Telco Training

PlanetOne put on a training/promo thing called Road Show 2004. They did one in Reston, VA. Dad and I went. The first day was at MCI Headquarters. This place is HUMONGOUS! It's a couple of times the size of Dulles Airport. This thing has grand stonework. Very nice (read: expensive) architecture. Built-in Starbucks clone. This was all built before they went bankrupt. One can see why they went bankrupt.

Our MCI trainer reminded me incredibly much of Reese Witherspoon of Legally Blond fame. She had brown hair, but her face looked a lot like RW and even her little facial expressions...

I, being young and raised with IP style networking, was amazed at how obtusely legacy "networking" was set up. They did what was called "full mesh." With five remote offices that needed to be connected, they needed a fractional T1 with 15 statically allocated PVC (private virtual connection). One between each office!! This meant that if office 1 sent something to office 2, it could only use that fractional allocation rather than dynamically allocating. First I laughed at the legacy, then I had to laugh cause they were touting this wonderful "new" Private IP service as a replacement. You are, of course, talking $800-1000 bucks per location (versus $2000-3000 a location the old way). This, of course, using the very fundamental tenets of IP, allows all that bandwith to go to a single location and a single switch and be dynamically allocated, end result: More bandwith, less links, less money. That's great. That's not what I'm laughing at. What I'm lauging at is while they're paying $700-800 a month, I can do that with Cable, Wireless, and DSL and open source VPN/Firewall software for about $60-80 a month a location. I understand who their customers will be, and they will get customers. It's those customers without an IT dept., those custs w/out the desire to worry about their own system, those custs that have extremely high bandwith needs (+1 Mbps), those custs that need a guaranteed latency of less than 40 ms, those custs that need MPLS (a protocol that prioritizes traffic (i.e. VidIP goes first, then VoIP, realtime data, web, email, files transfer...); the funny thing is, I can do that traffic prioritization for next to nothing).

MCI has 10-15 thousand employees working there at their headquarters. Their building is about 2/3 full. They said they were going to give us a NOC (Network Operations Center) tour. They took us into this room with a thick oaken conference table and tons of plush leather chairs all around. One wall comprised of what looked like a mirror that was totally frosted over with whiteness, the two other walls had rich trims and nice wallpaper or something, and another screen had a projector screen. At this point I thought we were going to see a Powerpoint (I got SO tired of those by the end of the second day...) presentation of the NOC. He asked someone to flip a switch on the wall. The "mirror" went from total opacity to clarity, revealing a huge room full of computers (200+). It was the length of two football fields. The entire opposite wall was filled with huge screens. There was a console screen on a couple of them pinging various circuits. There was another that showed which circuits were down. Another had a graphical representation of all the MCI circuits. Another was running the Weather Channel (so they could route traffic around inclement weather. Another was running CNN Headline News. One of the computers had a cool Matrix Screensaver. All in all it was one cool place. It would of been a really cool place even if I didn't mention the fact that there was 250+ Gbps of bandwith running through there.

I had a great time talking with various MCI geeks. One of the guys looked just like a classic UNIX geek. He looked really great. He was the one I talked with the most extensively eFax was his brainchild. He was the guy totally in charge of creating and developing it. I talked with him about BitTorrent and VoIP among the many topics broached. Another guy I talked with sat on the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force; Google). He was a major force in designing SIP (Session Initiation Protocol; Google; SIP is used in VoIP).

