 15 minutes), and life was happy.
However after running on adrenaline for so long, I'm now exhausted. I was going to come home and just go to bed. Skipped Martial Arts... Of course I diddn't leave work until 6pm. Got bird out of his cage, since it's going down to around -5f tonight, I stopped to retape my bed room window. If I had the tape I'd do the other one, and I really need to get some more weather tape, and replace all the duct tape I used. But it's not as drafty in here. Still some drafts but not as bad.
In the process I cut a line in my blue blanet on my bed. Stupid razor knife. I know it was my own fault. I didn't see the cut (and I looked at the time) until I got in bed. I hope it doesn't get worse between now and the weekend, so I can get some thread and sew it back up. Yes I know how to sew. Which does surprise people. Nothing fancy, but I can make small repairs, and put patches on clothes, I did all the patches on my martial arts uniforms myself. Although next time, I'm going to pay someone.
I was going to skip ETK tonight. but I wanted something to make me feel better than I when I was getting ready to go to bed.
Warm up: 10 minutes.
10x wall squat
10x halo (16kg, 5 to the right, 5 to the left)
10x pumps
Total: 4 sets, could have done more, but I stopped to get the kettlebell off my bookshelf, take off my sweat pants, change my shirts, get my water from the kitchen, etc.
Workout: 24kg, 5 minutes
5 left, 5 right Turkish Get Up.
Had enough time to do a 6th one on the left, but decided against it.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
hmm... time for the weekend review
Like most weeks, I don't remember most of them, but this is my first weekend off in a month. So I burnt it so far, at my computer. Muhahaha.
Here is what I remember that's worth it (most of the week is a blur).
Tuesday, I cooked. 2 tofurkies, with the oil and soy sauce baste. I cooked them on a bed of red potatoes, onions, and carrots. I also made cranberry sauce. yummm...
Wednesday I over ate at the pot luck.
Thursday, I went to Martial Arts. It was good. I liked it. My endurance level appears to be one of the highest ones there. Which is a little sad. I'm basing this off of people moving away from me in free fighting, while sucking wind. I'll be breathing heavy, but they are sucking wind.
Fell pretty bad too. Landed on my elbow pretty hard, buy my knee much harder. It's still bruised. I had a hard time walking Friday. Of course, I had to walk all around the building, which did help it some, even if I did limp most of the time.
Thursday it snowed. I fell on the ice outside, before going to class. Wasn't that bad in that case, just had one leg go out from under me, and was able to turn it into a kneel, before crashing. I tend to do that a lot when I fall on the ice. End up in a one knee kneel. The drive home sucked, once I got near the airport, went to a complete stand still.
Earlier Thursday, the director emailed me about a wireless access point showing near his office. They're pretty paranoid there about that stuff. I really don't care too much myself. To a point. Once a month I walk around with a laptop, looking for wireless access points. I'd much rather have a better tool, that finds the non-broadcast SSIDs too, but it makes them feel good. Anyway, it looks like someone set up a new access point across the freeway and we're getting bleed over. One troublesome thing though. Thursday during the quick initial scan. I found one that really did bother me. It was an ad-hoc peering point called "Free Public Internet". Ad-hoc networks are computers without a router, that can access each other no problem. Lets just put it this way, it is a bad thing to find. Turns out it was on the CFO's laptop. A VERY BAD THING. Basically anyone could sit out in the parking lot, or even across the freeway (with a directional antenna, which can be made with a pringles can), connect to the computer and get files from it.
I get to do a computer security class in a few months. It's for the Executives and the Sales people. Should be fun. I'm going to write the manual from scratch.
Friday, wandered around, then spent the majority of the afternoon at my desk being bored. Could have done some other stuff, but didn't feel like it at the time.
Today, I had fun. I set up some neato computer stuff, GnuPG, and the ability to encrypt my google email. (Encryption is good, it prevents people from reading what they are not meant to be). The way it works, you make a key pair. One is public, one is private. The public one you share. The private one you hide. When they want to send you an email, only you can read, they encrypt it with your public key, and usually sign it with their private key (because you're public key is public, anyone can get it and say they are so and so, but signing it with their own private key means it's from them). As long as you have their public key, you can read the message, after decrypting it with your private key, and can confirm it's from them, by checking they're signature against their public key. It sounds harder than it really is. Which is probably why so few use it. It took me all of 30 minutes to get set up.
I also looked up the details on creating a spice mister. Going to make some capsaicin oil to try with it in a few weeks.
