Diary of a Network Geek

I finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson last night.

Okay, so let me front-load this review with all the bad things up front. The main character’s name is Hiro Protagonist. I mean, can you get any more gimmicky than that? And, as often seems to happen with Stephenson’s books, things come to an end very quickly. And, by that I mean, they build to a state of extreme tension over more than three-hundred pages and then end in less than twenty, often without much in the way of explanations or tying up of loose ends. Snow Crash is no different.

But, those things aside, it’s a damn fine bit of science-fiction.
The story follows Hiro, who’s a hacker that’s currently working for Uncle Enzo’s Cosa Nostra Pizza as a delivery driver. Hiro, however, runs afoul of Uncle Enzo after crashing his delivery car trying to get a late pizza delivered on time. He’s aided by a skateboard courier by the name of Y.T. She’s a little under-age, but she’s a great courier and, now, a friend of Uncle Enzo. That’s a good thing, considering that the Mafia is a nearly ubiquitous franchise in the world of Snow Crash. In fact, most franchises seem to be nearly ubiquitous and have managed to become their own little countries, as are the California suburbs, or “Burbclaves”, where most of the book’s action takes place.
So, when Hiro gets fired from his job at Uncle Enzo’s, he goes to his part-time job as a stringer for the Central Intelligence Corporation and starts selling them intelligence. While in the on-line world known as the Metaverse, which Hiro helped program, searching for some juicy intel, he watches one of his hacker friends get infected with a new computer virus called “snow crash”. Nothing new there, right? Well, not quite… There’s a new twist to snow crash. It seems that this virus not only infects your computer, but it does something to your mind, too. And, now, someone’s trying to infect Hiro with it.

So, that’s the basic premise. I won’t spoil the book by telling you how it all turns out. But, I will drop a few hints. There’s a bunch of religion involved. And ancient Sumerian artifacts and the Metaverse and one of Hiro’s ex-girlfriends and raft-riding refugees and more. It’s complicated, convoluted and entirely entertaining. In many places it seems so light and comical that it’s almost a farce, but, really, that just off-sets the intensity of the other, more philosophical passages.
If you haven’t read it yet, read Snow Crash.  It’s Neal Stephenson at his best and it’s great.

Yummy noodles!

So, Thursday, after skipping lunch due to the indigestion that I always get from the barium, I thought I’d treat myself with something fast, easy, and that I didn’t have to really think about. But, frankly, ramen noodles just weren’t going to cut it, so, instead, I made Peanut Noodles from A Taste of Thai. These guys have been around for quite some time, but their “quick meals” are something new and they’re damn good.

At least, the Peanut Noodles I had Thursday were fabulous. Under other circumstances, I’d probably add meat of some kind, and I suppose that vegans could add nice, firm tofu, but I was in a hurry, and my stomach wasn’t quite up to anything too fancy. Besides, I’m not a giant fan of tofu.
The package is also the microwave-safe container to cook the noodles in, so there’s no need to dirty a dish. And, in four minutes, plus a little time to stir and add a light dusting of peanuts, you can have what is, in my personal estimation, the peak of Southeast Asian cuisine, noodles with Thai peanut sauce.

Now, I found mine in the ethnic food aisle at my regular Kroger, but you can hit their website to find the store closest to you, if you want to try this almost instant culinary delight for yourself.

Oh, and my appointment to get the results got moved from Thursday to Monday, so I’ll find out what all the radioactive isotopes and gastrointestinal distress have told the doctors about my lymphoma.  Or, hopefully, my lack of lymphoma.

Late last week, I finished Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

I’ve never read anything by Grossman, but, as this is his first novel, that shouldn’t be surprising. I’m sure he’ll have more out soon, though, if this is any example of his work.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is the latest in a growing new sub-genre of literature; the superhero novel. Granted, George R. R. Martin has been doing this with his Wild Cards series for quite some time, but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t seem to grow beyond his anthologies, until recently. I would be very impressed if any of the recent additions to the genre are better than this. It really is quite good.

