SNMP Polling vs. Traps

SNMP has been around for decades.  Many manufacturers build SNMP agents into their products so NMS nodes can monitor their status.  There are two ways SNMP can be used to monitor a device: 1) active regular polling by the NMS to the device and 2) traps sent by the device to the NMS.  Unfortunately, many people seem to only know about one or the other method.  I'm approached regularly with requests to monitor a particular set of devices via SNMP.  I ask what metrics they'd like to monitor (approaching from method #1) and they usually respond with the MIB and say, "We want to monitor everything."  After a simple discussion about what they expect should happen, their requests usually come down to wanting NV to be able to receive any and all traps defined in the MIB.  Oh the humanity.

NetQoS: the Next Pure Digital?

After hearing about the announcement by Cisco to officially drop the Flip camera, I have started to wonder about the similarities between Cisco and CA and Pure Digital and NetQoS.  Read this article and then see if i've gotten anything wrong:
Cisco is a big company that has gobbled up competitors instead of beating them at a fair fight.  Just like CA.
Cisco bought a company that could have gone stratospheric but has failed to manage it well.  Just like CA.
Pure Digital customers "[felt] like [they had their] heart ripped out and replaced with a brick.  Just like CA customers.
Cisco didn't apply the right resources to their new golden egg acquisition.  Just like CA.
Pure Digital employees that came over to Cisco will soon be getting layoff notices on their desks.  Every other week, another NetQoS employee leaves CA (John Mao, David Oliver, Lindi Horton, John Catalano (et al), Joe Burbano, Steve Harriman (et al), Greg Hutton, Mark Wheat, etc. etc. etc.).  At least NetQoS guys know to jump ship before it drowns.
So, does this spell eventual doom for the NetQoS products?   I don't think so.  But nothing has come out of this acquisition unscathed, especially the relationship between the vendor and the customer.

Apple being a little underhanded?

I should disclose, i work for RIM.  Still, even if i didn't work for them, i'm a little shocked that Apple would sink this low.  Is it true?  Perhaps.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/07/apple_reportedly_caused_display_shortage_that_delayed_rim_playbook_1_month.html
Still, this is the tactic i take when fighting against aliens or killer robots.  Cut off their supply.  Even if it means you'll only delay them.  In the technology race, release dates are significant down to the day.

Stitching PDF documents

Every once in a while, i have to submit expense reports.  Like some other new expense report systems, when submitting receipts, you have to print off a cover sheet containing a bar code.  When you send in your receipts via fax (what is this, 1987?) you have to use that barcode sheet as a cover sheet.  Luckily, you can also email it in.  However, your scanned receipts and the barcode cover sheet have to be part of the same file with the barcode file coming first.
The problem i have with this is that essentially, i have to print out the barcode sheet and scan it in with all my receipts.  Seems a waste to print something out so i can scan it back in.  When i talked to one of the guys in the expense department, he said he'd put in a request for me to get a full copy of adobe acrobat pro so i could merge them together.
So, i did a little search and found pdfsam (PDF Split and Merge).  This little utility is free and lets you split pdfs into multiple documents and reassemble them any way you want.  Pretty cool stuff. Definitely cheaper than acrobat pro!

Finally, something that doesn't work in iOS, wait nevermind.

I got an iPad back in October.  I've been really pleased with it.  It's constantly exceeded my expectations.  With the release of iPad 2 yesterday, Apple calling 2011 'the year of the iPad 2', and RIM's own tablet coming out soon, i'm excited to see how quickly we can get to a point where we don't need desktop systems in our homes. 
Anyway, about the thing that doesn't work.  I use the remote app to remote control my iTunes on my personal computer.  That way every time i want to change songs, i don't have to switch my kvm over to my home computer.  I can just reach over and click next on my ipad.  I've had problems with this before though.  My wifi at home is A/B/G/N.  The iPad supports B/G.  Sometimes when my iPad would time out and switch itself off and i'd manually turn it back on, it would report that the wifi was connected, when really it wasn't.  This was annoyingly obvious when trying to use the remote app (since the remote app requires ethernet connectivity).  I finally figured out that i could go and disable the wifi then reenable it and everything would work fine.  Then, this afternoon, my wife sat down to watch a netflix movie on her iPhone.  We got a startling email from AT&T stating that we'd gone over our 200MB limit for the month.  Turns out this problem applies to all iOS controlled wifi devices.  I disabled her wifi and reenabled it and lo and behold, web pages started to load much faster.
So, i had to conclude that the problem is not actually with iOS but with my router.  After a little research on the internet, i found that 802.11n is the culprit.  I went onto my router and disabled A/N wifi and without doing anything to either device, they both started functioning.  My wife got a bunch of emails that had been delayed since there was no connectivity.  And a youtube video i had paused on my ipad suddenly started working.
Go figure.  I guess you could technically call this a bug with the iOS and the corresponding hardware since the presence of an N network shouldn't hose up a G network.