I also got caught up on some tv. Watched about 4 hours of it today. About all I could stand. Read a lot of neat stuff on the web. Instructables and Life Hacker rock.
Only other thing of note, was I got the Ultimate bond, 42 discs. 21 movies (Doctor No through Casino Royal, minus Never Say Never Again). I finally saw Casino. It was decent. I look forward to seeing Quantum now.
Oh and I think I'm going to push and try to sell the idea of encrypted IM clients at work this week to the upper management.
Here is what I remember that's worth it (most of the week is a blur).
Tuesday, I cooked. 2 tofurkies, with the oil and soy sauce baste. I cooked them on a bed of red potatoes, onions, and carrots. I also made cranberry sauce. yummm...
Wednesday I over ate at the pot luck.
Thursday, I went to Martial Arts. It was good. I liked it. My endurance level appears to be one of the highest ones there. Which is a little sad. I'm basing this off of people moving away from me in free fighting, while sucking wind. I'll be breathing heavy, but they are sucking wind.
Fell pretty bad too. Landed on my elbow pretty hard, buy my knee much harder. It's still bruised. I had a hard time walking Friday. Of course, I had to walk all around the building, which did help it some, even if I did limp most of the time.
Thursday it snowed. I fell on the ice outside, before going to class. Wasn't that bad in that case, just had one leg go out from under me, and was able to turn it into a kneel, before crashing. I tend to do that a lot when I fall on the ice. End up in a one knee kneel. The drive home sucked, once I got near the airport, went to a complete stand still.
Earlier Thursday, the director emailed me about a wireless access point showing near his office. They're pretty paranoid there about that stuff. I really don't care too much myself. To a point. Once a month I walk around with a laptop, looking for wireless access points. I'd much rather have a better tool, that finds the non-broadcast SSIDs too, but it makes them feel good. Anyway, it looks like someone set up a new access point across the freeway and we're getting bleed over. One troublesome thing though. Thursday during the quick initial scan. I found one that really did bother me. It was an ad-hoc peering point called "Free Public Internet". Ad-hoc networks are computers without a router, that can access each other no problem. Lets just put it this way, it is a bad thing to find. Turns out it was on the CFO's laptop. A VERY BAD THING. Basically anyone could sit out in the parking lot, or even across the freeway (with a directional antenna, which can be made with a pringles can), connect to the computer and get files from it.
I get to do a computer security class in a few months. It's for the Executives and the Sales people. Should be fun. I'm going to write the manual from scratch.
Friday, wandered around, then spent the majority of the afternoon at my desk being bored. Could have done some other stuff, but didn't feel like it at the time.
Today, I had fun. I set up some neato computer stuff, GnuPG, and the ability to encrypt my google email. (Encryption is good, it prevents people from reading what they are not meant to be). The way it works, you make a key pair. One is public, one is private. The public one you share. The private one you hide. When they want to send you an email, only you can read, they encrypt it with your public key, and usually sign it with their private key (because you're public key is public, anyone can get it and say they are so and so, but signing it with their own private key means it's from them). As long as you have their public key, you can read the message, after decrypting it with your private key, and can confirm it's from them, by checking they're signature against their public key. It sounds harder than it really is. Which is probably why so few use it. It took me all of 30 minutes to get set up.
I also looked up the details on creating a spice mister. Going to make some capsaicin oil to try with it in a few weeks.
I also got caught up on some tv. Watched about 4 hours of it today. About all I could stand. Read a lot of neat stuff on the web. Instructables and Life Hacker rock.
Only other thing of note, was I got the Ultimate bond, 42 discs. 21 movies (Doctor No through Casino Royal, minus Never Say Never Again). I finally saw Casino. It was decent. I look forward to seeing Quantum now.
Oh and I think I'm going to push and try to sell the idea of encrypted IM clients at work this week to the upper management.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Fun things today
So today was Election day. I got up at 6am, got to the polls at 6:30, and I was about 13th or so in line (I got ballot 0013). It was a minor cluster, and there were lots of people there. By the time the polls opened the line had already doubled back on itself. We had the silly fill the bubble in kind, with black or blue ink. Oh even though I had ballot 13, I was the 12th person to cast their ballot.
The person in front of me used to be my Rep to the State Senate. I recognized him. He doesn't know me, but knows my uncle. It was fun, actually kind of argued with him over politics. The problem is he's been in the belly of the beast, and can't see the forest through the trees anymore.
