Seriously, the guy needs to find something better to do with his time. As many have said before, the guy is just crazy and wrong:
Living Like Jason Bourne
If somebody’s looking for something to buy me for my birthday, Christmas, or whatever, this book would go on the list. From the excerpts and commentary here it sounds like a fascinating read on how you can live like a super spy: multiple passports, Swiss banks, hiding your money (like I have any to hide), crossing borders, etc… .
That’s One Rude Monkey
Don’t let its cuteness fool you…
The Demise Of The View-master
I read with a bit of sadness to see that the View-master is pretty much going away as I loved those little disks. My grandparents (and now my parents) have quite a collection of old View-master disks from when they were younger, even some from a long while ago when Petersen Rock Gardens didn’t look so dilapidated (don’t get me wrong, it still looks decent, but nothing like it does on those little disks). I used to love going to grandmas and pouring through the box of disks they had, seeing far off locales and stories that I’d never seen before (all in psuedo-3D).
I’m going to have to dig those old things out and look through them again — they’ll probably be collectors items soon.
Router != Switch (or: Just because the plug fits doesn’t mean it’s right)
So the other day I was trying to troubleshoot a network issue at the office (which is always fun, as it’s usually something stupid that requires far too much time to figure out but only 30 seconds to fix). There were a couple computers in the office that couldn’t get onto the Internet. After checking the obvious (that the cable is plugged in properly), I head into the command line to try to ping our firewall, with no luck. I check to see what the IP address for the machine is (and to see if it even had a proper one) and noticed that it was in the 10.x.x.x subnet.
Since our entire network is on the 192.168.1.x subnet, I had no idea why this machine had a 10.x.x.x IP address. Just to make sure the network card was working OK, I manually changed the IP address back to an IP in the office subnet, manually putting in the OpenDNS IP addresses, and got online fine. But the minute I put the computer back to auto-detecting IP settings, it reverted back to 10.x.x.x, and couldn’t get online. I verified that the DHCP server on the network was running properly (it was), so it was either a) a weird thing is Vista that I’ve never come across or b) It was getting its IP address from somewhere else.
I assumed “b)” and installed Wireshark to look for DHCP handshakes and sure enough, there was another DHCP server running in the building somewhere that was overriding my DHCP server (which is basically a dd-wrt router, since that particular office is trying to phase out their Windows Domain/DHCP server).
So the hunt began for the rogue network device. After a bit of searching around the office, I found an old Zyxel wireless router (with a sticker from the long-defunct Unicom) buried under some wires in the corner of an office underneath a desk. It was plugged in where there used to be a switch (no idea what happened to the little five-port switch). Somebody must have figured that “Hey, this thing has network ports on it, it must work to connect all these random cables together.” And it would have probably worked fine, if somebody would’ve turned off the DHCP server on the thing. And it was only affecting a few of the folks in the office as the rest hadn’t renewed their DHCP request yet, so they still had the 192.168.1.x addresses.
But like I said before, pain to figure out, easy to fix.
So for future reference, just because it looks like a switch, and just because the the network cables fit, does not mean you should just randomly plug it in. Especially if it has a big ol’ antenna sticking out of the top if it.
The First Weekend Of March Madness Is Over
While Tasmanian_devils had sole possession of the lead yesterday in the pick ’em, after the second day of round two, he has some company: everybody’s favorite food critic. The two of them are tied with four folks right on their taile (and many more within striking distance). Everybody’s still kickin’ my butt, including my boss, brother, and bojack. TheDren has already locked up the last-place prize and will be getting his t-shirt sometime — whenever I get around to it (next year, I’m going to have the last-place prize be something good so more people try to “win” it).
As usual, the spreadsheet has been updated.
Round 2 Day 1 Is Over
The first day of round two in the pick ’em is over, and we have a new leader: Tasmainian_devils jumped from the middle of the pack to sole possession of the lead. There are four folks who are right on his tail, and pretty much everybody is kicking my butt. The games tomorrow will certainly mix things up a bit.
The spreadsheet has been updated if you want to see day-by-day scoring.
Round 1 Is Over
Round one of the pick ’em is over with a bunch of great upsets (which totally screwed my bracket, as I’m minus one Final Four team). We have a new leader with Monkeyinabox and 206Huskies tied for first. Which each game over the weekend worth two points, it’ll start to separate out some more. The spreadsheet and pretty graph has been updated.
I wasn’t following it as much through the day as I would’ve liked this evening, as my wife and I have gotten addicted to the British TV series MI-5 (aka Spooks) and we’ve been catching up on past seasons of that — Netflix Instant is awesome.
Pick ’em Day 1 Wrap Up
Day one of the pick ’em is over, and after 16 games played, we actually had somebody that picked all 16 of them correctly (even the 12-5 upset). So congrats to Homersolo for picking every game right today. There are three folks that picked 15 of them right today, and then six more that picked 14 right (the full scoring is all here). I did remove one bracket from the list, as only three of the games were picked, so they were not only not going to win, but they weren’t going to lose (The Dren appears to be well on his way to wrapping that up again — maybe I should make the prize for last place a bit better next time to encourage the fine art of sucking). Things are tight now, but things will start to spread out more this weekend as more games are played with more point values starting on Saturday.
As long as I beat my boss, that’s all that matters to me. And right now, I am, if only by a point.
Glad To Hear I’m Not The Only One
I thought I was nuts that I had this dream, but I’m not alone