It's always easy

I was going to write something on a subject I conjecture about, but really know nothing about. So I decided to scrap that and go with something else.  Perhaps this.  This might get scrapped before I finish writing it.  If not, lucky you!

I'm struck by how everything is always described as being "easy" as long as you use the correct method.  Which seems really strange because you need to know the correct method in order to use the correct method, and learning the correct method is generally trial and error.

Anyways.  I really see two variations in this theme.  One sells books, and the other is the truth.  The first is that everything is always easy.  Which is strange, because I can't describe anything I do as easy.  Sure, I make it look easy.  But I've got 5 years of hard experience in my job.  I've also done an okay job at learning how to learn.  I also understand that the primary way to learn is something I call blunt force trauma.  The goal with blunt force trauma is simple.  Beat a subject into your brain until it sticks.  Keep doing it over and over and over again. I've heard of plenty of shortcuts, but none of them work as well as blunt force trauma.  That's how I've passed my Cisco classes.

Because really, learning is work.  And work by and large is hard.  But it is fulfilling.  But it's hard.  It's a lot easier to kick back and use some passive method of studying.  I could watch videos all day long and not gain anything out of them.  Nor could I tell you what I read.  It just doesn't stick.  Because it requires no interaction and no concentration on my part.  Perhaps if I'd trained my brain differently, then I would instantly start learning the instant I sat in front of a TV.  But in reality I've spent years telling my brain to sit down and shut up when I'm in front of a TV.  And usually, my brain rebels.  So I watch about 30 minutes of TV a week.  There's far too many other things that I find interesting and would like to engage my brain in besides passive non-interaction.

At the moment, I happen to be reading Peak Learning by Ronald Gross.  He has a tendency to use the "it's so easy" method quite a bit.  But I've also covered 1/6 of the book, and he has yet to begin discussing learning how to learn.  And that's the purpose of the book, right?  So the question becomes when does the author try to get into the material so I can start learning how to learn?  In general, I'll probably gain 2-3 good insights out of the book.

I also happen to be reading Computer Vision by Dana H Ballard and Christopher Brown.  In comparison, I haven't heard anything described as "easy".  In comparison, it's better described as dense and/or heavily packed.  There is little room for fluff in this book.  Unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to go through that book.

Last Projects for Cisco 3

So I just finished my last two packet tracers for my Cisco 3 class.  Presented, for all your wonderful glory, is a picture of my EIGRP capstone project.  

Which I have to admit is about as complicated as some things I've designed for work, and are actually in operation.  The fun thing about this one is I ended up setting up DHCP on every single one of those networks in there, so the end user connections are all DHCP assigned.  The EIGRP portion wasn't that difficult.  Mostly, it was just labor. 

The interesting thing was in creating the ISP connection.  Really, it's just a router with an assigned public IP.  From there, I added a default route back towards the network I designed.  It might have been more interesting to design the thing as a multiaccess network, but who cares.  The system wanted a multiple location EIGRP network.  So I used serial connections.  And funny thing is, I've never had to set up a serial connection in real life.  All Ethernet based.  One was PPPOE, and that was a bit annoying to set up.  

So now, all I have to do is study for the final and start working on the next book.  In the process of taking over four stores.  Isn't work fun?  

Correlation/Causation

I think there are two big difficulties in the IT world.  Both are especially relevant to the C-Store world.  One is turf wars.  Turf wars are when departments are more concerned with covering their own behind rather than working with other departments.  You can only hope to fix that one, but it's not likely going to happen.

  The second issue is this: correlation does not equate to causation.  In laymans terms: just because two things happened around the same time doesn't mean one caused the other. I had a failed Verifone Commander install a few days ago.  I could never get the gas pumps to talk.  They happened to be Gilbarco Advantages.  This was my first site with more than 16 pumps.  Interestingly enough, this was my first site with more than 12 pumps.  That number becomes relevant in a minute.

Anyways, credit processing worked fine.  Ran like a champ.  But I couldn't get the pumps to talk.  The site was Gilbarco with a PAM 1000 and 2 D-Boxes.  I spent a long time trying to get it to work, but never could.

So I decided to put the old equipment back in place, and attempted to get it back to working.  Pumps still wouldn't talk.  I finally called in some pump techs, and we got 5 of the 10 dispensers communicating.  We decided that was good enough for now.  After the weekend, I called the pump company and scheduled them to come install the site.