After voting, I had to go outside and wait for my Uncle who went up there with me. In the process, I got to call a pro-lifer (she claimed she was a "right to life" person) exactly what they are. PRO-Slavery advocates. They want the government to micro-manage their lives, because they're scared of their own sexual organs. It actually chased her, and the former Rep away. I also got to say that Religious Beliefs have no place in politics.
Pro-choice is more than the right to abortion. It's about having a choice period. It means being able to chose what you do and how you use your reproductive organs. The Pro-Slavers won't stop when they get abortion abolished. They'll go after any kind of family planing. They've already gutted sex education. Which you can see as there has been a rise in teen pregnancy. Hell look at the Republican's VP choice's daughter. Being Pro-choice is about not having the government telling us how to have sex.
The best thing today... THE VERY BEST THING TODAY... I'm wearing new pants.
Why is that the best thing? The people who make the slacks I wear to work stopped making the flat front kind in my size, 40x32. Since I tore my last pair last week, I went out and bought new pants. 38x32. AND THEY FIT!!! Its a small victory, but I take what I can get where I can get it.
The person in front of me used to be my Rep to the State Senate. I recognized him. He doesn't know me, but knows my uncle. It was fun, actually kind of argued with him over politics. The problem is he's been in the belly of the beast, and can't see the forest through the trees anymore.
After voting, I had to go outside and wait for my Uncle who went up there with me. In the process, I got to call a pro-lifer (she claimed she was a "right to life" person) exactly what they are. PRO-Slavery advocates. They want the government to micro-manage their lives, because they're scared of their own sexual organs. It actually chased her, and the former Rep away. I also got to say that Religious Beliefs have no place in politics.
Pro-choice is more than the right to abortion. It's about having a choice period. It means being able to chose what you do and how you use your reproductive organs. The Pro-Slavers won't stop when they get abortion abolished. They'll go after any kind of family planing. They've already gutted sex education. Which you can see as there has been a rise in teen pregnancy. Hell look at the Republican's VP choice's daughter. Being Pro-choice is about not having the government telling us how to have sex.
The best thing today... THE VERY BEST THING TODAY... I'm wearing new pants.
Why is that the best thing? The people who make the slacks I wear to work stopped making the flat front kind in my size, 40x32. Since I tore my last pair last week, I went out and bought new pants. 38x32. AND THEY FIT!!! Its a small victory, but I take what I can get where I can get it.
Friday, October 10, 2008
The strange things I think of.
So I'm in the shower this morning thinking... 'It's A Wonderful Life' is really quite interesting.
See what George really was, was a Liberal. He fought Potter, the robber baron of the town, and greedy conservitive. Look at what happened to the town after George was never born.
The town had strip clubs and porn theaters, you could tell Bert was crooked by looking at him, people lived in fear.
Go watch it and think about that while watching that. Then mourn with me for the country
See what George really was, was a Liberal. He fought Potter, the robber baron of the town, and greedy conservitive. Look at what happened to the town after George was never born.
The town had strip clubs and porn theaters, you could tell Bert was crooked by looking at him, people lived in fear.
Go watch it and think about that while watching that. Then mourn with me for the country
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The problems I see with SaaS.
SaaS (the camel case abbreviation for Software as a Service), is providing the concept of Leasing Software. Kind of.
Different kinds of Software as a Service I can think of, off the top of my head: Gmail, Blogger (where we are now), Salesforce.com (CRM), Google Apps. In each of these cases, you can take similar software, and build a server. With virtualization you can put several of them on the same server at one time. I could go out and buy hardware; get sendmail and wordpress; and set up DNS. Then I could have full control over my mail and my blog.
However, I use services that run the software for me, and allow me to access what I want across the internet. That's great. It saves me hardware price, electricity, and space. I don't have to worry about upgrading or bug fixes, I don't have to worry about a lot of things.
Or do I? Here's the problems list, and why I came up with it. I started looking and thinking about this because of 3 things recently.
1: Yesterday I saw a job posting for a really good job. It was Linux administration, Xen Virtualization, MySQL administration, and playing with something called SalesForce.com (which turns out to be a Saas based Customer Relationship Management (customer database)).
2: I was contacted by a recruiter I've worked with in the past about the same position.
3: A comment on this blog post / article. And yes, that is me responding to the post with some of the same information below.
