Max Clark

A Bit of Humor in the Current Market

2008-09-18T17:36:03Z

An Italian walked into a bank in New York City and asked for the loan officer. He needed to borrow $5,000 for two weeks, but he was not a depositor of the bank. The loan officer said that the bank would need some form of security for the loan, so the Italian handed over the keys to a new $250,000 Ferrari out front and they could hold it until the loan was paid off in two weeks. The title was produced and everything checked out, the car was driven into the bank’s underground garage and parked, and the loan granted at 12%. Later, the bank’s president and officers all enjoyed a good laugh on the Italian for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral for a $5,000 loan. Two weeks later, the Italian returned, repaid the $5,000 plus interest of $23.07. The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?” The Italian replied: “Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $23.07 and expect it to be there when I return?”

Learning Python Complaints

2008-08-31T22:51:24Z

I read an excellent post the other day discussing Python education. I personally identify with almost 100% the author has to say. With Perl and PHP online articles and available books provide task based examples. What better way to learn a programming language than to give examples on how to solve a specific problem. More than anything else the lack of task based instruction has stalled my adoption of Python. http://troutgirl.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/learning-python/

HOWTO Remove Emergency Dialing from Blackberry when Locked

2008-08-25T20:59:13Z

I have what seems to be a relatively straightforward problem. I lock my blackberry, put it in my pocket and discover that a perfect series of motions result in the phone dialing 911. I find out the phone has dialed 911 when the emergency dispatcher calls me back to ask if I have an emergency. Should I be concerned when they accept my "no Sir/Maam, we do not"? After scouring the Internet this weekend, and waiting on hold with AT&T my fears were confirmed. There is simply no way to remove the "Emergency Call" option when the phone is locked. However I did find another option which has been working just as good if not better. By holding down the mute key the phone will go into standby mode disabling all of the keys except the mute button. Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to map the side keys to the standby function, but it is a step in the right direction.

Installing BES 4.1.6 on Windows 2008 Server

2008-08-02T16:52:05Z

Don't it's not supported.

Earthquake

2008-07-29T21:41:17Z

There was an Earthquake this morning in Los Angeles. If you are interested in the full details check out the USGS site here: [Magnitude 5.4 - GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, CALIFORNIA](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/eqinthenews/2008/ci14383980/) Reports are sizing the quake in the mid 5's - which means if you are in LA you felt it. I must say it was in interesting experience looking out the window in my 28th floor office watching the world move. As an unfortunate side effect the elevators serving the high rise (the upper floors) of the building are still out. This means each time I need to go to our main POP on the 7th floor I end up climbing 10 flights of stairs on the way down, and again on back on the way up.

mrtgsql Actually Used

2008-07-21T19:00:42Z

So I just found out that a utility I wrote called mrtgsql (parses and records the values of the mrtg .log files into a SQL database is/was being used by a German hosting operation. Honestly I wouldn't have imagined that anyone would be using the software - very cool that it came to use by someone. I've long since re-written the utility to read directly from .rrd files. Maybe I should release that work as well. http://www.cthought.com/free_software/

30 Million Domains No Profit

2008-07-02T19:38:07Z

From [Data Center Knowledge](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com): > [Go Daddy](https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/news/release_view.asp?news%5Fitem%5Fid=170&app%5Fhdr=) said this week that it is now managing more than 30 million domains I was actually thinking about the domain registration business the other day and what the actually costs associated are. GoDaddy is charging $6.85/year (plus the $0.20 ICANN fee) for a .com domain registration. If they are paying Verisign the list price of $6.42/year per .com name registered GoDaddy is making $0.43/year per domain (a 6.7% margin). With 30 million registered domains that is 12.9 million/year in Gross after $192.6 million/year payment to Verisign. Who's the real winner here? To bad there are those pesky things called merchant fees. At a best case 1-2% of the sale price for Visa/Mastercard (higher for Amex) that margin goes away really fast. Ever wonder why the GoDaddy shopping cart is so cluttered with all those up sells?

Superglued

2008-06-30T04:12:44Z

Tonight during round 37 of spring cleaning I managed to superglue three of my fingers together. It was quite funny actually - I was fixing some refrigerator magnets and dripped a nice pea sized dribble on one. As I was wiping the dribble up with my finger the thought ran through my head that it probably wasn't a good idea. After a quick run though our household chemicals I can say that nail polish remover works pretty good at melting the stuff of of skin.

$100 Dollar Tank

2008-06-06T18:42:09Z

This last week (as in four days) we watched the price of premium at the station near our house climb from $4.30/gallon to $4.61/gallon. Besides the disgust at the cost to fill up I've learned some interesting things in the process, for example: Gas pumps cut ATM/Debit cards off at $75 dollars, and the limit for Credit Cards is $100. Last month I was expecting gas to hit $5 dollars by 2009, now it looks like July 4th.

Just Plain Scary

2008-05-22T03:29:36Z

Oil Prices continued their assent today - I'm not going to venture a guess except to say the price of oil is probably going to continue upwards. This is a graph of the price of Oil over the past year: So we are approaching double the price from a year ago. I found this one tonight - can you believe that five years ago Oil was ~$40 a barrel? Wow.

Persistent, Misguided, or just Clueless?

