Diary of a Network Geek

Looks like I’m hitting the road again. Damn.
You know, mostly, if everything is arranged all nice and all, I like traveling. I especially like traveling on someone else’s dime. But, I hate having to hit the road for business at the last minute. This time, I’ll be swapping out a Windows 2000 server, including a data copy, at a remote location in far less time and with far less notice than I’d like. The sad thing is, I’m getting used to that with this job. How does that phrase go? “I’ve done so much with so little for so long that I’m now qualified to do anything with nothing.” Hmm, maybe I should add that to my resume under “qualifications” or “Skill set”. And, I was just telling Ms. NewGal tonight on the phone that I’ve been making the impossible probable and the improbable common place for more years than I can remember. It’s not too hard with Windows, since any moron can handle a point-and-click interface then call himself a Director of IT, claiming that he can manage servers. But, I’ve done it with Windows, Netware and Linux, with a little Solaris and even VMS thrown in for flavor. And mostly at remote sites where things often go wrong. Very, very wrong.

As further evidence that I’ve been doing this too long, when I pulled my toiletry kit out from under the sink, it was already stocked with almost empty containers of every thing I use on a regular basis. Enough after shave for a week, a couple of good gargles of mouthwash, a toothbrush and some toothpaste, the last bit of deodorant. I even had shampoo and conditioner in there from the last place I stayed at, just in case! And packing my clothes took all of fifteen minutes, too. I normally plan for one extra day, plus any special circumstances, so, I have three days worth in there, just in case. It’s going to take me longer to pack my toolkit and carry on bag than anything else. And that’s only because I have to slim down in case I have to fly back on a commercial flight. My boss is flying me over, which is actually sort of nice, but there are thunderstorms expected for Friday afternoon, so I may be flying back on a commercial flight. That means time wasted in an airport. In fact, an airport I spent the night in once. The part about all this that sucks, though, is having to go back to the little podunk airport to get my car when I do finally get back into town. So, I’ll be dragging my sorry, tired butt from either Hobby or Bush Intercontinental over to, basically, Clay Road and Highway 6. Yeah, the opposite side of town. Just so I can drive back to my house, which I will essentially pass on the way to get my car. The only upside there is that Ms.NewGal volunteered to pick me up and drive me to my car. What a sweetie! Of course, it does get her closer to me faster, but she claims she didn’t even think of that.
Thankfully, Hilda has a keeper for the next couple of days. And, in case Doc has to work late, I’ve asked one of the guys from work I trust to come let her out at lunch on Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, she’ll go out and not make a mess at all. Not that she ever has since she was a pup. At least, not unless you count the times she was being ignored while I was at the office during the prelude to my divorce. Oddly, she’s not had a problem since she’s been back. Imagine that! Must have been the company.

So, now, it’s off to queue up the coffee and the Friday Fun post. If I get the chance, I’ll moderate comments, but, I might not until Saturday morning, so, please, be patient.
It’s going to be a Hell of a trip, so pray for me!

Whoops!
Okay folks, the little problem has been corrected. It seems that someone or something managed to inject a little extra PHP code into my WordPress plugins. I think they were trying to add links to websites to improve their Googlerank, but it just caused an error on the blog. Anyway, I think I got all the offending code.

My iPod arrived tonight. I’ll be loading it with music over the next several days.

As a total red herring, though, I have a date Saturday night with an actual woman. Not a girl, but a real, full-grown, self-supporting woman. She has her own business and her own very busy life. She used to live in Chicago, but she’s from here and moved back just two years ago. The pictures I’ve seen of her are, well, let’s just say she took my breath away. I’d imagine that she could pretty well have her pick of guys. In fact, she doesn’t need me at all.
But, tonight on the phone, she wouldn’t hang up until I promised to call her in the morning.

In this particular case, I was apparently pushing my bandwidth limits.
Not sure what I’ve been writing about that would be so interesting lately, but, well, my bandwidth limit got exceeded last night about 2:00AM, or so. My apologies to anyone who was trying to get to my blog between 2:00AM and now. Firstly, I’m sorry you were reading my blog at 2:00AM. Secondly, the warning messages arrived after I had gone to bed last night, otherwise I would have done something about it sooner.
Obviously, since you’re reading this, it’s been corrected.

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?

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.

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?

It’s been a long week.
And, frankly, next week doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier. For starters, I’ve been wrestling with this server at work. I mean this has been real Jacob wrestling with the Angel kind of epic battle stuff here. In fact, it was so bad that just today I was looking at returning Novell’s Open Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux in favor of Windows Server 2003. For those of you who know me and know my Novell zealotry, you know how much I would have hated to do that. Thankfully, the guy Novell sent over to help out got me squared away. I think I’ve actually been Novell certified longer than he’s been in the business, but, still, he knew his stuff, so it’s all good.
I’ve been trying to get the server installed for the past two weeks and kept running into strange errors. Well, it turns out to have a really, tiny, picaune thing. Remember some time back I was talking about naming conventions? Turns out it was more important than you could imagine. In the old days, we all used the underscore character in our tree names, as in “CompanyName_Tree”. Now, apparently, no one uses that convention and, as a result, a bug slipped through that kills the install. So, do I get a prize for finding it? Doubtful.
In any case, we managed to convince the boss that we should stick with Linux and OES and that we’d go over the migration tools tomorrow, which is when most of you will be reading this post anyway. So, I’m still going to get those career goals in after all. Woot!

