I have just reviewed an interesting Field notice from Cisco. A MDS switch reboots after 233 days of operation. Now imagine the surprise of the IT guys when it happens. "Boss, I swear, I did nothing, I was having a smoke outside!"

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Terry has a very interesting post on his Netcordia blog about the history of ping. Ping was based on the submarine sonar eqivalent.
In his next post he muses about network visualizations. It made me think about my own thoughts on network visualizations.

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The latest outages at Amazon and RIM have been attributed to capacity and storage upgrades respectively. In both these cases the real root cause of the problem is not capacity or the upgrade. Why did the capacity problem occur? Why did the upgrade have an adverse effect?
There are two major categories of problems, those above the water line and those below the water line. As is the case with an iceberg, the visible problems above the water line are small in number but major in scale while those below the water line are larger in number but smaller is scale.
The problems at Amazon and RIM are above the water line due to their visible impact, but generic studies show that for each problem occuring above the water line there are 600 ones that have happened below the water line.

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I have been following the space shuttle Atlantis on The Flame Trench via RSS. Now Exchange is much the same as the space shuttle. It is a dated technology that has survived because there isn't anything else to replace it. The backend engine in Exchange, Jet, is as old as the reusable booster rockets.
Sometime back I created a checklist for Exchange. The thing with Exchange is that the same damn things catches you out and when you encounter them a second or even third time you mind tends to discount any previous lessons learned, as you think, they couldn't have done the same hare-brained thing again?

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The Perkins braille keyboard has 9 keys and does the same job as a qwerty keyboard. It takes a while to learn to use the keyboard, but once mastered it lends itself to multi-finger typing in a manner more intuitive than its qwerty counterpart.
After stuggling with various different clumsy keyboards on different phones, I wonder why vendors have not designed one with a really alternative and radical keyboard like the braille one?

Patching is an item in most security checklists, and can be a real pain. Last year Microsoft released a patch which stated that if you had a Realtek device in your PC you had to load a special separate patch or else the device would stop functioning after the patch. The notes said that this ONLY applied to Realtek devices.

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The blog is named Andabatae, and in that name there are multiple analogies. Andabatae are Roman gladiators who fought blindfolded. Solving problems in networks is often the same, as there are limited or insuffient environmental stimuli.
However, there is another analogy. In 1988/9 I wrote a program named Andabatae in 8086/8 assembler. It was for blind computer users, worked as a DOS TSR, and interacted with a braille keyboard. It could read the screen, perform file transfer functions and other various functions. I moved onto installing networks and later into other infrastructure disciplines and pretty much put the cause of disabled people in technology on the backburner.

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My wife told me that when she typed something incorrectly on her computer, my face popped up on the screen. After some thought, I realised she was referring to the OpenDNS pages I had configured. I think that OpenDNS is great and I started using it after discovering a reference to it in the Tomato firware for my WRT54GL. OpenDNS configured on the WRT54GL provides great protection for my home network. I think it works better and is more secure than some of the web filtering software installed in some enterprise networks.
This incident reminded me of a perculiar DNS problem that I encountered. I arrived at work and my boss directed me to the dealing desks. There I encountered chaos.

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I was having a braai and related my encounter ten years ago with a giant rat. I was working on the optics in the tunnels under the runways at Johannesburg International Airport as a network engineer. To me it looked like the size of a dog, not a Rhodesian Ridgeback but a Miniature Schnauzer. Everyone had a good laugh, and said it was a fishing story especially when I stated that after my initial shock I was even more paranoid about encountering the snake that eats rats of this size!

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Bill and Steve go into a conference room for a meeting with their Dell laptops. Steve heads for the coffee and Bill decides to create a shopping list for dinner that night. Steve starts ranting and raving at the coffee table about what Microsoft strategy should be while Bill stares at his screen as Vista slowly boots. Bill ignores Steve. Steve does not notice. After 5 minutes, Steve screams: "SO BILL WHAT SHOULD WE DO?"
Bill has finally opened Notepad and in his excitement shouts, "Yahoo!"
Steve taken aback, asks, "But why Bill?"
"Steve, why the fuss? It is only pudding and pie?"
"That simple, huh? How much do you want to spend?"
"About 44 and some change."
"Done, I'll go and sort it out."

My education is bubblegum and movies. When I was growing up we had Chappies bubblegum with "Did you know?" questions inside the wrapper. I was even more shocked when I realized on my first international trip, that Chappies was just a local thing! After the bubble gum wrappers, it was the movies.

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Checklists are a good way to verify Information Technology security environments. Many people including Tom Peters have been praising the usefulness and simplicity of checklists. I had previously created a networking troubleshooting checklist. Reading a post about Router/Firewalls at Guerilla CISO, reminded me of a checklist about firewall rules I created in 2003. I dusted it off and updated it. So, here is a checklist for firewall rules:

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The root cause of this problem lies with Network World. Let me explain. I was reading about the Token-ring vs Ethernet argument on Network World. This reminded me that I had a recovery CD of my old IBM Thinkpad, which contained a video clip of Robert Madge. To bring a tear to the eye of all the guys who worked at Madge Networks, I decided to put the video on YouTube, as I had often seen videos before on blogs that were hosted on YouTube.

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BMX is a draft problem solving management methodology that I have been devising in 10 steps. 10 steps being the natural process count limit which makes sense.

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Facebook has rapidly been banned by many companies. Many reasons are given and they are usually around security or wasting time. I think it is time the Cxx's stopped being reactionary and embrace technology as an enabler. To not do so will keep us in the dark ages. Here is my dirty little secret, I thought the same way about Facebook initially but what changed by mind was actually using it. I suggest all Cxx's do the same.

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Mike Melvill is the ultimate test pilot. He became the first commercial astronaut, after flying SpaceShipOne to above 100 km on 21 June 2004. He flew to the edge of space without government support. Melvill, has a dangerous occupation but he has survived mainly due to his perfectionism in following the basic pilot tool, the checklist. The checklist has important parallels in Information Technology and in this case networks. Another one of the ultimate test pilots is Chuck Yeager. "Chuck Yeager is a pilot of unsurpassed skill and determination," said Mike Melvill.

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American Chopper on Discovery is one of my favourite TV shows. I often have sat on the couch and wondered why I was so fascinated by the Teutuls. I left it at, enjoyment. I also suspected that the pressures of working against deadlines and the bombastic and aggressive behaviour hit an accord with my work in Information technology (IT). However, I revisited the theme after attending a presentation by Peter Armstrong, where he asked the question of what was the purpose of a rev counter in a car. He assets it serves no purpose to the underlying functionality and purpose of a vehicle or is of any use to the driver. Now I wouldn't buy a car without a rev counter, so if Peter's statements are correct, what is the underlying reason for that damn rev counter.

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Lovelace, from the movie "Happy Feet", is a rockhopper penguin, and a self-proclaimed prophet from Adélie Land who believes he has power and sex appeal. He charges the adélies one pebble in exchange for his prophecies. Lovelace is shown with a "sacred talisman" (plastic six-pack ring used to hold beverage cans together) around his neck. This becomes Lovelace's undoing, as the ring becomes so tight that he can barely breathe. The "talisman" became caught around his neck on a swim near an abandoned whaling process plant which is littered with debris and is later ripped from his neck by pure chance.

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Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance is one of my favourite books. What motorcycles are to Pirsig, computers are to me. He spent hours tinkering on the motorcycle and I spent hours tinkering on the computer (or network as the case may be). Pirsig demonstrates that motorcycle maintenance may be dull and tedious or alternatively an exciting and pleasurable. It all depends on the existence of inner attitude or kama.

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