GeekLimit

Physicists at the Bhavnagar University in Gujarat, India, have discovered a way to trap, store, and release laser light in a fluid on command.  The fluid operates at room temperature, and is controlled with magnetic fields.

[The scientists] coated micron-size magnetite spheres with oleic acid and dispersed them through a ferrofluid, which is a suspension of much smaller magnetic nanoparticles (in this case held in kerosene). When an external magnetic field was applied to the fluid, which was held in a glass cell, laser light passing through the medium was trapped inside. Photons escaped when the field was switched off.

Could this be a solution for an optical storage medium, to complement an optical processor?

Just the thing for a long Wednesday: the Mango song, from the makers of the Badger song.

Thought you could use something else stuck in your head besides “CORP-rate accounts payable, THIS is Gee-NA!  JUST a mo-MENT!”

I rarely post twice in one day, but this is too perfect to not send out on a Friday.  The guys over at Woot give some good deals on stuff every now and then, but they’re pretty funny too!  Check out the Wootable Awards for CES 2007.  For all the work I’m sure some engineer puts into a consumer electronics product, it’s a shame for them to be revealed so poorly by some marketing flunkie.

Ugh, my sides hurt.  Check this out, but first think up an excuse about why you’re laughing at work.  (or maybe think of a reason why to work where you can’thave a laugh every now and then…? )
CES 2007: The Wootable Awards

Making short- and long-term goals are something I’ve always believed in. I’m not a big fan of just wandering through life, it makes me feel like I’m lacking direction. Like many people, I need the sense of accomplishment to feel like I’m doing something with my life.

I’ve started using 43things.com to organize my goals, and for 2007 I’m making the resolution to accomplish at least the top ten items on my list. I currently have 18 things on there, but Here’s a little more detail on the top ten:

1. Get a Master’s Degree - I’m currently enrolled at the Keller Graduate School of Management. January 8 will be my 4th semester towards a Master’s degree in Information Systems Management. It’s very interesting, they basically teach you how to be a CIO. Good stuff.

2. Learn Ruby on Rails - I got a Barnes & Nobles gift card for Christmas, and picked up a Ruby/Rails book. I hope to know what I’m doing by the end of January.

3. Build a website with 1 million users - the user base may take a while, but I have several ideas I’d like to explore that have great potential to not only be successful, but to be a positive influence on my own community. I’ll tak about them later in the year.

4. Get my MCSE - I know, the MCSE is basically a joke these days. The knowledge is very valuable though, so it’s a shame that so many people just study for the test, get the certification, and then are complete yahoos in their own jobs, giving the cert a bad name.

5. Work for Google - I know some people have problems with Google, but I think that although there might never be a perfect company to work for, you need to find the company that is perfect for you. For me, the more I learn about Google, the more it’s like reading about myself. Since no-one else comes close, Google’s it for me.

6/7. Reduce my bills/get out of debt - I’ve already switched over to efficient lighting/heating, it’s about time to call up the credit card and phone companies again to try and get a lower rate.  Eventually this will let me only owe money on my house.  There’s a long way to go, but I hope to pay off a $14K car loan plus about $5K in credit cars by the end of 2007.

8. Watch a space shuttle launch - Soon there won’t be any to see, and I’ve always wanted to do it.  Besides, it’s a good excuse to get down to Florida too.

9. Drink more water - I think I overdid it yesterday (3 liters in a few hours), but I got a water bottle for Christmas, and I’m going to try to drink the proper amount of water from now on.  I always feel so tired when I don’t, so I don’t know why I dehydrate myself.

10. Golf under 90 - I originally picked up golf two years ago when the Director of IS had been hired by the CIO, his golf buddy.  A $150K/year job.  I’ve since left that company for a new job, and don’t see golf as a meal ticket, but I’m still golfing because I started liking it.  The thing I like most about golf these days is that you HAVE to be relaxed to play it well.  It’s more about controlling yourself and letting go than anything else I’ve done, and I like it!

Well, that’s the top 10.  Hopefully I’ll do all of these in 2007, and have time left over to get to the rest of my constantly-growing list.

I had to answer a few questions in my grad class on a very good article. The article is from the May-June 1990 issue of The Futurist, and is titled ‘The Importance of Followership’. Basically, it lays out the importance of cultivating an organization of employees that are happy to do their work, and are rewarded for acting on the best course of action for the organization, instead of trying to just be good employees because they’re afraid to stick out and lose their jobs. Having been written in 1990, it’s a little interesting to realize that most of the companies that survived the dot-com bust seemed to have understood this, and emerged as leaders in their fields. Here are some of my (short) answers to the discussion questions:

1. Distinguish between leadership and followership. What are the characteristics of successful leaders? Successful followers? Are the characteristics similar?

