Posts

Learnings from VCF Midwest 20 (2025)

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I just got home from VCF Midwest 20 where I again had a couple tables, this time I had a setup that looks, acts and feels like you’re on a corporate network in 1999, but if you’re here you likely know this already. I wanted to capture my thoughts on what I’ve learned so far from hosting a table, mainly for myself before I forget (read this next year DY) and for others that might be considering having a table. You WILL run out of table space faster than you realize. Draw out a table plan, Visio, Lucid, even just a piece of paper. They’re 30” deep and either 6’ or 8’ long, you pick. You WILL run out of time faster than you want. Start early, plan ahead, expect problems, these are old systems . If you want floor space but no table, say, for a rack, indicate that in your request, they’ll work it out for you. Stay in the hotel by the show floor, the group rate is good and you won’t have to deal with driving. Finding a spot in the loading area is hard enough as is. As soon as they announce...
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Just WAN up he says

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  We have a working version of a prototype network in the U1 lab, however someone just dropped a requirement on us that we need to route IPX traffic from the remotes back to the file servers at the HQ network. Those spreadsheets aren't going to write themselves now, are they. That means what we have in place, all IP routing, will have to change to accommodate IPX. In the meantime it's time to commit what we have to writing, mainly so we have it documented somewhere, but also to maybe help others out in the future. Part of it is to show Lumbergh we produced something to get him off our backs. The design needs some work, things need to move to sub-interfaces, EIGRP needs some work and, as mentioned, IPX needs to be added. HQ Router The configuration for the HQ router: ! version 12.4 service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec no service password-encryption ! hostname INIHQRTR01 ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! logging buffered 4096 informat...
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I'm going to need you in this meeting...

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After the INITECH office fire Bill Lumbergh’s father, William H. Lumbergh III, Esq., Chairman of the parent holding company, stepped in to deal with the aftermath. Now, he couldn’t very well fire his namesake son, Bill, but he could move him over to INITRODE where he’d not introduce so many problems. Call it a demotion if you want, it’s more like nepo-damage-control, it’s uncanny how much Bill looks like his 65 year old father, isn’t it, sorta freaks me out. So what to do? First order of business was to do just that, get business back up and running, enough to be able to send invoices and process payments. Payables could wait, Nina is freakishly good at keeping vendors on hold waiting to find someone to talk to. Us IS nerds were dispatched to acquire as much used gear as we could locally to, as he said, “just make it work you basement dwelling geeks” in the temp office space they rented. That was 6 months of hell, but thankfully that’s behind us and it’ll be smooth sailing now. Meanwhi...
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Windows 95, what's not to love?

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Legacy systems, I swear this place should just acquire a company who does nothing but wrench on old crap. Oh wait, that’s me. We have a couple older, “legacy”, DOS applications that are, as I’m told, “absolutely crucial to the business” and “must get creative about making them work”. Yea, got it, your ‘37 Ford needs help because you’re too cheap to buy a new Camry. We managed to recover some Dell Dimension Dxxx machines from the ashes of the past, grabbed a D233 as it says “made for Windows 95” on it. Why 95 when we’re about to leap into a new century? Simple, that’s as late of an OS as the vendor supports, and I’m tired of installing DOS 6.22, despite it being the last decent OS out of Redmond. But I digress, as usual, so anyways I grabbed a Windows 95 OSR 2.5 CD and went to install it. Having not done that in a few years, here is what I have decided are my favorite things about it. You can’t install it off the installer CD, you need a boot floppy. You have to partition the disk using...
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We have a design

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"Office Space 2: The Pivot” continues, do you believe they made a movie out of us? Just saw it, they nailed Lumbergh, can’t believe they promoted that d ba…    Anyways, Corp decided they wanted to use the fire to “make some changes”, so, they’ve decided to move the HQ to Dallas. Why? Excuse to fire everyone in the old, fried, Austin location and hire newer, cheaper, people in the new spot. We recovered a few things out of the crispy Austin server rooms, some routers, a couple DSU’s, some servers and a red stapler, weird, I know. Mainframe is toast, we’re making an ash tray out of it. Problem the Veep’s found out is that The Bobs live in Austin and won’t move, they’re stupid costly consultants paid for by the board, they ain’t goin’ nowhere. So, after signing a 1000 year lease in Dallas they decided to go back and get a new Austin office. At the same time The Bobs suggested keeping engineering there so they could “make sure we’re efficient”. Oh, and then nobody in HQ has to dea...
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