brokebit’s

Today has been a total buzz kill!!  I'm out in NY to install a new WAN connection between the NY and Evanston offices and reconfigure the local network. The connection is a point to point Ethernet connection at 6MB and it was supposed to be tested and ready to go last week. I woke up at 4AM this morning to catch a 6am flight to LGA. Take off was delayed because some backup "electrical system" on the plane had failed. We had to wait for replacement parts to arrive and get installed. That was about a one hour delay. Once I arrived in LGA I got delayed another hour because United crew couldn't unload the luggage due to lightning strikes on the tarmac.

Once I finally arrived at the office I went up to the telco closet to locate the new connection and associated equipment. It was nowhere to be found. I called the provider (Yipes) and after several hours we discovered the equipment had not been installed. Remember this was all tested!  Yipes finally dispatched a tech with the router and switch. I figured we were home free now! NOT! We could find the four T1s that were supposedly installed. Nobody knew who the carrier was or were the DMARC was! After another several hours of searching I found four unmarked/unlabled T1s that happened to be the right ones. We wired up the router and switch and boom it works! So I proceeded to connect our Cisco switch and establish a dot1q trunk with the Evanston office. Once again it doesn't work. After two hours on the phone with Yipes tech support we discovered the Yipes equipment was miss-configured. Once again, remember, this has been tested and confirmed working last week.

Ok, now that switches are working time to reconfigure all the desktops. I quickly reconfigure my laptop and soon discover I cannot access the Internet. UBS (Our office space provider and ISP) has not configured their firewall for the new subnet. So it's now after 7pm and the chances of getting someone on the phone are not good. What! I did get someone.. Oh. but they don't know the password to the firewall.
It's now been over 14 hours.. I'm going to get dinner and back to the hotel.
My wonderful wife researched some vegetarian restaurants for me. Mmm nice dinner. NOPE! Sorry! The restaurants are now closed.

Argh!!!!!!!!

We were eating dinner last night with Larry and his family. Around 5pm I noticed a firetruck and ambulance in front of my home. Naturally I ran out to see what happened. Our neighbors daughter tripped while running and bumped her head on the sidewalk. Nothing to serious. Lots of blood. I came back to my pizza. About ten minutes later an ambulance screeches by the house. I immediately thought maybe the little girl passed out and ran outside again. No, she was fine and the ambulance kept going down the street. At the end of my block were two police officers talking with a neighbor. I approached them and asked what was going on. They explained that someone had forced their way into a ladies home down the block and stabbed her. That was who was in the ambulance that just blew by. After some more questioning it turns out Lonnie may have had en encounter with the suspect. About a month ago someone came up to our house. Kind of raggedy, dirty, ripped clothes, smelly, missing tooth. He explained that he just moved to the neighborhood and was our neighbor. (Lonnie or I have never seen him.) Said his wife's car go towed and he needed ten or twenty dollars. He asked if he could come in and do some handyman work around the house. Lonnie said no. A few minutes later she saw him sitting in a pickup truck in the alley staring in to our house and immediately called 911. After talking to the police yesterday about the stabbing they explained a person of this description had been going from house to house in our neighborhood giving the same story for about a month. Whats his motive, why force your way in on an old lady, stab her and run away on foot? Hopefully she is OK. Last I heard she was in surgery. It's also pretty bold to do this during the day when people are around. She was assaulted around 5:15pm. There were firetrucks and ambulances one block down the street from the scene! Obviously he did't care. I think I am going to devise a siren on top of the garage with a hidden switch behind the front door. If anyone tries to forcefully enter the house Lonnie, Eno or I can just flip the switch and set off the loudest damn siren you ever heard.

Updated: http://www.nbc5.com/news/9409553/detail.html

So I was watching a Tivo'd version of Dr. Who on the SciFi on Friday. During one of the commercials I noticed a very quick flash and was sure that I had seen a face. So I paused the Tivo, rewound about 2 seconds and proceeded to move forward frame by frame. After about thirty or so frames I got the following image on my screen:

Just one frame and then back to normal. Nurses covered in blood with nasty scary teeth! What the hell! I still  have it saved on my Tivo. Has anyone else seen anything like this on SciFi?