New Years Resolutions

Well, we come to a New Year - and like so many I too have resolved to Blog more, and update an entry each week. Here we are the second week of January, so you can see how well this resolution is working thus far.

My wife and I watched 'Apocalypse Man' staring Rudy Reves last night on the History Channel. It was both entertaining and informative. It looked like it was filmed after Katrina, and had some very interesting footage. I hope they make it into a Series, as I think it has potential to capture the imagination.

Apocalypse Man on the History Channel

How to do a remote install when working from home.

One of the greatest challenges is working on remote lab systems when your a Home Based employee. Such is the situation I found myself in, how to upgrade a SunFire V40z from CentOS 4.6 to the latest CentOS 5.3 .

Fortunately for me, this problem was solved with Anaconda, unfortunately for me the version shipped with CentOS 4.6 didn't hand a sufficient buffer for all the arguments I wanted to pass - you can see where this is headed. So, it was with great expectations that I ftp'ed a PXE Boot version of vmlinuz and initrd.img to the /boot directory, updated the Grub menu.lst file with my configuration updates and rebooted...

Poof! Nothing...

Lucky for me there was a way ... the SunFireV40z Service Processor could allow me access to the Boot Console and the serial port had been wired to a KVM. This allowed me to remove all the excess white space, and unused arguments to end up with the secret sauce:

title CentOS PXE Boot (VncConnect)
     root (hd0,0)
     kernel /vmlinuz.pxe console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0 \
vnc vncpassword=myVNCpassword \
headless \
ip=10.0.0.100 netmask=255.255.255.0 \
gateway=10.0.0.1 dns=10.0.0.1 \
ksdevice=eth0 \
method=http://repository.centos.mirror/centos/5.3/os/i386/ \
lang=en_US keymap=us \
root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 \
ro
     initrd /initrd.img.pxe

This allowed the system to return to it's place on the network and begin it's new life as an IPv6 test bed. Anaconda is a very powerful utility once you learn to leverage it's features.

- Rich.

When Murphy Comes Knocking...

I recently had the challenge of trying to work during a City Wide backout. (Ok, so the City of Fate isn't that big, but at $3.89 a gallon gas, choices are made.) Now Murphy often strikes at the worst time, like while your partisipating in a Video Conference Call.

OK, so time for Step 1 and fast... Ease of operation, and fault tollerence are important. First thing's first, communication. For this there's nothing like your well charged Cell Phone, which is my case was a Cingular 8525. Dialing back into the Voice side of the Conference Call was a breeze, and my battery was fully charged.

We're making progress, so time to recover while I'm listening on the call. The MacBook Pro is running off battery, so time to get back online. Enabling Bluetooth on both the 8525 and MacBook Pro allow Internet Sharing, so while not blazing, I am accessing the AT&T UMTS Network via the 8525. Unfortunetly this will drain faster than water in a Texas Sinkhole. So I have to get some juice and quickly, but I can at least process Email.

Enter into the picture, something left out from last weekend's camping trip - a 400Watt Power Center. This little gem is a recharage battery pack w/ a built in 12v to 120v Adapter. It has two 120volt outlets, just enough to keep the duo fully charged... Step 3 accomplished.

With these handy tools, I had outsmarted Murphy. Or had I?


As it turned out he was set to attack my Wife by draining her cell phone, enter a couple more Camping & Emergency Tools.

The Power on Board TrailTracker is packed pull of features, such as neat little fluorescent / led lattern. weather radio, AM/FM Radio, and a 12 Volt Power port. I plugged in the Wife's Cell Phone Car Adapter and viola it's charging. I could have also used the Solio, but decided to hold off until I really needed it.


So when your considering your working environment, don't forget to buy yourself a little Murphy Repellent along the way!

- Rich.

The Concept of a ZPO - Zero Port Office (Who needs Wires?)

As we begin to truly investigate what it means to work in a Wireless World, we begin to redefine our work environment and ultimately our office. Bye gone are the days when you were chained to the desk in some forgotten windowless basement cell. With the adoption of Sun's Openwork Practice we are able to work privately and securely from anywhere at anytime. This re-shapes and begs the question, what does the office of the future hold?

One thought that seems to be making a come back is something I looked at a couple years ago, the ZPO - a Zero Port Office. A productive space consisting of a Desk/Table, Chair, Wireless Internet, and power in the form of a 110/220 Volt outlet. This becomes a place where you can power up the laptop, make a call, and work. This idea is already being embraced by food services such as McDonald's and Buffalo Wild Wings to name a few. If you notice, more and more locations frequented by mobile workers are delivering a super size of power and wifi to the table (as well as your meal).

