Please take the time...

...to go to this website and vote. http://www.rallytorescue.org/ It's a contest where the winning group gets $5K in pet food coupons. I personally have voted for Buddy and the Border Collie group Border Collies In Need Inc. There are 10 rescue organizations to choose from, each has a short printed blurb plus a short video detailing their story. You don't have to watch the videos to be able to vote and I will ask you to vote for Buddy and his group (they're #4 in the running right now), but make your own choice if you feel like spending a little time to view the entrants.

Please take the time, it's a really good cause. Please pass this on.

Network Troubles (Final Answer)

It wasn't my laptop. It wasn't my firewall. Slowly every computer in the house lost it's ability to connect wirelessly. Finally the computer in the basement with the adapter matched to the router lost it's ability to connect. So the culprit must be the router's wireless capability. I guess that since it's a piece of hardware that I bought 9 years ago when we moved here, I should be pleased with a piece of electronic equipment that performed flawlessly for that long.

So today I installed a new router. The PC adapter for the old router worked with the new one but since it only connects at 11 mbps, I installed a new adapter on the basement PC. Everything is working just fine...hopefully for another 9 years.

Network Troubles (continued)

Sheesh! I thought I had this fixed, but apparently not. Laptop still goes fubar after and hour or so of Internet connectivity.

So I started shutting off stuff. Like TeaTimer. Yeah, I know it's a pain in the a$$ but it's saved my bacon really good twice so I'll trade some residual slowness for the protection. But TeaTimer doesn't appear to have been the cause of the problem.

Next shut down, the firewall. It hasn't nagged me to update it in a while and that's probably a strong argument for it not functioning correctly. Once it was turned off, things seemed better so I grabbed a recent installation package from the web and did a fresh install. So far the laptop's been running with no connectivity issues for about four hours straight.

Someone say network troubles?

You know, after working on computer equipment all day long, the last thing I want to do when I come home at night is troubleshoot my home equipment. So it's been a majorly crappy thing that the wireless part of my home network has been effed up.

At first I thought it was the wireless adapter on my laptop but I took it to work and it operates just fine on work wireless. My nephew was complaining of connectivity issues before he left for the Air Force, but quite frankly I didn't give a $hit if he could connect or not (long story).

The other wireless user in the house has an adapter matched to the router so no connectivity problems there and if I drag my laptop upstairs and plug in an ethernet cable, we fly.

I've disabled/enabled the adapter, without and with reboots. I've run every ipconfig release/renew/flush/register both via Windows and from the command line. Nothing. Deleted the adapter-reinstalled it. Zip. No Internet.

About the only thing about the router that isn't factory default is the IP Address schema which I had to change because of a VPN conflict with my work network. So today I shut down all the computers but for one cabled connection and set the router back to factory default. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! I am posting this via wireless from my deck.

My world is complete.

Gone in 60 Seconds

No, not the movie about car thievery, though speaking from experience it was realistic from the standpoint of yes, there is usually a list of wanted models that you work from. No, I'm talking about the network. The one where all our little computers talk back and forth to one another and the outside world. It takes so little to make it not work. The diagram below shows just how little it takes to make it not work.

Adult Recess Equipment

Quick, what's the first thing you thought of when you read the title of this post?

April Fool's?

This just might be one of the funniest pranks I've seen on the web:

Automatic e-mail by G00gle

It Makes My Head Hurt

I've had occasion to be party to some interesting conversations over the past couple of weeks. I don't suppose I'll ever be privy to the big picture on the work front---thank the Lord my personal life is perfectly clear. The conversations have made me put on my manager's hat. Now I haven't put on my manager's hat since I managed service stations for Gulf Oil back in the 70's.

Quite frankly, that job is the one that made it clear to me that I never wanted to wear the manager's hat again and as long as I worked in organizations that were small and I was a department of one, it was never an issue. It's become an issue a couple of times over the past few years as I work for a company that's gone from the Mom 'n' Pop flavor to the major regional employer flavor.

With encouragement, I have reached out into the supervisory area a couple of times in my tenure at this unnamed company. One such reach was sabotaged by another (albeit inadvertently), but I think I have to admit that there's a little self-sabotage too. After my last experience I cringe at becoming responsible for the work product of people I currently call friend. Nothing kills a friendship faster than a promotion, be it on the part of the governed or the governing. Maybe I don't have the coaching skills necessary to be a leader rather than a boss.

So it is with misgivings that I put my self in the new-new sheriff in town's shoes. I'm led to believe that the initial plan to clean up our town involved scraping all current staff and hiring from scratch. I'm also led to believe that that plan was thwarted by the noble sacrifice of someone that was let go. "Blame the problems in the department on me, not them. Give them a chance." Perhaps the slaughter of one lamb avoided the decimation of the entire herd. Only time will tell.

But as I put on the shoes of someone else and tread their path, if only in my imagination, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be easier to do the clean sweep thing and start afresh. The new sheriff has a bunch of deputies that have been so badly beaten down by the empty promises and bad decisions of past management that it will take something very special to get their morale and work product to the level where it should be.

Somebody get this effing hat off my head...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

OK, I sort of fell for the hype. I stayed up waaaaayyyyy too late last night to see if the 'puters would go bonkers at the stroke of midnight. They didn't. I did.

Although my ISP apparently had some sort of issue. I had to power cycle my modem and router before I could post this.