On my way to work this morning it dawned upon me that 5 years ago today we were in an IT boom, and the Y2K bug was about to destroy the world. I was fairly new at my job, and had a pager strapped just in case the whole IT staff had to be called in. The more senior people in my team were already in a war room with radios, telephones, and a crate of flashlights, waiting for the moment that never arrived. And due to some strange accounting problem, we ended up getting paid around the same, so I think I came out the winner there.

That New Year’s eve my wife (we’d been married almost a year at that point), and two other couples had a nice fondue dinner. We staid up until after midnight, laughed that nothing was happening over Y2K, and finally went home.

This year, we’re having a nice (albeit scaled back) fodue dinner with our two kids, putting them to bed around 8, and then we’ll do our best to make it until midnight. Chances are we’ll be ready for bed before the clock hits 12, and will fall asleep a few minutes after. You know what? I like it this way better.

Tomorrow will be just another day.

Wintery whiteout: Blizzard blankets highways, taxes CAA

The snow in my back yard was so high this morning, let’s just say my guys were chilly. Busses were stopping in the street to pick up passengers. The airport is closed. Part of our office is closed. Busses are getting stuck.

Anyone need a network guy somewhere where it’s warm and doesn’t dump snow?

Happy Freaking New Years.

We recently dumped the Winnipeg Free Press for the National Post. What a welcome change! Anyway, an article today caught my eye: Reasonable Terms of Agreement. Alas, the article doesn’t seem to be available for non subscribers. Summary below.

Basically, a salesman changed companies on the promise of higher commission (among other things). His offer letter spelled out everything except the commission itself, but he was promised that it was forthcoming, and that it would be honoured. Of course, he never gets it.

Less than a month into the job, he gets handed a new contract, and is told to sign it or be fired. The new contract overrode some things the initial offer stated, and also laid down a terrible commission structure. A year later, he’s made $76K but has only been paid $23K, and some people that jumped companies with him got fired. He finds a new job himself, and takes the company to court.

Legal stuff aside, the courts ruled that he wasn’t offered anything in return for signing the new contract. Going back to something I learned in University, that’s the consideration aspect of a contract – you can’t have a contract if both sides don’t get something (even if it’s only $1), and any amendments have to follow that.

The courts said that if there were some indication that they were going to fire him, and if they said something like “sign this contract and your job is guaranteed for 6 months”, it would have been enforcable. Furthermore, mandatory severance can’t be considered something of value either.

The article then goes on to state how a company can effectively make amendments to contracts:

- Make sure that you put everything in the employment offer, ie it’s easier to do it right the first time
- Refer to a separate contract in the employment offer if it’s not practical above
- Give them something for it – a bonus, raise, promotion – and then make it part of the amended contract

And, to quote: “When you obtain any benefit from an employee, offer them more than they are entitled to”.

This was in Ontario, but made reference to Supreme Court cases and B.C. Court of Appeal. I’m not a lawyer. If this situation ever presented itself, though, I’d know to call one instead of blindly signing.

It’s another year. I’m not going to make any predictions because I don’t see the point. But here’s what’s happening with me over the next year.

First is I’ll hopefully be getting into VoIP at work, especially in the call centre area. I’m looking forward to this, and depending on which way we go, I may have a big part to play.

I’m also looking forward to finishing my book, and seeing on the shelves. It’ll be a relief to have that over with.

My CCNP elapses in a couple of weeks, and there’s no way I’d be ready for the recert. The core stuff I’m comfortable with, but it’s all the little things that I’d miss. So I’ll probably have to redo it, which is 5 exams. And I’d like to get my Voice Support qualification, which is another 3, for a total of 8. Hopefully, though, I’ll be able to put it all up on my web site so ofther people can use the notes.

I look forward to seeing what’s new in Linux, especially the Fedora project. I just upgraded my workstation to FC3, and I’d be lying if I said I was happy. First, my SCSI card wasn’t supported, and then, I’m having a popular problem with choppy sound. Both seem to be problems in the 2.6 kernel, and I hope they get fixed soon. I’d like to get more into SELinux.

Once the book is done, I’d also like to get back into playing with microcontrollers. I was working on a couple of projects, including a smart battery charger and a prox card reader, and I’m looking forward to picking those up again.

And, of course, I have a wonderful family that I’d like to spend a lot of time with. I adore my two boys and my wife, and they make each day something to look forward to.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sean

I’ve experimented with different types of markup language to store small amounts of data, usually for config files, but never found something that quite did what I want. Of course, if I could define what I wanted, I’d be in a better position to find it.

