Category: Errata

DuctTape and Popsicle Sticks

So I hear all the time from people how smart they think I am and how much value I bring. I will be honest I have a really hard time with this. I may not be what most would consider humble but I don’t blow sunshine up my own ass either. I am limited, I think we all are. I have so much to learn, I think we all do. I have no patience for stupidity and laziness and that is something I need to work on more, because not everyone is wired like me. But back to the core issue am I really as good as people keep telling me I am? The answer is no.

What I have discovered about myself from 24 years old to 34 years old is that I am really good at connecting dots, DuctTaping a one million dollar product to a five dollar product to accomplish my goals and jamming popsicle sticks into things to re-enforce them and make them work even it it ends up being one of those stupid and lazy peoples asses so they get done what I need done. So no I am not the smartest kid in class just ask any teacher I ever had.

But IT tolerates people like me calling ourselves engineers (even if it is with a small e) when we did not even finish college. I would even go as far as to say that we are often rewarded for not being a capitol E engineer because we are not saddled with the constraints of what can an cannot be done either in general or with a product. I don’t know how many times I have talked to Engineers and said I love that I can do this with your product and I get the response of “You can’t do that with our product.” Clearly they designed it better than they thought. Read more

Quit loosing your KEYS!

I know as a Network professional I should never forget a WPA key. Docs Docs Docs. But tonight I was setting up someone else ‘s computer and forgot our general WPA PSK and did not want to dig for it in the password vault. So I cheated.

In OSX go to Spotlight and type Keychain Access
Then on the right hand side choose the System Option under Keychains
Then select the wireless network you lost your key to, right click and choose “copy password to clipboard”

At this point you will need to jump through the local password hoops but then you can past it into textedit and get back to doing whatever you were doing.

Here is to not loosing your keys and if you do hopefully a way out of the mess.

Storage Wars the Epic Battle Rages On

So tonight as I was getting into bed I did my normal scan twitter to see who I have pissed off or what might be going on that should rob me of sleep.  Well tonight @david_Strebel asked the following questions;

“Who thinks FCoE will win over iSCSI?”  and I responded “Not I” and then David asked the next logical question which was why not and here is what I had to say in the incredible detail that Twitter allows;  “l2 boundaries, specialized hardware other than nics, hate relationship from most network people.”

 

The problem with this answer is pretty clear though.  It does not really answer the question just gives a few power point bullets to appease the crowd.  I don’t feel like this is enough though.  So I am going to attempt to lay out my overall view on this issue of who will win iSCSI or FCoE and why.  For those of you who don’t want to read the whole article which might get a a tad windy I don’t think either will win.  But I don’t think FCoE will emerge as the leader until something better come along.  For those masochists who like this kind of crap read on.

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Moving on up. From VAR to VP.

I left the world of Government employment about six years ago.  At the time I was questioning if I even wanted to keep doing the whole IT thing.  Some people are wired to work for lazy bureaucrats who lie cheat and steal their way through the governmental ranks.  I am not.  That 3.5 year experience  just about broke my will and my desire to succeed.  However I am a bit more resilient than that, and when I landed a job at a consultant with a now defunct Silver VAR it quite laterally changed my life and career.  What I learned was that my desire to succeed and drive solutions was not dead just beaten and bruised. Read more

Stupid Certs

So after a few weeks of messing around with my lab and getting my CCNP study materials ordered, I started prepping for my CCNP this weekend.  My plan was to knock down my CCNP by the January 2011 and then jump right into my CCIE R/S Studies and take my written no later than January of 2012 followed by the Lab no later than July 2012.  While this is all still very doable I ran into an annoying little hangup today.  I do not have my CCNA.  For me this was not a problem considering until a few months ago I had planned on just jumping into my CCIE R/S and it does not require that I pass my CCNA for go for it.  But today as I was looking up some CCNP info I noticed the annoying pre-req of CCNA to achieve my CCNP.  Cisco this is BS.  No other way to cut it.  Really you’ll let me take a run at your largest cert without jumping through knowledge hoop I passed years ago but you won’t let me go for the CCNP (which is the arguably my current point in my career). Read more