Diary of a Network Geek

No, really, go ahead and try.

It's not quite as easy as science-fiction would have you believe.  Honest.  Don't believe me?  Then head over to Extreme Planet Makeover and try for yourself.
The folks at NASA have brought us a pretty challenging, little game; make a planet habitable.
On the surface, that seems fairly straight-forward, but that's only because we over-simplify just how miraculous it is that this happened on our own planet.  There's actually a pretty narrow margin by which life becomes possible and taking an existing planet and forcing it into that margin is way, way harder than fans of science-fiction, like me, generally want to believe it is.
Go ahead and try the game yourself.  I think you'll find it an eye-opening experience.

We live on a paradoxically robust and delicate world.
This place has existed for millions of years and "modern" humans have existed for just a few hundred thousand years.  This magnificent ball of dirt and rock has seen more kinds of life come and go than we can even imagine.  We tend to think of ourselves and the world as it is right now as "life", but I firmly believe that life, in some form, will continue on even if we do the unthinkable and foul our own dwelling place to the point that we, as a species, can no longer inhabit it.  The Earth will continue and, I think, life in some form will, as well.
Though, we may no longer be here to see it.

Well, in any case, take a minute and go play the "game" at their site.  You may be surprised at just how big a miracle life on Earth is!  Besides, it's Friday, so what else are you going to do?

This may cost me readers.

But, honestly, I think that's okay.
I've never been shy about criticizing aspects of internationalism that I don't like, like off-shoring call-center jobs.  But, on the other hand, I'm also not shy about reminding people that extremists give us a skewed view of a larger population.  I know there are people in the United States right now that think every Arab or Muslim is bad.  I disagree.  I think those people who claim to believe that they are all evil are simply ignorant of the rich and diverse culture that exists outside of their own small neighborhood.  I hope before those of my readers that may think that there is no such thing as a good Arab, or Muslim, follows the link I'm about to share and reads a little of what they find there before writing me off.

Some time ago, through various other blogs, I came across a link to Apex magazine's 18th on-line issue.  The Arab/Muslim Issue.
I have to admit, I was intrigued.  For one thing, I don't think I've read any recent fiction by anyone from that culture.  For another, Apex specializes in fantasy and science-fiction.
This is some brilliant work.
Go read "The Green Book" by Amal El-Mohtar, a story about a book possessed of a spirit that corrupts her reader.
Or, try “50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire” by Pamela K. Taylor about a Muslim vampire trying to follow the Law of the Koran and stay pure.
Or, my favorite, “The Faithful Soldier, Prompted” by Saladin Ahmed about a soldier who's combat implants talk to him with the voice of God Himself, perhaps.
There are more, but these three stories were masterful looks at a culture most of us don't see.  They see myths reinterpreted in ways we may not have considered, or a future which may be all too possible.

Really, I joke around a lot on wasting time on a Friday, but these stories aren't a waste of your time, I promise.
Go and read them.  Then think.
Thanks.

Remember how I mentioned the new Microsoft Office replacement last month?
Well, it's golden, finally.

A number of months ago, my favorite free office suite, Open Office, forked for various reasons relating to the "openness" of the open source of that project.  The forked code, or, for those of you not familiar with the terminology, the new branch of the on-going project, was called LibreOffice and drew most of the heavy-hitters development-wise from the old project.  They've been working quite hard and have gotten their new release out; LibreOffice 3.3.
There's a pretty good review of what's new and great about this latest release over at eWeek.com.  Check it out and then go download the latest version and install it for yourself.  Trust me on this.  It's pretty great.

Yeah, you read that right.

It's no secret that I love my digital camera.  Not quite enough to give it a name, like some photographers I know, but, still, I love the little fist-full of magic that lets me take amazingly detailed digital photographs.  I remember when my ex-wife got her digital camera, it was a big deal that it was something like 3-megapixels.  Now, my iPhone has a camera at least as good as that built into it!  The camera I use now is a 10 megapixel camera and that's really just an entry-level DSLR, which is 3 years old.  The better cameras start at 20 megapixels and go up from there these days.  That, let me assure you, is capturing a lot of data.  We've come a long way in a short time.

But, researchers are working on cameras that make those look primitive.
According to Scientific American, DARPA researchers are experimenting with gigapixel cameras.  That's over a billion pixels.  That's like 333 times better resolution than an iPhone camera.  That, in short, is pretty amazing.  And, not only does the camera take amazing shots, but it looks amazing, too.  Check out the slideshow at Scientific American that shows the camera and a picture it's taken.

There's something to think about as you snap photos of your friends this weekend!

No, not the idea, but the actual event.

Two stories ran recently about dealing with the parts of us left behind after death.
First a story about a "better" coffin that screws into the ground.  Okay, I'll grant you, this is less serious than morbidly amusing to me.  Still, I do like the idea of having a low-cost disposal method for what I'll leave behind once I "shuffle off this mortal coil".  That it screws into the ground, just tickled me.
And, for anyone keeping track, I'd just as soon be cremated and scattered to the Four Winds where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan just outside the Loop.  Seriously.

