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Engineered to be infectious

One more time before the feeling fades

I think I killed it!

Apr 20
Random

I bought a pair of shoes in the middle of December from a shop called Rivers on the way to a wedding (I had left my shoes at home 150Km away).

 

 

 

 

 

Nice looking shoe, right?

These shoes have served me well these last 4 months.  I wore them quite alot for work as they were black and didn’t look all that much like sneakers (important in Security work).  Recently I upgraded to a pair of really decent combat-style boots, which are really good.  I didn’t notice just how much I had worn these guys down!

 

 

Guess I know how to wear out a pair of shoes!

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Ask Engie: Ep 2 DHCP

Apr 15
Ask Engie, Internet

Howdy,

Last episode [insert flashback here] I mentioned I would explain how computers came about their IP address.  Since I haven’t had any other inspiration or requests for a different topic, here we go!

 

IP Adresses

Recapping Episode 1, IP Addresses are a function of the Internet Protocol that gives a computer a unique number that it can be contacted by.  I am going to further qualify that and say that an IP Address needs to be unique within a network.  For practical purposes (those of you on a home network), all of the computers connected to your modem/router need to have unique IP Adresses for the network to function properly.  This means that in your house, all the computers need to have different IP Addresses, but if you ask your friend down the street, his computer might have the same IP address as you.  This is because your computer and their computer are on different networks, you are using different routers.  For complexity purposes, this is as far as I will explain for now – either stay tuned or ask if you want to know more.

MAC Addresses

Media Access Control Addresses are another type of address that your computer has.  While IP addresses are changeable, a MAC address is hard coded into your network device (either where you plug in the cable or where the arial comes from).  MAC addresses also need to be unique on a network, but it is setup so every network card “should” have a unique MAC address (as with all things electronic, your milage my vary).  Probably the best way to visualise it is like this: the MAC address is the phone, the IP address is the phone number.  You don’t really need to know about MAC addresses for the purposes of this explaination except to know they exist and are unique to your network devices.

 

DHCP

Dynamic Host Control Process is the method by which a device on the network can keep track of the computers on that network.  For home users, the device that handles this is your modem/router (specifically the router part).  It is basically a program, generally referred to as a DHCP server, that keeps a big list of the computers connected on the network, their MAC addresses and IP addresses, and which MAC has which IP.  DHCP only works properly if you allow all your devices on the network to get their IP address automatically, for reasons that will be explained next.

 

How DHCP Works

The following is a series of steps for a computer to be assigned an IP Address

  1. Computer sends out a packet to everything on the network asking who the DHCP Server is and requesting an IP address
  2. DHCP server receives this packet and looks at it’s list of IP/MAC addresses
    1. If the MAC has an existing IP assigned to it, the DHCP Server tells the computer to use that IP address again
    2. if there is no existing IP/MAC association, it makes a new one, using the next available IP in the list it is authorised to hand out
  3. Computer registers the IP address and starts using it

This all works perfectly fine as long as all the devices on the network use DHCP to get an IP address, or that the devices that do have IP addresses, have IP’s that are not in the list of IP addresses the DHCP server is allowed to allocate.  The reason this causes a problem is that the DHCP Server doesn’t get involved unless the packet asking who the DHCP Server is arrives.  A computer with manually set IP addresses doesn’t bother with this step, so the DHCP Server doesn’t know anything about it.  If the manually set IP is in the list of IP’s the DHCP Server is allowed to allocate, you may end up with 2 computers on the network with the same IP address and neither will be accessable because they are not unique.

 

 

—-

I would like to get some feedback from people as to the readability and understandability of these explainations.  I have tried my best to make sure that people that don’t know alot about computers can get at least the gist of what is going on and perhaps use this as a foundation to learn more if they are so inclined.

 

Thanks,

Engie

 

 

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Stay tuned

Apr 11
Random, Uncategorized

Dammit but I have some news I want to talk about, however I don’t want the person the news is about to know about it and they might stumble onto this blog before the newsworthy event happens.

