mikesdotcom.com

Is that 40 GB in your pocket, or...

I am really enjoying the portable storage benefits of my 40 GB iPod. Earlier I found a bunch of old CD's that I hadn't heard in a while and ripped them into iTunes. Not only is it great to be able to tote around my entire music collection, but I was also able to bring some divx episodes of CSI NY to work with me. Of course I could have done the same with a laptop, but this is much cooler !

iPod

There are many people to blame for this purchase, but the list is too long. Mostly I blame Apple and their intense online marketing campaign. It felt like a crime to have bought an iBook and not have an iPod. I decided that if I was going to get an iPod, i was going all out and getting the 40 GB. My whole music collection after some trimming is currently around 6.6 GB, so I still have room to store some files.

Now I know better

If you are going to buy something from apple.ca, DO NOT pick the free shipping option. Pay the little bit extra and get it shipped properly. For free ground shipping apple.ca will give you a tracking number for Sameday Right-O-Way. My iBook shipped over 8 days ago and this tracking number still doesn't work on their site. It just comes up as: "No shipment information found for shipment xxxxxx." The first time I called customer service for Sameday, they were unable to find ANY information about my shipment. The next time the person was a bit smarter and realized it *might* be an Apple shipment since she couldn't find any info on it. Even then all they could tell me is that Apple shipments *usually* take 7-10 days. They also told me the tracking number will not work until the package is in their facility, which funny enough is a 10 minute drive away from my house !! So the tracking number just might work on the day the package gets delivered. This tracking system they have is great !!

BTW, the non-free shipping option on apple.ca uses FedEx. I'll be doing that when I order my G5 :)

The days festivites

What good is having a blog when you can't share the useless facts of a night out with everyone ?

The Mike's and I had another BCMSN study session, this time primarily on 802.1d and the STP enhancements. We watched a few CBT videos to clarify the two chapters we neglected to read. Then we were off to Sam's Club for a few small purchases and some free food samples. As mentioned in the previous post, Ikea was the next stop. Had a look around, and came to a few realizations. 1) I actually have to start thinking about furniture purchases. 2) I could furnish an entire house in one trip to Ikea. After that we made a swing through Sherway Gardens which turned out to be more uneventful than a tupperware party. It was then that somebody had the amazing idea to head up to Danforth for some Greek dining. Thanks in part to the Dahil taxi service and the TTC, we ended up at Ouzeri. We consumed a platter of Greek dips (tzatziki, skordalia, taramosalta) with some pita, fried calamari, and a mixed platter of lamb, chicken, quail, and sausage. All topped off with over a litre of Turning Leaf Merlot. $140 later, we were on our way.. At this point somebody came up with the bright idea to walk all the way back. Coffee's in hand, we walked from Danforth / Logan all the way back to King / York where Dahil's car was waiting for us.

Now I'm nice and comfortable.. I think it's time for a cup of green tea and an episode of CSI to top the night off.

Only the expensive stuff for me

I wouldn't be caught drinking anything less :) Picked this up in the cafeteria at Ikea after gathering some furnishing ideas for the new digs and having some Swedish meatballs. I hope this company doesn't get dinged with a lawsuit for a copyright infringement.

Ted and Ting

The Story of Ted and Ting

Ted and Ting both work for the same company at a facility in Snellville, Georgia. They work in
the same department; their job is to make lots of widgets. (Widgets are imaginary products; the
term widget is used in the United States often to represent a product when the actual product is
not the topic of discussion.)

Ted worked quickly and was a hard worker. In fact, because he was a very intense person, Ted
tended to make more widgets than anyone else in Snellville, including Ting. Ted also liked to
have everything he needed instantly available when and where he wanted it so that he could
make the widgets more quickly.

Ting, on the other hand, also worked very hard but was much more of a planner. He tended to
think first and then act. Ting planned very well and had all supplies well stocked, including all
the instructions needed to make the different kinds of widgets. In fact, all the information about
how to build each type of widget was on a table by his door. He had a problem with the table
getting “reallocated” (that is, stolen), so he applied a nonremovable label with the words
“Ting’s Table” to the surface so that he could find the table in case someone stole it.
It turns out that Ted’s productivity was partly a result of sitting next to Ting. In fact, Ted often
was ready to make the next widget but needed something, such as the instruction sheet for a
particular unique widget. By swinging into Ting’s office, Ted could be back at it in just a few
seconds. In fact, part of the reason Ting kept the instruction sheets on Ting’s Table by the door
was that he was tired of Ted always interrupting him looking for something.
Well, Ted got lots of bonuses for being the most productive worker, and Ting did not. Being fair,
though, Ted realized that he would not be as successful without Ting, so Ted shared his bonuses
with Ting. (Hey, it’s an imaginary story!)

Then one day the president decided to franchise the company because it was the best widget-
making company in the world. The president, Dr. Rou (pronounced like the word “ouch”),
decided to create a manual to be used by all the franchisees to build their business. So, Dr. Rou
went to the most productive widget maker, Ted, and asked him what he did every day. Along
the way, Dr. Rou noticed that Ted went next door a lot. So, being the bright guy that he was, Dr.
Rou visited Ting next and asked him what he did.

