I've been doing a computer course at work for the past month, as part of the training for a possible task next year. Technically, I have always been a telecommunications technician - fixing radios, receivers, transmitters, radio net bandwidth management hardware and settings, modems, fibre-optics, satellite connections, DLOS links, etc... but in reality, I've always been the bright software specialist. Finally, my work have realised that my talents lie in computers, and are now 'training' me for that role.

Unfortunately, my workplace is both beurocratic and slow in realizing what century it is. So, in their wisdom, all Information Systems personell must have ECDL.

Yes, ECDL. The computer qualification designed for the long-term unemployed and immigrants who aren't so hot with anything computery. So, basically, I skived for a week, sat the 7 modules one afternoon and pretended I'd been working hard all week. What a farce... me, doing ECDL??? My seniors all thought it ridiculous that after years as a computer professional, programmer, server maintainer, etc... I was doing a course that involved tasks like "Here are 4 pictures. Click on the two which you think are input devices". Well done!

Thankfully the course moved on... we've done weeks of genuinely good stuff, like N+, A+ (which I already had), MCSA and MCSE courses, etc. There's even talk of putting some people on CCNA, later (another one I already have, but that was 5 stagnant years ago). We've all been given half a shelf of expensive MS 2003 server books; it's a shame many of the others on the course don't appreciate their 5-year worth.

For me, this course is mostly revision, but there are various MS features that I haven't used before (although working it out would be a diddle), such as Compatability modes, volume shadowing, folder and file encryption, etc. And lots which I'm familiar with; IIS, disk management, Active Directory, server software, NTFS kung-fu, and lots besides. I'm the "cone-head" of the course.

They all consider me an expert, although I have so many intelligent friends that I think its truer to say that I'm more like the one-eyed man amongst the blind.

Tags: computers, ecdl, geekery, geeky, microsoft, servers, windows, work
Current Location: Mönchengladbach
Listening To: "The line to the dead" by Combichrist

At the moment I am not writing much, nor reading much... I am back at 'normal' work after many months of hard work in London, and, we are having probs with our home PC and home network. And I'm having a break from doing stuff.

Tags: academia, computers, work
Current Location: Germany

I am looking for a harddrive I can plug into a router. With http://www.mediacase.co.uk/ you buy a 3.5" drive case which networks a drive for you. This is kind-of ideal... except... I want one or two more features!

* A Networked drive (to plug into a router)

* But with at least 2 disks, for RAID backup purposes

* and / or... a CD-writer, where you put in a CD and it then automatically writes a backup.

Anyone know of anything useful?

Tags: backups, computers, geeky, hard drives, networking
Listening To: "Dead Set (7am)" by Glis

Amidst much whirring, clicking and grinding, I lost my main hard drive where I store personal files (i.e., not my OS hard drive or my MP3 drive). My last backup was 2006 Feb 28th, and I salvaged a million file fragments from V:/, which meant that I only really lost odd files here and there.

I'm going to make backups more frequently than monthly, I think.

Tags: backups, computers, hard drives, windows

Before packing all my things into boxes and shipping them off to Germany, I dumped my massive, bloated, old monitor. I'm going to buy a new one, in Germany, and hopefully get it delivered there ASAP...

Will my Voodoo3 support a TFT monitor? I didn't even think that the required output from the PC could be different for TFT until a friend mentioned it - I'd like to think it doesn't matter and they've interchangeable with CRT monitors!

Tags: computers, voodoo3
Current Mood: excited

This stuff is utterly beyond all levels of boring I've previously encountered.

"
ISDN utilizes a suite of ITU-T standards spanning the physical, data link, and network layers of the OSI reference model:

• The physical layer - The ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) physical layer specification is defined in ITU-T I.430. The ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) physical layer specification is defined in ITU-T I.431.
• The data link layer - The ISDN data link layer specification is based on LAPD and is formally specified in ITU-T Q.920, ITU-T Q.921, ITU-T Q.922 and ITU-T Q.923.
• The ISDN network layer - The ISDN network layer is defined in ITU-T Q.930 (also known as I.450) and ITU-T Q.931 (also known as I.451). Together these two standards specify user-to-user, circuit-switched, and packet-switched connections

I don't know how to remember stuff that is sooooo anally uninteresting (AU)! I've done well so far, but ISDN seem to be a study of Terminology Without Reason (TRW), according to Vexen standard 2002 (Circa 2004, beta release known as 2003ra). TRWb (Also known as TRW-AU1) was adopted by LJ on 2002 Oct 29 RFC, however Cisco delayed release until 2005 due to a lack of TLAs, which led to the widespread adoption of No-one's TRWB-232 standard, except in Southern UK where it is known as ISTR-Nothing v29.