 

I just needed to get that off my chest as cryptically as possible

 

You may go about your business, now :P

 

 

—–

update April 12

I was right that my fiance might find this blog – she did, though a couple of days later.  The event was that I gave her the ring that I bought her (she thought it wouldn’t even be in until the 15th and I sneakily re-inforced this notion on the morning of April 10.  I, unfortunately, completely and utterly failed to give her the ring in an acceptable manner and I now have it back in my posession.  Thankfully she is giving me another chance to do it right.

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Ask Engie: Ep1 TCP/IP

Apr 9
Ask Engie, Internet

G’day,

Since I haven’t had any other requests to explain stuff, I have had to dip into my secret stash of questions.  This episode’s question is something that my fiance asked me a few weeks ago in relation to her University course (website design).  She had heard it talked about, but couldn’t quite gel with what she understood.

 

TCP/IP

OK, first thing’s first, what is it?  TCP/IP stands for “Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol” and as the “/” suggests is actually the combination of 2 protocols.  For those that don’t know, a protocol is basically a set of rules that define how something is supposed to work.  So, lets break this down into it’s component parts and what they do and then show you why they are referenced together.

 

IP

Internet Protocol is probably best explained first.  When computers talk to each other, whether in the same room or on the other side of the globe, they need to know how to get to the computer that they want to communicate with.  We humans use street addresses or phone numbers to get in touch with each other, and since we built computers we have a similar method for them to use.  Every computer has what is called an IP Address (and yes, IP means Internet Protocol), which for everything to work correctly has to be unique.  So when a computer wants to talk to another computer, it just “dials” the other computer’s IP address.  I will go through how computers look up the IP address in another episode of Ask Engie.

 

Packet

For the next part of this to make sense, you will need to know what a “packet” is.  A packet is, simply put, the smallest amount of data that a computer sends across a network.  A packet is kind of like an envelope; it has the address of the computer that is sending it, along with the computer it is going to as well as some “stuff” that is being sent.  For example, to view this web page, your computer sent packets to the web server asking for the page, and the web server sent the page over in packets

 

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol has two purposes.  Firstly, it allows data to be broken down into smaller pieces (aka packets) and sent across a network.  Secondly it is a way for both computers (sender and receiver) to know that everything has been received correctly.

Alluding back to the web page example, let us say that your computer has asked for this web page from the web server .  The web server sees that you want this page, but it is too big to try and send as one packet, so it breaks the page up into smaller pieces and numbers them.  It then starts sending out the packets in sequential order.  Your computer receives the packets and collects them, taking note of the numbers.

Now, a network can be a scary place for a simple, lowly packet and sometimes they get lost – either lost completely or they just take too long to where they are going.

If your computer notices a break in sequence of packets it has received (say it gets packet 1, packet 2 and then packet 4) it assumes the missing packet is lost for good and tells the web server to start again from the last good packet it received (in this case packet 2).  The web server then stops and starts again from the requested packet.  This continues until all of the web page packets have been sent.  The web server then sends one more packet to your computer to tell you that you have everything it sent, and voila, your web page appears in your browser.

 

And Then . . .

So TCP is how to send data across a network.  IP is how the computers find each other on a network.  Individually, these protocols don’t let you do much.  What is the point of knowing how to find a computer if you can’t talk to it and vice-versa.  Put them together and you have a way for computers to send stuff to each other!  A TCP/IP packet is made up of a sender’s IP Address, recipient’s IP Address, sequence number (what I called the packet number in the example) and finally the data (or part thereof) that is being sent.

 

 

Thankyou for reading all the way to the end.  I hope that you were able to follow my explaination, whatever your level of expertise.  If you would like something explained better or would like to ask me to explain something else for you, go ahead and leave a comment below!

 

Pożegnanie, see you next time.

-Engie

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More returns than Leno

Mar 16
Uncategorized

G’day,

Over the years I have been a little bit slack, promising comebacks, making a couple of posts promising regular posting and then disappearing again. I know – *SMACK* bad Engie!

