Diary of a Network Geek

Today is Ernest “Papa” Hemingway‘s birthday.

He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, which is not far from where I grew up, in 1899. Hemingway snuck off to fight in World War I when he was just 17. He got hurt early in the war, while serving as an ambulance driver, and spent weeks in the hospital before coming back home to his parents in Oak Park.  After his parents got tired of him hanging around, he started writing stories for Chicago newspapers and magazines, and then got a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star and went off to Paris with his wife Hadley. He became friends with a lot of writers who were in Paris at the time, including Fitzgerald and Joyce and Pound and Gertrude Stein. And he wrote every day, sometimes in his apartment, sometimes in cafés, but he wrote every day.  It’s this model of what a writer does, how he works, that I’ve always wanted to emulate.  But, honestly, the blank page has grown far too frightening to do that.

Oddly enough, Hemingway developed cancer and, in fact, grew his famous beard in an attempt to hide some of the scars which were a result.  In the end, he couldn’t live with the idea of cancer, or what it meant to his life and, in true “Hemingway hero” fashion, killed himself with a shotgun in 1961. But, by then, he was one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Ernest Hemingway has been one of my heroes since I first read his work.  Not his most famous, Old Man and the Sea,  but rather some of his shorter work.  As I recall it was “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” or, possibly, “The Killers”.  That, along with The Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises were the books and stories that got me.  The funny thing is, I’ve read that he really didn’t care for the Old Man and the Sea, even though that won more awards than anything.
I’ve read more of his work, of course, though certainly not all.  In fact, there was a time I wrote trying to emulate his style.  He’s also where I learned that the most beautiful art is that which seems so simple, so obvious that one thinks it must be easy to create, but then finds the execution of such art much harder to accomplish after all.

So, if you’re the drinking kind, raise your glass, whether that’s a daiquiri, absinthe, a martini, or a mojito, which are all said to have been his “favorite” drink at various times, and toast to Papa and all he wrote.

DarkKnight

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The Dark Knight today.

Wow.
I feel confident that this is going to be the best movie of the year. I have to admit I was a little dubious based on the massive amount of publicity the movie’s gotten and all the rave reviews my friends gave it. I mean, when they compared Dark Knight to the Godfather movies, well, I thought the reviewer had lost his mind, but I think they may be onto something.

So, the Dark Knight picks up where Batman Begins left off. Batman Begins retells the origin story of Batman in a way that’s closer to the original comic than the first movie did. This movie continues with that story, though Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawson and Aaron Eckhart joins as Harvey “Two Face” Dent. Christian Bale still plays Bruce Wayne/Batman, with Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, not to mention Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon.
The story opens with Batman fighting a number of criminals in a parking garage, along with some Batman copycats sort of getting in his way. He seems to find the whole thing a little depressing, having copycat vigilantes. He’s also sort of looking for a way to retire, once the city is safe from organized crime. For this, Bruce looks to Harvey Dent, the Gotham District Attorney. He’s the last honest man, outside of Jim Gordon, in the city and he’s putting away plenty of criminals. He’s also dating Rachel Dawes, much to the pain of Bruce Wayne.

Well, it seems he has his work cut out for him when he goes up against a new kind of criminal, the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. He’s scarred, both physically and mentally, and appears in makeup to hide both. But, his crazy shows through both when he kills his accomplices and offers to kill the Batman, for a fee. So, off he goes, in his crazy way, using random violence and our own worst nature against us.

Well, I don’t want to give away too much plot, because you all really have to see this movie, so I won’t tell you more, but it is a violent roller coaster through a dark world of back alleys and sub-levels and ruined buildings. There are explosions and guns and more explosions and hand-to-hand action and car chases. But, oddly, there’s also a fair amount of philosophy, brilliant dialog, and social commentary. But, none of that stuff gets in the way of the story or the action.
The sets and cinematography are brilliant, too. Oh, and most of the movie was shot in Chicago and near where I worked for several years. I kept seeing things in the background that totally reminded me of home. In a good way.

