RISE from your GRAVE!!

So...

Back again.  What? you mean my 1 follower is no longer reading this? Well, much has happened in the last few years. I say "last few years" but it is looking like its been much longer than that.  So what has happened to old Panvamp since '08?  Turns out that IBM laid me off in 2009.  I am surprised that it took that long. For a company that has an ongoing reputation for laying people off, I managed to make it 14 years. So I bid "good day" to Big Blue in March of '09. (Interestingly enough, my father was laid off at just about the same time. He had over 30 years.)

Next up, some people know that I was having problems paying my then out-of-control mortgage. Well, it turns out that if you sign an agreement to lower your mortgage payments, they don't take it too kindly when you no longer have employment. So, in May of '09 we lost our house in Georgia. I even pawned all of my firearms. I sold computer stuff. I threw all kinds of things away. 2009 was not a particularly good year for me and my family. But I will tell you...

It probably was one of the best things to have happened to me.

One thing that people often don't think about the benefits of being laid off.  "What?! Are you crazy?" you ask. No friends, there are most likely many benefits to being laid off (other than spending more time with your family).  The big benefit to me was, in all honesty, I HATED that job. I detested getting up in the morning, going to that god-awful place, and doing that stupid mindless job, even if I was making great money. It felt like instead of being laid off, I was paroled.

I could have done without losing my house (I really loved that house). But see friends, even this was not all bad. More on that in a moment.

So what did I do? Did I sit and cry? Did I feel sorry for myself? A little. But after it passed, I hit the streets. We got a rental house thanks to a really nice guy named Craig who gave us a chance. I did get another job. In May of '09 I began working for a company called Cbeyond in Atlanta. I realized something happened when I was with IBM. My love of technology, of computers, of all things digital had faded.  I began a new career as another new phone support agent, Tier 1.

And I LOVED it. I remembered why I got into this field to begin with. I picked up Cisco quickly, and all of the other products we offered I was able to build on my previous years of experience.  I was now supporting internet, HME, web hosting, firewalls, backup systems, you name it.  And I realized that I was fairly decent at Voice and VOIP products.

I was a Tier 1 contract agent until January of  2010.  In January, I became a permanent Tier1.  In February of the same year I was promoted to Tier 2 tech support (the single largest pay increase of my career to date). As luck would have it, in August, Cbeyond announced that they were opening a call center in Denver, Colorado.  They needed a Tech support instructor. They offered to move the candidate and to give them a permanent job as Operations Training instructor.

I applied for and got the job.

We moved to Denver in August of 2010 and have been here ever since. We still rent our house, but we are rapidly approaching a time that I might be able to buy a nice one of my own again (even though renting is not that bad). I am still not rich, and money continues to be a struggle, but I am far better off than before where we could not even afford to keep the power on.

Take heed, friends.  Life can be difficult. It's easy to lose a job or a house and feel that there is no way that things can get better. But they can.  If you make things happen, they WILL COME. Learn from this post.  Never give up.  You can ALWAYS start digging out of that hole. 

So I will be blogging more. I swear it. I am going to even delve into some telecom topics, as I have a new-found passion for voice and data technology. Let me share it with you.

Well apparently I blogged too soon. OpenBSD has had a release to version 4.5. I wonder if FreeBSD is going to get a new release this month too?

Announcing NetBSD 5.0

The Newest NetBSD has been released. This is pretty big news, they have been working on it for a long time. Its good to know that the SMP stuff is finished. NetBSD was one of the first OS's to support Multi core support, but I know they have been making it better and better. Says there are 7 million new lines of code. I usually use FreeBSD, that runs my server/firewall/router/gateway, but I have NetBSD on a backup server (a SPARC Ultra AXe).

The Big three BSD's all work great but they are mostly specialized. What are the Big Three?

Hmm. Maybe we should have a quick Tao of the BSD's.

FreeBSD - The Jack-of-all trades BSD Good for beginners, lots of supported hardware and the innovative ports system. Makes installing software as easy as typing "Make install clean" and walking away. I use this for my main server.

NetBSD - The main advantage of NetBSD is there is a release of NetBSD that runs on anything. I mean thin clients, phones, old single board computers, toasters you name it.

OpenBSD - This one is the BSD that is designed with security in mind. They went for years without having a single security hole in the default install. You would think that this would be best for a home server but it really has paranoia-level security.