Problem 1:
What happens when you have no network connection? It could be because you're traveling, natural disaster, accident (someone hit the telephone pole with their car and broke it, your ISP caught fire and burnt to the ground, someone got too happy with a backhoe and took out the local fiber --I've seen all three-- ), mistake (telco disconnects the wrong circuit --something else I've seen a lot-- or the DNS expires and the company can't get it back), or maintenance (isp has to upgrade a switch and its year end for your company). You've lost access to your email, docs or customer database. And the problem could be at the far end, where the SaaS provider is, not just where you are, or anywhere along the line between you and them.
At least if the data is on your hardware and equipment, you don't have to send your staff home, or have them waiting around doing nothing until they can get access back. You can also sit down and make modifications on data off line, and upload to central servers later. You can review old emails (something I can do when the mail server crashes, because I have a local copy on my desktop) and get ready for meetings you're about to go into. The list goes on and on.
Problem 2:
Where are the items stored? Are they on your computer, under your control or on someone else's hardware? If they decide to upgrade, do you have a say? When Microsoft comes out with patches or an update, I choose when to upgrade. When someone releases a new version of the Software, I plan it around when it will cause the least amount of chaos. That isn't the case when it's on someone else's hardware. They do things when they want to, because they think it's best for them, with no buy-in from the customer.
Another note in the same vain. I've had 2 friends (well people I know online and consider friends), who had their blogs and things stored on a community site. They lost access to most of their data when the site didn't renew it's DNS. One of these friends I was able to help and get her some of her data back. I couldn't help the other one though, because it was set up differently for him.
Problem 3:
Backing up and restoring data. When it's on your hardware, you do the back ups, and if you mess up, it's you that goofed. However, when it's on their hardware, you lose that right. They make the back ups. Companies do a good job of backing up, but they don't keep the backups forever. If they fold will they give you access to your backed up data so you can move it elsewhere?
Problem 4:
Who besides you have access to your data? In the case of SalesForce.com, Wikipedia (another SaaS) talks about how SalesForce.com was compromised in 2007. The attackers used a phishing scam, and then moved out from there.
Yes, there will always be crackers, but at least if it's my hardware, I would hope my monitoring software would catch them before they were able to attack to far. With SaaS, they just have to attack one vector because they know that's whats there. With your hardware, they have to figure out what you have first.
Going back to Wikipedia, their site shows something else just as good, although in a different fashion. Anyone can update it, which means if people don't like what is being said they can change what is said.
Problem 5:
Network overhead. Where I'm currently working, I have a decent network. Lots of switches, Gigabit links and all the fun that comes with it. However while my network can do 100mbit+ speeds from the desktop to the servers, I have a much smaller pipe going out of the network to my ISP. If my company were to use the SaaS tools, they would have to buy the next size pipe. Considering they ask me regularly if they have to have the one the size we do... I don't think telling them they would need larger would go over to well. Especially if it's because they have no choice but to get a bigger pipe, or wait longer to access the information they need.
Problem 6:
Cost and return on investment. It might cost less to do SaaS, since you're saving on hardware, software, cooling, space costs, and staffing. But it's a re-occurring bill every month to a year. What if you miss the payment? When I had Sprint / Nextel, they'd leave service on until you were 2 bills behind, then they'd cancel your service. That worked great for me when I was a contractor, and would go a month without income. AT&T, who I have now, if your 7 days late with your payment the only places you can call are customer service, and 911. What happens if you miss a payment to your SaaS because of an unforeseen problem? Also when you own the equipment you can write it off over deprecation. Can you do that with a Service?
Problem 7:
Staffing. Lets face it the economy sucks. We currently have a high unemployment rate too. If you don't have the hardware on the floor, you don't need as many people to run it. So there are less jobs and people get let go. I know I'm tired of working more than 12 hours at a time and 5 to 7 days a week (even if they're not all 12 hour shifts). If people don't have a job, they don't have money, if they don't have money, how do they buy your product? If they can't buy your product, where does your revenue come from? If you don't have revenue how do you pay your bills, including your SaaS bill? See problem 6.
I could probably go on if I wanted to, but I'll stop here. For now. While I think the concept is cool, and have no problem using some of it, knowing that things can get lost at any given time; I don't think it is what Businesses should be doing. I think the businesses that are using it, are being ran by people that are too busy counting beans and not paying enough attention to the larger picture. If they looked at the larger picture, they'd see that in the long run they could have a better Return On their Investment if they maintained everything in house.
