techie_

Scarborough dreaming

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:10:46 GMT

So I woke up this morning after dreaming that I had been camping out at Scarborough Faire with several friends of mine. Lets see.. Vulpine was there, MustangKitty.. the Plague and The Sporked One of course. Luckyljw was there but I don't remember lifeblender; I think he had finals or something. The redhead and the viking were around as well. I'm not real sure why we were camping out there. At least in my dream it was fun. Oh and since it was my dream, the Carillon was playing most of the night.

Maybe this came up because I'd been thinking awhile back that they should do a night time Scarby.

Now I'm just in my four off-white walls at work, reviewing requests.

Hmmm... am I taking two summer classes?

Wed, 14 May 2008 19:30:33 GMT

So far the Introduction to Databases course has 22 people in it so that one will make fine. However the Object Oriented Programming with C++ course only has 3. So yeah I don't think I'll be ordering the book for that one yet. :)

Upcoming movies

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:39:34 GMT

May 16: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
May 22: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
May 23: War, Inc (John Cusack shooting up the place worked well in Gross Pointe Blank)
Jun 27: Wanted (Angelina Jolie with guns)
Jul 11: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Looks like a good start to the summer. I'll have to see who is in the mood for what.

Monday

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:57:42 GMT

Wasn't really much to today. Went to work and then went to Logan's for dinner afterwards. I popped by Starbucks to see if the girls were doing the Monday night thesis/studying thing but didn't see them. Afterwards I came home, fired up World of Warcraft and ran the hunter while watching "The Holiday". Fun movie. :)

Now I'm going to read a bit in "First Rider's Call" then sleep.

Good day

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:04:43 GMT

This was a really good day. I got up when I intended to, went to Scarborough Faire, saw several spiffy people and then went to see Speed Racer. The movie was cool. Now I'm relaxing at home and watching a show on future air combat. :)

Degree GPA and future plans

Fri, 09 May 2008 21:25:22 GMT

The degree audit tool shows "Program: Complete" for the Networking degree. Nothing surprising for the Spring 2008 grades.. As in all three classes. If I did the math right then it looks like I come out with a GPA of 3.74 for the courses on the degree plan. :) It would have been higher if I'd actually taken Microcomputer Applications instead of CLEPing it but yeah.. I'll live with the difference.

The course list for Fall is up now. I'm toying with some combination of:
----------------------------------------------------
0126676 ITCC-2432-20540 CCNP 1: Advanced Routing
T Th 5:00pm - 7:50pm 08-25-08 12-11-08
----------------------------------------------------
(4-3-2). A study of advanced network deployment
issues and methods used to configure Cisco routers
for effective LAN and WAN traffic management.
Topics include designing scalable internetworks,
managing traffic, configuring OSPF in single and
multiple areas, configuring EIGRP, configuring and
using interior and border gateway routing
protocols, and techniques used for route filtering
and route redirection. Recommended prerequisite:
ITCC 1446, Cisco Certified Newwork Associate
(CCNA) certification, or equivalent knowledge.

----------------------------------------------------
0122244 COSC-1437-26320 Programming Fundamentals II
Online 08-25-08 12-11-08
----------------------------------------------------
(4-3-2) Review of control structures and data
types with emphasis on structured data types.
Applies the object-oriented programming paradigm,
focusing on the definition and use of classes
along with the fundamentals of object-oriented
design. Includes basic analysis of algorithms,
searching and sorting techniques, and an
introduction to software engineering. Recommended
prerequisite: COSC 1436.

----------------------------------------------------
0123767 ITSE-1450-46530 System Analysis and Design
Online 08-25-08 12-11-08
----------------------------------------------------
(4-3-2). Comprehensive introduction to the
planning, design, and construction of computer
information systems using the systems development
life cycle and other appropriate design tools.
(Formerly ITSE 2473) Recommended prerequisite:
COSC 1436.

The Cisco course would be a "just for the hell of it" course. We aren't anywhere near CCNP level where I work. We're not even really a CCNA level network. FoP II and Analysis are both required for the second degree I figured I would work on while I decide what the hell I actually want to do when I grow up. :) I'm not sure about taking three classes at once. I'll have the prof who does Analysis for one of my summer courses so I can get an idea of how she works and maybe quiz her about the workload for Analysis.

