Tammys ramblings

so over the past few weeks @ my place of work we have been fighting with removing instant messaging in our workplace.  MSN is a whole topic I dont wanna touch with a 90 foot pole because of the royal pain in the a$$ to block it.  It seems that for every carefully crafted firewall rule someone always thinks outside the box & their programs still connect.  that is a entirely differnet topic im not going to focus upon.

blocking gtalk is easy once you have figured out all the servers involved.  note I just blocked the IP's as for me it is easier to just block the ip all together and if they open more ports it still will not work.  here is a nice list for those who follow in my footsteps:

hostnames:
talk.google.com
talkgadget.google.com

ip's:
216.239.37.125
72.14.253.125
72.14.217.189
209.85.137.125
209.85.163.125
209.85.201.189
216.239.51.125
74.125.155.125

in a nice object group for a cisco pix:

object-group network gtalk
  network-object host 216.239.37.125
  network-object host 72.14.253.125
  network-object host 72.14.217.189
  network-object host 209.85.137.125
  network-object host 209.85.163.125
  network-object host 209.85.201.189
  network-object host 216.239.51.125
  network-object host 74.125.155.125

I hope this helps others with the same problems we had.

I sadly just found out that one of my favorite game makers has finally tossed in the towel.  I spent far too many hours when I should have been learning @ school playing Duke Nukem 3d.  

Rest in peace 3d realms.

So Brielle & I were driving to the coast late friday night after playing with phone stuff at a friends place.  Our trusty GPS navigation system that has worked flawlessly for months on end decides that it is faster if we take the "country roads".  Anyways were going along on oregon rural country roads.  Our trusty device (that will remain nameless) decides that we need to cross a /*CLOSED TOLL FERRY*/ @ 11:45pm on a friday night.  You can imagine my great joy at this.  Well it gets better.   So I see the huge ass ROAD CLOSED signs that look like they havent been moved in years & stop & turn around.  Our device is SO insistant that we perform a U-Turn immediately & go back & try to cross there.  The @#@$ing thing took about 45 minutes to shut the f*** up about making a uturn to go back to where it tried to kill us.  You can imagine my sheer joy at this.

Anyways

Nite

In other news I just finished watching a christmas movie with my partner Brielle.  I realized that it has been exactly 6 years since I spent thanksgiving/christmas/new years with a signifigant other.  Brielle Thank You Very Much.  

<3 Tammy

Its been quite a week to say the least.  Sunday night the main box of the SOSDG pitched 4 of the 6 disks in its main raid-5 array.   Thanks to our VERY talented storage admin we managed to recover a large portion of the data.  We definatly wouldnt be in the state we are currently in without her help.  Thanks!

So its been a while since i last updated my blog.   Life is progressing into happiness for us & the special girl in my life that i cant live without now shares a beautiful house with me & has helped me do the next to impossible & move a colo 500 miles & get BGP working on the first try.  To make a long story short happiness has finally been achieved & things are starting to turn around in my life.  Brielle I love you.   Thank you for everything you do.  A piece of me thats been missing for quite some time has now been added to my life.  Thank you.

So yesterday our DSL starts gettign slower & slower & slower & finally quits syncing up.   We call QWest & the technician comes out & moves us to the new "fibre to the node" that is about 2 blocks from our house.   Sadly he isnt aware that by doing this he eliminated our 3rd party ISP.    After 3 hours of fighting with QWest we get hung up on & they somehow miracolously called back & we have a number to call tomorrow to get a free static ip block.  Now it sadly seems that since we have been cut over there isnt anyhting we can do to get back.  Ironicly now QWest doesnt have anyone who is capable of conditioning lines to make them work when hung off the CO so they have been told to hook to the new Fibre to the Node equipment & lock the customer into MSN/QWest.net

This isnt over by far....

Edit much later: 

I hadnt realized that I hadnt updated this.  The Fibre to the node system goes over the same ATM network that the CO DSL lines mysteriously do as well.  However QWest hasnt let anyone but MSN provide internet off the Fibre to the node system.  The PUC ended up telling us that QWest is "sorry for causing this issue" which lead to me having a laughing fit on the floor.  We are eating the static ip block monthly fee as well.   I hate MSN & QWest.

