Monthly Archives: October 2015

Amazon Suggested Items…You’re Kidding Me, Right?

I’m sure you’ve noticed when buying stuff on Amazon that they will provide “suggestions” of related items commonly purchased…just to help you out…right? Ha! Yeah…right. Well I was recently purchasing an item on Amazon and this was their recommended “Frequently Purchased Together” list of products…

Makes sense to me...

Makes sense to me…

So according to Amazon, they must have a lot of customers that need to purchase ear plugs, gift cards, and a Fire HD 7…all at the same time. Yeah…right…and I have some real good land I want to sell you in the north east part of Florida. I guess I can’t blame Amazon for trying, but really…can’t your complex (and powerful) computer algorithms do a better job than this?

In case you are wondering…I didn’t bite.

Saturday Snapshot – 95% Accurate Sign

When I was up in Nevada earlier this week, I stayed at a Best Western Hotel…it wasn’t the fanciest hotel around, but it was nice and clean, with a very polite staff. What was interesting was finding my room after I checked in. I was assigned room #220…I walked up the stairs and found this sign…

Sign showing room locations

Sign showing room locations

Easy enough…turn to the right. Well…I thought it was easy…except my room was no where to be found in that direction. I thought I had misread the sign, but no…I didn’t. So if it’s not right, how about I turn to the left…and there was my room several doors down. The sign should have read…

202-222  <<<<<<< (turn to the left)
224-230  >>>>>>> (turn to the right)

I’m still trying to figure out how you can make a sign that is so wrong…seems so easy to me. And wouldn’t you think that someone would double check that?

So the “slightly kinked” version of myself is thinking this:  After I checked in and was heading up to room #220, the desk employee called all the staff and said “Quick…come down to the front desk…I just assigned room #220 to some middle-aged geezer…this should be great!!” They all gathered around the security monitor and watched me wander down the wrong direction before finding the correct room. And they must have busted a gut laughing! You see…I’m guessing this is what you do for fun when you live in the middle of nowhere. And to be honest, I’m OK with giving them a laugh!

DHCP Scope Configuration – Oops

So for the last couple of days, I’ve been in Nevada at one of our remote sites. (On a side note, the “middle of nowhere” pretty much describes all of Nevada!!) I was setting up a wireless bridge to connect separate parts of a large aggregate plant…it was a very busy few days. We kept running into problems, which took up a lot of time to resolve, but eventually we got things working. As I was testing the new subnet hanging off the bridge, I noticed that DHCP was not working…hmmm, very strange. I’ve configured DHCP many times over the years, and it just works. Time to troubleshoot…

First test was easy…I configured a static IP on my laptop and everything worked great. Next I drove over to the other end which housed the main switch and router, and plugged into a port configured for the new VLAN….and no DHCP. Say what? Hmmm…I must have made a mistake on my configuration…but the DHCP pool looks good…

Config for the DHCP pool

Config for the DHCP pool

And the subinterface configuration looks good too…

Sub-interface config looks good too

Sub-interface config looks good too

Very interesting…the only thing left was the DCHP excluded-address config, but that’s so easy, I know that’s not the problem.  But I checked it out anyways…

DHCP excluded-address config....oops

DHCP excluded-address config….oops

Say what?? How could I have messed that up? But I have to say, the configuration was doing exactly what I asked it to do…basically not handing out any IP’s!! So after a quick edit, everything was working properly…

The proper excluded-address configuration

The proper excluded-address configuration

So remember, most of the time, it will be the simple things that get you.

Saturday Snapshot – Welcome Evelyn Grace

There are certain events in life that leave a lasting impression…a moment in time that you will never forget. For me…it’s the day I got married, the birth of my two children, the death of my first wife, and the day I married my second wife. Most of these events are joyous, yet some are painful. Today’s event however, is a day of immense joy…my daughter Andrea and her husband Cory had their first child…my granddaughter Evelyn Grace. And like so many years ago when Andrea was born, I am once again smitten by a little girl…

My granddaughter Evelyn Grace

My granddaughter Evelyn Grace