blog.sarlok.com

2:45am, still not asleep. Gah. Wondering if I should bother trying to lay down again at this point... have to get up in three and a bit hours anyway.

It is strange the things one might find amusing when tired. Things such as this for example:
http://theworstthingsforsale.com/
It managed to conjure somewhat more than a chuckle from me. Not entirely sure why...

These guys strike me as a combination of between Justice, and Deadmau5, with a pinch of Daft Punk.

I should point out, that the version of this song that one would get from the Single, is far better than the youtubish one. It doesn't have a pointless 1minute, 30sec intro for example (pre-skipped for your convenience of-course).
Disco Decay is also pretty good.

Well, that burned 10 minutes. What the heck, I'll try lying down again.
...Then again, I wonder how many times I'll be corpsified in that time.

Toodles

Some things I learned today:

• It never rains, it pours
• The encumbant ISP in British Columbia can be annoying as all mighty fsck sometimes
• Lenovo's have got to be designed to make you want to insert them violently into someone
• My car has no speed governor
• Windscreen wipers don't work worth a sh!t at ~140km/h
• Tires smell like they're burning at ~186km/h
• You don't need windscreen wipers at ~186km/h

Yeah, I'm done.

It's been a long time comin, I know!
A change is gonna come, yes it is...

Snowed about a foot in them thar hills today. Sun lighting up the ridge over yonder looked pretty damn amazing... if only I had a camera.

So... had a series of stupid problems with our billing, ticketing, and dispatching systems at work the other day. The stupidity surrounding them was further compounded by a lack of documentation (Yay!).
Some of the problems could have been worked around with this handy little BgInfo majig. Makes life in the world of un-documented Windows servers much less painful.
That said, given some (read: all) of the afore-mentioned systems are virtualized, it got me thinking about how to actually document that sort of thing on a small scale.
I've had a few ideas and run some through the mill, and here's what's come out after a little bit of messing around:

Scaling is a concern, up to / past 10 VM's, though as it is, there's plenty of room for a quick blurb on each vm and it's function(s).
Obviously, that's on a different layer excluded from exporting - along with internal interface addresses.
Hindsight, adding another vswitch would be a disaster, though this is just an 8x11 canvas, so plenty of room for changes. May give it another go 'round someday if I can be bothered. For now, this covers my needs, mebbe I'll try adapting something for work for giggles.
Making this, it suddenly dawned on me how many VM's I have running on that lil' ol thing.
Damn. I knew I should have got that extra 16 gigs of ram. Ohwell.

So tired. So very, very tired... and perpetually bewildered. Fsck.

I'll just leave this here...

I was conversing with a group of friends the other night, and the question of "Which is bigger, the Millenium Falcon, or Serenty?".
The 15-some minute conversation that ensued discussed each vessel in great detail. I couldn't help but say "So, this is what life was like before the internet..."
To give relevance to that phrase, the locale where said discussions were taking place has no wi-fi, and little to no cell service.
"If we had internets, someone would have looked this up, and the current line of inquiry would have been over 10 minutes ago."
It were amusing evening to be sure.

Slightly related topic, this article on how Warp Speed works, was equally interesting (though, absurd and preposterous).

I recently had the opportunity to play around with a production ASA 5505. I must admit I was far less intimidated by it than my first experience with them, though packet-trace struck me as a bit of a red herring.
To that end, I'm tempted to track one down in reasonable shape to play with at home.
More strangeness, I found that the ASDM manager app doesn't appear work over RDP which struck me as a bit of a stupid hurdle, though that may have just been my laptop.

I'm also pleased to report, Airsoft Kitty is making an expedient recovery.

Toodles for naow.

In the interests of actually completing a post, this is significantly shorter than I previously intended... Ho-well, needs must.

I have touched on my overall dislike of humanity once before, males in particular.
Though my overall opinion of the afore-mentioned remainds un-changed on the whole (I for one should know - to my ever-lasting shame, I am one), recent events involving an air-powered projectile launcher and one of my feline companions has renewed my fervent hatred something fierce.
<sarcasm>
I would just like to say thank-you, thank-you very much, to the anonymous being responsible for perferating my feline's chest with a steel Airsoft pellet. Your selfless act has restored my faith in humanity.
</sarcasm>

That aside, life goes on otherwise I guess. 6 Weeks away from work, and I've never been more confused now than I can ever remember being. A particular phrase comes to mind;
"How many roads, must a man walk down?"
I'd best cut my rambling there. Reading back, I'm not making a lot of sense.

