For Juniper Network Connect on Linux Make Sure You Have Xterm

Juniper’s Network Connect SSL-VPN client is a bit quirky on linux.  I’ve had to set this up a few times so I know my way around them but if you don’t it helps to know a few things:

  • You need Oracle’s version of Java.  For Ubuntu, I installed it using info from this ubuntugeek.com.
  • You need xterm.  Why? because when you try to start NC, it want to prompt you for your sudo password and it uses xterm to do so.  If your system doesn’t have it, it just falls to pieces without much of an explanation.  Install it using: “sudo apt-get xterm”

Some Dude Named Kerstein Doesn't Think Much of Chomsky. Says Interesting Things While Elaborating →

  • …I think you’ll agree that, of all the bad things people are capable of, their refusal to think is one of the worst, mainly because it leads to most of the other bad things of which they are capable.
  •  I think its impossible to understand Chomsky’s politics without understanding that, to him, the US is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany and needs to be dealt with accordingly.

Dr. Hurd on Love →

Good thoughts from the Doctor:

  • Live life fully and leave room for a relationship.
  • It sounds paradoxical, but the people who cherish their own lives tend to be the best lovers. They have the most to give because they have given the most to themselves. 
  • … make yourself the person you want to be, by having the kind of life you want to have – and always leaving room for a relationship, when you find the right one.
  • (on ‘mending’ a broken heart) You cannot actively “mend” it. You have to let it heal.
  • Anything a couple enjoys sharing together is intimate.

Believe you can change" by Aaron Swartz →

Two mindsets on ability: Fixed-ability and growth mindsets.  Interesting quotes follow:

  • “I think intelligence is something you have to work for…it isn’t just given to you… Most kids, if they’re not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand… But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I’m wrong, then my mistake will be corrected. Or I will raise my hand and say… ‘I don’t get this. Can you help me?’ Just by doing that I’m increasing my intelligence.”
  • In relationships, growth-mindset people looked for partners who would push them to be better, fixies just wanted someone who would put them on a pedestal

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown →

Interesting reading on essentializing, decluttering, and saying no to perfectly good things.  Interesting quotes follow:

  • Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure. 
  • If we ask, “Do I absolutely love this?” then we will be able to eliminate the clutter and have space for something better. 
  • Tom Stafford describes a cure for this that we can apply to career clarity: Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?” And the same goes for career opportunities. We shouldn’t ask, “How much do I value this opportunity?” but “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?”

Kickstarting My Quest to Discover My Statement of Purpose

I’m devoting a bit of time tonight and in the nights to come to studying and thinking about how I can develop a coalesced statement of purpose which can serve as an integrating guide for my actions and investments.  I spend a lot of time doing a lot of things.  And many of them are worth doing.  But I feel that the products of my efforts are a bit scattered and I would be interested do see what might happen if I can apply some focus.

So… how am I to begin?  Well, I have studied Objectvism a lot, and thus I’ve read a lot of writings by others who have worked through some of the same curiosities questions I have had.  This has yielded interesting writers such as John Drake and Burgess Laughlin.

I’ve also been following the work of some bloggers and podcasters who focus on personal development and who are not obviously readers of Rand.  Steever Robbins, who blogs and podcasts at Get it Done Guy, and Steve Pavlina.

These are some of the tour guides I have selected to try to find my way through how to get started with what feels like asking oneself an enormously huge question, which understandably risks causing a sudden onset of writer’s block.

I have started tonight by re-reading Burgess Laughlin’s piece on what is a central purpose in life.  

This is a concept that comes directly from Ayn Rand in her discussions of her own relationship to her work, which she documents in The Romantic Manifesto, and Laughlin does some interesting treatment of it in this post to break it down and identify what a CPL is and what it is not.  My sense of it after re-reading is that a CPL is a broad and abstract personal statement of action describing what ambitious but achievable thing you wish to do. As a further note, this should be a joy to do and hopefully can be a source of income, though that is not always feasible. 

Laughlin does a lot of follow-up in the comments section of his blog to expand on this discussion including treatment of how a person might approach discovering his own CPL statement.  This, I think will be quite valuable to me.  The basic version was described as: what have you done, what are you doing, what do you want to do?  The more complex version was broken down into observation, abstraction, and testing/experimentation.

I’ve run out of time for the night but I’ll definitely be looking to spend some time itemizing for myself what I have been doing in professional life and in my personal time.  I would invite any of you are interested to chat about this with me to reach out to me because I’d certainly be glad to have smart people to toss ideas back and forth with on this matter.

-Franco

(photo credit: Ready, Set, Go! by Prescott Pym via Flickr)

Francis Luong Employment Information

Francis Luong is a Resident Engineer with Juniper Networks. He is assigned directly to a client as a subject matter expert for Juniper systems and IP/MPLS network implementations in order to improve the quality and outcomes of support interactions between the client and Juniper Networks to the benefit of both parties.

Regular Expressions →

I often forget syntax details on regular expressions and this guide is quite handy for a tutorial or refresher.

Juniper Stuff: When you need to know about your pluggable optics

I had a guy ask me today about some funky output he was seeing on his router when he was trying to get info on his SFP optics from “show chassis hardware”.  I directed him instead to check out “show chassis pic fpc-slot <#> pic-slot <#>”.  It’s a lot more detailed and reliable.

