Huling tag-init, Lumikha ako ng isang "tuwid sa bilangguan" na listahan para sa ref.  #1 sa ang ang listahan ng Lawrence O'Donnell (para sa hindi tumpak na mga paghuhula), ngunit iyan ay paraan na lampas sa saklaw ng blog na ito :)  Ngayon, Ako pagdaragdag ng VPN client Cisco ay sa listahan, at iyan ay sa saklaw ng isang ilong.

Isang grupo ng mga taon na nakalipas marami ng kliyente ginagamit Cisco VPN upang paganahin ang remote access sa kanilang mga site.  Bumalik pagkatapos, Lumikha ako ng virtual PC para sa bawat isa sa mga kliyente at install ang Cisco sa na? Bakit?  Dahil ang Cisco kandado iyong computer sa gayon ay hindi mo maaaring kahit na-browse ang mga lokal na printer sa network, ipaalam sa nag-iisa mapanganib na mga kasangkapan tulad ng Skype, Tagapagbalita at ang "~" key.  Pero,  kung mong i-install ito sa isang VM, ang iyong VM ay naka-lock down na ngunit hindi host ang iyong. 

Ako mapaalalahanan ng mga araw na iyon ng kaluwalhatian ngayon dahil ko bang gamitin ang isang Cisco VPN client * ulit * at ito ay mga kandado sa akin at ko bang gamitin ito sa isang minuto.  Gusto ko sa halip i-blog ang tungkol sa kung magkano ang Cisco VPN client nararapat sa bilangguan sa halip na gamitin ito ...

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SharePoint ay mas mahusay.

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Kami hilagang New Jersey ni Galvin ay malaking tagahanga ng tv pampulitika uyam. programa, Ang Pang araw-araw Ipakita ang hosted by Jon Stewart. I don’t like to get political in my blogging, kaya ang lahat ng kailangan kong sabihin na sa ay na walang mga Pang araw-araw Ipakita ang, Maaari ko pa rin permanenteng mawawala ang lahat ng pagkamapagpatawa sa o tungkol sa 12/12/2000.

Kami ay nagkakaroon ng isang meal sa deck maagang huling linggo at ang aking sampung taong gulang na anak na lalaki pinagsasama-up ng isang kamakailang episode ng Ipakita. Aking ginawa ang komento, "Jon Stewart knows that he mas mahusay na hindi pagtawanan sa akin or there will be terrible consequences for Jon Stewart."

Ang aking anak na lalaki palagay ni tungkol dito para sa isang minuto at sabi: "Dad, pangunahin: He doesn’t even know you."

Ako naghintay para sa isang numero ng dalawang, ngunit siya ay nagpasya na noon ay sapat at inilipat sa susunod na subject nang hindi laktaw isang Beat.

Ito ay ginamit upang maging na maaari ba akong makakuha ng mas maraming agwat ng mga milya out ng mga uri ng mga biro, but he’s getting too used to me or too mature or both. I need to adjust somehow.

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Ang isang maliit na higit sa tatlong taon na ang nakalipas, aking asawa at ako naka-sign ang aking anak na lalaki up para sa isang aktibidad ng tag-init, 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.

Hindi ko alam kung ang bata sa lahat ng tao ay ganito, 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. Kaya, upang mapaglabanan ang kanyang natural na pag-aatubili, namin sinabi sa kanya ng maaga at ginawa ang aming pinakamahusay na upang gawin itong tunog tulad ng masaya, at iba pa. Even with a multi-month advertising campaign, he still wasn’t convinced. We forced him to do, kahit na, at bilang ay madalas na ang kaso, he had a great time.

Sa pamamagitan ng mga oras ng ikalawang taon na pinagsama sa paligid, he had once again convinced himself that he didn’t want to participate. Pero, kami ay naka-sign up sa kanya at sa zero-araw, I dropped him off one morning at the high school where they practice. When I went to pick him up after lunch, siya ay napaka nasasabik, lahat ng mga smiles at inihayag, "The play is the Velveteen Kuneho and I want to be the Rabbit". He had spent literally months carrying on (minsan hysterically) tungkol sa kung paano hindi niya nais na magkaroon ng kahit ano ang gagawin sa Player Park at pagkatapos ng unang araw, he wants to be the lead role in the play. We’ve seen this pattern before.

(Karamihan sa aming mga sorpresa, ginawa niya makuha ang Kuneho papel at siya ay kagulat-gulat.)

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. Sa Pansamantala, sa wakas siya ay naniwala sa amin siya talaga 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, nitong mga paaralan nag-aalok ng higit pang mga programa para sa mga bata, at iba pa. 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 magbigay-alam gabi para sa pagtulog overs!" Stage Right was going to interfere with his weekend socials.

Ang araw ay, dalhin namin siya doon at i-drop off sa kanya at katulad ng lahat ng iba pa, kanyang natural na pag-ibig ng pagiging lamang buhay kinuha sa ibabaw at siya ay pagkakaroon ng isang magandang panahon na may ito.

Ito nakaraang weekend ang aking asawa ay pakikipag-usap sa kanya at para sa unang pagkakataon, 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."

Lahat ng mga taon, I never really thought that he was hearing or understanding anything as it related to the "rich town". Gayunman, ito lumiliko out siya ay.

