For all my IT friends:
Who knows of good MCSE resources for self-teaching? I figure I know most of the basics for most of the tests, but need to brush up on specifics and those things that I don’t work with regularly. I already have the O’Reilly book for the core tests, but what else is out there?
Crossposted with klech.netAnyone who isn’t big into SCO-UNIX can probably just skip this entry.
So: I’m trying to transfer a file from a SCO-UNIX machine to a Windows machine using Termulator II. It’s on a serial connection, so I know it’s going to take a million years. I’m hoping for it to finish before Monday night so I can FTP the data to where it needs to go by Tuesday morning.
I’ve tarred the files and am trying to use HSEND to bring it to the Windows machine. Remotely, to add a challenge. The client is about 100 miles away and I can’t get into their office before Tuesday morning anyway, and that would be a bad time to start a massive serial data transfer.
What I’m getting is the transfer dying and claiming to be canceled by the host after 2035 bytes or so. The kicker is that it looks like I have five or six different HSEND binaries, and a couple of them give a memory error and core dump.
So: is all knowledge really contained on the internets?
Crossposted with klech.netIntelligent Memory? I’ll take a couple of 1GB sticks, please, thanks.
Seriously, this is one of those exciting (yet totally nerdy) developments you hear of occasionally that, more of then than not, comes to nothing. If it works out like they say it could, I’m guessing that this is another one of those things that is going to help push the envelope on smaller, lighter computing, like OLEDs. Makes me wonder if the solid state flash hard drive is going to be a sort of intermediary between hard drives and this memristor stuff.
Or, it could be a bunch of vaporware.* Coming soon on a memristor disk, Duke Nuke ‘Em Forever!
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*Seriously, my browser spell check recognizes “vaporware” but not “memristor.”
Crossposted with klech.netSeems like some gremlins got into Linksys/Cisco when they were putting together their 16 port gigabit switch, because holy crap I’ve replaced a lot of those lately. Some reviewer on NewEgg indicated that Linksys brand stuff has a lifetime warranty, which I really hope is correct, because I am going to have some really cheesed off clients if that’s not the case. And I really, really hope it’s just something funky with the 16 port line, because I am going to hate life if all of their stuff decides to take a shit around the 15 month mark.
Then again, I doubt they’ll be very happy either.
Anyway, that’s also not very fair to Linksys. A bent fiber optic receptor port on a rare-as-rare-gets PCI card made my Monday run really long. Plus a dead hard drive. And a PC case fan that was noisily giving up the ghost. And a SNAFU with my work phone that has left me with a different phone number for the next day or so.
But yeah, otherwise, great day. How about you?
Crossposted with klech.netI was sitting here thinking I had nothing to blog about, and then I got on the phone with Symantec to try to get a downgrade license for a client so that they could not install Symantec Endpoint 11, which they had been basically forced to buy, and keep going with Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 which has worked pretty well for them up until now.
See… If you have practically any Symantec product, you have to pay them every year so that you can keep getting antivirus definition updates. Without those updates, your definitions get out of date and any new, pernicious porn downloaders you accidentally wind up with won’t be seen as viruses and cleaned properly. It’s a pretty good racket, as they go in the computer world.
The problem recently is that Symantec massively revamped their software and would only let you upgrade to that new version when it came time to renew the license. Some tech support wonk actually told one of my co-workers that we needed an entire server just to run the Symantec Server Console on it. And, after field testing a couple of times, we realized they were right. So, if we wanted to use it properly, we needed to convince our clients to buy a second server, just to run their little six computer network.
Riiiiiight.
Getting our clients to buy a new server for their mission-critical stuff is like pulling teeth. Getting them to buy a whole ‘nother server just to run their anti-virus software? Not in a million, billion years. Not until redundant servers become the new red sports car status symbols for dentists, anyway.
What’s funny is that Symantec apparently realizes this, even if their development team doesn’t, and in order to keep that hot licensing money flowing in, they’re happily sending out downgrade license files. The tech support dude I talked to today even said I could take the PDF certificate I get in e-mail and forward it back to Symantec, requesting a downgrade license.
Next they’ll just offer it on the website.
I do find it interesting that as the IT industry matures, they’re learning this really odd lesson that a lot of people are happy with what they have and what they know. Only Apple really seems to be able to get people excited about fancier icons in the next upgrade, but even they faced a pretty intense backlash on the release of Leopard, in part because it crashed a bunch of iMacs, but also because it was just unnecessary (with the exception of Time Machine, I think). But Vista has been the poster child for this kind of thing, and so many people are clinging to XP that I think Microsoft is going to have a hard time shaking it.
