this is a raw mental dump

...
hmmmm...
uh, wtf, bbq, i am ____

:(

why do i feel this way?


uh. yeah, i really want to be in a better mood...

subnetting and motorcycles

recently my networking classes have shown a greater interest in my ability to subnet, and because i never really learned it except for the stuff that i picked up on my own, it is becoming harder and harder to do the calculations in my head, and i have been resorting more and more to this lovely chart that i found




the thing is, i mean, i love using this chart, i would love to have one printed out poster size, but i really should try to pack the info into my head, it would be a lot quicker and i would not have to drag a chart around with me all the time.


on to the second part of my blog

i am currently in the process of purchasing a motorcycle, i am getting a great deal on it because sadly it needs a bit of work. to start with, the headlight did not work. after $10 and 4 hours of my time i got it working, i ended up just replacing all the wiring and switch for it. i added a 30 amp inline fuse where i came off the battery and a 3 position 2 throw switch. after some clever wiring i was able to get both high and low beams working.

the other thing that needs fixed is the fork seals need replaced. from what i have read it is possible for me to make the repairs myself, however, i dont know that i really want to do this on my own. it involves taking the whole front of the bike off in order to replace them. i still have about a month before i will be able to ride it because i need to finish paying for it and then i need to get a helmet and get insurance on it so i am thinking that i will take it in for repairs in a couple of weeks and just have a pro replace the seals.

the cube

here are some decent shots of my cube and you can clearly see the fireplace!

fireplace

did i forget to mention that my office has a fireplace? i did? wow, silly me. my office has a wonderful brick fireplace and mantle in it, i love it, the mantle is great for storage and as a book shelf and the fireplace gives my cube a very warm feeling, and provides heat in the winter too! i will post some pictures of my cube in the days to come.

symbol of status

its a right of passage, a symbol of status and rank, an earned hardwood desk in your own office. thats right, i am talking about my desk, in my own office. my office is really a room that i share with another person, we have a divider set up so we call them "cubes" but, it is my office non the less.

keyboards

for late night gaming in the dark there is always this little gem



for that added flair in your keyboard you could try this



if you want a general purpose late night typing keyboard



for those times when you just cant take your hand off the mouse



for people who like everything to be personal to just them



like it when your input devices give you feedback? try this beauty

spinning the tires

Yesterday i had to be at the main office in lancaster for the monthly inter-office meeting, i was the first to arrive, excluding the boss. i was there at 6:50 am, and the rest of the office did not show up until at least 7:10, scoring me bonus points with the boss! we did the meeting, not a ton of fun, i got about 4 assignments for monday but at least i have an idea of what i am doing. after the meeting i hit the highway again, this time heading back to logan to work a full day. i arrived at the clients on time despite the meeting running over, and did what i was supposed to for the day. after work i helped my lady put her motorcycle away and then took care of some stuff at my house, only to return to my ladys to hang out and enjoy a few beverages, went home and crashed on the couch because there is no place to sleep in my room

news bits

if rss is the short version, this will be the rss of that

apple employees sue apple for not providing overtime benefits

spaceX ship fails to launch, CEO says "im hell-bent on making it work"

DEFCON 16 badges are hackable, one idea is a IR virus

'secure' passport containing IC chip cloned in minutes, accepted by authentication system

border patrol wants to scan every bit of data entering and leaving country, VPN's to be made illegal?

bittorrent (the company) canned entire marketing and sales department

hit counters considered 'deceptive' advertising in the UK

do want

the health mug




the mana mug


both for those all night gaming binges when your caffeine must come from a sacred containment vessel

hackery

hack-a-day has a great how-to on making this rgb keypad entry system




part 1

part 2

drifting through reality

this post comes from work, i snuck in a wifi access point and hid it behind a desk and set the disabled SSID broadcast so now i can get online from anywhere with my laptop.

the day is going by really slow as it is only 10:13am EST



since the title of this post is drifting through reality i should talk about the latest stargate atlantis episode: The Deadalus variations.



i have only seen parts of the series up until season five when i started watching every episode. i am working to piece together the rest of the series so i can watch it and get the full story.

in this episode, a ship appears out of no where in orbit above atlantis broadcasting Deadalus IFF. Sheppard, McKay, Ronan and Teyla take a jumper up to investigate. There are no life signs in the ship. McKay opens the bay doors and they head on in, there is only a single jumper in the bay. McKay heads to engineering and starts bringing systems online and detects an energy spike, all of a sudden, there is a flash of white light and atlantis is not showing up on any sensors. they isolate where the energy reading came from and go to investigate, they find a control room that they dont recognize and a bulkhead door that has an interesting lock on in. they open the bulkhead and discover an alternant reality drive behind it. the drive has no off switch and every time it is charged they jump to a parallel universe moving them farther and farther from there own reality. McKay investigates trying to find a way to get them back home and the drive engages, moving them to yet another reality. they find an alien ship in orbit that starts firing on atlantis. Sheppard fires up the asgard beam, taking out the main weapons. the ship launches there fighters on the deadalus with minimal shields, and McKay speeds up the time it takes for the drive to engage, allowing them to escape. the next reality they are less than 2 million kilometers from the sun and need to direct all power to the shields. they do this and it is still not enough power to keep them safe until the next jump, McKay decides the only solution is to devote all energy to the drive and try to force a jump. in doing so they move to the next reality where there is no planet, only an asteroid field, when McKay has a stroke of brilliance. he is able to calibrate the drive to retrace its steps. they use the thrusters to move into a higher orbit when they jump back to the sun and McKay attempts to get the sublight back online to avoid the alien ship in the next reality. they make the next jump and attempt to out run the alien fighters but it is no use, the sublights are barely operational. with the first hit the sublights go completely off line and they are sitting ducks. all of a sudden fighters from atlantis show up and take out the fighters. Sheppard gets to talk to his alternant reality double and then they jump to the planet with no atlantis, just one jump from home. they head down to the hanger bay and an alien starts attacking them. they kill the alien but not before he shoots McKay and pulls the pin on a grenade, depressurising the hanger bay making it impossible to get back to the jumper. they make the jump and atlantis sends out a jumper to help, by the time the jumper gets there the ship jumps and is gone, but there are still 4 life signs waiting where it was. they move in and find that it is Sperrard, McKay, Ronan and Teyla in space suits. back at atlantis we find that McKay has saved all the data about the drive and could build another. Sheppard says no to the idea, but perhaps the people in charge will have other ideas

sweet sound

ever hear a thousand horses at full boar? this skyline has over one thousand horses under its hood and you get to hear it whined out every single one of them

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/139997/nissan_skyline/

weekend status

yesterday i worked on my endian firewall, even got to the point that i was testing it, and again, it decided to keep dropping connections, so for now i am back on the Piece Of Shit belkin and, as always, my network is like a house of cards. i also re-installed windows on my clear machine and attempted to install a wow server on it. today i am back to working on installing this server and i will most likely go over to my ladys house and spend time with her. she has been really upset with me recently (its my fault) so i think that spending some time with her would be a good thing.

who knew

who knew that working 8 hours would be so draining? i had no idea. my first day of work was friday and i was there for 8 hours, plus an hour for lunch. i had plans to write this yesterday after work but when i got home i hit the floor and fell asleep. i did not wake up until 8 this morning, over 14 hours later! i hope that every day is not like this or i will never get anything done. altho, on the upside, i worked 2.5 billable hours on my first day, and to me that is quite impressive. all next week i will be in training classes so i am not looking forward to that but it should not be too bad. today i plan on rebuilding my wow server with the latest repack and building an IRC bot on it to sit in my IRC channel. other than that i hope to relax and try to recover from the week.