Diary of a Network Geek

Oh, but I’m going to anyway!
I have seen the coolest computer desk with a computer built into it. These are the most incredible, fantastic, and beautiful creations I have seen. In a way, they are the ultimate case-mod. “They”, in this case, are Truvia Luxury Computers, as seen at Gizmodo. I mean, the desks themselves are just gorgeous, but to have built in computers… Now, if I just had a spare $55,000. Right, anyone want to donate one to a good cause (ie. ME)?

Click on the link! It’s Friday and the boss isn’t looking, so go for it!
(And, here are the rest of the Commandments, just in case…)

I know I’ve been sort of quiet this week, so here’s a tidbit.
I’ve been doing a LOT of bash scripting lately for the ZENWorks imaging project that I’ve been working on. Well, the first part of that goes live, or partially live, next week. Yikes! So, I’ve been refining and getting things ready for that. Busy, busy, busy! But, I did have time to notice someone asking for help adding color to the menus and such on a ZENWorks Discussion Forum at Novell. I posted a reply there, but I thought I’d do up something for the oh, so quiet blog, too.
First off, all this comes from the FAQs.org, Advanced BASH-scripting Guide, in the Colorizing Scripts section.

Now, remember, these are basically just escape sequences, just like from the old DOS days and batch files. (Thought you’d never have to do that again, right?) Keep in mind that once you apply one of these codes, it will be in effect until you cancel it out, one way or another.
Let’s start easy with a simple bold:
echo -e “33[1mThis line is bolded33[0m”;
Okay, notice that you need to append the ” -e” to your standard “echo” command for display. The actual “bold” code is “33[1m”. That’s it. Just add that to the begining of the quoted line and you’ve got bolded text. To “turn it off”, simply echo “33[0m”, either at the end of the quoted line as above, or on another line. Personally, I find it easier to turn off my codes ASAP. It cuts down on problems later on.
Now, we’ll make green, bold text:
echo -en “33[1mThis is bold and green”
tput sgr0

Okay, now notice that we “turned off” the codes with a different command. That command, tput sgr0, clears all the color and formatting.
Now, to do one color for the text and one for the background, do this:
echo -e ‘\E[34;47m'”This makes blue text on a white background”;

And, that’s really all there is to it. So, go experiment with your bash colors!

Here’s a table of some other colors for your reference:

Hmm, that’s a good quesiton….
A friend asked me why I blog the other day and it really got me thinking. Why do I blog?

Well, the reasons have changed over the years. Originally, I started “blogging” to chronicle my search for a job here in Houston. Well, it was also a way to try and drive traffic to my website so that the search engines would find my resume. That was almost five years ago, back before there was such a thing as blogging software. In the early days, I hand-coded every page and uploaded it. As one might imagine, I tried to make every “post” count back then. It was a real hassle! But, I kept posting things about my work. Often, I found myself out on the road doing strange things or going odd places for my work and I wrote about it. I tried to focus on the technical side of things, but every so often, I would throw in something strange about my personal life, like getting married.
Then, back in September of 2002, I heard about Moveable Type, which was the first really good blogging application. It ran on PERL and MySQL, which were things I wanted to learn, so it seemed like a good choice. And, it was. I was able to post more often and more easily than ever before. And, I was out of work, again, so I moved from work war stories back to the seemingly endless search for work. It was the Summer after Enron and IT work was hard to come by, so I started posting more and more about my own personal thoughts, hopes and dreams. The blog started to become much more personal. It was a place to vent my frustrations, though I did so carefully as I was ever mindful that a future employer might read my postings.
Somewhere in there, I also started my other blog on Fantasist.net. There I posted things that were purely fun for me. Nothing but cool science and fantasy stuff, some of my fiction and poetry, and just plain cool or weird things. It was there that I originally started posting my “Fun Friday” links. That carried over here and I’ve done my best to maintain that to this day.
Now, I’ve upgraded to WordPress and blogging couldn’t be easier or more fun. I’m still carefull about what I post. I have a fairly varied audience, some of which include family that might be under the age of 18, so I do my best to be intelligent without being insulting to too many people. I do my best to keep the profanity and “adult material” to a minimum, too, for the same reasons.

