Anthropology

Posted on by Michael

Lisa Catto presented today at the showcase.

Her presentation was well done. It was personal, thoughtful and had a point. I don’t know that I’ve thought about Anthropology, dead people or bones much before – so I appreciated the diversity of critical thought. It is only natural to assume that people might object to their ancestors being dug up and studied, but again, those thought don’t make it on the nerd-radar much 😉

Lisa, like myself, is completing a 2nd degree here at WOU and is doing it while working. That is a significant accomplishment, and I was happy to see her enjoying her success.

Showcase

Posted on by Michael

Today, Christina and Adam and I presented for the Academic Excellence Showcase.

Adam displayed his remote-access ham radio and functionality.
Christina and I showed off games we’d made with varied software/libraries.

I was pleased with the showcase. Students seemed reasonably engaged, and Faculty shut down classes so that all students could attend. As the day progressed, student attendance INCREASED – the opposite of my expectation.

Adam and Christina both did a great job. It’s not easy presenting in front of so many people, but I was proud of both of them.

I, still struggling with the sense that I could have done more, am tired. I have reached the end of a significant season in my life. Faced with a new season (and turning 30) this summer, I look questioningly into the future.

Was it worth it?
What did I learn?
Where am I going?
Who am I?
What’s for lunch?

These questions continue to drive me on. I continue to expect great things.

ICND2

Posted on by Michael

Ah, and now for Round 2.
ICND1 & ICND2 are the core requirements to take the CCNA exam. Paul and I didn’t take these classes for certification, but I believe with moderate study, we could pass them. In the end, the certification (cert) is nice to have so that people outside the department/university have a common understanding of your background.

ICND2 was focused almost completely on routing. We talked about RIP, IS-IS (not really), OSPF, IGRP, EIGRP, RIP v2 AND Frame relay, EGP (BGP), …
As we do basically zero routing on-campus, we lacked a lot of practical application for this training immediately, but the information is still very valuable. We also dug into IPv6 briefly and set it up on two lab routers.

Overall I was quite pleased with the training. The first week was a bit slower than the second, but our familiarity with the material and smaller class size allowed us to move through the 2nd week material more quickly. We spent time asking the trainer site-specific questions allowing us to take the moderately theoretical information and help apply it to our customized environment.

I’ll tell you what – design is a big deal. There is only about 12 different ways to setup any one network, so I’m glad we work closely with Cisco on our continued network design so that we are able to incorporate best practices while leveraging existing equipment.

I’m looking forward to additional training opportunities in the future. We’ll have a few more before TOO long…

ICND1

Posted on by Michael

Paul and I went to Lake Oswego two weeks ago for a training class: Cisco’s ICND1.

For Paul and I this was really kind of a “networking fundamentals” class. We assumed that we knew about 80% of it, but were really going to make sure. We learned quite a bit. Members of OHSU were also in our class, as the current trend of telcom & networking merges continue.

We also got a ton of practice at subnetting (Class A, Class B, networks, ip addresses, broadcast, …). AND I actually USED that training today to build some firewall rules. Amazing…
Additionally we covered VLANs and brushed over routing. All-in-all, it was very educational.

Unfortunately the venue was changed at the last minute to a windowless, highly AC’ed room with 20-minute chairs. Bleah.
We survived, and went back for another round…

The time draweth nigh…

Posted on by Michael

Graduation rapidly approaches.
June is like 5-6 weeks away.
I have every intention of graduating. I finished all my paperwork, paid all my fees. I reorganized my ducks into correct rows. Now it’s time to finish my projects.

Project 1:
You know, I was actually up late last night pounding away on this. Debugging is the worst, cuz you can waste like an hour+ on something dumb and then yell and scream at your computer (even though you wrote the code…) and go to bed. Oh well, I made lots of progress, and even killed my first bad guy last night!

Project 2:
At this point, I no longer need this project to graduate, but have become so interested with it, that I can’t help myself.
I am following this guide to setup an Oracle RAC (11g, OEL, iSCSCI SAN, …)

Basically the project is to setup an Oracle Database on multiple computers, to provide high-availability (aka if either computer crashes everything is still up). The computers are called nodes, and they are joined together into a cluster. The cluster relies on a SAN (Storage Area Network – aka shared storage) provided via iSCSI (over the network).

The problem is that I’m doing it on a Mac Mini. There are some inherent issues:

  1. The nodes all run Linux – Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) to be exact. Version 5.x does not really like the Mac Mini’s USB ports, so you have to boot off the CD and hope it picks the USB port that the keyboard is plugged into. You CANNOT have a KVM plugged into the Mini during install, and you may have to try all 4 USB ports to get it to work.