The .ini style of files is all right, and there are lots of perl modules to deal with them (and finding the right one is a pain), but this style of files doesn’t allow for any data structures other than key=value.

I looked at an Apache style of config file, and this worked ok, but again, using the data structures is a bit of a pain (ie cracking out a new container each time I needed a hash, and very poor handling of arrays). The modules I tried also had problems with inheritance, for example

firstlevel container name=a
key = value
secondlevel container name=”foo”
blah = quux

Here, foo is on the same level as key. So if I ask the foo container the value of “key”, I should get “value”. Some modules did this, but when I wanted to iterate through all the secondlevel containers, I couldn’t.

So, I happened to come across YAML, and Config::YAML

The YAML for the Config::YAML’s CPAN entry is

 # http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec.html

 #XXXXXXX This is a prototype!!!  It will change in the future!!! XXXXX#

 name:         Config-YAML

 version:      1.28

 version_from: lib/Config/YAML.pm

 installdirs:  site

 requires:

    Test::More:                    0

    YAML:                          0.35

 distribution_type: module

 generated_by: ExtUtils::MakeMaker version 6.17

It uses spaces to denote hierarchy (pythonesque, eh?), and the data structure returned is

$VAR1 = bless( {
‘installdirs’ => ‘site’,
‘distribution_type’ => ‘module’,
‘generated_by’ => ‘ExtUtils::MakeMaker version 6.17’,
‘version’ => ‘1.28’,
‘name’ => ‘Config-YAML’,
‘_infile’ => ‘app.yaml’,
‘version_from’ => ‘lib/Config/YAML.pm’,
‘requires’ => {
‘Test::More’ => 0,
‘YAML’ => ‘0.35’
},
‘_outfile’ => ‘app.yaml’
}, ‘Config::YAML’ );

No, it doesn’t do inheritance, but I think I could wrap something around that when I need it. However the simplicity and flexibility in the config file is wonderful.

Every so often, I’ll respond to a scammer’s email just to waste his time. Usually they’re pretty boring, but the latest one was a lot of fun.

It all started with this message…

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am Dr. Liu Peijin, managing director of China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp. (CNART) we are a group of business men who deal on
Art and Craft and export into the Canada/America and Europe.
We are searching for representatives who can help us establish a medium of getting to our customers in the Canada/America and Europe as well as making payments through you to us.
Please if you are interested in transacting business with us we will be very glad. Please contact us for more information. Your first step of application
will be to reply this mail. Reply to lp550@mail2world.com.
Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate > your mode of which we will pay for your services as our representative in
Canada/America and Europe. Please if you are interested forward to us your
phone number/fax and your full contact addresses.
Thanks In advance.

Managing Director,
Dr. Liu Peijin

My response:

Dear Doctor Liu,
I would be very interested in working with you. I already run an import business, and have just received significant funding with which to grow my business. This is a potentially exciting opportunity!

Thanks,
Sean

Dear Sean,

Thanks for your mail, Please we need this information from you to send
to our company lawyer who will send to you the contract agreement.

1. FULL NAME
2. PHONE/FAX NUMBER
3.FULL CONTACT ADRESS
4.NATIONALITY
5.IDENTITY

This are the information needed from you, please send this information
as soon as porsible.I which to inform you that as soon as this information
is send, it will also be sent to all our custormers. They will be making
payment throught you to us. for every payment that is made throught you to us we are giving 10% of the total funds to you. Thanks

I await your urgent responds

Dr. Liu Peijin
managinig director
China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp.(CNART)

Hello,

My full name is “Apu Sean Walberg”. Fax number is 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. My
phone number is unavailable at the moment, as I just moved.

My address is

192 Home St
Toronto, ON
3C5 A9C CANADA

My nationality is Botswana

What do you require in terms of identity?

Thank you.

Sean

Dear Apu Sean,

How are you today? Please get back to me with your phone number so i can
send it to our customers for us to start up with this transaction. Thanks and God Bless.

Dr. Liu Peijin
managinig director
China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp.(CNART)

Let’s have some fun now.

Dear Dr,

The FBI was here today asking if I knew you. I said no, but they made a
copy of my email records anyway. What’s going on here?!?!?!