If you are interested in Unix-like OS's check out the BSD's. Linux is probably more robust on the desktop, but the BSD's make GREAT servers.

Ok I joined Facebook

FINE! FINE!

I joined Facebook. I know, I know, I said I'd never be a part of that... But, things change. I've been feeling kinda isolated and lonely lately. Maybe re-connecting with other friends would be good right now.

Anyways... I am gonna try to post something a day at least...

I am BOYCOTTING HP

I'm boycotting all HP products. Right now. All of them. I'm certain you find yourself asking why. Hp has the reputation of making the worlds best laser and print systems. I suppose they make decent computers and, of course, gave us the robust HP-UX system. But the reason I am boycotting them is that product support, by and large, is abysmal.

I began running Windows XP-64 since 2004. I love it. Its just like xp but MORE stable in my opinion. Of course, I knew there would be driver issues in the beginning. And some of the issues I had with drivers were very bad, such as the drivers for the sound blaster audigy, which caused all sorts of lockups and reboots. But even that, as much as I HATE to give creative labs credit, was resolved in a later update. I was given an HP Laserjet 1012 printer for christmas the year before. I loved the way it printed. Really. Then I upgraded to XP-64. And of course, there was no driver for Windows XP-64. That was okay, I had thought. EVENTUALLY they would HAVE to come out with 64-bit printer drivers for this printer. I mean its HP -- how could they not support a recent Microsoft OS?

It is now November 10th, 2008. XP-64 has been out for FOUR YEARS and now there is Vista64. No driver. Not a beta driver, not a preliminary driver, nada. There was some crap on the driver site about how 64-bit windows would not be supported by HP. Their answer, I kid you not, was that you can use a driver for a completely different printer. Ok, I thought, that must be it. What they failed to mention, was when you use the wrong driver not everything works. In fact, every time I tried to print anything with ANY formatting at all, the printer would spit out sheets that say "Unknown PCL Mode". Thats no mapquest maps, no pdf's, and bearly any word documents. And when it did print, the borders were completely screwed up.

In an attempt to track down the answers to WHY my printer was acting that way, I was told that the 1010 series (including mine) were "host-mode" printers, and that they had incomplete PCL code in the printer. All of that is supposed to get formatted from the drivers. And since I was not using drivers designed for my printer, I was always going to have this problem. That means that HP's great printer solution of using other drivers has NO HOPE OF EVER working with my printer under XP-64. So I figured, its just temporary. EVENTUALLY HP will get the message and relase some sort of 64-bit driver.

I still look at the internet about this issue from time to time. I hooked up the printer to my BSD server using cups and Samba, and all of my 32 bit windows and Linux machines automatically install the driver and print GREAT. My 64-bit machine? Nothing. Oh and not only that? There is a generic windows postscript driver just for printing to cups machines. It works great on my XP laptop. But guess what??? It only has 32-bit drivers as well.

Still, no driver. So I got a bug in my brain to search the internet about my problem, like I have every now and then for the last 4 years. I happened to find this post here.

Not only did the person trying to answer the question give him the SAME answer that was given 4 years ago, he thought it was VISTA. The post clearly states XP-64. So it looks like HP support reps don't know the difference between XP-64 and Vista, they STILL HAVE NOT WRITTEN A 64bit driver. It has been 4 years. And HP, supposedly one of the most technologicaly advanced IT companies there is, is apparently INCAPABLE of writing a 64-bit driver for this printer. Its not like someone wanting a driver for BeOS or Solaris or something. Its Windows XP-64 by MICROSOFT. Its got a bigger install base than FreeBSD. And yet it appears that HP just can't be bothered at all. Oh you can sell me that old line "well it doesn't say that its compatible with 64-bit, so they have no obligation to make drivers for that platform." Give me a fucking break. I expected better of a company like HP. There are no Vista drivers for this printer either apparently, and HP has no plans on writing supported drivers for this entire line of printers.

So I suppose according to HP, I'm just supposed to throw this printer away. I know that it is a "valu line", meaning I didn't have to take out a mortgage to buy it. And because of that, I suppose, HP would love for me to just throw my printer away. But here is the BEST part. Almost NONE of their printers have xp-64 drivers. True they have some, but most of those are just half assed drivers just so Windows would see the printer forget having full functions. And Apparently, their beautiful answer to how to get these printers to "work" in Vista is to install a completely different driver, that is CLOSE to the actual printer. The same crappy answer all over.

