Diary of a Network Geek

The secret word for today is “firewall”.
Not only is it an essential part of any connection to the Internet, it’s also what I installed today at work. Yes, that’s right, what I thought I was looking at in the config of the weird, little Covad router was NOT a firewall or even an active filter set. Unfortunately, I found that out the hard way when I rebooted the router last week and the filters activated, killing everyone’s Internet access. I’m not sure who was more surprised, the support tech or me, when they discovered the active filters. I know I was more shocked than the tech when he told me that they don’t support firewalls built into their routers. In short, we were flapping in the proverbial breeze. And, apparently, we had been since, well, since they’ve had an Internet connection. Doh!
Anyway, after a bit of scrambling and some gulping at spending real money for a real firewall, I got a D-Link DFL-1100. It’s a nice, little firewall appliance that has a built-in DMZ, for later use with a mail server, and IDS detection with e-mail notifications. It was pretty easy to configure, once I got the details on the funky Covad router. I really don’t like them. Hooked directly to the console port on the router, I still had refresh issues and timing strangeness that got really frustrating when I had everyone in a hurry to get their e-mail. Damn irritating. the DFL-1100, however, was pretty simple to install and configure. It even had predefined filters and exceptions that seemed to be working just fine. I’ll probably fine tune that over the next couple of weeks, but, for now, it works okay.

It’s really frightening to me, though, that they could have gone for so long without any protection at all. How could an Internet company sell service to someone and not check with them about having a firewall in place? How could anyone who knows anything about the Internet leave a connection open for literally years? I wonder how many spam problems will go away here, now that I’ve gotten a firewall in place?
Of course, I’m pretty dissapointed in myself for not understanding what I was seeing in that Covad router, too. I should have caught that sooner. Sure, I don’t mess with routers on a regular basis, but I’ve done it enough that I should have seen this. Well, at least it’s taken care of now. Lord, help me, what will I find next?

But, good spelling is a little trickier!
Well, I finished that intellectual challenge, Airtight Willie & Me this weekend. It was actually a fairly good book. Though, as I got further into it, I was a little surprised to see that it was actually a series of not really related stories. The book takes its title from the first story, which is about a scam artist getting out of jail and being scammed himself by his partner. The O. Henry-like irony is actually quite sophisticated. Well, considering the source. Seriously, it’s a little strange considering my normal reading, but that’s why I chose that book. It’s a look at life from a perspective that I will, hopefully, never see or truly understand. It’s different. It’s a change. And, obviously, based on the length of time it took me to read it, not a very long book, either.
Currently, I’m reading Plot for about the third or fourth time. I go back to this book, and others in this series, when I have trouble writing. So, I read it every few years when I try to start writing again after a long hiatus. That’s where I’m at right now, ergo, I’m re-reading selected writing books to try and get jump-started back into a writer’s mind. We’ll see how we do in the coming months.
After that, though, I’ll be reading Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. (Literary enough for you, Mark? 🙂 ) The description interests me because a fictional language is at the heart of the story and I’ve long had a fascination for invented languages. So, I’m looking forward to it.

Yes, I read books without pictures. Sometimes.
Frankly, I do prefer the books with pictures. Preferably big pictures in color that illustrate the more complicated points in the text. But, I digress… Recently, I finished reading Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings and you can read that review at The Fantasist’s Scroll. And, today at lunch I started reading Airtight Willie & Me, which is a little different. It’s what be called “ethnic fiction”, if you’re being polite, or “ghetto writing”, if you’re being accurate. I’ve read about the first 45 pages or so and it’s surprisingly good. Of course, it’s a little gritty and filled with slang and poor grammar, but it’s no worse than reading the web these days. Oh, and the author is from Chicago, so there’s a lot of “local interest” in it for me. Though, I have to admit, Iceberg Slim’s Chicago is a whole lot different than mine!
So, there’s an upside to all this time alone after all. I get a lot more reading done these days with a whole lot less hassle. And, no one gives me hell about what I’m reading!

There’s a new Pope!
I saw this on the news at lunch and had to look up a story about it to link to for the blog. Here’s one from MSNBC about the new German Pope. So, now this is the second time in hundreds of years that there’s been a non-Italian Pontif and this one is, apparently, much more conservative than John Paul II. Not sure what that will mean to Catholicism around the world, or that he’ll even stay conservative now that he’s Pope, but it’s an interesting turn of events. I find it especially interesting because I’m questioning my own very conservative Christian upbringing. I’m not entirely sure that I believe in absoultely everything that I was taught as a child. And, I’m afraid that it will be quite some time before I figure it all out, too.

Oh, I did finish a book that I’d been laboring over for weeks on end, too. I did a review of the book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, at Fantasist.net, but I’m too lazy to do anything more than post a link to it. So, if you want to read it, you’ll have to give me traffic to the other site. More news later in the week.

