The Initial Problem: I've got a customer who has an existing LAN. He wants to add a public access point in his office. He's a doctor so he can't just let the wireless users have free reign on the LAN, they must only have internet access.
Solution A: Insert a new wireless router between the cable modem and the exisiting router. Then set up the exisisting router as a DMZ host on the new router so any traffic will get passed to it.
The Problem with Solution A: This puts the wireless router in the wrong position physically.
Solution A Revision 2: If a wired router is inserted instead, a wireless access point could be added to it. This has additional costs I would like to avoid.
Solution B: Obtain a second IP address from the cable company and put a switch between the cable modem and the routher. Assign the second IP address to the wireless router. This may be a less costly solution in the long run, but I don't remember how much the cable company charges for additional IP addresses for businesses.
I'd appreciate any additional suggestions.
It's 8:30 am on a Wednesday morning, and I'm already homicidal. That's bad.
I just got off the phone with ValueWeb, a hosting company I currently have 2 dedicated servers with. It's their fault. I will enthusiastically recommend that you never, ever use their Dedicated Hosting.
Not really fried, but it gets your attention, doesn't it? About a month ago, Alex chewed up the power cord for Homestar, my laptop. Amazingly, she wasn't injured, even though it was plugged in at the time.
I finally got annoyed enough at looking at it just sitting there to try and repair the cord myself. I still don't have the money to pick up another power supply for $65-$75.
Twenty minutes and about two feet of electrical tape later, I have a working power supply again. It's not a long term solution, since I didn't feel like looking for the soldering iron, but it works for now. And there's enough tape on it to hold it together, unless you really want to break it again.
What's the first thing I do with it after getting it running again? Reformat and try to install the lastest Vista build. We'll see how that goes.
From The A to Z of Programmer Predilections:
Word Salad Warren
Unlike Uri, Warren's native tongue is English; but it does him little good. Listening to Warren explain something technical is like listening to Dr Seuss - all the words make sense when taken individually, but assembled together they seem to be mostly gibberish with no coherent message. Such is Warren's talent for obfuscation, he can take simple concepts and make them sound complex; take complex topics and make them sound entirely incomprehensible. ...
This was just too beautiful not to share, so here it is, almost in it's entirety.
From The Day Programmer vs. The Night Programmer:
Over the years I've come to the belief that there are two kinds of programmer in the world, no matter what technology they work with, lets call them:
- Day Programmers
- Night Programmers
Now - day programmers are the most prevalent in this industry, and you find them mostly in organisations which have historically tolerated a certain amount of inefficiency. Day programmers have the following characteristics:
- They are mostly led and seldom lead.
- The have trouble coping with complexity.
- They cannot visualise a solution.
- They don't load their development tools at home.
- Typically don't participate in the development community.
- See programming as "just a job".
If you are a night programmer, you probably have trouble understanding why a day programmer even entered the industry, and the reason is because they are motivated by different things than you are. The characteristics of a night programmer are:
- They mostly lead (or drag kicking and screaming).
- They develop deep understandings of complex things.
- They can visualise a solution and have a sixth sense around design.
- They load the alpha/ctp/beta version of tools at home.
- They participate in user groups and mailing lists.
- See programming is as vital to them as breathing air.
If you are a day programmer, you look at the night programmer and think that they don't have a life. And you laugh at them when they come in excited about some cool new trick they can do in the framework.
I definately fall in the Night Programmer category. I do, in fact, often have trouble understanding why a day programmer even entered the industry.
There is also a further post in that blog on clarifications of the first post.
I just came across an article via the Journals at ArsTechnica that offers a sharp contrast to the environment I work in.
From Solitaire Game Gets NYC Worker Fired:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't playing games â€â after he saw a game of solitaire on a city employee's computer screen, he fired him.
...
"It wasn't like I spent hours and hours a day playing, because I had plenty to do," Greenwood said. "If I had been working at something exhaustively for two hours, I might get a cup of coffee and play for a minute but then go right back to my work."