And the thing is, the computer interface is getting to the point that, barring a major jump forward in how we interact with the software, there’s not that much more you can do with operating systems but rearrange the furniture. I’m sure there’s tons of kernel-, and driver-level stuff that can be improved, optimized for a 64-bit, multi-core world… but beyond that, I think all the software providers need to take a really hard look at just what an upgrade needs in order to be an upgrade.
Because I’m tired of upgrades breaking shit, solely in the name of filling the processor/RAM/storage vacuum that Moore’s Law provides.
I’m hopeful for the recent speculation that the next version of Windows may be more modular and subscription-based. So long as it doesn’t get silly (”Start button? That’ll be $5 more dollars. Oh, and you want to use a keyboard?”), it could be an excellent way of allowing people to maintain a familiar environment and functionality while giving the hardcore feature geeks something to go out and adopt early. Hell, Microsoft will probably jack it up somehow.
But, a man can dream.
Crossposted with klech.netEveryone else is, so why not me?
My response, then, to Scalzi’s unsolicited advice to writers about money:
Cool. Wish I’d thought of the “putting away half of all writing income” a while ago, but that’s the learning curve, I suppose, but otherwise I’m more or less on track.
As far as quitting the day job goes… I’m of two minds. The job doesn’t offer a lot of built-in incentives other than the 401(k) matching, but there are quite a few intangibles, including a ridiculous amount of personal freedom for a job that pays so well. The downside of that, of course, is the ridiculous amount of driving, and the hellish state of roads in Michigan in the winter.
So there’s no little appeal to the idea of not having to drive further than the daycare on most workdays.
The last year-plus has been a tremendous learning experience in terms of how to manage the writing as a business; I feel like we’ve got a handle on it now, which in turn makes me think the time might be ripe for a transition to freelancing. My ideal situation would be to make a measured withdrawal from the day job, which seems to be at least theoretically possible given the company’s flexibility (and the inability of the salesman for my territory to make significant sales lately). Eventually, I could break it down to working for them just a day or two a week, perhaps.
But I don’t think I’d want to leave IT entirely. I think I would still want to stay in the game, either as a contractor to my current employers or as an otherwise self-employed consultant working locally. Mostly, I think it would be a nice safety net for if the writing dried up suddenly or somesuch.
Especially after this winter, though, I’m really really really not interested in experiencing another one on the road every day.
Crossposted with klech.netIn case you aren’t aware, a recap on my current career: I work as an IT Consultant for a company that provides computer hardware, software, and wiring/mounting solutions for… dentists. It’s actually a pretty cool sector for technology, what with all the digital imaging advances going on, and all the young dentists getting out of school and all excited about the advances. It’s fun, and I get paid well. The downside?
You see US-127, right about the middle of the state? Basically divide the state along that line, and I get everything to the west of that line. There’s one other guy who lives in the Grand Rapids area to help me out, and all the wiring is handled by guys who cover the state from the Detroit area–so I could have it worse. But… I still drive a ton.
Working on about 4700 miles this month, especially since I’m going to end the month driving down to the office (near Auburn Hills, just north of Detroit) for a mandatory personnel meeting. The good news, is the 4500 miles gets translated into dollars for maintenance, plus the gas is paid for. But it also means I have to be rigorous with upkeep on the car, and I depend utterly on it running well and being safe to drive in. Had a minor crisis back in January when my trusty Explorer gave up the ghost on I-96 on the way down to Jackson. So, I bought a Chevy HHR to replace it (real overall mileage has been about 26mpg–even though I don’t pay for gas it’s nice to keep emissions down). Almost 30,000 miles on it since then, incidentally.
Today, I’m sitting in the service lobby of the dealer waiting for them to replace a tire and do a basic maintenance package thingy. The tire, because I seem to have hit a pothole last week and Sunday my wife happened to notice a cancerous bulge in the sidewall. Yeah, not going to do 70mph on the freeway with that kind weakness in the rubber. I’ll be doing around 300 miles today, almost all freeway, and the last thing I need is that thing giving out on a cloverleaf ramp somewhere.
So, it’s 10am, and I’ve yet to actually start my day. Good thing my boss knows how this goes. Good thing the service lobby has wireless.
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