There is always the argument that I should start on a bachelors in something but I'm not really sure what and some of the software classes would actually sort of matter for my current job. Not sure I'm ready to do the whole bachelors degree thing. The nice thing about picking up the software degree and working on my CCNA is they are near and medium term things I can see. Provided I'm not a total slack this summer I should be able to get the CCNA and then the Application and Web Development degree would wrap up in Spring 2009.

For now, back to work.

Semester is done

Wed, 07 May 2008 07:13:45 GMT

Well the Spring 2008 semester is now in the record books.

I anticipate As in each of the three classes though I won't know for sure until next week after the grades hit the system. The Cisco stuff was tonight. I got a 92 on the written final which is about what I thought would happen. The skills test I aced. :) I even worked out one of the instructor's Access Control List of doom but it didn't matter since I already had my grade wrapped up.

Supposedly we'll be getting notified about a voucher thing for 50% off the cost of the actual Cisco cert test since we survived the classes.

The rest of this week is going to be relaxing. Next week I'll start doing some studying for the Cisco certification.

Now I'm going to go check in with the vampires and werewolves.

Monday

Tue, 06 May 2008 06:06:18 GMT

Well, Monday was an ok day I suppose. Went to work. Didn't really do much.. reviewed a couple of RFPs, tinkered a bit with mysql-proxy. I really should like my job more than I do. Oh well, it pays the bills which is kind of the point of a job.

After work I went to Starbucks for a while and reviewed for the Cisco final tomorrow. I'm just ready for it to be done. The degree is already locked up.. the Cisco class doesn't apply to it. Actually the degree was locked up last week when I turned in my last lab assignment for the programming class. Taking the final for the programming class was just a formality to get an A in the class instead of a B. Passing was never in danger.

I think I am going to go read a bit. I left the vampires and werewolves annoyed with each other last night.

Yay Friday

Fri, 02 May 2008 20:06:20 GMT

Its Friday again. This is a good thing. :)

Work is just kind of here. I'm sitting outside the office with my laptop working on reviewing "Standard Functional Specifications for Law Enforcement Records Management System, version II". Yeah, its exciting. I'm pretty sure the Master Vehicle Index wants to tell the Master Property Index just what Master Location it can index. Ugh, this shit is so boring I can't even make a good innuendo out of it. Heh.

Don't know what I'm going to do tonight yet. Tomorrow is some Cisco studying and then Iron Man/socializing tomorrow night. Sunday will be more Cisco and taking the final for my programming class. A friend is having an art show opening Sunday afternoon that I might try to make if I can find the place.

you'd think i'd learn

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:06:23 GMT

"i'll just skim the opening pages of New Moon.. *time passes* 5am.. oh hell..zzzz"

Good morning from Hardy Heron

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:51:39 GMT

So after doing lunch with granny today I decided to go by Fry's and pick up a larger drive for my laptop and tonight I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" using the full disk encryption from the alternate CD. Seemed to go well enough. I've had to argue a bit with Flash plugins vs the new sound server and Rhythmbox has a dumbass bug in its default config but other than that its gone well enough.

I'm thinking that once I recover the 40 GB or so of Virtual Machines from the 120 GB drive that I might slick that one and install Windows Vista on it so I can swap operating systems on the laptop from time to time. I dunno. Things like Flash would "just work" on Vista but things like my rsyncs, crons and wallpaper swapping is easier on Ubuntu.

For now, its bed.

Saturday

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:09:35 GMT

Saturday was a good day. It started with me farming some Felcloth for my friend Courtney until the wee hours of the morning, then bed and sleeping until later than planned. After the sleep I went and checked mom's house then picked up Chris and the Red One for Freebirds and movies/homework with Paul and Jessi. It was fun. Now I'm home, listening to the rain and checking out a few things online before bed.

I got "New Moon" tonight from the Red One but I'm going to be good and not start reading it at 4am. :)

nice weather

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:07:34 GMT

The weather is great today. At the moment I'm sitting outside the office reviewing proposals on my laptop. Whee for wifi.

For giggles

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:30:35 GMT

Hey Wes... decided to see what I could price out on Dell's site. By the time I have the money to actually buy a VM hosting machine this rig will probably be more like $2,000 instead of $3,000.