I re-read the Science of Breath last week.
For a skinny, little book it sure is packed full of information. Those yogis really pay a lot of attention to the details of everyday physical life. We all breath, but how often do we actually contemplate our breathing? The Science of Breath asks us to do just that. What’s more, it offers the most correct way of breathing for maximum health and benefit. It also gives the yoga student breathing exercises that help revitalize, reinvigorate and recharge themselves on many different levels. I re-read the book to refamiliarize myself with those breathing exercises which, over the years, I have found extremely helpfull in times of stress. As one might imagine, they are very meditative in nature and I found them quite relaxing.
This little, 90-page book is now a bit of a challenge to get, but well worth the effort. (Oh, and don’t be fooled by the other books of the same title. The one to get is the one by Yogi Ramacharaka.)

I got a lot of reading done while I was out of town.
In fact, I read two books last week while I was on the road. I reviewed them over at my other blog, the Fantasist’s Scroll. You can go there to read my reviews of Coyote Blue and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. Both fiction by Christopher Moore.
Currently, I’m reading a self-help book of sorts, but it’s sort of strange, so I’m keeping that one to myself.

This is interesting.

Okay, I downloaded this little program some time ago and loaded it up at work on my experimental kernel machine. See, I foul things up so terribly that I occasionally need to reload the server. Well, rather than sitting around and doing an install all day, I thought a recovery CD, or CDs, would be a better answer. So, I tried it.
First off, mkCDrec is easy to install. Just download it, make yourself root, or root-like, and extract it. It’s that easy. Then, go to the mkcdrec directory and run “make”. That’s it! You’ll get a menu that will pop up and ask you a couple of options and you might want to change the default paths, but otherwise, that’s all there is to it.
Restoring is just a little bit more complicated, but not much. Basically, you boot off the first recovery disk and run /etc/recovery/start-restore.sh. After that, the restore script asks you a couple of questions and goes to work! When it finishes with the first disk, it prompts you for the next. My system took three CDs and less than 45 minutes to restore, which beats a fresh install any day.
Did I mention that this was free software? Oh, the author asks for donations, but for all intents and purposes, it’s free. Pretty damn cool.

Oh, I also noticed that my darling wife has taken me off her “Worthy Blogs” list. Not sure when that happened, but I’d suspect that my link went away between one and three weeks ago. I guess I’m just not worthy! Story of my life. This blog gets an average of 1300 hits per day, but I’m still not worthy. Maybe if I post the next winning lottery numbers….

I finished The Freemasons: A History of the World’s Most Powerful Secret Society by Jasper Ridleylast week.

As a Freemason myself, I found the book quite interesting. First of all, it looks at masonic history from the perspective of a what is known and concrete, not with any real speculation at all. It’s a very, very scholarly work which included a significant bibliography.
Secondly, it was written by a non-Mason. While that, in itself, is not remarkable, what is special about that is that the author maintains an even-handed look at masonic history. He sticks to the facts and was actually quite enlightening in many areas, at least to me.
Thirdly, the book covers quite a bit of history, but it completely discounts the claims that some authors have made regarding Freemasonry being descended from the Knights Templar. This is, oddly enough, unusual these days. It seems like the majority of books lean the other way. Jasper Ridley, though, maintains that the simplest explanation is, in fact, correct. That the story we’re told from the Grand Lodge is right. Namely, that the Freemasons are an outgrowth and offshoot of the original working, or operative masons, who were essentially an early trade union.
Finally, as Mr. Ridley sums up at the end, he gives the Freemasons a fairly good endorsement, which we can surely use for a change!

If you have any interest at all in the history of Freemasonry, this is an excellent place to start. I wish I’d read it first, before all the others that I’ve gotten into this past year or so. But, if you’ve only a passing interest, there are other, easier books to read. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this is a rather scholarly work.
(Oh, yes, this also appeared on my other blog.)

I finished Iron Council by China Mi�ville last week.

It was good, but not quite as good as his last two.
This one dealt with an attempt to run a transcontinental railroad across Bas Lag, home of New Crobuzon. Something goes wrong and the people building the railroad rebel and become their own, moving, city. While the idea is interesting, and the descriptions of magic and struggle are compelling, the book focuses elsewhere. Specifically, it seems as if Mr. Mi�ville has a social message to impart to us. A rather anti-capitalist, socialist message.
While there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, it does take away from the story in this case. The book seems less about exploring the world of Bas Lag than either Perdido Street Station or The Scar . It is not, by any means, his best effort.
However, it was a good book. I certainly enjoyed the previous two more, but I was not sorry that I bought Iron Council and read it.

If you’re already a fan, Iron Council will be worth it. But, if you’re new to China Mi�ville, it would be better to start with either Perdido Street Station or The Scar .
(Oh, yes, this first appeared on my other blog.)

Okay, not really new, but new to me.

I was introduced to a utility called Servant Salamander this week by my boss. It’s basically a file and disk utility, but it has plugin extendability. For instance, it comes with the ability to open ZIP, TAR, GZ, and RAR archives. It lets you quickly edit text files, including INI files. It has direct access to the registry and it has a built in FTP client. So, you can upload files directly to a server via FTP as if you were using a regular file manager. Pretty cool. Oh, and there is a free version, but it’s worth paying for the latest.

Enjoy!