An open letter to all my Facebook friends

Que?

I knew I recognized that address range...

Google's new public DNS server is up and running and I'm pretty excited about it and their adherence to DNS standards. The network addresses, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 were bothering me, though. Where had I seen these before? A quick whois shows the following:

Level 3 Communications, Inc. LVLT-ORG-8-8 (NET-8-0-0-0-1)
8.0.0.0 - 8.255.255.255
Google Incorporated LVLT-GOOGL-1-8-8-8 (NET-8-8-8-0-1)
8.8.8.0 - 8.8.8.255

Yup. Level 3. I've set up many a BGP neighbor with them in the past and that's where I saw the 8.0.0.0 range in the past. It's cool that Google snagged 8.8.8.0/24 from Level 3, well not "snagged", but you know what I mean.

Now, the big question that matters only to me: what about IPv6 connectivity for public Google DNS?

hum.....

So, I installed my Soekris Net-4801 m0n0wall and my RR speed tests have decreased dramatically:



Bandwidth is determined by the cable modem, not the firewall. So.. why would I have been getting close to 20 meg down before and now "just" 5-6? I had long suspected that something was wrong with my cable modem and that's why I was getting such astonishing download speeds and perhaps that's all been fixed.

More testing is needed.

True story.

I met a girl this weekend who has a Ph.D. in Statistics**. What are the chances of that? I suppose I should have asked.

** And for those following along with my life drama at home, no, it was not "that" kind of meet. She's married.

Confused

I wanted to learn more about Asterisk and VoIP in general so I installed Azktoria on a Soekris Net-4801. I'm so confused. I'm trying to set up a SIP client on my laptop to connect to the PBX but I'm not having much luck yet. I'll keep tinkering. This is going to be fun. Oh, and co-worker and friend Heath gave me and older Cisco IP phone but I've got to apply the SIP image to get that working.

Next I'd like to get a proper network up and running with my registered domain name that I'm not doing much with.

Brilliant!

As far as resignation letters go this is one for the ages.

Goodbye Philadelphia!

You are a great city, rich in history and a fantastic place to spend a week of work or vacation. But, alas, it's time to leave and ahead of me is a long drive. Takeoff in t minus 1:45.

Thoughs on 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001 is one of my favorite movies. What Kubrick managed to create, in terms of special effects, all the way back in 1968 was simply amazing. Watch the movie and think about the lack of CGI and how good the space scenes look when compared to Star Wars, a movie released almost a full decade later.

The production part where I wish I could have been a fly on the way was where the opera singers must have been gathered to record the "monolith scenes". I can just picture the singers being handed the music and thinking "are you serious? This is just fifteen pages of the letter 'e'." Must have been funny and I wish I could have seen that but having not yet been born it would have made logistics rather difficult.

it was about this time.. on a dark and stormy day

I think the year was 1993 and it was around this time of year. It was bitterly cold outside, that much I do remember, but then again I was a youngster back then and cold affected me in greater ways than it does today. I was working at then Glaxo, a pharmaceutical company, in RTP, North Carolina and I had just be introduced to a old-school operating system called UNIX.

Personal computers back then were running DOS with Windows 3.1 on top. It's hard to remember back in the day that the Microsoft GUI ran on top of a separate operating system, and no necessarily one made by Microsoft. IBM, DR and a host of other companies had their own versions of DOS and a computer could be running any kind of DOS. IBM had a little thing called OS/2 2.0 but in 1993 OS/2 was, shall we say, rough around the edges? It ran circles around DOS/Windows, that much was totally clear, but it lacked a bit of polish that would come later in OS/2 3.0 and later Warp. But that is future speak back in '93.

At a large company you might find some Macs in the marketing department, perhaps elsewhere. In the data center you might find a VAX, probably for the R&D side of the house. Perhaps an IBM mainframe was around too. But lurking back there was UNIX. Perhaps it was just a mail server or something else, or maybe you had some mid-range UNIX systems even big ones the size of, oh, I don't know, a full-sized Ford van? Sun Microsystems was a player back then and so was HP, IBM, Silicon Graphics, and many others that made their own versions of UNIX. UNIX was created at Bell Labs in 1969 and it gained a foothold that it has yet to lose today.

UNIX was strange and foreign to me. There was an odd grapihcal interface called "X Windows" and a command line interface that was at first quite baffeling (though in starting to poke around the command line I could clearly see the influce of UNIX on DOS as serveral, if not many, of the commands were the same, though the guts of the OS couldn't be more different).

Back to that cold, blustery day. I had an application on a UNIX machine that was located in the R&D campus and I was on the commerical campus. We were connected by, at the time, blistering fast 100 megabit FDDI rings and the computers were plugged into shared 10 meg hugs. Laughable today, but fairly state of the art back then.

So, here I was. I needed to launch an application on a machine located on a differnet campus and I had resolved myself to get out in the cold, walk over, sit down in front of the other UNIX machine, and do the work that needed doing.

Not so fast! In walks one of the more senior UNIX gurus and he says "just set your display varialbe and bring the GUI app up on your desktop." I thought that was the craziest thing I'd ever heard. Launch an app on a remote machine and use the app on my local machine? I logged in (telnet back in those days) issued my 'setenv DISPLAY=my.ipaddress.blah' and proceeded to launch the app. A few seconds later there it appeared on my machine as if magic.

Had this been a slight-of-hand magic trick it would have been one of the best I have ever seen. I wondered then why and how could an "old" operating system have functionality that copycat desktop operation systems couldn't dream of. The root/superuser account was a neat trick too - keeping the operating system delicate parts away from the user so the user (or in the future, a virus) couldn't do accidental damage was pretty neat too.

Even today, using a XP machine (I don't have a Vista machine and probably never will.. work will likely skip Vista and go straight to 7), I wonder why things are so.. "primitive". I love my Mac, my personal computing platform outside of work, and there is far greater amount of spit and polish on the Mac OS compared to Windows, and in some ways Linux and UNIX. Yes, there are features of Linux and UNIX that I think are lacking in OS X but OS X is one heck of a tightly integrated OS. It's easy to use and the power is still there in the background in you want to use it. If you don't that's ok too. You can still do things with a Mac you can't do with a PC running Windows. The reverse is true I'm sure but I can't think of an example.

Still, UNIX is one heck of an operating system. It can run on little systems and it can scale to run on very large systems. Wonderful stuff. I hope UNIX never dies even though eventually I think Linux is going to totally take over that market space. When that day comes I'll smile a bit, afterall any time a community driven effort of any kind can reach such measured success is wonderful. But good, old UNIX will always be just that. Good stuff.

Thoughts on the AT&T Microcell

(that's not Kelly's microcell, it's just a hotlinked picture)

At my old house in Youngsville the cellular phone coverage was less than stellar (seemingly for all cell phone providers). AT&T seemed to perform slightly better than Verizon in the back reaches of Franklin County but that wasn't saying much. Kelly recently purchased an iPhone 3Gs and she loves the phone but the coverage was lacking as it always had been. If you stood perfectly still in the master bedroom you could reliably connect a call but isn't mobility the point of having a cell phone?

Enter the AT&T Microcell. Essentially a microcell is a 3G cell "tower" made by Cisco intended to be installed in AT&T customer homes. The microcell connects to your existing Internet connection and when connected your AT&T phone talks to the microcell which routes the traffic from G3 to IP (over your Internet connection) and sends the call across the Internet to an AT&T facility where it is processed in much the same way that "normal" cell connection is processed.

So, how does it work? Turns out pretty darn well. Kelly called to let me know she had picked up a microcell from the AT&T store. When she got home she connected the microcell to an existing Linksys switch located directly downstream from the firewall (in this case a Soekris Net4501 running M0nowall if anyone cares). The device flashed a couple lights and that was about it initially. The installation document said the next phase of the installation would take about 10 minutes and if all went well the device would be ready to use in about 90 minutes.