PowerEdge 2950 III:
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5405, 2x6MB Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5405, 2x6MB Cache, 2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB

Memory:
16GB 667MHz (8x2GB), Dual Ranked DIMMs

Primary Controller:
PERC6i SAS RAID Controller, 2x4 Connectors,PCIe, x6 Back

Hard Drive Configuration:
Integrated SAS/SATA RAID 10, PERC 6/i Integrated

250GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive
250GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive
250GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive
250GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in HotPlug Hard Drive

Doing it as 4x500GB drives adds another $800 to it but it would make it 1TB of usable. If I knock it back to a single quad-core proc and only 8GB of RAM that balances adding in the extra disk space.

*sigh* Stupid credit card debt. Heh. I'd have probably already ordered the box. :) I'm being responsible. Damn it.

Know where I'll be Sunday night :)

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:57:21 GMT

PBS' `Carrier': Aboard the USS Nimitz, a 10-hour documentary

"An extraordinary environment," one of the Nimitz's three chaplains sums it up. "We live beneath the runway of a major airport; we live on top of an ammo dump ..."

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=311030&affid=100055
http://www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/

That's new...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:15:44 GMT

Apr 22 18:18:03 willow sendmail[20809]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(michael): can not chdir(/var/spool/clientmqueue/): Permission denied
[root@willow ~]# ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
-rwxr-xr-x 1 michael michael 746328 May 2 2007 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

I seem to have fouled up permissions on the file server in a creative way. Sendmail isn't supposed to be owned by me.

[root@willow ~]# chown root:smmsp /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
[root@willow ~]# chmod g+s /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
[root@willow ~]# ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 746328 May 2 2007 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

Ah.. all is right with the world or at least with the mail subsystem on WILLOW.

Sunday so far

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:04:31 GMT

Today started a little bit before noon with me waking up, looking at the time, saying words some of you shouldn't hear. I got prepped and out the door quickly and headed off to SMU for the faire and presentations that mustangkitty128's class was doing.

With some last minute directions relayed by lifeblender I found Meadows museum and met up with folks. We had a good time looking at the pieces and listening to the presentations. I liked the back-end exhibit they had going on how they did some of the research and restoration for the pieces. They also had a guy (a professor of some sort) playing an old organ which was quite entertaining. The little medieval faire that was going out front had some SCA folks including a guy in an armor set that would have had me melting I think. :)

After that wrapped up I headed home, got a few things at the store and then sat around outside doing some reading for my Cisco class and now I'm going to nuke up some chili and see what is going on in World of Warcraft. After being at the museum today I have a desire to see "The Thomas Crown Affair" again so I'll pop that in later I think or I might tune in Discovery Channel's Alaska stuff.

kaylee upgrade

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:04:19 GMT

Instead of jumping straight to 8.04, I decided to upgrade my to Ubuntu 7.10.

The upgrade went pretty smooth. I had to run System76's special driver app to get sound back and I had to tinker a bit to get some of the fancy desktop effects (due to weak video chip) but otherwise everything seems to be fine.

I now have Thunderbird on the laptop. :) The mail client Evolution and I just don't get along.

I just thought of this.. the Phase 10 label is true now. At every 25th boot or so, I suppose I'll truly be a Gibbon Fscker[1]. :) Yes, you can groan now.

[1] For those looking confused, the codename for 7.10 is Gutsy Gibbon and the laptop runs a disk check (fsck) roughly every 25 boots.

Desktop Effects for Intel video chipset

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:35:17 GMT

http://knowledge76.com/index.php/GutsyCompizIntelX3100

Just a note for me really.. for when I go to reinstall the laptop later. Actually, Carissa.. you might find this useful too.

Yay Friday, almost weekend

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:26:00 GMT

Friday is good. 8 hours to go and then Friday will be better. :) Work is just kind of here. At the moment I'm going over server logs and letting my laptop work on running the Ubunutu 7.04 to 7.10 upgrade.

I don't know what I am going to do tonight yet. I didn' tget much sleep last night and I have to be up early tomorrow so I'm thinking whatever it is won't be super late. Maybe Chilis with folks or something.

Tomorrow is some car maintenance and then "The Forbidden Kingdom" with some friends around 3pm, probably in Grapevine. I was hoping the big fancy screen at the Capri would have it but no dice. With luck I'll get a lot of homework done while waiting for the car so I won't have to worry about that later in the weekend.

Sunday is hopefully to be going over and catching presentation a friend is doing for one of her classes. There has been talk of a trebuchet. :) I should really look up the navigation for that. Getting to SMU isn't hard.. I just gotta figure out where on campus the right parking and building is.

A Letter to Me

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:51:21 GMT

So on the way home there was a song playing called "A Letter to Me" about what a guy would say in a letter to his younger self and I thought the concept was kind of cool, so here goes.

