The Major

Blog

  • Damn It

    I don’t know what it is…but straight-up studying isn’t my thing. Don’t get me wrong, I studied my ass off this weekend, but it was really a test of my will power. Such a miserable weekend. It involved diet coke, coffee, lattes, and almost no chores at all. Everything else was not even secondary this weekend – it was tertiary. Secondary to studying was studying. My study habits weren’t perfect but they were almost as good as I can get. From Friday at 11am until now I haven’t made it more than three blocks from my apartment.

    Time goes slow as hell when you’re sick of studying.

    But in the end, I know it will all be worth it. Because in about 16 hours I will fianlly be a Cisco Certified Network Associate. Because if I don’t pass tomorrow, I am not really sure what else I might be able to do to study even more.

    I can remember before the other times that I’ve taken the exam. And there are so many subjects that I either didn’t know almost at all or only knew with average competence. This time I feel like I have a solid grasp on not just the concepts, but also the implementation of routing protocols, vlans, stp, design, security, subnetting, ISDN, Frame Relay, VTP, trunking and all the subjects inbetween. The only things I could use some more work on are dial-on-demand routing, “show” commands, and “debug” commands.

    I almost passed the other times. And since I am so much more solid on all of these subjects this time, I am confident that I will pass tomorrow.

    I am not sure what to do with myself for the next four hours before work. I almost just really feel like sitting here and being tense and nervous. But most of all I want the time to go as quickly as possible. So I think I will go to sleep. I’ll want to be as alert as possible before the test tomorrow anyway. Hopefully it will work out.

    I’ve been thinking about what it will feel like once I finish the test, walk up to the front and get my print-out saying I passed. And I really don’t know. I’ll just have to pass and find out.

  • Routing Protocols Comparison Table

    While studying tonight I found that I didn’t have a good listing of several characteristics of routing protocols to study from. So I made a table for studying, and released it under the GFDL:

    Comparison of Routing Protocols

    You will need to be able to read OpenDocument Text Documents to view the table. Open Office can be used to view such documents.

  • It’s weird…

    …fighting against what my body is trying to tell me.
    …having my hand on my knife as I walk to my car to go to work.
    …being first at every stop light in the middle of downtown.
    …having no one notice if I come in late.
    …stepping out on the balcony and seeing people return to their cars from a night of clubbing.
    …having my eyelids twitch.
    …taking a nap in the break room during my lunch break.
    …turning the lights on, and putting my shoes back on in the middle of the work day.
    …having caffeine as a necessary substance for my job.
    …needing to call people by 9am so I can catch them before they go home for dinner.
    …having my superiors’ expectations lowered because they don’t think they can expect much from people that work my hours.
    …having every new hire say things like, “Wow, what’s that like?” when I’m introduced as one of the European support techs.
    …having our receptionist say, “Have a good night!” at 10am.
    …having my senses feel numb by the time I go home.
    …being used to staying up for over 24 hours straight.
    …having to wake up early to spend quality time with my girlfriend (not that I mind at all, sweetie 🙂 ).

  • You Have Been Robbed

    You owe it to yourself to read this article on Rolling Stone about how the 2004 presidential election was stolen.

  • When Will Microsoft Learn?

    From a great Windows Vista overview on Tom’s Hardware:

    The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!

    When will Microsoft learn? I thought Bill Gates was now supposedly pushing security above all else. This horrible default settings shows exactly how committed Microsoft is to security.

  • ogod

    Seagate releases a 750GB hard drive.

    I am excited, even though I probably won’t be getting one. I am excited because this drives down the price of the 500GB drives, which is what I’ll be buying now instead of the 320GB drives. My current drives (for my main desktop):

    1 Internal 250GB: Windows, Program Files, Music
    1 Internal 320GB: Movies. Lots of movies.
    1 Internal 120GB: “Temporary” storage. Where I put my Bit Torrent downloads until I can organize them, and where I put my DVD rips until I can encode them, and then delete the huge temporary files.
    2 External 320GB: One has TV shows and software. The other is a backup of my movies drive.

    Actually when I get more drives, they’ll be used for backup mostly. And when I stick another internal drive in, I want to get a new power supply.

    It’s a damn shame that I probably won’t actually get to buy more drives for a while. *plays world’s smallest violin for self*

  • Ballplayers “Safe” with Breakaway Bases

    There are so many little things that can be done to enhance the safety of our everyday lives. I like this article on “The Nader Page”: Ballplayers “Safe” with Breakaway Bases

  • Using the Bill of Rights as Toilet Paper

    I was chatting with Ben the other day, and we were talking a bit about the Bill of Rights. I was explaining how I am familiar with the Bill of Rights, but I am not so good at recognizing which amendment goes with with number. So I thought maybe it would be good to read it over again. While reading, I was noticing how little the Bill of Rights is actually respected. The following are just examples, and are by no means intended to be comprehensive.

    1st Amendment: All of the things that are done with faith-based initiatives. Attorney General Gonzales speaks of prosecuting journalists.

    2nd Amendment: San Francisco has banned handguns.

    4th Amendment: Illegal NSA wiretapping of US citizens.

    5th Amendment: Guantanamo Bay.

  • Feeling Like a Dope

    I found an article over at the Free Software Foundation about a protest against ATI on the MIT campus recently. Reading stuff like this always makes me feel like a dope. I feel like a dope for not being a part of this movement.

    And it isn’t just the Free Software Movement. There are so many things that I am not a big enough part of. The anti-war movement. The workers’ rights movement. The consumer rights movement. Many different civil liberties movements.

    But at the same time I realize that you have to mix practicality with being a stubborn bastard. Sometimes I feel like I am compromising my morals too much. Most of the time I feel comfortable with how I live my life.

    But however I feel, I look at these people – people like Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, and Noam Chomsky – and they just provide me with more motivation to do things about what pisses me off. Maybe one of these days I’ll be more of an activist. Probably my own greed will only let me do so much.

  • Iran

    George W. Bush once said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

    I wonder if this great saying will hold true if Bush tries to invade Iran, where the American people are the ones being fooled.