Category: Technology

Pave Paradise and Put Up More Data Centers

Posted on by chappyshi

It griefs me to see how much the area by my office has changed.  My office is in a data center in a complex of four buildings, nearby is what was once the Verizon HQ which has a few large building, and Amazon has data centers in the area.  As of this time last year, there were 6.5 million square feet, about 107 acres, of data center floor space in my area, which is Ashburn, VA, one of the wealthiest areas of the country w/ very high property values.  The fact that there are so many data centers here already makes it cheaper to build more data centers in the area.  With the property values as they are, the fact that companies can afford to host data centers here means they must be making a good profit though one of the reasons they do build here is because we have some of the cheapest electricity in the country.  Why that would be I don’t know.

As Ed can attest to, there was a fair amount of undeveloped land in the area….not virgin forest by any stretch of the imagination but there were maybe 500 acres of unused land.  As I watch day by day and month by month, construction (or destruction) vehicles, rip up the trees and bushes to clear the land to build more data centers.  It was particularly unsettling to watch, as I sat at a stop light near my office, the destruction of some very lovely flowering trees.  More than likely, that section of land will be cleared by the end of this coming week.

I don’t understand why we need all these data centers.  What is all this data for?  Where is it coming from…besides Facebook?  What good is all this data?  Can it really make life better for humanity?  I doubt it.  And what about the damage to the environment.  We’ll see more erosion, convert less carbon dioxide to oxygen, diminish habitat for God’s creatures, and certainly not improve the views.  It takes power to run all these computers in the data centers.  Then it takes power to cool down the computers in the data centers.  As of last year, there was 676 megawatts of commissioned power for data center use in Ashburn.

I don’t know what that means really or how it translates into say… powering homes.  I am still trying to figure that one out.  I do know that it seems like a waste of resources.  As regards that data, I am not keeping my personally created files out there in someone’s data center so whatever all this is for, it isn’t benefiting me.  Given that, is it really benefiting that many of us that is worth the expense and resources.  I would venture to say no.

Got Gloves or Mittens?

Posted on by chappyshi

I saw an advertisement for those packages that you rip open to expose the interior to air so it heats up to warm your hands or other body parts as desired.  Really?

HOTHANDS

The FAQs say the innards are all natural and biodegradable.  I don’t know about the packaging but I am going to say it probably isn’t readily biodegradable.  Even if it is, what the hell ever happened to gloves and mittens?

One Year at My New Job

Posted on by chappyshi

Last night marked one complete year at my job w/ Lockheed Martin Automated Flight Service Station.  I have been working the service desk and network operation/security center…on 12-hour night watches for most of the last six months.  I started as a contractor and got signed on full time w/ LM in late April.  The schedule and hard work have payed off.  I have been in line for a promotion to a systems administrator type position for a few months now.

I look forward to the change and opportunity to get back more heavily into Windows and Linux systems administration since that is more my background than help desk and NOC support.  I also will be glad to get back on to a day schedule that will be mostly Mon-Fri with flex time and telecommuting.  The down side is that I will have on call duty but that isn’t anything I haven’t dealt with in previous IT jobs.

My superiors seem to have a lot of faith in me and my coworkers respect me.  I hope to be able to return those feelings by helping our group to grow with increased training, organization, and communication.  Wish me luck!

Life Is a Fist Up the Ass

Posted on by chappyshi

My new apartment management company (at least the 3d since I have been here for six years) decided they needed to issue new parking passes.  This was  because, in this advanced computerized day and age, the new company couldn’t import the previous company’s records into their database.  And in this advanced age they only issue the permits that you have to hang from your mirror.  This is an impediment to my site picture as far as I am concerned.  It is even worse on my motorcycle because I really have no secure place to hang it and riding with it hanging from my rear view mirror is just not an option.

Anyhow, to get the permit, I had to provide a copy of my  vehicle registration.  Well  I re-register as required every two years but I don’t know what the hell I do with the registration cards.  Oddly, I found the one for my car in my glove compartment but the one for my motorcycle was  nowhere to be found.  So I thought, “Cool, I have one of the registration cards.”

Well, I left that one in my car and down the line cleaned out my car and added whatever paper products to my recycling and took that to the recycling center.  Next thing you know I couldn’t find my car registration.  Crunch time…I had to get the stickers by 9/1.   So, on the last day of the month, bad time to be at the DMV, I drop in at 1400 or so.  Thankfully the line was moving well.  I got a bit freaked out when the woman who was setting us up w/ paperwork and such gave me some forms that asked for information I did not have with me.  All I wanted to get was reprints of my vehicle registration cards….  So I filled out as much of the paperwork as I could and  waited for my number.

When my number came up, I went up to the counter and was pleasantly surprised to find that my request, after I explained what it was, was easily and quickly fulfilled.  I paid 2$ each for the reprints and marched right out of that place.

It was not much later that  afternoon when I got myself ensconced in a chair in the rental office to get my vehicle parking permits.  I handed my paperwork over to the clerk who was inputting my vehicle information when she stopped to ask me if I could have the same license plate for both my car  and motorcycle.  I said, “No, of course not” and looked at the printouts of the registration only to find that the DMV clerk printed out two copies of my car registration and none of my motorcycle registration.  The rental management company, thankfully, and aware of the folly of trying to hang vehicle parking permits from motorcycles, has  said that they will not be towing motorcycles.

So where is the fist up the ass?  I don’t know but I hope it isn’t near me.  I just want to say that the whole process felt like getting one.  And then this evening when emptying my grocery bag, the environmentally considerate one, I found my car registration car.  Fistulator, eh?

Order Disorder

Posted on by chappyshi

I ordered concert tickets earlier this evening.  It costs less, for me, $2.75 vice $4.75, to have them snail mailed to me than to have them emailed…  What is up with that?  The seller has  to pay for the ink, paper, and postage for snail mail and for next to nothing to email.  Apparently most people  pay no attention and just have the tickets emailed to themselves at nearly twice the price of having them sent via the postal service.  Ticket sellers are…wait for it…winning!

Lost Emails

Posted on by chappyshi

Last night before going to work I noticed that I hadn’t got any email since about 1500.  Not that I get that much email but it seemed a bit odd.  This morning after work and early this afternoon when I got up, I still had no new mail.  I checked my quota on my mail hosting service and had used less than half of my quota.  I saw from my Gmail account that forwards mail to my hosting service that my forwards were getting rejected due to a full mail box.

Well that was puzzling.  After contacting tech support, I found that I had not used up the physical capacity of my mail box but had reached the limit of the number of messages I could have in my mailbox, which was 3000.  The tech kindly upped my quota to 6000.

I asked him what good the record of physical usage was if the quota was based both on that and the number of messages.  He said that I had to monitor the number of messages in my account via webmail.  I asked if there was any kind of alerting to let users know when they were nearing either quota and was told that there was not.

Thankfully, I am not trying to run a business using this email because the lost emails could cost me money.  I think I would have to change hosting services were I to have a business dependent on email.  I think that my hosting service needs to reconsider its approach.

Anyhow, I did not get email for about 24 hours starting yesterday at 1500 so I you sent me an email between then and now, please resend it.

Just Another Web Scam…Read the Fine Print

Posted on by chappyshi

Watch out for these guys.  I am not sure how they got me but they have been getting me for quite a while.  I am likely to flush $350 down the toilet because I wasn’t watching a credit card I almost never use.  I take the blame for that definitely but I still want my money back from these assholes:

MVQ*24PROTECTPLUS

Here is their “claim to fame,” “raison d’existence,” or really their “how can we screw you now without you knowing it until we have sucked some bucks out of you” statement:

“24 Protect Plus members can enjoy greater peace of mind through a variety of benefits designed to provide greater security and protection for their homes, family members, finances, pets, cars and more.  As a 24Protect Plus member, you can protect your family budget as well, thanks to more than $1,500 in savings each membership year.”

What the hell does that mean?  I obviously missed a check box somewhere and/or did not read the fine print and, as I well admit, didn’t look at my credit card statement carefully enough.  Nonetheless, I cannot see how any responsible enforcer of business law could find a reason why anyone would sign up for this “service.”  Look at the web site…what services are they providing that one would pay a monthly fee for?

I tried to get some money back from these assholes but will be lucky if I get 20% out of it.  I will be taking this one further because there are certainly others out there that have been sucked in to the same scam.  And I don’t like taking it without lube…

Sl “apps” Happy iPhone Users

Posted on by chappyshi

In the Washington Post article, “iPhone Apps for the Traveler,” dated May 16, 2010, Ross Arbes, endorses 15 apps for the iPhone using traveler.  I will comment on a few of them.

  • Maps – Buy a hard copy or print something out from Google or Mapquest or just access the sites on your iPhone.  Do we really need an app to replace competent services that are available to us on our web enabled device?  Familiarize yourself with where you are going before you get there.  It is generally very beneficial.
  • Cheap Gas (free) – First of all, cheap gas may be cheap but is is not free.  No driving directions to the gas station so what is the point.  What is that $1.50 savings per fill up in the wider scheme of things anyhow?  Especially if you are out of town.
  • ATM Hunter – ATM’s are everywhere…banks, fast food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, bars, etc.  Now an app for “Money (free)” would be cool.
  • Sit or Squat, public toilet finder – Public toilets are everywhere…banks (just kidding), fast food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, bars, etc.
  • EveryTrail, records route, speed and elevation using iPhone GPS and incorporates photos taken into the route – This presumably requires that you use the camera on your iPhone.  God forbid!  Give my my Nikon D60 any day.  Besides if you can’t remember where you took your pictures then they probably weren’t very good.
  • HearPlanet Lite, locates nearby sites and reads articles aloud from Wikipedia and Wikitravel – Get the relevant real Lonely Planet guide and read about it beforehand.  Bring the book with you to refine the experience on site.  Avoid noise pollution be it by headphone or speaker, especially by speaker.
  • Am I Safe (costs $.99), provides crime states for your area and classifies it as safe or not safe – Bam your mugged or dead. If you can’t figure that out by yourself or haven’t researched it in advance then you are effed.  Sorry.
  • iTranslate, can translate more than 50 languages  and voice translations out loud – Sounds pretty good but how do you input the foreign language?  Do you have to type it in?  Can someone speak the foreign language in and have it output in the desired other foreign language?

Passwords In the Clear

Posted on by chappyshi

I was recently reminded of a work incident that occurred a few years ago whenn I needed to retrieve a forgotten password.  The coworker/system, instead of generating a new password and emailing it to me and forcing me to immediately change it, brought the password up in the clear.  I use, shall we say, racy, embarrassing passwords.  They haven’t been compromised and I remember them but I don’t want others to know what they are for the obvious reason that they are passwords but for the less obvious reason that the might be construed as very weird.

So it is weird and bad enough if one of your coworkers pulls up a password which embarrasses you.  The other day I was at the library and…yep…you got it.  I ask to see if I can view a history of books that I have checked out and the female librarian asks for my card number.  I give it to her and as she is saying “the default password is “111111” which I had changed at first logon, she is somehow pulling up my account with my “not for public consumption  password” and telling me that I have such and such checked out.

Well  I know what I had currently checked out.  I wanted to see a history of all of the books I had checked out.  I think that they can’t keep that info for privacy reasons though I may be wrong about that.  NTL, the librarian said that they might not be able to store all that info due to storage limitations.  I kind of doubt that because all you need are a few fields like a card number linked to a user name, and every book that had been checked out on that card number.  That database would not require that many fields and take up that much disk space in my estimation.

The bottom line is why do we still have major databases systems out there that store passwords in the clear?  If you are a system administrator and can reset passwords, whether or not the password is in the clear is no matter.  But if you are a hacker, it is a different story.  No serious computer system should store passwords in the clear!

PIM My Ride!

Posted on by chappyshi

I have been trying for probably a year now to find the, for me, perfect PIM.  It has to include email, calendar, to do list, and some type of memo option.  A big concern has been reminders, be they by email or application pop up, for both calendar events and to do list items.  The Linux KDE package, Kontact, appears to do the trick.

Many people use the calendar for all appointments/tasks that require reminders.  I am however of a mind in which I deal with deadline based reminders and goal (not time sensitive) reminders.  The difference may be subtle but to me it is significant.  Hence I require a PIM with which I can configure events and tasks using an automated reminder system.

It was very easy to import all  my mail from my Linux Evolution client.  Two or three steps pulled in all my folders.  Contacts,  exported as Vcards from Evolution,  were easily imported into KAddressbook and integrated into Kontact.

I had some issues getting KMail to recognize my address book after importing it to KAddressbook.  After multiple deletions and recreations of the address book, I got it to work.  Unfortunately, I am not sure what the problem was or why the fix worked.

Nonetheless, it seems to be working as I would like it to so I’ll  keep testing it out and hopefully adopt it as my “new” standard.