Different kinds of Software as a Service I can think of, off the top of my head: Gmail, Blogger (where we are now), Salesforce.com (CRM), Google Apps. In each of these cases, you can take similar software, and build a server. With virtualization you can put several of them on the same server at one time. I could go out and buy hardware; get sendmail and wordpress; and set up DNS. Then I could have full control over my mail and my blog.
However, I use services that run the software for me, and allow me to access what I want across the internet. That's great. It saves me hardware price, electricity, and space. I don't have to worry about upgrading or bug fixes, I don't have to worry about a lot of things.
Or do I? Here's the problems list, and why I came up with it. I started looking and thinking about this because of 3 things recently.
1: Yesterday I saw a job posting for a really good job. It was Linux administration, Xen Virtualization, MySQL administration, and playing with something called SalesForce.com (which turns out to be a Saas based Customer Relationship Management (customer database)).
2: I was contacted by a recruiter I've worked with in the past about the same position.
3: A comment on this blog post / article. And yes, that is me responding to the post with some of the same information below.
Problem 1:
What happens when you have no network connection? It could be because you're traveling, natural disaster, accident (someone hit the telephone pole with their car and broke it, your ISP caught fire and burnt to the ground, someone got too happy with a backhoe and took out the local fiber --I've seen all three-- ), mistake (telco disconnects the wrong circuit --something else I've seen a lot-- or the DNS expires and the company can't get it back), or maintenance (isp has to upgrade a switch and its year end for your company). You've lost access to your email, docs or customer database. And the problem could be at the far end, where the SaaS provider is, not just where you are, or anywhere along the line between you and them.
At least if the data is on your hardware and equipment, you don't have to send your staff home, or have them waiting around doing nothing until they can get access back. You can also sit down and make modifications on data off line, and upload to central servers later. You can review old emails (something I can do when the mail server crashes, because I have a local copy on my desktop) and get ready for meetings you're about to go into. The list goes on and on.
Problem 2:
Where are the items stored? Are they on your computer, under your control or on someone else's hardware? If they decide to upgrade, do you have a say? When Microsoft comes out with patches or an update, I choose when to upgrade. When someone releases a new version of the Software, I plan it around when it will cause the least amount of chaos. That isn't the case when it's on someone else's hardware. They do things when they want to, because they think it's best for them, with no buy-in from the customer.
Another note in the same vain. I've had 2 friends (well people I know online and consider friends), who had their blogs and things stored on a community site. They lost access to most of their data when the site didn't renew it's DNS. One of these friends I was able to help and get her some of her data back. I couldn't help the other one though, because it was set up differently for him.
Problem 3:
Backing up and restoring data. When it's on your hardware, you do the back ups, and if you mess up, it's you that goofed. However, when it's on their hardware, you lose that right. They make the back ups. Companies do a good job of backing up, but they don't keep the backups forever. If they fold will they give you access to your backed up data so you can move it elsewhere?
Problem 4:
Who besides you have access to your data? In the case of SalesForce.com, Wikipedia (another SaaS) talks about how SalesForce.com was compromised in 2007. The attackers used a phishing scam, and then moved out from there.
Yes, there will always be crackers, but at least if it's my hardware, I would hope my monitoring software would catch them before they were able to attack to far. With SaaS, they just have to attack one vector because they know that's whats there. With your hardware, they have to figure out what you have first.
Going back to Wikipedia, their site shows something else just as good, although in a different fashion. Anyone can update it, which means if people don't like what is being said they can change what is said.
Problem 5:
Network overhead. Where I'm currently working, I have a decent network. Lots of switches, Gigabit links and all the fun that comes with it. However while my network can do 100mbit+ speeds from the desktop to the servers, I have a much smaller pipe going out of the network to my ISP. If my company were to use the SaaS tools, they would have to buy the next size pipe. Considering they ask me regularly if they have to have the one the size we do... I don't think telling them they would need larger would go over to well. Especially if it's because they have no choice but to get a bigger pipe, or wait longer to access the information they need.
Problem 6:
Cost and return on investment. It might cost less to do SaaS, since you're saving on hardware, software, cooling, space costs, and staffing. But it's a re-occurring bill every month to a year. What if you miss the payment? When I had Sprint / Nextel, they'd leave service on until you were 2 bills behind, then they'd cancel your service. That worked great for me when I was a contractor, and would go a month without income. AT&T, who I have now, if your 7 days late with your payment the only places you can call are customer service, and 911. What happens if you miss a payment to your SaaS because of an unforeseen problem? Also when you own the equipment you can write it off over deprecation. Can you do that with a Service?