I had to buy a usb IR port for some testing. I was worried when I bought it because it was cheap, obviously chinese, and it was difficult to actually identify the manufacturer. To its credit, I put the driver cd in and right there was an XP-64 driver. Fully supported. If Joe-bob-chin chinese company can write 64 bit drivers, I fully expect HP to be capable. But clearly they just don't care enough about their customers.

I work in support and If I were to give these answers to my customers, my job would become a complaint department VERY quickly. And my customers would not accept the "use the driver closest to your printer" crap for a second.

Hewlett-Packard, your lack of drivers and support for your products to be used in modern, 64-bit environments, is INEXCUSABLE. And from this moment forward I vow NEVER to purchase any HP products again. Ever. This is the last straw. You have had 4 years and you can't even support Vista 32, much less any of the 64-bit OS's. Perhaps if I bought a professional line printer from you, I wouldn't have this problem. But clearly you don't give a crap about the little guy who cannot afford a thousand dollar laser printer. My father bought a laptop from you on my reccomendation. No more. I will never reccomend any HP products to anyone ever again. I honestly hope you go bankrupt and lose every customer that you have. Oh I know I'm just one pissed off techie, but there are plenty more of me.

If you happen to be running Vista or XP-64 and you have a Laserjet 1012 printer. Give up now. No amount of searching the internet will EVER give you a work around that works completely. You might be satisfied with limited printer support but I am not.

Will they Listen? Probably not.

I was just reading about Spore's recent crisis at Amazon.com. The much anticipated game was released to some fanfare. It seems however, that Spore implements the DRM scheme Securom. And take it from me, Securom causes more problems than it solves. I personally have had issues where Securom games refuse to work because I happened to be running the Daemon Tools virtual drive software.

For a game company to expect me to uninstall perfectly legitimate tools simply because those tools might be used for piracy, well let me just say that this is a slap in my face; an insult to my intelligence and my reputation. When I was first into computing, piracy was just as rampant as it is now, if not more so. First, there were "uncopyable disks" that could still be copied with the proper image software. The next reaction was to include a code wheel or code sheet, usually filled with esoteric symbols that correspond somewhere in the game. Usually red, or somehow otherwise protected from photocopying. This did not really work either, since code wheels could be taken apart, copied and reassembled, and you could get a copier to copy the red code sheets if the setting were just right. But the PC game market had a saving grace that both provided a means for them to produce more technically superior games AND reduce piracy. The CD-ROM. For about 6 years in the 90's, game manufacturers released many games on CD-ROM with absolutely no copy protection whatsoever.

The reason was, was that CD Burners were unheard of, and most hard drives were mostly no larger than 1GB. So copying a 600MB CD made little sense, and that is IF you could fit it on your hard drive. So at that point the only way to get a full game was to buy it. For a long time, copy protection was nowhere to be found. Then of course, came the advent of CD burners and the Internet. These two factors combined gave rise to a new era of piracy. So what did game makers do?

For a while, they did nothing. Burners were not that popular and most people accessed the internet through dial up and most people were unwilling to download entire cd images. But the threat had begun. Game manufacturers, taking a page from recent controversies from the RIAA about MP3 piracy, decided to implement DRM. They were just checks to see if the CD was in the drive, but it had begun. And so, with major piracy fears, game companies are more and more using the utterly draconian Securom protection. Never mind that it doesn't work on a large amount of computers for people who actually bought the title. So, more and more, users are turning to less-than-legitimate channels for these titles.

I had thought that computer software vendors would have learned a lesson long ago, a lesson that the RIAA is now just learning. There will always be pirates. The pirate has been an accepted stereotype in the computer industry since the early eighties. And these guys aren't going anywhere. Arrest them, confuse them, make everybody authenticate with thumbprints, they are going nowhere. This is the digital world now, and pirates are a fact of life. If you provide a digital product for sale, it will be acquired by a percentage of pirates. It is going to happen. Instead of trying to accuse every customer that buys your product of being a pirate, why don't you concentrate on the title. Make no mistake, you are calling every one of your customers a criminal, just like the RIAA. Oh you could be like them, track down a handful of pirates and sue them. Of course, this is futile as well, as there is no way you will catch even a fraction of the actual pirates, and you will just ruin a few dozen lives.

