Diary of a Network Geek

Better questions.
That’s the answer I give to people who ask why I know things they don’t. I ask better questions than they do. In fact, I think people often find it frustrating that I ask some of the questions I do. Things like, “So, if it doesn’t work, why do you keep doing it?”, or “Yeah, but why have you always done it that way?”. But, there’s always someone who asks better questions than I do. Take for instance the folks at the World Question Center. Now, if you really want to get your mind all bent out of shape, go read some of these questions. Then, think about what they mean. Really. Think about it.

Then go have a drink. It is, after all, Friday!

Novell has failed me.
I cannot believe that I am writing this, but I actually advised against continuing with a Novell product in favor of a Microsoft product this week. I would be more ashamed of myself if not for the terrible problems I had with Novell’s Open Enterprise Server from the install all the way through an attempt at migration. Everything that could possibly go wrong, did.
First, there were numerous problems getting the software to simply install simply because I used a secure password that started with a “$”. That caused a previously unknown error in the Linux-based installer. As far as I know, this has still not been corrected or published. From there, things just got worse. Then there were all the problems getting the SAMBA share to work at all with the Netware Storage Services(NSS) functions on the server. I had to do this because we have Mac OS X clients that access the same data as Windows clients. I had no other option, but, apparently, no one has ever done this before in the history of Open Enterprise Server because I could find no data on doing this and making it work. And, it did work, for a couple of weeks, until I changed some setting somewhere that knocked the Macs off that SAMBA share. I have no idea still what did that. But, there’s more!
The deal-breaker in this case was that our accounting system, Peachtree, would not allow us to add more than a single transaction without restarting the program. Even when only a single user was accessing the data at a time. As you might imagine, this cause some concern in upper management. Two days into trying to get this resolved via Novell Support, my management had lost all confidence in Open Enterprise Server running on SuSE and Novell as a company. At the point that happens, there is absolutely no way to ever make that executive feel “warm and fuzzy” about the software in question. I know, I’ve tried over and over and over again over the years. Well, your Uncle Jim has learned his lesson, kids. Not this time. This time, I decided to cut my losses early and not drag it out. What’s the point? If I managed to get them to stick with this product, six months from now when some other thing went wrong, because, of course, it will, who will get the blame for choosing this stupid software? Me, that’s who. So, yeah, no thanks. Time to change horses.
So, I figure, if we’ve got to change, go with what they know and feel okay with and that’s Windows Server 2003. And very few of you have any idea how it galls me to have to admit that it’s the best option for these folks. Trust me, this goes against every thing I believe in the realm of technology. It used to be: “Windows for workstations, Novell for servers and Macs for graphics” as far as I was concerned. Now, it’s “Windows for workstations, Unix/Linux for servers, and Macs for graphics”. I think a part of me died inside to have to say that, too.
I worry about Novell as a company. This has been a mess from day one. Understand, I’ve been Novell certified for more than fourteen years and I’m well known as a Novell cheerleader. But, after this, I really wonder how long they’ll be around as a company. I think the shift to Linux is too little, late. I don’t think even vaguely complimentary articles at eWeek or changing their strategy, again, to building “cross-platform management tools” can help them now.
At least I think I’ve convinced the boss that when we do an e-mail server it should be Linux or BSD running some, to-be-named-later e-mail package. So, I’ll be able to use some of my favorite skills and show that on my resume. After all those jobs doing so many different things in IT, I can spin just about anything I do professionally to look about the way I want. Sure, there are limits, but, with me, not many. Professionally, that is. I’ve alway said that I can sit down with a good manual and a test system and figure almost anything out. Time and professional experience has shown that to be true. So, I guess I’ll be looking for a good Windows Server 2003 book. And, a good Linux-based e-mail system that allows me to give my users web access. Any suggestions anyone?

Today is Fannie Farmer‘s birthday.
Name doesn’t ring a bell? Yeah, when I got the e-mail from Writer’s Almanac, I didn’t know who she was either. She’s the first cookbook writer. Ever.
I wonder if she knew she was spawning a multi-billion dollar publishing trend when she did that? I wonder what one of us is going to do that’s interesting and innovative that will change the world, too. So, what do you have planned for today?

