Diary of a Network Geek

Why do I have a hard time sympathizing?

Okay, look, the smut peddlers are protected by the First Amendment, but when they get harrassed by an e-extortionist, it’s hard for me to feel too much sympathy. Not even when their websites get crippled, as is apparently happening, according to this Wired News story.
After all, these sleeze-bags are behind the most offensive and pervasive spam I recieve. I have an 11-year-old daughter who might be accidentally exposed to this filth, just because some wormy slime-ball needs to make money in a dirty, disgusting business. So, they’re getting black-mailed by some hacker/cracker/script-kiddie and they don’t like having to explain to the FBI what their business is. Hmm, seems like it’s time to get out of the business, eh?
Of course, they have their rights as American citizens, including the right to Free Speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment, but I just don’t put pornography in the same class as political dissent. Go figure. I just hope this guy puts enough pressure on these “business people” to close some of them down.

Well, I actually managed to do something technical and new this week. A friend of mine is a total Mac guy, who has worked on Windows machines, but doesn’t know anything about networking them together. He’s out of work and has been trying to beef up his skills on Dreamweaver for the PC, but has most of his graphics stuff on his Mac. He asked me for help and I couldn’t refuse. Besides, I had a spare hub and network cards, not to mention the spare time.
So, we’ve actually been trying to get this to work for some time now, but finally figured out that we needed more “stuff” than the standard networking junk that comes with Windows XP and Mac OS 8. After hunting around, we settled on PC MacLan, by Mirramar Systems. Quite frankly, we were told that it wasn’t the best solution, but it was what we could afford, so we made it work. Basically, what it does is install AppleTalk on Windows XP and then translates the data back and forth between Mac and Windows. We got the little eight port hub set up and the CAT5 cables snaked behind the furniture with no problems. Then, after a bit of a false start, we got it going in short order. We shared out several directories on his Mac and made shortcuts for them in My Network Places on his WindowsXP machine. But, that wasn’t good enough for us. No way! We weren’t satisfied until we could get the HP DeskJet 960C hooked up to the PC and were able to print from the Mac as well as Windows. So, we horsed the printer around to a place where the USB cable would reach the Windows PC and I ran the PC MacLAN print server wizard. It was really pretty easy, but there were some odd quirks. Mainly, it gives new warnings every time a new “session” is started and there’s no way to set it permanently. And, the printing is pretty slow from the Mac, but it does work. Besides, there are some extra steps going on. After all, technically, it is network printing.
It might not be Netware, but at least the stuff I learned while working on my CNE came in handy! Now, I need to really buckle down and work on my CCNA Certification. There have been several jobs that I’m pretty sure I would have had, if only I’d been Cisco Certified already. *sigh* Well, back to the old grindstone.
Oh, by the way, that friend of mine is still out of work. He’s a User Interface designer, but he’s worked in print, too. His name is Patrick McGee and you can find him at Pmcgee.net.

Okay, so I *still* haven’t been all that great about keeping this up to date, but I have an excuse. My wife and I got the house. In fact, we just finished moving in this last week. Now, we’re surrounded by boxes. But, somehow, I don’t mind. After all, we have *all* our stuff, no more storage facility, and we *still* have more room than we did in that stinking little apartment!
Now, let’s see, I still haven’t passed that damn kidney stone, so tomorrow, Saturday, I’ll be going in bright and early to drink a radioactive milkshake and have intestinal pictures taken. Of course, the real fun will be the castor oil that I have to drink the night before. My lovely wife, who’s very knowledgeable about health and medical stuff, says that it’s to clean me out. I guess so that nothing interferes with the pictures. Fun.
Oh, and I bought all my supplies for running my cat 5 network cable this week, too. With any luck at all, I’ll be able to start wiring up the house this weekend. I’ve looked all over the Internet for people who have chronicled their home cabling experience, but I came up pretty empty. There are a few folks that have talked about it, but not too many really. So, of course, that means that I’ll be doing my best to log all the stuff I do. I’m even going to try and give a little technical advice, but I’m afraid that it will mostly be out of date by the time it hits the web. In part because I’m using at least *some* “found” materials. Namely, I saved myself a couple of bucks (roughly $150) by salvaging a category 5 punchdown panel. It only has 24 connections, but how many does a home network need?!? Anyway, I’ll do my best to make a usable reference of everything I learn along the way. Stay tuned!

