Diary of a Network Geek

I love stories and today is the National Day of Listening.

One of the hardest things to explain to geeks on a helpdesk is that the everything they do is about people. It’s not about systems or networks or computers, but, rather, the people who use them. It’s amazing to me how many people don’t seem to get that. And, for me, people are about stories. The story of someone’s life can be a fascinating thing, if we just take the time to listen.

In my family, I’ve become my generation’s historian. I’ve collected the stories of all those relatives marching back into time and memory. I got them from both my parents and my paternal grandmother, who lived with us from the time I was born until she passed away when I was in college. All that time, I collected stories. I can tell you the story of my great-great-great grandfather who fought in the civil war after getting drunk and signed up by a recruiting agent. (But, since I’m in the South, I won’t tell you what side he fought for!) I can tell you about my great-grandfather who rode the rails with Hinky-Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Kenzie, two of Chicago’s most notorious Aldermen. I can even tell you about how that same great-grandfather took my father to that Bathhouse John’s house of ill-repute and the “nice ladies” who doted on him while he was there on the porch.
But, many families have lost their stories. They don’t know their history. The National Day of Listening is meant to help keep that from happening to another generation. I saw this on LifeHacker first, but I’ve heard about the group running it, StoryCorps, on NPR. The idea is simple. Go find one of your older relatives and ask questions about their life. Interview them, if you will. And then, listen, and pass the story on. Go to the link and download the guide and then, do it. When you start collecting the stories of your family’s life, I think you’ll be glad you did. I hope so.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When I look into the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes."
   --Oprah Winfrey

I’m so behind, I think I’m catching up to myself!

Thanksgiving fast approaches and my house is mostly clean. Now, by “mostly clean” I think it’s important to understand what I mean. I mean that I’ve vacuumed for the first time in two years. I mean, my bathroom is so clean that a woman might actually feel safe using it! Hey, what do you want from me? It’s been two years since I’ve been in a relationship and half that time I was in the hospital slow dancing with death, so, there really hasn’t been any point in having the place clean. Now, there is, so, well, it is. Well, mostly. My office still needs work and the bedroom can always use more cleaning and the upstairs… Well, the less said about the upstairs, the better right now.

The important thing, though, is that my kitchen is clean. And, just barely in time to start baking pies tonight. Yes, pies, as in plural. With so many people coming over after their main Thanksgiving plans, I figured a few extra pies can’t hurt. I might try to get to bed early, too. If the pies don’t take too long. See, I’ve been up until the wee hours for the past several nights in a row getting ready. So, I’m getting a little short on sleep. And, I still need to whip up a playlist for background music. After all, all the running around I did Sunday to get it and rip it won’t do me any good if I can’t get it playing!
Of course, I’ll probably end up staying up late again tonight then trying to catch a nap after I start the turkey in the morning. It just seems like I’ve totally under-estimated my time on just about everything this year. It’s just taken so much longer than I expected to get everything done. Witness the fact that this post is popping up here so late! I normally have Wednesday’s post queued up Tuesday evening before I go to bed, so this is amazingly late for me. It’s also why this post probably seems a little disjointed. Of course, that may be the lack of time and sleep, too.

Oh, and for those of you who love “food porn”, know that I’ll be taking pictures of people and food tomorrow. Naturally, I’ll post the pictures to my Flickr account, so keep an eye out if you’re interested. But, if you are going to be making your own “food porn” this holiday, here is a link to some Food Photography Tips and Techniques. Enjoy and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

The Boy Scouts of America are advocating Open Source software.

Yea!
According to this article on ComputerWorld, the Boy Scouts are turning to Open Source software to build better tools to support their organization. There’s no word on the BSA Open Source Initiative page about how much they’re expecting the boys to do themselves, but, frankly, I hope they do a lot.

QuantumofSolace

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Quantum of Solace Friday night, but I’m just getting to review it now.

I have to admit, when Daniel Craig was revealed as the newest James Bond, I wasn’t impressed. But, after seeing Casino Royale, my opinion on the subject changed. Dramatically.
Quantum of Solace, in spite of the goofy, contrived title, is, if anything, better than Casino Royale ever thought of being. In fact, unlike all previous Bond movies, this is the first movie that’s not based on a book or story from Ian Fleming.  UPDATE: I’ve been told by a pair of Bond fanatics at work that this is incorrect.  Goldeneye is the first Bond movie not based, at least in part, on an Ian Flemming story of some kind.  This is, however, the first movie that is an obvious and direct sequel that really doesn’t stand entirely on its own. This let the script writers do some things that they might not have been able to do otherwise. For instance, this movie continues from where the last one ended. In fact, it really sort of helps if you see Casino Royale right before going to see Quantum of Solace, because things will make more sense. Honest.