The story opens with a chapter from the point of view of Doctor Impossible, imprisoned super-genius and super-villain. He gives us a quick look at his world, both inside and outside of prison. I think the immediacy of starting out a book about larger-than-life heroes from the point of view of their chief villain really helped draw the reader into the story. At least, it drew me in a bit more. As a writer, though, I found it slightly hard to suspend my disbelief reading from the point of view of a genius. Theoretically, the character speaking is infinitely more intelligent than I am, and most people, for that matter, but I’m fairly certain that, as clever as he is, the author is not, in fact, an evil genius. So, how do you write a character more intelligent than you? And, Dr. Impossible is writing from jail. Hello? How much of a genius can he be if he got caught, right? Well, I think I laughed out loud when he made the same comment. Then, of course, he goes on to explain how that worked.

The chapters alternated point of view between Dr. Impossible and the more-or-less heroine, Fatale. Fatale is a female cyborg recruited to join the Champions, greatest super-team of the moment. Or, more precisely, the New Champions, who are the latest incarnation of the group that defeated Dr. Impossible the last time. But, she’s recruited to help find CoreFire, the World’s Greatest Hero, who’s gone missing. While she and the other New Champions are trying to solve that riddle, Dr. Impossible breaks out of prison and starts on his latest nefarious scheme to dominate the Earth.

Yeah, I know, it all sounds a little over the top, but, honestly? It’s not when you’re reading it. It really reads about like you’d expect the average super-hero comic book to read, if it didn’t have any pictures. It even has all the twists and turns and secret lives that the better comic books have. It even has secret government programs, forgotten past lives, and murky origins. And, not just in the form of Fatale’s past work for the NSA, who also, allegedly, made her.
Naturally, a lot of the time is spent looking closely at the normally hidden life of Dr. Impossible. Actually, based on the title, I’d have almost expected even more of a focus than there was. Besides, villains are almost always more interesting than the heroes anyway.

All in all, Soon I Will Be Invincible was a good book. It delivered everything that it promised and then some. I like Old Man’s War better, but, I would certainly recommend Soon I Will Be Invincible to anyone looking for a good, quick read that’s not the usual fare. Well worth the money I spent.

Well, since I bought it, I think I should review it.

So, I’ve been wrestling with the typically mediocre documentation which surrounds most OpenSource projects and, in an effort to ramp up my efforts, I bought Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios by David Josephsen. Now, keep in mind that I don’t normally read entire computer books very much any more, but rather read just the few chapters that seem most relevant to my current project and keep the book for future reference. Also, I was in a hurry when I bought this book and didn’t have time to look at it very closely before purchase.

Now, all that being said, this book wasn’t all that helpful to me. It probably would have been a great help if I’d gotten it right when I was starting to install Nagios, though. Sadly, I puzzled out most of what I needed to know about the system the hard way, via on-line help files, how-tos, and trial and error.
With a table of contents broken up into eight chapters, titled; Best Practices, Theory of Operations, Installing Nagios, Configuring Nagios, Bootstrapping the Configs, Watching, Visualization, and Nagios Even Broker Interface, you can see that this book is about installing the base system and monitoring the most basic of services. I got the book hoping to monitor an SQL database and, if possible, the completion status of backups. Sadly, that’s not covered in this book. I did manage to find more information on-line regarding the SQL database monitoring, but not about watching backups.

So, mostly, this book didn’t get done what I was after. However, since there are things wrong with my installation, I may save the configuration files, wipe the server and start over, following the principles laid out in this book. For instance, I can’t seem to get scheduled down-time set via the web interface on my installation, which should be possible by default. And, the visualization on my monitoring server leaves something to be desired, so, if I start over, I’ll reference the chapter on Visualization. Certainly, it would be nice to start from a clean slate and do it right, but I may not have time to do that. We’ll see.

