Diary of a Network Geek

It's law and it's about time!

I read yesterday that President Bush finally approved the National "Do-Not-Call" Registry. Horay! No more damn telemarketers!
According to the FTC's Website, the registry should be ready to sign consumers up as early as July. It will be available to businesses as soon as September. And, most importantly, enforcement of the $10,000 fine for violation will begin as early as October of this year! Yeah! Finally, some consumer protection with teeth! You rock George!

I can't remember what the first thing is!

For the past week or so, I've come up with several ideas for blog entries and forgotten them before I could get to a web interface and make the actual entry! Just now I sat down to write an entry that I'd thought of yesterday and drew a complete blank. How terrible! I'm sure that it would have been enlightening and horribly important, too. No doubt it would have made comment on current events and Linux and Microsoft vs. Novell. Or, maybe it would have mentioned certification and Cisco. Or, possibly even debated the merits of the CNE vs. the MCSE vs. the CCNA.
Or, it could have been total dribble about how pretty my ponds are.
Who knows? Damn early senility. See what working in the IT industry does to you?!?

As proud a parent, or step-parent, can be!

My wife reported to me today that our daughter is a bit of a writer, which I knew. What I did not know, however, is that at least one of her teachers thinks she's good enough to get published. Or have her work submitted to a contest. I wish I could claim that it was biological superiority that made her such a literary genius, but, alas, she is my step-daughter and I can make no such claim. However, it does give weight to the nurture-vs-nature argument. She has, after all, seen me working at the Craft for more than five years now. Surely, some of that must have rubbed off on her. I hope that the fact I don't make a living at it has registered for her, too. And, all the network administration I've taught her. I hope she'll learn something other than Novell, though, because it's really become too much of a niche market.
In any case, I have all the tools to help her find the appropriate publication or contest to submit her work to, if she wishes. I will not push her to do so, only suggest. At the moment, she writes for her own pleasure and I'd hate to take that away from her, but I would be tickled if I can help her get published. That's something that I have yet to do.
In the mean time, I'll just be as proud as I can be of my daughter, the Writer.

Hey, I'm a Geek of the Week!

So, earlier this week, I was going through my web site stats and noticed that a particular domain name had referred a lot of traffic to my site. So, out of idle curiosity, I finally went to see what it was. Well, it seems that I've been "awarded" the Geek of the Week site for the week of 2-23-2003. That's pretty cool!
Though, I have to admit, it would have been nicer if the guy had let me know. After all, I might have gotten a sudden flood of traffic and had problems. Luckily, since I've gotten a new web host, traffic isn't a big problem.
Anyway, I thought it was cool and thought I should share.
We now return you to your regular web surfing!

Why is it okay to interrupt my lunch?

For pity's sake, I'm a contractor. I'm on a clock. My lunch hour is my own time. And, yet, people seem okay with completely trodding all over that and shoving work on me durning my time. Why is that?
Yesterday, it was someone who insisted on talking to me about nothing after obviously interrupting my lunchtime reading. Well, not quite nothing, but something that sure wasn't as important as my personal time!
Today, someone wanted a file restored, but had to stand and watch me select the damn thing. He couldn't have sent me an e-mail with the file path. Or, actually put in a ticket in the Helpdesk app. Oh, no! That would require effort on their part. And, a certain amount of consideration for their co-workers, so that just won't do.

Ah, well, I guess I'll just have to start leaving the building at lunch, now that the weather has gotten better.

I built a server yesterday.

Well, in a way I did. I really imaged a server, from a Ghost disk image. But, it was a Windows 2000 server, so at least I can use it on my resume. And, it beats working with nothing but the Novell servers that my company is phasing out. Of course, they're phasing them out very, very slowly, but still, they are going to eventually go away.
Really, that's my only complaint about this job. Everything moves slowly. Absolutely everything. So, I'm still waiting to go full-time and get benefits. And, since I have about two months left on COBRA, and even after they hire me I have to wait 90 days for benefits to start, I'll have to get some kind of health insurance. Right now, I'm looking at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, but I may find some other options, too. Man, I hate dealing with all that mundane garbage.

Anyway, at least I'm working. And, two jobs, too!

What do those two things have to do with each other?

Nothing, really. Except, of course, that's what I've been doing for the past week or so.
My pond is looking good now. A week or two ago, I thought it was leaking so bad that I'd have to replace the entire liner. Not so. In fact, the waterfall isn't even really leaking. It had gotten so clogged with roots and mud from the papyrus the original owners had planted there that the water was just flowing out and under the liner! I spent a couple hours this weekend cleaning it out to the point that the water was flowing again and it seems fine now. Honestly, after getting into it, it's a wonder I didn't have problems sooner. For pity's sake, it was so clogged with dirt that there were earthworms living in the waterfall!

And, I've started a little consulting work on the side. It's just a couple of hours a month, and I've only been doing it about a month, but it's nice to make some extra money. Last month, I billed out four hours and last night, I've already racked up four hours! But, I think that was a bit unusual. In any case, I've got a great contact there that's really flexible on hours and all, so I'm able to do it after I'm done at my main gig. So far, so good. I'm just going to see how it goes and not put too much pressure on myself. I'll evaluate how things are going at 6 months and decide if it's worth continuing from there.

Stay tuned!

This is a test of the PDA/AvantGo method of posting. If you can read this, it works. The only problem with it is the small data-entry area.

Well, that and the fact that it doesn't automatically reindex on the live blog, ergo, it posts, but doesn't show up.

Have to see about automating the rebuilds.....

Well, 10 minutes per chapter, anyway.

I just finished Teach Yourself Linux in 10 Minutes last night and was fairly impressed. Of course, it was a review of Linux for me, not a true knowlege dump, but it was a good refresher. And, it gave me some new information that I hadn't had before. I tend to learn things on the go, as I'm trying to accomplish a goal of some kind, so sometimes, I miss things. This was certainly the case with Linux. So, since I'd gotten this book some time ago and never read it, I decided it was time to fill in some gaps.
This is pretty basic stuff, but it's a good introduction to Linux for someone that has never really used it before. It talks the reader through the basics, starting with logging in and going all the way through printing and basic shell-scripting. It's fairly comprehensive, for an introductory book, and each chapter is broken down into managable chunks. And, yes, each chapter takes about 10 minutes to read.

All in all a good book and worth the money.

My pond is leaking!

Well, at least, it looks like it is. It's had some trouble holding water for a couple of weeks, but this weekend it got really bad. And, Saturday, as I was trying to fill it and find the leak, the bottom of the liner bubbled up. Yikes!
So, I played with it and tried various combonations of pumps running but, with little effect. Finally, I called our favorite pond store, Nelson Water Garden and they suggested turning off both pumps. They also suggested that it sounded like the waterfall was pumping water under the liner, which is what was making it bubble up. So, while I was on the phone with them, I priced replacement liners. The 40 year, rubber liner was much less expensive than I thought it would be, so that's good news. Now, I actually hope that it's the liner, not the pumps! Of course, either way I'll be busting my butt next weekend. Luckily, we have a second pond to put the koi into while I work on the first one. I hope that I can limp this along until Saturday and not have to worry about fish from the two different ponds attacking each other.
Never a dull moment!