Quantum of Solace starts with Bond running from pursuit by both classic, unnamed “bad guys” and police. It turns out that he’s running because he has Mr. White, who’s responsible for killing Bond’s lady love in Casino Royale, in the trunk of the car.
Mr. White, in classic “War on Terror” fashion is tortured somewhere off UK soil to get information out of him. But, instead of cracking, with the help of a turned agent in MI6, White escapes. Bond, naturally, gives chase. And chases the whole organization through the rest of the movie. Though it’s not clearly identified, I think, Quantum is the name of the vast criminal organization to which Mr. White belongs. Of course, the chase runs through several exotic and beautiful locations, not to mention the two very exotic and beautiful women that Bond meets along the way.
I won’t ruin the movie by revealing the rest of the plot, but there are a few twists and turns that you won’t expect. Also, an homage to earlier Bond films, including Goldfinger. And, there are quite a few car chases and intense action scenes. The villain is a little weak, especially compared to Craig’s Bond. The only thing that wasn’t there were a lot of gadgets. Oh, sure, Bond had a super cell phone and there were some cool computer gadget things, but those are really almost here now, if they aren’t already.

I won’t say this is the best James Bond film ever, but it’s got to be in the top five, for certain. I’d definitely see this again if the opportunity presented itself. And, no matter what anyone says, Daniel Craig makes a great James Bond.
If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go see Quantum of Solace!

My house almost blew up tonight.

No, really.
As I write this, I’m waiting for a serviceman from Centerpoint Energy to come out and turn my gas back on. Apparently, shortly after I left for church this evening a neighbor smelled gas by my house. They called emergency services in Jersey Village, where I live. When the emergency services got out, they could smell gas, so they turned off my power and got Centerpoint out. Centerpoint repaired the leak, or so it seems. Actually, the first thing the serviceman is going to check is to make sure the leak isn’t a leak any more. Then, assuming all is well, he’ll turn the gas on and I can light all my pilots and so on. That’s why the gas was turned off when I got home. Naturally, they couldn’t find me, since I’d gone to church, so they couldn’t turn anything on until they knew I could light all the pilots again. Otherwise, my house would have filled with gas, hit something electric and, well, let’s just say I was irritated with the whole thing until I got the lights back on and figured out what almost happened. Thank God!

I guess my little efforts and building up a little good karma in the short term paid off today.
See, I helped two people with computer things today. This morning, I started reformating and reinstalling my friend J.’s wife, L’s, laptop. She’d been having problems with it and I looked at it several times, but I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. So, rather than spend any more time on it, I backed up her files and started reinstalling it. Of course, that got interrupted by my power being out, but, still, I’m sure I’ll get it done pretty quick now while I wait for Centerpoint to turn my gas back on.

The other person I did a little mitzvah for was Alison over at Inspired Work of Self-Indulgence.
She was having a little trouble with Comcast and their network. More specifically, it seemed to me she was having a problem with the assigned DNS servers. As any good network geek knows, an Internet connection with out DNS isn’t very useful. She had a connection, sure, but she couldn’t get anywhere. Comcast had been out multiple times trying to fix things. They’d even changed out her cable modem, which seemed to be connected fine when I looked at it. But, her wireless gateway was picking up the normal, default DNS servers from Comcast’s autoconfiguration. I reset the wireless router to the factory default and tweaked the settings a bit. The part that I think mattered the most was adding additional DNS servers from outside Comcast’s network. So now, if the main DNS server goes down or stops working, the backup servers should still find what she’s looking for.
Though, if the problem comes back, it occurred to me on the way home from church that it might be her laptop turning off her wireless connection in a power-save mode, so I might have to check that. (If she’s reading this, that’s a hint!) In any case, it was nice to at long last finally get to meet her. We’ve exchanged e-mail and comments and read each other’s blog posts for quite literally years now. She even sent me cookies when I was in the hospital getting chemotherapy that first time! But today was the first time actually meeting. Hopefully, now that she’s seen I’m completely harmless, it won’t be the last time.
Oh, and I got to meet Piedmont and his new pet human, er, owner. Both were sweet, too. And, of course, I got to meet Cheyenne, Alison’s chocolate lab. She’s as cute in person as in the pictures Alison takes of her and as spoiled, too! She has almost as much tummy as my own Hilda!

