Tuirgin

Hello, World. Apologies to my chess and go friends, but I have disappeared inside a dozen herniatastic tomes of dubitable verbosity in the attempt to pursue certification as a CCNA. I shall come up for air from time to time… I hope.

What follows are subnetting tables, largely based on the chapter on subnetting from Todd Lammle’s CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide.

Sorry, but there’s no sex, pop-culture references, or fart jokes to be found here. Move along. There’s nothing to see here. Unless you’re trying to memorize a bunch of subnetting info. Seriously. That’s not flatulence. That’s the sound of my brain on subnetting.

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From The Art of Fiction:

In theory it may be proper that teachers ignore thrillers, science fiction, and the comic books. No one wants Coleridge pushed from the curriculum by a duck “trapped in a world he never made!” But when we begin to list the contemporary “serious” writers who fill highschool and literature courses, Howard the Duck can look not all that bad.

I’ve been reading short fiction lately, and for the reasons I mentioned in a previous post I am focusing almost exclusively on Science Fiction and Fantasy. This week I got the idea of seeking out this year’s award winners, and was pleasantly surprised to see how much was available for reading on the web. Free stories are a treat for the unemployed. (continue reading…)

A response to Paul Mathers.

Will I scandalize you if I question the pure virtue of literacy?

What I mean is, reading, in and of itself, has only a pragmatic value. Literacy is a tool. It happens to be an extremely useful tool, but it’s value is in it’s usefulness. Of what value is it if someone can read, but chooses not to, or reads only the back of his cereal box? Or Glenn Beck?

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I came across a comment by Paba on BoingBoing that hit just the right spot:

People keep telling me that the more local the government, the more responsive and receptive they are to your needs. And then I remember homeowner’s associations and disregard most of that.

Objective

I am seeking an Information Technology position which will build on my experience with network administration, security, and virtualization, and which will benefit from my enthusiasm for Free and Open Source Software and enterprise technologies.

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Friday morning I went in to work to put the finishing touches on the new backup system I have been working on. All the hurdles have been dealt with—I just needed to finish up the scheduling and then move data from our Windows file shares to the new Sun CIFS shares. All of this is the result of several months of work. Sometime late in the morning I was called to the office of the CEO. When I left, I was jobless.

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I’ve recently made a decision to make an attempt to get back into a habit of writing. Several years back I made a 6 month study of poetry. This time I’m wanting to stretch further into the realm of “I really suck a this” and work on short fiction. I’m looking for suggestions on worthy materials dealing with the mechanics of short fiction, as well as searching out the better examples of actual works.

I’m putting a limitation of sorts on my pursuit, however, because I believe it will help liberate me from some of my worst tendencies. My first steps into this will be restricted to genre fic, and specifically fantasy and sci-fi. (continue reading…)

One of my bigger game problems is that I have lacked any consistent method for analyzing and playing my games. I might eyeball a game from my cell phone and make a move if one is obvious—if it isn’t I’ll wait until I can get to a computer. At the computer I’ll work positions out on the analysis board. If I’m really invested in the game I’ll get it into SCID, Aquarium, or Chess Assistant so that I can utilize my databases of games and opening references. Occasionally I’ll make private notes of general ideas, but my analysis of the board is really rather arbitrary and unorganized, and I rarely bother to make notes.

This, of course, is a mistake. (continue reading…)

I picked up a book on Go on Friday, Go! More Than a Game. I’d looked at another series of Go books, Learn to Play Go, and while the first volume looked like a good introduction to the rules and concepts of Go, it looked rather theoretical. Go! More Than a Game teaches the beginner to play Go largely through demonstration games, from start to finish. This is very much like learning from the annotated chess games that I like so much. (continue reading…)