–

user@host> show chassis pic fpc-slot 4 pic-slot 1
FPC slot 4, PIC slot 1 information:
  Type                             10x 1GE(LAN)
  State                            Online    
  PIC version                  0.0
  Uptime                         18 days, 5 hours, 41 minutes, 54 seconds

PIC port information:
                          Fiber                    Xcvr vendor
  Port  Cable type        type  Xcvr vendor        part number       Wavelength
  0     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-D SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-49  1490 nm 
  1     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-D SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-49  1490 nm 
  2     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-D SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-49  1490 nm 
  3     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-D SM  OCP                TRXBG1LXDBVM2-JW  1490 nm 
  4     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-D SM  OCP                TRXBG1LXDBVM2-JW  1490 nm 
  5     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-U SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-31  1310 nm 
  6     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-U SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-31  1310 nm 
  7     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-U SM  OCP                TRXBG1LXDBBMH-J1  1310 nm 
  8     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-U SM  OCP                TRXBG1LXDBBMH-J1  1310 nm 
  9     SFP-1000BASE-BX10-U SM  SumitomoElectric   SBP6H44-J3-BW-31  1310 nm

Extracting Userpic from Mac OSX

I had a devil of a time figuring out how to extract my account picture from my Mac to a JPEG.  Then I found an article which had the answer.  Man… it’s ugly.

If you wish to extract a 320x320 version of your account picture you can do so by running the following command: dscl . -read /Users/short_username JPEGPhoto | tail -1 | xxd -r -p > /PATH/TO/accountImage.jpg

Two Recommendations On Linked-In

I honor integrity and justice.  It’s part of who I have chosen to be.  And as a part of my attempts to come to closure with my recent job change, I have devoted some time this morning to expressing my gratitude for the people who contributed to my thriving at Verizon, both by their examples, and in our professional interactions.

I present to you, my words about Dante Pacella:

Dante Pacella is the full package.  In my time working with him, I have come to characterize him as a brilliant and long-sighted engineer whose memory for detail is incredible, and whose ability to integrate those data into systems is, to me, simply stunning.  He also navigates negotiations within the company bureaucracy with incredible skill.

I was in the Systems Integration Testing group when I worked with Dante, and every experience with him was an immense privilege.  He produces the best and most detailed test requirements that I have ever seen, which incidentally also demonstrated his deep understanding of the systems we were evaluating for deployment, and an understanding of how to be concise by focusing on fundamentals.  He was the spiritual author for many of the best tests that I ended up automating and building upon.

I can never possibly repay Dante for everything I have learned from him.  It’s impossible.  And that’s some serious praise.  But I come to work with an active mind and hopefully, that at least makes me worthy of that privilege.  Thanks, Dante.

And my words about Jim Koskulitz:

Jim Koskulitz is a man that I credit directly with my thriving at Verizon.  Under his management, we began an initiative to systematically automate repetitive and time-consuming testing to make the entire process more efficient, more consistent, and to leverage non-working hours.  

This had been attempted by managers prior to Jim.  Jim made it a priority and gave me and a couple of teammates a lot of freedom and guidance on how to go about building it.  These are important things, as is the time risk involved in possibly having project deadlines slip.  It was a calculated gamble and it paid off in big ways for Verizon, and for me personally.

I would like to thank Jim for his leadership and his continued inquisitiveness and attentiveness for the half-decade or so that I worked with him.  He’s a great technical contributor and a damn good manager.

My New Linked-In Summary (who have I been and where am I going?)

Francis Luong (AKA “Franco”) is a man in transition. 

He spent the last decade refining and improving the methodologies used to test IP/MPLS topologies and network elements by exploiting TCL/EXPECT as a means of automating the testing work flow. This made the method and output more consistent and detailed, and extended the workday beyond the usual 8-hours that a typical human being is present and attentive. 

Says Franco, “Test engineers who create automation spend less time doing things in a mindless stupor. They will get more satisfaction as creators of interesting things that just improved the quality of their lives than as do-ers of boring tasks with which they feel somewhat unconnected.”

He is now on a two week “rest” period before starting his next Network Engineering position with Juniper Networks. During this time, he expects to be busy as hell diving into the world of DC entrepreneurs, leaning about the problems they face and how he can contribute both in terms of technology, and in sheer terms of untangling logistical rats nests. He will get to see “bootstrapping” in action, and, hopefully, to do some of that himself. With any luck, he might find a glimmer of passion in the process.

A very fond fare thee well to each of you...

UUNET Vacation


It has been an amazing decade and some change since I joined UUNET as a Sales Engineer.  We have been through a lot together and shared some very dark times and come back from that to really achieve quite a lot. 

 

I am grateful for the privilege of having been through all of this with you…. For what I have learned from you… for the times that I felt like the king of the world for having conquered a problem or two with a very clever script.  J

 

This is goodbye… for now.  My journey with Verizon has come to its end and it has been worth it the whole way.  I will see you again.  Bet on it. 

 

More importantly, make it happen! Add me on Linked-in and/or Twitter.  Send me a message from time to time and tell me what is good in your life.  Send me a message and tell me life sucks, then tell me how I can help you.

 

I look forward to it.

 

-Franco

 

=====

Francis Luong (Franco) – franco [splat] definefunk.com
https://twitter.com/#!/FrancisLUONG
http://www.linkedin.com/in/francisluong

“Some things are worth getting your heart broken for.”
— Sarah Jane Smith, Dr Who S02E04

Using CamStudio.org to record demos with commentary

Spent today trying to figure out a freeware solution to record a windows demo with audio commentary so that I can record some brain dumps for work.  Ended up using camstudio.org but I had to drop the frame rate some to get it to work for any respectable length.  But I have recorded a couple of them at this point and have a decent process.  

This was a bit frustrating at first but quite gratifying as I have worked to remove barriers.  Now, I love it.  I have a way to pass along knowledge that is more durable than a good-luck-remembering-it walkthru and it is not as tedious to create as a document.

Just Add Blurry

I just realized I can experience bokeh any time I want. Just have to remove glasses… Best experience is at night.