So, in spite of almost coming home to a smoking hole in the ground where my house used to be, it turned out to be quite a good day indeed! Stay warm, y’all, and make sure to check your gas!

Update: Apparently, my sins still out-weigh my good deeds, since the guy from Centerpoint Energy never showed up. I stayed up waiting for him until 4:00am, then went to bed, mumbling about liars in the night. I wish it were the first time.
I’m half tempted to turn it on myself and to hell with them. But, better safe than sorry, so I’ll just mumble quiet, Lovecraftian curses on them and try to be on about my day until the next lying serviceman arrives.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both."
   --Samuel Butler

I hate it when the doctors are right.

No, I don’t have cancer again or anything like that. No, I just hate it when someone, especially a doctor, tells me that I can’t do something and they turn out to be right.

HeavyBag

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

In this particular case, I’m talking about running and my knees.
I was pretty well prepared to ignore my oncologist’s advice against taking up running because I’m tired of having even a small gut, even at my age. I know, as I creep up on forty, I should lower the bar, drop my personal standard and just accept that I’m probably always going to carry a “little extra” weight. Except, I just can’t. I hate the pudge that’s built up around my middle. Also, according to an article I read in Men’s Health while I was in the hospital, that “spare tire” could have been part of the reason I actually had cancer in the first place! So, one way or another, that gut has got to go.
Running may be out, but I know aerobic exercise is the best way to drop that weight, so I’ve been walking. Four days a week, weather permitting, I walk. The past month or so, I’ve walked at least a mile and, by my calculations, up to a mile and a-half most of the times I’ve been out. And, that’s good, but it’s not taking the weight off fast enough for me and, well, just not really enough to satisfy me in general. I feel the same about bicycling, though that might still be better than just walking. Not that I’d stop walking, but I feel like I need something more. So, as you can see in the picture, I got my old heavy bag out of the garage and cleaned it up.

Back in the “old days” when I was in something that resembled good shape, I hit the heavy bag twenty minutes, or more, at least three times a week. Of course, I also did some weight training with dumbbells and push-ups and sit-ups or crunches in the morning five days a week. But, I know it was going after that heavy bag that got me and kept me in shape. Thankfully, I still have some of the callouses and the bag gloves and wraps to start up again. I know it won’t be easy, but I’ve got to do something. Besides, I did like being in shape. I seem to recall more than one woman I knew at the time appreciated it, too, and well, my long-time readers will know, nothing motivates me like the opposite sex.
If you’ve never tried it, boxing and kickboxing are great ways to stay in shape. I wasn’t overly lean when I did it, but I certainly carried a lot less weight in general and fat in particular. I mean, I wasn’t like a cast member from 300, but I know I looked better than I do now. Also, I eat better now than I did when I was in my late twenties and thirties. I’m no vegetarian, but I do try to avoid eating whole boxes of Twinkies, no matter how much I love them.

Well, I guess there’s nothing to it, but to do it. So, I’ve got the heavy bag out there and my bag gloves are by the back door. I only managed three minutes after my walk on Sunday, but, well, I’ve got to start somewhere! I’m sure if I keep at it, I’ll be back to twenty minute workouts in no time!

I voted yesterday.

Yeah, I know, something like two weeks before the normal election day, I was able to vote.  Turns out, there has been a massive response this year and huge numbers of people are voting.  Personally, I think that’s great.  I mean, a friend of mine said he’d heard they were expecting something like a 60% turn out rate, which is monster.  As I recall, normally, the percentage of people who vote is less than 20%, so to get so many people out voting is wonderful.

I always have felt that if you want to complain about the way our current leaders are running things, then you better have voted.  Me, I like to complain, so I vote.  From what I understand, this year, you can even vote early on Sunday!  Thanks to Google, you can find your local early voting polling place with just a few clicks of a mouse, so why not do it?  If you haven’t voted lately, why not start this year?

Also, I’m not normally a very political animal.  No, really, stop laughing, I’m not.  Oh, sure, I’ve ranted and raved about certain tiny aspects of politics, but, mostly, I want everyone to participate in the process.  This year, though, I’m going to make a suggestion.  I think everyone tends to get in the mindset that you have to choose between the Democrats and the Republicans, but, you know, we’re not a two party system.  There are a wide range of parties in the United States, but the popular news media almost never talks about them.  Did you know that Ralph Nader was running again?  Have you heard of Bob Barr?
Just think about this for a couple minutes.  Over the past fifteen years, both the Republicans and the Democrats have been in power.  Did you like the way either of them ran this country?  If you’re not happy with either the Republicans or the Democrats, why not give a third party a try?  The Libertarians are well represented this year, at least in Harris County, Texas.
Maybe it’s time we gave another party a chance to make a difference.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
   --George Elliot

I am not nice.