Edit: the song on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6fqtbMHfpXY (Chris, country warning)

Michael,

Hello from yourself in several years. We're going to assume you'll just accept this and not have to deal with an authentication system.

Enjoy the rest of senior year. It really is pretty good. Hang out with the teachers some. By now you're probably finished with plans for going to A&M. We're going to be blunt.. you're going to fuck it up and fuck it up royally. Thats ok though... if you didn't, you wouldn't be where you are today. In the late 90s and early 00s, you'll meet some people online. Some of them are just passing through but years later you'll be thankful every hour of every day that some of them weren't.

After A&M you'll start over at TCC and then you'll fuck that up too but in Moak's hardware class you'll meet a guy who gets you your first "real" job. You'll bounce from tech job to tech job over the years. Enjoy your time at Teknekron.. you work with some cool folks there. When you're temping at Microsoft don't spend money like you'll always be making that kind of salary because you won't. The next job will not be nearly so lucrative. Speaking of that job.. when you're working overnights and daddy goes in the hospital and you think "I'll hit Sandy's with dad next week when he gets out".. don't, because he won't and it'll mess with you from time to time for years.

Late in 2003 you'll get a job offer from a friend. Its going to have its ups and downs. A couple of years into it you'll have to make a choice to stay or to bail for something that is probably more interesting and more stable. I can't really tell you where to go on that.. I chose to stay and from time to time I'm still not sure it was a good idea.

I said you screwed up TCC and you did but you'll fix it. Take the online World History 2 course in Spring 2007, Intro to Web Programming in Summer 2007 and Fundamentals of Programming I in Spring 2008.. you'll meet some cool girls in each one. Beyond that, take the Cisco classes as they fill in some holes in your networking knowledge. Windows Server 2003 with Ehalt is a good class.. nice guy.

Be good with your money.. don't buy random stupid stuff and don't let the credit card get out of control. Try to put some away each month if you can. There will come a time in that job from a friend where you'll have to manage your own tax withholding. Be very serious about it. Being 28 and having to borrow three grand from mom just because you were stupid sucks. :) Yeah, you'll get it paid back fine but just don't do it to start with.

There will come a time when you have the chance to take a trip to Canada. Take it. You get to hang out with some nice folks.

In December of 2005 you'll be pretty down on the whole girls thing. You'll be thinking about two girls you know and wondering if something could happen with either of them. The rules and all signals you can parse will say no. Like a hurricane, a third girl will enter the picture almost by accident. In theory the rules will say dating her isn't a good idea either and, in fact, it won't work but you'll have a good run. The ending doesn't have anything to do with anything you do.. it just happens and will be chaotic but she'll do the best she can. She's a good girl and it is through her that you meet the Tuesday night Starbucks/Saturday night poker people. This is a good thing.

Don't let anyone you know fly in September of 2001. When you move out of mom's, don't get a two bedroom apartment.. you don't need it. :) Look into Magic: The Gathering and D&D. They are fun. When World of Warcraft comes out, get into it. Go to Scarborough Faire. Babylon 5, Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly.. all good. Read more. More than once you'll be likened to a computer.. don't take offense, its just people's reaction to the way you do things.

I can be artistic!

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:01:31 GMT

At work I use MRTG to do some traffic monitoring and I never could remember if blue was in or out so I changed the colors to be Indigo and Orange for in/out. Yes, I'm a dork.

Sunday: Scarborough Faire

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:23:10 GMT

Well this has been a good day. I went to bed around 3:30 this morning, got up about 830 and headed off to Scarby with some friends. Scarborough was a blast... saw a lot of people, heard the Carillon a couple of times and just generally had fun. I never did find The Plague.. I'll have to do better at that. I did however get to see a flight of six Apache helicopters fly over. :) After Faire Vulpine brought me home and I've been doing laundry and watching the second half of The Two Towers.

Now it is Monday morning and I'm going to start shutting down and head to bed. Blah Monday. Heh.

Saturday

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:38:09 GMT

Saturday has been good to me. I got my car inspected (it passed). After the car stuff I did some Cisco studying until time to go play poker with some lovely people. :) Now I'm home and doing some more Cisco homework while watching The Two Towers.

big blue room

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:40:59 GMT

Im doin 65 down one eighty three windows down, lindsay lohan CD bopping even traffic is cooperative. Now to read ACLs while car inspected