90 minutes later Kelly called, she had full 5 bars of 3g connectivity and the voice quality was crystal clear. But this was next to the microcell itself so a high quality connection was expected. Kelly then wandered around the house, yard, into the street, in fact all the way to the back fence all the time with at least four bars of 3g connectivity except for one isolated incident when she dropped down to two bars and her voice broke up, but only momentarily. She later went back to the same spot with no negative effect on voice quality.

In short, the microcell rocks! But I have many questions and I'm going to do have to do some troubleshooting in order to find out, and I hope to do this next week. First and foremost what devices are on the back end of the conversation? Is the data between the microcell and the backend device encrypted? Does the microcell support IPv6? Does a persistent connection exist between the microcell and AT&T back end equipment? It seems there would have to be. Otherwise in a true "dead zone" how would an incoming call connect and the phone ring? The microcell is behind a firewall (of course) so it's not like the AT&T back end devices could reach out and initiate a connection therefore a persistent connection must exist. Right?

So far, from the single test, what I can say is the microcell rocks. Even though I have superior connectivity at my place in Durham I may end up purchasing one for myself just to tinker and toy with the device, see what makes it tick, etc. I'll keep you all posted.

Two weeks

It's been about two weeks since my last blog post, and that's a bit rare for me to let as much time go by between posts. In reality I've been quite annoyed over the last two weeks, especially annoyed over the last week. But there is a bit of good news, and we'll open with that.

The Good: my job has been retained at my employer and I have survived the latest round of job cuts. I haven't been doing much singing and dancing about this, especially at work and that's because this was a deep cut and a lot of really good people lost their jobs, and this includes several people I could call my friends. It's a difficult position to be in, really. I want to be excited but I feel so badly for them at the same time. Had I lost my job, well, that would have completed the Great Circle of Crap for 2009 with everything that's happened in my personal life (and it would have likely dictated that I would have had to leave the area in search of employment). But thankfully this has not come to pass and I'm going to start at the current company for the for as long as they'll keep me.

The Bad, or really, the annoying: One of the Philadelphia crew came down for a visit and I met him at a local pub one evening. For reasons that I can't yet figure out my credit card (actually my check/ATM card) was given to another patron who left with said card and did not return it. Luckily I only had to deal with that single erroneous charge but I had to cancel my card all the same. This left me with no access to an ATM and only a credit card to purchase anything with. This was very annoying. I now have my new check/ATM card but NOT my new PIN hence if I need any cash it's a trip to the bank, and forget about getting any cash on the weekends! It's like a trip back to the 80's I tell you. ATM access is something I just take for granted! My credit card has a PIN but I have no idea what it is, in fact I purposefully forgot what it is because it's just such a costly way to get cash. Back when I was married (well I'm still married, but I'm not living at home) I could just get Kelly to get some money from the joint account. No such luck these days! Anyway, I hate to gripe about something fairly minor but it really has been an inconvenience.

Next annoyance: lack of money. I had two unexpected rather large expenditures over the last couple of months and it really took a bite out of my cash reserves. I'm now in a spendthrift mode of living and hoping to make a fair chunk of change with some extra overtime, at least that's the goal. We'll see how well that works with the company currently complaining about the amount of OT money they are paying out. In fact one of the Philly managers told me that the extra work I'm doing above and beyond, at night on my own time should be comp "pay" not OT. And technically this work isn't OT at all. Basically how it works is if I work an extra two hours after normally working hours on projects that are not part of my job description I get a decent chunk of change. if I do that three times a week for a month it works out not to be equal to an extra paycheck but it's close, and it's a fantastic way to build the bank account back up. With that in mind, and the fact that I'm still not making what I was in 2001, I think it's a good deal for both me and the company. I'm a cost-effective employee to begin with and the work I'm doing won't get done otherwise as the other members in the group (some) have no interest or technically can't (a couple others).

*****

Ok, this just in. I should not let two weeks pass before my next blog post. I'll likely ramble on pointlessly as I have just done. Lesson to me, less pain for you.

give me land, lots of land

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in.

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies.
On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies
On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.
Ba boo ba ba boo.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.
No.
Poppa, don't you fence me in

Of Twitter and Tweets

If you are not on Twitter I think you should be. Why? It's fun. Follow some famous people you have heard of and read thoughts and opinions (generally) unfiltered by agents, publicists, and the like (though I'm sure quite a few "stars" have people tweet for them). But where else, where else I ask you, can you see a picture of Danny Devito with a piece of the Berlin Wall tied to his foot with an iPhone cable?

The Worst Internet Proxies

I know the location of the most poorly implemented Internet proxy servers in the known Universe. For fear of reprisal I can't say where they are located.

Time Warner and Me

Still a happy customer

VoIP the hard way

http://www.bullcityrising.com/2009/09/att-offers-durhamites-better-cellular-coverage-if-you-buy-your-own-little-cell-site.html

Yes, this is a high-speed Internet connected 3G to IP gateway. Why not on an iPhone just turn the phone into a VoIP phone that connects to an AT&T gateway device I do not know but this is a step forward to better 3G coverage on the fringes. Oh yes, I like it very much.

a VoIP question (ahem.. Mark?)

Ok, how many concurrent phone calls can "fit" in a full-duplex 100 megabit connection? For that matter how much bandwidth does a VoIP call require?

This is the scenario I'm picturing: an Asterisk server connected via 100 meg/fd to a T1 via Digium card of some kind. VoIP to analog server (as mentioned) connected to a 100 megabit LAN. Other Asterisk servers talk to the VoIP to analog gateway across the larger LAN/MAN (dedicated bandwidth, mostly across a fiber network with a good deal of bandwidth).

So, I'm thinking of the Asterisk/Digium server being what one could consider a VoIP/analog gateway of sorts much like a firewall or VPN concentrator would function as a IP input/output for a, well, IP network.

Hence.. how much bandwidth does one VoIP require to the voice gateway?

UPDATE..

Also, does it help to have a VoIP server that talks to the Asterisk gateway? Should the phones all talk to the gateway themselves? Can an IP only Asterisk server compress traffic to the gateway? Is that more efficient or less?

dealing with Cougars

I've been living the not-so-exciting life of a (nearly) 40 year old man for a bit now and I just read some bullet points from an article that I'd like to pass along. File these under "Dealing with Cougars".

Although cougars will normally avoid a confrontation, all cougars are unpredictable - good point. Granted I've not been single for very long but so far I'd have to agree.

Always give a cougar an avenue of escape. Nobody likes feeling trapped. This seems like common sense.

Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice. It sounds easy. But when you haven't dated in nearly 15 years, well, that 'confident swagger' doesn't immediately come back.

Pick all children up off the ground immediately. I remain forever mystified why people bring children to bars in the first place.

Do not turn your back on the cougar. Face the cougar and remain upright. Unless, of course, you are invited back to her place to get horizontal. I hear this does happen.

Do all you can to enlarge your image. I think this helps regardless of age bracket.

Oh, wait.. this article was not talking about the dating scene at all. Ok, move along, nothing to see here.

vacation plans 2010

Ok, I'm putting together some odd ideas.

First: Aokigahara Forest, Japan

If you've heard of this place you probably have because it is a noted destination for Japanese who wish to commit suicide the woods are reported to be haunted. Don't read to much into that. I want to go because once past the first mile or two it is supposed to be one of the more incredible places in the world, as far as scenery goes.

Things I don't know that I have to figure out:
a) how to get from Narita Airport to Aokigahara.
b) I'd like to find a place to stay close by where I could check in one day, head off into the woods, take a boat-load of pictures then check back in four days later. Yup, that's right I wan to camp in the woods for four nights and emerge back on the 5th day (then fly home on the 6th).
c) is camping even allowed in the forest? Are permits required? If so how do I get them?
d) is this as nutty as it sounds to me as I type this?

Plan B: This one is so ridiculous I best not even mention it yet. I'd probably chicken out in the first place.

Thoughts of 9/11

It was a Tuesday morning eight years ago today. I had arrived at work in Greensboro after my daily hour plus commute. At the time I was employed by Lucent Government Operations and I worked for the group that managed the Video Teleconference gear for the US Government, primarily the US Dept. of Defense.

