I have a plan.

I’ve had a ‘home network’ for a while now. But it isn’t much of a network. Mostly a few PC’s and a couple of wireless laptops connected the internet. Throw in a few network printers for good measure and you get the picture.

This doesn’t really cut it for the geek in me. And to tell you the truth, it’s not really working as well as it should for the rest of us either. What we need here is a real network. Luckily, I know I network engineer. (It’s me. Really. I don’t need to find any one else.)

What I have is one P4 Desktop, 3 P3 Desktops, 2 laptops and one 200GB external drive . The plan is this. Take one P3 and make it a w2k3 Server and attach the external drive to it. One of the other P3s is already set up to be a VM Server. I will add a Ubuntu LAMP Server VM and a Windows XP VM. THe final P3 will be set up with EDUbuntu for the kids. My P4 desktop will be formated and I’ll install Kubuntu on it. The laptops are already good to go.

I’ll share out some folders from the external drive. The Printers too.

And then I’ll be set. I’ll be able to work from either my desktop or my laptop equally, my wife will be able to access my MP3’s and I’ll have the XP VM to fall back on if I find something that just needs windows (or the kids do.) I’ll use the LAMP server to work on some PHP/MySQL databases. You know for all that important data I have. Seriously, I see full relational databases in the future for my comic book collection and my movie library.

Why? Cause I’m a geek that’s why.

I’ll bore you with updates as they are available.

Sometimes blogging seems like such a chore.

(I can hear you, you know. You just said, ‘Then why do you do it?’ I’ve answered that question before, and I suppose I will again. But not today.)

Anyhow.

It does.

I figured out what is going on with my foot. If you’ll recall I my right foot was causing me pain when I ran. I took the week before Christmas off from running to give it chance to recover. I also bought a new pair of sneakers. My foot hadn’t been bothering me at all, so I went to the gym to give myself my ritual torture on the treadmill.

As soon as I started the pain started up. What’s worse, it throws of my stride. Instead of running evenly, I extend my left leg correctly, but take a short step with my right. I guess it hurts less that way. I tried to concentrate on running evenly, but I found that I kept favoring the left foot. This means that I was pulling at all kinds of muscles and tendons that don’t usually get used this way. By the time I had run for 30 minutes, I was no good. I stepped off the treadmill and was barely able to walk.

When I got home, I examined my foot closely. I poked all the bones and everything felt okay, nothing fractured. I knew something was going on, this has been bothering me for weeks. I poked and prodded some more until I found the exact spot that the pain radiated from. It was the joint between the middle toe and the main bone in my foot.

Suddenly I realized exactly when I had injured it. I was switching from a brisk walk to a jog on the treadmill and stepped awkwardly, as I had anticipated the run a moment before the treadmill was up to speed. Turf Toe. That’s what I have. The good news is now I know how to treat it. The bad news is I may be a week or more with out running.

It’s funny in a way. Being the football fan that I am, I’ve seen players suffer through turf toe. It can keep them out for weeks. Fans always question it, how bad could it be, it just a toe. Now I understand. Luckily, I suppose, it’s not my big toe.

I’ll be taking Advil and the rest of the Celebrex that I have and combining that with keeping my foot elevated for an hour or two each night. With any luck, I’ll be able to run soon. In the mean time, I need to find a way to burn some calories.

I may have to resort to something like the dreaded yoga.

Dear Santa,

My name is G and I would like to tell you a little about myself before I tell you what I want for christmas. I am 5 years old and I am in kindergarten. I go to Elementary School. I have a Mom and a Dad and a brother named S who is helping me write this letter. I also have some ? for you. How is the weather at the north pole? Are you feeling happy? Are you decorated for christmas yet? How is Mrs. Claus? Am I on the good list?

Now I want to tell you what I want for christmas. I want a Superman toy and a Fantastic 4 toy, I would like a coloring book, RoboRaptor, math cards Superman InflatoSuit, Green Day Music, Rescue Pet toy, Backyardigans toy, Shake and Go cars, Kids Pop Microphone, Cars Videogame, SpeedStacks, Science Book, Green Day Poster for christmas.

From G

Enjoy your Holiday.

I’m in a shitty mood this morning. Of course, it is almost afternoon. This isn’t helping my mood out at all. But none of that matters.

