IPSec.  Used in virtual private networks.  Which is how employees access their work networks from home.

Why?  It doesn’t work with NAT firewalls. 

What does everyone have at home?  NAT firewalls.

And cause traffic jams…

Cell phone usage is being blamed for several problems this week as a University of Utah study found that cell phone usage on highways causes traffic jams.

In addition, the French government said mobile handsets can be bad for children, and Massachusetts law enforcement authorities said a hit-and-run fatality was caused by a man text messaging on his cell phone.

David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, said new research not only showed that the cars of drivers talking on cell phones tended to move slower, but also that the conversational activity tends to cause traffic to show down.

“At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,” Strayer said in a statement. “That SOB on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.”

Yeah… was next to a complete moron woman who was texting while driving today.  I just make it a habit now to flick off every single driver I see on a cell phone.  I’d suggest more people do the same thing.

Previous research has already shown that using a cell phone is equivalent to a DUI driver.  Why all the fuss about people driving while drunk, if like 20-30% of the population driving is doing the equivalent at any point in time while driving?  In fact, the studies showed that most drunks were driving better, because they knew they were impaired and drove slower.  While cell phone jacknuts can’t imagine that they’re impaired and just drive horribly.

I’d like to see the user interface redesigned.  No keyboard, no mouse.

Your input controls will be a Wii like nunchuck and a DDR mat.

Want to move somewhere?  Walk on the mat with a 1:1 distance scale.  You’re gonna fight those boars a coupla hundred yards over?  Yeah, that’s a couple hundred steps.  Start sword fighting with the nunchuck remote like you’re actually… sword fighting.

yesterday I submitted a trouble-ticket that my work email was down. A few mins ago the tech support guy IMd me…

————-

(10:49:44) Babu V: This is Babu from GTRC

(10:50:02) Babu V: This is regarding your outlook issue

(10:50:05) Jason Mc: howdy

(10:50:13) Jason Mc: actually thunderbird/webmail, but yes

(10:50:33) Babu V: I sent mail regarding this

(10:51:06) Jason Mc: uh, you sent me an email about my broken email account?

(10:52:02) Jason Mc: and AT&T tech support has been sending me text messages about my broken phone?

(10:53:53) Babu V: still your not able to receive the maulS?

(10:54:00) Babu V: mails

(10:54:03) Jason Mc: nope

(10:54:38) Babu V: you tried my steps in mail which i had sent

(10:55:02) Jason Mc: dude, if I can’t get email how would I follow the steps you emailed me?

(10:55:18) Babu V: sorry,

(10:55:37) Jason Mc: np, it’s just kinda funny

(10:56:04) Jason Mc: in a “throwing the drowning man the whole rope, and not just one end” sorta way

(11:15:47) Babu V: Open Outlook.

From the menu bar, select File > New > Outlook Data File.

[BLAH BLAH DELETED]

(11:16:44) Babu V: pls creat personal folder & move your mails to that folder

(11:17:03) Jason Mc: well that’s great, except as I mentioned

1) I’m running thunderbird (in linux)

2) scalix webmail doesn’t work, either (sj-webmail-8)

his [deleted] answer was thorough, easy to understand, and had nothing to do with my problem. wheee

Visit the Updated List of Fred Thompson Supporters at Flopping Aces for all the various bloggers and other folks who are all for Fred Thompson…

Man using GPS drives into path of train

A Global Positioning System can tell a driver a lot of things — but apparently not when a train is coming.

A computer consultant driving a rental car drove onto train tracks Wednesday using the instructions his GPS unit gave him. A train was barreling toward him, but he escaped in time and no one was injured.

Don’t hire this schmuck or any other computer ‘tard… I mean, “consultant”… who puts so much faith in technology such as this.  Or you’ll find your business/project is in front of the barreling train also.

Lets talk simple here.  Virtualization in computer systems is where one computer can run multiple virtual machines.  A host operating system of some sort runs an application that creates walled off sections of memory, disk, and CPU resources (The virtual machine), presents a fake BIOS, and lets you load an operating system inside that VM.  The entire computer exists only in that virtual section.  When it isn’t running, it’s simply a giant file on the disk.  When it does run, a big chunk of memory and CPU cycles are now not available for things outside that virtual machine.

Virtual machines can be a wonderful thing.  If you understand what you are doing.  If you have a limited hardware budget (but not software budget!) you can get less machines, and assign multiple separate systems to a single piece of hardware.  In my current environment, we have an entire virtual Windows domain consisting of a multiple domain controllers, a SQL server cluster, an Exchange server cluster, multiple Office Communicator Servers, Symantec IM Manager relay servers, workstation clients, a Blackberry server, and other systems.  All this on 6 pieces of hardware.

Works great for one reason: our hardware all have 4 CPUs and 4 GB memory on each box.  And because the domain is for development testing purposes only.  Each virtual machine runs slow because there is only 100% of CPU time to go around.  And the host operating system takes up a few percent of that, lets say 10%.  So now you’re splitting 90% CPU with 4-6 different virtual machines.  If one of the virtual machines is busy, the other virtual machines on that system suffer for it.  So ensuring that each virtual machine plays nice with the other ones is critical.