Problem 7:
Staffing. Lets face it the economy sucks. We currently have a high unemployment rate too. If you don't have the hardware on the floor, you don't need as many people to run it. So there are less jobs and people get let go. I know I'm tired of working more than 12 hours at a time and 5 to 7 days a week (even if they're not all 12 hour shifts). If people don't have a job, they don't have money, if they don't have money, how do they buy your product? If they can't buy your product, where does your revenue come from? If you don't have revenue how do you pay your bills, including your SaaS bill? See problem 6.
I could probably go on if I wanted to, but I'll stop here. For now. While I think the concept is cool, and have no problem using some of it, knowing that things can get lost at any given time; I don't think it is what Businesses should be doing. I think the businesses that are using it, are being ran by people that are too busy counting beans and not paying enough attention to the larger picture. If they looked at the larger picture, they'd see that in the long run they could have a better Return On their Investment if they maintained everything in house.
Monday, September 29, 2008
signs you spend to much time in vi
Editing a text file today on a Windows box. On windows I use notepad++
Got done with the edit, and the first thing I though of doing was hitting esc 3x, and then typing ZZ.
Then I realized, regardless of what I'm in, I have a habbit of the following.
typing :q! to try and quit things
ZZ to save things
hit the escape key a lot
have to remove I,A and R from files I edit.
Got done with the edit, and the first thing I though of doing was hitting esc 3x, and then typing ZZ.
Then I realized, regardless of what I'm in, I have a habbit of the following.
typing :q! to try and quit things
ZZ to save things
hit the escape key a lot
have to remove I,A and R from files I edit.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
A little more on FuseSMB.cache
For some reason my post on FuseSMB.cache seems to be popular. Not sure why, but when searching on google, it's on the front page. However The top link for
Linux Mint Forum is even better.
Basically it's creating a version of microsoft's network neighborhood under /home/usename/Network
There is a way to turn it off, I suggest going to the above link.
Linux Mint Forum is even better.
Basically it's creating a version of microsoft's network neighborhood under /home/usename/Network
There is a way to turn it off, I suggest going to the above link.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
bidding on ebay sucks
With all the reading of virtualization I've been doing lately, I want to do virtual windows xp on my laptop. Since I'm reading about Xen Virtualization, which we are going to use at work, I want to stick with that. That means I need an Intel VT chip. I did some looking at the processors and I thought I had one, however the option isn't in the bios, and the flags are not there in cpuinfo.
So I did more looking. Turns out I have an Intel Core Duo T2300E which doesn't do VT. So after looking around the net, and not wanting to pay $400.00+ for a chip that is no longer made, I decided to try Ebay.
In the last week I tried to bid on several different processors. I placed bids, and ended up getting out bid. One, I held the winning bid for 3 days. It was a T2300, the right kind. However I got an email today saying I was out bid, and the thing is now going for $60.00.
Talking to a co-worker, she said don't bid until the last 20 seconds. Put in the max amount you're willing to pay for it, and it'll usually prevent you from being out bid. Personally I don't like the snipe approach. I wonder how often that is someone just jacking up the price of their own product.
A great example. One of the processors I had bid on... I got an email from the seller last night. He hadn't heard from the buyer (after an hour of the sell closing), and wanted to know if I wanted to buy it. Of course at that time I was looking at another one and winning the bid on that. I said no.
Buying on ebay is a little easier... even if it does cost you more money. Still not the greatest system in the world, but I've seen much worse.
So I did more looking. Turns out I have an Intel Core Duo T2300E which doesn't do VT. So after looking around the net, and not wanting to pay $400.00+ for a chip that is no longer made, I decided to try Ebay.
In the last week I tried to bid on several different processors. I placed bids, and ended up getting out bid. One, I held the winning bid for 3 days. It was a T2300, the right kind. However I got an email today saying I was out bid, and the thing is now going for $60.00.
Talking to a co-worker, she said don't bid until the last 20 seconds. Put in the max amount you're willing to pay for it, and it'll usually prevent you from being out bid. Personally I don't like the snipe approach. I wonder how often that is someone just jacking up the price of their own product.
A great example. One of the processors I had bid on... I got an email from the seller last night. He hadn't heard from the buyer (after an hour of the sell closing), and wanted to know if I wanted to buy it. Of course at that time I was looking at another one and winning the bid on that. I said no.
Buying on ebay is a little easier... even if it does cost you more money. Still not the greatest system in the world, but I've seen much worse.
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