Diary of a Network Geek

Have you ever had to learn on the fly?
Well, most of us geeks have, at one time or another. In my case, it was basic Cisco router administration while under fire. No, not literally under fire, just in a tight spot with tons of pressure to get things done quickly and right the first time. Back then, it was pretty easy to get an entry-level Cisco certification, but they made that harder right about the time I tried to get it. Which, honestly, is besides the point. I didn’t really need a Cisco cert to get stuff done. All I really needed was some basic commands. Well, now, we’re all in luck. Thanks to TechRepublic, you can get through some basic Cisco admin tasks with little or no help. Just hit Cisco Administration 101, and they’ll walk you through the basics of setting up a router. And, by basics, I mean setting the Admin password, too, not just configuring the interfaces. Basic configuration includes basic security!
Anyway, it’s a start and enough to get you through a tight spot.

A guy tried to sell me his wife’s cousin today.
At least, that’s how it felt. He was thanking me for working on his laptop, which is personal, but used for company business. I have to admit, it was a real bear considering all the spyware and junk on it. So, he said that the next time he’s in Brazil, where his young wife is from, he’d get me something and bring it back. Then, we got talking about a project I’m working on and he starts showing me pictures. Of course, all his pictures are mixed in together, so we see a bunch of family shots and he comes across a bunch of pictures from the beach. He laughs and says he could bring me back one of “those nice, little Brazilian girls, but my wife and yours would probably be unhappy.” I laugh and tell him that I’m divorced, so it’s all good. That’s when it happened. He pulls up this pic of a girl in a bikini and tells me she’s his wife’s cousin, or something, and she’d love to meet an American man.
“She’s even nineteen already, so it’d be no problem.” Right. Sure. I’m thirty-seven and he’s going to convince a ninteen-year-old who, at best, speaks English as a second language, to move North and marry me. Yeah, that’d be great for everyone involved. I mean, look, she was pretty and I’m all for people emigrating to this country and getting citizenship and all, but, uh, not that way and not with me that way.
That happened before 9:00am, and the day just got stranger from there…

“I may have to blow up the building.”
Why does my life have to look so much like Office Space? Why?
So, I’m talking to the boss today about the new Linux server that we desperately need, trying to confirm that we will, in fact, order this essential piece of equipment before the end of the year, when the quotes expire, and I get…
“Well, if not by then, shortly after.”
“Ah, you do realize that those quotes expire at the end of the year, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And then the prices will change…”
“Well, tell them that any deep discounts would be appreciated.”
“Uh, those were already in those quotes. After the first of the year, the prices go up.”
“How much?”
“Um, not sure, but a lot.”
“Oh, well, find out. Maybe it will make the MoneyGuy go faster.”

To quote Charlie Brown, and mix my metaphors, “AAAARRRRRGGGHH!!”
And, all this without Chotchkie’s or Jennifer Aniston. Life is not fair.
All I can say is, no one better try to take my Red Swingline Stapler.

Ready to claw your way to middle management?
Well, then you better have a good resume! Luckily, TechRepublic is there to help with the downloadable article, Ten Things You Should Know About Creating A Resume For A High-Level IT Position. I’m not sure I agree with everything they’re saying in this one, but, then, I’m not close to middle management these days, either, so it’s worth a look. Still, I’d pay more attention to the headhunter I’m working with than a canned article. Again, it’s a good place to start, but I sure wouldn’t stop there.
Unless you like the endless round of interviewing for jobs you’re not qualified for or interested in taking.

“What do you mean, I’m in charge of the project?”
Oh, if I had a nickel for everytime those words came out of my mouth! And, if I’d had this downloadable article from TechRepublic, Ten Things You Should Know About Managing IT Projects, I might have survived some of those “special” projects. It hits the highlights, but it’s a good place to start. At least, after reading the article, you’ll have a working knowledge of what you need to be worried about. God knows, no one is even going to tell you that much once they’ve stuck you with that project that no one else wanted!
Anyway, it’s at least enough to help you survive your first IT project. In theory.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
   --William Conner Magee

