Random Thoughts

I left a comment on a blog today and noticed that the account I commented with (mine) pointed here. It's been interesting to read the old blogs that I wrote but I don't post here anymore. I've got a new site where I'm working with a WordPress install. You should come visit me there.

http://keithseymour.com

I was just reading a column (http://70.125.157.216/index.html) written by a friend of mine and his topic hit close to home for me. He was discussing the current dilemma of 'do I upgrade or not' and his advise on the topic. To relieve your already overflowing concern and suspense he is advising against upgrading unless you have some compelling reason.

I've purchased a Dell laptop recently and it's about everything that I could want in a laptop, duo core 2.0 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM. (I know I know it won't use it all YET) Vista came on the laptop and I'm using it. For my job (computer security) I need to understand how the OS works and responds but I haven't been happy with it. It crashes frequently due to driver problems -- mostly from the built in web cam from Logitech. I am pretty happy with the problem advisor, since it keeps track of the issues that I am having and lets me know when there is a new driver or version to apply. I get pretty angry at the power saving feature, I set my laptop to 'do nothing' when the top is closed -- which makes it easy to walk around and collect information on a network -- and for some reason Vista shuts down the video but several of my apps hang and then crash when that happens.

That isn't really the reason that this topic hits close to home for me however. I am working on a major software product release where I work and while the app works, there is a lot of opportunity for it to improve. Seeing it from the inside of the effort my thought is we couldn't make the product any better without releasing it to the general population. Of course with that there's a lot of negative feedback because there are still a lot of rough edges on it.

Guess I'm getting more reasonable in myold age, you can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need.

Thanks.

This is the result of me watching PBS and working in the US. I was watching a show the other day about a book that sprung from examining good companies that had become great companies. These were all companies with great stock market performance and good growth and very stable. The show fascinated me because they were talking about the few things that distinguished these companies from their peers, they even covered a police department that used the principals of the great companies to help focus them on increasing performance.

The collision with my everyday life in the trenches was that in my day to day job I work with a lot of groups that are suffering under changing processes and support models. They are paying in pain today for the savings they gained last year (or last quarter) when they decided to get a 'quick win'. This has become a very popular concept in business today, take drastic action quickly to achieve some near term goal that will make a group of people happy. This could be deploying an instant messenger client with cool new features or hammering out some chunks of budget to make the stock holders happy.

Where is the collision you ask? Well one of the things that made the great companies great was the ability to look at the hard facts when they were making decisions. They didn't focus on the short term or the quick win. They looked at the long term goal, determined what they were going to have to do to get there and then accepted the hard work that it was going to take to get there. I hope that we don't loose site of the long term goals for the forest of quick wins.

Wow,

So I am in Hilo, on the big island in a dive bar (since they are close to the port and have a high speed connection) access to the Internet is like heroin, this is pretty sad. I can't get anything done without this digital connection to the world. Maybe someday I will go cold turkey but for now I'm cool.

So if I really felt it I would reach over to my bag and get out the connector for the camara and let you see what paradise looks like, but I am just not feelin it. Sorry too bad. I will send put up some pictures when I really feel like it.

So long Mahalo for reading

Keith

This is my drunken cat Thomas. He is pretty particular about what he drinks, only the freshest water available and he's not interested in many people drinks - snubbing our usual fare. However he is partial to his extra dry dirty gin martinis or my wife's if he can't get his own. He's a loud drinker so don't think that he got much of this martini before we noticed him. I would be interested to hear any opinions from vets on the long term effect of martinis on cats, since having a drink a night has been proven to reduce death from every effect in humans (I will post the reference shortly) I wonder what effect it would have on a cat - they don't seem very stressed normally anyway.

So, I know people always glow about their stupid kids and pets. I have to say that my cat Thomas is too stinkin' cute (phrase stolen from my wife!) This is him in a cradle that we bought at a yard sale. I think it was originally made for a doll. Our cats are defiantly creatures of comfort.

Some things happen based on skill and effort, some things are karma. This however was totally random. I was working at my desk and tossed this piece of paper up there. Not only did it stand on edge long enough for me to notice but it stood there while I got out my phone and took two pictures of it. I've got an older camera phone so that took awhile. I'm still not sure what to think about it.

This has to be the best recommendation for a business that I have ever seen. So it might look like just a scratched up door to you. Maybe you are thinking that the business owner should fix it 'cause it looks kinda run down.

No, it's actually Dogs at Play a doggie daycare and unlike my house where the dog is usually scratching at the inside of the door to get out and play these doggies are scratching at the out side of the door to get inside and play.

So Tricia and I are looking at a house. It's in the city of Rochester in an area called upper Monroe. It's a wonderful house – check out the MLS listing and here are some pictures that we took while we were there with the home inspector. The house is in awesome shape, the home inspector told us that it is going to need a new roof and we are in the process of getting some quotes to have the work done so that we can see how soon we might have to do that and what it might cost us.

I am doing well professionally, the job market here was tough and I was lucky enough to land a job with Xerox. My title is 'Security Architect' and for those of you that know me you know that's no big deal – sounds cool though. I was on the phone the other day with our real estate agent and she exclaimed 'Wow, I never even noticed your title – you sound important.' I dig working for Xerox, it's a really different environment than I'm used to. Normally I know everybody in the company by their first name. At Xerox there are so many people that I don't even know people by their title yet. Also since both of the previous companies I worked in Network Support, I worked with everybody in the company. This is the first place that I have started out working in security and it's kinda different. Funny but when you fix their computer people naturally trust you. When you work for security – not so much.

Anyway, thought I would keep this short and sweet so that I can get it out. Look for more in the future.

Keith

OK, So this is going to be a good practical lesson in basic security. I was setting up my wireless AP this evening, trying to secure it. I have been living here for a few weeks and just running it in the default and have noticed a few other people on it now and again. I don't so much care but the wife would like to know that the cops aren't going to come banging on our door for something the neighbor did.

So I went on the wired side with one of my PC's and logged into my AP. Set a password and then setup WPA with a preshared key and a new SSID and turned off broadcast. Power cycled the AP thinking I had done not too bad and got on to testing it. I turned around to my laptop and it was still on the Internet. Hrump maybe the settings didn't take, so went back to the PC and back into the AP interface and it showed my laptop was still connected. So I set up a MAC exclusion and let only my laptop in, since it didn't have the settings yet it wouldn't be able to connect.

I turned back around to my laptop and refreshed the page I was looking at and it came up no problem. So I was wondering WTF, from my laptop I signed into the AP. Tried my password and it didn't work, tried the default password and it did work. So what the hell? I thought setting the password took? Didn't I already login once with my new password?

Then it dawned on me, I checked my access point from my desktop and sure enough my laptop was no longer connected. Just think what the support call would have gone like for linksys if I hadn't realized that I was on someone elses default configuration AP and had configured it correctly.