I’m sure I’ll see this movie again, possibly on IMAX. The friend I saw it with today had already seen it twice before and was talking about seeing it again. Dark Knight is one of those movies that you can watch many times, finding more each time you watch it. It truly is the best of the Batman films and, really, is one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
I cannot encourage you enough to see this film. If you see no other movie this year, make it Dark Knight.

In this case, it’s a hard drive crusher.

Once upon a time, I was in charge of a networking department who’s responsibilities included backups and disposal of old tapes and drives. We had to do all kinds of crazy things to assure the Board of Directors that the data had been completely and safely removed from those drives before we could get rid of them. At one point, a tech was actually drilling through backup tapes with an electric drill to make sure they were destroyed.
The Hard Drive Crusher from EDR would have been an easy sell.

And, if we’d gotten it? Techs would have been fighting for the privilege to destroy old backups.

Oh, and don’t forget to vote in the poll!

Okay, so I’m tragically unhip and I know it.

But, that’s no reason for my music to be sad, old, and uncool. So, I know many of my readers are far more with it than I am and I’m looking to you all for suggestions to give my iPod an injection of cool music mojo. And, ladies, I’m especially counting on you all to help this poor white boy find something to shake it to that will at least impress your kind with my brilliant musical taste. Also, I’ve just gotten bored with the CDs I’ve got in my car and on my shelf and I’ve got a huge cart at Amazon.com that I want to throw some music into before I checkout.  So, something new and hip and, preferably, indie, okay?

Just in case you’re not clear, the Rolling Stones are not what I had in mind.
The poll is live and in the sidebar to the right, so vote!

I am a Freemason.

I am also tragically unhip and I know it. I love my Masonic Brothers, but, honestly, I’ve never met one that is any less un-cool than I am. Well, thankfully, that may be changing, according to an article in the Boston Herald. Apparently, at least one Lodge there is attracting a slightly different kind of Brother: punk rock musicians. Now, keep in mind that the only requirements for membership is that a candidate be male, an adult (ie. usually over 18 or 21, depending on the jurisdiction), “free-born”, of “good report” (ie. not convicted of a felony and vouched for by a Brother), and have a belief in a “supreme being”. So, basically, a man who, theoretically, can make his own decisions and believes in a single deity. So, as long as they’re basically upstanding guys, who are willing to follow the rules of Freemasonry, we’re a pretty open group. Really. Not trying to take over the world at all. Honest. I promise.

Seriously, most of the Brothers I know can barely remember the punch line to a good joke, so you can pretty much forget the whole world-domination thing.
Here’s what the guys in the article had to say about it:

“It’s kind of like a history class that no one else can take,” said Dave Norton, drummer for Victory at Sea and The Men. He believes his membership in the fraternal organization will be especially rewarding when he tours Europe later this year.

and

Gary Robley, drummer for Dashboard Jesus and J. Geils cover band Blow Your Face Out, said he joined because his father was a Mason, as are many of his friends.
“There were a bunch of musicians I knew in it,” Robley said. “It was kind of a brotherhood. Musicians have always been a part of Masonry since its inception.”

Anyway, it struck me as both funny and cool that Lodge as I remember it is changing. When I was active, there was a lot of talk about how the Fraternity was hurting for members because new guys weren’t joining. Well, maybe the is the start of a cool new trend.
And, maybe, it’s about time I started looking for a local Lodge.

OpenOffice lacks one thing that I’ve always liked: barcodes.

Specifically, back when I was a WordPerfect user, I used to love the ability to address envelopes with the United States Postal Service ZIP Code barcodes. I know that it made letters less likely to get lost and more likely to get to their destination quickly. Also, I’ve known a few people who work for the US Postal Service and, from what I understand, letters with the barcodes are less likely to actually be touched by people. Their machines just suck the letters along and just about sort them into carrier’s bags.
Unfortunately, OpenOffice has not been able to indulge me in this minor joy. Until now.

Now, there are macros available, for free, to let you insert USPS-approved barcodes into your OpenOffice documents. The company who makes this available to you is IDAutomation.com and they have a webpage that describes the process for using the macros and has a link to the macros themselves.
Yea!