The article does a good job describing the roles of leadership and followership, and what makes each successful. What struck me is that the most successful leaders and followers are those that choose to carry the traits traditionally held by the other. That is, employees that take a more vested interest in leadership qualities in their organization, ad leaders who choose to be open to collaboration with their employees.

2. Why do you think so little emphasis is given to followership compared to leadership in organizations?

Unfortunately, our culture is shaped around celebrating the top percentage of success stories. We celebrate sports stars on winning teams, when there are usually multiple people responsible for their rise to greatness. In recent years, there has been more hopeful signs of celebrating the accomplishments of non-leaders. Just look at the online world for example - its equalizing tendencies are celebrating people for their accomplishments or ideas, as opposed to celebrating a leader for the successes of their organization.

3. Describe the ways organizations can nurture followership. What are the obstacles to implementation of these strategies, if any?

By including people in the operation of business and giving them a sense of ownership, they will be more inclined to operate on the behest of the organization’s well-being. By rewarding this behavior, whether it is popular or not, leaders can cultivate employees that are more interested in being dynamic producers than an army of followers looking for the answer people want to hear.

Addition: Coming from the IT field, I can see the organizations that survived the dot-com bust were ones that counted on, and encouraged, the initiative of their employees to be personally innovative in the best interests of the company.

Another good case of this was in the forming of Silicon Valley back in the 50’s and 60’s. The inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, won the nobel prize in 1956 and is generally regarded as the father of the computer age. He formed a company, and was set to be the first to build transistors, which led to semiconductors, which led to processors. He had an innate ability to hire geniuses, but due to his overwhelming desire to control people, and a fear that they would come up with greater innovations than his own. In the process, he almost immediately lost most of his first employees, who soon formed their own companies: Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

William Shockley faded away from the birth of the computer age, and people like Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) eventually took his place as silicon valley’s innovators.

As a side note, later he basically went crazy, heavily supporting Eugenics, the belief that humans are in a form of “reverse evolution” by breeding “undesirable” traits more often than desirable ones. The Nazi party based their reasoning for the Holocaust on eugenics, so this didn’t make Shockley popular in post-WWII America… He died in 1989, and his ex-wife was the only attendant at his funeral.

If he had been able to foster a sense of “followership” as strong as his desire to lead, we would have undoubtedly been the most wealthy person in the computer age, either at or above the level of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

It’s true that the forefront of research and progress usually uses the latest in technology, but McDonald’s is proving once again that a great idea doesn’t need to be complicated.

Essentially, this is a giant sundial outside of Wrigley Field, where a Golden-Arches-shaped shadow falls on suggested breakfast choices during the morning hours. Very cool, and probably the most ‘retro tech’ you can get!

I thought having a working Apple IIgs with a program copyrighted in 1979 was cool, being that the technology was 27 years old. McDonald’s is going back approximately 5500 years with their retro tech!

Now if only I can make some sort of astronomical calendar to figure out when the Cubs will win the World Series… that would be sweet. (”Next Year”, right?)

picture courtesy Crain’s Chicago Business

If you have been working in iT for a few years and have not come across a virus outbreak, then you have probably spent most of the time surfing the Internet or not been good enough to notice what was going on! In the organization I have worked with over the last 5 years, we have only had two major virus outbreaks, Zotob and Sasser.

Sasser kind of caught us with out pants down and all hell was let loose as we realized we had to rapidly patch over 100,000 PCs with Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 before we could then apply the correct Microsoft security patches to halt the virus outbreak. Zotob was the same - but we were prepared and the infection was not so bad.

As a Remote Support Specialist, I was called into action to provide as much remote resolution as possible before we had to pull field engineers to sites to manually patch and clean PCs. I have listed five things that we employed to manage the workload, slow the spread of the virus and eventually keep it all under control.

1. Shutdown

When we were hit with the Zotob virus and everyone’s PCs started shutting themselves down after a few minutes, we initially thought we were hard pressed to find a remote solution. We examined the timing of the event and determined that the login script ran before this event took place. All of our users had the SMS.BAT login script as part of their login process and therefore we decided to use the SHUTDOWN.EXE file from within that login script to stop the PCs from being switched off.

SHUTDOWN -a

This command will abort any shutdown process that is running. If you action this at the right time, then the shutdown process cannot continue. In our case, the SHUTDOWN.EXE was copied to the NETLOGON share on the server and run from there.

2. Lockdown Ports

To stop Zotob from traversing networks and sites, we took the decision to block the relevant TCP and UDP ports on the routers. In the case of Zotob, this was port 445. However, this did have a knock on effect that some sites were affected by being unable to access network printers and server shares - but this is not as important compared to total network meltdown! The ports were kept locked off for over two weeks in the end before we were happy that the infection had come under our control.