ZOMGWTFBBQ!11!!!!1one! WEEE! A KITTY!

Quite some time ago now, I had someone ask me how a VLAN access port would behave when it receives tagged frames. I was unsure how to answer outside of assumption that tagged frames would be dropped.
Googling found that, in theory: "Tagged frames are allowed on an access port, provided the tag matches the access VLAN. If it is for the wrong VLAN, then it should drop the frame.". Clearly some research was necessary to find out if this is actually the case - at least as far as a Catalyst switch is concerned.
Sounds reasonable, and I was left curious enough to do a quick test in GNS.

For now, results on Adv Enterprises, 12.4(21):

• Tagged frames are allowed on an access port, provided the tag matches the access VLAN. False - Frames are dropped.
• If it is for the wrong VLAN, then it should drop the frame. True

Granted my test was using some NM-16ESW's on a pair of 3725's, but oh-well. If I'm bored enough, and in posession of some new enough Catalysts, I may repeat the test. I really should just order some 2950's or 3550's off ebay... they're all of 80 bucks. :S

Also, it are catchy song... though the video is somewhat disturbing.

Waiting for Outlook to open. Should be good to go in about 5 more minutes.
I've had two posts of relative size in the works for some time now. Just never found the enthusiasm to finish them off.

In the meantime, here - watch this:

I felt this was worthy of it's own post:
Clash is out! Go get it!

Considering how slowly time seems to have passed of late, it's sure seems to have gone by quickly.

Have had plenty a restless night over the last few weeks for whatever reasons. My inhibitor has been suffering from capacity issues as a result. I may or may not have said things somewhat unbecoming of myself. Discussing if you're on chocolate-covering terms with someone, is not the sort of conversation I would typically engage in for example.

In other news... I has a car again. A '98 Passat with a hair over 300,000 Kilometers on the clock. Will do just nicely 'till I can find something I'd rather get. I'd quite like one of these, but may wait until winter's done it's thing before getting carried away.

How peculiar. It would seem my blog database went all kersplodie the other night. Fix'd - backups for the win!
Been in Prince George all week, getting me some edumacation on some 4G hardware - in this case, of the mobile-WiMax, aka; 802.16e variety.
I'm not entirely convinced that it's the right tool for the job if I'm honest... our network design and planning is far to volatile for them to be implemented correctly. Unfortunately, that's not a good enough justification to give it a stamp of non-approval.
Many fun months await as a result, I'm certain.

I started this post about 2200hrs last night, and I'm not entirely certain 0345 is exactly the best time to finish it after a week of sleep deprivation, but since I can't sleep, might as well do something productive.
Well, maybe not productive, but at least keep my mind pre-occupied for a little while. I'm getting mighty sick of repeatedly arguing with the little fucking co-workers that live inside my head.

On Minecraft... the two worlds I have running are pretty much starving my poor server for resources. Not sure if I'm better served rolling the two worlds into one VM, or just move them to a dedicated machine entirely.
I say again - it's really too bad Minecraft is powered by Java. The horsepower and resources the server consumes are almost as bad as something else I constantly refer to when providing examples of how crappy Java apps can be. Don't get me wrong, Java can be amazing in the right hands, but more often than not, the majority of what's typically churned out is shit.

Hmm, best call it at that. This is turning into a sweary rant-fest.

But before I do - fuckin' ay.

Yet another large expanse of time appears to have elapsed since my last post. Trying to get back in the groove and start posting on a regular basis.
That said however, there hasn't been much in the way of developments that one might regard as being of any interest... so that will complicate matters somewhat.

I may have touched on pseudowires briefly in a previous post some time back.
One of my co-workers was kind enough to point out this interesting one-liner which explains a lot for being such a short sentence - and very easy to miss.

Sessions between the same Layer 2 protocols; for example, Ethernet-to-Ethernet, VLAN-to-VLAN, but not VLAN-to-Ethernet or Frame Relay
ref: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3t/12_3t2/feature/guide/gtl2tpv3.html#wp1042632
I must have read and re-read that document about 3 times over the course of the evening while I was playing around with them last. Go-go-gadget observation skills... couldn't believe I missed that one.
Still doesn't really explain the swath of errors I was seeing, but maybe that was just dynamips.