So, why do I keep posting? Well, I can always use the traffic, even if I am the #1 hit for “CNE Resume” on Google. But, mainly, it gives me a place to think out loud when no one is around for me to talk to about things. Blogging let’s me share my thoughts and dreams and, sometimes, fears with a larger world. A larger world that often responds with surprising kindness and sympathy, I might add. It’s my way of reaching out to fellow geeks who are stuggling with their own careers or lives and offer a bit of hope that they’re not alone.
Also, it’s a way for me to create a bit of immortality. To feel like a part of me will go on beyond my own limited life. To get my words and thoughts out into a larger world so that I might be remembered and understood.
So, why do you all read my blog? And, if you keep one, why do you blog?

I know, you’re thinking, who?
Well, today is the birthday of Robert W. Service who wrote “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. Still in the dark? That’s okay. I don’t think that Mr. Service is too well known anymore. I know him because of my father. Apparently, when my father was growing up one of the things that kids in school did was memorize and recite poetry. It was a competition along the lines of a spelling bee, from what he described. In any case, the poem that he memorized was, of course, “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. It’s a gruesome little tale about a man keeping his promise to a dying friend. A promise to cremate his remains in the frozen Yukon, in Winter, during the Gold Rush. Here’s a sample:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

You can see how that might grab a young man’s attention, eh? Especially, when his father introduces him to it. I have to admit, it was a real father/son bonding moment.

I grew up in a house where we were allowed to explore what I would call the darker side of our nature, but in a safe environment. When I was a kid, my Grandmother lived with us so we often talked about things like death and funeral arrangements at the dinner table. Grandma Hoffman would be more than happy to tell us that she didn’t want us to spend a lot of money on her funeral and that she, in fact, simply wanted to be cremated and interred with her late husband. We discussed these things in a very “matter-of-fact” way and nothing much was made of them. I think, in part, I have my father’s work with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to thank for that. And, in retrospect, I think it helped Grandma prepare herself at the end, too, knowing that we knew what she wanted and that she was okay with dying. You know, I don’t say it too often, but I have a pretty remarkable family. I may have my problems, but Mom and Dad did a pretty bang-up job with their kids. They really taught us to live well. They taught us in ways that I’m only just now starting to understand. Well, in any case, if you click on the link, you can read the rest for yourself. I think it’s worth it.

Personally, I aspire to a cubicle again.
That would mean that I was working at a desk instead of a table in Storage Room B. But, I understand that some folks really resent cubicles. Those cube-farms become a kind of professional purgatory from which escape seems impossible. Or, at least, improbable. Well, if you can’t make fun of your terrible and desperate professional life, what can you make fun of? So, here it is. The ultimate toy for the prisoner of the cubicle: The Cubes.
That link is to Boing Boing, who ran a story on the Cubes earlier in the week. But, if you’d like to get more information directly from the source, cut to the chase and go to CubeFigures.com and if you’re already sold on the idea, you can buy them from Archie McPhee.
(Oh, and yes, there is a “Jim” figure. He’s naughty. Art imitates life!)

Aw, c’mon, it’s Friday, so, you know you’re going to click on it sooner or later anyway.

Well, I’ve got another bit up on Novell’s CoolSolutions website.
This time, it’s a bit of bash code to let you choose which ZEN imaging server to use based on subnet. It works for any version of the ZEN for Desktops imaging system, since it’s pure bash.
For those of you who are not ” in the know” bash is the Bourne Again SHell which runs on Linux and has scripting capabilities. It’s pretty cool, considering that this will be the third or fourth thing I have up on Novell’s site and I get another t-shirt. Wooo! And, I’ve turned in enough articles that I have my very own Author Profile page. Cool!
Anyhow, go look at the article and vote it up higher, eh?