I booted the PC, logged in and left to go to the drink machine in order to pick up a cold can of Coke as was my usual custom. Arriving back at my desk I brought up CNN to check the news and was shocked to read a "breaking news" headline that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I immediately checked the weather for the New York area and saw clear conditions. "A small plane", I told myself.

A minute later a picture was on the CNN front page. The damage to the building was enormous and it was clear a large plane had struck the WTC. The CNN front page had a typo calling the hole in the building a "gas" instead of a "gash". Funny the details that stick with you.

We all know how the story goes from here. A second plane struck the other tower and it was clear we were under attack. I watched the towers fall, the Pentagon on fire and heard many confusing stories about what was happening with Flight 93 which would later go down in Pennsylvania.

Cell phone and public phone systems crashed. Some people in the office thought some kind of cyberattack was underway against the phone system but we techies explained to them about oversubscription and this was a natural part of so many people trying to get on the phone at the same time.

As luck would have it we had some serious HAM radio operators, old school guys and they had a club in the company itself. In a small room near the back the techie group gathered as the old masters fired up the shortwave radios. This is where I was when the Pentagon was hit. One guy was operating the Morse code paddle while another transcribed what was being clicked across the airwaves so we non-HAMs could understand what was going on. Few facts and a lot of rumors, but it was still nice to hear the raw first-hand reports from various locations.

Work ended that day for me around 4. On the way home I pulled over to fill up my tank. Across from me a young black man pumped gas into his car. Both our heads hung low and he asked "how you doin?" "Not good" I responded. "Naw man, me either but we'll get through it" he said. "Yes, you're right, we will" I said and we both finished fill our tanks in silence. I gave the man a slight wave as I put the cap back on and drove home.

That was was spent with Kelly in front of the TV watching video of the towers collapsing over and over, the second plane striking the tower from a thousand angles and all the other terrible footage. Our Congress men and women walked out on the steps where a speech was read and a spontaneous rendition of God Bless America was sung.

The rest of the week was s a blur. I only remember the next morning I saw the first plane striking the tower. Reports came in about causalities, heavy losses of fire fighters and civilians. Kelly and I left town that weekend with the dog and tent and headed to the woods of Virginia. I just remember wanting to get away.

Now, eight years later, I'm still learning what happened that day. Today, for instance, I learned I had lost a co-worker from a former company in one of the towers. She left behind two children and a husband. No remains were ever located. Another employee from then Concord Communications was lost on one of the airplanes, someone I may well have met during one of my many trips to visit the company to test new releases.

As long as I live I will never forget that day and I assume that is the same for most people.

Latin

*WARNING*

There is really no point in the following gibberish. You can stop reading right now and not have missed a single thing. I just wanted to warn you.

As the saying goes "Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be. First it killed the Romans now it's killing me." I read an article a while back about dead, dying and endangered languages. At first thought I would have assumed Latin was in the list but it was not. I had forgotten about all the medical professionals that are required not to speak conversational Latin but know the words related to their profession. Fair enough.

But what about Latin amongst the general population? If any linguists read this post I'd be curious to know how sharp of a decline was there after the Roman Catholic Church ended Latin requirements in services. That was, I think, part of Vatican II in the early or mid 1960's. I could be totally embarrassing myself and probably am as I am talking about something of which I know almost nothing. I might have to check to see if any higher education institutions still require Latin as part of a religious degree in higher education. I wonder about that too.

Why? I don't know, beats me. Just something I was thinking about.

So what are the dying languages that I referenced in the first paragraph? There is a long list, at least globally. Vanuatu seems to be the most endangered, or at least in a tie, with only a single native speaker left alive. That can't bode well for that language. In American Yiddish has practically disappeared as a conversational language despite being a language spoken widely enough to have Yiddish Newspapers in print in major US cities at the turn of the last century.

What gets me on these wild tangents? That's probably the real question here. As far as I can tell with today's tangent I started to think about language and my odd ability to pick them up rather rapidly - at a cost. See I seem to only be able to squeeze English as my native tongue and one other language, spoken only functionally, never mastered, in my head at one time. For instance I picked up Korean well enough to awkwardly convey what I wanted to a native speaker in about eight weeks. Not bad. But in doing so I seemed to have pushed Spanish totally out of my brain. Sure, I can still say, in Spanish, "where is the bathroom?", "how much is this?", "check please.", "another round of drinks, please sir!" and basic things but I can't communicate any longer, not one bit. My Korean is slipping too as I don't have anyone to talk to that speaks the language (at least not until I joined the Korean Language Group on meetup.com, we'll see how well that goes).

Other languages I wanted to learn, but never have, are Dutch, I just like the sound of it, German and French. But it seems my brain could never let me know the them all, just one at a time. And how much fun is it to learn something just to forget it after starting a new language? Sheesh. Sounds like a waste of time to me as I now rarely travel outside the US and besides, I could probably make best use of Spanish anyway.

I'll shut up now.

I want to go home

I wanna go home, I want to go home,
Oh Lord, I wanna go home,

Last night I went to sleep in Detroit city,
And I dreamed about those cotton fields and home,
I dreamed about my mother,
dear old papa, sister and brother,
And I dreamed about that girl,
whose been waitin' for so long,

I wanna go home, I wanna go home,
Oh Lord, I wanna go home,

Home folks think I'm big in Detroit city,
From the letters that I write they think I'm fine,
But by day I make the cars,
by night I make the bars,
If only they could read between the lines,

I wanna go home, I wanna go home,
Oh Lord, I wanna go home,

I rode a freight train north to Detroit city,
After all these years I've been wasting my time,
I'll take my foolish pride,
on a southbound freight and ride,
Go on back to the ones,
The ones I've left waitin' so far behind,

I wanna go home, I wanna go home,
Oh Lord, I want to go home.

what to buy?

I have an opportunity to do some extra work and hence make some extra money. I can't really call the money "disposable" but I do need a new computer as the 1.5 Ghz mini just lacks necessary umph to get anything useful done in a reasonable amount of time.

So, my options are as follows:

1) use my existing 15" MBP as my desktop, connect said MBP to a monitor and pick up a used Macbook Air as my "floating around the casa, take on the road" laptop.
a) monitor in question: possibly a 24" Apple LED Cinema Display. Cost $899.00
b) monitor in question 2nd place: 30" Apple Display. Cost $1799.00 (OUCH!!!)
c) cost of used Macbook Air: somewhere in the $1000 - $1200 range
d) so, minimum, $1900, maximum (I hope), $3000.00
2) keep the MBP as my laptop and get a 24" iMac. Cost: $2168.00 (base with upgraded graphics and Applecare)

In addition the 24" LED monitor has an eyesight camera built-in and that's a nice feature while the 30" monitor does not. I was hoping that new 30" monitor with a reduced price and a built-in camera would have been mentioned at the latest Apple meeting, but no. A guy can hope, can't he?

Regardless of which path I select I'm going to have to work a LOT of extra hours on extra projects, but as I've stated prior, I now have the time.

IBM T42 vs Dell Latitude D630

As many of you have read I more or less despise my work-issued laptops mostly because I forced to run a horrendous excuse of an operating system, XP, while enjoying technology that can only be described as "more inspired" while at home (OS X and Linux (and BSD for the record)).

But what about the lesser machines? Can there be a "king of crap"? I think so. Here is what I like and dislike about my two work-issued laptops:

T-42: The Likes: IBM built a small LED light into the lid of the laptop that could illuminate the keyboard and other buttons at night. It sounds like a cheap excuse for a back-lit keyboard but it was somehow more than that. I just loved that little night light. I am on-call quite a bit for work and it was nice to leave that little light on and if I was called to do something there was my little T-42, sitting awaiting me in a warm glow of light on the table. It was a nice touch that was more than the sum of the parts. Very nice.