In short, Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios was a bit of a disappointment for me, but not because it wasn’t a good book. Rather, by the time I bought this book, I was a little past implementing most of the strategies discussed. Again, though, if I end up starting over, which I may, I’ll definitely read more of this book to get it done the right way.

I read Old Man’s War by John Scalzi this weekend.

I’m still reading Soon I Will Be Invincible, but, Friday, I got a free newsletter from Tor Books and it included a link to Old Man’s War as an ebook.  Naturally, I dropped everything to read it.  And, am I ever glad that I did!
John Scalzi is one of those authors that I’ve been hearing about the past year or two as being one of the new faces to watch in science-fiction, and, after reading Old Man’s War, I can see why.  On the surface, this is an old-fashioned colonization/space-war book in the vein of Heinlein or Niven, but with something else, too, that reminded me of Joe Haldeman at his peak.  This is truly great work and I’m sure I’ll be buying more of Mr. Scalzi’s books very, very shortly.

The story follows one seventy-five-year-old man, John Perry, who’s lost his wife of more than fourty years as he joins the Colonial Defense Forces so that he can get a new lease on life, literally.  Apparently, the only way for citizens of non-Third-World countries to colonize space, and take advantage of some slightly secretive, possibly shady, physical rejuvenation program, is to sign up for the military.  The story follows Perry as he leaves the planet, gets his new body and life, and sees the galaxy as a soldier in the Colonial Defense Force.  From there on out, Mr. Scalzi shows us a well-thought-out universe that, frankly, is rather hostile to humans.  He also gives us a compelling story of mankind’s place in that universe and how we might evolve, live and fight in the future.
He also writes a ripping yarn.

I cannot recommend Old Man’s War enough.  I don’t want to go into too much detail on this, so I don’t ruin it for you, readers, but, if you like science-fiction, you owe it to yourself to get this book and read it.

I finished World War Z by Max Brooks this weekend.

I’ve hardly read any fiction this past year.  I read mainly non-fiction, but I didn’t even read much of that.  I can blame the chemo treatments, but, really, reading became a job of sorts, not fun.  So, this year, I vowed to read nothing but fiction all year, unless I had to read non-fiction for work.  Also, I’ve lost track of what a narrative is, what plot is, how fiction works and I thought if I immersed myself in fiction, those things would resurface in my soul.  Or some shit like that.

Anyway, I read World War Z, which is a novel about the world after a zombie plague, and the resulting war, sweeps the Earth.  There wasn’t much plot, to be honest, but the book painted some interesting word pictures about a world consumed with a terrible plague that first killed thousands, then brought them back to life and made them the enemy.  Perhaps, it’s more accurate to describe the book as being light on a cohesive narrative.  The “plot” was about how the plague started as something mysterious in rural China, a sickness that made the infected into strange, feral creatures that want to eat and kill every living thing around them.  And, those that don’t get consumed by the living dead become the next legion of walking dead.

Then the author, posing as an investigator for the United Nations, takes us on a tour through space and time, following the plague as it works its way around the world.  Along the way, he introduces us to the leaders and warriors who fought the dead in that war, showing us their struggles and triumphs.  He also paints a fairly realistic world.  I can believe that the way the world he shows us reacts would be how our world would react.  The plot is somewhat thin and clouded by gimmick, as it were, of the zombies, but it’s still a good book.  It bogged down for me in places, and got slow because it was long, but, other than the pacing it was worth the read.  And, again, Brooks shows us a very realistic and well described world that first suffered, then survived, a zombie plague.  So, in the end, World War Z fulfilled its promise.  It may not be my favorite book, or the best I’ll read this year, but it was good and I’m glad I read it.

If you like zombies and science/horror fiction, World War Z is well worth reading.
Oh, and I started Soon I Will Be Invincible, which has started strong and looks like a really interesting book.

Trying to get back to basics.