The second two were a little more serious.  Two stories about social media applications dealing with the accounts of the dead and, more recently, one from the New York Times Magazine, online, of course.
Back before everyone was on the web all the time, I used to have an envelope that was labeled "Open upon my death or disappearance".  Seriously!  I used to keep it tucked under my keyboard.  I had one at work, too, for those folks, though that was in a safe.  In each envelope was a series of usernames and passwords for people to use to get access to my accounts should I go missing, or should something happen to me that left me incapacitated or dead.  I'm honestly not sure if anyone knew about the one under my keyboard, but I figured it would have turned up when someone cleaned up after me.  So, basically, I was giving someone who survived me access to my e-mail and other, similar accounts.
I got rid of that sometime shortly before the divorce, for some obvious reasons.

Now, though, there are so many accounts and websites and blogs and such that I'm not sure I could easily list them all.  And, frankly, who would bother to pay for my website?  Who would care enough to maintain an archive of this blog, for instance?  I don't have a huge readership, though you are a pretty loyal lot, so I don't expect anyone to really want to preserve what I have here.
How many of you have though about what will happen to your blogs and websites and so on when you die?  What about if you were to die suddenly from, oh, say, cancer?  What then?  If I went missing for a month, would anyone notice here?
Well, for WordPress blogs, there's a plugin called Next Of Kin that might help, a little.  You can set it to post some message to your blog if you fail to login to your blog for a set amount of time.  And, just to be sure, it will send you a reminder or warning e-mail to check and make sure that you haven't just forgotten to visit your blog.  It's far from enough to take care of all of your digital needs after death, but it is a pretty good start!

So, what have you all got setup in case of your untimely death?  Does anyone know your passwords?  Have you given anyone instructions on what to post to Facebook or Twitter after you've gone?

I love science-fiction and I love travel!

Okay, not really.  I actually kind of hate traveling now, thanks to Bin Laden and the TSA, but it would be the only way to see the locations of famous sci-fi films.  I tend to forget that Tatooine was filmed on location.  No, seriously!  All the Tatooine shots were filmed in Tunisia!  For real!
And you can check out a slideshow of a lucky thirteen well-known science fiction movie locations over at Salon.  They've got everything from [amazon_link id="B001G7PX80" target="_blank" ]Planet of the Apes[/amazon_link] to [amazon_link id="B000K15VSA" target="_blank" ]Blade Runner[/amazon_link] to, yes, [amazon_link id="B001EN71DG" target="_blank" ]Star Wars[/amazon_link].

Oh, go ahead and look at the slideshow!  It's Friday, what else were you doing?

Okay, look, this is getting ridiculous.

I'm a one-man IT shop.  Okay, technically, I do have someone else and some consultants, but they're all at other locations and, pretty much, everyone still comes to me first anyway.  So, effectively, I'm a one-man IT shop.  That means I'm busy.  No, really, I'm busy pretty much every minute that I'm even close to the office.  And, I'm trying to get out of the office by 5:00PM.  Well, by 5:30PM.  Okay, honestly, I try not to stay past 6:00PM more than twice a week.  Which means my time is a very precious commodity and if you waste it, I will have strong negative feelings toward you.  Strong negative feelings.

This should be pretty apparent to anyone who watches me work, or try to work, and answer phone calls from every cold-calling, knuckle-dragger who's been tasked with trying to get me to notice their product for which I do not have the time to implement or, most likely, the budget to purchase.  Now, to be fair, the average sales drone who's tasked with calling me doesn't know this.  They can't know it, as they have never met me before or been to the morass of paper and spare parts that I call a server room, er, rather, that I call my office.  But, I'm going to do them a favor and outline some sure-fire ways to lose my sale.

First, like I've already mentioned, don't waste my time.
Don't show up unannounced at my office pretending that we have a meeting.  I will leave you sitting in the waiting room all day long.  For real.  I've done it.  I don't even feel very guilty about it.  Why?  Well, you were willing to waste my time, so why should I worry about wasting yours?
Don't call me and tell me that you have a great product or service or idea or whatever to tell me about, but refuse to give me any details about unless we meet in person.  Worse, if I seem interested but want to know about pricing, since I have a very limited budget, don't be coy about giving me the information.  I know how to read a proposal and a tiered-pricing spreadsheet.  Honest.  I've done this for almost 20 years at this point.  I don't need you to hold my hand.  Really.

Second, be honest.
If I ask you a direct question, give me a direct answer.  Look, I work in IT now, but I have a degree in Marketing.  Sure, it's a little old and dusty, but, you know what?  Sales techniques haven't actually changed that much since I did that kind of work.  So, when I ask if you do something or if your product does something, don't give me some circular answer about interfacing with one of your business partners.  I asked you.  Can your product do what I asked or not?  It's simple, really.  It's binary, like computers.  Yes or no.  Often the answer to the direct questions I ask take care of the first problem for both of us.
Also?  If I ask you a deeply technical question about your product and you don't know? Just admit that you don't know.  Don't guess.  Don't try to play off my question.  And, again, don't offer to involve another company in "our" solution.  I just want to know what you're asking me to pay for out of my very limited budget.  It's okay to get back to me later with an answer and pricing.
Just a word of warning about this, if you promise me that your product will do something it cannot do, I will not pay you.  It's that simple.