The install was done in 4 hours.

What happened?  Remember that magic number 12 I was talking about before?   The PAM 1000 can only address 12 pumps with a single board.  You can add more boards to talk to more pumps.  But you start over the pump addressing.  This is not information I knew prior to installing.

So, when I plugged 16 pumps into one board, nothing would talk.  Why?  Because there were duplicate addresses out on the system.  Not only that, there were multiple duplicate addresses.  Because fueling position 13-20 had internal pump number of 1-8.

The fix (had I known the situation) would be renumber the pumps.  Which is what the pump company did.

Or, start over on the 2nd fuel board at position 13.  That would have solved the issue quite easily.

So where does causation/correlation come in to this argument?  Simple.  The belief that changing out the point of sale system caused the pumps not to communicate.

I'm not a pump tech, and that's rare in this industry.  I am a Verifone VASC and a CCENT, but my knowledge stops at the 2 wire going to the pump.  I have to work with other pump techs and hope they know what they are doing.  And hope that they aren't having turf wars.

As a footnote to the story.

As I was leaving the parking lot, I noticed the site was changing gas prices.  After getting back ot hte office, I had conversations with 4 different people about why the price sign wouldn't change, and no one seemed to believe what I was saying.  The gas price sign was changed by a key fob.  Always has.  I didn't mess with that during this install.  But now, the gas price sign wouldn't change.

It took a bit of convincing to for people to realize that the gas price sign was at fault, not the point of sale system.

Anyways...

Defeated

What to do during adversity?  Most of the time I think of decisions I've made.  Generally always the wrong ones.  Would it have been smarter to get in the situation three months earlier and without a second loan?

The last month has been a roller coaster of adversity.  I've found myself mostly responding badly.  The answers seemed logical, but all turned out to be the wrong thing.  What happens when you have such a colossal string of bad decisions?  It's been mentally defeating.  The debt I'd paid off this year returned in a matter of days, despite my best attempts to get rid of it.  One step forward, one entire year back.  Right back to the beginning.  Did I mention I hate cars?  I really do.

This is 5 years in a row of cars that can't seem to last a year.  And around Christmas time every single time.  I feel hopeless and helpless.  Part of me wonders about fate.  Part wonders about things I can't control.  Part goes back to the old ideas of God teaching people lessons.  Part goes to the Millionaire Next Door.  Part goes to blame.  Part goes to self blame.  

It's a cycle I don't seem to be able to break.  I don't understand the causes or effects.  I keep repeating the same lesson over and over again.  

Tired of the lesson.

Must find myself so I can drag myself out of the mud hole.  Just have to find the right mud hole.

Back to SNMP and other things

I used to hate SNMP.  I’m not sure I still don’t.  It’s been annoying to set up.  I’m still fighting with SNMPWALK on SNMPv3 and getting data from a Cisco router and switch. Eh well. I’ll get into that at some other point.  

I have to admit Cacti was one of the better than I thought it could be.  I followed the right instructions and have started doing some SNMP polling and producing some decently relevant graphs on information someone in IT would think could be important.  Luckily, I happened to set it up on a site that had Internet issues later that day.  It worked out great because I ended up diagnosing the issue while trying to connect to my Cacti web page.  Turns out there was interference on the network in the area and the site was dropping about 18% of packets.  Which explains why they were having network connection issues. 

 The other thing I keep looking and thinking about is network security.  Which seems to be something everyone says they need, but no one does anything about.  I pissed off a networking vendor because I told the person I wanted three single purpose servers instead of one multipurpose server.  Everything I've ever read on servers says one purpose per server.  Don't end up with a multipurpose server. 

Eventually, the server needs replaced.  And then you have numerous tools that need replaced or fixed in order to solve all the problems you used with that server.  I mean sure, the RADIUS / print / file server / new thing part two server is great.  But wouldn't it be simpler to have a RADIUS server that does nothing but RADIUS authentication.  Or a print server that does nothing but handle printing.  And then, when you need to upgrade that server you take down one function.  Instead of the 25 different things running on one server.  

I guess the second part of that conversation is "don't turn on any service that you don't need" on a server.  Great.  That's a lot simpler with a single purpose server.  The print server doesn't need to do anything but print.  The file server needs fat bandwidth to reach it, and that's about it.  Virtualize it all.  It's not like you need a physical server for all that.  

But what do I know?