There are several people at my work, including management, that subscribe to this sort of philosophy (the "playing games on short breaks is ok" one). Personally, I'm not big on solitaire during breaks, but I have been known to browse websites when I get frustrated with what I'm working on.
My big problem is have trouble telling if I'm goofing off or not. Mostly because what a lot of the websites I read for fun are also informational and pertain in some way to what I get paid for.
It would be interesting though to see something like Mayor Bloomberg's idea of how an office should be run implemented at my work:
Bloomberg, who left his financial information company for politics in 2001, managed Bloomberg LP with a style that has become his signature. He created an office setup, which he repeated at City Hall, where everyone sits together in an open-air environment â€â an arrangement that facilitates communication and eliminates fooling around.
I got in the check cards for HolosTek on Tuesday. They were fine. I got the actual checks today. They were not fine. The address was totally wrong (granted, it was the address on the paperwork we had to give them, but still inaccurate and they were told that) and it looked like crap. Below is a summary of what was on them, with some small modifications for privacy reasons.
What kind of person writes a phone number like that? It needs to have some sort of formatting in it. I mentioned something about it being centered too, but don't know if anything will be done about that.
But, they took those back and are having them corrected. Now I just have to wait another two weeks.
4055553825
5555 NW 55TH TER
Bethany, OK 73008
This was too good not to share with others that don't read SlashDot (which usually includes me).
From Free software? You can't just give it away:
A little while ago, I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them.
I wrote back, politely explaining the principles of copyleft â€✠that the software was free, both as in speech and as in price, and that people copying and redistributing it was a feature, not a bug. I said that selling verbatim copies of Firefox on physical media was absolutely fine with us, and we would like her to return any confiscated CDs and allow us to continue with our plan for world domination (or words to that effect).
Unfortunately, this was not well received. Her reply was incredulous:
"I can't believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to. Is this really the case?" she asked.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
I felt somewhat unnerved at being held responsible for the disintegration of the UK anti-piracy system. Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?
Mozilla (and Firefox as a derivative work) are released (mostly) under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). The MPL falls somewhere between a GPL (somewhat restrictive, non commercial) and the BSD license (less restrictive than a regular copyright). As a side note, I like the AFL (Academic Free License) which is a BSD-style license. I've released a couple of programs under the AFL.
From Health concerns limit wireless Internet at Lakehead University
There are many benefits to studying at Lakehead University. Ubiquitous wireless Internet access, however, isn’t one of them.
That’s because president Fred Gilbert won’t allow it until he’s satisfied EMF (electric and magnetic fields) exposure doesn’t pose a health risk, particularly to young people.
...
“All I’m saying is while the jury’s out on this one, I’m not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students,†he said. “Admittedly that’s highest around the locations of the antenna sites and the wireless hotspots, but those are the places people tend to gravitate to because they get the best reception.â€Â
I'm not sure what to say. If this is true (and no, I don't believe it is), I'm going to die of cancer, but not from smoking like everyone says. I spend around 3/4 of the day within 20 feet of a wi-fi antennae between home and work.
And through this all, I'm having a hard time not referencing South Park, where all Canadians have "beady eyes and floppy heads". Too late.
I wonder if Mr. Gilbert owns a cell phone. Probably not.
I was cleaning out some of my bookmarks, all 10 of them, and found this article in there. It's old, but it still amuses me.
From: Outsourcing Rejection on Salon.com
When I launched into the actual interview, it really pissed them off. They'd get furious that the freaking receptionist had the audacity to waste their time by ... And then round about question 5 it would dawn on them that this was the interview. I could hear the quick catch in their speech as it hit them, and the sick pause as they thought back over how they'd been behaving for the past several minutes. It was the attempts at damage control that I really found hilarious. Suddenly, we were best pals. They almost always thought that using my first name as much as possible might somehow make up for their earlier suggestion that I make it snappy. Too late, Mr. Jenkins.
