Things what I writ

I sometimes write nonsense about things to try and sound clever

do I understand DNS?

no. I don’t get it. I went on the network administration course and everything but I still can’t map one domain to another with all that A and CNAME stuff. I can’t even understand the help I read when I’m looking for help that I can’t even find because I don’t even know how to ask for it. well, that’s not strictly true. I can at least type “DNS CNAME map domain not redirect or forward my head hurts” into google and trawl through a million self-proclaimed experts with hello world paint shop pro banners who will proceed to enlighten me in such a way that they obviously understand what they’re talking about themselves but I still have no idea even after reading it a few time and mentally underlining the bits that look relevant so I can come back to them when I understand a bit more which I never do so it’s pointless. I do know now that if you’ve been in a marketing organization longer than you’ve been in a service organization you are officially too stupid to work things out for yourself anymore and the preferred method is to ask somebody who does know what they’re doing how much it will cost if they do it for you at which point they see from the way you’ve written and signed your email that you’re in marketing and so it’ll immediately cost double the number they first thought of. which, in this case, means I should have just got the domain through the service that can configure the DNS for me for free instead of buying it from my regular domain broker and then trying to use a control panel from 1994 to tweak IPs and stuff. and then waiting for a day to see that you’re in no better state than you were yesterday and you don’t have any idea why not. its a bit like playing mastermind with someone but walking between each other’s houses 15 miles apart between each move to see if you’ve learned anything.

don’t offer to help. I like the pain.

been caught stealing

tate 1
tate 1 by Tim Caynes

As tends to happen to me these days, the BBC appears to have watching over my shoulder and anticipating my next move. I just returned from a lovely fortnight in the Dordogne (notwithstanding the 8 hours caught up in ‘Operation Stack‘ at the channel tunnel terminal at Felixstowe), to find that I need to spend most of the week at my parent’s house down the road, amidst rather traumatic circumstances.

This is no problem, as they have a home office with broadband access, so I can take my Ferrari and clamber onto conference calls and collabsites whenever I can, to remain as productive as possible between pills, bowls, and ambulances. The first problem I encounter, however, is that there does not appear to be a broadband modem in sight. This might not be a bad thing, but I suspect it is. I turn on the ancient Time PC in the corner and it springs into life, after about 10 minutes, but hey presto, full internet access. Follow the cables. There on the wall is the ethernet port. Not a telephone point, but an ethernet port. Oh. Its cable.

First logical next step, I’m guessing, is to just stick an ethernet cable between the Ferrari and the wall. There, look, its trying to get me an IP address. Try again. Hmm. I ponder the probabilty of installing ntl: broadband software and drivers just to get the network up and running, obviously screwing up any other configuration I already have, and decide against it. I just won’t do any work this week. I’ll write a huge presentation offline or something. No. Not going to happen.

I try wireless. I don’t use wireless at home anymore because we’re linking it to headaches and we’ve turned off all transmitters in our house, but you never know, there might be an access point around here somewhere. Enabled. Hmm. 2wire675, secured. Nope. numer4_essex, secured. Nope. Hang on, HotelDownTheRoad, wide open. Bingo. Its about 100 metres down the road, so I have about .1 of a bar on the strength meter (which is true in real life, coincidentally), but its available and seems to be plenty fast enough for downloading adverts from pixmania and apple in my email. I’ll even be able to squeeze in a design update or 2.

And here is where the BBC come in. No sooner do I piggyback on the generosity of the local (private) hotel’s open wifi access, than they paste up an article proposing that I might indeed be arrested for trying to get some work done. Actually, they present all the arguements for and against freeloading on open wireless access points, but the hook of the article is about a man being arrested for deliberately freeloading in the street, like those people who sit in their car in your driveway downloading dvds onto 17 laptops in the boot, using your unsecured broadband hub. I’m pretty sure the hotel doesn’t even know that its wifi access is so accessible, or they’ve just found that handing out WEP keys to guests is more trouble than its worth (more likely). Either way, I’m not taking any significant bandwidth away from them and they probably wouldn’t even care. Still, I’ve closed the curtains and if the blue lights come round the corner I’m diving into the cellar and grabbing my laptop, 90’s hacker film style (think Johnny Lee Miller), just in case.

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