Between
Buffy
Northern Exposure
and Quantum Leap, I might not have any money left for The Dukes of Hazard.

Weekend of fun and network architecture

1:15 Restate my assumptions
I) I have a soon to be repaired laser printer.
II) The parallel port on my workstations is currently taken
III) I have 2 working Sparc20s and 1000 feet of Cat5e

The plan
A) Move the Sparcs and the printer into the closet
3) Run Cat5e from the switch on the desk up and around the ceiling to the closet
V) Provide a makeshift raceway for said cabling
2^s) Magic happens here

The Implementation
s) Purchase shiny hooks from Paul's Ace Hardware
34) Measure the distance, using the cable ('cause that's how we do it here (word))
phi) Tie the cable to the hooks using wax-coated string (it's all about the wax-coated string)
Σ) Install linux on said Sparcs (boot: 1/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3) (repeat as necessary)
:) Print happily

(photos to come)

Pumas on Hoverbikes

<quote>
One unfortunate truth of the profession of system administration is that we wouldn't enjoy it so much if it didn't reward its practitioners for being lateral thinkers with a predilection for high-intensity short-duration incident-based problem solving, or, as we say in the trade, "Triggerhappy psycho-freakazoid gloryhound powermongers with stress-induced facial tics."
</quote>

Knowing how things work, and the benefits therein.

At my current place of employment, I have recently had the joy of reconfiguring a Cisco router with spiffy new ACLs (Access Control Lists), including something called reflexive access lists. Reflexive access lists let me do things like block everything except well defined access protocols, but allow all outbound connections to return without special rules to do so. It was great fun and has inspired me to attempt to get my Cisco certification.

Anyway, today one of the developers was trying to transfers some files to his workstation using FTP. This wasn't working for him and so he asked me if I was blocking FTP at the router. I immediately said no, everything should work, but after a quick second of thought I realized that he needed to use Passive mode FTP. He did this and all was good and the bits moved from there to here with no problem.

How did I know this? Because I know how FTP works. Knowing how FTP works, and having read the RFC (Request for Comment) on it (RFC 959), I knew that FTP tries to connect back to the client over a new data channel. Since this data channel wasn't part of the original connection, the router happily discarded it. Passive mode allows the client to connect the data channel back to the server instead, and so the router let it pass.

This is something I have seen quite a bit of in my tenure as a computer professional. I don't blame the developer, but I have seen admins who don't know things like how FTP works or how SMTP actually delivers mail. The number of people I know who can send mail with nothing but a Telnet client is amazingly small. I was lucky at the beginning of my career to have worked for someone who knew how things worked. This was emphasized and, with just the knowledge of how stuff worked, I was able to set up servers I didn't know anything about to function correctly (i.e. MS Exchange). This isn't esoteric knowledge, or deep magic in any way. The RFCs specify how things work, and are pretty straight-forward in their explanations.

So as a little bit of advice, primarily to network/system admins, I would say learn how things work. Knowing the protocols will make debugging specific servers/services amazingly less complex. Even for end-users, knowing a bit about how things work will make it easier to report problems in a way that makes sense. If you are in a position to hire for a technical support or help-desk position, hire people who know how things work some things work at least, and teach them the things they don't know. This will make it easier for them to diagnose problems, and provide solutions to the end-user.

In the end, and in almost every aspect of life, knowing how things work at a base level will make things easier for everyone involved. So, if you are having some sort of problem, step back and look at how things are working, then learn how they are supposed to work, and the problem will, more then likely, be simpler then it initially seemed.

Am I the only person who hasn't seen either 'Kill Bill' movie, and has no desire to see them? I still don't know what people see in Tarrentino. If I want ultra-violent movies, I'll watch Japanese or Hong Kong martial arts movies. I guess I just have no taste at all.