Actually, an old friend from college.
My friend Kevin e-mailed me today. I haven’t spoken to Kevin in, oh, years, actually. We’ve exchanged the odd e-mail here and there over the last four years or so, but never really got deep into each other’s lives again. We lived in the same dorm, just down the hall, for three and a-half years. He knows the old me. The really old me. The me so old that I didn’t have my dark past yet. Well, I had some of it, but most people just didn’t ever know. Then, later, a lot of people knew, but they don’t know me now. Mostly. Hmm, being direct yet vague is a lot more complicated than I thought.
Anyway, Kevin e-mailed me and it was, well, cool. I miss Kevin. I miss the drunken talks when he’d get too honest with me and my feelings would be hurt, at least until I sobered up again. I miss being jealous of his ease with women, even though I ended up the one having a long-term, committed relationship. Sure, it didn’t work out, but, well, I sure made a good go of it. Kevin did the Peace Corp thing and I racked up consumer debt, got a second tattoo, married, a house, and divorced. Kevin… Kevin taught and played in a band and, well, I guess when we finally connect, I’ll find out more about what Kevin did.
But, it was cool that he came looking for me again. Especially because I was thinking of him the other day, trying to remember to get in touch with him.
Wow, serendipity.

So, I’ve started a class on Kierkegaard at church.
Honestly, I had no idea that he was a Christian philosopher at all. I mean, I knew of him, but only as a complicated Danish philospher that is hard to understand and harder to read. Naturally, I was instantly interested in the free class at Mercy Street. I missed the first night, but my friend J. who got me to go to Mercy Street in the first place convinced me to hit the second class. Oh, boy, was it worth it!
We’re studying from a book called Provocations, which is actually available in PDF format for free from plough.com.
Oh, and make no mistake, this guy is hard to read. I’ve had to reread several sections because I’ve lost where we started by the time I get to the end of it. So complicated and convoluted and, well, wonderful. So much intellectual meat to tear into and digest. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed those kinds of discussions and that way of thinking. This may sound, well, a little arrogant, but I’d stopped talking about those kinds of things because so few people around me seemed interested. Certainly, my ex-wife wasn’t going to keep up with me on that stuff. Not that she’s dumb, far from it, but she just couldn’t be bothered to deal with any kind of real intellectual challenge. More’s the pity. Then, of course, there are the redneck engineers… Hmm, best not to go there, isn’t it?
So, to give you a taste of K-Dog, as several of us have taken to calling Kierkegaard, here are a few, small, easy to digest quotes:

“An ethic which ignores sin is an absolutely idle science.”

Tru dat, yo. So, he challenges us to look at our faith in terms of sin. No kinder, gentler Christianity for him. K-Dog is right in there talking about the tough stuff.

“Man is not conscious of guilt because he sins, but consciously sins because of his guilt.”

So, we know we sin and, therefore, feel guilty. Can you see why I dig this guy? No flinching, no holding back. He just lays it out there.

“To sin against God is to punish yourself.”

I feel that! Every time I’ve sinned in anyone’s eyes, no one has punished me worse than I’ve punished myself. This guy is good!

“It is true that a mirror has the quality of enabling a person to see his image in it, but for this he must stand still.”

Ah, so my old favorite, introspection is required for growth. I have to look at myself honestly to see where I’m lacking, or sinning, and, for that, I have to be still.

“A person rarely amounts to anything, either good or evil, who has never lived in solitude. In solitude there is the Absolute, but also the absolute danger.”

And solitude shall be my mirror. A little peace is required before I can quiet the mental and spiritual unrest enough to see myself honestly.

“There are many people who arrive at conclusions in life much the way schoolboys do; they cheat their teachers by copying the answer book without having worked the problem themselves.”

It only works if you work it yourself. No one can do my spiritual work for me, nor I can do the work for anyone else. Damn.

“Our age is without passion. Everyone knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is really willing to move.”

And, there it is. All Whitey White faux rap-speak jokes aside, this Kierkegaard guy is tough, not because he’s hard to understand, but because he speaks so much truth in such direct ways. Remember, the book is titled Provocations and that is his intent, to provoke us to move from our complacent, safe ideas about what Christianity is and is about.
I’m looking forward to the next session tonight!

Or, it takes a thief to catch a thief.
I’ve often said that if you really want to secure your system, house or whatever, you have to learn to think like the kind of person who’d break into it. It’s not an old idea, frankly, so I always find it a little suprising when someone finds it novel. In fact, this has always been my justification for reading 2600 magazine and haunting websites like Cult of the Dead Cow and NMRC, among others. (Please note that while those two sites are mainly “hacker” or “cracker” sites, they may contain adult language, images and other things that are generally Not Safe For Work, or kids under the age of 18.) In any case, the folks over at TechRepublic are brushing this old idea off and suggesting that, to protect your network, you need to learn how to look at your network through a hacker’s eyes. It’s a good idea, if you haven’t done it lately. And this article has the latest tools, techniques and mindset you’ll need to lock your network down tight.