The T42 had built-in 802.11b/g which was nice. Draft N did not exist so I can't fault it there. 802.11a would have been nice to have, though. The optical drive was DVD+RW and that was acceptable as Blu-Ray was so new it was not expected to have been supported. The built-in screen was acceptable, but nothing to write home about in today's standards. The keyboard was beautiful, nearly as good as my MacBook Pro. It was clear someone put a lot of thought into that keyboard, how it felt, the placement of the keys and how the mouse worked. Kudos for that.

The bad? Not a lot. Even the battery was still going strong after nearly four years of daily use. All in all it was a great laptop. Even the monitor port could be used to extend the desktop (not just mirroring). Nice. The only thing missing was the nine pin serial cable.

The Dell: The good: Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the ability to install a lot of RAM (that XP can't use past 3.5 gigs so what's the difference?) The Dell also has a nine pin serial port which is more handy than you can imagine if you work with Cisco routers every single day. Oh, what's that? Just get a USB to serial converter? They don't always map key strokes correcltly and it's one more thing you can't forget. A nine pin serial cable comes with every Cisco product that needs one. If you work with Cisco gear as often as I do it's a huge plus.

The bad. The keyboard on this laptop sucks. The mouse is far worse. There is no back-lit keyboard or LED light. It's flimsy, and it feels cheap. Howso? Resting your palms on the case below the keyboard you can feel the plasic case "flex" and that just screams "cheap". Could be beacuse I so used to the nice, cool, metal case of my Mac. Probably is in fact. Heck, if I had never had a Mac I wouldn't know about better and could further debate the merits of Dell vs. Thinkpad. But that's all for naught. Why?

My Mac is a superior machine to both. I want to make a VMware image of my work laptop and put it on my Mac to use under virtualization and probably will very soon. I won't be able to use that machine at work but I could "deploy" the work laptop image anytime I liked when using the Mac. In fact I think I'll do that after this week (I'm oncall this week so it's best not to screw with the only interface you have to the corporate network while you are required to provide 24x7 support).

And that's that.

Installed my first Soekirs net5501-70 today

Ah, Soekris, how wonderful are your boards? So wonderful that even the non-technical peeps I know like them. They are stable, rock-solid. Paired with m0nowall or pfsense they make a fine gateway device. Today's install was displacing a Linksys router that kept locking up on a regular basis; the little linksys just couldn't handle the traffic. And that's not unexpected, really, not on a network with as much traffic as is thrown at the router.

I suggested these peeps install a Soekris box running m0n0wall quite some time ago but they were not convinced the problem was with the router itself. They were partially correct. Multiple problems existed and were corrected along the way but the little Linksys was a problem, a big one in fact, and it was finally displaced today after regularly locking up once every 24 hours requiring a hard reboot.

Meanwhile, on the other "sister" network across the hall, the other network was humming along quite nicely using an old Soekris net4501, a box no longer produced. Heck, we even had IPv6 on that side in addition to everything else. I suggested the client purchase a net4801 but they wanted something "bigger", "faster" and "more expandable" so they went with a net5501-70. A good box, really, and it runs the basic PC version of m0n0wall. The setup was easy, though you still need to do the initial setup via the serial port so keep that in mind as nine pin serial connectors on computers aren't exactly commonplace any longer. Oh and with the net5501 the default com port speed is 9600 baud, not 19200 like the documentation would have you believe, so FYI there (9600, 8, N, 1, Hardware).

Once I had the box properly flashed it booted right up and we were off to the race for configuration which was very easy as we only, currently anyway, had one WAN connection and one LAN connection (note: I tried to install a Kingston 1 gig CF card initially but the Soekris failed to recognize it and boot from the card so I flashed a PNY 128 meg cards and it worked fine). Later we'll add another two networks to the box but that's down the road a bit.

Funny tid-bit that may only interest me: the only other device to have objected to (specifically) the Kingston 1 gig CF card were all Cisco 6509 Supervisor II modules. Other cards, even larger 2 gig card from different manufacturers, worked fine. Kingston did something weird with the 1 gig "white flower" CF cards. Everything else from cameras to PCs seems to love them however. Go figure.

I like the net5501-70, quite a bit in fact. I'm going to order one of my own so I can play with Askozia (PBX) and pfsense a bit. Heck, we may as well go crazy and check out FreeNAS while I'm at it. I'm sure I'll be loading up pictures when the time comes so stay tuned.

I've hit the boredom phase for sure

Well I'm all over the "woe is me" crap about my impending divorce. Kelly and I talk frequently and we've resolved all that needs to be resolved, or that can be. Regardless I'm dealing with things and am finding living on my own to be.. boring.

To that point I've decided to become either a Blue Devil or a Spartan (UNC-G), depending on what degree I decide to pursue next. I've got to do the useful needful; obtain transcripts, apply, budget, etc, all the fun stuff that goes with going back to school. That should help eat up some of the sixteen hours a day (M-F) when I'm not supposed to be at my desk working and that's what I really after: something useful that will help burn my mountains of spare time I have on my hands, and maybe some of my vacation.

Speaking of vacation, this Friday I'm taking the third day off from work this year, in fact it was the last day I rolled over from last year thus leaving all my vacation from '09 to use before December 31st. I hate to sound pathetic but I don't have anywhere to go or anything to do and I tend to get a bit jumpy if left to my own vices for too long. Those that have gone through this might know what I'm talking about, or maybe not.

I'm just thankful the whole insomnia thing has passed. That said I don't think I need 11 hours of sleep *every* night but dreaming is one cure for boredom.

And now you all know why I want to get my amateur radio gear working inside my apartment (or at least one reason).

I need to get back on the air

OK, so I've established the following fact: my apartment building impedes 2 meter radio waves and I have no way to participate in any 2 meter nets from within my apartment. I cannot place an antenna on the roof. And finally, my 5 watt hand-held is not powerful enough to hit the 146.88 repeater from downtown Durham.

What are my options? Go portable 20 watt with a Yaesu FT-897D? That will set me back nearly $1000.00 for the radio alone without an antenna or battery packs.

Are there any other options? Again, placing an antenna on the roof of the building is not an option. I think I'm going to have to get outside the building in order to participate.

interesting tid-bit learned

Chimpanzees are human's closest relatives in terms of shared DNA. That is no surprise. What did surprise me is the *lack* of genetic diversity in humans. Any two humans, from the most remote Eskimo up North to the most remote Aboriginal Tribesman in Australia are most closely related than any two chimps from the same extended family group. That did surprise me.

A tale of two download speeds

1.5 Ghz Mac mini connected to Internet via 802.11 g. 1 gig of ram:



2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 802.11n via 5.8 Ghz. 4 GB ram.



This test was largely inconclusive. I thought, quite honestly, the delta between the G4 mini and the Intel MBP would be larger if for no other reason than the 2.4 Ghz range is very congested in the apartment complex and I am the only person "in the know" using 802.11n over 5.8 Ghz.

But that's not a complaint, it would be hard to do so with download speeds like this.

Thanks, Time Warner!

It has occured to me..

It has been far too long since my last IPv6 rant. I must now think of a topic not yet covered, research, test and write.

But.. what. What topic? Perhaps an IPv6 overlay on top of a IPv4 configuration for a Cisco router? That would at least be somewhat of a personal challenge. In addition I could then introduce the masses who may not yet be aware of the fantastic python-based Cisco simulation software known as Dynamips in all its FOSS goodness.

Happy Birthday!

Today's birthdays: Chicago (city of, 1833), IBM PC 5150 (1981), Sir Mix-a-Lot (1963), Pete Sampras (1971)... who did I miss?

Nobody.

