The first wireshark lab is a lot of fun for most students. Don’t forget our chat about what is and is NOT appropriate behavior when using wireshark and other network admin tools. If you don’t have a Knoppix CD yet, bring a blank to lab and I’ll burn you a copy.
One more reminder, don’t forget to register with the forums. Homework assignments and quiz announcements will only be posted to the forums starting on Monday, 29 September.
In episode 3 we cover the physical layer of networking. I talk about limitations of physical network technology, topologies, 100BaseT, some cabling fun, device types (hub, repeater, switch, bridge) and we started to dive into 802.3 frame
[podcast]http://www.skoda.net/podcast/cis2151-ep3.mp3[/podcast]
Grimlager at Brewfest, chatting up a lady
I think that Brewfest in the World of Warcraft is my favorite virtual holiday. I’m amazed at how the folks at Blizzard take real world events, like Octoberfest, and tun them in to a week long party.
The other thing that’s really amazing is the nature of the event. It’s a booze fueled festival yet none of the negative troubles seem to manifest themselves. I suppose that’s because the toon is drunk and the person behind the keyboard isn’t, so all that beer-induced bad judgement that causes troubles at binge drinking parties doesn’t exist.
Playing WoW tipsy isn’t nearly as much fun as playing WoW when your toon is tipsy. One night I thought it was a good idea to swim from Darkshore to Durotan. I made it to Azshara then hearth-stoned home. I know, don’t ask, it wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. I know others (no names of course) who couldn’t manage to keep from falling to their death in Gnomer (more than once) while the rest of the team waited, and waited, and waited…
…not even Microsoft itself can wean itself off the Mac…
This is silly. Microsoft paid an advertising firm to make the content. It’s not uncommon for creative shops to use Macs. The US Air Force doesn’t allow Macs on their networks but their portal front page had a screen shot of a Mac application for a number of months. The Air Force doesn’t design those pages, a contractor does. Of course Microsoft uses Macs, did everyone forget about the Mac Business Unit inside Microsoft? I’m starting to get the feeling that the general public and the mac fandom are really hoping the new MS ad campaign fails.
I’ve added forums to skoda.net. I needed a single place where VTC students in my Networks 1 course could share idea/thoughts/etc. Blackboard and the student email servers troubles have put our on-line course a little behind. I’m still using Blackboard for grades and quizzes and tests, but the more social and interactive things are moving here to skoda.net. That way all 30something of you students can be in the same virtual space and hear everyone’s questions and my answers to those questions.
To access the forums, VTC students need to press the Forums button, register, and then I’ll put you in the student group.
I saw some goblins this morning sending people to Booty Bay to have a drink. I was wondering why the sudden interest pirates in WoW. At lunch I received an email and discovered that today is “talk like a pirate day” See www.talklikeapirate.com for more info.
Arrr, Way to go Blizzard, a quick in-game homage to “Talk Like A Pirate Day” Ye be owed an extra ration of grog fer ye efforts, matey.
It appears that Blackboard is having some troubles with student e-mail addresses. I’m sorry that some of you Networks I students didn’t get the take home lab instructions via e-mail, but I’m working on a fix for our class. I’ll be sending out an email tonight using a distro list I’ve built from the course rosters. Please reply to that email. If you don’t like the email address I used, let me know what is a better way to reach you, since we know that the student mail server hasn’t been cooperative this semester either.
I was in the Berlin Wal-Mart and stopped by the Unicel kiosk. I asked the sales associate what was going on with the Verizon/Unicel/AT&T deal. He said that AT&T could be in the state as soon as November. The associate’s understanding was that once the Verizon/Unicel deal was free of imperial entanglements (i.e. state of Vermont regulators) Verizon would have 90 days to sell the towers off to AT&T.
“90 days to sell” is probably 90 days to start selling the towers and that will probably have to go through some sort of regulatory gymnastics at the Federal and state level, so iPhones for Christmas might be a reality.
Today I’m free. Today is the last day of my Verizon wireless contract and in a few short weeks I’ll be a happy iPhone user and an AT&T customer. The company is horrid. My fairly cool Razr isn’t cool at all. My nephews Cingular/AT&T Razr can do all sorts of cool stuff and will communicate over bluetooth with a Mac. My Verizon Razr can’t. I can use V-cast to get content but all the content I have purchased off iTunes? Well, the only way to get that from my Mac to the phone is to buy a microSD card and an adapter. When I complained to Verizon about the crippling of the handset and asked for a Razr with all the features turned on, they told me I could return the phone and go back to a less feature-rich phone.
My DSL line is crap. When I went from voice and DSL to dry-loop DSL, they disconnected me. Then I was told I couldn’t have DSL in my location, after using home DSL and paying for it for two years!
It took almost a month to get DSL turn back on at the house and now every time it rains my line drops. I’ve called support so many times I have their script memorized. Of course you have to put up with the Peter from the PC support area telling you that “Verizon DSL doesn’t really support macs.” Then you get transfered to the Mac support line and they are shocked that Peter from the PC support office would say something like that. Once you get to a technician you restart your modem and they test the line and it works for 15 to 45 seconds and then it drops again. They promise to send a tech, but they never show up. I got a sticky note on my NID saying the line tested fine (of course they don’t show up if its raining, which is the only time I have the problem.)
I even tried to switch to Earthlink but Earthlink uses Verizon for the last mile connection and the Earthlink DSL line was 60% slower than the Verzion line to the same house (the NIDs were a few inches apart and I used the same internal wiring to both DSL modems) When I called Earthlink to get the line speed boosted I got sent over to Verizon, so I figured I wasn’t really getting out from under the red V and I gave up. Fairpoint bought them out and sooner or later a different company will be handling my dry-loop DSL, maybe then I can get someone to fix the rain flap problem.
Sure, poor customer support, crippled handsets, incompetent service techs, and a less than stellar product offering is frustrating and wastes time and if I live anywhere other than Vermont I could dump them like a hot rock and get something else, but my Verizon story isn’t anything compared to the pain and suffering the big red V caused this family: Verizon refuses to help locate body of a missing woman for 4 days
I was very disappointed with the initial release of Pirates! The Firaxis guys always seemed to get games out for the Mac fairly quickly, but Pirates! and Civ4 were sort of a downward trend for them. I had given up hope of playing Pirates! on anything other than my son’s Xbox, but a completely unrelated google search for video game midi files brought me to a Macworld UK article that had a link to this
Pirates! for the Mac
Spore can wait until they fix the DRM or Christmas when my kids will want it, I’m spending my video game allowance on Pirates! This game was wonderful back in the old days on the C-64 and the Xbox version is pretty good. I’m looking for a game to play when I’m not on-line (and would normally be WoWing it up) so this is perfect. If the game is half as fun on the mac as it is on the Xbox, it will be well worth the $29.99 retail price.
