bryan wann :: binary fury

I finally got tired of the “small” LCDs I had at work and set out to buy a pair of Dell 2001FPs like I had at Giganews. Through eBay I found a local liquidator that had a warehouse full of ’em and made a visit to them today. I hadn’t put a purchase through on eBay yet and their sales guy wasn’t there to make the sale. I told one of the guys in the warehouse “ah ha, no problem, I’ll just buy them on ebay right quick on my iPhone.” eBay site browsing was oddly slow, perhaps due to shoddy 3G reception. After several minutes of fiddling through the site, I had put in an order for my LCDs. The misstep came at checkout when sending money with PayPal. In a bit of a hurry I had selected eCheck to complete the transaction and quickly realized it wasn’t an instant transfer. “Funds will be released on October 21.” argh! No new loot, I had to leave like a yuppie fool.

I did score some Dell rails at another place today. I’m one step closer to reviving aeris in our NJ colo and say goodbye to The Planet.

After spending a couple of weeks afraid to look at my credit report, I finally bought a report today. I’m relieved that it confirms what should be true, that I have zero debt. I am however disappointed that it didn’t move my FICO score much. It would seen my past sins are still lurking in the shadows and still require a few years to evaporate. Fortunately I’m in no need of acquiring any more credit. “Stay the course” seems to be the cliche that applies here.

I’ve been working on overhauling a project this week and came to despise whoever named their project last, Net-SNMP or Net::SNMP. Maybe I should blame Google, since searching for one inevitably results in finding things for the other. While they do similar things, they are by far different animals.

The cool kids seem to use Net::SNMP widely. It’s nice to work with, but it lacks a way to translate numeric OIDs to text labels such as 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.670 to ciscoASA5520. The perl interface to Net-SNMP (SNMP.pm) does, as it has access to the shared MIBs directory on the system. The downside to SNMP.pm is that its gettable() method isn’t good at least, broken with esoteric errors at worst. This has lead me to use both, Net::SNMP for all the heavy lifting and SNMP.pm for translateObj. Annoying extra dependency for my scripts, but it works.

I’m beginning to wonder why on earth I wrote some things in PHP. Its annoying to shift my mind from perl to PHP and vice versa. So this weekend will be spent figuring out Mason.

Another wicked case of stomach cramps this afternoon. I left work early because hunching over was the only comfort I could get. Loaded up on pepto bismol, then tylenol .. four hours later it finally went away. gah. I don’t know what causes it. I had lunch at Delaware, which is pretty tame.

My Hong Kong colleagues get some interesting holidays. Today is the Chongyang Festival which “falls on the 9th day of the 9th month of the Chinese lunar calendar.”

The markets declined in a spectacular fashion today. Bargains to be had, but I spent my loose cash already last week. drats. A person could’ve gotten into GE and Goldman Sachs this morning at a lower rate than Berkshire Hathaway!

I hate you ancient Cisco code:
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Cisco Cisco PIX Security Appliance Version 7.1(2)

Hooray, I found a laundrymat, the laundry monster has been put down. The closest one I found was at 183 and Duval, across 183 from Rudy’s. I sort of enjoyed the experience, other than ignoring kids playing around, I got in two hours of reading Nick Leeson’s Rogue Trader.

The rest of my apartment for the most part is squared away. I spent more than I cared to on shelving, which greatly expanded how much fuh the balcony closet can hold.

Not sure if I got over my sickness. I still have the sniffles and can feel some congestion in my chest. It may or may not be allergies. I suppose the quick way to find out would be to go ride my bike up the hill and see what I cough up.

Blah, I’ve been sick since Friday night. Some sinus burnage that fled to my chest over the past couple of days. Last night was the first night I got a whole night’s rest, feeling better finally.

In the process of being sick I finished cleaning out my old apartment and turned in my keys Sunday. Making progress in putting my stuff away, I can now see my livingroom floor. Still several crates of documents from the old company I need to deal with.

I love having cable and this new fangled thing they call a ‘DVR’. Watching CNBC and Becca Quick in the morning makes waking up worthwhile. When I get home at night, I can watch the opening of the Australian markets, then Asia, then repeat the next morning!

Need to figure out how I’m going to get a washer and dryer moved to my apartment. More importantly, I need to find a laundrymat to wash my overflowing hamper o’ clothes in the meantime.

Good news!

The jury trial you were assigned to in the 299th District Court on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 has been canceled. You are released without needing to do anything further until the next time you are summoned by our office. Your jury service is now complete.

Hoooray, internets!!11 Time Warner showed up today and fixed whatever problem there was. I don’t know how a normal working joe handles this many channels. Tried running coax to the other end of the apartment with my antenna, didn’t help OTA reception. Looks like I’ll be chipping in for HD channels now.

Went up to IKEA tonight to look for a new dresser and desk. Found a set I liked, but boxes were way too heavy for me to lug home.