Hacker for Hire

I know Black Friday is over, but I figured I needed to document what happened just in case someone comes back a year later and says, “Do you remember what position you were in line when the fist fight almost broke out?” By the way, I edited the time stamp on this one, but I own the blog so my opinion matters more than yours.

Black Friday for those of you who don’t know is the day after Thanks Giving when stores have their really big sales and try to get Americans to spend a lot of money. It works pretty well. Generally, the process starts with the ads being distributed at the beginning of the week and then on Thanks Giving day at around 2300 hours, people go stand out in the cold and wait for their preferred store to open at 5 or 6 A.M. People shop, people get beat up over taking stuff, enough background, on to the story….
Continue reading ‘Black Friday’ »

Now that’s what I call an interview. It was challenging in the questions that they asked, but satisfying in that I had all the right answers (well, at least I think that I did). I met with 3 individuals who work there and though they couldn’t tell me much more than “what we do is really cool,” I think that it would be an awesome place to work. One of the most interesting questions that I was asked was “How would you go about determining what this unknown virus does?” Unknown viruses??? That’s fricken BA (bad ass, I shortened it just like Dane)! All this reverse engineering sounds so fricken cool! I’m sorry, but this job just sounds uber cool! Hopefully, they will call back soon (about 2 weeks I’m told after all the paperwork and whatnot). I’ll keep you posted.

Bo-fricken-ya!!! After a great wailing gnashing of teeth, Xetron finally called me for an interview. Now on to the fun part, trying to get the job. I’m generally not one to get super excited about interviews, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was totally amped about this one. The ideal situation (which I know is not going to happen) is that I will have my interview tomorrow, go do my crappy CAPC stuff in the afternoon and get a call on Wednesday that say “Hello Mr. Latest Xetron employee, we’d like to welcome you aboard. That would make “Nerd’s Night Out” that much cooler cause then I could say all kinds of stupid crap like “I would tell you that, but then I’d have to kill you.” Though, I guess I wouldn’t be allowed to kill them, I don’t think you get that privilege on your security clearances, even though you should. However, I imagine that there would be a lot of charred, smoking vehicles on the way to Xetron and other places that work on security projects for the U.S. Government on the days that the engineers just couldn’t handle the road-rage and had to retaliate with their hood mounted IABMs (Interautomotive Ballistic Missiles). I’ll keep you posted on if things go really well or if I’ll have to go back to the “Office Space” hellhole.

It has been a little while since I’ve posted some good evil ideas for you conniving little extortionists and I think you are about due. Why do I do this you ask? Well, two reasons. One, I think that the evil needs to be distributed to the masses to prevent one sect from getting too much evil dealt to them or dealing out too much evil unduly. Two, I know how hard it is for people who aren’t naturally evil to come up with good, cheap, effective evil ideas. As a public service, I present to you my most recent evil ideas. If you have anything that you think would be a good evil idea, feel free to submit it to one of my many email addresses and I’ll give you all the credit and it will be immortalized for awhile on my site (traffic is increasing oddly enough). Oh yeah, I’m not responsible, you’re an idiot and blah blah blah.
Continue reading ‘On Like Donkey Kong’ »

I’m slightly conflicted. Getting messages from people you haven’t talked to in 5 years will do that to you though. It’s always really weird talking with someone you haven’t spoken too in a really long time, even more so when there was not a good ending to the last time that you spoke. This seems to happen to a lot of people and it just always reminds me of the “Jerry….” … “Hello … Newman.” that was on Seinfeld. It’s like the conversation never really flows, sort of like trying to flush a block of wood through plumbing that’s way too small and then you have to call the Roto-rooter man and they ask you why you were trying to flush a 5 year old block of wood through and that you shouldn’t be bitter towards the block of wood after 5 years because you think it had an affair with the sink even though there was no soap to prove it all the while reminding yourself that the next time you’ll use the garbage disposal.

Not that this is what happened mind you, just what I think what someone would slip up and say on a dumb sitcom and using the number 5 because it was easy to get to. I mean, it’s just right there next to the 6, how could you not go for it? My situation revolves more around that after 5 years, I don’t feel bitter, but more perplexed. I guess it’s just me and my logic trying to make sense of things that would make someone’s brain give off the sound of tapioca with cashews being pressed through a screen door by a rabid chiuaua hopped up on speed. As best I can tell, the proof would go:

A -> true
B -> true
A && B -> false
Bottom
Someone is a pope

Well needless to say, I replied with a clunky, block of wood message, mainly for the hell of it. Maybe I replied because I am slightly OCD and I hate seeing stuff left half finished, but other than that I really don’t know why. But then again, I’m not really sure why I do many of the things that I do. Maybe it’s because I’m not the pope.