The next day's proceedings were held at River Creek Country Club. Gorgeous place. One of the PlanetOne guys said, "When the meetings are at places like this, you make sure you get a one hour speaking thing, and then get there about 2-3 days early to 'set up.'" Dad got us a little lost getting there. We were worried we'd be late. We were the first ones besides the PlanetOne staff and the vendors who were giving presentations. 26 people had reserved bookings. 7 canceled. 5, besides Dad and I, showed up. The CEO/Owner, Ted, was swearing a blue streak. He was "mad as h***!" He calmed himself and we got started (2 hours late). Before each vendor would get up to give their 50-75 min presentation, he would get up and say all sorts of nice things about that particular company. After he introduced one guy, the guy said, "I'm not sure there's room in this room for the rest of you after that, 'cause of my big head!" Ted's COO, Rick, said, "That's a switch! It's usually Ted with the big head!" Ted said, "Still is!" At one point Ted came around and took all our business cards for a drawing. The only one I had was an old moldy one with a phone number on the back. I put it in and Ted said, "You sure you want to put that one in? It has a phone number on the back." I took it out, a bit embarrased, and scribbled it out and put the card back in. He got Dad's and then came back and whispered to me, "Was she cute?"

Ted and his company are quite the party types. (They send their largest agents to a vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; they had a slideshow going of last year's) Ted introduced another vendor's speaker, and he said, "Our companies get along well. We have similiar corporate cultures." He said this in a loaded, funny way. He proceeded to say some things about how when a CEO is down there losing sentinence after ingesting various types of "stupid" (his word) beverages and throwing people of a certain gender over said CEO's shoulder, you know it's a fun company to work for. After the first session at MCI, they went to a bar and watched the Red Sox beat the Cardinals. After the second day, they went to a high end restaraunt for dinner and then to the Platinum Night Club. Both times Dad and I...went to revival meetings. Ted bought everyone a round of drinks after the second day's meetings. I asked Rick if I could get alternative compensation because I was underage. Him and another guy laughed and the other guy, an AT&T rep, said, "You'll just have to eat lots of cheese." (there were snacks set out) Dad and I finally decided that since there weren't any Mennonite ministers around watching that we would go ahead and order a drink apiece. We knew that this posh country club with these rich clientele wouldn't ask for ID. So we both ordered a Pina Colada...without alcohol.

Three cool things and Barbie royalty

Three really neat things have happened recently:

The NCR onsite tech called me a "crackerjack IT guy"
I ordered a new computer today!
Dad told me to order the equipment for a 802.11g wireless link between the office and home so we can use the Cable @Home (no pun intended)!

Here are the specs on my new 'puter:
3.0GHz/800 FSB
Intel 865PE NEO MB
1024 MB PC3200 DDR RAM
120 Gig 7200RPM ATA100 H.D.
8X DVD+-R/RW
nVIDIA GF FX5200 128MB
Altec Lansing 121 w/ Subwoofer
56K V.92 PCI Fax/Modem
Gigabit Ethernet

I talked, the other day, to a customer with a funny name: Barbie King. I thought to myself: "Self, I guess this lady is Barbie royalty! But, she should be called 'Barbie Queen' then... Man... I wish I was a 'Barbie King'... [smile to self]"

Hilarious Boondocks comic today, even tho it pokes fun @ Bush:

I might interject here that I was always confused about the Boondocks comic strip. At first I thought its writer was Democrat and the strip was sticking to Democratic 'values' (if indeed they can be called that). Then, as the ideas the characters espoused became more deeply steeped in ludicrosity, I thought the author was a Republican mocking Democrats' and their ideas. Then, I wasn't sure. Then I thought it could be either of the above situations or he could just be an all around (I think the Grandpa is a conservative) satirist mocking everybody. I did some research and I found that my first hunch was correct. Here's an article by Keith Phipps of The Onion (doesn't that inspire confidence?!?):

Since the mid-'90s discontinuation of The Far Side, Outland, and Calvin And Hobbes (themselves holdovers from the '80s), the world of comic strips has seemed pretty dull. One person changing that is Aaron McGruder, whose strip The Boondocks made its debut last spring in more than 150 papers, a nearly unprecedented number for a launch.

Set in the suburbs, The Boondocks follows the lives of several children, primarily two brothers transplanted from South Chicago to live with their grandfather. One, Huey Freeman, is a deeply opinionated Afrocentrist; the other, Riley "Escobar" Freeman, is a posturing would-be gangsta.