So since we are moving & have signed paperwork for our new place we ordered service from qwest Monday Oct 13th.  According to their website we qualified for up to 20 mbit/s DSL service.   Our ISP that we have colocation from & a existing business relationship with goes up to 7mbit/s DSL. The sales person told us that we cannot get anything faster than 3mbit/s with a 3rd party ISP in the neithborhood we chose because of equipment limitation they have in our area..  However if we wanted to use MSN/QWest as our ISP we could have the 20mbit/s that they thought we needed.   This is their attempt to upsell MSN/qwest.net Internet which they are told to push over 3rd party ISP's.  I call my ISP who i have a long runing business relationship & colocation with & mention this to them & they call their qwest rep.   Their qwest rep told them that this was indeed true & that we should choose MSN as our ISP instead.  Nevermind the fact that QWest.net/MSN can provide up to 20mbit/s internet here where we live but anyone else is barred from competing with them in the high speed internet market.  Anyways they say that our line will be live & active with 3mbit/s DSL service as of 5pm friday (Oct 17th) (yesterday no less & Im writing this via EVDO hmmm).  I called them after my dialtone & DSL failed to magiclly appear on my line as of 5pm.   I was told that they just made the central office connections & programming changes & didnt send someone out into the field to make sure we had the service we'd ordered.   Nevermind the fact that someone someplace has to have messed with the wiring between our demarq point & our remote dslam.  So long story short sometime between the hours of 9:30am-1:30pm saturday (Today) someone from qwest is supposed to be on site to assess the problem.   They are accusing us that its our wiring etc.   I highly doubt this as we live in a nearly brand new 4plex & we have battery voltage on our line so it is connected to something someplace.  This doesnt change the fact that we hv ebeen without Internet or TV at this point for over a week now.  Im starting to get fairly irritated with QWest.

Heres where this concerns me quite a bit.   It is in direct violation of QWests tarrifs for them to be doing what they are doing.  It seems to me that QWest is going back to their old bell system gestapo like tactics.   I wonder how long its going to be before they start measuring things like REN's & whatnot & start charging you for wear & tear on their system & unuthorized phone systems & non approved phones that are attached to their network.  Im going to let the people comment openly on this but it is my stance right now that I should take this complaint to the Public Utilites Comission & also bring it too the FCC's attention that qwest is basically pissing all over their tarriffs that specify the levels of service they are /*REQUIRED*/ to provide to their customers.  It seems that they are trying to create the bell system monopoly that existed before divesture.

As mentioned above please comment to this as you see fit.

EDIT:  We still havent seen or heard jack shit from QWest this morning & were advised that the technician has until 1:30pm (45 minutes or so from now) to resolve this.   If i havent gotten a phone call before 1:30 guess who im calling back. 

EDIT @ Sunday @ 2:36AM MDT:  Guess what.   QWest had a technician out who ""fixed"" a wiring problem to the pedistal in between our 4 plexes & now they have to dispatch yet ANOTHER tech tomorrow to finish the last 20 (or less) feet. It took us 10 calls & a bucketload of lies from John (er Achmed) to find out that FINALLY theyre sending another damn tech sometime between 9:30AM & 1:30PM.   Brielle had a rather legenthy convorsation with Achmed & he ended up probably needing a change of shorts when the conversation was done with.  If anyone who happens to read this may be with QWest Management I highly urge you to contact us reguarding this matter.

EDIT Sunday Afternoon (quite later updated) QWest installed it at a wrong address we had DSL & dialtone

Im writing a little bit about the shit that has spewed forth from my familys mouths as i have come out.

I wont

• Make your kids teh ghey


• Make your kids teh trans


• Eat your kids


• Rub off on your kids

I dont

• Sacrifice children (yet)


• Warp your kids

I Deserve

• Respect as I am a human being just like you


• To be treated like a human


• To still have a family

And lastly my private life is just that.  Its none of your fucking business.

This post is dedicated to someone who knows who they are & I will leave it at that.