So what would be the advantage to a ZOP in an Enterprise? Well for starters you could save ALOT in Physical Cabling, Network Equipment, and Installation Cost to each office desk. Since most mobile workers use Cell Phones already (remember GSM ad EDGE are also a great backup for no wifi), you could save on Phone equipment on each desktop. And lastly Time, WiFi allows faster deployment for 50 -> 128 Users than it's wired alternative. The only part of this solution lacking is Mesh.

Mesh Technology could allow an entire warehouse or technical support floor to be run off a single copper backhaul with tens or hundreds of AP's simply plugged into power (or 100% Green running off a Solar Panel or Wind Turbine) and configuring themselves to talk to their neighbor. With Mesh already included in the $199 OLPC, I have to believe the future is not that far off.

Working in a Wireless World

A wise man once said, "... all I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by." In todays mobile work place, the same could be said of Wireless - give me GSM, WiFi, or Bluetooth and work is progressing. I thought I would share a couple of my favorite Wireless finds to help the Mobile Worker.

Starting off with WiFi - WiFi's pretty abundant if you know where to look, from Coffee Shops, to Resturants, to your "Super Size It" spot you can have access. The trick is often how to find a hotspot near your moving location, one tool I have come to rely on is JiWire Hotspot Companion for Skype. With JiWire I am able to hop scotch from hotspot to hotspot as I travel across the city without fear of ending up in a signal free wasteland (I'll cover the boonies in a moment).

Bluetooth is finally breaking past Cellular Headsets here in the US. I have always wanted to go wireless for my iPod and have finally found a winning combination. The Jabra A125s Bluetooth Music Adapter supports the advanced audio Distribution Profile (a2DP) and audio video remote control Profile (avrcP) for the iPod. This means I can listen to rich stereo sound and control the iPod from the bluetooth device. I am big advocate for functionality, durability and versatility, as such I find the Motorola Motorokr S9 works great as headphones. The S9 is light, flexible, and most of all water resistant - so wearing them while I'm outside is not a problem. If I had to pick a downside, it be that the S9 is a headset, and can be used with a cell phone - I personally find the sound quality lacking compared to my Jawbone headset. One Bluetooth device I can't wait to test is the Jabra A7010 Bluetooth Hub, which should allow me to use my Bluetooth headset with my Deskphone and replace my now dead 15 year old ACS Headset (may it rest in peace).

This brings us to Cellular (and the boonies), I am totally baffled by the number of people who carry a newer cell phone and think they need a cellular card for their computers to connect to the internet. Most modern cell phones can be used by a computer to access the internet using either a USB Cable or Bluetooth DUN (a Bluetooth profile) via Internet Sharing on your Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone or Pocket PC. Signup for an unlimited cellular data plan and you can connect both your smart phone and laptop to the internet for a nominal fee. This allows you to use your smart phone for mobile applications and the laptop when you need a bigger keyboard or screen

So free yourself of the cables that prevent you from soaring and embrace your freedom.

Keep My Identity

Greetings, Welcome to Rich's Ramblings

I am in the process of migrating my Blog off another system, so please be patient.

Like so many of us, I've made a New Years resolution to actually Blog. I've been experimenting with Twitter and micro blogging for some time, and decided to go ahead and take the plunge. First I guess a little background is in order, I have been in the computer industry since 1978 (a hobby I'm paid to do - too cool!).

I've been blessed to be a part of some of the most exciting times in the computer industry and can say the best is beaconing on the horizon (but that's another entry, can't spill on the beans at once). ;-)

It's now time for Disclaimer 37 - “The views expressed by this individual (me) do not necessarily reflect the views or ideas of my employer. They are for entertainment purposes only and are considered accurate based on the delusions / medication of the poster and may be used as food for thought or just a good laugh.”

One of my roles at Sun Microsystems, Inc., is in Security so I spend some time thinking about how bad things can happen and how to prevent them. This brought me to thinking about a Plague on our industry – Identity Theft. It's probably coincidental that a commercial for LifeLock came on the radio. You've probably heard it “My name is Todd Davis and My social security number is 457-55-5462” Where they guarantee protect your identity, well it seems to me that credit theft is only one aspect of Identity Theft. Another more insidious that hit me was Income Taxed Theft, wouldn't it be interesting if people started using this SSN for work, thus allowing the IRS to believe someone had made money that wasn't reported as income (this would be against the law, so don't try it). The Government doesn't seem to be discriminating about where they get their money, so long as they get it. I've seen this occur first hand where someone was able to use a SSN that didn't match their name to report income fictitiously. It becomes an interesting exercise to prove your not that person, but even harder is to prove that you did not make that money, nor do you owe taxes on it.

Identity Theft is far broader than Credit Theft, and I have a solution for Credit Theft... Don't use Credit, I personally like Dave Ramsey's idea, pay off your debt, pay cash, and lower that credit score down to Zero so it's useless for criminals to steal. :-)