From his strip's debut in daily papers, McGruder--whose work had previously appeared in The Source and the college paper of his alma mater, the University of Maryland--already seemed to have hit his stride, finding the right combination of winning characters, effective gags, and storylines that didn't shy away from racial issues and other political material. This latter facet served as the initial focus of most of the attention directed at The Boondocks (it landed the strip on some papers' editorial pages), but McGruder hopes, and The Boondocks' continued quality suggests, that audiences will find more to like. So far, McGruder has taken on everything from the identity problems of biracial children to his disappointment in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, to the hot button issue of lawn-mowing. Currently developing an animated version of The Boondocks with director Reginald Hudlin in addition to turning out his strip, McGruder recently took some time to talk to The Onion.

That was the header article, for the rest of the interview, you'll have to visit The Onion.

Response to a comment about Bush & Iraq

Here's the comment:

Yeah, I always get a kick out of the people who say they're voting for Bush because of his strong moral character...

What's worse, changing your mind about an issue, or knowingly lying about an issue to the public to try to strengthen your position?

Here's the part I want to focus on:

knowingly lying about an issue to the public

That is simply not true, to be very kind about it.

The fact of the matter is (to use a Cheneyism) that Kerry admitted that he looked at the same intelligence (sometimes I wonder if that's a misnomer) and came to the same conlusions. It is a popular myth perpetuated by certain partisans that Bush "lied" about Iraq. They voted for the Iraq war too! Kerry said all this and more (when it was popular to be for the Iraq war):

"Where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity...?"

"We urge you...to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

Letter to the President from Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others

"If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."

Op-Ed, "We Still Have A Choice On Iraq," The New York Times

"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation."

If Bush was lying about Iraq, then so was Kerry.

After saying all that, he correctly voted for the Iraq war. The he voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it. Man, even if you don't agree with the war, don't you think that troops might need some body armor and ammo? Dude, trying to figure out Kerry's positions gives me a headache. Anyone got an Advil?

Cable Internet!

Yeee-haw!! I no longer surf the net, I cruise at supersonic speeds! Where we used to have an ISDN modem that hooked up via a serial cable and topped out at 112 kbps up and downstream, we have a cable modem that tops out at 3 mbps downstream and 256 kbps upstream. Check out this screenshot:

Ohio

On Thursday afternoon we (Dad and I) drove up to Ohio. We stayed at Mark and Mary Ellen's except they and their two youngest kids weren't there. There went to Maryland for the weekend. We met them on the way at McDonalds. On the way back, as I was going *cough* *cough* an unspecified amount over the speed limit, I almost had a heart attack when I saw a cop. My pulse slowed when my brain caught up with my eyes and I saw that he was going the opposite way on the other side of a concrete wall. Then about ten minutes later, it happened again! Our car was loaded down pretty heavily, and it didn't seem to have much power. Let's just say that I suppose it could've gone faster than 85 (what I maxed out at), but only downhill with a hurricane behind it. Man, I would have so much fun (getting tickets) with a Corvette. I got a new leather jacket at JC Penny's for half-price! It was normally 100% more than what I got it for. It was normally priced at $200. For buying it, they gave me $30 worth of gift certificates.

My suit pants are getting too small for me. (Yes, that's exactly what's happening; the pants are getting smaller) I was lucky to find pants that match my suit exactly at JC Penny's! And they were 50% off! You know what they say, "Those that get too big for their britches are exposed in the end!"

Take the global test! and check out The Ultimate John Kerry Ad!

When we came home last night I turned off the headlights as I drove up the lane. When I flicked them on again, I was half-way into the field. I got back on the lane and then turned them off again. At this point I could see the trees framing our driveway outlined against the slightly lighter sky and was able to drive according to that. The end result was that no one in the house saw us coming. I coasted to a stop by the garage. Dad and I got out and made sure not slam our doors. I started walking away and the car started to roll. I grabbed the car and held on. It kept rolling pulling me with it. I opened the door and leaned in and almost got knocked over. I yanked the emergency brake. We then walked over to the kitchen window and peered in. Dad called the house with his cell phone. Heidi picked up. Dad told her to tell Mom that we were so tired that we were just going to stop for the night and sleep. It was hilarious seeing their facial reactions!!