So, I’m kind of, well, not a nice person sometimes. I have been known to be self-serving, arrogant, overly pleased with my own intelligence and, on occasion, too willing to take the proverbial low road. I did that today.

I follow a lot of blogs via an RSS reader. When one that’s ostensibly about science-fiction and fantasy fiction and publishing, run, in fact, by people in that business, popped up with a odd-looking picture of Alan Greenspan, I had to see what was going on. They were making fun of him based on a bad picture. Then, in the comments particularly, people were blaming him for the current economic crisis, as if a single man could have caused such a thing. Perhaps it made them feel more intelligent or better in some way to belittle a man so far above their tiny, little world by making fun of a bad picture. I’m not clear, really, because I’m not a knee-jerk Liberal. Some would say that I’m a bit of a knee-jerk Conservative, but, really, I’m not. I am, however, a bit of a prick. You see, I suggested that a dissenting view would be good. And I rather rudely offered one. Why? Well, outside of the obvious, I thought it might be fun to kick over that particular ant-hill. And, I’ll bet my website stats for the day spike.

Yeah, that’s all I really was after. So, I feel mildly ashamed of myself for using such tactics to draw clicks. I wanted to see if it worked better than putting “free porn” in a title. We’ll see, I guess.
Also, now that I’ve thoroughly irritated anyone who followed my links over from that site, I sort of feel like I should expound on the topic a bit. You see, it wasn’t those damn Republicans that got us into this with their deregulation. Nor was it those unholy Democrats who got us into this what with their trying to help the poor buy homes they couldn’t afford. No, gentle readers, we can’t blame anyone but ourselves. We did this. You and me. We did it through greed and over spending money that we don’t have. We did through a culture of “give me mine now” and not worrying about consequences. We did it when we allowed bad managers of failing companies to collect huge bonuses for doing terrible jobs and making things worse then still relying on their Golden Parachutes. Greed did this. Our greed. And, if not our greed directly, then our greed tacitly.

Do I think we should force those skeevy bastards who mismanaged funds while knowing that they were screwing the economy eventually to cough up their balloon payments? Yes. I’d love to let those companies that knowingly mismanaged their credit twist in the wind, the same way many Americans have been left to suffer after being lured in by those empty assurances of endless credit. Oh, and I’m not any better. Sure, I kept my mortgage smaller than I was approved for when I got my house. And, when my mortgage broker and my ex-wife were both pushing to convince me to buy more house, it wasn’t easy, I can assure you. But, by then, my credit was already bad, though I have no one to blame but myself.
The problem is if we don’t do something to bail these bastards out, we’ll have something worse than the Great Depression. I’d love to do nothing and ride it out, letting market forces correct this mess, but I don’t want to have to eat my dog. I don’t care if it’s a delicacy in Korea, she’s too happy to see me when I get home to eat. So, we’ll be forced to do something. And, so will the world, because their economic situation is tied to ours now, not to mention they’ve had their own spending issues. I also find it interesting that they have a slightly different view of Mr. Greenspan than those little minds who were making fun of his bad picture.

I find it equally interesting that several people tried to say I was trying to look smart in those comments. I wasn’t. I was, however, trying to point out that they weren’t half as smart as Mr. Greenspan. Certainly, none of them seemed to have any ideas on how to solve our current situation. They were content to ridicule someone who, frankly, did more to even things out during previous economic hardship than anyone else and, quite possibly, managed to hold off this current situation for far longer than we deserved. He did, after all, retire in 2006, after seeing us through another crash in 1987 as well as the Internet boom and bust a few years later. It’s only now, two years after he’s retired, that things have gotten bad. And, four years ago he did try to warn us, didn’t he? At least, that’s how it looks to me in one of his speeches from the Federal Reserve back in 2004. Others seem to agree with that position.

But, what do I know? I mean, I’m just a computer geek with a Marketing degree. Mostly, no matter who wins this next election, my life’s not going to change much. I know some people disagree, but, frankly, the Republicans and the Democrats always seem to do the same thing to me. It’s just that one group wants to sneak up from behind me and the other wants to look me in the eye while they do it. Neither group is all that admirable and the end result is the same, no matter what method they use.
The most important thing, though, is to at least try. Try to see who voted for what and look at who your local officials are who voted in ways you didn’t like. Then, when you do vote, don’t vote for them again. Try someone new. I’m tired of the old song and dance routine. I’m ready for a new number and a new show. How about you?

No, really, I have this friend who wants to know what people think.

Specifically, he wants to know what people think about a particular question.  See, it’s like this…
So, about a year ago, this friend of mine started dating someone he met via eHarmony.com. Well, things started slow with this woman, but he’s a very rational guy and allowed logic to guide him.  She had many appealing qualities, so, even though he didn’t have an immediate romantic attraction to her, he stayed the course and did his best to make a connection with her.  Sadly, it didn’t work out.  He could never quite get any chemistry going and, in the end, she obviously never felt that either because she pretty much broke it off.

Well, it turns out that was okay with my friend.  Why?  Well, as wrote previously, he never felt any real chemistry with her.  But, more than that, there was a complication.
The complication was a sister.  A single sister, as in not-married.  It seems he had an immediate reaction to this sister when he first met her.  In fact, one could say that all the chemistry he was hoping for with the original woman was, instead, centered on her sister.
Her sister had been seeing someone, sort of.  He was also from eHarmony, but he was from another state and, well, apparently there wasn’t enough chemistry.  So, even though she was kind of involved when my friend met her, she’s single now.

Now, here’s the dilemma…
After having dated the one woman for a year, can he now ask her sister out?  If so, under what conditions?
There are a few details that may be important, too.  First, these two sisters are Phillippina and pretty conservative Catholics.  Secondly, my friend is a staunch Christian and, therefore, is waiting until he’s married for sex, so that complication is not an issue.  Thirdly, my friend is very much NOT Phillippino and a Protestant.  Also, he’s waiting a respectful time before he’ll even contemplate asking the sister out, but, that time is drawing near.  Though, that raises another question, though.  What is a respectful enough time to wait before asking the sister out?  Oh, and should he ask the first woman’s permission first?

Right, so vote on the poll in the right side-bar, okay?  And leave any thoughts and insight in the comments.
(And, yes, I am talking about an actual friend, not myself in disguise!)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
   --Lady Dorothy Nevill

First, let me start by saying that I think this is all a good thing.

So, I saw in the news this week that another state has upheld the right of same sex couples to marry. I think this is a good thing. If one truly believes in the separation of church and state then defining marriage in terms of a particular religion’s view of a committed partnership, the lines are being blurred. A civil marriage is a contract, plain and simple. Call it by any name you like, marriage, domestic partnership, I don’t care. It’s still all the same. It’s a contract. A commitment to another person, primarily, a financial and fiduciary commitment, but, still, it is what it is.
Perhaps I’ve read too much science-fiction, but I think it’s time we, as a nation, learn to accept that people are going to arrange their love lives along lines that, frankly, we cannot dictate. People’s hearts will do what they will and trying to legislate something else is, well, foolish, I think. I suppose it would irk my conservative father, but I really haven’t seen anything wrong with marriage as a simple, civil contract between two consenting adults who wish to simplify certain financial arrangements for a long time. And, I’d even take that a step further and allow plural marriage, among legal adults, if it was so desired. It’s an old-fashioned notion that marriage, as a contract, should be between just two people. Of course, we have to draw the line somewhere, I suppose, and same-sex marriage is at least a start

But, I think some people are forgetting the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Consider, for a moment, taxes. Will same-sex marriage partners be assessed a marriage tax? I think they should be, just like heterosexual couples. Will employers count them the same? Will benefits pay the same? Will this finally end all justifications for pay inequality between men and women? After all, one of the several justifications I’ve heard for paying men more than women was that men more often had to take care of a family. Well, now, the reverse may finally be true in the eyes of the people who matter, regardless of how long it may have actually been true. Perhaps, I dream too large.
Still, the real ramifications of these decisions being made won’t be felt for many years to come. By definition, we cannot know all the myriad ways this will effect our society. I hope everyone who has wanted this so badly is willing pay the prices to go with the change.
Both the prices we know now, and the prices that have yet to be tallied.

UPDATE:  You know, after reading this entry this morning, it occurs to me that I should have added that I hope the people who have agitated for this are, in fact, willing to pay all the prices for this to truly succeed everywhere.  Because, I think it’s worth the price.  Truly, I do.  It’s just that so often, we want the change without considering what the change will really mean.
I hope it means that some of my homosexual friends can finally enjoy the same misery, and joy, of being married that the heteros have for, lo, these many years.