Third, high-pressure techniques do not work with me.
Maybe they work with someone, but the harder you push me, the less inclined I am to give you money.  I honestly don't care if you have a great deal, because if you try to rush me into something, I suspect that you're trying to keep me from taking the time to think about what you're doing.  And, if you are trying to get me to spend money without thinking it all the way through, there's a reason.  Usually, a reason that is not to my benefit, but yours.
Also?  High-pressure sales went out with loud ties, junk bonds and easy mortgages.  And, I'll be honest, they didn't work on me then, either.  Nothing has changed for me since then.  I still tend to respond to high-pressure sales techniques with barely restrained violence.  If you're still using them, go back to blood-sucking, parasitic, low-life school and learn something new.

Fourth, I do not care that you are a hot chick.
Yeah, this sounds sexist and misanthropic, but I see plenty of beautiful women in tech sales.  I get it.  Really, I do.  I'm a one-hundred-percent, red-blooded, American male and I love to look at beautiful women as much as the next guy, but I don't care about that when you're selling me tech gear.  For real.  For one thing, I was married to an absolutely gorgeous woman, so I know just what kind of hell their personal life really is like.  For another, I'm pretty sure that I will never, ever have access to a budget that will entice one of you to sleep with me, so, again, I just don't care.  It doesn't matter.  Not even if you flirt with me.  Honest.  So, you know, it's okay to just stop.  Really.  Because it will not effect my decision to buy, or not buy, your product.
So help me, if another company sends me some Barbie doll who just blinks at me when I ask a marginally technical question about their technology product, someone will be hurt.  Seriously, at least put people in the field who know how to get me a Support Tech faster than just calling the 800-number on the back of the package.
And, yes, I'm sure there are many very attractive sales people in tech companies who do know what they're doing.  I haven't met any in the past eight or nine years, but I am sure they're out there.  Somewhere.

So, really, is that too much to ask?
I just want competent technical sales people who can answer my questions about their product, don't waste my time and know that, well, "No, means NO".  Okay?  Everybody on board for that?
Thanks.

(This rant was brought to you by a high-pressure copier toner sales "person" and the most helpless software sales "person" I've ever had to circumvent.  All in the same week.)

What are you doing today?

If you're at work, you probably aren't getting anything done because it's Friday and, frankly, if you're reading this blog, you probably aren't going to get much done no matter where you are, so you might as well check out some of the best damn science-fiction I've ever read. And, no, I don't think that's exaggerating. At all.
So, go read Ted Chiang's The Life Cycle of Software Objects at Subterranean Press.
Seriously. Go read it while it's still up and free!

No, not your personal name, network names!

Yeah, since I've been thinking about computer security a little in this new year and new decade, I've noticed a slightly disturbing trend.  Spammers have been working at redirecting you to compromised domains.  One way they do it is something called DNS cache poisoning.  Another is straight-up DNS hijacking.

Okay, let me back up a second.  For my slightly less-technical readers, DNS stands for Domain Name System.  That's the system of servers that translates website names, like "www.google.com", into addresses that your computer understands and can connect you to via a browser.  It's how you found my blog, though you may not have even realized it.
DNS Hijacking is usually accomplished via a "rouge" server, which is a server setup by spammers to publish bad information.  The more usual method, I think, and more insidious, is DNS cache poisoning.  With that method, spammers trick good, valid DNS servers into updating their records with bad information.  Giving them poisonous information, if you will.

So, now, back to the hard-core server admins.  Last week I was reminding everyone that the start of a new year is a great time to change passwords, but it's also a great time to check on other security issues, like your DNS.  Luckily, Michael Kassner over at TechRepublic has written a blog post titled Test your DNS servers for spoofability.  It's worth a read and worth running through.  Maybe even making it a regular practice, to see if your DNS has been compromised.

Oh, and if you all want to read more about DNS, and how to implement it, there's a great book from O'Reilly titled [amazon_link id="0596100574" target="_blank" ]DNS and BIND[/amazon_link] that's well worth owning.  Trust me.

I have lots of hope for the new year.

No, seriously, I do!
We, as a race, the human race, are capable of amazing things.  We live in the future.  Our lives are filled with science-fiction, which has always been the language of wonder and hope, even when it's filled with warnings about where we may go wrong.  But, now, right now, we have people who live, albeit in a limited way, in space.  And that, gentle readers, has always inspired hope in me.
Here's a link to some beautiful photographs which inspire that hope in me, courtesy of NASA and brought to you via Yahoo: Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looks down at Earth.

I hope you have a new year filled with wonder and hope, people.  Truly I do.  Be good to each other this year, okay?