Kerry had to cheat at the debate to win!

Kerry's hometown paper endorses Bush:

We in Massachusetts know John Kerry. He got his first taste of politics 32 years ago in the cities and towns of Greater Lowell.

In his 20 years in the U.S. Senate, Kerry, a Navy war hero, hasn’t risen above the rank of seaman for his uninspiring legislative record. He’s been inconsistent on major issues. First he’s for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, then he opposes it. First he’s for the war in Iraq, then he’s against it. First he’s for a strong U.S. defense, then he votes against military weapons programs. First he’s for the U.S. Patriot Act, then he opposes it.

Kerry’s solution to stop terrorism? He’d go to the U.N. and build a consensus. How naive. France’s Jacques Chirac, Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other Iraq oil-for-food scam artists don’t want America to succeed. They want us brought down to their level. And more and more, Kerry sounds just like them. In a recent campaign speech, Kerry said America was in the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

No doubt John Kerry sincerely wants to serve his country, but we believe he’s the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Americans should think back three years ago to the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. There among the mist lay the images and memories of fallen firefighters, police, a Catholic chaplain and ordinary working citizens moms, dads, sons, daughters.

President Bush, through heartfelt tears, told us never to forget the twisted carnage and the massacre of the innocents. Yet some of us are forgetting.

President Bush told us the attacks must never happen again. Yet some of us are wavering because of the brave sacrifice of soldiers that our nation’s security demands.

Well, President Bush hasn’t forgotten. Nor has he lost the courage and conviction to do what is right for America.

We know if there is one thing the enemy fears above all else, it is that George Bush’s iron will is stronger than his iron won’t.

The Sun proudly endorses the re-election of President George W. Bush.

The Debate (cont.)

Great stuff on James Lileks' Bleats:

But mostly I hate the debates because I simply cannot abide hearing certain statements I’ve been hearing over, and over, and over again. I can’t take any more talk about bringing allies to the table. Which ones? Brazil? Mynmar? Microfrickin’nesia? Are there some incredibly important and powerful nations out there whose existence has hitherto escaped me? Fermany? Gerance? The Galactic Order of the Belgian Dominion? Did we p*** off the Vulcans? Who? If we mean “France and Germany,” then please explain to me why the reluctant participation of these two countries somehow bestows the magic kiss of legitimacy. They want in? Fine. They don’t? Fine. At this point mooning over France is like being that sophomore loser dorm pal who spent his dateless weekends telling his loser roommate about a high school sweetheart who stood him up for the prom. Give it up. Move on.

Perhaps the “ally” is that big blue wobbly mass known as the UN, that paragon of moral clarity, that conscience of the globe. You want to really anger a UN official? Tow his car. Short of that you can get away with anything. (Sudan is on the human rights commission, to cite a prominent and amusing detail. It’s like putting Tony Soprano on the New Jersey Waste Management Regulation Board.) I don’t worry that the UN is angry with us. I’d be worried if they weren’t. And I find it interesting that someone who would complain about outsourcing peevishly notes that we hired HALLIBURTON to do the work instead of throwing buckets of billions to French and German contractors who sold them the jets and built the bunkers.

The SCSU Scholars quote Homer's The Iliad. It is almost spooky how much that the Trojans are like modern day Europe, and their attackers like radical Islam:

The repeated appeals to accept ransom are not only indicative of Troy's immense wealth, they are also a reminder of Trojan attitudes: they believe, typical of rich, civilized cities, that wealth can always buy a solution, and the illusion that civilized ways of warfare -- quarter for disarmed men or men who surrender, ransom and exchange of prisoners -- are laws as valid and universal as the laws under which their own civilization lives. Inside Troy the manners of civilized life are preserved; there are restraints on anger, there is courtesy to opponents, kindness to the weak -- things that have no place in the armed camp on the shore. ...