The next day Dr. Rou emerged with the franchise manual. Being an ex–computer networking
professional, he had called the manual “Protocols for Making Widgets.” One part of the
protocol defined how Ted made widgets very quickly. Another part described how Ting kept
everything needed by Ted at arm’s length, including all the instructions that Ted needed. It even
mentioned Ting’s Table as the place to store the instruction sheets. To give credit where credit
was due—but not too much credit—the names of these protocols were as follows:

The “Rou-Ted Protocol”—How to make widgets really quickly

The “Rou-Ting Protocol”—How to plan and collect information so that the other guy
can make widgets fast

The “Rou-Ting Table”—The place to store your widget-making instruction sheets
Similarly, with networking, the routed protocol is the one being routed, such as IP, IPX, OSI,
DECnet, and so forth. The routing protocol is the one preparing the information needed to
perform the routing process quickly, such as RIP, IGRP, OSPF, NLSP, and so forth. The routing
table is where the information needed to perform routing is held, as built by the routing protocol
and used by the routing process to forward the packets of the routed protocol.
That’s all just to distinguish among the terms routed protocol, routing protocol, and
routing table.

Good Day

Today was fairly tame at work, and we had a decent lunch at Big Daddy's on King Street. And the highlight was finally making up my mind and buying an iBook. I ordered the iBook G4 from apple.ca with mostly standard options. I decided to upgrade the RAM afterwards as it will be cheaper. My goal was to get a laptop that was smaller/lighter and had longer battery life than my Dell Inspiron and the iBook wins in both cases. It ships in 3-5 business days for free which was also good.

It's like finding money

I was walking from my car to the GO station this morning, all ready to buy tickets. I had just grabbed my jacket from the closet for the first time this season, and behold I had a 10-ride ticket with 2 rides left in my pocket from back in April. It's going to be a good day.

All taken care of:

In response to:
http://www.scooterboy.ca/mt/archives/000149.html

 Registrar of Record: easyDNS Technologies, Inc.
 Record last updated on 22-Oct-2004.
 Record expires on 21-Oct-2005.
 Record created on 21-Oct-2003.

In light of Cisco BCMSN studies:

I think that I shall never see
A graph as lovely as a tree.
A tree which must be sure to span.
So packets can reach every LAN.
First the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.
Least cost paths from Root are traced.
In the tree these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me.
Then bridges find a spanning tree.

Another installment

The Mike's and I went to Casino Niagara last night. I was able to invest a further $100 into the Casino. They are just holding my money for me, I'll be back one day to withdraw all of my money.

Seems to be working

Looks like the MT-Blacklist plugin for Movable Type is working nicely. It has managed to block a few spam comments. If one slips through the cracks, you can remove it and submit it. This way everyone benefits. The auto-update feature is nice too.

Yes, you are correct

You can stop second guessing yourself, I really am THIS cool. SNMPc network management at home !!

Finally...

I guess all of my effort was wasted trying to setup JUNOS was wasted due to a hardware issue. I bought a new box today, threw in some Intel 100 Pro dual NICs and installed JunOS without a problem.

mike@olive> show version
Hostname: olive
Model: olive
JUNOS Base OS boot [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Base OS Software Suite [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Kernel Software Suite [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Packet Forwarding Engine Support (M20/M40) [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Routing Software Suite [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Online Documentation [6.3R1.3]
JUNOS Crypto Software Suite [6.3R1.3]

Which file extension are you ?

Which File Extension are You?

Nostalgia in a Leisure Suit

Just installed the new Leisure Suit Larry game.. Brings back some good memories of playing the old EGA text interface original of the series. Of course I wasn't quite 18 at the time, as the game suggested. The 3D graphics in this new version are amazing, and the game contains a bunch of games within a game.

No HD here !

I was able to install FreeBSD 5.1 on a 256 MB Compact Flash card. It was an effort to turn the whole thing into a Juniper Olive box. But once I got the JUNOS image on the box there wasn't much room left. I'll have to use a larger CF card.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD olive 5.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE #0: Thu Jun  5 02:55:42 GMT 2003
$ df -h
Filesystem    Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a   225M   147M    60M    71%    /
devfs         1.0K   1.0K     0B   100%    /dev
/dev/ad0s1d   9.4M   2.0K   8.7M     0%    /config

ATDT 911

Found some of my old software laying around... I really miss Telix, and all of the fun I used to have with it. I guess not everyone is going to know what it is. Those that recognize it will know what I am talking about. I wish I was able to find my old CSHOW disks, now that was good stuff !! ;)

Why does MSN Messenger suck this much ?

Not only is the service itself down, the website isn't even up to check the status of the MSN Messenger service. Most likely being overwhelmed by people trying to check. I really regret ditching ICQ sometimes. ICQ just worked, no fancy crap.

I don't see the problem

Is there something wrong with conducting important phone calls in the washroom ? I never thought so...

Dancing Elephants

Turns out Ontario actually wasn't as flat as it is now ! Check out this article HERE... It talks all about the studies that are being done about how Canada's land was a long time ago.

Lima, three, three, tango

Did some more flying in MS Flight Simulator 2004. Mostly with a Cessna 172. Took off from Calgary International, and Brampton.. And then Decided to cruise over Manhattan in a Learjet.

Next Game

As anyone who knows me will swear, I am the furthest thing from a gamer. I prove this on an ongoing basis by many means. My game selection is horrible, my hand-eye co-ordination is comparable to that of a toddler, and I have a desktop PC that solitaire could cause smoke to billow from the CPU.

So to prove myself once again, I will shortly be installing the second CSI game. CSI 2: Dark Motives. It isn't much different from the first installment in this series. The graphics were terrible, the interface was annoying, but the cases were actually fun to see through to the end. The first one wasn't all that challenging however, seeing as I completed all of the cases in two days. But, I am looking forward to giving the second one a shot. My main reason is, I have exhausted any further CSI episodes to watch on my four days off... I just can't find any more that I haven't seen, without stooping down to the level of CSI Miami.

A little R&R

Friday was crazy.. After a long, expensive night drinking at Black Bull some went home and some went to System Soundbar. To make a long story short, I ended up getting home at 11:30am on Saturday morning and sleeping all day. Lots of fun though.