Well if you tried to email me this weekend you probably had poor luck. It seems that the power decided to do some funky stuff this weekend and that caused a little bit of a mess with my servers. It was even better when this happened while I was back home enjoying easter dinner with family.
Anyway just a note for the few people who read this blog.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Its been awhile but I still survive
Well it has been sometime since my last post, but I do not totally forget about the blog. Anyways, I am not sure for how much longer I will be at this residence, as I have my domain name secured, and now its the planning stages of the to be website at said domain. I do have email working already and nicely at that. If you feel the need to drop me a line, jarmitage"at"xavorin'.'net is the email I use. Of course you must omit the "" and '' to make it work, they are just my little attempt to reduce the possibility of being caught by spam crawlers.
Not much else has been going on, just still trudging away at school, listening to some Frank Sinatra among other things.
Xav out....
Not much else has been going on, just still trudging away at school, listening to some Frank Sinatra among other things.
Xav out....
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Well so far so good
Heh, not updated as often as I would like right now.
Anyway, just in the process of polishing off the cisco course here, getting introduced to some sexy enterprise grade equipment that I wouldn't mind to call my own.
My one downfall with the course so far is that I have not pushed myself to do my full potential. Yet I still manage to pull off an average of 90%+ overall in any course thrown at me(it used to be higher, but I found a lower energy expenditure that allows for more lazy!). Hell I could be pushing a perfect average if I wanted to, I mean it would be nice, but that would require more energy than what I am willing to put in right now, efficiency is key! Although it would be nice to have a bundle of equipment for my own personal use, a rack full that is guaranteed not to be tampered with by others. Sure its a little greedy, but to help me excel I need that extra bit of challenge that only comes from playing with elaborate setups. I keep hoping for some delivering of the goods to my front door, the pure thought of it alone gets me all giddy. And it wouldn't be just a couple boxes, but racks of network equipment, and the servers to create all my wildest imaginations! It would only be a few million worth to make my dream of a play house with the goods :D
Anyway, enough rambling about my g33k dreams, but I guess that means I have nothing left to talk about for the moment...
tata!
Anyway, just in the process of polishing off the cisco course here, getting introduced to some sexy enterprise grade equipment that I wouldn't mind to call my own.
My one downfall with the course so far is that I have not pushed myself to do my full potential. Yet I still manage to pull off an average of 90%+ overall in any course thrown at me(it used to be higher, but I found a lower energy expenditure that allows for more lazy!). Hell I could be pushing a perfect average if I wanted to, I mean it would be nice, but that would require more energy than what I am willing to put in right now, efficiency is key! Although it would be nice to have a bundle of equipment for my own personal use, a rack full that is guaranteed not to be tampered with by others. Sure its a little greedy, but to help me excel I need that extra bit of challenge that only comes from playing with elaborate setups. I keep hoping for some delivering of the goods to my front door, the pure thought of it alone gets me all giddy. And it wouldn't be just a couple boxes, but racks of network equipment, and the servers to create all my wildest imaginations! It would only be a few million worth to make my dream of a play house with the goods :D
Anyway, enough rambling about my g33k dreams, but I guess that means I have nothing left to talk about for the moment...
tata!
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Playing Catchup
Well its been a little while, but I intend to get into a more rigorous regime about this Blog.
So a bit of updates. School is back in session, Linux class is about to be completed. Started MS Security Admin(70-299).
This past Monday night, I joined a good number of fellow gamers at the south common Best Buy as we eagerly awaiting the dawning of the midnight hour. Why? Well if you must ask such a question you must either be a hermit, or a non-gamer. For it was at this noble hour, that Blizzard released the expansion to their MMORPG, World Of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade! It took 3 long hours but at 0250 I had purchased my copy, and was returning to my current domicile in Edmonton. Those 3 hours where not ill spent however, as the conversations happening around me were a delight to partake and listen into. If I would of planned it better, I probably could have met up with some guildies, or even others from the server I play on the most, Kel'Thuzad.
Anyway, I checked out part of the new Blood Elf area before returning to playing Alliance, and making a Draenei toon. Blizzard has done a pretty good job with the models and textures of the new areas. It has been a splendid time exploring and checking out just the Draenei starting area of Azuremyst Isle, Bloodmyst Isle, and Silvermyst Isle.
Outlands is just swarming with toons right now, and thus I haven't actually tried to experience any of the content there, should be good though once I start.
So a bit of updates. School is back in session, Linux class is about to be completed. Started MS Security Admin(70-299).
This past Monday night, I joined a good number of fellow gamers at the south common Best Buy as we eagerly awaiting the dawning of the midnight hour. Why? Well if you must ask such a question you must either be a hermit, or a non-gamer. For it was at this noble hour, that Blizzard released the expansion to their MMORPG, World Of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade! It took 3 long hours but at 0250 I had purchased my copy, and was returning to my current domicile in Edmonton. Those 3 hours where not ill spent however, as the conversations happening around me were a delight to partake and listen into. If I would of planned it better, I probably could have met up with some guildies, or even others from the server I play on the most, Kel'Thuzad.