Anyway, rambling aside - it would seem that is possible to drop a pseudowire on an 802.1q subinterface, provided the l2 interfaces match either end. This makes them frighteningly useful.

On the lighter side of things - if I haven't already pointed it out yet, go read Lackadaisy Cats. I'm not saying that just because the characters are depicted by cats... it is genuinely funny, and I do so love the art style. Some may even say it's magically delicious - present company included.
I do highly recommend reading it the start. Or at least read this mini-comic to get a feel for it.

There has been a renewed interest in the Übernet of late. Dust off all the bits and pieces I acquired a couple years back, and have started their respective assembly.
I may or may not have also picked up a few new pieces to add to the mix. Could be fun.
Stay tuned for further developments!

Hum... 23:31 and I'm supposed to be at work by 06:00 to prep for a teleconference. Whoops... silly me.

Well, been a while. Not a lot to say at the moment, but figured it was about time I shake the dust of the old blog.

Picked up an 1811 for the server, it will sometime soon (I hope) be taking the place of the WRAP currently sitting between this blog and the internets. Bit of tomfoolery to do with the vswitches in ESXi though, as I'll be moving the grey listing onto the mail VM proper and such.

The more perceptive of viewers may have noticed six new images in my gallery.
This is what happens when a small moose attacks a car that's already traveling ~110km/h.
Obviously, the car is a write-off. Not bad for my first road accident though.

For reasons I don't quite understand, I've acquired a new domain. Allow me to present:
http://www.issurroundedbyidiots.com/

Accompanied by it's .net, and .ca counterparts, but they don't really do anything at this point.
Not sure what to do with it yet aside from chuckle to myself at the thought.

Work to do, ta ta for now.

This, is by far, the best spam I have ever seen in my life. Buy 9 grams, get one free? Tomahawk rockets?
My favourite is the sequence of 1, 2, 4.

FREE HEROIN SHIPPING!

1. Heroin, in liquid and crystal form.
2. Rocket fuel and Tomohawk rockets (serious enquiries only).
4. New shipment of cocaine has arrived, buy 9 grams and get 10th for free.

Everebody welcome, but not US citizens, sorry.

ATTENTION. Clearance offer. Buy 30 grams of heroin, get 5 free.

Please contact: debbier16 (at) gmail dot com 

PHONE 0093(0)4765481
FAX 0093(0)4485291

Afghanistan

Body's e-mail address respectfully scrubbed. Though it wouldn't please me more than to flood that idiot's address with spam from more bots, it would be an un-necessarily pointless thing to do to gmail.

Another equally awesome Spam of late: on the cisco-nsp list over at puck.nether.net was offering me nuclear warheads and missiles at a discount rate. Too bad it appears to have been stripped from the archives.

Randomness!

Emille says:
 what the heck is a gaming tax refund, and why is MSN trying to make me click on it?
Co-worker says:
 Trying, like sent a burly guy in a suit to drag your arm and mouse to click on it?
Emille says:
 perhaps. I'd rather punch a monkey

Good song... seems short for almost 10 minutes. Just kinda works out that way I suppose.

Minecraft, it would seem, is terribly addictive.
It strikes me as an exceptional piece of work given it's many similarities to Dwarf Fortress.
I've built a little hideaway in the forest in close proximity to that of my buddies. Basically capped off the entrance to a natural cavern, lined the bottom with dirt for a small underground tree garden.
Shortly thereafter, I scout out, and tunnelled from the afore-mentioned house to the beach.
Nearly a full game-day's walk from site to site.
Greenhouse is built at said beach, and a new house has been mostly carved out of the side of a mountain overlooking the area.
Now though, I've taken to falling repeatedly into lava pits - or digging into one from underneath.
"Losing is fun!" springs to mind. :]
It really is too bad it's powered by java. Oh-well.

Random amusing conversations from last week:

You say: you know what would be awesome...
Coworker says: Snakes with wheels?
You say: Snakes with caterpillar treads is a highly amusing thought come to think of it...
but no, other than that...

I was actually thinking something that could poll various routers and such for MAC addresses and store them in a central database for if/when you need to find a specific MAC on your network somewhere. Along the lines of an IPAM system, but not as intense... just MAC accounting.
Anyone got any ideas? Preferably PHP and *SQL powered.

I also had an interesting conversation regarding second hand VM's, and their potential market value. I think they would be somewhat in-line with the DVD rewinder

Needs moar muzik... Let's see, this should suffice.