Last summer, I created a “straight to jail” list for the refrigerator.  #1 on the list is Lawrence O’Donnell (for inaccurate predictions), but that’s way beyond the scope of this blog :)  დღეს, I’m adding Cisco’s VPN client to the list, and that’s in scope by a nose.

A bunch of years ago many of clients used Cisco VPN to enable remote access to their site.  Back then, I created virtual PCs for each of these clients and installed Cisco on that? რატომ?  Because Cisco locks your machine up so that you can’t even browse local network printers, let alone dangerous tools like Skype, Communicator and the “~” key.  მაგრამ,  if you install it on a VM, your VM is locked down but not your host. 

I’m reminded of those glory days today because I have to use a Cisco VPN client *again* and it locks me and I have to use it in a minute.  I’d rather blog about how much Cisco VPN client deserves to be in jail rather than use it…

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

გამომყვეს Twitter-ზე http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

SharePoint უკეთესია.

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

გამომყვეს Twitter-ზე http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

ჩვენ ჩრდილოეთ New Jersey Galvin-ს დიდი გულშემატკივარი პოლიტიკური სატირა ტელევიზია. პროგრამა, The Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart. I don’t like to get political in my blogging, so all I’ll say on that is that without the Daily Show, მე კარგად არ მუდმივად დაკარგა ყველა იუმორის გრძნობა ან შესახებ 12/12/2000.

We were having a meal on the deck early last week and my ten year old son brings up a recent episode of the Show. I made the comment, "Jon Stewart knows that he better not make fun of me or there will be terrible consequences for Jon Stewart."

My son thinks about it for a minute and says: "Dad, number one: He doesn’t even know you."

I waited for a number two, but he decided that was enough and moved on to the next subject without skipping a beat.

It used to be that I could get a lot more mileage out of those kinds of jokes, but he’s getting too used to me or too mature or both. I need to adjust somehow.

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

ცოტა მეტი სამი წლის წინ, მე და ჩემი მეუღლე ხელმოწერილი ჩემი შვილი მდე ზაფხულში საქმიანობაში, The Midland Park Players. This is a drama group that spends about three or four weeks preparing for a play and then showing it to the parents, friends and relatives. It’s always been done very well.

მე არ ვიცი, თუ ყველას ბავშვი მსგავსი, but my son is extremely reluctant to try new things. Knowing this, we signed him up for the program. We’ve found that it’s best to alert him to these kinds of things early and often. ასე რომ,, დასაძლევად მისი ბუნებრივი თავშეკავებით, ჩვენ უთხრა, ადრეული და გააკეთეს იმისათვის, რათა ის გავს fun, და ა.შ.. Even with a multi-month advertising campaign, he still wasn’t convinced. We forced him to do, თუმცა, და როგორც ეს ხშირად ხდება, he had a great time.

ამ დროისათვის მეორე წელს შემოვიდა გარშემო, he had once again convinced himself that he didn’t want to participate. მაგრამ, ჩვენ ხელი მოაწერა მას და ნულოვანი დღე, I dropped him off one morning at the high school where they practice. When I went to pick him up after lunch, იგი ძალიან აღელვებს, ყველა smiles და განაცხადა,, "The play is the Velveteen კურდღლის and I want to be the Rabbit". He had spent literally months carrying on (ზოგჯერ ისტერიულად) იმაზე, თუ როგორ, მას არ სურს რაიმე კავშირი პარკის მოთამაშეებს და შემდეგ პირველ დღეს, he wants to be the lead role in the play. We’ve seen this pattern before.

(ბევრი ჩვენი სიურპრიზი, მან მიიღოს კურდღლის როლი და ის იყო საოცარი.)

