Technology

Mini Pix

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After some consideration I went out and bought a Cisco Pix 501e. You may be wondering why in the world a person needs one of those. Need may not be the word, but I do have uses for it. In the past 24 hours I have learned more about IKE tunnels than I had in the past 12 months. Allot of what I want it for is work related, but I doubt they will pay for it so I got one.

I want to prove (i know it can be done, but me doing it and having someone say it can be done are two different things) that I can setup a static VPN tunnel securely and allow a VOIP phone to connect to our office. I want to be able to lock down the connection so only the voice traffic we want can go over the VPN. It will work since to my office pix, it is just connecting to another office with a pix. The 501 is exactly the same as the larger 515 but you can only do less. The config and the PDM is all the same.

It is very cool. The only problem I am having is that I cannot initiate a VPN client connection through my pix to another pix somewhere else. We have this problem at work, and I have not been able to find a fix for it. I need to call Cisco about it. It is a pain, but not a show stopper.

I showed jayson what we can do with the personal Pix and he wants one, but he just got a big screen tv so he is not spending anything for a while.

Firefox Vs. Mozilla Vs. I.E.

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I downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox 0.91 last night for my Mac. To me it didn’t seem that much different from Mozilla 1.7. Not sure what advanced features they were touting but it just looked like a stand alone version of Mozilla to me. It had better import / export of bookmarks. Other than that, not sure what the big deal is. I will probably start using it, but only because I don’t need or want the newsreader or email client that comes with mozilla.

I find it funny that the government is telling people that Mozilla is more secure than IE. It probably isn’t. it is just less used, so less people using something equals less people trying to exploit it. I still think mozilla is a better browser. We have been pushing mozilla as a browser in my company for over a year. We love it. This past attack on IE reinforces my decision to go with Mozilla. Like I said it probably is not more secure, but in reality it will be attacked less, since fewer people use it. I think that theory is holding up.

HBH-65 Update

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The headset is good so far. The phone I am using with it (Sony Ericsson T610) right now sucks. You don’t really know how good or bad a phone is until you use another one in the exact same places and get totally different results. This time I used the T610 on my trip up from NYC to Kingston. On the train my Treo normally backs out allot, so did my verizon phone. In the cab from the train station I am usually able to make calls, and sometimes have spotty service. With the T610 I had almost no coverage at all on the entire trip. In the cab from the train I had no signal until I was 5 minutes from the office, and our office has a T-Mobile tower in the same building complex.

The headset worked well when I had good cell signal. No complaints from people about voice quality. I probably wont use the headset that much since the phone sucks. I am sticking with my Treo 600 for now. It actually gets a signal. Palmone, please put bluetooth on the Treo!!!

Sony Ericsson HBH-65

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I have had the SE HBH-10, the HBH-30, and now the HBH-65. Pretty much all three generations of SE’s bluetooth headsets. I have also had the Motorola gen 1 headset. The first couple of generations of the SE’s needed work. So far this new headset seems ok.

I made several calls with it paired to my SE T610. All were loud and mostly clear. Miguel said that he heard background hum when I called, but he could hear me clearly. Everyone else had no complaints about it.

making calls was easy. When the phone was paired to the headset it just switched over to the headset when dialing a call.

Recieving calls has been a bit trickier. I am still working on getting the headset to answer the call without having to transfer the call from the phone to the headset.

The headset fits nice in my ear. It is really small. I thought it would be bigger, but I am not upset by it being so small. I just hope I don’t break it like I did my motorola.

I am going to try and use it allot in the next 2 days while I am in Kingston. Hopefully I will iron out all the kinks with it.

iMac Will Stay, For Now

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I have decided to keep the iMac for now. I decided that I do like it, and I do use it. Any other solution won’t be that great right now. So instead of investing more money in something else, I will keep what I have.

I do need another firewire hard drive though. My Lacie 200 Gig drive is running low on space. My other 160 gig drive in my PC only has 8 gigs free. I think I can get another 200 gig firewire drive for around $200. I will wait till after I move to pick it up. I am trying to save this month. So far I am doing ok, but there is several things I need to buy that I am waiting to spend money on.

Bluetooth Headsets

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I was cleaning out my closet and came across my original Ericsson Bluetooth headset. it was the first one to market that I can remember. It never worked right. I tried to use it again with my new T610 thinking maybe it was the phone that sucked. I was wrong. it was the headset. I am tossing it. It is not even worth putting up on Ebay.