Thanks,

Sean

Dear Sean,

I just got the information from our company lawyer, he was the one that
informed the FBI. that we want to go into a business transaction. from the adress you sent to us he said he wanted to know if you are one of those people that lie to get what dose not belong to them. he as advice that we can go on with the trasaction that there is nothing. Please send to me you phone number so that we can go on with this transaction.

Thanks and God Bless

Mr. Liu Peijin
managinig director
China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp.(CNART)

Whew! I was worried.

Dear Liu

My phone is still out of service after the move, however I am told it will be up Monday, at which point I will forward my new number. When shipping to and from Botswawna I am able to do most things electronically, which is why I haven’t been anxious to get it installed.

I am relieved to hear that the FBI incident will not cause a problem.

In the meantime, do you have a picture of yourself that I can have? It is a tradition in my country to know what our business partners look like. When I finish unpacking some boxes, I will send one of myself to you.

Sincerely,

Apu Sean

Dear Apu Sean,

My pic is attach to this mail, sorry i have not been able to jet to you i was out of the office for some time. Please inform me if you have got the phone number ready for us to start up with this busness transaction. and send to me a copy your your pic too.

Mr. Liu Peijin
managinig director
China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp.(CNART)

I have no idea who that picture is of, but I know it’s not him.

Hello,

The FBI were here again, and there is a strange van parked across the street that hasn’t moved for a few days. I’m worried they may be tapping my phone.

Maybe it would be more secure if I flew out there to meet you? I’ve always wanted to see China.

PS, you look familiar, are you on TV?

Apu Sean

And here comes the scam…

Dear Apu Sean,

I got your mail, I will be very happy to meet with you. You are welcome here okey. I will like to tell you this please keep it to you self. I am a well respented man in this state. some time ago i was giving a contract by a goverment personality who dieded some year ago. He die befor we started up with the contract, this contract was a contract of
$18m. USD. in with i deposited in a security company here in china as a deplomatic bill. No body new about this.

Please if you are willing to help me lay cliam of the funds, i will get a lawyer for you to start up with the charge of beneficiary that will enable you lay cliam of the funds from the security compuny. i am giving 10% for your expensis and 30% for your asistans. This is a legal transaction. i just need some body that will help me in moving this money out of this country.if you are not intrested please keep it to your self. If you are Get back to me.

PS, you look familiar, are you on TV? Yes that has been some time ago.

Mr. Liu Peijin
managinig director
China National Arts & Crafts
Import./Export. Corp.(CNART)

Let’s try to scam him.

Hi, Liu

Your offer is most intriguing, and I would love to help.

I was looking at getting a flight to China, and the cheapest is $4,000. I’m a bit short on funds because I’m still waiting for a large payment on a shipment I just brokered. Any chance you could advance me the $4,000 to get the ball rolling?

Thanks,

Apu Sean

Hrm, doesn’t look like it’ll happen.

Apu sean

Thanks for you mail, well i have told you about this business. this is not the company business as you beening our representative. this is beween the 2 of us. there is no way i can send money to you for your traveling becuase i am going to pay all the legal fee for the business. you are to pay for your traveling and the Dumorage and handling charges to the security company for the consignment to be giving to you. this i why i need some body that is capable of this. and that is why i am giving 10% from the total funds for your expensis and 30% for you asistans. Then we can go and start up a business some well so we can be business partiners.

You know how morch is 10% from 18m USD. if you can not handal this please inform me okey.

Thanks

Mr. Liu Peijin

Can’t blame me for trying.

Ok, Liu, I’ll find the money. What’s the first thing you need me to do?

I’ve also dug up a picture of myself.

Thanks,

Sean

Dear Sean,

I got your mail and your pic, Thanks for that. I which to inform you that i have long informed the security compuny well this funds was deposited that the funds should be frighted our of the country. I was informed by the that the funds was frighted to a branch compuny in Netherland, This was due to security resons.

I have inform them that you will be coming to lay claimed of the consignment. so you have to travel to Netherland to lay clime of this consignment, i have got a lawyer for this transaction who will send to you the Documents of the consignment. he is going to asist you in this, as soon as the consignment is goting by you you can come to china for the holliday.

I will send to you the contact of the security company in Netharland so you can contact them. Please get Back to me and inform me that you got this mail.

Thanks

Mr. Liu

Hello Mr Liu. I have received your message, and would like to help. Please have your lawyer send me the documents.

thanks,

Apu Sean

I seem to be missing an email or two, basically Liu gives me his accountant’s name and email, I send him an email, but it bounces because I’m sending from a dynamic IP. I figure I may as well use this:

Liu,

I tried to respond to Mr Baker, but I received an error message in return.