Hellboy2

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army on Saturday.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in this movie. I’d been anticipating it since it was announced and really looking forward to seeing more of the Hellboy franchise, but this turned out to be just another bland sequel.
I felt like the special effects were the entire point of the film. Well, that and all the merchandising opportunities. The director, Guillermo del Toro, who also directed the first Hellboy movie, was one of the writers on this script, and I think his influence shows. Sadly, that’s not a compliment. Del Toro is also well known for directing the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth which featured bizarre and fanciful creatures as much as the story or cinematography. There are large sequences in Hellboy 2 that feel like they were included in the movie strictly to show off some strange creature or character that would make a good model or action figure to sell a fanboy. In fact, the entire plot device of a “goblin market” under the Brooklyn Bridge seems created for this purpose of having creatures resembling leftovers from Pan’s Labyrinth.

But, I’m getting just a little ahead of myself. The basic plot of this sad offering is that an ancient race of fairies who has been at war with humans make an unstoppable, mechanical army constructed of gold and magic. After a brutal war that shocked even the fey king, the crown that controlled the Golden Army was broken into three pieces, one of which was given to humans as part of a kind of non-aggression pact. Fast forward a few centuries and mankind has forgotten about this war and the Golden Army, but the prince of the fairies, Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss, has not. What’s more, he wants to waken the Golden Army and break the peace with mankind, conquering them and returning his people to dominance over the Earth. So, yeah, end of the world, blah, blah, blah. Naturally, his sister, Princess Nuala, played by Anna Walton, stands in his way and runs into the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in the form of Abe Sapien, played by Doug Jones, Hellboy, played by Ron Perlman, and Liz Sherman, played by Selma Blair. They protect her and hide her from her brother just long enough for her and Abe to fall in love. And, I mean just long enough. As soon as there’s just barely enough dialog to establish that Abe has fallen for Nuala, her brother arrives to try and get her piece of the crown and kidnap her. Talk about a worn out plot. Yawn. Then, of course, Hellboy is injured in such a way to force the team to go on a quest and well, save the world from the Prince and the Golden Army.

Nothing at all spectacular here, but in case you plan on going to a matinee, which is all this movie is worth, I’ll keep from revealing any other plot points, such as they are.
Really, considering that the first movie was so good and established these characters so well and clearly, I’d hoped for more from this film. I’m not sorry I saw it, but it’s not something I’d be all that interested in seeing again. Maybe there’s a director’s cut that has all the good parts in it or something, but, well… Well, it’s not a fantastic movie, but not the worst movie I’ve ever seen either. If you don’t think you have time to see this movie at a matinee, I can’t blame you and it might be worth seeing on video, but don’t bother to pay full price.

Brian Rothenberg of Wilco Computer Products is my new hero.

So, I’ve been having this issue at work with a FAX machine and a phone network. We’ve been wrestling with this for about six weeks. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the FAX machine we have is not playing well with the phone network since we joined our two PRIs together with some network equipment to “steal” unused bandwidth from the phone network for the data network. Mostly, it worked great. Mostly.
The problem is our FAX machine hasn’t been properly negotiating the connection speed with some older FAX machines since we added the VOIP component to our data/phone network. The result? I get yelled at on a regular basis because I can’t make a miracle happen.

My service provider told me that the solution is to make the default receive baud rate 14,400 instead of 33,600. That’s great, but I searched for days to find instructions for how to do it to no avail. I even got the people who supplied the FAX machine to us out to try and figure it out, but they came up empty.
Enter Brian. Brian Rothenberg called me looking to sell me computer equipment or printer supplies or, yes, FAX supplies. But, it turns out, he sells the devices, too. What mattered more to me, though, was that he took the time to go hunt down the super-secret service hot-line phone number for the manufacturer of the FAX machine that was giving me issues. Then, he called them and got the procedure on how to make the change and e-mailed it to me. Problem solved.
The next time I need a printer serviced, I’m calling Brian.

So, you know what? If you need someone in the Greater Houston Area that sells office equipment and supplies and goes the proverbial extra mile? Go to http://www.wilcocomputerproducts.com/ and ask for Brian. Tell him I sent you.
Thanks, Brian.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When I'm working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But, when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
   --R. Buckminster Fuller