The home of RobL...

Woohoo. A tax refund. Think it is legit??



My Nigerian friends are also particularly active today.

My name is Captain Matthew Stamford of the US Marine corps stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, I found some money stashed in a couple of barrels while on patrol ($900,000.00) I need someone to help me move it to a safer place, please have it in mind that there is no danger involved. You may contact me on usmarine120@i12.com so that I can provide you with more details.

You would think by now that we would have solved the problem of automated "out of office messages" being sent to mailing lists with hundreds, possibly thousands of subscribers.

It is not exactly the most difficult problem in the world to solve:

1. Only reply to e-mail that contains your e-mail address in the To: and if you must, the Cc: header.
2. Only reply once per sender for the duration the responder is set. If the same sender happens to send another message, we do not respond again. (consider automated ticketers and other out of office messages!)
3. If adding it to a rule set, place it at the bottom of your rules, so that list mail etc. gets dealt with first, before the auto-reply.

There are other elaborations on this, such as not replying to obviously automated messages and bounces, but the above should generally work.

I cannot believe after all these years of this STAGGERINGLY OLD PROBLEM that there are still platforms out there which allow users to set up such brain-dead auto-responders. (Either that, or make interesting assumptions about what headers to expect.)

Yet again one of the large mailing lists I am on has been bombarded by somebody's brain dead out of office messages. Every time somebody posts something, we get another out-of-office message. Worse, his own out-of-office messages are posted to the list and this triggers another out-of-office message. DUHHHHH!

FFS!

Okay... what sort of idiot pays this sort of money in Staples for:




2 x CAT5e patch leads... £27.23 !!!

I mean. I can get the same cable from Repsole for £2.42.
And could probably get a supplier cheaper than that if ordering in bulk.

Okay.. so.. the price of copper goes up and down, so at wholesale, the cost of CAT5 cable fluctuates from month to month. But priced per metre, that works out at about £2.72 vs £0.484p.




6 velcro ties. £5.95 !!!

I can easily get about 50 for that price, I would not be so bothered about the colour of them though for that price.

Lawks. Talk about markup.

(OTOH, I would not mind a couple of customer like that... Although I do not think in all conscience I could charge that much for something that costs pennies to manufacture.)

Been busy getting stuff ready etc for Bike Week which is looming this weekend to next.

Doing a ride to Richmond Park and lots of other misc jobs.

Lots of data centre work recently installing servers and networking stuff in batches of 50 servers or 80 servers. I think my regular caged nut and M6 bolt suppliers think I am slightly crazy. They phoned me up to check I was not duplicating orders. So... "You want Another 2000 caged nuts?" "Yep"

A smattering of e-mails about various bike rides, including,

• "Do I have to book a place?"
• "How long do you think it will take?"
• "I am not doing your ride, but can you tell me where start point for this other ride that you are not doing is?"

Of particular concern is the Midsummer Madness ride. Which starts at 2AM in Brick Lane, and then we join Southwark up to Primrose Hill to see the sunrise at 4.43 am.



This always confuses people who do not know how midnight works. The next day begins at midnight.

02:00 AM is MONDAY MORNING. We always seem to get at least one person calling up at 02:00 on Tuesday... "Where are you?" I.E. SUNDAY NIGHT/MONDAY MORNING.

Maybe some people are just never often actually awake at odd hours to appreciate this.

Okay, it has taken a little while to get it going, and I may have had to sell a kidney to buy all of the hardware, but the RobLab is now operational.

Basically, I have resisted having a 19 inch rack in my house for a while, but it has come to the point where I needed to be able to set up and test a wider variety of routing and network setups. And increase ability to test situations like testing out upgrading customer configs from older versions of JUNOS to more recent (and some quite big changes!)



The lab can be remotely accessed and devices powered on and off when needed.

It contains:



A server for running tests/routing etc.

Cisco 2511-RJ (console server)

Extreme Summit48

Cisco 2621XM

Cisco 2611XM

Juniper J2320

Cisco 827

Cisco 2960-24 Switch

HP DL380 Server

Cisco 857

2 x APC 7920 Switched PDU

- other misc scavenged or borrowed kit!



All kit for testing out configurations and various scenarios.

I wrote some nice little perl scripts that interact with the APC pdus over SNMP as the interface is a bit clunky, and I wanted to just quickly be able to power on devices, or groups of devices, and see what is on and off.

With surprisingly little kit, I have found that quite a lot can be tested. So far have tested some quite complex BGP policy setup (sending a customer the exact commands to paste in to the router in the right order, and to check that nothing bad will happen.) Some QoS stuff, various NAT configurations, The best procedures for various customers to upgrade from various versions of JUNOS, Juniper Virtual Router instances, Authentication config, how many full tables can be put on a Juniper before it runs out of memory, and rather a lot of idle curiosity.

Since it is all remotely accessible and turn-on-and-offable, it can be easily made available to fellow geeks. A lot of scenarios can be created and tested, and many interop tests (i.e. OSPF Juniper/Cisco/Extreme) are possible.

Although there are other public labs available, sometimes getting time on these can be difficult, and I needed a mix of different vendor hardware, as well as some client machines and endpoints (i.e. a server and some real Internet access to test out some of the situations.)

For the curious, here is a more detailed map of the usual topology (may change!) A variety of topologies are possible by changing the VLAN configuration of the switches. (So, the above is just a serving suggestion!)

I would like to make this available for fellow geeks, If this sounds interesting, you would like to access this for something, for doing an exam/training etc, then drop me an e-mail and I'm sure I could arrange access... Or.. if you have any hardware that you would like to go to a good home, that would be appreciated. I am particularly after any Cisco PIX or ASA kit, (although I have access to one, it is semi-live) and any other switches or bits and bobs that you may have.