3. Payment

Servers were also affected by infection. Upgrading servers to new service packs before being able to patch them with the relevant security fix from Microsoft was a real no-no idea considering there were over 5000 servers in existence on the network, all running different processes, all slightly different - but all running an out of date service pack. In the end, we went “cap in hand” to Microsoft who supplied us with a copy of the relevant patch that would protect the servers. Of course - this was not free. I did hear the sum paid for this special fix - and it was a 5 figure number! Sometimes it is worth paying for these things rather than putting your servers at the mercy of rapid Service Pack upgrades.

4. Remote Resolution

As part of the Remote Resolution team, it came to us to develop and deploy a rapid fix for the situation we now saw ourselves in. We had a mixture of clients. Desktops and laptops on the network and remote desktop and laptop users too. We needed to apply patches and fixes to them all - and fast. We developed a fix methodology for the networked clients as follows:

1. Kill the running virus processes on the remote PC using PSKILL.EXE - mainly to stop the CPU maxing at 100% so step 2 was easier.
2. Gain remote access to the PC using Dameware.
3. Use RunAs to launch an Internet Explorer window as a local admin account (shift right click Internet Explorer, choose Run As).
4. Download the latest service pack from the local server or intranet site.
5. Download the relevant patches and virus clean utilities.
6. Run the service pack upgrade, reboot and log on as local admin.
7. Repeat step 1 again.
8. Install the relevant patches and reboot.
9. Repeat step 1 again.
10. Clean the PCs using supplied cleaning tools from Symantec.

In the end we also found we were able to remotely update the Symantec Anti Virus definition files by copying the installation file to the PC and running it silently in the background using the /S switch. The Symantec clean utilities could also be run silently too if need be. This aided our ability to capture and quarantine the virus whilst we worked on the patching process.
5. CD distribution.

For customers whose PCs were not attached to the network, we developed a CD that would autorun, log on as a local admin or promote the current user and then upgrade, patch and clean the PC. This was not perfect as it had to be developed for various different PC types and builds - but it worked. We had to mail the CD out with instructions and quite a few calls were raised from issues the CDs created - but it was expected not to run perfectly.

Conclusion:

I cannot stress enough the role of the Remote Resolution teams had in controlling the outbreak. Managing the tasks using automation scripts and batch files meant that we had the fixes and were able to apply them quickly without much impact on our other workload. The correct documentation of the processes also provided to the 1st line helpdesk staff with the ability to fix them too.

‘Good news, everyone!’  Futurama is back.  And no, this is not a look into the WhatIf machine.

The original cast members of Futurama are returning to make 13 new episodes of Futurama, scheduled to air on Comedy Central for 2008. Katey Sagal, the voice of ‘Turanga Leela’, told Craig Ferguson of The Late Late Show that all of the original actors had returned for another 13 episodes (1 season), and that they would be airing on Comedy Central.
Don Kaplan, a columnist for the New York Post Online Edition, was able to verify that the show is indeed coming back after a four-year deep freeze. Kaplan’s sources cited the show’s popularity on Adult Swim and strong DVD sales to its return.  It should be noted this was the same reason for the return of Family Guy, which continues to have a strong following and new episodes after halting production in 2002, only to return to prime-time television in 2005.

John DiMaggio, the voice of ‘Bender’, commented on a story at TV Squad:

Hey, everyone. I’m John DiMaggio, I’m the voice of Bender on the show, and yes it’s true: WE’RE COMING BACK! Billy, Katey, Maurice, and myself (as well as the other cast members) are looking forward to (mid-to-late) July to start getting into the studio and record new episodes. Thanks for all the support and digging the show all these years! Bite my shiny metal ass!! And I’m out!!!!!!!!

I’ve seen every episode of this show, and catch the reruns on Adult Swim on Comedy Central.  If you’ve never seen Futurama, you owe it to yourself to check it out, not only for the entertaining storylines, but the layers on layers of hidden meaning, which just add to the hilarity.

I once had a co-worker that kept getting severe signal degradation a few days after he would have a cable comapny rep out to see what the deal was. Rep would leave, the signal would be great, then turn to trash by the next day. Turns out that every house around him was tapping into his coax cable, so the signal had been split 3-4 times before it got to his house. Eventually he got sick of calling the cable repairman and disconnected the coax going to his house, attached a stun gun, and fried anyone still connected to his line.

Now, while quite possibly one of the more hilarious tech stories I’ve heard, I can’t recommend this, unless you want to end up buying people new TV’s for your vigilante justice. But there are a few less-lethal ways of pulling a technology-based prank or two.

Long Awkward Pose

With is a video blog (vidblog?) with a good idea: Have people pose for a picture, and videotape them until they give up. I’ve actually done this on accident before, but never thought of doing it on purpose. And why not? Most digital cameras can take video clips as well. I’d just be afraid that I would run out of recording time, but since my camera takes up to 30 seconds, I really hope my victim would get the idea by then.