Anyway, I checked out part of the new Blood Elf area before returning to playing Alliance, and making a Draenei toon. Blizzard has done a pretty good job with the models and textures of the new areas. It has been a splendid time exploring and checking out just the Draenei starting area of Azuremyst Isle, Bloodmyst Isle, and Silvermyst Isle
Outlands is just swarming with toons right now, and thus I haven't actually tried to experience any of the content there, should be good though once I start.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Valve redux
So after I finally completed that little rant about Valve and their apparent lack of redundancy, I try to login to steam. It gave me an error, but this one is not the same as the others, apparently I cant type my password. Again I enter the password, sucess!
I then promptly go back to the steam forums, a friendly sticky telling us of the current work being done to move the servers to a different facility is underway, and that apparently I was one of the lucky ~50% that have already been restored.
So a cudos to Valve in getting a solution to the issue, but it still took you long enough.
Surprisingly enough, this is turning out to be a annual thing, as the power outage today has the same cause as the one of last year. Sad to see that a lesson was not learned.
On the other hand, I do have a good idea as to why Valve only has the one set of "master" servers to perform the login authentication, security. By having a second set the possiblity of leaking the account data is of a greater chance, although if the servers were powered off, or simply kept off the net the chances of that happening would be minimal.
I then promptly go back to the steam forums, a friendly sticky telling us of the current work being done to move the servers to a different facility is underway, and that apparently I was one of the lucky ~50% that have already been restored.
So a cudos to Valve in getting a solution to the issue, but it still took you long enough.
Surprisingly enough, this is turning out to be a annual thing, as the power outage today has the same cause as the one of last year. Sad to see that a lesson was not learned.
On the other hand, I do have a good idea as to why Valve only has the one set of "master" servers to perform the login authentication, security. By having a second set the possiblity of leaking the account data is of a greater chance, although if the servers were powered off, or simply kept off the net the chances of that happening would be minimal.
Valve, y?
So After getting back from class, I decide that I need to play a nice relaxing couple hours of HL2ep1. Well sadly things did not turn out to be in my favour.
First, I come home to a locked up machine, totally unresponsive but a simple fix none the less. After getting back into the familar confines of XP, I am greeted by multiple "We have recovered from a serious error" messages. I'll investigate those later.
Then to my surprise Steam pops up, requesting my logon information. This brings a little wonder to me as steam has always been a good little app that does its thing in the background. I disreguard the request as I take a couple mins to probe my machine for reasons to the failure.
I go back to the steam client and enter my credentials. "Steam is having troubles connecting to the Steam servers". WTFBBQ!?! Thinking that the issue is on my end I do some simple connectivity tests, lo and behold I see no reason I am receiving that message. So I tried in vain a couple more times. Now I am ticked.
So I wander over to the steampowered website, and hit up the forums. They take forever to load, this is not normal. I think to myself, oh shit...
Well turns out the "master" servers which apparently handle the login information have been affected by a power outage caused by this bugger of a storm going through the washington/oregon states. So 1 for me.
Now this brought to mind the question, Valve why are all the login servers in one place? From a network standpoint this is a major no-no, especially since Valve's Steam service runs world-wide. A single point of failure. So where are the secondary servers that are in some sort of hot/cold standby, prepared for such an event? So far no where to be found ><
First, I come home to a locked up machine, totally unresponsive but a simple fix none the less. After getting back into the familar confines of XP, I am greeted by multiple "We have recovered from a serious error" messages. I'll investigate those later.
Then to my surprise Steam pops up, requesting my logon information. This brings a little wonder to me as steam has always been a good little app that does its thing in the background. I disreguard the request as I take a couple mins to probe my machine for reasons to the failure.
I go back to the steam client and enter my credentials. "Steam is having troubles connecting to the Steam servers". WTFBBQ!?! Thinking that the issue is on my end I do some simple connectivity tests, lo and behold I see no reason I am receiving that message. So I tried in vain a couple more times. Now I am ticked.
So I wander over to the steampowered website, and hit up the forums. They take forever to load, this is not normal. I think to myself, oh shit...
Well turns out the "master" servers which apparently handle the login information have been affected by a power outage caused by this bugger of a storm going through the washington/oregon states. So 1 for me.
Now this brought to mind the question, Valve why are all the login servers in one place? From a network standpoint this is a major no-no, especially since Valve's Steam service runs world-wide. A single point of failure. So where are the secondary servers that are in some sort of hot/cold standby, prepared for such an event? So far no where to be found ><
Last day of this year
Booyah! So today is the last day of school for the year @ NAIT and my NSSA course. It has been well so far, building upon the knowledge that I built in my earlier years of tinkering and experimentation.
So far I have completed the following:
CCNA p1 (subnetting, CIDR, etc)
tcpip protocols
A+
70-270
70-290
70-291
70-293
Currently in the following:
Linux+
70-294
I am proud to say that the completed courses have been with flying colours.
Later,
James
**NOTE: I just noticed that for some reason the course page states part time, however that is incorrect as it is indeed a full time course.**
So far I have completed the following:
CCNA p1 (subnetting, CIDR, etc)
tcpip protocols
A+
70-270
70-290
70-291
70-293
Currently in the following:
Linux+
70-294
I am proud to say that the completed courses have been with flying colours.
Later,
James
**NOTE: I just noticed that for some reason the course page states part time, however that is incorrect as it is indeed a full time course.**
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