Only the strong survive in my yard.
No, really, the entire past year has not been neglect at all, but an experiment in Darwinian garden theory. Well, okay, maybe not, but, it is true that only the strong plants make it through in my yard. The past week or so I’ve spent a lot of time in the yard doing all sorts of things.
In the front yard, I’ve been growing grass. The neighbors seem to think that I was devaluing their property by letting my front yard take nature’s course. They didn’t seem to appreciate the entire back to native plants motif that was developing there, mainly because the trees were killing the grass. They did not buy the story that I was “growing” dirt. Nope, not one bit. Seriously, I was chatting with one of the neighbors about they way my divorce turned out a couple of months ago and she asked if that meant I’d be growing grass again. And the other neighbor, who sold his house and moved a couple of streets over, just gave me a serious look and shook his head in agreement. So, I paid my lawn guys to trim the front trees and I’ve been growing grass. It’s really been coming up this week, too. I’m quite encouraged. And the neighbors wave at me again, so it’s all good.
In the back yard, I took out three mostly dead azalea bushes yesterday. Did you know that azaleas have giant, but shallow, root systems? Neither did I. Until yesterday. I did leave the one azalea that was actually flowering, though, when it’s done, I’ll be trimming it back, too. I also hacked out some reedy-looking palms that I previously tore out of my pond’s old waterfall. As well as chopping out some volunteer live oaks. Man, those running tap roots were HUGE! I must have lopped off a good eight feet worth of three-inch diameter roots just to make way for my new plantings! So, in case you’ve been keeping track, I basically removed anything that wasn’t actively flowering in one bed. Only the strong, flowering, plants survive!
I planted a peach tree where the crappy plants came out. It’s small, but it was only $13, so if it dies, I’ll go back and get something else. Maybe an orange tree or something. It doesn’t quite fit with my plan of a semi-tropical wonderland for my backyard, but it is a fruiting tree and I hope will be different enough to be interesting. Also, my ex-wife is allergic to peaches, so I had great fun choosing that particular tree to plant in a bed that we both hated but that she’d never let me change. I suggested to one of my friends that I might smear peach juice over my door way, much like the blood of a lamb, to make the Shadow of the Harpy pass over my house. I think he wet himself a little because he was laughing so hard at that image.
I have some crappy hedges to remove from the pond area next weekend or the weekend after that. I’ll replace them with bamboo, in pots and metal drums to keep them from spreading. Bamboo makes a wonderful screen, does wonderfully well in our climate and has a lot of decorative and crafty uses around the house. I’ve wanted to grow bamboo in my yard, one way or another, ever since I’ve been in this house. This is my year. Also, I think I’m going to trash one of the two cheap palms by the back of the house next to the patio. It’s a junky, little Chinese palm that never really took or got to look better. And, I may take the other volunteer palm of indeterminate variety out, as well. That one, though, I may just pot and keep small and portable. I thought I’d plant another fruit tree in their place. Maybe a mango tree. I love mangoes and have missed them since Paddi Thai closed down. Mangoes and sweet rice and vanilla ice cream are about the most wonderful thing in the world to me. I’d love to be able to have that fresh for entertaining friends and family. So, if I can find a mango tree, I think that’s what I’ll do.
Oh, and I’ve been dealing with pond issues, too. Once again, my fountain structure popped a seal and almost drained the pond over night. Luckily, it stopped before any fish died. Then, I spent most of a day filling it again and rerouting pumps and water flow to keep it going while I get the problem corrected. Luckily, the fountain with its plants and multiple layers acts as a bio filter, so, in creating this structure, even while bypassing the section that has the popped seal, I created a redundant system. Pretty cool, hunh? So, anyway, I got some heavy-duty, flexible, marine sealant to fix the external leak and now have to wait seven days for it to seal totally before testing it. So, next week Saturday, I should know for sure. In the mean time, everything is working just fine and I didn’t even lose any fish! Yea!

The best part about this weekend and all the work in the yard is that, just like my house, every change I make takes back more of that space for me. With every decision, I make this property more my own. Every passing week, I bring my house and my yard closer to my vision of how I want everything to be. Slowly, but steadily, I’m creating the haven that I need and that I want to welcome other people into. I really love my life, though I don’t always love everything going on in it at any given moment. All in all, things are looking up.

