blogging in the dark

(softly humming a familiar tune) by the light of the silvery moon...... (humming because I forgot the rest of the chorus and song LOL)... Oh yes, no moon rays in here, but there is the glow of the LCD monitor on the laptop and the sounds of the clickty clack of the keys as I bang on the keyboard. Gizmo is behind me trying to get to sleep and I am at the desk at the end of the bed blogging. Normally I would be in the living room however American Idol took over the living room tonight and I did not care to watch it so I grabbed my bag of toys and the chair and headed for the solitude of the bedroom. So, here I am blogging at the end of the day at the end of the bed by the light of the technological moon at my finger tips.
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to find that my blogsite blog is back online again. I have no clue what happened BUT the important thing is that we are back online with this blog. I guess Fortune City forgot to pay their electric bill this month or something equally silly. Why else would my public web blog just not come up?
Speaking of technology, HP4100TN 5 James ZERO... I spent the two last hours of yesterday evening between 5pm and 7 pm pulling the blasted printer apart into a hundred pieces for one last looksie... I even took our HP4000 and put it side by side with that blasted printer to make sure I had the flag and sensor assembly installed correctly which of course I did not. So, I gutted the printer down to the system board one more time and reseated the assembly correctly. I put it all back together and I still get the printer jam error. I figure after about 10 hours over the last 8 days that I have had enough. Tomorrow I will be sending the printer off to a different shop to have it looked at and hopefully Kyle will be able to fix this darn printer.
I spent all day Monday in Charlotte NC at a Nitro Security seminar. We all gathered at the Microsoft complex off of Arrowood Drive. I have never been to Charlotte and I have to say that it reminds me a lot of Austin Texas. Sort of hilly and lots of trees. Anyway, the training was a huge joke. The Systems Enginners were supposed to get technical training from 10 am and 3pm and then from 3pm to 5 pm the sales guys were supposed to get sales training. Nitro provides IDS /IPS services on a network. That stands for Intrusion Detection Services and Intrusion Protection Services. The IPS device is a server that you install with Nitro Security software which is actually a Linux based install process. Once it is up and running on your network you have two Network Interface cards in the server. One runs the protected side of the network and the other card is the incoming data stream from the unprotected side of your network. Typically this server (IPS device) is placed on the furtherest part of your network closest to the Internet. This device sits there and watches ALL the traffic coming into your network via the Internet and through a series of complex rules and profiles it will monitor and respond to different known attacks as well as suspicious network activity. This device also provides network administrators with a robust reporting feature that shows where the attacks are coming from and the ability to show the management person what is going on and how the IPS device is working and protecting the network.
We spent about 10 minutes with the Nitro Engineer who was the one who had all the MEAT we were looking for then he had to rush out and go to Greenville to tend to a new Nitro server install and we were stuck with the man that was there to do the introductions to Nitro and do the sales training. Unfortunatley that went over like a lead balloon because all of the propellers in the room were rotating much faster than his. Every time one of us would come up with a question asking about implementation or integration or functionality his response was I do not know or the demo console does not show this functionality. Halfway into the training class I found out that this was a beta training seminar for Nitro. I would have never known... LOL...
Well, I could blather some more BUT it is midnight and I feel myself turning into a HUGE FROG.... Gribbit....