You don’t magically gain resources you didn’t pay for.  And unless the software license allows you to, you don’t get the software for free.  Just because you paid for the host OS running Windows Server, doesn’t mean that by default you can use 4 copies of Windows Server in virtual machines.  Or the anti-virus installed on each virtual machine (you can’t forget AV!).  But if you have things like an MSDN license for software and have a set of systems that have low horsepower requirements, building them into virtual machines may be a very good idea.

We had a case here where another group was supporting the web application that employees use to sign up for benefits on a yearly basis.  They have this one Java application that processes the business logic that was very slow.  Now, they could run this on multiple computers to get better performance and reliability.  That’s a great idea.  What isn’t a great idea in this case was to simply use the original computer, add virtual machines, and install this app on each virtual machine.  That java application now ran slower than ever.  Performance was absolutely horrible for the employees trying to sign up for benefits.  All because someone thought they would be getting something for nothing.  If you’re already using all your CPU, you’re not going to benefit by adding overhead for the host OS and each of the virtual machine’s OS also!

Lets think about a situation where having a virtual machine in a production environment may be good.  Disaster recovery for a Windows network.  Backing up a domain controller, although better now with Windows 2003 and higher, can still be pretty hit or miss.  Restoring a domain controller in a cold backup site with nothing but blank systems can be a nightmare.  Years ago we had a DR test failure every year with restoring a domain controller when doing a cold site restore, then would take out a laptop we had loaded with the AD domain on it specifically for the test.  For those that think that this is easy, we were using completely different brands of hardware, and could never know what we would be restoring to.  Hardware RAID controllers plus a system state backup to work from made things very very tough with Windows 2k.

But imagine this scenario:  In your home environment, you have a virtual machine running Windows Server that is a domain controller with a copy of the entire domain on it.  Since most virtual machines are scriptable from the host operating system, you can have the virtual DC’s OS shut down every night, copy that virtual hard drive that exists simply as a file to tape, and then restart the virtual DC’s OS.

When a warm/cold site DR situation happens, you simply take whatever hardware is provided for you, load the virtualization software such as VMWare, Microsoft Virtual Server, or even Virtual PC, restore that one single virtual hard drive file, then start it up.  You’re entire Active Directory will be online within 15-20 minutes.  I’d highly recommend this type of solution to any organization that requires this type of scenario

Click on the pic and see what you can find.

So it’s been a while since I wrote a history of myself post.  So I’m due.

Since Jason and Kim stopped by over the weekend for a visit, I think this one will be about why he hates Tarot cards.

So I used to read Tarot cards for people. 

Mostly as a get to know chicks thing.  Because no girl I have ever met could resist.  And from just flipping over 10 random cards, you’re going to know what you need to know about her. 

You flip a card, and she’ll relate it to if she has a boyfriend or not.  What she thinks about this and that, what her feelings are towards certain subjects that may be important, etc.

Trust me guys, if you’re looking for a way to pick up women, learn to read Tarot.

But basically the whole thing is mostly a party trick.  I learned that after the first few cards, you could tailor whatever the final cards are towards a coherent reading based solely on the feedback you get from the first few flips.  The back and forth feedback as part of the discussion between you and the person being read gives you a storyline to work with.

Except this one time…

Myself, Jason, and a few friends went off to see Rocky Horror up in Allentown PA one Saturday night.  After that we were staying at a friend of his who was having a big get together.

The show is great, we get to the house, and there’s like 30 people there.  A nice turn out.  At one point Jason mentioned that I can read Tarot for people and that my cards were in my bag in the car.  I wasn’t really interested at the time but what the hell, I got them and set up in the basement.  Someone was nice enough to bring me my own personal party ball of beer.  Good thing too, my throat got awfully dry doing reading after reading…

I must have read cards for every woman at the party.  Every single one up to the last one went according to the normal plan and were unremarkable.  Lots of guys getting lucky that night from what I remember the typical outcome being…

Finally the last person!!!

I had no idea who she was.  Dark hair and very pretty.  But my throat was sore from hours of talking.  I was almost out of beer and pretty tired.

I was ready for one last quick reading.  But this one was different.  She didn’t tell me anything more than her name.  No feedback.  No back and forth at all.  So I just let the default definitions for each card be told.

New guy in your life…  Not a good thing though… use care in an upcoming relationship, take it slow…

At the end of this reading, she thanked me and went back upstairs…

Finally done, I was able to socialize a little and find a quiet corner to crash.

<Kick> <Kick> It’s now morning and Jason is telling me its time to leave, but he didn’t seem happy.  He was rather annoyed about something, I had no idea what that could be.  The entire two hour ride home was very quiet and uncomfortable.  Until he told me what was wrong…

What I didn’t know at the time was that the night before Jason was upstairs, putting his trademarked moves (don’t ask) on this one Irish Italian girl.  Things were going well for him when someone came up and told her it was her turn to get her cards read.  Her whole attitude had changed when she came back upstairs.  Colder, resistant to any advances.  He got nowhere that night.  Finally before he left to look for me and go in the morning she told him what her Tarot card reading said…

The 10 Manliest Firearms.

Not a bad list from Michael Z Williamson.

Forgot one though:

I would so shoot that just to enjoy the looks of people staring at me.