Diary of a Network Geek

Hey, here’s another reason to be proud of my adopted state!
The State of Texas is sueing one of the world’s top four spammers. Apparently, the company, or companies, is based out of California and is already being sued by MicroSoft, but the State of Texas is joining in. The suit itself is based on the CAN-SPAM Act, which was such a big deal when it was passed. I have to admit, at the time, I never thought we’d actually see any of these bottom-feeders prosecuted in any way, but it looks like the CAN-SPAM Act may be actually doing some good! According to the article, the two spammers who run this company could face “penalties of $250 per violation, up to a maximum of $2 million.” Wow. That’d hurt!
Apparently, the Texas Attorney General is bringing suit against these guys under Texas law that “cover electronic mail and solicitation as well as deceptive practices. Those laws carry fines of up to $25,000 per day and $20,000 per violation…” Dang! You go get ’em!
Let’s hope it does some good!

God, I remember this…
I used to do this all the time, before I “settled down”. Oddly enough, I almost miss it. Sure, I miss being home in my comfortable bed, eating lower-fat food and doing my “regular” routine, but it’s a change. I’m out here like some kind of hired gun, out to scare off the rustlers and make the unruly ranch hands shape up. Well, maybe that’s going a bit too far, but I’m sort of out in the corporate wilderness carving out a settlement of IT civilization. I’ve missed that bit.
You know what else I miss? Those damn, “side-car” trackballs for laptops. These stupid touchpad things are just not positioned right for my big hands. (Yes, ladies, I said BIG HANDS. You know what they say about the size a Network Geek’s hands…)
I do have to keep reminding myself that flirting with the cute, young waitresses is not appropriate behavior, though. I’d forgotten about that aspect of being single and travelling, even if I’m not legally single. Yet. And, that copier saleslady had the deepest, darkest pools of night for eyes that I could have just stared into for hours. (“Sure, 20k copies per month. Whatever you say….”) But, I’m sure that was just business, too, even if she did write her cell phone on her card for me. I’m sure she does that for all the IT guys that she’s selling copier leases to. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And, I’m sure it was a sign that my fortune from lunch at the Chinese buffet was “Guard yourself against evil temptations”!
Big meals on the company dime, coffee that someone else made with a smile, and a line of appreciative end users who are oh, so happy to see someone, anyone, from corporate who will fix their computer for them. Yeah, I miss home, but not that much.

Oh, yeah, I have a digital camera from the company so, after I get home and figure out the software, I’ll have pictures to post of our new facility. The manufacturing floor is incredible! We’re doing stuff with deep-sea umbilicals that virtually no one else in the US, possibly the world, can manage. It’s cool working for a kick-ass company again.

Okay, so it occurred to me that there had to be a better way.
Yeah, sure, I could talk about the evils of free porn until I’m blue in the face. I could even rant about how terrible it is to manipulate searchengines. Instead, I’m going to try and do it. Again.
Yes, again. I did it once back in 2000/2001 to get my site ranked so highly on Google for the search terms “CNE resume” that it was the number one hit. I did all sorts of crazy things, not the least of which was start this blog, incidentally. One thing I did was look at both the Google Zeitgeist and the Yahoo Buzz Index and try to use those terms in my site. So, for instance, according to Google’s Zeitgeist, I should talk about: how I felt about the Golden Globes and who won; the fact that Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day; what Teri Hatcher was wearing at the Golden Globes; who Teri Polo is and what she wore at the Golden Globes; what NASA has thrown into space lately; what “naughtiness” Prince Harry has been up to over in the UK; detailed specs on the iPod Shuffle; the super-model antics of Naomi Campbell; the fact that Mariska Hargitay also won a Golden Globe; and how the movie “Elektra” was doing in the box office. As you can see, that first hit, the Golden Globe Awards, was a really popular one, since it was repeated in, or was effected by, several later searches.
Last week, I should have been talking about: Amber Frey, the adulterous whore who was banging Scott Peterson; the terrible damage done by the tsunami in India; how terrible it is that Ashlee Simpson was caught lip-synching; Delta Airlines for some reason; the Weather Channel coverage of that tsunami in India; Heidi Klum, because it’s always a good time to talk about Ms. Klum (and she got married to Seal); NFL player Randy Moss, presumably because he sprained his ankle; the Orange Bowl, because it’s still football season; the fact that Brad Pitt is single again; and all the cool concept cars at the Detroit Auto Show. Crazy stuff, right?

Well, according to Yahoo Buzz Index, I should have talked about some very different things this week. If I wanted to get Yahoo hits, I should have talked about: OJ Simpson’s daughter, Sydney Simpson, getting arrested; Playboy Playmate Alicia Rickter, for obvious, pornographic reasons; those nuts over at Jibjab, who made another hit animation; Enter Location, because, uh, people were travelling a lot?; actress Elisabeth Harnois, possibly for the Golden Globes again?; O.J. Simpson, because his daughter got arrested, of course; the fact that Julian Ozanne got married to Gillian Anderson and no one knows who he is, but everyone knows her from the X-files; anything and everything about actress Lucy Liu, just because, she’s Lucy Liu; the Tennesse-based music and arts festival, Bonnaroo; “How We Do” almost anything, from the sound of it; eating “Breakfast and Brunch”? Or is that more travelling stuff?; how cheap Costco Wholesale pricing is; soap-opera star Annie Parisse, most likely because she moved on to something better; the fact that Japan had another big earthquake; and Jimjab.com, which is most likely a mistake for “jibjab.com”.

