For the Win32 / MS Outlook users out there (yes, all 100 billion of you) there's an app by the "7 habits of highly successful people"'s Franklin Covey, called "Plan Plus", currently on their 2.0 release.
The Good: Nice integration with Outlook Has seperate sections for the "Big Picture" goals and weekly goals. A really well thought out and task-oriented way to manage your to-dos Easy Drag-and-drop Tasks to your calendar to schedule time to get shit done integration with your palm pilot or PocketPC 2002 handheld (although this is definitely minimal and kind of sucks) Lets you prioritize tasks better than standard outlook, lets you do A (high) B (mid) and C (low) priority tasks, with numbers to indicate their relative ranks (i.e. A1 - Get a job, A2 - stop reading/., B1 - get a girlfriend, etc)
The Bad: Did I mention the win32/outlook thing? ok good. You MUST have IE as your default web browser, otherwise the Planplus "home page" (i.e. daily to-dos, meetings etc) doesn't render right in outlook. To-do's can't have sub-tasks, can't share tasks with other users
The Ugly: Took them a freaking YEAR to release an update for it, and the update was minimal at best. The Tech Support sucks, blah blah yadda yadda. I sent them an email saying I was evaluating it for rolling out to my 30+ sales staff, but was concerned about something-or-other, and got NOTHING back. nada. zip.
So, bottom line, check it out if you're an Outlook user that's also a Franklin Covey fan, its a 90+ mb download, needs.NET and your firstborn son (and a gander at your wife/gf nekkid) but hey, IMHO if you can get ANYTHING to get you to be organized and actually Get Shit Done(tm) then you're on the right track. If Notepad.exe does it, good, just pick a tool and USE it. This means sticking with it after the initial honeymoon period. I find I always put in A-level tasks that never get done (i.e. get my CISSP, solve world hunger, knock wife up, etc) and then get discouraged when none of those happen (ok, well, I *did* knock the wife up;-)
Hope this helps. Follow-up conversation is encouraged; I'd love to hear from other users/ex-users.
Will introduce you to the high-powered, creatively satisfying, poorly compensated world of public radio. May compensate you. May also not compensate you. Will provide you with an immediate list of marginally interesting things to do, a list that will grow exponentially more interesting as we discover how competent you are. Will offer exposure to people who are famous, or at least as famous as you can be if you got famous by being on public radio.
1 package Mac&Cheese (spring for the "Annie's Shells&Cheddar" (the one with the bunny on the front. Its organic and much more healthy for you. Or at least go for the Kraft low-fat version.
1 15oz can Black beans, rinsed, and then nuked with a little water for about a minute
Make the mac&cheese, dump in the black beans, add some of the following (tabasco sauce, oregano, hot pepper flakes, ground cumin and/or coriander, or heck just throw in 1/2 jar of salsa)
You're done in 10 minutes (less if you use the new microwave mac&cheese) and you have pretty decent meal.
Its a 60-page PDF that covers all of the features included in most PBX's that can be exploited and/or manipulated.
If you're a security engineer I HIGHLY recommend it. Even if you're just the company's Network Admin that's also responsible for the PBX, check it out. What a cool line on your resume? How about "Reduced company's monthly phone bill by XX% (thing BIG) via PBX audit" Nothing says "You're Hired!" better than that.(Hint: turn off automatic-forwarding by default to start. People config their work phone to forward to their house over the night/weekend, and their long-distance friends just call the company's Toll Free number and get routed to the employee's house. They chat, company picks up the tab. Also look into setting up SMDR or CDR (google for it) on the PBX, connect a serial cable to the switch, and do some simple call accounting to determine who's doing what on your phone lines all day.
The tin-foil hat wearers are going to flame me a new one, but really this is just like sniffing your ethernet traffic to see if people are goofing off on the web all day. Plus, you're not actually LISTENING to whats said on the calls, you're just logging that extension x1234 called 978-555-1212 fifty times in the last month. Maybe that's a legit call, maybe its their wife/husband and they're goofing off. Or hell, maybe you figure out that you're under-utilizing your trunks, and can get rid of that extra T1 without causing inbound calls to get busy signals, or outbound calls to not get an outside line. Tell the PHB's to roll the first month's savings into your bonus plan:-)
And, as a turnaround question, have people found that their PBX experience translates into small-mid scale VoIP gigs, and if so, how? With a decent amount of PBX (non-voip) switch management under my belt, is it worth doing the WRT54G VoIP setup for the experience, or should I just try to find a job at a company that's doing 'real' voip?
We can, its easy. You just need to say the Universal Prayer:
"Please Lord, Bend all known laws of Existence for my convenience. Amen."
I usually say the U.P. before major router upgrades, or other potential risky feats of Network (or System) engineering. So far so goo%*(S*(ASDF
NO CARRIER
During a recent interview I was asked about my experiences with IDS systems. I joked with the guy interviewing me (also the hiring manager) that I was using Snort on ACID*, and how that wasn't a phrase you should use in the elevator or when around non-geek types. He agreed and laughed.
Sad part is, I just got the call 5 minutes ago saying that I didn't get the job.:-(
I work for a company that makes defibrillators (as in: PADDLES, "CLEAR!!", ***BZZZT** )
I think these would be the geek choice of anti-assailant devices if only those pesky robbers would just stand still long enough for us to put the pads on their chest.
How's this for a kicker: the sysadmin at my current gig purchased about 10 PCs with Win XP Home Edition preloaded, and now we need to pay $179 EACH just to upgrade them from XP Home to XP Pro. (The 60+ systems were all in "Workgroup" mode, moving them to Active Directory so I can have security on the file shares. XP Home won't join a domain.)
Yes, I know there are some hacks to make XP Home join authenticate to a DC, but they're just that, hacks (and work about as well.)
About five years ago (1998-ish) I was using Quickbooks to track my home finances, including credit cards, one of which was Intuit's own credit card.
I got behind once on a payment to the Intuit card, so WITHOUT my permission (except perhaps in a hastilty clicked-through EULA, but STILL!) the Quickbooks software does a transfer from one of my other credit cards and PAYS ITSELF something like $150.
And I was only 3 weeks late, on probably a $5000 or so debt.
This is so far offtopic the Mars Rover is going to pick it up, but its one of the few chances I've seen to tout my own sport here:
Try Fencing if you want to get involved in a strategy sport that: a) is an amazing cardio workout b) very inexpensive to get started with (most clubs let you use their equipment for free, and a full electric setup, with appropriate clothes, is under $500) c) fighting with swords is a crapload of fun, especially once you get the hang of it (only a couple of months, but still a lifetime to master) d) makes you THINK. its not about bashing the head in of whomever has the ball. its about figuring out your opponent, and then executing a strategy against him. I leave practices and/or tournaments with my head spinning (but in the good way)
and if I haven't convinced you yet: e) LOTS of girls fence. Yes,/.'ers, you can participate in a sport AND meet girls at the same time. And "NO" to the sarcastic kid in the back, they DO NOT look like orcs. Most of them are damn cute (and most that I know are in professions like molecular biology and other "thinking" jobs, so they also pass the geek factor.)
I had a bunch of die-hard punk friends a while back.
Our standard greeting on our Thursday night gettogethers was "Fuck you, you Fucking Fuckers!!" (kind of like 'hey man, good to fucking see ya, how the fuck have you been!?!")
Somehow, I can't imagine walking in an saying 'Greetings friends. How is everyone doing this fine evening?'
That's sort of what your Fucking F*ck's are doing for me right now. If you want to say FUCK, FUCKING say it, you fucking fuck! We/.'ers are a hardy fucking bunch. A few fucks here and there never fucking hurt anyfuckingbody.:-)
The main advantages I've personally experienced with Solaris on x86 are:
* as a study platform for the Sun Certified System Administrator exam. At my last company I could reboot and crash my x86 boxes all day long and not have to touch the Netra T1's, X1's and 420R's that we're being used by the developers for staging/production. Granted, some of the hardware aspects are completely different (the BOOT rom, etc) but I could learn that on the X1's during off-hours and weekend.
* As a way to keep the number of OS's in your environment down. Again, at my last place we had Micro$oft on the desktops, and Solaris as the staging/production environment. I had PLENTY of x86 desktops that I could install Solaris on and use as, for example, a squid proxy server, Snort IDS, Apache for employee's personal web sites, etc. It didn't make sense to run Linux/*BSD for those boxes since we were already a Solaris shop.
* Proof-of-concept for a new app and/or service before asking the Boss a real Sun server.
Nowadays, though: * I don't know how many people are taking the Solaris exams, and perhaps Sun is giving x86 away for free in order to stimulate this area of revenue and interest.
* More people know and are comfortable with Linux than before, so finding admins that know Windows, Solaris, AND Linux (e.g. Redhat) isn't as hard (or expensive) as it used to be.
Just my.02 worth, and I know this was a slightly off-topic answer to your question.
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For the Win32 / MS Outlook users out there (yes, all 100 billion of you) there's an app by the "7 habits of highly successful people"'s Franklin Covey, called "Plan Plus", currently on their 2.0 release.
/., B1 - get a girlfriend, etc)
.NET and your firstborn son (and a gander at your wife/gf nekkid) but hey, IMHO if you can get ANYTHING to get you to be organized and actually Get Shit Done(tm) then you're on the right track. If Notepad.exe does it, good, just pick a tool and USE it. This means sticking with it after the initial honeymoon period. I find I always put in A-level tasks that never get done (i.e. get my CISSP, solve world hunger, knock wife up, etc) and then get discouraged when none of those happen (ok, well, I *did* knock the wife up ;-)
The Good:
Nice integration with Outlook
Has seperate sections for the "Big Picture" goals and weekly goals.
A really well thought out and task-oriented way to manage your to-dos
Easy Drag-and-drop Tasks to your calendar to schedule time to get shit done
integration with your palm pilot or PocketPC 2002 handheld (although this is definitely minimal and kind of sucks)
Lets you prioritize tasks better than standard outlook, lets you do A (high) B (mid) and C (low) priority tasks, with numbers to indicate their relative ranks (i.e. A1 - Get a job, A2 - stop reading
The Bad:
Did I mention the win32/outlook thing? ok good.
You MUST have IE as your default web browser, otherwise the Planplus "home page" (i.e. daily to-dos, meetings etc) doesn't render right in outlook.
To-do's can't have sub-tasks, can't share tasks with other users
The Ugly:
Took them a freaking YEAR to release an update for it, and the update was minimal at best. The Tech Support sucks, blah blah yadda yadda. I sent them an email saying I was evaluating it for rolling out to my 30+ sales staff, but was concerned about something-or-other, and got NOTHING back. nada. zip.
So, bottom line, check it out if you're an Outlook user that's also a Franklin Covey fan, its a 90+ mb download, needs
Hope this helps. Follow-up conversation is encouraged; I'd love to hear from other users/ex-users.
My sig: All Politicians Lie (www.unamerican.com)
Will introduce you to the high-powered, creatively satisfying, poorly compensated world of public radio. May compensate you. May also not compensate you. Will provide you with an immediate list of marginally interesting things to do, a list that will grow exponentially more interesting as we discover how competent you are. Will offer exposure to people who are famous, or at least as famous as you can be if you got famous by being on public radio.
Subsitute /public radio/ with /your job here/
Hey, at least they're honest.
Here's a good one:
1 package Mac&Cheese (spring for the "Annie's Shells&Cheddar" (the one with the bunny on the front. Its organic and much more healthy for you. Or at least go for the Kraft low-fat version.
1 15oz can Black beans, rinsed, and then nuked with a little water for about a minute
Make the mac&cheese, dump in the black beans, add some of the following (tabasco sauce, oregano, hot pepper flakes, ground cumin and/or coriander, or heck just throw in 1/2 jar of salsa)
You're done in 10 minutes (less if you use the new microwave mac&cheese) and you have pretty decent meal.
PBX Vulnerability Analysis: Finding Holes in your PBX Before Someone Else Does
Its a 60-page PDF that covers all of the features included in most PBX's that can be exploited and/or manipulated.
If you're a security engineer I HIGHLY recommend it. Even if you're just the company's Network Admin that's also responsible for the PBX, check it out. What a cool line on your resume? How about "Reduced company's monthly phone bill by XX% (thing BIG) via PBX audit" Nothing says "You're Hired!" better than that.(Hint: turn off automatic-forwarding by default to start. People config their work phone to forward to their house over the night/weekend, and their long-distance friends just call the company's Toll Free number and get routed to the employee's house. They chat, company picks up the tab. Also look into setting up SMDR or CDR (google for it) on the PBX, connect a serial cable to the switch, and do some simple call accounting to determine who's doing what on your phone lines all day.
The tin-foil hat wearers are going to flame me a new one, but really this is just like sniffing your ethernet traffic to see if people are goofing off on the web all day. Plus, you're not actually LISTENING to whats said on the calls, you're just logging that extension x1234 called 978-555-1212 fifty times in the last month. Maybe that's a legit call, maybe its their wife/husband and they're goofing off. Or hell, maybe you figure out that you're under-utilizing your trunks, and can get rid of that extra T1 without causing inbound calls to get busy signals, or outbound calls to not get an outside line. Tell the PHB's to roll the first month's savings into your bonus plan :-)
And, as a turnaround question, have people found that their PBX experience translates into small-mid scale VoIP gigs, and if so, how? With a decent amount of PBX (non-voip) switch management under my belt, is it worth doing the WRT54G VoIP setup for the experience, or should I just try to find a job at a company that's doing 'real' voip?
and people who still insist on making lame "imagine a beowolf cluster" and "I, for one, welcome our new overlords."
"Please Lord, Bend all known laws of Existence for my convenience. Amen."
I usually say the U.P. before major router upgrades, or other potential risky feats of Network (or System) engineering. So far so goo%*(S*(ASDF NO CARRIER
Sad part is, I just got the call 5 minutes ago saying that I didn't get the job. :-(
* (Analysis Console for Intrusion Databases)
You're going to need it when your sweat short-circuits all that gear you're wearing.
But then again, I guess that title works too, huh?
I think these would be the geek choice of anti-assailant devices if only those pesky robbers would just stand still long enough for us to put the pads on their chest.
Reminds me of a bad (and now reallllly old) joke:
What's OJ Simpson's email address?
Slash Slash Escape
(Yeah yeah of course I know its not a valid address. Get over it. Its a JOKE. I didn't say it was good.)
I've told you a million times: DON'T EXAGGERATE!
[/my mom]
Maybe now nature won't be pissed.
Check out this link, halfway down is a T-shirt of an Angry Daisy t-shirt that pretty much sums it up.
Note: I am in no way affiliated with this guys site, but I DO agree with a lot that he has to say.
How's this for a kicker: the sysadmin at my current gig purchased about 10 PCs with Win XP Home Edition preloaded, and now we need to pay $179 EACH just to upgrade them from XP Home to XP Pro. (The 60+ systems were all in "Workgroup" mode, moving them to Active Directory so I can have security on the file shares. XP Home won't join a domain.)
Yes, I know there are some hacks to make XP Home join authenticate to a DC, but they're just that, hacks (and work about as well.)
That got me thinking. Is there an XML cooking spec?
There was an effort called RecipeML. It hasn't been updated in ages, though.
Check it out: here
Here's a great site:
Fat Free and Vegetarian
Now just wash 'em down with the aforementioned Dirty Martini, and you're all set!
here
This is awesome news. Now I can have diamonds on the soles of my shoes.
About five years ago (1998-ish) I was using Quickbooks to track my home finances, including credit cards, one of which was Intuit's own credit card.
I got behind once on a payment to the Intuit card, so WITHOUT my permission (except perhaps in a hastilty clicked-through EULA, but STILL!) the Quickbooks software does a transfer from one of my other credit cards and PAYS ITSELF something like $150.
And I was only 3 weeks late, on probably a $5000 or so debt.
I was schocked. Still am. FUCK INTUIT.
It won't work, since XT's only had 8-bit screws.
This is so far offtopic the Mars Rover is going to pick it up, but its one of the few chances I've seen to tout my own sport here:
/.'ers, you can participate in a sport AND meet girls at the same time. And "NO" to the sarcastic kid in the back, they DO NOT look like orcs. Most of them are damn cute (and most that I know are in professions like molecular biology and other "thinking" jobs, so they also pass the geek factor.)
Try Fencing if you want to get involved in a strategy sport that:
a) is an amazing cardio workout
b) very inexpensive to get started with (most clubs let you use their equipment for free, and a full electric setup, with appropriate clothes, is under $500)
c) fighting with swords is a crapload of fun, especially once you get the hang of it (only a couple of months, but still a lifetime to master)
d) makes you THINK. its not about bashing the head in of whomever has the ball. its about figuring out your opponent, and then executing a strategy against him. I leave practices and/or tournaments with my head spinning (but in the good way)
and if I haven't convinced you yet:
e) LOTS of girls fence. Yes,
Check it out. http://www.usfa.org
You, my friend, are obviously not a crack-smoker.
I had a bunch of die-hard punk friends a while back.
/.'ers are a hardy fucking bunch. A few fucks here and there never fucking hurt anyfuckingbody. :-)
Our standard greeting on our Thursday night gettogethers was "Fuck you, you Fucking Fuckers!!" (kind of like 'hey man, good to fucking see ya, how the fuck have you been!?!")
Somehow, I can't imagine walking in an saying 'Greetings friends. How is everyone doing this fine evening?'
That's sort of what your Fucking F*ck's are doing for me right now. If you want to say FUCK, FUCKING say it, you fucking fuck! We
(insert George Carlin-esque diatribe here)
and you can "WarHorse" all of the wireless AP's at the racetrack.
The main advantages I've personally experienced with Solaris on x86 are:
.02 worth, and I know this was a slightly off-topic answer to your question.
* as a study platform for the Sun Certified System Administrator exam. At my last company I could reboot and crash my x86 boxes all day long and not have to touch the Netra T1's, X1's and 420R's that we're being used by the developers for staging/production. Granted, some of the hardware aspects are completely different (the BOOT rom, etc) but I could learn that on the X1's during off-hours and weekend.
* As a way to keep the number of OS's in your environment down. Again, at my last place we had Micro$oft on the desktops, and Solaris as the staging/production environment. I had PLENTY of x86 desktops that I could install Solaris on and use as, for example, a squid proxy server, Snort IDS, Apache for employee's personal web sites, etc. It didn't make sense to run Linux/*BSD for those boxes since we were already a Solaris shop.
* Proof-of-concept for a new app and/or service before asking the Boss a real Sun server.
Nowadays, though:
* I don't know how many people are taking the Solaris exams, and perhaps Sun is giving x86 away for free in order to stimulate this area of revenue and interest.
* More people know and are comfortable with Linux than before, so finding admins that know Windows, Solaris, AND Linux (e.g. Redhat) isn't as hard (or expensive) as it used to be.
Just my