I received a call from Interpol yesterday asking about any dealings in Holland or China. Is this perhaps them intercepting my email?

Thanks,

Apu Sean

Dear Apu Sean,

Good day to you, how are you and your family hope you all are fine is so priase God. I have contacted the in the security company here and i have been inform that we should contact Mr. Baker true his personal email adress that he have some problem with the company email account. This is the email address; s_baker112@yahoo.co.uk. Please contact him.

My lawyer have investigated and find out the it is you email account that thare are intercepting. He have advice that you open a new email account for this transaction. Once again please contact Mr. Baker. Document will be sent to you as son as posible.

Thanks

Mr. Liu

At this point I was thinking I’d just tell him off and quit, but then I had an idea.

Liu! There is a problem! There were more people from the police here asking questions. I didn’t like the questions they were asking, and we got into a fight. They pulled guns on me, so I shot them in self defense. I’ve attached a picture so you know what I mean.

Help me! What should I do?

Apu Sean

I lost the source image for that, but what I did was remove a couple of things on the floor, and added the blood.

His response didn’t have the usual footer:

You are going to need avery good defence my freind.I’ll help you in many ways that I can.Where are you right now?I advise you turn yourself in to the police.Then I’ll take it from there.I have good contacts in the USA

Liu,

I cleaned up the mess and hid the corpses. I’ve flown to Canada to lay low for now. I could use your help, though.

Before this incident, I had received a government grant for my export business of $3.2 million USD. I need your help in getting it out of the country by providing invoices and other correspondence to back up the transactions. I can put you in contact with my lawyer, and for your troubles, I will give you 10% of the money.

You’ve been such a good friend so far, I’m hoping I can count on you to help me out of a tight spot. Once I get my money out, I can help you with the things we talked about previously.

Thanks,

Sean

Atten: Sean

I got your mail and willing to help you, as you know i am a reputable business man in china and will not like to be involved in any questionable act.

As regards your funds you are willing to get out of the country were is the money lodged if its in a bank what bank and any contact for the bank so we can confirm as this will go a long way in helping you get this money out of your country.

The invoice you asked of should we issue the invoice as if you are paying for products so that you will be able to send the money to an account you will have access to. This account will be opened in your name and as such you can access it through the bank website.

I will be waiting for your mail as regards all what i have said in this mail.

Dr Liu Peijin

I’ll see if I can at least get him to do something stupid.

Liu,

Unfortunately the money is in the form of a government grant, and they require invoices to pay the funds.

To start off, I need an invoice for the following products:

1,000 pink dildos @ $12 ea
2,000 big honking black dildos @ $13 ea
1,000 “Kathy Knockers” dolls @ $20 ea

The invoice should be sent to

“Big Poppa Pump’s Pleasure Palace” Fax - 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx

That’s $58,000.Upon you sending the invoice, my accountant will direct
the government to pay your company, after which point I will arrange for
you to transfer me 90% of the funds.

You can call my accountant, [a coworker], at 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx if you require any details.

Praise be with God for your assistance,

Apu Sean

Dear Friend.

I have writing the invoice but you have to sign on it and what is the
date that will be on it? Inform me so i can sent invioce to them .

I awiat your mail.

Dr. Liu peijin

Dr Liu,

Make the invoice date December 1, 2004. I will not have to sign it, but please make sure to have an address where the government will send the check.

Thanks,

Apu

Argh.

Mr. sean

Please i have to inform you that we do not take checks. if the funds is in check we can not help you. i will advice you to open an upsure account, i can help you with a Back contact in holland becuase i have a friend in the bank there. i will give the contact to you so that you can get to him to open the account for you and then you can send to me the account information. so will can sent it to them. for them to pay the money into it for you. or you ned me to get or open the account with your name? for you.

Dr. Liu peijin

Dr Liu,

Why is it that you can’t take checks? This is starting to sound highly suspicious!

Apu Sean

And that’s the last I’ve heard of him.

I was reading through an article with the byline Making good IT hires is critical to the success of the growing business, and came across the following comment:

When you bring in a new employee, you don’t get any value out of them for about 18 months, says [Robert] Berger

Yikes. That’s scary if it’s true.

I can see some cases, such as knowing some esoteric details of some system or another, but to provide no value is either BS, or the employee is an idiot. What does the guy do for a year and a half? Or is this just self serving commentary? (The person who made the comment runs a recruiting business)

I found this at Searchenginewatch. I should prefix the list with a favourite phrase: “Arguing on the Internet is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, you’re still a retard.”