Wow, those are totally different things, aren’t they? Are people who use those two different searchengines that different? Have I been losing out by optimizing for Google?
Oh, I don’t know, but I think I’m going to go have a bit of a lay-down. This whole experience has been exhausting.
(And, yes, I’ve posted this same thing on my other blog, the Fantasist’s Scroll, for the same reason as the last post.)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
   --Ernest Hemingway

Okay, I admit that I’ve been blogging as an escape.
Cut me some slack, allright? I’ve got a lot of crap to escape right now. So, anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of blog reading and I saw that a new XML site syndication standard has been developed, and adopted, that’s supposed to be really sweet. Really, the fact that two aggregators have allready adopted it speaks quite highly of the new standard, I think. But, what really got me was the fact that I know the guys who did it! Yeah, I know these two XML developers who have just released the hot new standard for site syndication.
Sean B. Palmer and Christopher Schmidt, the developers, are guys that play on an interactive world-creation game that I’m a part of called the Ghyll Encyclopedia. How cool is that. I feel like I’m somebody now. Er, well, at least, I know somebody. Anyway, it’s cool.

I know I’ve been sort of quiet this week, so here’s a tidbit.
I’ve been doing a LOT of bash scripting lately for the ZENWorks imaging project that I’ve been working on. Well, the first part of that goes live, or partially live, next week. Yikes! So, I’ve been refining and getting things ready for that. Busy, busy, busy! But, I did have time to notice someone asking for help adding color to the menus and such on a ZENWorks Discussion Forum at Novell. I posted a reply there, but I thought I’d do up something for the oh, so quiet blog, too.
First off, all this comes from the FAQs.org, Advanced BASH-scripting Guide, in the Colorizing Scripts section.

Now, remember, these are basically just escape sequences, just like from the old DOS days and batch files. (Thought you’d never have to do that again, right?) Keep in mind that once you apply one of these codes, it will be in effect until you cancel it out, one way or another.
Let’s start easy with a simple bold:
echo -e “33[1mThis line is bolded33[0m”;
Okay, notice that you need to append the ” -e” to your standard “echo” command for display. The actual “bold” code is “33[1m”. That’s it. Just add that to the begining of the quoted line and you’ve got bolded text. To “turn it off”, simply echo “33[0m”, either at the end of the quoted line as above, or on another line. Personally, I find it easier to turn off my codes ASAP. It cuts down on problems later on.
Now, we’ll make green, bold text:
echo -en “33[1mThis is bold and green”
tput sgr0

Okay, now notice that we “turned off” the codes with a different command. That command, tput sgr0, clears all the color and formatting.
Now, to do one color for the text and one for the background, do this:
echo -e ‘\E[34;47m'”This makes blue text on a white background”;

And, that’s really all there is to it. So, go experiment with your bash colors!

Here’s a table of some other colors for your reference:

I know I should be headed for bed, but…
But, damn, I’ve been having fun with plugins again! Okay, so you’ve noticed that I have fancy-schmancy titles, right? That’s the Title Images 2 plugin by Chris Cogburn. The nifty “posted at blah-blah-blah” thing is the Time of Day plugin. The GoogleAds are served up by the Moose Candy plugin. (You’ll have to go read up on the plugin to see why it’s called that!) And, behind the scenes, we have the Auto Shutoff Comments plugin, obviously, closing comments over a certain age. (I’ll let the spammers try and figure out how far back I go!)

I’ve also been working on my own plugins. Notably the Full Moon plugin, the Chinese Zodiac plugin and the Forgotten Realms Date plugin. These three aren’t quite ready for production, yet, but they will be soon! The Full Moon plugin is already running on this site, as you can see. (I tried to get it working for b2evolution, but their documentation just isn’t as clear as WordPress’ is. Oh, well…) Trust me, when these bad boys are ready for public consumption, I’ll post about them here.

I’ve changed over to using WordPress, now, too. I’m still trying to work out some of the “bugs” on the new version of the blog, but I’m getting there!

Just when you thought I’d never post another fun link…

O’Reilly comes out with Make magazine, the magazine dedicated to geeks who want to make it themselves. Yep, my favorite tech/geek publisher is coming out with a new magazine in early 2005 that is dedicated to the hardware hacker in all of us. They describe their fledgling magazine as “Martha Stewart for geeks”.

Sounds like fun to me!

The Patron Saint of Geeks?

Well, according to this article on Wired, maybe so! Of course, that depends on whether or not he’s really a saint at all, but, it sounds good.
Apparently, there are quite a few urban legends surrounding this Saint, but he’s still revered by hackers and other computer consultants. At least, he is in New Orleans. And, according to the testimony in the article, praying to him works! At least one person claims to have gotten a tech job fast after praying to good, old Saint Expedite.

Well, it can’t hurt, can it?

Been a while in between Novell stories…

So, I thought I’d remind all my regular readers about NUI, Netware Users International.
First of all, if you use Netware, you’re probably already familiar with NUI. Novell did a pretty big marketing campaign a couple of years ago when NUI was just starting to get big. Well, now they’re big.
Secondly, it doesn’t cost anything to join. Yep, that’s right, it’s free.
Thirdly, you actually get benefits! Yeah, no charge to sign up, but you still get membership benefits. Cool!

So, anyway, if you haven’t signed up, or even thought about NUI, lately, you might want to check it out. Hey, it’s free, what have you got to loose?