The constant in life is change

Wow, long time no write. I mostly update via facebook, but still a good blog post can be worthwhile. I'm still really focused on my career; I had a 6 month contract with Cisco which expired 10 days ago. I have mixed feelings; it was a good educational experience but I pretty much tapped that out, and the pay was horrible. I guess my impression is that i can do more worthwhile things than do scut work at minimum wage, even if it does not directly and immediately lead to income generation.

I'm still trying to get into PACS/RIS, its probably a good field for me but tough to break in to, and is essentially saturated in the U.S.; pretty much everyone has a system of some sort, now its just updates. I spent several months chasing a job prospect; some 6 interviews, and didn't get it at the last interview. Oh well. Sour grapes.

After that I re-evaluated and decided to start my own computer repair business. I've been thinking about it for a while and it's something I can definitely do. The problem is many others can do it too, and its also probably hard to break in to a saturated market. But that's the case no matter where you go in IT; there are alot of people in this field, only a handful really have any skill; and it seems really hard to get off the ground. In this I am sure my PhD is working against me. How much easier of a time would I have if i just had a BS in comp sci or something? I will never know. For now I am doing all the certifications and networking I can do.

First off is finding a name. I am thinking of going with "PhD Computers Inc.". There is a shop online with that name though, in Oregon. I can legally use it for doing business in NC however, but I'm not sure. I can go with something like "PhD Computer Repair", or "Dejournett Computers" . Or something like that.

Uhmm yeah.

So I play a bit too much (191d /played), over the stretch of 3 years . That's 4500 hours. In comparison you work for 9600 a year if you are a 40 hour per week employee. Too be fair, I wasn't actually played while I could have been working. But its still sobering. Nowadays tbh I may play 1 hour a day so i'm very pleased; I am really busy with RL stuff that is hopefully useful for my career.

However, you know what, you may laugh, but I gained huge insight about business and free markets. I was reflecting on this today. If I ever have any free cash flow I'll try to invest it for the purpose of short term gains; i did this a year ago, chickened out, and lost the opportunity to make $15,000 from $1000. I'll make a million and start a nature preserve, which would protect that ecosystem for all time, until the last day.

Long time no write.

Well i've been pretty busy, I hang out on Facebook more often now, and I have yet another blog devoted to my IT stuff. It's here: http://robccnp.blogspot.com/

Also I am working on my Cisco Users Group, that website is here again.

Google calendar feed

Well this drove me absolutely bonkers. I needed a feed for my new users group (website (still very rough) here: http://rtpcug.com/)

Anyway it was less than obvious how to do this. You see the 'settings' in the picture? yeah that aint it. There are fully separate groups of calendar settings, don't ask me why.

What you do is click the down arrow next to your calendar in "My calendars" (see picture). Then you click "Calendar settings". From there, you need to make the calendar public, first of all. There is a row of tabs on the top of the dialouge, the second reads "Share this calendar". Click there. Then click 'make my calendar public'.

Then get the feed url by click on the Calendar details tab, then on the Calendar address row, click xml or html button or ical, which I think is a apple thing.

Guess everyone is in Hawaii this year for xmas

I saw this pict and I recognized it immediately. The Obamas are staying a block from my Dad and step mother. Mele Kelemaka Obamas!

I then got on twitter. Apparently Lance is doing the Ironman in Kona this year. Good luck to him!

Christmas decoration win

I love failblog, its got stuff like this.

Stating the obvious

This story about insurgents pulling out unencrypted feeds from the Predator attack drones is interesting. Apparently some russian programmers (there are alot of them, and they seem to have no morals) have developed software to decipher wireless communication from satellite feeds.

This quote from the developer is pretty 'no duh' for me.

"But generally speaking, this points to a large security gap that the American military has missed."

Any time you have stuff going over the airwaves, it can be captured and exploited by anyone. Luckily with todays technology of authetication and encryption its harder to do that. Turning OFF the encryption during MILITARY operations is just...not bright at all.

What is more interesting to me is the commercial standpoint. WiMax is a new technology that allows broadband like speed wirelessly as long as there is a WiMax tower within 5 miles. So its like cell phones but much faster. Now I think this will be revolutionary IFF the price is decent (and it looks like that to me, the usual $30 or $40 a month). If you think about it, you could get this for your home network and be able to travel around town to some degree and use wireless. Not only that but set up is a bit simplier than wired networks, you dont need a router or switch or anything.

But here's the thing. Now there is going to be alot of traffic over the airwaves, at very large diameter of operation (whereas WiFi only goes a few hundred feet, WiMax goes for miles). So the possibility of somebody sniffing out your signal jumps exponentially. I think our current standard of encryption is pretty good, but think about if alot of people started using WiMax and you could some how get access to that data. That's tens of thousands of credit card transactions and so forth. Again, i think the encryption is pretty good right now, but is a sobering what if as we push more and more into the wireless space.