“IN THIS FANTASY WORLD OF YOURS, DO YOU HAVE ANY MAGICAL POWERS?”
“What Color is the sky in your world ”
“I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ll be it’s hard to pronounce.”
“I see you’ve set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.”
“Did the aliens forget to remove your anal probe?”
Let me guess … then your alarm clock went off and you woke up
“The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean that you’re an artist.”
“Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Nice rant. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
**** “NO” ****
Do you have to work very hard at being a *****, or does it just come naturally?
I don’t think there are any medications for being “honesty impaired”, but that’s something hes going to have to own up to.
“Your beginning to make sense…must be time to up my medication.”
“I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid.”

About 8 months ago a vendor referred to me as a Cisco bigot in an email that went to his SE, who mistakenly forwarded it to me as part of a reply to something else. I got a good laugh out of it, though the vendor was very apologetic. As the company I work for heads into a major VoIP purchasing decision, other people have used the phrase. Am I a Cisco bigot?

Do I prefer Cisco? Absolutely. I’ve been doing networks for coming on 6 years now, and I’ve yet to run into a company that impresses me as much as Cisco. The gear is full of features and always current. Yes, I’ve run into my share of bugs. I’ll happily run the latest T-train IOS (ie bleeding edge code) if it has the features I need, full well knowing I may be opening a case with TAC (support) about a bug. I’ve run into many bugs in everything from ATM to routing protocols to VPNs. In my latest project doing backup VPNs, I ran into two at the same time, called “Excessive replication of locally generated multicast on mGRE” and “IPsec connectivity failure during re-key for complex setup”. Big mouthfuls there, but I was implementing some really cool features that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

What separates Cisco from everyone else, in my mind, is the support. As a customer, I have access to almost everything that TAC has, including the ability to look up bugs and get a report on the status. And I know the guy on the other end of the phone is motivated to help me because his success at Cisco is determined by the Bingo card I get at the end of the case – my satisfaction with the resolution – not by how quickly he could get me off the phone. (are you listening, Checkpoint?) To this end, I’ve had my first line guy talk directly to developers. It’s all about customer satisfaction, not just on the front line techs, but down to the guys cutting the code. I also find it interesting that the pre-sales engineers are bonused according to the performance of all the SEs in the region, encouraging them to collaborate on proposals.

I can’t speak any higher of TAC than the folks at Slashdot, in their Blow-by-Blow Account of the OSDN Outage. In a nutshell, not only did the engineer fix the problem, he did it by logging into the customer’s gear – both Cisco and non-Cisco – and correcting the problem. I’m told that on a P1 case (ie serious network outage) senior execs start getting paged if it isn’t resolved in 4 hours.

I don’t think I’m as much of a bigot as I am an evangelist. Jeremy wrote about being an evangelist several times. I’m a customer who believes strongly in the product. I think it is the best stuff out there, not because most of my expertise is in it, but because I have confidence that the company will take care of me and my company.

Would I recommend Cisco over anything, sight unseen? No way. PIX has some way to go before it equals Check Point, and while I’m sure their storage stuff is great, I’d want to have a storage guy vet it out first. However their routing and switching are top notch, their voice equipment unparalleled in flexibility, and they have some slick stuff on the services side (load balancers especially).

Cisco’s marketing slogan used to be The network works. Period. As a network guy, that is what my employer wants to hear from me. Would I want a company behind me that thought any different?

I just got a comment spam on my Random thoughts on GPL and BSD post. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that as I read the comment, it’s close to the topic:

On Wed, 2003-08-20 at 16:58, Matthew Easton wrote:
> Beg to differ. SCO has claimed that the GPL itself is illegal. If the GPL is
> not legally valid, that affects all who distribute under the GPL.

Well, the GPL argument is just one of their arguments, and it’s likely
the weakest of the bunch. Even if they did win that argument, it’d
likely only make the GPL more like the BSD license (essentially killing
the restrictions on distribution of GPL’d code). That may be problematic
for the future of open source (the GPL has some nice properties that
really help out with open source projects), but the present code base
should be just fine.

Googling, I find it online.

Ah ha! If I google for the title, the post in question is the first entry that’s not mine.

However, since the search engines seem to be moving toward using the link text itself rather than the raw number of links, I can’t see how this is effective. The only link in the post was in the user supplied URL.