On other fronts, I’ve got at least one, dear, sweet lady crawling all over my site to try and find out all about me. No matter what she finds here, and, yes, I am directing her to put the best possible spin on who I am, it still won’t be me. Not all of me. Not the part of me that people really love. The blog gives information, but, I’m more than the sum of my stories. And, in fact, many stories simply won’t ever see print, here or anywhere else. I have collections of odd, little facts and strange, obtuse skills that simply don’t fit well into a blog. And my humor doesn’t really play well in print, either. It’s all timing with me, and you can’t do timing very well in print. Still, I worry that we’ll be all out of things to talk about by the time we actually connect for coffee. I hope she’s ready to talk about herself!
And, several people have come to me for advice in the past week. Or, I’ve seen a couple of situations that I’d like to advise people about. Thankfully, I’ve shown restraint. Mostly. No one really wants me to give them advice. My advice is rarely well recieved, even if it is dead on. It may be my communication style, but, whatever it is, people sure don’t like hearing my advice. i do try and temper it by starting off with “Well, if I were in your position, I’d…” Doesn’t always work that well. Of course, I never said I made the best choices for myself, either! Still, sometimes it’s just like watching a slow-motion train wreck. You can see it all happening, but what can you do? These folks wouldn’t believe me if I told them the pattern I see in their lives. They’d just get pissed off at me. Of course, it wouldn’t change that I was right or that they knew I was right, but, still…

Well, there’s more, but my brain is all a-whirl with thoughts of my upcoming day, weekend and week that I can’t summon them up. Besides, I have a feeling I’d really irritate someone if I did! Always seems to work that way. So, it’s off to a lonely bed with my faithful companion. G’night.

For data disasters, not hurricanes and such.
Although, I suppose one could result in the other. Still, the article on TechRepublic is about a system for categorizing systems disasters. Five levels to help you decide appropriate responses, ending in total loss that might result from, of course, hurricanes and the like. Yes, as much as I’d like to ignore them, they are a very genuine concern here in the Gulf Coast. And, now, in this brief “off-season”, is when people who manage data should be planning for them. Now. Not two days before they hit. Or, a day after. Plan now for data loss due to hackers, or virus infections, or failing hardware. Not after the loss of data. The article is a good start on what to think about when planning.
Now, I have to go find the rest of my server so I can start ignoreing all that.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the blogosphere….
Some of you may remember my reader warning from November, when my ex-wife was following me to other blogs and leaving strange comments there, as messages to, well, to someone. Guess what, folks? Yeah, she’s still out there and still obsessive-compulsive, apparently. In the past week, I got e-mail from two or three people who asked about my ex-wife, her location and her IP address. Yes, as far as I know, she’s still in Phoenix, Arizona, or thereabouts. Yes, if you have an IP address from that area that seems to, well, show up a lot in your logs, that’s probably her. Now, she seems to be concealing her IP address at my website, or I haven’t been looking for her in my logs very hard, or both, but she doesn’t seem to be smart enough to do that on the other blogs she’s haunting. Honestly, considering that our divorce was final five months ago, you’d think she’d be able to let go by now, wouldn’t you? I can’t imagine what she’s interested in with me anymore. I haven’t been to her blog in months, but she seems to still be very interested in mine. And, sadly, in people who comment on my blog, so, well, be warned that if you do comment on this blog, she will most likely follow you to your blog and, possibly, comment. Until she does, comment that is, just enjoy the extra hits. Feel free to contact me for more details. If you’d like, leave a comment marked PRIVATE: and I won’t let it roll live to the blog.

Again, sorry about this, but, well, these things happen. At least you know now. What a world…
Update: Well, thanks to my intrepid readers, I have more details on the strange goings on. Apparently, the IP address is associated with her new husband’s company. To limit any potential liability, I choose not to reveal the name or IP address publicly, but will provide the information on request. So, now, I’m not sure which of them is more obsessive-compulsive and can’t let go. Or, which is the worst option. Again, my apologies to anyone who’s been adversely effected by this strangeness.

Considering what I’m working on this week, it seemed appropriate.
Windows NT had its time. It was good at what it did. It had its place. That place was the early 90’s, not in the twenty-first century. So, while I get ready to gut this server setup I’ve been saddled with and replace it with a shiny, new Linux-based Novell server, contemplate this: Windows Neanderthal Edition.
It’s funny. Laugh. Laugh, damn you, laugh!

Oh, who am I kidding? Go out and have a drink tonight, it’s Friday! Then, laugh.
Update: Next week, more Geek Pickup Lines!