As if being treated like a criminal by default wasn't bad enough, the worst part is that the DRM functionality does not work on a growing number of systems. This is inexcusable, especially when the customer is being called a criminal even though he purchased the product. Now, the advantage of piracy is not only to make the game free, but for some people who bought the title, this is the only way for them to actually play it. And the activation part of securom? Three activations and then you have to call??? What happens if I feel nostalgic and want to load up Spore in 10 years? Are those activation servers still going to be functioning? I highly doubt it. Which means that your game will have a limited shelf life. As far as I'm concerned, the minute those activation servers are offline, every customer who purchased that product should get a refund. Because then it becomes impossible to install this title legitimately.

Software companies, I truly am sorry. Piracy is not going away. In my opinion using lesser draconian DRM measures like Safedisc is OK, but do what you can and then accept what happens afterword. If its a good game, it will sell. Sure some people will pirate it, but again, this has been going on for the last 20 years. One day, when these games requiring activation are forgotten because there are no more authentication servers, software companies will listen. But until then the gaming public seems to be speaking. Treat paying customers like they are criminals and they will, invariably become them. And you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Review of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files

One of the things that I still do on a regular basis is read fiction. I love to read. I have loved to read since I could read. So many of my peers and colleagues have admitted to me that while they may code, or play video games, or work on their networks, almost none of them read.

Literacy, or as I like to say, “the art of reading”, is one of the best measures of both a person’s intelligence and wisdom. I know it carries a stigma of being geeky or nerdy or something that shut-ins do to pass time. But some of the best stories are still written in books. Some of the books have been mad into excellent movies, such as The Lord of the Rings. Some of them have been made into very bad films. But the romance of the printed word still retains a large majority of a tale’s impact, and in most cases popular media has ineptly failed to adapt said tale to modern media.

A few months ago, looking for something to read in the darker parts of literature, I stumbled upon a set of books by an author named Jim Butcher. I had never heard of him before, but the blurb on the back of some of his books, as well as the cover art, piqued my interest. So I picked up a copy of Storm Front, the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden files. I had some reservations. Modern horror novels all seem to look like they are about tragically-hip wanna-be vampire punks who are hopelessly tormented and crying and blah blah blah. Either they were copies of Anne Rice’s vampires or straight out of the World of Darkness. I was getting very sick of those horror novels.

Jim Butcher has totally breathed new life into the horror/occult literature arena with The Dresden Files. Needless to say, my expectations were totally wrong. While vampires ARE a part of the Dresden Files, Butcher’s take on them is very different. There are elements of the previous vampire ideas there, but Butcher manages to give them a different identity, making them his own unique creations. And they are not the only focus of his novels. Not by a long shot. The magic and wizardry of the novels combined with the brooding “White Council”, the demons, faeries, werewolves AND vampires create absolute page turning details in the whole of The Dresden Files.

There are, so far, 10 different Dresden Files works. I am going to try to write a review of the series and perhaps one or two lines about each book. I am going to try my damnedest not to give away any spoilers. But if I have convinced you already, hit up one of the links below and order yourself some of them. Those of you who need more convincing please, read on.

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only professional “Wizard for Hire”. I sort of got the impression “what if Harry Potter grew up to become Sam Spade?” Your take may be different, but he is by far one of the most complex literary characters that I have read in the last five years and he is hard to place an exact analogue. He has an office, a dingy apartment and a car that barely runs. He wears a black leather duster, something I myself wear when weather permits (Though I have been wearing mine since the mid 1990’s). His clients are often boring, looking for lost items and the like, but the novels document some of Dresden’s more strange and dangerous clients. The stories are rife with magic, conjurings, thaumaturgy, and the supernatural. My skin crawled more than a few times.

Butcher seems to have either written these books with a male audience in mind, or at least an open-minded female audience. This is fantasy, bear that in mind. Every woman has huge boobs and most of the female characters seem to border on nymphomaniacs. But instead of feeling “cheap” or “sleazy”, the adult themes of these novels end up being very sexual, and very arousing. Sure it’s not reality, but this novel is “fiction”. And I’ll tell you, I loved every last minute of it. I WANT to read books where girls are literally tearing their clothes off all the time. Some scenes are the most erotic things that I have read in quite a few years. Make no mistake – these are not books for the majority of the Harry Potter crowd.