Tags: cisco, communications, computers, geeky

I got the point of VLANs today :-)

They:

• Provide secure control of where network broadcasts and traffic goes. You can't add devices to the network that can spy on traffic, because the new device is by default only member of a crappy low-service VLAN, and needs to be added to specific VLANs to see specific traffic. It's not that the traffic is unreadable, but that it isn't even sent to the new devices by the routers/switches in the first place.
  
• Provide segmentation of broadcast domains. Broadcasts are strictly limited to correct VLANs, which potentially frees up a lot of bandwidth (I would guess 20/30%) that was otherwise merely being ignored by most machines anyway. If you want broadcasts from a particular VLAN, you have to be a member of that VLAN.

Their biggest disadvantage appears to be that switches and extra complexity adds to latency, and that routers/switches have to configure ports to let VLAN traffic through - meaning some extra administration to do, and, of course, more things to go wrong. But when done in an organized way, VLANs are dead useful and efficient.

Tags: computers, geeky, vlans

(Context: Medium/Large routed/switched computer networks)

I just feel deep down that VLANs could be done much better! Maybe I don't understand the whys of it all! I still think that subnetting could be done better too!

Tags: computers, geeky, vlans

Sometimes, this Cisco course is great, with lots of in depth technical stuff that it's kind-of fun to remember by making up memory games. At other times, the course material is ludircously unintentionally humurous (it is all in American too):

Chapter 11, section on server rooms and ventilation:

"One of the easiest environmental issues to identify is the temperature. If a network technician walks into the computer room and it is really hot, it means there is a problem"

Earlier in the chapter, I misread something and came up with:

"If the server technician is rack-mounted, make sure he is well ventilated"

uh, *goes to reread*

Tags: cisco, computers

I'm leaving at a ridiculous hour tomorrow morning to travel to a distant non-London part of the country for 10am... where I will be subjected to physical tests, medicals, examinations, all culminating in a final formal interview. For which I have bought a non-black suit and collar that would make a politician proud, and is now all ironed. The only thing I have to do is figure out how to pack the shirt as I don't have a suit-carrier!

I've spent months completing a physical fitness training regime designed to make sure I pass the tests, and months studying politics, sociology, military history and other stuff. Hopefully this is complete overkill: I will pass easily and with no problems.

Of course, this isn't the end of the selection tests, it's just a big step, but if I pass they might start paying me to continue training at some point this year - for a 3-month intensive period when I'll be mostly offline - and then for a 40-week period next year. Given that it's August soon, there's only 5 months left this year, which means I've only got 2 months to complete my CISCO networking course at College... there's nothing like PRESSURE to force my brain to remember that:

Printer ports, standard Centronic parralel ports, are assigned LTP port number 7, have output address starting at 378, and are given a very low IRQ number, along with floppy drives (6 or 7). AT & ATX power supplies' yellow cables supply +12v, blue is -12v, black is earth, red is +5v, white is -5v, orange is +3.3V (ATX power supplies only). Red Book CD format was released in 1986 (or so) by Sony & Phillips & set standard for audio CD format, Yellow Book for data format, then Green, Orange and Blue. Blue is multisession data & audio format used on DVDs, etc..

This year I've learned that _willpower_ makes my memory good and excellent, I used to have poor memory. I've also learned that when I dress as a mundane, in colored normal-looking clothes, I command the respect of the untermensch mundanes and become a charismatic leader & teacher.

So... hail fucking Satan, and tremble, you mortals!

:-)

*giggles*

Tags: army, cisco, computers, fitness
Current Mood: happy
Listening To: "Mr. 44" by Electric Hellfire Club

I haven't had nightmares for monthes... I don't know why, but I'm feeling unproductive even though I'm speeding through my course. Maybe it's because website production and music production have slowed right down whilst I am doing the massively time consuming new non-DHTML backend for the photosite.

So I'm recharging the horror and power by watching all four hellraiser movies...

"feels good, looks good, IS good..." as they say...

Tags: computers, dreams, nightmares

This is turning out to be a consistently hot summer, isn't it!

... and the chairs in this college are awkward, not properly adjustable (i.e., you can only adjust their height, not the back cushion height or angle), so I get warning signs in my back more or less as soon as I sit in them! And all the monitors are sat on the desktop machines, meaning they're all about 8" too low too, which is pretty bad going for people who use computers a lot! I stole some catalogues from a drawer to prop up my monitor so it's more bearable!

Anyone who uses computers should study some ergonomics and learn how to keep things comfortable and safe... the disadvantages of not doing this (I learned) are too great to ignore.

ok I'm in a tetchy mood!

Tags: computers, ergonomics
Current Mood: uncomfortable