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?  

Exoneration

Let's talk about exoneration for a minute.  Exoneration is the idea that I can do something for a period, and then quit doing it forever.  The concept is usually introduced when talking about money or fitness, but it's generally used all throughout life.

The mindset is generally this: if I can make it to X, then I won't have to do this sacrifice ever again.

The X factor is always different, based on the mental picture that has developed.  But it's all based on the concept of exoneration.  And the hard part is there is no point of exoneration.  Almost never.

Yet people reach endlessly for the exoneration point.  I'm not saying you shouldn't reach.  What I'm saying is you can't ever quit.  Because if you quit, you go back to being what you were before you started.  Dieting is generally a big exoneration subject.  The key to success with diet and exercise is a long term plan.

You are not going to fix whatever problem you have with your weight or health in three weeks.  It's just not going to happen.  You can take almost anyone and put them on an exercise plan for three weeks, and they'll lose weight.  Why?  Because they weren't putting in any effort before.  But long term, the weight loss will stop or slow down.  Then the person will quit, and regain everything they lost.

Several months later, the same person will find a new "quick fix" and proceed to quick fix and lose 20 pounds.  Then the new will wear off, and then 20 pounds will recover.  My wife found a book that was talking about clients losing over 100 pounds.  Except it was the same 20 pounds over and over again.

Most multilevel marketing plans are sold as exoneration plans.  I'm not saying they are not worth the income if you can get them to succeed.  But they are sold as quick fixes in a world that needs long term solutions.

Quit trying for exoneration.  It doesn't work.  There is never a point at which you get to quit doing what you've been doing.

Unless you don't like what you are doing.  You do like what you are doing, right?

Before work, kitchen table thoughts

I came up with an idea to teach my kids reading.  They are 5, 4, and 1.  I know I want to teach all three of them the same way.  That means I'll be repeating the same content three times.

The computer part of me says rebuilding the same content three times is ridiculous.  And it is.  So all I have to do is build the content the correct way once, and then start the next kid on their lesson.  In many ways, I think Khan Academy is revolutionary in the academic space.  I would love to see something like that for English.

The program I'm writing is based on Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Steps by Siegfried Engelmann.  It's been a pretty awesome book so far, even though I've only made it through lesson 20 with my oldest child.

So the goal is to create something like Khan Academy for English, based on Englemann.  It's going to be interesting.

Kitchen Table

It's formica, and it's my kitchen table.  At least it doesn't look like it came from 1999.  Maybe 1975.

Maybe I should spend more than 5 minutes on the background.

Or, I could go back to studying Scaling Networks.

Back to studying.