These novels are not just fear and sex either. The magical system that Jim Butcher has created for the Dresden Files is intricate and interesting. It combines many ideas of traditional magic, some fantasy elements and just a subtle hint of Hollywood flair. Harry Dresden has an array of spells and magical artifacts, including several spiritual items. This approach to magic is has the effect of feeling realistic, or at least as realistic as magic can be. There is a bit of religion in the novels as well, and Butcher handles this perfectly. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t offend, and some of the most thought-provoking aspects of these novels pertains to Dresden’s view of the almighty and how it relates to others around him. The magic is also not overused. Dresden is not just some spell-slinging whitebeard that is powerless without his books. Far from that; Dresden has little hesitation to pull out his revolver when the need arises.

Butcher is also careful to include lots of humor as well. Downright funny events happen and there are small nuances that get the reader smiling every time, such as an army of unseen Faerie cleaning servants called brownies that Dresden cannot talk about or they will stop cleaning his apartment. There are also plenty of pop culture references, especially if you were a child of the 80’s as Dresden, Butcher and myself likely all are. (Though how Dresden was able to watch Star Trek TNG without a television is a mystery to me)

Harry Dresden is a fantastic character. Often broke, cursed by bad luck and bad women, he is easy to empathize with. He is a character that you want to root for. The other characters in the book are quite unique as well. Every person detailed in the books is interesting. Every enemy, every ally, and many of the creatures are all finely detailed. I’ve stated that the setting is Chicago, but that isn’t really true. With the Spirit world of the Nevernever, the jaunts to various night haunts and forgotten places, Butcher’s attention to detail doesn’t just create a story – he created a world. Some characters have hidden and mysterious lineages, others have ongoing personal challenges, yet others are members of secret societies like the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The story is rich indeed.

I am also amazed at Butcher’s talent for writing epic scenes and encounters. The climax of almost every book is a page-turner. Without giving too much away, one ending involves two magic users fighting in a house that becomes a giant, blazing, inferno, while trying to avoid being killed by summoned scorpions. The end of my favorite of the series, Death Masks, leads Dresden and company on a chase after a demon that spans the entire length of a moving train. Adrenaline filled, I read those pages at a blinding pace in an effort to reach the ending. Butcher also is unpredictable. Several times I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, and of course, I was wrong. The writing is filled with creativity and style. If you have any imagination at all, you will love these books.

Now here is a list of the novels including a small mini review

Storm Front

This is the book that got me interested in the series. If you aren’t prepared, (I wasn’t) the beginning has lots of information, and the story heavily builds in the beginning of this one. You get introduced to things like the White Council and the Wardens, plus there is a lot of information about officer Murphy, Dresden’s sometime employer, sometime partner.

Fool Moon

Werewolves, werewolves everywhere. Great climax, begins building an interesting relationship with resident mobster Marcone.

Grave Peril

Introduces Michael Carpenter, God’s own Knight of the Cross. Without a doubt my favorite character aside from Dresden. Genuinely creepy starting with an exorcism in Chicago’s Cook County hospital’s Nursery ward.

Summer Night

My least favorite of the series. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good! Lots and lots of Faerie intrigue, culminating in a battle that shakes the heavens themselves.

Death Masks

Easily my favorite of the series. Michael Carpenter takes more of an active partnership with Dresden and brings in the other Knights of the cross. Introduces the Order of the Blackened Denarius. Best ending of the series.

Blood Rites

I’m afraid I can’t say anything about this one without spoiling the plot and the Thomas character. I enjoyed it immensely, however.

Dead Beat

A real mystery. Dresden tracks down a necromantic artifact in an attempt to stop an evil wizard from destroying the city. Only two words can sum up the awesome ending to this one: Zombie T-rex.

Proven Guilty

Molly Carpenter, daughter of Michel and Charity carpenter, becomes a mail character in this book. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but man, the whole Goth thing that Molly has going on. Dude. Hot. REAL HOT.

White Knight

This one starts with a mystery and ends with a bang. The mystery part was the best aspect of this novel. It really seemed to take Dresden back to his roots, so to speak.

Small Favor

In the first few pages of the book, Dresden gets into a fight with several large Goat creatures. And it just gets weirder from there. I loved the ending. Lots of guns, night raid, magical island. Almost felt like a James Bond ending.

Read these books. They are superb. I can’t wait for Turn Coat.