Fast forward a few years. He’s been in Park Players three times now, so he’s something of a veteran. This summer (2008), Players starts up again. In საშუალო დრო, ის საბოლოოდ დაგვარწმუნა იგი ნამდვილად doesn’t want to play soccer and he never liked basketball. That left him with no extra-curricular activities for late Winter / early Spring. A client with whom I was working mentioned that his daughter was in a program called Stage Right. Stage right is a slightly more expensive version of Park Players and it’s not in my town, but adjacent to it. Perfect.

The thing to know about that town is that it’s practically another country in terms of wealth. It has a high-frequency train right to Wall Street and NYC in general. It’s just a wealthy place. One of the on-going family discussion themes is whether we should have moved to that town instead of where we live now. It’s a bigger town, მისი სკოლებში შესთავაზოს მეტი პროგრამების საბავშვო, და ა.შ.. My wife grew up in that town and her parents live there, so we are "hooked in" despite not living there. I personally grew up in different circumstances in Massachusetts, so I don’t have a lot to say about this during family dinner conversation. This isn’t to say that we aren’t very happy where we live. We just know that that town is a level above our town economically.

Stage Right’s next program started too soon for us to launch our normal advertising campaign to overcome my son’s reluctance. This is when he came up with one my personal favorite arguments against doing something: "Friday nights are პრემიერ ღამე დასაძინებლად overs!" Stage Right was going to interfere with his weekend socials.

დღე დადგება, ჩვენ მოუტანს მას იქ ჩამოაგდეს მას off და როგორც ყველაფერი დანარჩენი, მისი ბუნებრივი სიყვარული მხოლოდ მყოფი ცოცხალი აიღო და მას კარგი დროს იგი.

გასულ კვირას ჩემს მეუღლეს ესაუბრებოდა მას და პირველად, I think he’s tailoring his discussions very precisely for his audience. She had asked him how Stage Right compares to Midland Park Players. He tells her that "In Park Players, we have teenagers that help us out. There aren’t any in in Stage Right. In Park Players, teenagers make all props. In Stage Right, we have to bring our own props. We have to do everything. And then he twists the knife: "I thought this was supposed to be a rich town."

ყველა ამ წლების განმავლობაში, I never really thought that he was hearing or understanding anything as it related to the "rich town". თუმცა, აღმოჩნდება, რომ იგი.

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

I recently bought lunch for my brother (როგორც ყოველთვის) and we ended up talking about funny things that we did at our respective colleges. At my alma mater, Lafayette College, the academic support IT department had a very inclusive way about it. We were given a LOT of rope and I took advantage of that at times.

Two my favorite memories relate to my good friend, Gabe. He had made the terrible mistake of telling people his freshman year that "I’m a freshman, but I have Sophomore standing" due to the various advanced placement classes he had taken, და ა.შ.. Many of us were similarly situated but we didn’t talk about it so much. His senior year, when we introduced him to people, we’d say "This is Gabe. He’s a Senior, but he has Sophomore standing".

The college had some Sun workstation/servers running X-Window. They had gigantic monitors and the engineers used them for CAD and other boring engineer stuff. We CS people used them to learn programming and, რა თქმა უნდა, to play games.

We didn’t like the computer-helpless engineers to much so one of our favorite things to do would be to telnet to the box they were on and run X-eye on them. This would pop up a pair of eyes that followed the mouse around on the screen. You could pop up even more and have literally a dozen or more of the X-eye applications running. ცდილობენ არ სიცილი ხმამაღლა, როდესაც უიღბლო ინჟინერი დახურვას ცდილობს X-eye შემდეგ X-eye და muttering მისი სუნთქვა შესახებ 🙂

We also played X-trek on those boxes. ამის, you had to download the source, get various dependencies wherever you could find them and build it. I wasn’t a sophisticated C programmer, but I could read header files. I was looking through these and found directives like "#DEFINE MAX_TORPEDO_DISTANCE 10". I played around with that increase range and power for phases and torpedoes, re-built it and then destroyed Gabe the next time we played.

