excuse::my muse

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything on Vox.  My last published post was dated November 6, 2008.  Wow.

Twitter powered Facebook status updates, sporadic newsgroup posts, and LinkedIn updates have satisfied my need to stay "internet active" recently until today. 

The events in Iran have captivated me.  I'm currently in Philadelphia at a conference but I find I'm splitting my attention with a portion of it going to the conference speaker, another portion dedicated to work-related events, and the remainder following the real-time updates of StopAhmadi and  Andrew Sullivan's blog (who I am proud to say Six Apart hosts).

I am inspired and engaged by the political events taking place in Iran as it's people navigate the treacherous waters of political self-determination.

Special kudos go out to Twitter, NTT, and our POTUS for dealing with everthing today in a way that makes me proud.

"To those (Iranian) people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process... the world is watching and inspired by their participation." - Barak Obama

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Hollywood Declares Themselves

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Section 8 of the Paulson financial bailout package includes the following language:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Um, excuse me?  Would the UnAmerican jackass that put that clause in the bailout plan please go back to the secretive fascist country from which you've apparently escaped?

Seriously.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

I'm pretty tired of all the stupid campaign tricks and lying the last few weeks.  I'm ready for more substantive discourse and was wondering when the debates would be.  If I'm reading this right, here's the schedule.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Paul G. Kirk, Jr. and Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., co-chairmen of the non-partisan, non-profit Commission on Presidential Debates ("CPD" or "the Commission") today announced dates, sites and formats of three presidential and one vice presidential debates for the 2008 general election. The dates and sites are:

First presidential debate:
Friday, September 26
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
Vice presidential debate:
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Second presidential debate:
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, TN
Third presidential debate:
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Whoa, what the heck is going on?  This morning I woke up to 60 spam messages in my gmail.  In the time it took me to go from home to the office, I received 33 more. 

Google, why haven't you integrated Postini into gmail yet?  I rarely receive spam in my Postini-filtered work address.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Here's my cool Pix/ASA trick of the day.  Take the following scenario:

I had a Pix with a sizable jumble of non-concurrent networks behind the inside interface. 192.168.1.0/24, 192.168.50.0/24, and so on.  For simplicity I had set a large static route to encompass them all.

pix# show route | i 192.168
S    192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 [1/0] via 10.0.0.1, inside

At a later time I needed to establish a ipsec tunnel to a remote network with the internal address 192.168.10.0/24.  Because the address space overlaps with the static route, hosts on the Pix network were unable to route to the remote site.  They actually encountered a routing loop as the inside router (10.0.0.1) and the inside interface of the pix bounced traffic back and forth.

In order to fix the problem I had to let the crypto map for the new tunnel inject the remote sites route into the routing table.  The "reverse-route" argument enables this feature.

crypto map mymap 10 set peer 1.1.1.1
crypto map mymap 10 set transform-set 3DES
crypto map mymap 10 set reverse-route

So now when you look at the pix route table you'll see an entry for the remote site.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Wow!  Two wonderful things smashed together make a rad band.  Powerglove is a Nintendo theme song cover band with a metal twist.  On top of that the members all dress up in Nintendo/Gwar inspired dress.  They're touring, but doesn't look like they'll make it all the way to California this time.

Powerglove at 16 Bit Genocide

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

After spending more than a few days troubleshooting this on a live production network, I thought I'd share.  If you're a network engineer troubleshooting a similar problem, hopefully Google brings you here for a quick fix before you open a support ticket.

FTOS 7.6.1 on Force10 hardware may not support mac masquerading when the mac address changes ports . When a mac address floats from one port to another, as it would during a Cisco ASA failover, the arp table is not updated.  In order to achieve this functionality you need to enable the following command in your switch config:

mac-address-table station-move refresh-arp

Problem solved.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Has anyone see those Shamwow commercials?  The one where the pitchman sorta assumes you're a jerk if you don't buy his rags and even talks down to the camera man?

ShamWOW!!!

Vince Offer of ShamWow is almost as cool as Billy Mays of OxyClean. 

I find it super easy to imagine that Billy Mays  yells not only in his OxyClean commercials, but all the time.

"HI THIS IS BILLY MAYS AT HOME.  HONEY, CAN YOU PASS THE KETCHUP!" 

Perhaps poor shouting Billy's parents died when he was an infant, leaving him to be brought-up by his elderly hard-of-hearing grandmother with whom he could only communicate by yelling. 

