Green

It’s been a while since the test, but I did get my green belt in TKD! Woot! (The test was at the end of February.)

Over the past year that I’ve been doing TKD, I’ve noticed that I’m (somewhat) more confident in my forms and kicking. Especially the past month or so since Master Jon got back from Korea. He’s been much stricter, which I think really helps with learning and the “pride” of being associated with his gym.

Lately, Master Jon has started doing “fun” Wednesday nights, which involve material that isn’t what we’d normally cover. For instance he’s taught us some basic nunchuck and mokum techniques. I seriously can’t wait until I get my blue belt and I can start some real weapons training!

DNS relations

A couple days ago my servers were unavailable, not because any actual problem with the server, but with the DNS. Turns out that the domain I was using for the nameserver address expired and someone else registered it. Quite the bummer, but an easy fix by attaching new nameservers to the domain. So now everything is working again for your not-reading-this enjoyment.

xkcd: Advanced Technology

It’s soo funny!

advanced_technology.png

We need no stinkin’ breather!

Where does the weeks go? I have no idea. I just know that each day ends as soon as I wake up.

Break down of a week.

  1. Sunday
    1. Church (2-3)
    2. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  2. Monday
    1. Work (8)
    2. School (2)
    3. Bible Study (2-3)
    4. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  3. Tuesday
    1. School (8-9)
    2. Work (2-3)
    3. Tae Kwon Do (1)
    4. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  4. Wednesday
    1. Work (8-9)
    2. School (1-2)
    3. Tae Kwon Do (1)
    4. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  5. Thursday
    1. Work (6-7)
    2. School (3-4)
    3. Tae Kwon Do (1)
    4. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  6. Friday
    1. Work (8-11)
    2. Homework or Rest (Remainder)
  7. Saturday
    1. Work (5-6)
    2. Homework or Rest (Remainder)

Note that the Rest in “Homework or Rest” includes relaxing and hanging out.

So anywhere from 58 to 70 hours of my week are taking in doing school, work, TKD, or something church related! Considering I set aside roughly 7-8 hours a night for sleep which leaves about 16 hours left to everything else. So each day I have is divided roughly between work 50%, school/homework 35% and rest 15%.

I can’t wait for school to be over.

The Fold - Gravity

The Fold - Gravity

Let’s start at the beginning of this story
I was just a boy with nowhere to call home

There I was building houses on the sand
I could see that I was only running circles in my mind
It just goes on and on and on until it finally catches up to me
Like gravity it takes me round and turns me upside down

That’s when it all came screaming back

Just like gravity, what draws you to me
Someone I didn’t know I needed
It’s like gravity, and it’s stronger than me
I need you here

There you were in your perfection looking on
You see that I can only run in circles for so long
You just press on and on and on until you finally catch a grip on me
Like gravity you take me down and turn me upside down

That’s when it all came screaming back

Just like gravity, what draws you to me
Someone I didn’t know I needed
It’s like gravity, and it’s stronger than me
I need you here

When will you be able to see past your own hands?
I’m taking down, empty pictures that we used to hold close, before you…

That’s when it all came screaming back

Just like gravity, what draws you to me
Someone I didn’t know I needed
It’s like gravity, and it’s stronger than me
I need you here

Thuper Thunday

Because of the new server room and the wiring that it involves, today we shutdown every server and switch because the power was going to be out for a number of hours. It was quite the experience to be in an old bank building basement in the oh so quiet dark!

Working on Sunday’s is very tiring for me since I just don’t get the rest I otherwise would. For me, Sunday’s are one of the few days in the week these days I can do whatever pleases me. Whether that be sleep, hanging out with friends or some other activity I find relaxing/enjoyable. So once the servers were back up and running I came home and promptly crashed on the couch and didn’t wake up until about 9pm when the Big Game was about to end.

Solid B without cracking open a book.

With one of the classes I’m taking this year we have two quizzes a week, thus far I’ve not cracked the books open once and I’ve never gotten less than 80% on any of them. I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Either the course is so far easy, or I know more than I had thought on the subject. While I’m not going to argue with it, it does bother me in that it’s almost like I’m just giving the school money for a piece of paper. I realize that this isn’t their fault, but it kind of bothers me. I mean, what’s the point if I’m already decent at it other then as “proof” I can do it?

Oh well, employers only seem to take notice when you have some degree…or a ton of experience.

Network Mapping: Deuce

Today I realized that most of the addresses that had issues with incorrect locations of the network map may have been related to old and expired reverse DNS entries. Apparently part of our supernet DNS wasn’t being deleting old reverse lookup entries. Of all the misplaced network nodes, the entries seemed to all corresponded to that part of the supernet. We’ll have to wait about a week for the DNS service to finally clean out it’s lists, but I’m hopeful that that’s the reason for the jumping nodes!

Network mapping

I’ve been searching high and low all over the internet for a “network mapper”, something that will find all the nodes on the network, and tell me where they are plugged in on which switch. However even after weeks of searching and even having started my own solution, there is still no hope.

This quest first started simple, get something that will find which ports on which switch go to which nodes. Well you’d think that a simple ARP and mac table gleaning from the switches along with some simple algorithms to find the relations would be all there was. Well you would be wrong, oh so wrong. No, for some reason Nodes A,B,C, and D which should be on Switch B, are showing up on Switches A and R!

Today I did find an application that almost, almost meets my needs. Solarwinds LANsurveyor, is a pretty slick application that scans you network and builds network maps. (It can even export them to Visio!) It also can hook into/launch *VNC application to make your remote computing easier. However the problem I have with it is the same as my own work, it doesn’t give accurate or consistent results as to what is plugged into where. So the search continues!

If any of you fellow techies know of any applications that do what I’m needing, let me know! I’d be super glad to hear it!

Haircut

Last…Tuesday? I finally got a haircut! No more long hippy hair for another few months! There were a number of reason I got it cut, but the most important one was that my hair was getting caught in my fan! It is pretty annoying to be woken up in the middle of the night because your fan is chomping on your hair (and it doesn’t feel that great either)!

I’ll have to find my camera and get some photos uploaded so you can see my new ‘do!