And, The Choice by Og Mandino, actually.

Not too long ago, I finished Year Zero by Jeff Long. I got this book, mainly, because I’d read one of his other books, The Descent, based on a reccomendation from a website some time back. Year Zero is about a plague that gets released into the world from a sealed reliquary, purported to contain the blood and bones of Jesus. It’s never determined if they are, or not, but a terrible disease is loosed upon the world as a result of the search. A disease for which we no longer have any immunity or defense.
Certainly, this is not an old theme. It’s been a favorite of science-fiction and horror writers for a long time. (As in The Stand, by Stephen King, among others.) This one does blend in a little early Christianity and spirituality to the mix by basing it on a search for the physical body of Christ. It’s interesting to me to see how Long handles both the beauty and cynicism that I associate with organized religion. I think he does it quite well, showing both the good and not so good aspects of religion and science. For instance, not all the scientists in the story are heros trying to stop the deadly plague. Some are quite amoral and rather brutal in the pursuit of an Answer to the question of the hour. It’s actually quite a fine line sometimes and this book handles it well.
I won’t reveal too much of the plot, but, things do work out, in a way, at the end. And, of course, hope is reborn.
I do reccomend this book to anyone looking to break out of a reading rut, like I have been. Any one who’s a fan of the softer science-fiction will like this just fine. And, of course, anyone looking for an interesting, but not too taxing read, would be fin with Year Zero, too.

Immediately after finishing Year Zero, I started in on The Choice by Og Mandino. I have to warn you, this was reccomended to me by my psychologist, so it was almost a reading assignment. Almost. This was an “inspirational” book, both by design and, for me, because of the subject matter. In short, it’s a story about a man who bails out of the “rat race” of insurance sales to become a writer. Gee, can anyone figure why my shrink would suggest this book for me? At first, I wasn’t quite sure, but at the end of the second or third chapter, when he writes, in response to a question from his former boss about what his big plans were that made him leave, “I’m going to be a writer!”
In spite of this, I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical of this book. I mean, I am somewhat cynical, so overly sappy inspirational books just aren’t my style. This short book was different, though. I have to admit, it really caught me. Also, it was short and I read it, while doing laundry and my regular weekend chores, in just two short days. It’s actually his second book and I sort of wished I’d read them in order, but I do have his first, A Better Way to Live, waiting for me. The Choice is, basically, a somewhat ficionalized account of how the first book came to be written. I say somewhat because Mandino uses a different name for the “main character” of the story. It was a little off-putting, to be honest, but, after I managed to just set that incongruity aside, it wasn’t a bad story at all. And, yes, it did, in fact, get me all emotional. If you’ve ever dreamed about changing your life for a dream, this is just the right kind of inspirational book for you.

Now, though, I’m reading some trashy “chick-lit”, titled Dirty Little Secrets by Julie Leto, though, it’s hardly “literature”. It was on the sale rack and looked like fun, light reading. Besides, it was totally different than anything I would normally pick and on sale for $3.95, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose. And, I have to admit, it does give me inspiration that I can break into print. After all, if this trash can get published, so can mine!

The top eleven Geek Pickup lines, fifth edition, as stolen from BBSpot, for your Friday afternoon funny:

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 5
11. I entered the probability equation into my TI-89 Titanium Graphing calculator and it predicted you would go out with me, see! (hold up calculator)
10. What’s a nice girl like you doing on an unsecured webcam like this?
9. Can I have a large coffee with sugar and your phone number, please?
8. Do you prefer the static or expanding universe theory more? Because, since I first saw you, I’m expanding.
7. That Princess Leia slave girl outfit would look great in a crumpled heap next to my bed.
6. You make me want to be an honest man, and register all my shareware.
5. Yes, that is a real light saber replica in my pocket, but I’m still happy to see you.
4. You’re so beautiful, I’d take my Steve Austin action figure out of its original packaging for you.
3. Do you want to come back to my place, and we can prank call George Lucas?
2. I don’t mean to disturb you, but Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle said I already did that by observing you.
1. Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven, because p=mv and your velocity after falling that far would be incredible.

And, that’s the last of them folks. Unless, of course, you all want to shoot me some new ones!

No, not me. Work’s not that bad. Yet.
This time it’s a new virus that encrypts your special, important data and holds it for ransom. This is actually something that’s been talked about in security circles for years, but it’s been more of an urban legend than anything else. Now, it’s real. Updated your antivirus files lately?