I now want another bluetooth headset. I remember how cool it was to use one. Dam Treo 600 with no bluetooth makes that difficult to do. I would need to use my T610 with the headset. If PalmOne doesn’t get their head out of their ass’s soon, I may have to give up that device. No matter how cool the Treo is. It takes them forever to come out with newer versions of it, and then they stagger its release with different carriers by months. get with the program, and fix your issues and make more of them.

It is time I shopped for a bluetooth headset. I am off to the internet for research.

Allot To Write About

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I have allot to write about, but for some reason don’t feel that up to writing today. So here will be a quick recap of the weekend.

I continued to throw stuff out of my apartment in anticipation of my move next month.

I am also getting ready to ebay a bunch of tech stuff I have. I realized that allot of my crap is not worth that much anymore used. So it is easier to just keep it and or give it away.

Had dinner with Carrie, and my grandmother tonight. Morgan also! My grandmother was in to visit my cousin who is sick. She took us to dinner. it was actually pleasant. That is not always the case with my grandmother.

Got a hair cut on Saturday. My regular barber wasn’t there. Not sure what his deal was. His father did my hair. Didn’t do a good job. it is ok, but he didn’t listen to me when I gave him instructions. That may be the last time I go to that place since I am moving. I need to find a new place in the city for next time.

We had an issue with one of our Call Manager Servers Saturday that caused it to fail. The second machine in the cluster took over fine, but we had about 15 seconds of down time while that happened. Kai is working on getting a patch for it. I spent allot of Saturday working on the phone system because of that, and other issues.

The plus side is I did some more work on our IVR. I even setup our own for Support, to prove the concept. An IVR for support is overkill but we had extra 800#’s and it shows that they system can work.

This blog entry was written while listening to Machine Head by Bush

Sean And Kelly

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My friend Sean and his wife Kelly are visiting today. They flew into DC a few days ago and are driving up to NYC today. They will hang out tonight and stay over by me before they continue their drive up to his parents place near albany tomorrow.

I haven’t seen them in almost a year and a half. It doesn’t feel that long, but I think it has been. Sean is one of those friends that I am sad lives very far away. I have other friends that I wish lived that far away. Go figure.

We IM a few times a month and keep in touch, but it is hard when people are so far away. It will be good to see them.

We are planning on hitting Angelo and Maxis by my office for dinner. I will need to fast today to eat their later.

I got the air mattress from my parents last night so they have a place to sleep. I love that air mattress. I slept on it for almost 6 weeks when I moved to Baton Rouge. it is comfy. Just plug it in and hit the button and it inflates. Ah the joys of technology.

My Apartment In Visio

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I can be considered a true computer geek. I am moving. If you read this you know that already. Well last time I moved I took all the measurements of my new apartment and plotted it in Microsoft Visio. My mom and sister measured all the furniture to make sure it would fit in the apartment. I figured why not put that all in visio and see how the place will turn out. I did just that, and it came out awesome.

Due to a freak hard drive accident last August, I lost the visio file, but I found a hard copy a few weeks ago. I took that paper with all the measurements of my furniture, and a copy of my new apartments floor plan (complete with dimensions of the rooms) and created a new visio file. I don’t have the bathroom or kitchen done yet, since I don’t have dimensions for them, but the living room and bed room’s are both done. It looks like all my furniture will fit just fine.

I just have to decide if I am going to take my living room wall unit. It was very hard for the movers to put back together. That costs money. I also may want a wide screen TV this winter. If I get one this wall unit will not fit it. I would need to get a new one then anyway.

I have a few weeks to decide before the movers come. I am still pondering my options. I need to goto ikea and see what I can get for a replacement wall until.

Gmail?

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What is the big deal about Gmail? For many the concept of 1gb of free mail storage is a great idea. What I want to know is why tech guys are so into the Gmail invites? Is it because of the 1gig of space? Or that there are only a few invites floating around?

I am not talking about normal users who use hotmail and such now and gmail is a major upgrade. I am talking about people like myself and others I work with. Gus got a Gmail account and was so happy. I don’t know why. He has his own mail server. he has virtually unlimited mail storage as it is, but he was almost giddy when he got his gmail account. Howard also got one. He was practical in saying it was for life, so it was a good idea to have one. But your own domain with your own mail server is good also. Now most people don’t do this, they have mail through someone, but if you are a tech guy with your own custom home email address running on your own mail system do you really need gmail? Again it is a great idea, but not for me. Howard offered me a gmail invite. I turned him down. I don’t have any use for it. I don’t want something just to have it.

I guess this is an internet trend that I just don’t get. I will stick with my mail system with my own domain (or several domains to be exact)

This blog entry was written while listening to Given to fly from the album “Yield” by Pearl Jam