From inside my skull:

I’ve been looking a bit at the new Vista OS. It’s pretty good, of course it ought to be after 5 years or so of development. I have been planning to make some changes to my ’supercomputer.’ Initially, I was thinking of putting some flavor of Ubuntu on it, but now I’m considering Vista. Linux or Vista? There are good reasons for both. I love the whole Open Source thing and the implied geekiness that goes with Linux, but Vista is new and shiny. Plus, sooner or later I’ll be supporting Vista at work, the more familiar I am with the better off I’ll be. At the moment, I’m totally undecided.

I can’t help thinking that we haven’t seen the worst of this Iraqi sitiuation yet.

There are all kinds of playoff implications in todays games. Not only in the NFL but in my Fantasy Football League. So in addition to the Ravens, I’ll be rooting for LT, Jerricho Cotchery and Eli Manning.

Monday Night Football presents me with a unique dilemma Assuming the Ravens win today. If Indy wins, the Ravens clinch the AFC North. If Cincy wins we clinch the Playoffs but not the AFCN. However we will move into Second Place in the overall standings in the AFC. I think I’ll just go with my gut here and root against Cincinattica.

I really need to go backpacking. This mild weather has only made this fact more obvious to me. Spring cannot get here fast enough.

The middle of next week will mark the shortest day of the year. I look forward to it, only so I can start seeing the days get longer again. All this darkness puts a hurting on my psyche.

I hurt my foot while running the other week. Nothing serious, but it does hurt when i put my weight on it. I kept running each day, hoping that it would work itself out. It did not. I believe that my sneakers were the culprit. So I switched shoes, but the pain is still there. And there is nothing more pathetic than seeing a middle aged guy hobbling along in a half run-half limp on the treadmill. I bought some new running shoes this weekend, which in the long run should help. My problem is what to do about the short term. I don’t run on the weekends, so it has had a chance to heal some, but if it still hurts tomorrow, I’ll have to make some choices. Either I just take a week off, I use the Elliptical Machines for a week (which will put less strain on my foot, but causes my knees problems,) or I just keep running. None of those are great options.

Every time I hear about Hilary Clinton getting ready to run for President, it makes me happy. Not for any particular reason, it just feels like a good thing.

I am sick of work. Luckily I’ll get the last week of the year off. Hopefully, I can come back re-charged.

Work. Gym. Sleep.

Sometime it feels like that’s all there is.

I hate the short days and long nights. I hate the gray skies. Even this recent wave of warm weather can’t fix that.

The answer, for me anyhow, is to escape, just a little, every now or then. I have a few avenues for escape. Music is one. My comic books are another.

Of course, any time I try to talk to any one about comic books they roll their eyes at me. I guess grown ups aren’t supposed to read comic books.

But they are a perfect little escape for me. I have a stack of comic books I haven’t read yet. Every day on my lunch break, I read one or two and I read a couple before I go to sleep.

These books let me wonder if Iron Man or Captain America will come out on top in their War. You didn’t even know that there was a war, did you? Will Charles Xavier ever regain his powers? Who is X-23?

Better to think about those things, than to be bogged down by a job that honestly isn’t going anywhere.

Besides Batman, Wolverine, Marvel Girl and the rest are badass.

As you may know, I go to the gym. At least I try to.

Sometimes I let life and work and stuff become excuses and then I don ‘t go.

This fall was particularly bad for that. I didn’t go, to speak of, during September, October or November. And I suffered for it. Soon I was slipping back into bad eating habits. Going out for lunch, instead of packing a sandwich; late night snacks; feasting during football. And I packed on a few pounds, fifteen or so.

That was bad enough, but there was more. My energy levels slipped away. I felt tired all the time. Hell, I felt like shit. So two weeks ago I decided that it was time to do something about it. I went back to the gym and I ran. By the time I’d gone a mile I thought my heart would explode. After two miles I was sure I couldn’t go on. But I forced myself. I ran for 40 minutes and covered over three miles. Not good enough to get me on the track team, but it would do.

It’s gotten a little easier since that first day, but I’m still not to where I was in the summer. I haven’t lost but a pound or two, but I do feel better.

Aging is such a bitch. Once upon a time I could eat like a pig and not gain a pound. I was so skinny you count my ribs from a distance. (I wasn’t in good shape, but I was skinny.) Those days are gone. If I want to be in shape, I am going to have to work for it.

