Decade-old memories

I passed up writing about a supposedly important anniversary last week. I didn't write about it because, honestly, it didn't really affect me.

I was in college at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the 2001 Fall semester. Since 11 September, 2001, was a Tuesday morning, I was in an early lab class. After lab I had the whole rest of the day open so I went back to the IEEE lounge in the basement of the engineering building. That's when another student, well known for being a bit of a cut-up, said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Of course I said, "That's a really bad joke, James."

But I still walked to the computer lab down the hall to find out the story. I sat down at an open computer and thought about where to find the information I was looking for. You had to do that in those days. Remember that Google was only a few years old and hadn't overthrown the top search engines of the day, Lycos and Alta Vista. As this story was supposedly happening in New York, my first stop was the New York Times, the first New York-based newspaper I could think of. Their site wasn't available that day, my first indication that there might be something to this story. So I tried the Washington Post, our hometown paper there inside the Beltway. Also unavailable that morning. Now I'm thinking I need to try for a server well outside the supposed area. The LA Times was showing news from the night before. They hadn't even woken up yet to update their website. I finally hit upon the Tampa Tribune, who was both awake and online. That's when the towers started falling.

In the following years, many whitepapers would be written about dealing with surge capacity for news websites and many more about continuity of operations. The University's administration was castigated for not evacuating the school to which their response was, "Where are the students supposed to go? All the flights have been grounded and anywhere could have been a target." There was a campus-wide memorial on the 12th and classes were cancelled that day. Looking up and seeing military fighter jets on patrol instead of the normal passenger jet contrails was the eeriest part. We were concerned about reopening the world's oldest continuously operating airport.

Chromebook 3

It's been a few months so I thought I'd take a moment to circle back to Chromebooks. In my last post, I made much noise about Verizon's 100 MB per month bandwidth cap. It's free connectivity with the purchase of every Chromebook so I can't complain too loudly. But it was still very annoying to burn through my monthly allotment in a matter of days. Each month, the battery nearly outlasted the bandwidth. But by shifting a few priorities around, and ponying up to open wi-fi whenever possible, I've finished this month with a few megabytes on the account. Okay, kilobits. But you get the point. I've actually made it to the end of the month with data to spare.

How did I manage this miraculous feat? Lots of wi-fi. There is no ethernet port on a Chromebook and it won't tether to an Android so unlimited data from other providers is not an option. This month, I stayed off the 3G network as much as possible and never used it for bandwidth intensive activities like streaming media. Even so, moderate web surfing, email, and social networking on the big screen (compared to my Android phone) used up almost the entire quota of data this month.

Because I work where I do, there's no wi-fi here at all. We have our own war-drivers roaming the halls sniffing out rogue access points. Even broadcasting cellphones get hunted down. Not a good place to have a misconfigured radio. I do have my own network(s) at home but the apartment complex nearby makes for very crowded airspace. But then the Elks Lodge where I'm a member has wireless. And no other access points nearby. Since those are the three places I spend all my time, and two of the three have wireless internet, I'm usually near enough to an access point to switch radios.

So that's my secret for making the shallow data pool last the month. Don't actually use it.

Testy

As an engineer, I require certifications to prove my capabilities. Yes, even the stuff I've been doing since third grade. I still need that little paper which shows I know how to do what I do. But studying for the exam can be hard some times. Mostly, I've forgotten my study skills since I graduated. But sometimes the companies behind these exams make it hard to share information about them.

CompTIA provides certifications for IT professionals, such as A+ and Security+. (ISC)² offers the CISSP for senior managers in security positions like a CISO. Of course, all the vendors like Microsoft and Cisco also offer certifications for their products. And they all offer all manner of tools to help your earn their certificates. But have you priced out some of these offerings? And that's not for the test to get the certificate, that's for the training to get ready to take the test.

And of course these test providers work hard to make sure their tests don't leak out to the internet. Some test providers are more aggressive than others but they'd all rather you didn't reveal their exams because otherwise what would people pay for. Which I why I won't talk about specific questions. But I will talk about some basic test-taking strategy and some differences I've noticed between vendors.

Charitable Lawyer

There is only one lawyer joke; all the rest are true stories.

The United Way realized it had never received a donation from the city's most successful lawyer. So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a visit in his lavish office.
The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, "Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don't give a penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community through the United Way?"
The lawyer thinks for a minute before replying. "First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long painful illness and she has huge medical bills that are far beyong her ability to pay?"
Embarrassed, the United Way rep mumbles, "Uh, no, I didn't know that."
"Secondly," continues the lawyer, "did it show that my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six kids?"
The stricken volunteer begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off again.
"Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in a horrible car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled with severe learning disabilities requiring an array of private tutors?"
The humiliated United Way representative, completely beaten, says, "I'm so sorry, I had no idea."
"That's fine," the lawyer finishes. "So if I didn't give any money to them, what makes you think I'd give any money to you?!"

Special Offer

Chrome sleeve by Rickshaw

Like I said in my First Impressions post about my new Chromebook, I got this device through a special offer from Google. Included in this offer was a custom built notebook sleeve from textile manufacturer Rickshaw Bagworks of San Francisco. This notebook sleeve isn't even available with the Amazon pre-orders. So why tell you about this? I'm bragging. I just want to point out how much better life is this deep into the Google cloud. You get hooked up with all sorts of cool extras. Like exclusive custom sleeves.

Chromebook Second Impressions

Next verse, much like the first. I am still impressed by the hardware Samsung put into the Series 5. The wireless antennas, both cellular and wifi, are quick to connect and hold a strong signal. The screen is bright and easy to read. The worst feature of the hardware, and it's going to sound a bit weird, is the keyboard is too big. No really. I've gotten used to typing on the Motorola Droid on-screen keyboard. The Samsung Chromebook keyboard is agoraphobia-inducing. It's expansive and the keys feel like they're too far apart. I know, quirky little nitpick.

I like the software, too. Android is a great operating system for the type of hardware it's installed on and for using a lot of cloud services and Chrome does the same thing for bigger systems. It's fun to pick the differences between Chrome the web browser and Chrome the operating system. It's great code.

Chromebook First Impressions

I had asked to be a part of Google's early Chromebook preview, the Cr-48 netbook. I wasn't accepted for the program because I'm not a tech blogger. Obviously. I was granted an invitation-only special offer of a Samsung Series 5 Chrome notebook which was available even before the Amazon preorders. This is the first of a series of posts about the Samsung Series 5 I received.

Shiniest slab in the 'verse