Gabe was also a huge fan of a TV show called Blake’s 7. I had never seen it, but that didn’t prevent me from insisting that Dr. Who is the superior show. არგუმენტები დაიჭერს გათბობის დროს 🙂

One day, it occurred to me that I could probably guess his UNIX password. I sat down next to him one day and announced in a loud tone, "I’m going to guess your password right now, Gabe." "Yeah, უფლება" was his answer. I then logged in, entered his user id, turned to face him, typed and said out loud, "I wonder if it’s B-L-A-K-E-7" ? Touch typing has never paid off as handsomely as it did that day.

მომავალ კვირას (or soon): More computer room antics from college.

Do you have any to share? Leave a comment or email me and I’ll publish them here.

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

As a parent, somewhere along the line I discovered the "When I was a little boy" trick.

My son, probably four or five at the time, was playing a balloon and like most little boys that play with balloons, he popped it. He was very upset. The world had come to an end. I said to him, "when I was little boy, I had a balloon and it popped and eventually, I got a new balloon." It seemed to help him cope with his loss and led to a fun talk about what it was like when I was a little boy.

That worked well as a consolation technique and I used it a several times over the next period of time. I did get into trouble once when his Monster Rancher 3 creature died. I talked about how my dog, Prince, had died in a car accident. ამჯერად, his response was, "Now I feel bad about two things!" I shied away from using the "when I was a little boy" technique for consolation after that.

Before the dead dog incident, თუმცა, I had also started to use the technique to convince him to do chores. "When I was a little boy, I had to go out and get the newspaper", "clean my room", "get Mommy her coffee cup", და ა.შ..

This too was pretty successful for a while, but he started to increasingly rebel against the tyranny of my childhood. One event, კერძოდ, marked the end. I told him to bring the garbage cans from curb back to the garage. He argued and I responded, "When I was a little boy, I had to take the garbage back to the garage." He responded, "Oh yeah! Well when you were a little boy, that was STUPID!".

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური.

Back around 1998, the company I worked for at the time received some funding to create a new e-commerce product. We had the full gamut of business requirements to meet. It had to be fast, easy for end users, flashy, multi-language, და ა.შ.. Sad to say, I probably haven’t had as an ambitious set of work to accomplish since those heady days.

This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (or least very unfamiliar to my company). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Doomed! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Not Hadron Collider pioneering work, but for us in our little world, it was pioneering work.

We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, figuring out how to maintain state in an inherently stateless medium, figuring out multi-language issues, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (I preferred state-persistent but for some reason, the awkward "statefull" won the day).

As we were madly inventing this product, the marketing and sales people were out there trying to sell it. Somehow, they managed to sell it to our nightmare scenario. Even though we were designing and implementing an enterprise solution, we really didn’t expect the first customer to use every last feature we built into the product day zero. This customer needed multi-language, a radically different user interface from the "standard" system but with the same business logic. Multi-language was especially hard in this case, because we always focused on Spanish or French, but in this case, it was Chinese (which is a double-byte character set and required special handling given the technology we used).

Fast forward a few months and I’m on a Northwest airlines flight to Beijing. I’ve been so busy preparing for this trip that I have almost no idea what it’s like to go there. I had read a book once about how an American had been in China for several years and had learned the language. One day he was walking the city and asked some people for directions. The conversation went something this:

• American: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] street?"
• Chinese: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
• American: "Oh, well I speak Mandarin." and he asked them again in Chinese, but more clearly (as best he could).
• Chinese: Very politely, "Sorry, we don’t speak English".

The conversation went on like that for bit and the American gave up in frustration. As he was leaving them he overheard one man speaking to the other, "I could have sworn he was asking for directions to [XX] street."

I had picked up a few bits and pieces of other China-related quasi-information and "helpful advice":

• A Korean co-worked told me that the I needed to be careful of the Chinese because "they would try to get me drunk and take advantage of you" in the sense of pressuring me into bad business decisions.
• We were not allowed to drive cars (there was some confusion as to whether this was a custom, a legal requirement or just the client’s rule).
• There were special rules for going through customs.
• We were not allowed to use American money for anything.
• You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.