I know, you’re thinking, Duh, of course you have to work for it. It didn’t used to be that way for me. I am so unused to have to work at this. The thing that kills me is after I lose the weight i want to lose, I will still need to do this.

So I keep going back. I am determined. (And this time, even when I’ve lost the weight, I’ll keep going.)

Is privacy important?

The nature of this question keeps changing. Should we sacrifice a little privacy to make the world safer? To make it more convenient?

It seems that this question is no longer academic for me.

At work we got a new piece of equipment. A network analyzer to go with our firewall. Our Network Analyst, who is responsible for the firewall has been testing it out.

It seems that there is very little information that is hidden from him.

Oh. I know the information has always been there, for anyone with the right tools and enough time. But this has raised the stakes. He can read in near real time what you are saying on IM or what web page your are reading. Who you are logged in as.

If he were inclined, he could know just about anything I did on line, with no more effort than you are expending to read this blog.

He let our Network Engineers know about the capabilities of this device by reading verbatim an IM conversation between to of them.

The reaction in the room was unanimous: Fuck this.

Like I said, we know that nothing is safe or secret in the electronic world. We know that better than most people. We also know the pure volume of stuff happening on the network at any given moment should mean that whatever we do is just part of the noise.

Not anymore.

Of course, the argument always goes— if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Like most old arguments, it’s dead wrong.

Typical Chat conversation:

jeckles:dude
shutter:what’s up!
jeckles:that meeting was lame!
shutter:oh yeah?
jeckles:fuck yeah. you should have heard the dumbass shit that so and so was saying.
shutter:hahahhaha. I know so and so is such a tool… why do they invite him to those meetings
jeckles:to make me nuts, I think

Harmless. Just a little venting between co-workers. I’m sure it happens all the time. But what if ’so and so’ got access to the logs of the analyzer? Yeah. That would be bad.

And even if I refrained from criticizing or insulting anyone on IM, would it still be OK?

No.

Imagine if your boss offered you overtime to work on a project. You declined because you had plans for the weekend. You don’t tell your boss that your plans are to watch all 12 hours of LotR, its none of her business. But when you tell your buddy about your plans and she sees the logs…

What if some one was planning to quit? That’s not illegal or immoral, yet you wouldn’t want anyone at work to no about it before you told them.

The scenarios are endless. The fact remains that recording personal conversations is wrong. It’s probably legal, but what’s legal and what’s right often don’t line up.

There is a need to monitor what happens on a network and to control the kinds of traffic that is on the network. But there has to be a way to do it without spying on your own employees. I’d rather have IM blocked than monitored.

So what happened at work?

We downloaded and install a tool to encrypt our IM. Our Network Analysts blocked our IM. Our CIO said, “You guys can encrypt it? Send me the link.” Our Analyst backed off.

But this isn’t going to go away.

What should you take out of this? Two things.

Protect your privacy. If you think you have nothing to hide, you underestimate the ill will people can possess.

And if you IM me while I’m at work, assume what ever you type is being read. Cause it probably is.

Actually, no one asked.

But I don’t care. I’ll tell you anyway.

Remember that Laptop I was working with? Dell was kind enough to send me a new (or at least new to me) CD/DVD drive as well as a hard drive. And to my surprise, they worked great. Before long I had Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft installed and everything is looking peachy.

I was pleased to see that the wireless adapter was recognized by the OS. I started trying to connect to my wireless network, but there were no options for WPA security. This was no good. I did a little research and found that WPA security isn’t available in the base install of Kubuntu.

I installed and configured Knetworkmanger and tried that. And it looked like it would work. But as it attempted to connect to my network, it hung at 28% and got no further. I tried a number of other things, but the results remained the same until I manage to change enough settings and the networking completely. I got frustrated and walked away.

But I don’t give up that easy. I reinstalled Kubuntu and and began looking around again. It occurred to me that I never actually connected to any network with the wireless card. I turned the security off and tried to connect to the wireless network. Still no dice.

More research. Perhaps the firmware to the wireless wasn’t installed correctly. I found some steps to correct that and followed them. I tried to connect. Success.

I reconfigured the security and tried again.

No dice. It took me a few minutes to consider it, but it came to me that I keep my SSID hidden. I enabled SSID broadcast and tried again. It connected like a champ.

As a matter of fact, I sit here now in front of the TV (Watching The Search for Spock) connected in just that fashion.