So, as many of my long-time readers know, I used to write. Well, I used to write fiction. Oh, okay, I used to write a lot more fiction. But, I get distracted easily. Apparently, so do a lot of writers. It’s very easy for me to get obsessed with formats and customizing displays and so on. More so when I’m having trouble with plots. Or endings. Or, most often, beginnings.

So, when I saw an article on 43 Folders about Scrivener and other simple writing tools for OS X. Sadly, everything he talked about was for Mac only, but he linked to a Slate article on the same subject titled In search of the distraction-free computer desktop, which had a few more options.
Now, I’ve read more books and articles about writing and the writing trade than I care to admit, so I’ve seen a lot of information about different writer’s writing environments and choices. Steven Brust, who writes top-notch fantasy, uses Emacs and macros to export that to Word format to send to publishers. I tend to use OpenOffice Writer, because I can use it on any platform I might find myself and my backup laptop is running Linux. But, the articles talked about several options that I haven’t looked into yet.

One that seemed very popular is called Scrivener, but, sadly, it’s only available for OS X. Another was called WriteRoom and it has a “clone” for Windows called DarkRoom. I liked the look of DarkRoom because it was, well, simple and clean and I’ve just about convinced myself that’s what I need. A simple, clean interface with minimal distraction so that I can get to the business of writing. Finally, there was a Windows-only program called RoughDraft that one of the commenters suggested. It, too, has a clean, simple interface, though it looks more like a old-fashioned Windows file-manager than anything else. And, neither of those options truly addresses the fact that I really want to be able to write on my Linux laptop in a pinch with the same tools and configuration.
So, in the end, I’ll probably just stick with OpenOffice. Perhaps I can find a way to customize and simplify the interface on Writer to my liking. Surely, someone, somewhere, has done this and has a convenient HowTo. If not, maybe I’ll do that myself and write it up.

Then, of course, I’ll have to find another excuse not to write…

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before.

Some time ago, I was having problems with traffic on my network. Something, somewhere was apparently causing some issues with bandwidth on our Internet connection. Or, at least, that’s what our ISP kept telling us. It was, I think, the excuse they were using to avoid dealing with an e-mail problem.
Regardless, I had to find a tool to monitor our network traffic. I ended up using Wireshark for that, but along the way, I discovered a number of OpenSource monitoring tools for various purposes. The one that impressed me the most was Nagios.

Nagios is, according to the opening paragraph on their website, “an Open Source host, service and network monitoring program.” While I never did configure anything to monitor the network, per se, I did configure this to watch both local servers and third-party web and mail servers.
First of all, it’s important to know that Nagios runs on Linux. So, to install the software, you first have to have an available Linux server on which to install it. I’m using an old workstation that I installed the latest version of Fedora, the free version of RedHat. Getting the initial install done wasn’t very hard at all. In fact, there were RPMs available, so all I had to do was use RedHat’s package manager to get the base install loaded on the machine.

After the initial software load, I mainly followed the Quick Install instructions that they link to on the first page. Then, since I was mainly monitoring Windows servers and workstations, I found the cleverly titled help page, “Monitoring Windows Machines“, and followed that. This page ran me through the basics of installing the NSClient++ on a Windows machine and configuring Nagios to connect to and monitor that client. One thing that I had to find out the hard way was that the entries for the monitored systems have to be duplicated for each host. In other words, there is no way to just list all the Windows systems you want to monitor. You have to created entries describing each host individually. That’s not a big deal, honestly, since you can open the configuration files in a text editor and just copy, paste and edit the required entries.
I did have a few false starts here, until I figured out the correct syntax and the fact that every host has to be part of a previously defined group. But, other than that little glitch, configuration was fairly simple.