Finally, a post that’s not about cabling. Well, not entirely. I’m done with that client, for now, and my boss said that he would never ask me to do that again and if we were going to work with that client that I would not be involved in stuff as stupid as re-cabling a data center. I guess he got nervous when he realized that I was the last engineer.

But man o man, working with him is a nightmare. They sent me into deal with two issues, a new switch installation and an SQL latency issue. The first was not so bad, given one of the older switches wouldn’t play nice, but that’s any Cisco upgrade. Though I had to be a nice person and fix the silly cluster servers because some moron from hell with a thirst for stupid with an extra smattering of cracked out the ass set the servers that are supposed to come back up after a failure to NOT COME BACK UP!!! The other issue that arose from this was that the client was out of IP addresses.

Totally out.

So I try to resolve this the correct way but I keep running into management that keeps saying, “Our problem is that our wireless computers could create an ad-hoc network and attackers could access the internal network.” Did I miss something? Yes, making sure that the laptops are not on the wireless and the wired network would free up a few IP addresses but attackers trying to get in via ad-hoc networks? Give me a break. Have you ever tried to set that up? It requires setting up and ad-hoc network and then trying to make the wonderful XP system try to be an Internet gateway for anything else. This is something many of the techie people I know can’t even accomplish and we are worried about an end user setting it up? My ass, Microsoft does not write that functional of programs.

Well that was the “switch install,” but the SQL problem still had to be dealt with. I can only liken this situation to going to a car mechanic and say “My car is making a sound.” Needless to say, there was nothing I could do. Well, nothing I was willing to try and break. I’m not a DBA, I don’t pretend to be, I want nothing to do with that monstrosity that people call a database. Crackers. So I got to go home early and be bored and write this entry.

Well, ti’s been a few days since my last post. Nothing too much has been going on. I’ve started up my technical support company again to get some extra cash and Ultimate Frisbee has been moved to Saturday, which is very disheartening. Both really. I’m not really all that big into doing the tech support stuff, but when people pay you $30 an hour for it, it’s not too bad of a gig. But I’m really crushed about having to move Ultimate Frisbee to Saturday. There was really no better stress outlet than a good game of UTF on Friday after a long week of horrible.

I’m considering giving my notice to CAPC this Wednesday because I can’t stand it anymore. I know that it would be jumping ship without having another job, but it’s getting really bad. I was recently asked why I was leaving, these are the ‘because’-es I came up with:

Because I refuse to do cabling again
Because the boss is trying to hire someone that he can’t afford
Because the boss is trying to hire someone that he can’t use
Because the boss can’t run the business for squat
Because our internal infrastructure is shot to hell and no one cares
Because our business model is “Sell them everything”
Because our business cannot get beyond “We have to support everything”
Because everyday I don’t like being there more and more
Because the boss has assumed that I will not hold to my word and leave

Those are the big ones. Mainly the last one. I told him if he ever made me run cable again, I would leave. I told him that three times that I would leave, but apparently, he doesn’t believe me. It’s unfortunate that I will have to resort to this to gain any respect, but I view it as better that I leave a company where I’m not respected. I think that’s what it really boils down to. There is no respect. But that would be too long for this post, so instead I’ll leave you with a current status of Project FWANJ (pronounced Fa-wan-gee).

Project FWANJ Status
CAPC – Planned notice Wednesday
P&G – Not Accepted
Clifton Labs – Declined
Scotts – Third phase of interview process
Xetron – No contact

Yep, you know it. Revenge. As the Klingon’s said, it’s best served cold. Even better with a side order of whoop-ass. I’m not a vengeful person by nature. Well, that’s a flat out lie. I would prevenge as many people as I could if I had the foresight to do so. However, I saw this one coming. I stepped off of their railroad tracks while everyone else was looking for what I was pretending to stare at out in the horizon. And the carnage, oh the sweet sweet carnage . But enough about my pleasure, I’m sure you’re interested to know what happened. I did try to hook you in as much as I could with all my gloating and glowering.