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Ako kamakailan binili tanghalian para sa aking kapatid na lalaki (gaya ng dati) 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.

Dalawang ng aking mga paboritong mga alaala nauugnay sa aking mabuting kaibigan, Gabe. He had made the terrible mistake of telling people his freshman year that "I’m a freshman, ngunit mayroon akong sopomor standing" dahil sa ang iba't-ibang mga advanced na mga klase sa placement siya ay kinuha, at iba pa. Many of us were similarly situated but we didn’t talk about it so much. His senior year, kapag ipinakilala namin siya sa mga tao, 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, mangyari pa, upang i-play mga laro.

Kami ay hindi tulad ng mga computer na walang magawa-inhinyero upang magkano kaya isa sa aming mga paboritong mga bagay-bagay na gawin ay magiging sa telnet sa kahon sila ay sa at magpatakbo ng X-mata 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. Subukang huwag tumawa nang malakas kapag sinusubukan ng isang kaawa-awang engineer na isara ang X-eye pagkatapos ng X-eye at bumubulong-bulong tungkol dito 🙂

We also played X-trek on those boxes. Upang gawin iyon, nagkaroon ka ng upang i-download ang 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, muling itinayo ito at pagkatapos ay nawasak Gabe sa susunod na namin ang naglaro.

Gabe ay din ng isang malaking fan ng isang palabas sa TV na tinatawag na Blake ni 7. I had never seen it, ngunit iyon ay hindi maiwasan ang akin mula sa insisting na Dr. Who is the superior show. Ang mga pagtatalo ay mag-iinit minsan 🙂

Minsan, 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, karapatan" was his answer. I then logged in, ipinasok ang kanyang user id, naka upang harapin sa kanya, nai-type at sinabi nang malakas, "I wonder if it’s B-L-A-K-E-7" ? Touch typing has never paid off as handsomely as it did that day.

Sa susunod na linggo (o sa lalong madaling panahon): More computer room antics from college.

Mayroon ba kayong anumang upang ibahagi? Leave a comment or email me and I’ll publish them here.

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Bilang isang magulang, somewhere along the line I discovered the "When I was a little boy" trick.

Ang aking anak na lalaki, marahil apat o limang sa oras, ay naglalaro ng isang lobo at tulad ng karamihan sa maliliit na mga lalaki na maglaro na may mga lobo, he popped it. He was very upset. The world had come to an end. I said to him, "when I was little boy, Ako ay nagkaroon ng isang lobo at pop ito at malaon, 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, Prinsipe, had died in a car accident. Oras na ito, ang kanyang tugon ay, "Now I feel bad about two things!" I shied away from using the "when I was a little boy" pamamaraan para sa pag-aliw matapos na.

Bago sa patay insidente aso, gayunman, 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", at iba pa.

Ito ay masyadong medyo matagumpay para sa isang habang, but he started to increasingly rebel against the tyranny of my childhood. One event, lalo na, 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, na noon ay bobo!".

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Bumalik sa palibot 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, madali para sa mga end user, marangya, multi-wika, at iba pa. 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.

At sa wakas, 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, kung sa lahat, when I left the U.S., hindi noong papasok ako sa China 🙂 Walang nangyaring hindi kanais-nais at itinuturing ko pa rin iyon na ang pinakamahusay at pinaka-memorable na paglalakbay sa negosyo na nasiyahan ako sa paggawa.

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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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Mapagkamalan kanyang tanong:

Nito: Anong araw ito?

Tatay: Isang araw bago Miyerkules.

S: Hindi, anong araw ng buwan ay ito?

D: Naku, ito 4 araw pagkatapos Jan 25.

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Kilidin sa kanya at sabihin sa kanya makikita mo itigil kapag siya tumitigil tumatawa.

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Bumaba hagdan sa kuwarto TV at ipahayag, "It’s good to be the daddy." Pagkatapos, pick up sa kanya upang makuha ang maayang lugar sa sopa at baguhin ang mga channel sa isang bagay mahusay, tulad ng 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. Halimbawa, "the knife slipped in his hand, paggupit kanyang hintuturo, pagpatay sa kanya agad." 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, sabihin sa kanya, "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!"

(Ito reminds sa akin ng aking mga paboritong Borg magtawa: "Borger King: We do it our way. Your way is irrelevant." hahaha!)

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Buksan ang isang libro sa pahina 9 at sabihin, "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, arch kaaway sa bayan ng Squarewood."

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Magmaneho namin ang hanggang sa Massachusetts mula sa New Jersey ilang beses sa isang taon at ito ay madalas na tumatagal ng tungkol sa 5 hours door to door. As we arrive home and pull into the driveway say, "oh, Nakalimutan ko ang, kailangan namin upang magsagawa ng isang mabilis na gitling sa Home Depot."

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Kapag nanonood ng marahas na episode sa isang palabas sa TV (tulad ng mga Bayani), sabihin sa iyong anak na lalaki, "some times, sa trabaho, I need to destroy my enemies by burning them alive using the powers of my mind. I don’t like doing it, ngunit ka gotta gawin kung ano ang iyong gotta gawin."

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Kapag nanonood ng masamang pelikula malaking sindak (see "It’s good to be the Daddy" sa itaas), ascribe improbable motives to the evil character. Halimbawa, 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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Ano trick mo ginagamit ang?

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