When life seems full
Of clouds and rain
And I'm full
Of nothin' but pain
Who soothes my thumpin', bumpin' brain?
Nobody

When Wintertime comes
With its snow and sleet
And me with hunger
And cold feet
Who says "Here's two bits, go and eat"?
Nobody

Well, I ain't never done nothin' to nobody
I ain't never got nothin' from nobody, no time
And until I get something from somebody, sometime
I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time

When Summertime comes
All warm and clear
And my friends see me
Drawin' near
Who says "come on in and have a beer"?
Nobody

Well one time when things was
Lookin' bright
I started to whittlin' on a stick one night
Who said "Hey! That's dynamite!"?
Nobody

Mmmm, I ain't never done nothin' to nobody
I ain't never got nothin' from nobody, no time
And until I get something from somebody, sometime
I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time

I ain't never done nothin' to nobody
I ain't never got nothin' from nobody, no time
And until I get something from somebody, sometime
I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time

From Cary to Durham. By Amtrack?

Apparently such a thing is possible, perhaps even practical in some ways.

Streaming movies over the iPhone/iPod Touch?

"According to unnamed executives familiar with the situation, Netflix is preparing to bring its "Watch Instantly" streaming service to the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch via Wi-Fi."

Well this is an interesting development. I greatly prefer to watch my streaming content over the big-screen, HDTV but perhaps I could find a use for this. I certainly do enjoy my streamed movies via the Roku player!

Streaming over the Wii is interesting, even if limited to standard definition. I could see a practical use for this as not all streamed movies are capable of playing in HD in the first place.

Marwencol

I can't wait to see Marwencol. Ever since watching Ira Glass' portrait of the world of Mark Hogancamp I've wanted to know more about him and see more of his pictures. Looks like I'll be able to do just that, eventually (and I hope soon).

A bit of back story: Mark was jumped outside a bar one night by five men and left for dead. He recovered, albeit with some brain damage that makes him rather timid, yet he often fills with rage when amongst "outsiders". So now he lives in a remote area where he has built the village of Marwincol in near perfect 1/6 human proportions and he photographs his 1/6 soldiers fighting the SS in the Battle of Marwencol. Mark shows up as a character in the village as does his brother and ex-wife along with many others.

If, like me, you want to be notified when this movie will be played send an e-mail to info@marwencol.com.

Millennium

I just restarted watching this show again and it's pretty darn good. Nice and dark. Solid writing, excellent acting. Good stuff all the way around.

my mac mini is showing it's age

Assuming we get a bonus early next year I think a portion of that is going to go towards a new Mac. My 1.5 Ghz G4 Mac Mini is really showing it's age. It's still a nice machine, don't get me wrong, but the lack of IO is really a limiting factor when doing anything fun (read Final Cut and Photoshop). In addition it does not support 802.11n which is nice to have as the machine is in a room without access to wired Ethernet.

When the time goes to upgrade, and I'm stuck between wants of a 24" iMac and a Mac Pro, I'll probably turn this machine into a Linux machine without any graphical interface and I'll then replace the Pentium III machine at work with the mini. I'd like to sneak it into the data center and plug it directly into the server farm switches but I'm not going to be that bold (or stupid). Or maybe I'll leave OS X on the box and migrate all my perl/expect scripts to OS X (which really isn't much of a 'migration' in the first place).

For some reason I'm still leaning towards Linux though. Perpahs it's time to investigate and see what's out there. Last time I loaded Linux on a PowerPC mac I used Yellow Dog with great success. Perhaps I'll go that route again.

A song about insomnia.

I was going to write a song about insomnia last night around 3 am but then I remembered that one has already been written and performed by The Beatles on The White Album. There's no way I could top that so here it is, I'm So Tired by The Beatles:

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.

I'm so tired I don't know what to do
I'm so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git.

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
(mumbling)

Final Cut: I really don't know what I'm doing

I decided to arrange some of my video clips into a short movie complete with voice over narraition last night on the Mac. I did not get very far at all. Turns our Final Cut is not what I'd describe as "intuitive" out of the box if you've never used it before. So I'll be watching a few training clips as time allows.

By the way, anyone know someone who teaches piano lessons?

shot some good video last night

Last night I got a touch bored so I headed out into Durham with the Canon Rebel T1i and the tripod. I got some good video clips around Durham but not of anything terribly exciting. The purpose was to shoot some background shots and to master zoom and focus when shooting video (on the Rebel video is shot quite differently from photos and it's quite easy to shoot a blurry few seconds of video by accident).

Next up - load some of the video into Final Cut Express and learn the art of editing.

My how time flies!

Is it April 1st already? I would have though so reading this article. I LOL'ed.

Let's hear it for a PC I do like

My good, old, reliable Linux box running CentOS. It's a Pentium III running at a blazing 731.217 Mhz. Got to love it. Oh, and for those interested: 1462.71 bogomips. Not what you'd call a hot rod but so very functional. It serves as my backup platform for Packeteer devices and is my machine for all things perl/expect which is, to say, a lot. I just started a project to upgrade an insane amount of routers all requiring TFTP transfer and while other team members were scrambling around trying to set up a TFTP server on a Windows server I quietly and easily enabled the TFTP server on my Linux box and was up and running in five easy minutes. The best part? The Linux TFTP server far outclasses the hacked-up, added on, hardly functional Windows TFTP server and it handles more concurrent sessions despite running on hardware several generations older.

So, yes. I love my Linux box. The box was manufactured way back in the day as a Windows machine by Dell. See? I haven't always not liked Dell (I just despise my possessed Latitude D630).

I really do despise my PC

It's the 'mystery mouse clicks' that drive me over the edge. I'll just be using the built-in stick mouse (that I don't like) no navigate around (trackpad disabled.. or is it?) when, all of the sudden and without my intent and I believe input, windows will be selected, things will be dragged.. you name it. It's just like the POS decides to start selecting things just to aggravate the hell out of me. And it does, quite often.

Is it any wonder I go running for my Mac at 5 pm? No.

Newsflash......

.....Greg has taken his medication and is feeling much better. You may emerge from your hiding places under your desk.

/and no, he still does not like his computer very much.

I F-ing hate my F-ing PC

My PC (a Dell some-kind-of-horrible-pile-of-crap laptop) is my main interface to work. It is my portal to all things that I need to fulfill my job requirements and it is also the main impediment keeping me from doing so many days!!!! IT'S SO ANNOYING I WANT TO SHOUT!!

Need to undock and go to a conference room? Ok, but you're taking a lot of chances. Want to re-dock? Oh, that's a near guaranteed seizure waiting to happen. The 3.5 gig RAM limit in XP? Oh, heck, nobody needs more than 640k anyway. (and don't mention Vista as a solution here - Vista regularly craps itself with less than 4 gigs of RAM because it's bloated to the point it's little more than a dead animal with built-up gas inside.. go a head and poke around in there.. you'll puke.)

I swear this to be ture before God and all humanity: the day that Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and hired Tim Patterson is the day I can clearly define as the beginning of a long and horrible saga of making computers less useful than they could be.

Want to know why computers can't do crap? Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, they make a fine suite of office software, clearly the leader in the field when you really examine applications side-by-side with their competition. But operating systems? They have NEVER made a decent OS. The best chance they had one making a good one was OS/2. Microsoft knew it was superior and it would not allow them to monopolize the PC market so they stopped development and released the absolte crapfest that began with Windows 3.0 and went to ME.

NT? Don't get me started. Ripping the multitasking guts of VAX MVS does not a great operating system make. XP? Crap. Vista? Worse. WHY IN GOD'S HOLY NAME DO WE STILL HAVE A REGISTRY?!?!? WHY?

People. You have options. Better options. OS X and Ubumtu alone make more sense than this. Have 'mission critical applications' that only run on M$? Start searching for a solution now.

Garbage OSes loaded onto cheap-ass computers is not a wonderful solution.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SETTLE FOR THIS!

Good times

I've been having a hell of a lot of fun with my new camera and now that I've got my UV filter, tripod and remote I can now try some longer exposure night shots. I live in practically a perfect place for that kind of thing with a man-made river complete with small waterfalls running through the middle of the complex but there is a problem.

Apparently management does not really care for people taking pictures. Really. The security folks (nice people, by the way) stopped me last night and told me I had to have a special contractor's badge if I wanted to take pictures and they are dispensed on a by-project basis and only for short times.