It all started with those damn black birds last week…
Actually, it was a mostly quiet week, except for the fact that my house refinance is in limbo because my ex-wife’s lawyer didn’t file the special warranty deed that grants me possesion of the house. Ah, well, some things never change. She’s still sticking it to me even after the divorce.
Anyway, today, everyone in the company decided to dump their problems on me for the week. An entire week’s worth in one day. This after a week of Access database development. Yeah, development, not database administration. I hate doing Access development! All pointy-clicky and why-the-hell-does-it-do-that? But, not Friday.
Friday, I replaced a cd-rom drive in the shop. No big deal, right? Yeah, well, at the time, there was a guy in the office looking at negatives of welds, in the dark. So, I did this under someone’s desk by the infrequent light of the glowy box he was using to read the negatives. In other words, I changed a cd-rom drive basically by touch. Then, there was an electrician who need to print labels but was dissatisfied with the fact that they were off by a centimeter in one column. After wrestling with that for fourty-five minutes, I walked away to do something else and found out later that it wasn’t the printer that was off at all. It was the cheap labels he’d bought. They cut them on a bias!
Then, there was the too-picky engineer who complained all day about getting a 19-inch flat-screen LCD. Yeah, complained about it! No one but him could tell the damn difference, but he claimed his recently lasik-ed eyes were strained and hurting because of the low-resolution. Well, until we suggested that he could have his old monitor back. Suddenly then he found settings that looked good enough. Yeah, sure.
But, the coup de grâce was the Vice President of Sales having his Macintrash G4 go South on him. I worked on that alone and, worse, with the boss, who’s the resident Mac expert. There’s noting I hate more than not knowing in front of my boss. And, after buying a hard drive, and exchanging it for one that would actually run in a damn Mac, we finally, after working until 6:30PM on a Friday, finally decided that it was a memory issue. We think. We left it running to see if it hangs up again. So, just to fight my personal ignorance, I went to Borders and bought Mac OS X : The Missing Manual, Tiger Editon . (Well, I also bought some other things including How to Do Everything with PHP and MySQL so I can build an app for Fantasist.net. And, Looking for Jake : Stories, because China Mieville is a great writer and I deserve a break!)
So, tonight after church, children, your Uncle Jim is going to be drinking heavily and ignoring trick-or-treaters. Happy Halloween. Bah!

Ever wonder if your job is in danger?
I know I have. In fact, I tend to worry about it even when I probably don’t need to worry at all. Of course, if you look at my resume, you’ll know why I worry. I’ve been through a lot of jobs. That, combined with the news I got yesterday and the day before, really got me thinking about losing a job. So, when I saw this article on MSN about Signs that you’re about to get fired, I read it with rapt interest. Unfortunately, I already knew most of these. In fact, several of them are what had me looking for work this last time:

– You find yourself increasingly out of the loop.
– You are watched and micromanaged where you once had freedom.
– You are given new, unattainable goals or targets.
– You are in a nonrevenue- producing or overstaffed unit.
– You have the least tenure or were the last one hired.
– You have a significant salary.
– You are no longer included in future plans or upcoming projects.
– Your opinion is now worthless.
– You are on progressive discipline (verbal or written warning).

Obviously, by the time anyone gets to that last one, their resume should be updated and headhunters should be alerted. It’s also not a bad idea to have looked up how to apply for unemployment by that time, too.
A little advice from your Uncle Jim, kids, don’t ignore the warning signs. If you do, you could find yourself out of work for a year.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who does not appreciate kindness and compassion."
   --Dalai Lama

Hmm, more of an update, I guess…
It’s been a crazy week, and is shaping up for more of the same. First off, I forgot to mention the other day that I picked up my gear from REI, so, now, I’m pretty well ready for any disaster that might come my way. Though, if it’s thermonuclear destruction, I’m saving the last bullet for myself. Everything else, though, I’m all set to weather, if you’ll pardon the pun. And, I’ll have had a hot shower and a cup of coffee when the time comes, too, thanks to my 4 Gallon SunShower and my green, enamelware percolating coffee pot. It may be the end of the world as we know it, but there’s no reason to be uncivilized!

In other “news”, I’ve been thinking about ways to meet more ladies of the datable variety. No good ideas yet, that I’m not already doing or planning on doing, so I started browsing the “relationship” books at Amazon. That’s where I found this: MACK Tactics : The Science of Seduction Meets the Art of Hostage Negotiation. Okay, does a “relationship” book that includes the phrase “hostage negotiation” really seem like a good idea to you? Yeah, me neither, so I took a pass on that one. Hey, I got out of one hostage situation clean, no need to take that kind of risk again!