So if you’ve been reading, you know the following: My job sucks, I hate my job, My boss is an idiot, My clients are nuts, and I hate running Ethernet cable. Well, the cable has been ran and ran some more all over their data center. Specifically, their are 3 cables per server, roughly 20 servers to a rack. Doing the math that comes to 60 cables per server rack. If you’ve never held 60 CAT-6 Ethernet cables in your hand at once, it’s not a small bundle (oh this is good, so very, very good). Well, running these cables from server rack to server rack, eventually, they fill up the space you have run them through. Yes, that’s right, matter takes up space. I know we’ve not gotten past that yet, but it should be a fairly simple concept to grasp. After running all of the cables required, the told me I had to run more. I said I can’t do that based on the laws of physics. The gave me a stunned look as I showed them how there is no room left to run any more network cable. I thought that they were going to cry. But it gets better.

The last rack that I ran to was only half full. So now they have more no room to run cable to servers they planned to put in. But wait, it gets better….

The last rack of the row has no servers in it currently, but was planned to have another twenty and they have no room to run any cable to them. But wait, it gets better….

They have another rack that they have assembled and ready to install on the end of the row that has no more room left for any cable at all so now they can’t put that rack or any of the servers for it. But wait, it gets better….

They don’t even have enough open ports on the switch let alone the cabling space required to install any of the servers that go in the last empty rack or the rack they have yet to install.

I was so happy I could barely contain myself and my heritage passed on to me by my father, “The Neal Shit-Eating Grin,” as I watched them writhe in agony and luscious torment at their lack of a basic understanding of how matter takes up space (part of the definition of matter) and how simple math is the best foundation for pain in the ass problems.

Today I really felt like walking out on work. I mean really just saying “You know what, I’m done. No, the job is not done, I am.” and leaving the crack heads to do their own crap. That’s what it really boils down to. I’ve noticed that the people I’m working with simply don’t do this job because they know it sucks. I can’t blame them for that, but I can blame them for wasting my time and talent. I can also blame my boss for that. He has no respect for me. I think that’s what really just cheeses me off to no end.

As I stood running cable all day, all I could think of is how much I couldn’t wait to tell him I’m leaving. I have to admit, I was coming up with some pretty dramatic ways to do it too. All the way from:

Me: Knock, Knock
Boss: Who’s there?
Me: No one you freak, I’m leaving you high and dry.”

to

Me: You remember how you said you were looking to hire another engineer?
Boss: Yeah?
Me: Yeah, make it two.

to

Me: You know, you’re OK as a person, but my god, you suck at trying to run a business.

I would venture to say that it’s getting really bad when all you can do is think about how you want to tell your boss that you quit. I swear I was so angry that I couldn’t even see well enough to peel the stupid little labels that I had to make for each one of the networking cables. Especially when I had to go hunt down one of the stupid cables because some other moron put it in the wrong rack. It’s really twisting my anger twisty too that I keep working through my lunch hour so I can get the heck out of this place by using up their block hours. You think they would notice if I put nooses at the ends of all the cables? Oh, I have a better one. I think I’m going to start braiding the cables as I run them. And every 3rd cable will be the wrong one from another server rack on the other side of the data center that was suspiciously run underneath the floor and magically wound itself in to a knot of malice and jovial kinkification.

On a brighter note, I got an email from a professor at UC that is in need of people to work at non-sucktastic jobs. I also got a call from Scott’s in Dublin (not that I really want to move) for an interview. Still nothing from Xetron though . I guess I’ll just have to hope they call me up tomorrow while I’m at the INFRA Guard meeting with Greg and ask me for an interview. Another side note is that I’m taking resumes to the INFRA Guard meeting and there is a good possibility that my boss will be there. What’s he going to do? Fire me? Go ahead, I triple dawg dare him. Though, it would be nice to see the look of hurt and the tear in his eye from knowing that he ran his business into the ground faster than a flaming train wreck of French anarchists toasted off of PCP wielding baguettes as middle fingers.

Now I know that I really hate cabling. Here’s how it works out:

Each cable requires 4 labels
Each server has 3 cables
Each rack has about 15 servers
There are 6 racks in a row
There are 5 rows in the data center

3 x 15 x 6 x 5 = 1350 cables total that I have pulled
1350 x 4 = 5400 labels that I will have printed

As to the total number of feet, the racks are setup something like this in feet:
11 15 19 23 27 31
13 17 21 25 29 33
15 19 23 27 31 35
17 21 25 29 33 37

A quick hit to Excel gives us 1728 feet of cable per row of servers (3 cables a piece) … times 5 rows that I’ve been working on gives us 8640 feet of cable, roughly.

To put that into perspective its:
1.64 miles
28.8 football fields in length
420 times taller than me
69,120 peanuts laid end to end, assuming a peanut is 1.5″ long