I’m sure no one is as impressed with me as I am, but then again, I don’t care about that either.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Christmas, this time of year. Not so much the what am I going to get nor what I plan to give. I think more about how does Christmas fit into my life and that of my family.

I guess for most people, that kind of thing is just a given. For me it’s harder. I’m an atheist.

Before we go any further, let’s talk about that statement.

I’m an atheist. By that I mean I don’t believe in god. I do NOT mean that I am sick of religion, that I am immoral, that I hate Christians, that I am trying to make some sort of statement, that deep down inside I really do believe. I have people try to assign those things to me, but they do not apply. I just don’t believe. Sorry. I’ve thought a lot about it during the course of my life. I’ve read huge chunks of the Bible as well as parts of the Koran, some Hindu and Buddhist works, the Book of Mormon and even several issues of the Watchtower. I’ve read and I’ve examined my thoughts and beliefs. But at the end of the day, I just don’t believe.

Having said that, part of me feels like I have no right to celebrate Christmas. It’s a Christian Holiday, why would I celebrate? To be honest, at first the only reason I did celebrate it was for the kids. Actually, that’s not even true. I did it for my mother. She would have been ruined if I didn’t give my kids Christmas.

So we had Christmas. At least most of it. Christmas Tree, presents in the morning, lights on the house. No church. No Jesus. I do mention to my kids that a lot of people are celebrating the birth of Christ. They should be aware of that. But you’ll find no Nativity Scenes at the Jeckles household.

The funny thing is this, I found that I enjoyed it. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed it a lot. I guess a lot of my objections to Christmas as a teenager and a young adult came from the obligatory Church Services. They made me feel so uncomfortable and so unwelcome. But as I started my Christmas traditions with my own family I was able to really enjoy them.

At first, I felt guilty for celebrating. Like I was an impostor or something. But as I look around, it occurs to me that there are really two holidays that happen at the same time. The Christian Christmas with it’s Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. Shepherds, wisemen and angels. But there is another Christmas. The secular Christmas. A holiday of Santa Claus and Rudolph. Of Lights and food. Of gift giving.

I choose to celebrate the latter.

There are aspects of this time of year that bother me. And if I have nothing else to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I do not work retail any more. No one should have to suffer through that. I have many reasons to dislike Christmas. But I choose not to let it get the best of me. I think I need Christmas, and not for the reason you might guess.

I suffer in the winter. I need the sunlight. The short days and the gray skies fill me with despair. But these last few years, the years I have celebrated Christmas my way with my family, I have found that when it seems that the darkness will overwhelm me, there is light.

There is light everywhere. Christmas Trees. Lamp post with lighted wreaths. And miles and miles of lights strung out through the neighborhoods.

Christmas is not perfect for me. I guess nothing is. But it brings light to the darkest days of the year. And for me, that is reason enough to celebrate.

I have been seriously questioning why I still doing this.

I think that most of the people who used to read this have moved on.
And writing it feels like a chore.

I go through cycles on this shit. Hot and cold.

Right now, I feeling cold.

I sit down to post something, but don’t. I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like reading the well meaning comment from people who don’t understand what I’m trying to say.

Like this post. I’m not look for someone to talk me into keep blogging. Shit. That’s the last thing I want.

When I started doing this, I wanted a place to put my thoughts out there and that was it. But it’s changed. Once people started reading, that changed everything. Then I started thinking about what the readers thought.

The problem, I suppose, is that I really don’t like people.

I really don’t. As I am sitting here trying to type this, this buffoon I work with is trying to give me his malformed opinion of a presentation/meeting we had at work. It’s taking all of the strength I have not to say, “I don’t give a shit what you think. Shut up and leave alone, can’t you see me typing here.”

I guess that makes me not a nice person. I kind of wish I were a nice person, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. I am who I am. I am a product of the events that have shaped me and there isn’t much to be done about it.

Back to the point, Blogging seems to be an interactive/community kind of thing. My general dislike for people doesn’t work well with that.

So I ask myself, should I keep doing this and just say fuck ‘em, when the other bloggers rub me the wrong way? Or should I pack it up and try something else?

I don’t know. Not right now anyway.

I’m not here to make friends. I’m not here to get your approval. I’m not here to fit in to some sort of community. And I’m not here to be judged.

I’m here to say what I think. And recently, that seems more trouble than it’s worth.