Chat Bot

Oh man, did I ever use this back in the day. I can’t find the web site any more, but someone made an AOL chat bot where you could give it a target screen name, supply some innocuous detail about that person, and the chat bot would see how long it could keep them talking. It was surprisingly good, and would send you a transcript of the communication when it was done. Oh, and it would humiliate your friends for wasting time on the bot.

Fake Tests

These are actually pretty shady, but it was bound to happen. Basically what happens here is some geek is too afraid to talk to a girl (a real one), so you go to a web site and give it her email address. It’ll send her junk mail for an ‘free online coolness/dating preferences/iq test’. You get her answers in the email. There are a few of these out there, but I mean, come on. Just talk to them already, what is this, junior high?

Pranks of scale

We’ve all seen these. Cubicle filled with packing peanuts, cubicle covered with post-its. It’s been done, but is still hilarious.
Pure craziness

Working in an IT department breeds some weird stuff. The same guy who taser’ed his neighbor’s coax-connected devices also made a smooth 1/8-inch layer of parmesian cheese in the bottom of a drawer of someone’s workspace, then replaced all of their stuff. When this person came back into work, they were looking for the smell for a while, and were not amused.

Changing the wallpaper to something horribly inappropriate may not go over well at work. Switching a power supply to 230 volts is an explosive eye-opener (possibly in the form of solder shrapnel). I wouldn’t recommend trying either out on your co-workers, but I’m sure there are other not-so-destructive, appropriate-for-Friday jokes out there for those familiar with technology.

What’s your favorite Friday hijinks for Geeks? We all have a few stories from work, but like the Awkward Pose site shows, there are a host of devices in the consumer arena that are begging to be used for evil.

For some reasom, I’ve heard a lot of people talking lately about how they want to get into IT (either Information Systems or Computer Science), and some of them have been asking where to begin. Some want to start their own comapnies, some just want to get a job.

Know what you’re talking about

Getting a degree from a reputable school in IS or CS is a good start, along with reading books on web, net, machine technologies, etc. Certifications don’t hurt either, but they’re not as powerful as they used to be, due to many people getting certified when they obviously only studied for the test…

Define your goals, and stay focused daily

I’ve been telling people that while these things are very valuable, you need to define exactly what your goals are for your career in IT, and make a daily effort to reach for them. Literally. Do something, anything, every. single. day. Even if it’s reading the blogs of Java programmers when you want to be a Java programmer: Every. Day.
How I started

With my first job out of college, I told my employer that I wanted this job to be a learning process, and that I realized that I was new to the workforce. Also, that I was confident in my ability and desire to succeed.

They put me in a low-level job, (basically a helpdesk secretary) but allocated time and money my training. I went from an IT secretary to a Jr. Net Admin in a year, + a 15% raise, using what I learned in the training. In another year I was managing our Email server and acting as a co-Sr. network admin, plus another 15%.

A year later, it was made obvious there was nowhere else to go career-wise in that organization, so I switched org’s and now run my own WAN of 400 machines, split across 3 campuses, and am continuing to fight hard for the right to educate myself. (The current job is a blend of Sr. Net Admin and Director of Technology, although the official title is an unflattering ‘Technology Coordinator’)
I’m planning on continuing this level of progress, getting my master’s degree and gunning for a CIO job before 30. And it is a daily grind, let me tell you.
Sell out your pride for massive gains in the future

If you keep fighting, and have the will to succeed, look at a low-level job as an investment in your future. I’ll be 27 in 3 weeks, and am already have my own network to command, after being in the workforce for only 3 years. To get here, I probably put in at least 5 hours per week reading tutorials online, or tinkering with admin interfaces, just to try and be more knowledgeable about every technology I might want to control some day as a CIO. The ultimate goal is that I will have had some expirience and (at least) a small amount of knowledge about any technology I might have to deal with in my role as CIO.

Summary for the ‘just get a job’ argument

Getting any old job is good just to be doing something, but have a plan/goals, and ask yourself ‘what can I do TODAY to reach for my goals?’. For example, I’m reading up on XHTML, CSS and AJAX while I wait for my master’s degree course to begin. If you don’t have a job and want to be a programmer, find a job that can lead to that. If there aren’t any, get any job, retail, whatever, and study programming at night until a good ‘entrance ramp’ job opens up.
The key is to do something, anything, but also to make sure it’s in line with your ultimate goals. Make sure it’s moving you forward, and not a waste of your time in the long run. (Sometimes it will seem like a waste of time in the short run, such as a programmer working in retail, but look 3+ years down the road…even a small paycheck can buy used programming books…)

Finally, good luck to everyone!