Discovery's Final Launch

Well, by now the shuttle Discovery is within sight of western Europe (the shuttle can see them, they won't be able to see the shuttle).  I've had the video from spaceflightnow.com playing in the background all this afternoon.  I took 20 minutes to bite my nails as there was a glitch at the range (did you know there are systems on standby during every launch to blow the shuttle out of the sky if we lose control of it and it starts kareening toward a populated area?!?!) and to watch the subsequent launch.  It was an amazing sight.  Even with the little piece of tile that came off and was plastered over with a sharpie and the BSOD that happened at the firing range, it's an amazing feat that men can launch themselves into space, orbit our planet, and meet up with other spacecraft in space.

This will be the final flight of the Discovery.  After it lands, NASA is going to mothball the whole thing and put it in a museum.  This makes me sad.  I wanted to see a time when i could take a weekend trip to the space station and, who knows, maybe run into the Doctor.  Thank you US Gov't for destroying the dreams of every Star Wars fan who dared to think that we could actually make this work.

Syndicating yourself

Thanks to Kevin Grimes for the tips on how to get this setup.
I recently configured our community to syndicate to twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn. It was actually easier than i thought. I discovered that this can be used to syndicate your own self out to twitter and facebook.  This method only allows for one way communication from the community to the social networks.

So, here's how i did it:

1. Sign up for a bit.ly account. I used the same password for all the accounts to make it easy. Once you've got your bit.ly account created, go to settings and make a note of the API key. You'll need that later.
2. Make sure you have a twitter account and a facebook account.
3. Connecting to Twitter and Facebook:
1. Now go to twitterfeed.com and sign up for an account. Twitterfeed is a service that will take multiple RSS feeds and publish them to twitter and/or facebook. So, go get any RSS feeds you want to syndicate. I went and got the feed from my blog.  Twitterfeed has two steps, one to get data from your RSS feeds, and the other to determine where you want to publish that data.
2. On the twitterfeed site, click 'Create new feed'. Give your feed a name; this name won't show up anywhere except in twitterfeed. It'll help you keep your feeds straight (I ended up with 10 feeds, so it was important to have some intelligent naming). Paste in the URL for the RSS feed and hit 'test rss feed'.
3. Open advanced settings on that page. I change the update frequency to add up to 5 updates at a time. Since twitterfeed checks the feed every 30 minutes, it's possible that more than 1 new item appears in the feed. If this is so, twitterfeed should go ahead and publish as many as possible (which is a maximum of 5). Also, change the 'Include' option to include 'title only'.  'Post link' should already be checked; expand bit.ly settings and put in your bit.ly user account name and the API key. This will allow URLs to be shortened so they don't take up the majority of your post in twitter.
4. Go on ahead to step 2. This is where you'll select where to publish your feeds to. Pick twitter and you'll be brought to a page asking you to pick what account to publish to. Your twitter account will not appear in the drop down box to begin with. To get it in there, click the huge 'authenticate twitter' button and sign in with your twitter account. Once you're brought back to twitterfeed's page, your account should be available in the drop down box. Select it then click 'Create service'.
5. Repeat the process for facebook. For facebook, you can choose to publish the feed to your account or any of the pages you manage. The nice thing is that when you add the rest of your feeds, you won't have to re-authenticate. Your twitter/facebook accounts will be available from the drop down box.
6. Once you've created the services for facebook and twitter, click the All Done button. If your feed has items, you should see them show up in facebook and twitter within a few minutes.

*If you want two way synchronization between twitter and facebook, you can use the facebook app called 'twitter'. Then you would only use twitterfeed to get your posts to twitter.

Facebook account versus Facebook pages

In the last little while, i've received friend requests from 'people' on facebook.  Really, the requests come from an organization like my local rock climbing club.  The account was setup by a person who is an officer of the club and wanted to get the club on facebook.  So, that person created a facebook account as if the group was an actual person.  It was then that i received the friend request.