Well I think that stinks to high heavens though I can understand the policy. They don't want someone coming in and doing a MAXIM shoot on the grass in front of the Lucky Strike tower. Ok, I get that. At the same time I think there should be a permission for a wanna-be photographer to snap some pics.

I could, on one hand, get in and ask for permission. But I'd likely be denied by policy. Then I could not longer (lie lie lie) claim ignorance. On the other hand I could just keep taking pictures.. that is until a security guard warns me who has warned me in the past. So I'm not exactly sure what to do.

I'll probably have to venture out beyond the comfort of American Tobacco and go out into Durham proper.

I can't believe

I can't believe it's already the second week of July.

ouch

I'm bleeding.

Rest in Peace, Darius Xavier Poteat

This is Darius Xavier Poteat. I didn't know Darius that well, not past a "hey, what's up?" or a wave hello. He always seemed quick with a smile and seemed to have an immediate and positive effect on those around him. Yet, inside, it appears Darius was a troubled man. Darius ended his life yesterday and I'm sad that I didn't get to know him better and now I'll not have the chance to do so.

Darius, you will be missed, by your family, the people you worked with as well as people who didn't even know you that well. People like me. I wish I could have done something for you.

Goodbye, Darius. Godspeed.

Cool Star Wars ads

These are my two favorites of the bunch:

Of variables and default placeholders

Netflix might need to update a script:

"Dear Greg,

You recently watched the Streamed Movie. To help us ensure a great experience for all members, would you take a moment to tell us about the picture and audio quality?"

I've watched a lot of streamed Netflix movies but never one titled "the Streamed Movie". I got a chuckle out of the e-mail though.

Close To Me - The Cure

I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish I’d stayed
asleep today

I never thought this day would end
I never thought tonight could ever be
this close to me

just try to see in the dark
just try to make it work
to feel the fear before you're here
make the shapes come much too close
I pull my eyes out
hold my breath
and wait until I shake...

but if I had your faith
then I could make it safe and clean
if only I was sure
that my head on the door was a dream

I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish I’d stayed asleep today
I never thought this day would end
I never thought tonight could ever be
this close to me

but if I had your face
then I could make it safe and clean
if only I was sure that my head on the door was a dream too

RIP Michael Jackson

I didn't write this yesterday because I did not feel like writing 'R.I.P.' again and, personally, I wonder to what degree MJ was actually guilty of child molestation. He was found not guilty by a jury of his peers and I still have a bit of faith in the system, even in the "post O.J." chapter of jurisprudence. Besides, as a mortal human being it matters not what I think. I know what my beliefs are regarding what happens after death but I wonder what MJ thought. Did he worry about his treatment in the hereafter? Oh he knows.

Well, MJ, you were a force on the pop scene, that much is undeniable. Dying at the age of 50 can only be described as "untimely".

I said this yesterday and I'll say it again: NO MORE DYING! NOBODY!

RIP Farrah Fawcett

Jeez.. no more dying. Nobody. For no reason. No here. Not in Iran. Nowhere. I'm tired of writing 'R.I.P.'.

RIP, Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, the physician who discovered symptoms of breast cancer in herself while trapped wintering over at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has died of cancer at the age of 57. Her book* is a good read and I do recommend anyone with an interest in South Pole history grab a copy.

Rest east, Dr. Jerri. You were a trooper and will be missed by many.

* Apparently I first linked to a children's version of her book which can be found here. Original link updated to point to the original version of the book.

Kodachrome. Goodnight, old friend

This year marks the last that the 74 year old stand-by Kodachrome will be produced. Goodbye, old friend!

Coca-Cola

If it were not for Coca-Cola I would have probably lost another 10-15 pounds from my rapidly thinning frame. Still, the weight loss is a good thing and I've needed it for a few years now. Oddly enough I don't know exactly how much weight I've lost.. I just go by clothes and belt sizes (down 3 sizes.. or is it four). Anyway.. I'll soon know because June the 29th I plan to rejoin the YMCA of Durham and start a regular workouts once again.

movin' on out.. (sung to The Jeffersons theme)

Today I signed off ownership of the house in Youngsville and the condo in Rodanthe to Kelly (officially) so she can refinance both in her name only. One more step towards "The Big D" down. The good news is I will then (after refinance next week) be able to purchase a house of my own (likely in Durham, but I'm keeping my options open). Plus I have another ten months on my apartment lease so I have a while to find a new home.

San Francisco? Seattle? Vancouver? Fairbanks?

I'm thinking of getting out of town July 4th. I think San Francisco is the current front-runner. I'd like to take a camera and just walk a few key areas of the city to take some snaps. I should have my new DSLR camera by then (I hope) if I'm able to make enough money on-call to cover the rather high cost.

The old cameras are no longer cutting it. My old Sony (a great camera back in the day) has a failing CCD sensor and the other cameras just don't take very good pictures. Having access to raw image files is, admittedly, an attractive option.

Flights on Southwest to San Francisco are surprisingly affordable. Why not? I'd love to get a picture of Alcatraz from the Golden Gate, the single photo that eluded me on my last trip to San Francisco in 1992.

What happened?

What happened to the 1/2 tower computer case? I'm looking to build a new server to replace my Gizmo linux server at $WORK and all I'm finding are humongous tower cases and tiny itty-bitty shuttle type cases and not much in between.

good lawd..

31.51 meg down, 768k up (hell, that's hardly enough upload to handle the 'acks' on the download side, but whatever, it's better than 5 down, 768k up!).

Well that sucks

Going though a divorce is no fun. Leaving home and setting up a new one, alone and in a new place, is expensive in both financial and emotional terms. Today I looked at my carpets and said to myself "wow, Greg, I you really need a decent vacuum that actually pulls something up from the carpet" and with that I decided to purchase a Dyson.

I love Dyson vacuums. Sturdily built and incredible to behold (as much as a vacuum can be) they are the proof rock against which all other dry carpet cleaning devices must be judged. Roomba you say? Ok, that's more cool technically but I've never seen anything pull grime out of a carpet like a Dyson can.

During shopping I settled on a newish, somewhat small DC24 "ball" vacuum. So far I'm not impressed with this unit. First two things were broken out-of-the-box. Most damning of the two was the brushes, which have no decipherable height adjustment mechanism, did not work out of the box. I might have been able to overlook this in a house with all pergo or hardwoods but, no, with carpets everywhere except the kitchen and bathroom I kind of need that function.

So back into the box the vacuum went but when I got back to Super Target it was closed!

I swear, some days this whole thing I'm going through feels like a god-d#!$ conspiracy. I know it's not but it feels like it. My two meter ham radio does not work. I can't reception on my ham HT. I damn near crippled myself carrying a heavy load up a flight of the most oddly sized steps I've encountered in some time. I move within walking distance of my office and I hear my office is someday moving. When? Beats me.

But the I have to remember how truly bad a lot of people really have it. Comparatively my life is a cakewalk and I would do well by myself to remember that fact. Nobody likes a whiner. Winner yes. Whiner no. With that I'll shut up.

Sunday Afternoon - The Kinks

The tax mans taken all my dough,
And left me in my stately home,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
And I cant sail my yacht,
Hes taken everything Ive got,
All Ive gots this sunny afternoon.

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.
I got a big fat mama trying to break me.
And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

My girlfriends run off with my car,
And gone back to her ma and pa,
Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty.
Now Im sitting here,
Sipping at my ice cold beer,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.

Help me, help me, help me sail away,
Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay.
cause I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

Ah, save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.
I got a big fat mama trying to break me.
And I love to live so pleasantly,
Live this life of luxury,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
In the summertime
In the summertime
In the summertime

Things to do

1) get dynamips configured and working properly on my MBP. I need to get studying and completing labs for the CCIE next year.

2) investigate if I really want that 24" LED monitor made specifically for the Mac laptops. I'm operating my 15" MBP in lid-closed mode using a 19" Dell plasma. It works well enough but for labs where I have to have half a dozen Cisco images booted and running the extra real estate would be a welcomed advantage. I'm also considering the 30" Apple monitor but I don't think the MBP can push the 30" to high resolutions.

3) Figure out what in the world is wrong with my 2 meter radio. I can't send or recieve a signal for poo in this place. I refuse to believe I've moved to a giant faraday cage in Durham. There's got to be something wrong with the power supply, radio or antenna.

4) Fix my Apple TV, perhaps upgrade the HD for a solid state drive. I'm bummed I can't stream my music and watch all my movies as I am accostomed.

5) Send Time Warner a thank you letter (see following graphic). As always the upload speed could be better but I can't agrue with the download speed. No sir, I sure can't do that (and the time is way off on the graphic - I was not surfing at 3:22 AM though it could have been that time somewhere around the globe).

Haven't been writing

First and foremost I'm interested to learn Apple may (*MAY*) be brining a data center to the area, or somewhere in North Carolina. Personally I hope they host their IPv6 apps from here but that's just me, and probably only me. Regardless I'm sure the data center will be managed by Apple employees and day-to-day operations and what-not outsourced to ACS or someone else. Johnson Controls will probably manage the building and grounds. Still it is interesting and it would be nice to see Apple's footprint increase beyond the local Apple Stores, remote sales staff, etc.

I haven't been writing much, mostly because I haven't felt like it. This whole thing has been a larger kick in the gut than I anticipated. In short, it sucks. From what I understand it gets better with time and that's welcome news, let me tell you! I don't want to be so down, after all, it could be sooooooo much worse.

My main focus now is to make sure my employer knows my value. If I were to lose my job right now? Oh dear, that would not be good at all. So I'm working a lot and that helps to keep my mind occupied plus I'm volunteering for extra projects outside of my normal area of expertise. This forces me to learn something new and meet new people in the process, both pluses.

I'm finding Durham to be a fine little town through this adventure in fact a great little place to live and work. Years ago I was afraid of Durham and that is just so unnecessary. Sure, the city has some problems but not many. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. My area of town is spot-on wonderful. I have not yet made as much use of the new Durham Bulls stadium as I would have thought but these lonely, boring weekends will be much less so I hope, partly due to the fact that I intend to attend and *follow* the Bulls. Heck, they are right next door, I feel getting to know them should be as natural as getting to know any new neighbor.

With that I think I'll try to set up my HAM radio once again. So far I've not received *ONE SIGNAL TRANSMISSION* in my apartment building. Could I be living in a giant faraday cage? Time will tell (and I hope not). I'm going to see if I can get on ARES/RACES net tonight at night. But first, to reorganize the desk!

Please, a moment of silence

It appears my Apple TV passed away sometime last night or today. The Apple TV worked tirelessly traveling thousands of miles between Youngsville and Rodanthe for several years. Perhaps a future stuck in Durham for the next year or more was too much for the old man to take and he simply gave up the digital ghost.

I can't say this was good timing, though, as I'll probably not be able to get another Apple TV for some time to come. I have many, many DVDs encoded for Apple TV that formerly resided on said appliance and I don't think they will play full-screen on a television attached mini hence I'm kind of at a crossroads.. do I go with the TV attached mini or an Apple TV. The Apple TV had a couple of cool features such as being able to use the unit as a remote speaker set for iTunes computers on the same LAN. It doesn't sound like much and you can do the same with a set of speakers and an Apple Airport Express but that's just one more thing on top of all the other things to find a home for.

Not that it matters, it will be a couple months before I get adjusted well enough to my new financial situtation to feel comfortable dropping hundredes of dollars on any new gizmo. Still, I've had the feeling for a long time that Apple was going to let this one die on the vine much like the Apple Hi-Fi that I loved so much.

If I could fix the Apple TV I probably would. I had been thinking the disk was going to die as the movies played "stuttered" quite a bit but now it won't even power up. That's obviously bad, especially with a unit that has an internal power brick. If put plug the unit in it won't boot and the power light on the front will not illuminate. So I think it's good and dead. Surgery coming soon (this weekend?) will confirm the status.

Goodnight, Apple TV. We had some great times together.

Got to get back on the airwaves

It's been far too long since I've been on the HAM radio airwaves. In fact I think I'll remedy that tonight. I need to drop by the office and pick up a metal file cabinet so I can properly use my 1/4 wave mag mount antenna - no more pizza pan for me! If anyone seems me I'm taking the cart back I borrowed for the move. Yeah, that's the ticket.

And, NO, I'm not STEALING the file cabinet. I need to purchase two of my own and just haven't gotten around to it. I have two in my modest sized cube, totally empty at that. I can simple use these two until I purchase my inexpensive metal file cabinet replacements (very soon). I'd have to be a total idiot to risk my job over a file cabinet!!

But I am borrowing them. That much I am doing. I'm just sayin' is all.

A lot of stuff needed

Mark Turner was timely to write about ZipCar this week as I have been thinking about signing up for this very service. Today I woke up early and drove the Suburban back to Kelly's house where it will reside henceforth. So, as of today I don't own a car. My home and work are separated by, perhaps, 100 yards at best. Do I really *need* a car? Not really, I mean probably 50 yards at a 90 degree angle from my beeline to the office from home sits the new Durham transit terminal. But.... the bus? Me?

What if I need to, say, go see my physician in Cary? It's hard to get a bus ride there. Still even a cab there and back would be less expensive than making payments on a car I don't use. There is a larger problem at work I'm afraid and that is the just about perfect for me ZipCar service does not extend into Durham. Chapel Hill, yes. Durham, no. The service may be coming to Duke University but we just don't know yet.

So for the next few months I'm paying for and insuraing a friend's 2004 Jeep TJ. She's not using is so why not? In fact she says it would help not having the payment for a while. That's good enough logic for me.

But what about after that? What then? The reason I'm waffling on purchasing a new ride is my boss made the statement flat-out that I can work from any facility where our company has a footprint - including any global office. That's when the light went off in my head.

I could, if I could figure out how to pull it off.. go totally without a permaent address starting the spring of next year when my one year commitment/lease is up. The less payments I have the more I could afford to live (cheaply) on the road. Could it be possible? If I were going to do the global explorer role I'd want to do it right - leave the country and stay out for as long as possible. There are seveal "main" offices that I could visit and stay for a long time, perhaps even a month. The first places I'd want to visit would be the corporate UK HQ in London followed by Poznan, Poland and Malaysia where our "tech centers" are located.

After that anything is possible - Russia, Italy, Czech Republic, Japan and of couse South Korea. Hell we have offices where the Peace Corps dare not tread. I woudn't put myself in harms way intentionally but, yeah, why not Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Isreal, South Africa and other assorted locations?

Travelling about Europe would be easy enough but these other places, I'm not sure about them. But I'm getting well ahead of myself. First and foremost I have to get through this year and save money so I could, if I were able, undertake this oddyssey. I'd be sure to take LOTS of pictures.

I may be staring at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I think it would be doing myself a disservice were I to not at least consider something as insane as this.

got me a brand new key

Two actually, one for my apartment mailbox (looks much like a P.O. Box) and one for my dead bolt of my front door. I'd be moving some stuff into the new place but my carpets are being cleaned at the moment. Tomorrow is the day of the "big move" anyway at a time to be name later, between noon and six. Saturday night and Sunday I'll spend putting beds and tables together and what-not.

Monday it's back to work for the shortest commute I've ever had in my life (100 yards? tops, if that) and back to the apartment to meet the Time Warner guy for television and Internet install. After that it's off to the Apple Store for a new Time Capsule (I'd use my Mac mini with a USB drive except my mini is old and has USB 1.0 only, even if I had a large enough firewire 400 drive can you imagine a restore? Oh, you say, firewire is 400 meg, but the Ethernet connection through which I'll be backing up and restoring is a 100 meg bottleneck. Restores take long enough as they are, no need to increase the time. I'll just "blow" the extra $500 on a 1 TB Time Capsule and be done with it.)

Anyway, I digress. Today I briefly entertained the idea of going back to Kelly's house and taking the futon with me so I could have a place to sleep and therefore spend the night in my new place but I decided against it. I have to go back there tomorrow and I hate saying goodbye to my dogs. For those that don't understand what it's like to really share you life with a dog laugh all you want and call me stupid or insane. But for those that know there are times in life the when only thing you can depend on is your dog, well, imagine having to leave them behind at the same time knowing you're doing the right thing. It is not easy, nor is it any fun.

World's Greatest Dog Ricki-Beep



World's Greatest Dog Mister Boo



Yes, they are co-holders of the title.

Got it

All the possible answers are multiples of 9 and on the square on the second phase all the multiples of nine have the same answer.

10	1	0	9
11	1	1	9
12	1	2	9
13	1	3	9
14	1	4	9
15	1	5	9
16	1	6	9
17	1	7	9
18	1	8	9
19	1	9	9
20	2	0	18
21	2	1	18
22	2	2	18
23	2	3	18
24	2	4	18
25	2	5	18
26	2	6	18
27	2	7	18
28	2	8	18
29	2	9	18
30	3	0	27
31	3	1	27
32	3	2	27
33	3	3	27
34	3	4	27
35	3	5	27
36	3	6	27
37	3	7	27
38	3	8	27
39	3	9	27
40	4	0	36
41	4	1	36
42	4	2	36
43	4	3	36
44	4	4	36
45	4	5	36
46	4	6	36
47	4	7	36
48	4	8	36
49	4	9	36
50	5	0	45
51	5	1	45
52	5	2	45
53	5	3	45
54	5	4	45
55	5	5	45
56	5	6	45
57	5	7	45
58	5	8	45
59	5	9	45
60	6	0	54
61	6	1	54
62	6	2	54
63	6	3	54
64	6	4	54
65	6	5	54
66	6	6	54
67	6	7	54
68	6	8	54
69	6	9	54
70	7	0	63
71	7	1	63
72	7	2	63
73	7	3	63
74	7	4	63
75	7	5	63
76	7	6	63
77	7	7	63
78	7	8	63
79	7	9	63
80	8	0	72
81	8	1	72
82	8	2	72
83	8	3	72
84	8	4	72
85	8	5	72
86	8	6	72
87	8	7	72
88	8	8	72
89	8	9	72
90	9	0	81
91	9	1	81
92	9	2	81
93	9	3	81
94	9	4	81
95	9	5	81
96	9	6	81
97	9	7	81
98	9	8	81
99	9	9	81

Math parlor tricks

Ok, I realize there is a simple algorithm going on behind this but I can't figure it out. My brain is mush right now and I'm sure that's at least 1/2 the problem. But still, this is annoying. Give it a try.

Hi! I'm your power company, would you like Internet?

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Why when I call the power company for new service do they feel compelled to send me to a "trusted 3rd party" for (in a super-chipper voice) "Internet, phone and television service at your fingertips".

No, thank you. I can call the Internet service provider of my choice for Internet service and I'll take care of something to display pictures of my TV when I purchase one.

I call the power company to provide electricity to my apartment, not telephone and everything else. Now if you provided some kind of on-call sushi delivery that would be one thing, if I were not already in walking distance of some of the best sushi in Durham (and I even have a pool of restaurants from which to select).

Now I can't wait to call the cable company so I can be offered a jar of fresh lamb's blood, Matzo and a bottle of Manischewitz for my next Passover dinner. News to cable company: nice thought, but I'm not Jewish. Not that there's anything wrong with that.. ;)

New home, take two

Before my new apartment building was a home it was a tobacco factory dating back to the mid 1800s. As you may imagine it hasn't always looked the same over that period of time but this abomination must be considered the absolute low point. Nasty! It should be noted that "my" section of the building can be seen peeking up behind the metal nastiness (behind the billboard). That's my section but I'm on the 2nd floor so you can't see any of windows or anything.

Endangered Durham has a great, well researched article on The Bull Building as well as the American Tobacco complex. Give it a read, if you're into that sort of thing.

Saladelia Cafe

* feel free to stop reading this post right now

Since I've been staying with Richard and Caroline I've been eating out a lot, eating a little bit of food, mind you, large meals and I still are not appetizing in the least (and I've lost a belt size, in fact I've been told the 'divorce diet' is an effective one). That aside the lobby of my building has a small version of Saladelia Cafe and I have to say, I'm glad it's there.

The food is quite tasty, made from fresh ingredients, quite a few grown locally. In addition to many salads, sandwiches and other offerings covering the vegetarian, vegan and meat crowds, they also have small sides. Earlier in the week they sold a fantastic small-dose spicy bowtie pasta. Wow, that was good stuff. Really excellent. Assuming they sensed my growing addiction they pulled that from sale. Why? Beats me. Maybe it's a Monday and Tuesday thing only. Today I tried something new - tabbouleh.

I've seen tabbouleh for sale before, Neomande comes to mind in fact, but I've never tried it (though I think that has more to do with the fact that Neomande's hummus is so freaking good I can't bring myself to try another side item).

Anyway, Saladelia's version of tabbouleh turns out to be vegan made from fresh tomato, cucumber, red onions, parsley, bulgar (?), olive oil and lemon juice. I added a dash of salt and pepper before tasting because, well, I was kind of afraid of it.

WRONG! THIS STUFF IS FREAKING AWESOME!

Had I known vegetarian and vegan stuff actually tasted good I might have explored my options a bit more. Will I now? You bet. Don't get me wrong, while I lived in Korea my meat-to-vegetable ratio was reversed from what it is here in the states (Korean food is very good, by the way).

Anyway, I'm rambling on at this point.

This weekend is going to be odd. Normally on Friday I'm either getting white line fever to hit the highway with the wife and dogs in a mad dash to the NC coast where we'd have a happy weekend in our cozy condo. Well the condo and the dogs are all Kelly's now as is the car we drove there. So.. that's out. Yardwork? I no longer have a yard. Tonight the void will be filled by Richard and Caroline both getting new iPhones. I'll give them a full home training session. That will be cool. Saturday we have a massive data center power-down for electrical maintenance. That will keep me busy for sure. Sunday I have to go to Kelly's house to identify what out of the garage we will sell and further identify who gets what.

* I'll keep you all posted if only for the fact that writing about this helps keep me sane.

My New Home.

If you know where to look (I think) you can see my new apartment in this vintage picture.

Actually I'm fairly positive. I'll have to download the photo, edit with a red box and re-post tomorrow.

As early as next week this could be home-sweet-new-home for a year. After the divorce is granted (exact date to be known later) I'll consider moving to a new place, and after a year these guys will let me go month-to-month. So around the four month prior mark I'll really start to give some consideration to where I'd like to purchase a house.

I'm going to keep myself busy through a number of legal and technical means. I'm going to go after a couple big-time certifications and see how far I can push that envelope. I've got to shore up the resume and certainly one way of doing that getting a couple recognized and respected certifications.

Just like Burgess Meredith in that famous Twilight Zone episode there is Time Enough At Last. And I don't wear glasses.

I also look forward to meeting many of you again in person. It's been far too long since I've seen more than a few of you. And being as I'll be in stumbling steps to Tyler's Taproom in Durham, the Durham Performing Arts Center and The Durham Bulls Stadium (not to mention 1000 things in the revitalized Durham downtown) perhaps I can persude a few of you into check some of the sights out.

If not I'll drive to Raleigh or Chapel Hill or whatever. Oh, and with luck you'll be seeing me at many more future TriLUG meetings. It's been FAR too long since I've attended one of those.

I don't know if it was agreeing to the wording of the separation agreement or knowing, with a fair degree of certainty what my future address will be, but a weight feels like it's been lifted today.

Yes, plenty of sadness and regret remain but it's time to push on through. Realizing and accepting this train is fully derailed and will remain so will was a big turning corner too.

Thank you all for you kind words, e-mails and support. This is a great little community we have.

Greg



(for no reason other than it epitomizes my last couple of weeks.. and I mentioned 'train derailment' once)