This time I am not going to promise anything, but I have had an idea rattling around my head that I would like to perhaps use as a regular posting topic.

I would like to do an “ask Engie” column for those who want to know the how or why of something technical. The idea is that non technical people should be able to follow what I am saying and hopefully gain a better understanding of whatever it is they are asking about. Now I don’t pretend to know everything, but what I don’t know I will research and even contact experts in that field to get an understanding, then post the digested information publically. I will post the question, but can leave out who asked me if requested.

I may also get excited and do web programming tutorials as time goes on, but not nessessarily.

“What prompted this return?” I presume you ask (because my ego is jsut that big :P ). On one of my one-post returns (done when I was pretty close to drunk out of my skull) I mentioned that I was wrestling with proposing to my girlfriend, but was being held back by my financial situation. Short version: I got over myself. In December 2010 I popped the question and she accepted! We don’t have a date or even a firm idea of what we want to do for our wedding yet. We have also moved out of our rental an in with her mother to save money with goals of getting qualifications and deposit for a house. She has quit her job and has gone back to University to study website design (heheh, I geekified her).

So this has inspired me to become more of an active internet user, rather than a passive viewer of internet content. As part of my fiance’s studies she has had to sign up for twitter, and I could hardly let her have an account and not one of my own! If you like, you can follow me as @Engieviral (http://twitter.com/#!/Engieviral).

Ok, enough rambling for now. I will now go away and come up with some fallback topics for “Ask Engie” in case nobody asks anything!

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It’s amazing what you find

Aug 19
Uncategorized

Hi,

My boss just asked me to go through our disposed machines and find ones that are still in warranty.  There were a bunch of machines that are about 6-8 years old.

Then I found a classic, ancient beast.  Look, it has a massive 40 megabyte hard drive!  And then, BONUS, I found a compact wireless mouse.  I decided that the best thing to do with the mouse was to give it to my girlfriend, M, to use with her laptop.

Sorry about the image quality, I was using my iPhone.

Today was a good day :)

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Moving more often than an army brat

Aug 11
Uncategorized

I mentioned previously that I have been moved out of the main Service Desk office.  When we chose where to go, one of the guys was out sick.  Today was his first day back.  We split our project team amongst 2 places – an old server room and our “build room” – because we wouldn’t really be able to all fit in one place.  We thought he would prefer to be in the build room, but he didn’t.  I volunteered to swap with him, so for the second time in less than a week I have moved.

I don’t really mind.  I am now in the same room as one of my friends who was laid off last christmas with me.  I have finally gotten around to getting my music setup too, so now I get to sit and listen to toonz while I work.

Last post I said I had a busy weekend.  One of the events was cancelled, so I got a chance to just sit around vegging with a DVD with M.  The cancelled event was Karaoke on Saturday, which was supposed to be for a friend’s birthday (the same one I am now sharing the room with).  Turns out he went out and got very messy and forgot a large chunk of the evening.

M’s meeting of the relatives (or at least my Mum’s side) went fairly well.  I didn’t think there would be much of an issue, we are a fairly laid back bunch and the focus was on the cousin with the birthday.  It was good to catch up with everyone, though we will be doing it all again in 60-something days for the birthday girl’s sister’s wedding.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say for the moment.  I am mainly posting to try and develop the habit again so I don’t go AWOL :)

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Mental Diarrhea

Aug 7
Uncategorized

Whew, I have a couple of things on this weekend – not a whole lot, but enough that I don’t want to plan anything else!

Friday (tonight) I am going out to dinner with M, then onto a pub where a friend of a friend is playing with his band.  Shouldn’t be too late a night.

Saturday I have a karaoke birthday outing with a friend from work, it will probably kick onto the early hours of the morning.

Sunday morning (9am) I have a birthday breakfast for my cousin, who has come down from Dongara for the occasion (which will hurt after Saturday night).