და ბოლოს, I had relatively fresh memories the Tiananmen massacre. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.

In short, I was very nervous. I wasn’t just normal-nervous in the sense that I was delivering a solution that was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I had ever done before. I was also worried about accidentally breaking a rule that could get me in trouble.

I’m on this 14 hour flight and though it was business class, 14 hours is a damned long time. There are only so many ways to entertain yourself by reading, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.

Eventually, I started to read the packaging material on a piece of software I was hand-carrying with me to the client, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, the marketing blurbs, looking at the pretty picture and suddenly, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" warning, something about 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, warning face-down (as if that would have helped) and tried to keep visions of Midnight Express out of my head.

Looking back on it now, I should have been worried, თუ ყველა, when I left the U.S., not when I was entering China 🙂 Nothing untoward happened and I still consider that to be the best and most memorable business trip I’ve had the pleasure of making.

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გამოწერა ჩემი დღიური!

One of the many joys I take in being the parent of a ten year old boy is finding new ways to make him laugh or think a little differently about questions and things in the world. I’ve used these techniques over the years:

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Misconstrue his questions:

Son: What day is it?

მამა: One day before Wednesday.

S: არ, what day of the month is it?

D: Oh, it’s 4 days after Jan 25.

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Tickle him and tell him you’ll stop when he stops laughing.

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Go down stairs to the TV room and announce, "It’s good to be the daddy." მაშინ, pick him up to get the warm spot on the couch and change the channel to something good, like the Scifi channel.

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Read stories out loud. Insert ridiculous sentences in the middle of the story. My favorite is to add "killing him instantly" when the main characters encounters some minor trouble. მაგალითად, "the knife slipped in his hand, cutting his index finger, killing him instantly." Nothing quite gets your son out of a complacent and passive listening mode as the main character being killed instantly.

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Read stories incorrectly. Read sentences backward. The best part of this is that the first couple of times I did this, my son thought he was helping me out by pointing out that I wasn’t reading the words in the right order. The down side is that he really doesn’t want me to read to him any more.

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Go to Burger King for lunch. My son would eat BK morning, night and day if we let him. When going, tell him, "I know you hate going there, but we simply have no choice." When he tries to explain that he loves BK, talk over him and say things like "We don’t have time to argue about it! We’re going and I don’t want to have a discussion!"

(ეს მაგონებს ჩემი საყვარელი Borg ხუმრობა: "Borger King: We do it our way. Your way is irrelevant." hahaha!)

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გახსნა წიგნი გვერდზე 9 და აცხადებენ,, "hmm, that’s an odd page".

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Fill the world with arch enemies. "We’re going to run quick over toe 7-11, arch-enemy of 11-7".

"Your aunt lives in Ringwood, თაღის მტრის ქალაქ Squarewood."

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ჩვენ მართოს მდე მასაჩუსეტსის from New Jersey წელიწადში რამდენჯერმე და ხშირად ეს დაახლოებით 5 hours door to door. As we arrive home and pull into the driveway say, "oh, დამავიწყდა, ჩვენ გვჭირდება, რათა სწრაფი ტირე დაბრუნება დეპოს."

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როდესაც თვალს ძალადობრივი ეპიზოდი გადაცემა (როგორიცაა გმირები), გითხრათ თქვენი შვილი, "some times, სამუშაო, I need to destroy my enemies by burning them alive using the powers of my mind. I don’t like doing it, but you gotta do what you gotta do."

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When watching bad horror movies (see "It’s good to be the Daddy" ზემოთ), ascribe improbable motives to the evil character. მაგალითად, tell your son that the reason Jason is so angry is because he wants some cake and they won’t let him have any.

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Explain phone numbers incorrectly. Instead of telling your son to dial "201-111-2222", tell him it’s "2-011-1-12222".

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What tricks do you use?

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