2008-05-15T21:51:17Z

Okay, I tried to let this one go but I just couldn't. I will expand on my specific reasons for not being interested in InterNAP's Flow Control Platform (FCP) or by extension their route optimized bandwidth in another post. For now I give you the text from a recent exchange with a Salesperson which started with this message: > Hello, > > I would like to speak with someone about connecting InterNAP to 7012. > Also, to who is responsible for managing eBGP links among Savvis, > Hurricane, etc. Please advise. > > Ian P. * InterNAP Half suspecting this is a spam message sales prospecting I respond with our peering information. Ian responds with his canned followup message - which for the record is his first mistake. Not only is my contact information included in my email it is very easy to find our phone numbers via our web site(s), whois records, Google, etc... Trying to turn a lead into an opportunity via email just doesn't go anywhere. > Hi Max, > > Thanks for the quick response. Just to make sure we're on the same > page, I am proposing the following two items: > > 1.) IP [snip] > > 2.) Flow Control Platform (FCP) [snip] > > Please let me know if there is/isn't a level of interest here. > > Ian P. * InterNAP Now that we have confirmation that this is sales spam I move to quickly quash the conversation and not waste any more (of my) time. > Thanks no interest. At this point I'm impressed by Ian's persistence - he still wants to talk. Except Ian makes another mistake by still not calling. I've clearly stated that I am not interested in internap's offerings, sending yet another email is not going to open the door. > Thanks for your candor, Max. I understand these types of things are > occasionally reviewed and sometimes changed/implemented. Please let me > know a time in the future to follow up. > > Ian P. * InterNAP I (wrongly) assumed that at this point the issue was closed and we had moved on. Needless to say I was surprised to receive this next latest message - maybe it was the language/tone, or maybe it was just the persistence. In either case this is where things get weird and I would guess that Ian was having a bad day. > Max, > > I can't read your mind, and I don't want to waste anyone's time. Per my > last email, when would be a good time to touch base? > > Ian P. * InterNAP Interesting sales tactic don't you think? "I can't read your mind", I just love that line. Quick reply again from myself. > Ian, > > My last email clearly stated I was not interested in internap services > or products. > > -Max This has to be Ian's tour de force. > I didn't say I couldn't read. I said I couldn't read minds. My last > email clearly stated, "I understand these types of things are > occasionally reviewed and sometimes changed/implemented. Please let me > know a time in the future to follow up." this way we could have avoided > impolite email correspondences like this. > > Forget about it. Thanks. > > Ian P. * InterNAP So what do we learn from this (besides that I will never purchase anything from Ian)? Being hostile in email when you are sales prospecting is never a good idea because chances are it will be posted on the Internet for all to see.

Remove Hidden Devices from Windows

2008-05-15T19:16:09Z

This week we converted a series of Windows servers to VMWare machines. The VMWare Converter worked perfectly (albeit very slowly). After starting the new VM and installing the VMWare Tools we came across an interesting issue - the IP address was already in use by another NIC in the system, one that we could not see to reconfigure/delete. My initial hack was to just to search the registry and remove the IP address entries from the devices. After some Internet research I found the real solution: To get rid of that unwanted driver, device, or service: 1. Open the "Start" menu and choose "Run" 2. Type in "cmd" (without the quotes) and click "ok". 3. At the cmd prompt, type in "set devmgr\_show\_nonpresent\_devices=1" (without the quotes) and press enter. 4. On the next cmd prompt line, type in "devmgmt.msc" (without the quotes) and press enter. 5. In the Device Manager Console, from the "View" menu, select "Show Hidden Devices". 6. Uninstall the offending Devices. I should probably give caution to make sure you know what you are removing before you do it.

Uptime

2008-05-13T18:02:02Z

Every now and again I log into a server I haven't touched in a while and get a pleasant surprise... >[cthought@server01 ~]$ uptime > 11:01:01 up 636 days, 18:11, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.11, 2.25

The Razor Conspiracy

2008-05-13T17:22:23Z

Every year Gillette and Schick release a new razor. Usually the bold new improvement is an additional blade either on the face or now because the face is so big on the reverse side to reach the hard spots. With the new design comes increased prices (sure inflation is a factor but not the sole pricing pressure). The razors that I use (Gillette Fusion Manual Razor Cartridges) cost ~$15 dollars for a four pack ($3.75 ea). I usually get four to five shaves out of the cartridge before throwing it out, so $0.75 - $0.94 cents per shave. At what point does the cost of shaving become intolerable? As a test I purchased a pack of the old disposable packs (Bic Sensitive Shaver) which come in a 12 pack for $3.89. If I use a new razor each day it drops the cost per shave to $0.32, if I can reach a three shave per razor average it drops the cost to $0.11 per shave. I'm interested to see if I even notice a difference in between the razors. Yes I'm crazy for even thinking about this, but hey we all need our distractions from our daily lives.

Geeking out with Neat Receipts

2008-05-08T22:57:11Z

For years now I have kept all of my receipts (or I should say, all of the receipts that I didn't lose) just in case. Really what that means is envelopes stuffed full of loosely organized paper - the general strategy was when I found a hidden pile of receipts I would put them into whatever envelope was handy and deposit that into my file pedestal. A month or so ago C2 and I were out for drinks with another couple and he was going on and on about his new scanner, this and that and the next thing. We all got a good laugh at the level of geekery that was being displayed. Fast forward to today. After being haunted by the neat receipt displays in every airport and mall I've through I finally broke down and bought one to test out. Two hours later I have every receipt I've been able to find so far for the past four years imaged, cropped, categorized and of course the original shredded. Just the experience of eradicating a significant source of clutter in my life has been fantastic. So now of course I've been calling and spreading the Neat Receipt geekery to my friends.