Unfortunately for Troy, the Trojans have the defects of their qualities: they are not so much at home in the grim business of war as their opponents.

Great comment by mitch on Shot In Dark:

Let's see - Kerry is angry because we are "nationbuilding" in Iraq, but also angry because we let the Afghans do their own nationbuilding.

We're too "unilateral" in Iraq, but not unilateral enough in Korea?

Bush is a unilateralist clod, but Kerry insults the nations that are helping?

Shot In The Dark had a good post about who 'won' the debate:

I think there are two ways of reacting to these debates - call them "Two Americas".

One America is on the morning talk shows, and most of them thought Kerry won. That America took debate in high school, and admires things like polished prose and smooth delivery. They focused on trivia - Bush's occasional stammer, his facial expressions, that sort of thing.

Another America - one I live in - saw him articulate a baker's dozen positions on the war, on pre-emption, on homeland security. They saw him cut Allawi loose, and insult Britain, Australia, Poland, Japan, South Korea and every other nation that has troops in Iraq. They saw him going wobbly on the war; they saw him rant about how he'd finish the job, and then contradict himself. If they were like me, they saw him put a relatively smooth face on equivocation.

Sitting at the Undisclosed Location last night, I noticed something interesting; the higher up the wonkery chain you went (John Hinderaker, John LaPlante, King Banaian), the more pessimistic they were. The farther down the scale of political erudition you went - and I count myself in that group - the more enthusiastic about Bush people seemed.

I'm involved in an email discussion group populated mostly by lefties - generally fairly vapid, koolaid-drinking fever-swamp dwellers at that. I wrote a message that stated "So what if Bush stammered a bit? Most of the audience know that they'd stammer, themselves, in front of a crowd." Three or four of the usual suspects responded, almost simultaneously, "The President isn't 'most people'". They missed the point; "most people" are the electorate. "Most people" can tell the difference between substance and a good show. "Most people" don't care how someone talks when they're standing at a lectern, unless they're unbearably incompetent or pedantic - and neither Kerry nor Bush were.

"Most people" care about substance - and Bush had it. So did Kerry, but it was self-contradictory.

Captain's Quarters has a great post with commentery on and about the Washington Post and Times' editorials on the debate.

The Debate

Great debate! I would agree with the former Clinton adviser who was amazingly candid when he said he thought that "Kerry won on style, but Bush on substance." Kerry lied about "lied." I loved the after-debate remarks by Karl Rove and Karen Hughes! I want to see Karen Hughes for President in '08! (on second thought, I'd like to see her as Veep in '08, I'd love to see McCain for the Republican ticket)

The Drudge Report reported:

LOCKHART: DEBATE CONSENSUS A 'DRAW'
Unbeknownst to Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, a C-SPAN camera quietly followed McCurry as he found Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart on Spin Alley floor and asked him his impression of the debate. Lockhart candidly said to McCurry , “Basically, the overall is that the thing was a draw.”

Will those Dems ever give it up? A professor got caught in the act [wizbangblog.com] trying to forge a verification of the forged Bush national guard memos. What irony! You'd think they would've learned by now that forging documents hurts them more than helps. That train of thought of course raises the question: If they aren't totally nuts (I like to believe that they aren't all), could it be that there are some successfully forged documents out there that have been successfully used? Just a thought. The other side is in light of my parentheses comment, that it might logically follow that it is only the Michael Moore types that are outputting these forgeries.

Two documentaries: The first: Kerry on Iraq. Available free on DVD or you can watch it online. It's great! I have watched it. It is little more than clips of Kerry saying stuff (contradicting himself). My little brothers and sisters watched it with me and they were laughing at Kerry. Even they could see his ridiculous vacillation! The second: Haven't seen it. FahrenHYPE 9/11. Rebuttal to you-know-what by you-know-who. Coming to DVD Oct. 5.