It took a little more digging, but I later found instructions for passively monitoring services running on servers without a client. I now use my private installation of Nagios to monitor our company webserver, both POP3 and SMTP on our hosted e-mail server, as well as my two Windows 2003 servers. I can even check on the Microsoft SQL database, thanks to information I got from this post on the OSdir mailarchive. And, did I mention that all this software was free? Yeah, the documentation wasn’t the best and it took me a little while to figure out the install and config, but it was far easier than the other monitoring software I played with and I can let anyone who has the username and password check these stats from their own workstation via a web browser. How cool is that? Oh, and did I mention that this can be used to monitor Linux/Unix systems, Windows systems and even Netware systems? Nagios pretty well covers it all!
(Oh, and as a side note, if you’re messing around with the configuration and want to reset the statistics, just stop the service and delete /usr/local/nagios/var/status.dat, then restart the service. All your counts will zero and all the checks will start fresh.)
In short, if you’re looking for a low-cost but versatile monitoring system and aren’t afraid to read the documentation, I highly recommend investigating Nagios.

I love Men’s Health cooking recipes.

I got a book some weeks ago titled A Man, A Can, A Plan, A Second Helping. I meant to get the first one, but, somehow, I got the second one. It doesn’t matter, because the recipes are still great and still from Men’s Health.
The premise is simple, all the main ingredients for the recipes are things in cans that can stay on the shelf for a long time. This is the perfect cookbook for men, or women, on the go who don’t have time to go grocery shopping every single week. With this cookbook, you can plan ahead and get cans of ingredients and leave them on the shelf for weeks until you need them.

Tonight, I made my first recipe from A Man, A Can, A Plan, A Second Helping. I made Black Gold Burritos. Since this book is still available and in print, I don’t feel right listing the recipe, but, hopefully, the link to Amazon will show you what I made.
Naturally, I had a few substitutions. First, I thought I had a can of corn in the cupboard, but it turns out I had creamed corn. I drained it and used it anyway. Also, I didn’t have a full cup of red peppers, so I diced up a yellow pepper and made a cup of peppers with red and yellow combined. It turned out quite well indeed. I made three burritos to eat, and three for another time, but I ran out of wheat tortillas, so I had “stuff” left over. More than enough for two more burritos, making the eight that the recipe claims to create. Either my tortillas were smaller than theirs, or they’re making really huge portions that, somehow, don’t spill out. Mine spilled all over the plate, but Hilda seemed to like helping me clean up, so it was all good. And, take it from me, it really was ALL good! The burritos were quick, at less than an hour to prepare and cook, and very tasty!
If the original A Man, A Can, A Plan is half as good as this one, I heartily recommend them both.

…And the first of this year, in review.

First, there was the Simpson’s Movie. That was part of the Saddest Bachelor Party ever. Half of us didn’t drink, half of us were gay, and I wasn’t quite done with chemotherapy treatments. No alcohol, no strippers, and I looked like a walking corpse. Hell, I felt like a walking corpse.
I’ve never been a huge Simpsons fan, to be honest, though I love Futurama. We went at the request of the groom, J. I bought dinner at my new, favorite Thai restaurant and I bought J.’s ticket. The movie was hilarious. Everything that was ever good about the Simpsons crammed into one movie. At one point, Homer is trying to catch up to his family and save Springfield. He’s using a dog-sled to do so and driving the dogs hard. They run away in the night and Homer whines “Why does everything I whip run away?” I verbally sympathized. We missed the next five minutes of the film while we laughed. But, really, if you missed this one, rent it. It was good, even if you’re not a fan.

Next was Dragon Wars. This was a Korean import staring mainly unknown American actors, or B-movie actors that should have retired years ago. The best thing I can say about it is…
“Dragons! With rocket launchers on their shoulders!” It was our catch phrase for the evening. Don’t bother even renting this one unless you want to reenact Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Then, I went to see American Gangster with J. and L. just after Thanksgiving.
This was very, very good. It was so hyper-real that it was almost unbelievable. But, it’s pretty well all true. This is the story of the Black Mafia in Harlem in the Sixties and Seventies. It’s all about gangs, criminals, heroin, and the mob. Again, very real, very violent and very good. Another one to rent if you missed it in the theater.