And, in semi-business news this week, I heard that Loomis Fargo finally had some cuts in the IT department. I was expecting the dreaded “outsourcing” to wipe out a bunch of the staff, but, it turns out upper management of the parent company didn’t like that idea and axed a bunch of the high-level IT management at Loomis. In fact, it sounded like I could get my job back there, if I wanted it. Doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me, really, unless they can tack on a cool $10k and great benefits to boot. Frankly, I don’t see that happening, even with the “extra” cash from the CIO’s salary floating around. Ah, well, at least the front-line guys I worked with survived. Too bad some of the managers I really liked didn’t survive the cut. They were nice guys. Maybe that’s why they didn’t survive the cut! Still, if Joe Dante ever turns up somewhere I’m interviewing, I’d work for him again. He’s a great guy and an excellent manager.
Good luck guys!

I’m sure there was more, but, well, my calcified, old brain can’t remember what it might have been, so, that’s all the news for now.

Apparently, you can add telecom specialist to the list.
I’ve been avoiding talking about Hurricane Katrina because: a) everyone else is talking about it, b) there’s neither anything I can add or do, and c) I didn’t have any real news anyway. Well, after yesterday, I do. We have offices over there. Notice, I wrote “have” not “had”. The facility is still standing, as far as we can tell. So, when the rest of the city settles down, we’ll be able to resume business there. In the meantime, we’re more concerned with people. Not everyone from that facility has checked in yet. I’m not sure how many are missing, but, some are. Of those who have checked in, their families all seem to be okay, but many of them have lost everything they didn’t take with them. It’s like the recent tsunami in Asia, but with a lower, thankfully much lower, death toll. But, the damage to property and business is very similar.
So, how does that make me a telecom specialist all of a sudden? Simple, actually. Our regular phone guy in house is out on vacation, so when one of the boards on our phone switch died over the weekend, they came to the computer guy to get it straightened out. Phones, computers, same thing, right? Not hardly! Thankfully, I already have some experience with telecom and high-stress troubleshooting. About the time I settle down from that fracas Monday, I start getting questions about cell phones. How to get them fast, but still on our account. So, all day Tuesday, I ran around getting that straight and getting a local cell phone for the “senior partner”. But, wait, there’s more! Yesterday, I had to get more cell phones lined up and get two Iridium satellite phones ASAP. Oh, yes, they had to be Iridium phones, not just any sat phone. Why, you ask? Because the “senior partner” is getting a new plane and wants to be able to use one of these on the plane which, you guessed it, can take only certain models. If everything goes right, which I highly doubt, we should be getting the two Iridium phones Friday morning. So, any guesses who gets to figure them out and teach everyone how to use them?
Yeah, time to update the resume with all this high-end telecom stuff I’m doing. A little more chaos thrown my direction and I’ll be all ready to be the Director of IT somewhere bigger. Anyone looking for a guy like me to head your IT department? I’m willing to consider anywhere that’s not California, New York City, or prone to hurricanes. Blizzards and tornados I can handle just fine, but I’m really not liking this hurricane business.

This is cooler than it sounds.
No, really. Please, let it be cooler than it sounds so I feel better about the way I spent my day. Please?
Honest, using the PDF::API2 CPAN module is much more challenging than it sounds. I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to force a second page into my PERL-generated PDF. Why? Because, I want a nice title page for my documentation. Also, I see applications for this frightening technology beyond the scope of my project. See, one of the things we do is prepare, and sell, documentation for our great, big, huge, expensive cranes. That documentation is in, you guessed it, PDF format. A fair portion of this documentation is based on AutoCAD drawings that have been convertd to PDF. So, now, all I have to do it automate most, if not all, of that process and I’ll save a ton of time, which, according to the “time=money” formula will “impact the bottom line”, as they say in boardrooms. Cool. In other words, I found a way to justify my personal project (the server inventory script) by applying the things I’m “testing” there toward the automation of a dirty, low-end, repetetive task that no one likes doing (compiling the documentation PDF). Very cool. And, thanks to all this work on PERL this week, I’ve added a new category: PERL.
Oh, yeah, here is the PERL PDF Example code. Enjoy!