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

</geek>

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

This evening I brought Theo to the office for an Ops and Sales-sponsored  after work social thingy we call Foobar.  As several other parents brought their spawn in,  we tried to line then up and snap a quick picture.  It didn't go so well.  Theo and Harper would try to run away, or Penelope would start crying. 

After I told Karen how squirmy Theo was, she showed me this picture of Asia Carrera's kid from her blog.  Click the picture, view it full screen, and appreciate how completely bizarre it is.  I'll probably have nightmares tonight.

01easterbunny

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Ingredients:

• 

  Art Project
  1 Quart Yellow Paint ($7)
• 1 Quart Primer ($5)
• 1 8oz Can Green Paint ($4)
• 1 Svala Childrens Table and Chairs ($40)
• 2 Paint brushes ($2)
• A couple of beautiful sunny afternoons.

Directions:

1. Assemble table.
2. Coat the table and chairs in primer.  Wait 2 hours.
3. Apply 2 to 3 coats of yellow paint.  Drink a beer and wait 1 to 2 hours for each coat to dry before applying the next one.
4. Detail with green paint.  Be creative!
5. Watch your kid laugh hysterically while he smears mac and cheese all over it.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Gas_prices

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Okay, I'm kinda digging this band now.

Los Campesinos - You! Me! Dancing!

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

One of my co-workers just informed me that if you have a San Francisco Public Library card, you can access the O'Reilly Safari Library for free.  It looks like they've got about 1500 books online, but not everything in the Safari Library.  For example, "The Sendmail Cookbook" doesn't show up on the free version, while it does on my paid account.

Here's how to connect.

1. Browse to http://www.sfpl.org/sfplonline/dbcategories.htm
2. Search for "safari".  It's a big page and the link is about two-thirds of the way down.
3. Log in with your library card number
4. Geek Out! 

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Mystery Men

In a email list I'm on, we were analyzing the oratory style of Barak Obama.  As it turns out, he tends to use a lot of statements that basically go like this: 

"It's not A for B. It's B for A"

All this reminded me of a character called "The Sphinx" from a grossly underrated film from a few years back.

Barak Obama: With the changing economy, no one has lifetime
employment. But community colleges provide lifetime employability.

The Sphinx: To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn.

Barak Obama: My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to
represent you to Washington.

The Sphinx: He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.

And in homage to an underrated movie:

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a
little bit formulaic? "If you want to push something down, you have to
pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right." It's...

The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn
to master your rage...

Mr. Furious: ...your rage will become your master? That's what you
were going to say. Right? Right?

The Sphinx: Not necessarily.

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

There's a kids show on Nick Jr. called Yo Gabba Gabba that Karen and I have fallen in love with.  It's hosted by a guy called DJ Lance Rock who carries an old school boombox.  Most of the segments feature electronica or electro beats with fat bass.  Theo and I crank up the subwoofer and dance around.  Check out the "Party in My Tummy" clip for a dope beat and some good tips on eating vegetables.

"Pick it up" is another brilliant sketch which uses rude boys and ska music to teach kids to clean up their rooms.

Yo Gabba Gabba! - Pick It Up (GOGO13)

Yo! Gabba Gabba Party In My Tummy

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

If you happen to find yourself looking for some old school, bass heavy, non-lawnmower drum 'n bass, check out this mix.  Make sure the subwoofer is plugged in.

http://www.amadj.com/oldschool.html

(Psst, Ginevra....)

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

Junior and senior year of High School was all about telling my folks I was going to a movie with friends and then driving downtown to see punk shows.  At that time I was living in Richmond, VA.  Richmond has an art school known as VCU that cranked out some great bands and a bunch of students to support them.  I don't know why RVA isn't any better known outside the area, but if you lived in Virginia, DC, or the Baltimore area in the mid to late-90s, it was a hotbed of fucking cool shows that always seems to guarantee stage diving, finger-pointing, mosh pitting, and dog-piling.  I currently blame RVA for my complete disinterest in live music now.  I haven't found any other bands or venues with that kind of energy since I left.

Action Patrol and Sleepytime Trio were two of the best, and they recently performed a reunion show.  Plane tickets, family-life, and career kept me from calling in sick and flying east, but I did download all the AP mp3s that day and seriously rock out in my headphones at work. 

If you only watch one of the videos below, check out the performance of Hustle.  The other clip is Sleepytime goofing on AP by wearing their signature orange jumpsuits.

Sleepytime Trio as Action Patrol - Action Patrol Reunion

Action Patrol Reunion Show - Hustle

Originally posted on jason.vox.com

This is the cleanest my desk has been all year.

IMAGE_079

Originally posted on jason.vox.com