Well, it sure has been a long time since I did any updates on this page! In fact, it’s been literally months!! I can explain…

First off, I’ve been pretty damn busy at work. After my little adventure in the New Orleans airport, I hardly had a chance to sit down. Not only have I had to roll out two sets of patches, or “Service Packs” as they’re called now, on our Novell servers, but I’ve had to set up a Novell BorderManager Proxy server. Man, the troubles I’ve had with that! The initial setup was okay, but getting the VPN (Virtual Private Network) working has really bedeviled me. It’s been so bad that my boss, the CIO, had to raise some ruckus with our sales reps at Novell. He’s finally gotten me a connection with our local Support Engineer, who’s promised to come take a look at our configuration for me. Hopefully, he can find what a CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) with more than eight years experience has missed.
Second of all, I finally got my gorgeous girlfriend/fiancé to marry me. On Saturday, March 10th, 2001, Anne and I got married in the Canterbury Wedding Chapel at the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Allie, Anne’s daughter, was our ring-bearer/flower-girl. The service was nice, short and attended by the photographer. We thought it was the perfect way to get married. No one hassling us or telling us what to do and how to do it. No meddling mothers or aunts or sisters to make us miserable. No seating charts or receptions to worry about planning. Just a cool, quick wedding and a great steak dinner afterward. After that, we spent most of the week running around Las Vegas doing tourist stuff. We went to see Sigfried & Roy, Tournament of Kings and The Blue Man Group. We also went to see Star Trek:The Experience, where I bought “genuine” Romulan Ale and Klingon Blood Wine. But, of course, work intervened and I had to come back a day early to “fix” something that had gone wrong. What would they do if I ever quit?
Finally, now that we’ve done all that, we’ve been looking for houses. It looks like we found a nice four-bedroom, two-bath, two-story house on a lot that’s almost double-deep! And, even with all the flooding that we’ve had here in Houston, it stayed dry. What could be better?!? Two koi-ponds, that’s what. That’s right, the property already has two koi ponds on it, complete with koi. There’s a fireplace with a Ben Franklin stove in it and a partially finished garage. There’s a covered car port that’s connected to the house by a covered walkway. It’s really great and I hope the sale goes through okay. We’re scheduled to close this Friday, 6/29/2001!
And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my kidney stone. That’s right, as if all the work I’ve been doing isn’t enough, I was doubled over in pain by a kidney stone last week Monday, 6/22/2001. It got so bad, that I had Anne take me to the emergency room. We ran into Charles, our paramedic friend, there who told the nurses to take good care of me, which they did. I got moved through as fast as I’ve ever been. And a nice, young doctor gave me some great pain medication. I still haven’t passed the damn thing, but I’m off to see the friendly urologist tomorrow. I plan on demanding that he “do something” about it because I’m tired of peeing through a strainer!
Until next time….

Well, last week, I saw black helicopters flying over fields West of my office. Now, Anne thinks that I’ve been watch too much First Wave, but I swear there were military helicopters flying around out there. Gosh, it’s weird having a window… I saw all that, incidentally, because I was using my second machine to get the screen captures that Novell wants for my corporate licensing agreement self-audit. (Oh, boy, is my job fun, or what?) Anyway, that machine faces the windows in my office. Well, for those of you that care, I’ve just about gotten my new bookstore done. I decided to redo it from stem to stern, as it were. Not only am I doing away with the JavaScript menus, to make it easier to navigate without having any security concerns, but I’m adding a lot of new books! Don’t worry, though, all my old favorites will be there, too. On another note, Allie, Anne’s daughter, started piano lessons on Saturday. Apparently, her Nana (grandmother to you Northern carpet-baggers) has done so much work with her that Allie skipped right to the second or third lesson! Good for Allie, but it makes me wonder just what she’s been doing over at Nana’s… Anyway, she seems to have enjoyed the first lesson, at least. We’ll see how long she keeps at it. Hopefully, she’ll stick with it. I’d like to think that music positively influenced my life, even if I don’t make my living via music. Speaking of family, Nancy and Tim, her new beau, are getting married! Yikes! I don’t think her divorce is even done yet!! (Ah, if only her sister would take a cue from that…) So, we’ll be flying up there in October for that wedding. Big fun. Hopefully, Anne will get the time off. I already have, but… Well, the life of a contractor is a little different. I think it’ll be okay, but you just never know. Well, more later in the week, but that’s all for now. Stay tuned for the latest wedding plans and developments.

Well, not much of an update today, but I thought I’d add in some personal stuff. Just for variety.
Last weekend, the girls went out to a Celtic Fest and left me at home. I thought it would be nice for them to get some “girl time” together. Anne has been working really hard and hasn’t been able to see Allie as much as she’d like, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for them to “bond”. This weekend Anne isn’t feeling too well, so I might just end up taking Allie out shopping for a little while. We need to get a book on telling time for her. I’ve instituted a work-for-allowance program that requires some knowledge of telling time. (Okay, so what I’ve done is tell her that I’ll pay her $2.50 per hour of cleaning up and other chores that she does. She might as well get used to the idea young. It is how the world works, after all.) Besides, I also need to get a book on the current version of Red Hat Linux. After looking around the Internet at stuff, it seems like everything for Linux of any real value assumes that you have a version of Red Hat installed. So, in spite of the fact that I’ve been enjoying Storm Linux, I’ll be learning Red Hat.
Speaking of learning… One of the reasons that I’m focusing more on Linux is that my studying for my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate, for the uninitiated) has been slow going indeed. I’m still working on it, but with the lack of sleep that house guests create, it’s been hard to slog through the issues relating to sub-networking. It’s especially bad since I’m already familiar with most of the material! I just have to get the Cisco methods down for the test. Shoot! I’ve been doing TCP/IP since Novell used IP tunneling!! (That’s over 8 years, incidentally.)
Anyway, this is going to be a light weekend. At least, it is if I have anything to say about it. I’m in a good mood since I got two calls from headhunters on Friday. They’re looking to fill Network Manager positions, which is what I think I need to have next. I changed my resume on Monster.Com to reflect the fact that I managed people for the past two years. It seems to have made a difference! So, like I said, I’m in a pretty good mood this morning, so, if Anne is feeling up to it, I may just take my two girls out to our favorite little Greek place for lunch, Niko Niko’s.