  2. You cannot install OEL directly onto the Mac hardware. After months of testing, I found that the easiest way to succeed was to install the Mac OS, then install OEL on top of the Mac OS, deleting only the Linux partitions, and the MAC partition. This is a very weird process. Apparently the Mac Hardware needs the 200MB Fat partition to boot?

  3. The Mac Mini only has one (1) Gigabit Ethernet port. Oracle RAC nodes are required to have 2, so I’m using USB network adapters (successfully). Unfortunately I don’t have very many, so the size of my RAC is limited.

People think I’m crazy to spend so much time and effort making these little Mini’s do something useful, but I just love them. I have like 10+ on my desk, and I’m hoping for many more. I’d like to build a little cloud or something with them. Only time will tell.

First impressions…

Posted on by Michael

Well, the day has come at last.

The iPad has arrived.
We all knew it was coming. For some, it loomed like an ominous weekend to Aunt Betty’s… For others, it was Christmas in July. Only time will tell.

So on Delivery-Day, we had one walk into the office. Adam and I got to touch it, play with it and stream some video. Interesting toy.

Here are my thoughts:

  • Nice screen

  • Good touch

  • Plenty of capabilities

  • Backwards compatible with the iTouch (who ever thought you’d hear the words backward and iTouch in the same sentence…

  • Responsive

Any my other thoughts:

  • Once you’ve held it for 5 minutes, you’ll realize that iPad needs to go on a diet.

  • EVERYTHING (literally) on the iPad is connected to or through iTunes. OK – that’s not fair. I was able to turn it on without an iTunes account. But I think that was all…

  • Propriety video-out (seriously Apple, you’re killing us here) – AND it only exports video for “presentation-based” apps. Why?

  • No Flash. Seriously? How I am supposed to entertain myself on addictinggames.com?

That’s enough of my thoughts…

In the end, my only comment was “Shiny!”. But seriously, we know Apple can deliver that. How about some web-standards? Interoperability compliance? And a stomach-rest for my aching wrists?

I don’t know, man. I was looking at a Kindle – primarily cuz it could read to me. But to pay twice as much for color, wireless, apps, etc…

Will iPad give Kindle a run for it’s money? Can Flash survive the next decade? Will Chiropractors around the world become mega-rich?
Find out next time on: this blog here…. at some point… I mean when I get around to it… or … you know…

New Term

Posted on by Michael

Today, I disabled some p2p file-sharers.
I used the same tool to fix some out-of-date Sophos AV installations.

I’ve been working with folks to organize projects and make sure that they are delivered on time.
We hired a new programmer!
I got Project setup, so devs can now use that to keep themselves organized and on-track. I’ll be able to glance at the whole department, so that’s useful for me.

I have two more projects to finish for my masters degree. June is just around the corner!

Very soon, I should be able to configure comments for the Course Approval system, which many folks are looking forward to…

VDI

Posted on by Michael

On Wednesday, Richard Lowe and I gave our Sun-based VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) presentation for our Masters in MIS (Management and Information Systems) final project.

I have begun to compile information here.

The presentation was well-received and well attended. We had CS faculty, UCS staff and some students. I was a little disappointed that other groups of people were unable to attend (meeting conflicts, …) but felt that the demonstration went very well.

Ryan and I both helped Richard with various setup, logistics and testing tasks – though he was the definitive project lead. I will continue to compile resources at the above URL as I receive and complete them.

UCS has “scheduled” basic setup and testing upon the completion of some pending tasks.

Hands-on

Posted on by Michael

Today Gabe and I went down to the Physical Plant to work on a machine that had virus/spyware issues.

We covered some advanced topics of Task Manager, msconfig, Command Prompt, virus hiding locations, and removal tools. We left the machine to scan (as it takes a bit, especially with older machines). After being cleaned, if we continue to receive notifications that it is misbehaving, we’ll be forced to re-image the whole computer.

Lance also mentioned that we’ve had a much higher number of tasks than usual for viruses in the last 2+ weeks. I hope that if that trend continues we can find an efficient way to clean the machines that does not require re-imaging them.

Fingerprints…

Posted on by Michael

So I recently got a Dell Studio One 19 (All-in-One) with a Touchscreen. Super cute.

Initially I purchased it as a networking monitoring tool, that I could do a great deal of R&D with. We quickly found a myriad of uses and possible applications for this cute tool.

How is the touch? Not perfect, but it works pretty well. I can’t get any of the multi-touch options working yet, but hope to soon. Also, the dock they provide is NOT customizable AT ALL. Lame.

Anyway, it’s a success so far, and I’m working with it to learn more. We have a SUPER cool idea for the WUC, so we’ll see how that turns out 🙂