Oh, my, but they are sneaky.
Of course, I should expect that from these folks, but, still, I fell for this one. I was checking my Hotmail account, as I sometimes do at lunch, and saw a link to an interesting news story. At least, I thought it was a news story. Instead, it turned out to be a thinly veiled advertisement for MicroSoft. The article was titled Gaming Company Gets High-Score Thanks to Innovative IT. Sounds pretty good, right? I thought so too, so I clicked on it. SUCKER!
What this actually links to is a “case study” that “is intended to provide real-world examples of IT solutions. Case studies are created by Microsoft to show how IT solutions help customers meet their business needs.” In other words, an ad. Plain and simple an ad for MicroSoft programming tools. Not that they have bad programming tools, mind. After all, they’re about the only one’s left marketing programming tools of any kind that even registers as a blip on my radar anymore. (If anyone has others that are enterprise level, post a comment!) But, I sure felt like I’d been suckered when I got to the ad.
Tricksy Hobbits.

This turned my stomach when I read it.
I’m quoting the entire article from the WiredNews Furthermore collection, because it tends to scroll so fast:

Dogs and Dope

02:00 AM Jan. 06, 2005 PT Drug smuggling has gone to the dogs. Police in Colombia report that smack traffickers there cut open a half-dozen puppies’ bellies, hid bags of liquid heroin inside and then sewed up the poor pooches in a plan to sneak the drugs across international borders. “The lust for money leads criminals to commit acts of great cruelty,” police said. The surgical scam didn’t work, though: Authorities following up on a tip found six pups with scarred bellies, and ultrasound scans revealed the contraband inside the living dogs. Vets removed the dope, and the dogs are doing fine.
— Lewis Wallace

I cannot imagine what kind of heartless bastard could do this to a dog of any kind, much less puppies. Good lord, the idea of my poor dog just not getting enough attention makes my blood boil. Damn, but stories like this remind me how much I miss my Hildegard. Is it silly to cry over a dog? Oh, Hilda, I hope you’re doing okay.

That’s my new goal for the new year.
I’m no good at letting things go, to be honest. I want to hold on tight until my fingers bleed and then I just want to switch hands. Of course, I know that’s not healthy for me, in any sense of the word, so I’m trying to take the advice of friends and just “let it go”. It’s hard, though, when I feel wronged or cheated or, even, like I just wasn’t given a “fair shake”, to shrug and walk away. But, it’s what I should do. I know that, but…
But, I miss my dog today. The dog I begged to get. The dog I named. The dog for whom I baked home-made biscuits. The dog who often would not eat or relieve herself until I got home from work. The dog I had to carry to her crate every night. Maybe I should have fought harder for my dog. My poor Hilda. Trapped so far away. I wonder if she even understands what’s going on. Probably not. I hope not. I hated letting her go. But, I was in full-on pain avoidance mode and that seemed like the best way to avoid the most pain. Now, I wonder if it was. I know I can get another dog, but I miss my Hildegard. And she’s gone, but I’m having trouble letting her go.
So. So, it’s a goal, this letting go. It’s what I aspire to accomplish for the coming year. To take care of myself and do the things I need to do and then, in the most zen sense of it, to let it go.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Men of few words are the best men."
   --William Shakespeare

I went to church for the first time in years tonight.
It was a little different than I remember church being, but then, I expected it would be. It was nice, though. It’s a program called Mercy Street, which is part of a larger Methodist church. I was raised by Baptists in the Methodist church, because there wasn’t a Baptist church close to where we lived. (That’s sort of like being raised by wolves, but you’re not allowed to dance, BTW. My Father loves that joke for some reason.) So, it wasn’t too far off from services that I’d attended before. But, it was unusual in that the entire service was designed to appeal to people that have been, well, somewhat disenfranchised by organized religion. I always got tired of the money campaigns most churches had, so, I fall into that demographic. Well, I do for other reasons, too, but I won’t go there tonight. The cool thing about this place for me is that they never “pass the basket”. Not at all. There’s a “Carpenter’s Box” in the middle of the room and people who are called to give, can and do. To the tune of, roughly, $240, 000. All with no pressure and no passing the basket. Oh, that’s with under 400 members, but with an average of over 475 people attending. Yeah, more people attending than actually belong. Sort of different, isn’t it?
Anyway, it was good. Church has been something that I’ve missed, so, I think I’ll be going back. No, I know I’ll be going back. I’ve been needing something more in my spiritual life and church is it, I think. Regular church services and regular contact with a like-minded faith community. These folks seem like they’re headed down the path I would like to follow. So, yeah, it was comfortable being there. What’s more, it was comforting being there. Yeah, I’ll be going back.