(Of course, I you wanted assistance labbing stuff up, or network consultancy... then I can sell you that too...I know a very good company :-) :-) :-) )



R.

Having had a rather... erm... "unproductive" all-nighter on Monday attempting to upgrade the CF card in a Juniper M7i that was not having any of it, I ordered a PCMCIA CF card reader for the next attempt! So, it turned up today and I grabbed the nearest CF card to test the device, and it happened to contain These pictures from the Great Raft Race 2009 which it turns out I had already uploaded but forgot to link them in anywhere. In which we see the epic Owen and Aneeta hull breach and sinkage to the bottom of the canal. (RIP the Wheelers camera. Although gallant efforts were made to find it, it remains in its watery grave at the bottom of the Regent's Canal. No Flowers.)

(Warning: contains gratuitous shot of Robin in his tight fitting hotpants!)

Ahem.

Anyway, said CF reader thingy does work to allow me to make a new build for Juniper routers. Which I would also like at the bottom of the Canal after the nonsense the other night.

Call me boring etc, here is the list of apps that I have taken off my facebook news feed:

21 Questions
Airline Manager
App Designer
Astrology
Bejeweled Blitz
Cafe World
Date of the Day
Farmville
Friend Facts
Friends for Sale
How original are my parents?
Island Paradise
iTunes 12 Days of Christmas app
Jungle Extreme
Little Warrior
LivingSocial
Mafia Wars
MindJolt Games
Movies
Music Challenge
My Zoo
Playstation Network
Snowball Fight
The Warlords
Vampire Wars
Word Twist
YoVille
Zoo World


These are listed in the rather obscure location:

Click on Home, then View News Feed, then scroll down to the bottom, then at the end of the list, click on Edit options, then select Applications.

Okay, so it has been a bit of a break since the last issue of East London Cyclist, but finally handed out - Cable Street with Dave W in the freezing cold, and Hackney Road with Dave T in the not so cold (although I made the mistake of putting too many layers on Thursday after being too cold on Wednesday at Cable Street.

East London Cyclist

Rules of hostels:

There will be a large, six-slot toaster. Only one slot will work properly, the other slots will not work, or only toast on one side. At breakfast, about 20 people will be attempting to make toast, and each new person that tries to use the toaster is warned about the faulty slots. They will assume user error and try anyway.

There will never be enough cups. Nobody knows why. (at least 3 cups too short)

There will not be enough pans of the correct size. (a dozen tiny saucepans when you are cooking pasta for 16 people, or only massive pans when you are just cooking for yourself.)

If you assume there will be NO oven or microwave... then there will be 3 of them. If you need an oven/microwave, there will not be any.

The " spare food" box will contain some or all of the following:
1 onion
1 large bag of flour/cornflour/sugar
1 heavy jar of instant coffee/pickled onions/pasta sauce
1 half full pack of spaghetti
1 small bottle of olive oil
2 or 3 big boxes of weird herbal or fruit tea bags i.e. rose hip tea.
1 Jif lemon juice
1 stock cube
1 can of sardines (no opening key)
1 half full pack of instant custard


You will break at least one obscure rule, for example "Use of the washing machines is not permitted after 7.30PM" - having arrived at 7PM with no clean clothes!

If you are staying in a group, with the room staying unlocked all evening, suddenly, the only person with the room key will have a fit of paranoia and lock the door. (Even if the hostel is miles from the nearest town, and you are the only people staying there.)

... You will be returning from the shower to find the door locked.

If you decide to do laundry together to save time, you will ask everybody many times if they have any laundry, to please give it to you, as you are going to put the washing machine on, and it should be left in this bag/in the laundry basket etc. Eventually you decide to put the washing machine on. When you return to the lounge and announce "Right.. I've put the laundry on..." there will be at least one idiot who says "Oh NO, I didn't give you mine yet!" somehow this will be your fault, even though everybody else got their dirty kecks to you on time!

There will be at least one person that assumes you have never used a washing machine before and cannot cope with the responsibility of it, and will personally supervise your washing machine skills.

Conversely, if you leave somebody else to it and assume they know what they are doing, you will find that they have put your delicates/synthetics in the dryer for 3 hours, or hung up only their own stuff while leaving everyone else's in a damp heap.

The thing that you really, really need to be dry before leaving, will not dry out. (or somebody will have covered it, or it will have fallen off the clothes line etc.)

Showers generally have two settings: Cold Fast, or Boiling Dribble. Some alternate between the two by themselves. If a push button shower, it will provide approx. 3 second blasts of lukewarm water before switching off.

There will not be anywhere in the shower room to hang your towel/put your soap etc.

There will be at least one door that bangs shut loudly, and most people will forget until it bangs, thus waking people up while sneaking in late or going to the bathroom in the dead of night.

Some idiot will always come into the room more than 30 minutes after the light has been switched off, and switch the light on.

The person arriving late will rummage about for far too long. They will have either velcro straps on lots of things, or a rustly plastic bag. They will attempt to undo the velcro straps or rustle the bag slowly, but you wish they would just get it over with.

There will always be one less set of sheets than is needed. If you were the last person to get to the room, you will have to deal with this, as somebody else will have nicked yours.

At least one person will snore and deny it the next day. "I never snore!"

The curtains and/or window will not fully close.

The bike shed will be full of old beds and other junk.

People are downloading karenskristmaskraka.mp3 again.

And without me mentioning it this year The legend that is karenskristmaskraka.mp3...

(don't say I didn' warn you. remember. I can never give you back those minutes of your life.)