After that, though, we started picking up speed.
Midway through December, I saw the disappointment of the year, the Golden Compass. After the massive build-up and comparisons to C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia, I had high expectations for this film. I was betrayed.
The entire movie was rushed and it felt like huge sections of plot had been left out leaving indecipherable gaps. The only thing that saved me, frankly, was having talked to a friend who read the books about the premise of the first book, on which this movie was based. The CG was very good, but not good enough to distract me from the butchered plot and lack of real sparkle in the film despite some brilliant actors. To say that it was a huge disappointment is, at best, an understatement. If you haven’t seen it, but feel compelled, I’d wait to rent it.

On Christmas Day, I went with my mysterious artist friend, for whom I’m doing some creative work, to see No Country for Old Men. If you haven’t seen this yet, skip work this afternoon and go see it. Yes, it is that good. I hope to see it again while it’s still in the theaters and I almost never see a movie more than once in the theater. That is how good I think this movie is.
First of all, it stars two of my favorite actors, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin. Yes, Josh Brolin, son of James Brolin and husband of Diane Lane. Very, very under-rated actor, in my opinion. Also, I didn’t realize that this was a Coen Brothers’ movie until I was there with Mark. So, by the time I sat down in the theater, I had pretty high expectations. They were exceeded.
Now, true to their form, this is a violent film. And, a very realistically violent film. I’ve seen a lot of wounds, on myself and others, fresh and not quite so, and the effects in this film are very, very good and the most realistic I’ve seen outside of… Well, actually, they’re the best I’ve seen anywhere. Period. So, if you have a weak stomach, don’t plan on eating Italian after seeing this one. However, if you’re up for a bit of the old ultraviolence, then this movie is for you.
The story follows Brolin’s character, who finds a drug deal gone very wrong in the Texas scrub while hunting. He hunts around until he finds the money from the deal and takes it. The rest of the movie is about the consequences of that decision and that act. Brilliant work.
If you see no other movie in the next twelve months, see No Country for Old Men.

Now, to wrap things up, I started my year with I Am Legend.
The weakest thing about this movie was the CG. Based on a book, which I’m currently reading, by Richard Matheson, this is the story of biology gone wrong. Will Smith plays an Army doctor who is the only survivor in New York City after a plague sweeps the world. The plague, which is the side-effect of a reengineered virus meant to cure cancer, kills most people and transforms the rest into Dark Seekers, zombie-vampire-like creatures that feast on living flesh and hide from the day-light. A classic monster movie. From what I’ve read so far, the movie is only vaguely similar to the book. In fact, it’s more like the Charlton Heston version of this movie, The Omega Man. (Apparently, this was also a remake of an even earlier version of the story staring Vincent Price called The Last Man On Earth, but I haven’t seen this version. Yet.)
As far as the movie goes, it’s worth seeing. I won’t spoil anything, but it does end on an up-beat. I do recommend that you see this with a friend, though, not alone like I did. At least, not if you’re feeling depressed or lonely. This is a very, very lonely film and Smith gets that feeling of hopelessness and futility across to the audience very well. If they’d spent just a little more on the CG, this would have been a truly great film. As it is, if not for Will Smith’s fame, I doubt it would have done well.
Of course, I might have enjoyed the film more if not for two of my fellow audience members that intruded on the experience. The first was an older gentleman that kept asking his much younger companion, daughter I assume, what was happening. When he asked where all the people were in the opening scene, I almost asked him if he knew what movie he’d come to see. The next time he asked a similar question, I had to bite my tongue to keep from snapping back at him that if he’d just shut up and watch the movie, the plot might answer his damn question! The other audience disturbance was the non-English-speaking family that brought a toddler into the movie 3/4 of the way through. You know, right before the horde of monsters stormed the hero’s stronghold. Perfect timing to scar the kid for life.
Other than that, though, it was an enjoyable experience.

So, here’s to the new year and many great movies to be seen!