The worst thing was that I forgot about tonight’s thing until lunchtime today.  I had hoped to just veg after working, but it wont be too bad.

I might try to find some time to post tomorrow afternoon.

On a completely unrelated note, I have done a heap of walking these last few days.  I guess I am averaging about 2-5km or more a day(I should get a pedometer).  Since I moved office I have had to go back and talk to the guys at the Service Desk occasionally – mostly because we didn’t have a phone – and go down to our build room (which is where the rest of my team are setup).  It could be a couple of weeks before the wiring contractor gets around to fixing the plug in our room so we have a working phone.  So, we have organised to use a loan mobile phone (cell phone for you of the North American persuasion).  Not the best solution, but it will have to do.  I am still walking around a lot more though – mostly to get out of the little, windowless room I am in!  I might look into getting a large poster or something for one of the big, blank walls.  The only benefit of that room is that it has it’s own air conditioner so we shouldn’t get hot in summer with that baby!

I finally got paid today.  It feels so good not to be broke.  Of course, a big chunk of it just went out again as rent, but I am still not broke :)

M should be here any minute to head out.  I suppose I should sign off and get out of my work clothes and into something suitable for the pub.

G’night

- Engie

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Aaahh Politics

Aug 5
Uncategorized

Considering I work for the State Government, there is relatively little politics that I am exposed to.  So when it does hit me, it is usually a rather perculiar aspect.

I am typing this from a dingy little ex-server room that I now share with one other person.  The other 2 members of the Project I am employed on are setting up in another room off on the other side of the campus.  This is so that we are not in the “main” service desk room.  The reason?  Upper management (read: morons that run the place but don’t know how it works) are complaining that the service desk was dragging it’s feet and deliberately going slow on jobs to try and get more people/funding.

Now, before I moved out of the room, there were 11 people in there (and relatively cramped in there too).  However, the 4 of us are not allowed to do service desk work as we are employed for a seperate project and another person only deals with phone and 3G wireless modems.  Another is the Service Desk Manager.  So fully half the people in the room do not do Service Desk jobs.  So to help the upper management monkeys figure out that they aren’t faking it, we project people have moved out.  Problem is, we won’t all fit in the same room, so we had to split.

I think this place has entirely too many managers and not enough people actually doing work!

- Engie

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As Promised

Aug 4
Uncategorized

Greetings!

I promised I would post again, so here I am.

As you may imagine, alot has happened since my last substantial post in March.  So much that I probably wont remember alot of it, so I am not even going to bother trying to recount it all.  I am going to restrain myself to recent history (the last month or so).

I finished the Bunnings contract in May and finally found new work on the 23rd of July.  The math on that isn’t all that pretty, so I try to ignore it.  One of the other guys that got laid off from the Ag Department around the same time I did managed to get a contract with them rolling out new PC’s to replace the oldest ones in the department.  Someone else left and he thought of me.  I indicated I was not otherwise employed and interested in going back (I actually liked my job at Ag, and the people).  The next day I get a call from the boss and the day after that I am working!

I still have a girlfriend, and that is still sounding really weird when I say it!  She left a few minutes ago to go home and get some sleep before work tomorrow.  I am wanting to go in relatively late anyway, so I am staying up.  We are still getting along really well.  Her mum still likes me and I helped them setup the Wii they got and recently a new 40″ LCD TV.  I am even going over tomorrow to have a roast.  I don’t know what it is about me, but mums and animals seem to like me?

I have been having trouble with my housemate.  M and I are looking at finding a place to rent together and she is seriously looking at perhaps buying a place.

That seems to be all that I can think of that is of any consequence at the moment.  My birthday was during my non-posting time, but that was pretty uneventful.  I am actually quite tired – it is 11:15PM at the moment and I have been up since 5:30AM.  I will try and post again soon.  Perhaps tomorrow afternoon when I am bound to be in the office by myself and looking for things to do :)

‘Till next you read!

Engie

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