See you next week!

Not much going on this week, so I might as well have an update! Anne’s sister has been with us for a couple of days and I’ll be taking her to the airport later this afternoon. In spite of some setbacks, it looks like she’ll be doing the move to Pittsburgh just fine. She’s a little worried about the whole thing, but so was I when I moved down to Houston. I think she’ll be okay, once she starts to adjust to living in a new state. I’m not sure that her parents will adjust, but that’s a different story.

Speaking of different stories… I activated a second resume on Monster.Com yesterday that has more of a focus on management than my other one. It’s gotten about 25 “views” so far, but I’ve already had two calls. I’m not sure that either of them will pan out, but at least someone’s showing interest. One of the things that might have been slowing folks down was that I had mistakenly left March as my out date. Yikes! I wonder how many people passed me over thinking that I hadn’t found a job in four months!! Or, almost as bad, that I’d already found a job and wasn’t really looking anymore. Well, at least I’ve corrected that problem.
On a related note, since I’m taking Nancy to the airport, I won’t get out to the “job fair” at WIZARD. I called J. to tell him, but I had to leave a message. I haven’t heard back from him, so I can’t help but wonder if he’s wise to me. Or is that, that he knows I’m wise to him? Cheap, shady tactics result in cheap, shady jobs. And, that’s all I have to say about that.
Speaking of not getting a call back… I haven’t heard from D. at the Waco Syndicate, so I called her this morning. Unfortunately, I had to leave a message there, too. I really wish I could get more information on the job she had dangling before me. Or, if it’s passed me by, I’d like to know that, too. *sigh* Ah, well, it’s a bit of a waiting game. I figure that if I haven’t found something permanent by the end of the month, and we don’t get extended again, I’ll just start contracting. In fact, that’s what I’ve saved my other Monster.Com resume for, contracting. I reworked it with a contracting slant to it. At least I have some kind of fallback position. Thank God I’m in an industry that lends itself to that.

Well, now that I’ve finally set up my news and updates page, namely Diary of a Network Geek, I’m going to start adding to it. My dear, sweet girlfriend, Anne, suggested that I chronicle my quest for a new job. I’ve decided that I like that suggestion, so I’m going to start with a little background.
The company I started working for when I moved to Texas, Harbor Financial Mortgage Corporation, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December of 1999. Currently, I’m a contractor for the liquidation company that is disposing of Harbor’s assets. Without going into too much detail about why they filed Chapter 11, let’s just say it was a bit of a surprise. When I joined the company in June of 1998, we were in a period of explosive growth. We gained over 200 employees in less than 8 months, and continued to add employees slowly for a year. Less than two years after I signed on, we’re all but gone. At last count, there were about a dozen employees left here, including myself.
So, you ask, what have I been doing since December? Well, for starters, I separated the Dallas network from the combined Houston-Waco networks. I was in charge of the Houston-Waco end of things. It all happened just like it’s supposed to in the on-line documentation at Novell. Well, after the router guys at Sprint got the right routers disconnected, that is. *Sigh* Nothing’s perfect, I suppose. On the upside, the Houston separation from Waco went without even that much going wrong. Not every day that a Network Engineer gets to purposely break then fix a network!
After that, mostly what I did was maintain the system as it’s been. I kept the backups running and made sure that the sad, little ISDN connection to the Internet was up and running. Of course, from time to time I had to perform some other regular maintenance, but that didn’t take much time. So, in between times, I studied for my CNE (Certified Netware Engineer, for the uninitiated) update test. Which I passed, BTW. So now I’m a genuine CNE 5. In fact, the last time I called Novell, I was the only Jim Hoffman that was a CNE! Cool!
And, the rest of the time, I spend catching up on all the tech reading that I’ve been missing out on. I setup a Linux machine, too, just to brush up my Unix skills, which are far too out of date for my taste. Oh, yeah, I’ve been talking to people about jobs, too. See, I’ll be totally out of work at the end of June. At least, that’s what they’re saying today. Who knows, though, next week they might tell me to get out. Or they might tell me that they’re extending the contract until the end of July! I just don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day.
So, this Diary of a Network Geek will chronicle my trials and tribulations as I go out job hunting. I promise to change the names of the people involved to “protect the innocent”!