For anyone trying to do this same kind of thing, don't do it!  Actually, don't do it that way.  Actual accounts are for real people not organizations.  If you have an organization and you want a presence on facebook, create a page.  The page can contain information about the group and has a wall.  Instead of friends, the page gets followers.  The page is administered initially by the person that created it.  The creator can then add officers that have varying levels of permission to do stuff on the page. 

This is the car I'm looking for

I don't normally do this, but someone found this video and sent it to me (thanks ang).  Now I have this inexplicable need to buy this car.  It's not the color i'm looking for, but it is the right car.

View it here if your browser sucks.

I finally broke down and got twitter

In order to start syndicating myself a bit more, i've decided to finally get a twitter account.  I held out as long as i could.  Anyway, a friend of mine from the CA Endevor community sent me a how to on connecting your blog to your twitter account.  He also sent instructions on how to connect your blog to a facebook page, but i haven't tried that yet.  Anyway, here are the instructions (i've modified them slightly based on my experience):
Assumptions: You already have a twitter account.

1. Create a bit.ly (http://bit.ly/) account.
2. Find the bit.ly API key (found on the account settings page)
3. Create a twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) account.
4. Create a new feed using the RSS feed from your blog.
5. Under advanced settings, set it to include the title only.
6. Under advanced settings, make sure "post link" is selected.
7. Under advanced settings, select shorten link through bit.ly and use the 'bit.ly settings' menu to enter your user account and the API key from step 2.
8. Continue to step two of the feed creation and authenticate your twitter account.  This took a while because my IE settings were keeping things from happening.
9. Once you authenticate, your account should be available in the drop down box.  Make sure it's selected and continue.

That should be it.  You should see a new post on twitter with the title and link to your blog entry (it might only include the first one in the beginning, but should include every one after that).

Apple and Big Money

Seems Apple is riding high lately.  Their string of successess has only been marred by the leave of absence of Steve Jobs.  However, new and exciting things are on the horizon for iOS based devices:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/25/apple_finalizing_wireless_e_wallet_for_iphone_5_ipad_2_report.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/24/deutsche_bank_very_positive_on_iphone_trial_no_going_back_to_blackberry.html
http://osxdaily.com/2011/01/21/xbmc-for-apple-tv-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+osxdaily+(OS+X+Daily)
Not to mention the announcement that you can now get an iPhone on Verizon instead of being forced to drink the AT&T kool-aid.  Does all this add up to a huge change in the technology world?  For sure.  Does it mean people will eventually not get desktop computers?  Maybe.  More likely it means more homes will adopt the home server architecture having one very powerful very high capacity system instead of multiple desktops per household member.  Given that RDP and VNC both exist as apps for iOS, it wouldn't take much to turn an iPad or even an iPhone into a terminal.  With the right docking station hooked up to the network, a couple monitors, a keyboard, and maybe a mouse (probably not), any iOS device could be turned into a terminal.  However, i expect that services that would normally be accessed with direct input to a PC will be configurable using apps.

Excel and Dates

While recently working on some data, i recently stumbled across some formulas that i found useful:

Excel handles dates as numbers. Basically the number of days since 1/1/ 1900 0:00. The decimal portion of the number represents the hours and minutes within the day. For example today is 40556.64462. So, if i wanted to subtract the number of hours until quitting time, i'd need to subtract 40556.64606 from 40556.70833. This is fairly easy.

XBOX Kinect review

So, i did get a kinect around the middle of december and have liked it overall. It's really quite good for a first generation motion capture video game controller. Most of the positive feedback can be read in other reviews. I wanted to make sure i got my gripes on here, so here i go:

1. It may be my HDMI cable, but i've had problems with the xbox turning on. If my tv is not all the way switched to the correct input when i turn on the xbox, it doesn't seem to enable the hdmi port on the xbox. Not really a problem with the kinect, but it didn't start happening until after i hooked up the kinect.
2. I have the kinect on the same table the tv, so it's below the tv and out from the wall by about 2 feet. The 'optimal' range from the sensor is about 6 feet. I have a fairly spacious den, but i still find myself backing into the couch to get the best experience.
3. Not all kinect games are created equal. I have three games: kinect adventures, kinect sports, and biggest loser. It's easy to tell which games were tested with normal people and which weren't. When using kinect, navigating is as easy as controlling a mouse cursor with your hand. Since there's no button to click on, you have to hold your hand over a button to click on it. When a game requires a bunch of option selections to start the game, it gets tiresome waiting for the xbox to register clicks. Biggest loser is the worst game i've played so far. The menu consists of only icons, you have to mouse over in order to get a description of what each icon does. The problem is that the hover over click time has been reduced (supposedly to speed up menu selection). By the time i've hovered over a button long enough to read half of the 5 word description (in small font btw) the game has registered a click and opened that menu. The other problem with that game is that it doesn't do a good job of recognizing the exercises you're doing. They put a trainer up on the screen and a 3d representation of you as well. You're supposed to follow the trainer. If you're not exactly in sync with the trainer, it frequently stops the game saying you need to decrease the difficulty because you clearly can't keep up. And it isn't just me; i've had two other people go through the 'pre-test' and fail out completely at the same exercise, the game stating that clearly this exercise is too much for us.
4. Having nothing really to do with Kinect: you can't do much online with xbox unless you've paid for a gold xbox live membership. This is a clear loseout to the wii where you can play online with anybody as long as you have their information.

That's pretty much it. It's been fun playing with the kinect. I usually have to shower after playing since i usually work up a sweat. In fact, given some wrist weights, i've been able to shed a few pounds while duking it out in the boxing arena. Volleyball is really lifelike. I find myself jumping as high as i can to get those spikes.

Sorting Excel data using formulas

Sometimes, you sort data in excel. This is handy since the order provides a framework around which our mind can be wrapped. However, it's not always handy to have to select the cells you want to sort and use the menus to sort them. Sometimes, it would be handy to sort the data automatically.

Square

Wow, Thanksgiving hit me harder than I thought it would. I've been neglecting my blog. Well, i've come back from the holiday with a doosey.

Check out http://www.squareup.com/. Quite honestly the coolest thing i can do with my iPad. Read here as to why it can't be done on the blackberry.

Using VMWare to test software for bugs

I earlier posted instructions on how to create virtual machines to run other operating systems on your desktop. Another advantage of virtual machines is that they can be used to test software for bugs or virii. If you've ever downloaded beerware and wondered if it would infect your computer if you ran it, installing it on a VM can (mostly) keep your computer from getting infected. At least, the VM might get infected or hosed. If that happens, simply power off the VM and delete the files.

Another way of running software you don't necessarily trust is by running it in Wine. Wine is not an emulator, technically. It allows you to run windows programs in linux. If you have a Linux VM built, go ahead and install Wine in the software center. Then copy your executable to the linux box. Right click and select open in Wine environment. It'll run just like windows.

There are many options for Wine. One being that you can map lettered drives in the Wine environment to physical locations in the Linux file system. There's a huge learning curve in regards to permantly mapping Windows file shares to the linux file system. I'm still wrapping my head around that. Perhaps when i figure it out i can write a 'windows user's guide to mapping windows file shares in linux' article.

iOS 4.2 is bigger than the Beatles

So, the Beatles are bigger than God, right? Well, with the recent tease and supposedly huge announcement from Apple about the Beatles library finally being released on iTunes, I'm left saying, "Dang Steve, getting multitasking on my iPad is more important that your new money making scheme." I mean, not only did they miss the Beatles revival of my generation 10 years ago, but I've already bought all the Beatles music i want on CD and ripped it into my music library. Why would i want to buy it from Apple when i already bought it?

Seriously, with the playbook (better battery, no required data plan if you have a bb, flash, and multitasking) release emminent, the iPad had better get a facelift or finally face a competitor eye to eye. Contrary to Apple's promise that i'll never forget today, i probably will as soon as iOS 4.2 is released. Until then, i'll be listening to my Beatles music that i didn't purchase through iTunes and waiting for Apple to fulfil its promise to upgrade my iPad sometime this month.

Custom Formula: IP2DEC (IP address to decimal)

THIS CONTENT IS NOW HOSTED ON GITHUB: https://github.com/sweenig/ipfromdec/

Excel and IP addresses

THIS CONTENT IS NOW HOSTED ON GITHUB: https://github.com/sweenig/ipfromdec/

Removing the protection from Excel workbooks

I get frustrated from time to time when i'm forced to use a mediochre Excel spreadsheet. For example, i have a spreadsheet that i have to fill out from time to time. I put in between 3 and 10 entries and have to number them. This is the most annoying thing. The first thing i did was open the original template and insert the following formula into A2: