Sunday of my Life

Thanks to the good graces of one of my good friends, I was recently offered a teaching position as a lab assistant for my University. Did I accept? Did I ever!

So last night I had my first real lab, with an unexpected preamble. I was asked to take over someone’s tutorial, just for last night. It wasn’t a terribly long time to prepare, but I don’t think that I did too badly. The students certainly seemed to enjoy it.

(As a side note? When it comes to teaching give me adults every time. Give me people who actually want to be there. Give me people who actually have maturity, and who know how to ask the right questions.)

Because of this, though, I ended up missing my train home, and got home near-on midnight. Needless to say, with a start at 6:30 the next morning, I was a little tired today.

Okay, I was a lot tired today.

Getting off the train tonight, I was getting some funny look. Now, I’m no stranger to people looking at me in a funny way. Been happening one way or another for most of my life. But this caught my — somewhat addled — attention. I didn’t find out why exactly people were staring until I got back to the car. See, my usual winter attire includes two coats. Otherwise, lately, I’m just too cold for comfort.

It turns out that, since I was tired and wasn’t paying attention, I’d zipped the left side of my inner coat to the right side of my outer coat. I think my father only just finished laughing at that.

…

Nope, there he goes again.

Today, I recieved my official notification from RMIT as to the status of my application for the Bachelor of Applied Science (Information Technology). SOunds spiffy, doesn’t it? I quote below the best portion of the letter:

Dear Mr. [Person]

I am pleased to advise your application for admission to RMIT University has been successful for the following program:

Program BP162 Bachelor of Applied Science (Information Technology)
Plan: BP162 B App Sci (Informtation Tech)
Acedemic Load: Full time
Fee Type: CSP (Commonwealth Supported Placement)
Attendance Mode: Internal
Campus: City Campus

I just have to turn up to the appointed place on the 4th of July and 10 AM, and fill out my enrollment forms,then pay my student dues, and all shall be peachy. Woo!

I meant to make this post, uhh… something like a week ago, and just kept forgetting…

My CCNA certificate and wallet card finally arrived. Yay me! I’m all official and stuff now.

Today was… hot. Very hot. Try 37 degree celsius (that’s ~98 to those of you in America-land). Despite said heat, though, I ventured into the city today, to visit one of my favourite bookstores. The Technical Bookshop. I am so glad I decided to go too. I bought three books (and have a fourth on order). At a steal, too! $10 for two of them, $20 for one. The one that’s on order I put a $20 deposit down on, and that will cost a further hundred once it comes in, but it will be worth it.

1. SAMS: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Dealta Guide: A hand-reference book on the Windows Server 2003 platform, covering all its base capabilities. A handy guide for any aspiring network admin.
2. O’Rielly: Linux Server Hacks: This is the good kinda hack, the things that help systems run better and faster and more securely. Not the media hyped sort of hack that a mother or offshore casino might do on your bank’s systems to get at your money. That’s a crack. I do so wish the media would get the parlance right and stop villifying the innocent parties.
3. Syngress Computers: RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) Study Guide: Okay, this is wonderful (or will be once I get my hands on it). I read quickly throguh the somewhat battered display copy of it today, the only one left. And I cannot wait to get my copy of it. Further study, here I come!
4. Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Character Naming Sourcebook: A bit out of step with the other books, yes, but it was a steal at $10, and a gift for my sister, who is both a big fan of Sherrilyn kenyon, and will be studying professional writing and editing in the coming year.

I am officially geeking out. So much techy goodness. Plus the look on my sister’s face when I handed the book to her was damn nice too.

As far as my brain is concerned there is no such thing as six in the morning. I laid out carefully, last night, everything I would need to take with me today. Keys. Wallet. Watch. Credit card (not mine). Noterised letter stating that I’m allowed to use the aforementioned credit card. Study-guide to read on the train (again). Cisco Academy connection ID. CCNA 640-801 voucher number… all nise and neat and in order. Perfect for the sleepy mind to just grab and go

Well, not quite.

I got onto the train at 7:10AM, sat down, and started reading, going over points, trying to memorise what I can (and I should have learnt my lesson by now, studying on the day never helps me at all. I tend to start forgetting things, then). I never suspected, not thorguh the hour long trip up to Caulfield, nor through the 15 minute wait for the next Frankston train, or even through the 40 minute trip down to Frankston. I had left two crucial things at home. My academy connection ID, and my CCNA voucher number. Without these I can’t take the exam or, even if I could, get my discount.

Luckily they let me call home, and I woke up Erin, who told me what I needed to know, and so I could take the exam at a 50% discount. So, crisis solved. And I’m drained, completely, now. I barely slept last night, on the go since early in the morning, and it’s nearly 4PM now.

Addendum: Oh, and I passed by the way. Just barely. I needed 849 out of 1000, and I got 857. But I passed. I told you my brain was asleep!

VLSM, or Variable Length Subnet Masks is a by-product of the advanced routing concepts of such routing protocols as IS-IS, OSPF, EIGRP and RIP version 2, called Classless Inter-Domain Routing (or CIDR, Cider, get it?). At its most simlistic VLSM allows you to take an already subnetted network, and subnet one or more of the subnets further, creating out of them yet more networks. It was developed, like all forms of subnetting, in response to the shrinking address space in the IEEE private network specifications. If you subnetted your network, in order to create seperate router links you would need to use one subnet per point-to-point link. That’s two addresses used out of potentially hundreds or thousands of addresses in that one subnet. A massive waste of addresses.

VLSM, therefore, allows you to specify one subnet for all of your router links and, upon subnetting it, instead of having hundreds of addresses wasted, you can have hundreds of extra networks, each with only the requisite two addresses. Lets run through an example (the actual point of this post, since I literally am studying into my keyboard. One of the best ways to learn somthing is to teach it to someone else, so that’s what I’m doing). Sit back, ladies and gentlemen, and prepare to be amazed, astounded, and bored to death! Binary, ho!

We start with the Class A private address: 10.0.0.0

It has the default subnet mask of: 255.0.0.0

We require 102 networks, one of which will be dedicated to point-to-point router links

As far as our subnetting is concerned the first octet doesn’t exist, since we can’t change it. Since we can’t change it we don’t worry about it. After that point, everything becomes binary:

255.00000000.00000000.00000000

What, boys and girls, is the subnetting formula? That’s right. 2^{n-2. Two to the power of an unknown and variable number, mnus two, will give us the number of useable networks. So, we need 102 of the little buggers? Well, we can’t do that purely in binary, so we have to go as close as we can, without getting under it. So we work with place-values. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, so on, so forth. The closest we can get is 128. @8}-2 gives us 128-2, or 126. Good. This fits, so we can work with it. We’re borrowing 8 bits for the root subnet. our subnet mask now looks like:

255.11111111.00000000.00000000

Or

255.255.0.0

If we draw an imaginary line down the seperator between the network portion and the host portion we get:

11111111.11111111|00000000.00000000

So, working from this, we start creating our subnets. Best practice states that, if you have ot have one network purely to be further subnetted for router links, you make it the final network, giving you all that extra room before it to logically scale the network with minimum fuss. So, if we do the first, say, 10 networks, including network address and broadcast, we get the following diagram:


10.00000001|00000000.00000000 First Network
10.00000001|11111111.11111111 First Broadcast
10.00000010|00000000.00000000 Second Network
10.00000010|11111111.11111111 Second Broadcast
10.00000011|00000000.00000000 Third Network
10.00000011|11111111.11111111 Third Broadcast
10.00000100|00000000.00000000 Fourth Network
10.00000100|11111111.11111111 Fourth Broadcast
10.00000101|00000000.00000000 Fifth Network
10.00000101|11111111.11111111 Fifth Broadcast
10.00000110|00000000.00000000 Sixth Network
10.00000110|11111111.11111111 Sixth Broadcast
10.00000111|00000000.00000000 Seventh Network
10.00000111|11111111.11111111 Seventh Broadcast
10.00001000|00000000.00000000 Eighth Network
10.00001000|11111111.11111111 Eighth Broadcast
10.00001001|00000000.00000000 Nineth Network
10.00001001|11111111.11111111 Nineth Broadcast
10.00001010|00000000.00000000 Tenth Network
10.00001010|11111111.11111111 Tenth Broadcast
...
10.11111110|00000000.00000000 Final Network
10.11111110|11111111.11111111 Final Broadcast


Okay. So, our big subnets are worked out, all fine ‘n’ dandy. That’s just plain old subnetting thus far. Now we come to the VLSM. We take our final subnet up there, and subnet it again. We stop thinking, now, of the number of networks we need. Now we think of the number of hosts per subnet. We need 2 hosts per subnet. In order to achieve this we need to borrow 2 bits, as 2² - 2 = 4 - 2 = 2. In order to achieve this we allocate the remainder of the bits, 30 in total, to networks, giving us the subnet mask of:

255.11111111.11111111.11111100

Or

255.255.255.252

Taking this, and acting as if our final subnet there was our root network, we get this (I’ll only do a couple):


10.254.00000000.000001|00
10.254.00000000.000001|11
10.254.00000000.000010|00
10.254.00000000.000010|11


Giving us router links on the networks 10.254.0.4, 10.254.0.8, 10.254.0.12, etc, etc. See the pattern? Going up by 4s. It makes things easier, believe me. That’s all there is to VLSM. It’s exactly like regular subnetting, just using a different address for your root network. Simple, once you know how.

You heard me, folks. I have officially just completed my CNAP (Cisco Networking Academy Program) Semester 4 Final and compulsary voluntary feedback exams. I scored 88.9% on the final, and with this score (considering the pass is 70%), I am more than happy. Didn’t help — being the paranoid soul that I am — to have a group of people standing behind me laughing as I do the exam. Or the V.35 Serial Cable hitting me in the back of the head. But I got through it regardless of any machinations on their part, real or imaginary. Remember folks: Just because you think they’re out to get you is no reason to assume they aren’t.

Quite close to being done with the meat of my Project Development report.

I’m such a trend sheep. This report is about 60% pretty logos and pictures and other assorted frivolities, and 40% actual content.

Just follow the flock, that’s me. All in the name of getting it passed with the minimum of having to rewrite it. Where’s the infernal contract, where do I sign? I have sold my soul to the trend for the purposes of expediency.

So we draw close to the end. After two gruelling years of further education, I come close to the end of my qualifications. Five weeks to go. All I need to do then is go and sit my CCNA and RHCT exams externally and I have my full swag of qualifications. I want to do my AusTel Data Cabling certification, but that’s not essential. Would be nice, though.

So now we come to what is possibly the least fun part of the whole game. Assembling my resume. My curriculum vitae. My Document O’ Bragging, as I sometimes think of it. It’s never easy to put a resume together from scratch. What do you put in? What don’t you? I have a lot of qualifications I can list, and everyone loves to see previous job experience, right? When it comes time to put the application letters out there I’m going to be saturating a couple of different industry sub-sectors (not-for-profit and education) with my name.

In times past I’ve applied for a hundred jobs in one go, and gotten three interviews. This I attribute to my resume, my lack of qualifications beyond high-school and my Audio Engineering diploma (which, admittedly, is not useful in all but a select subset of jobs). Now I have qualifications and I have experience (that I’m not planning on admitting to), and so it begins. It’s time to write. If anyone reading has advice on doing it right, drop a comment in, or contact me offline. I think the sum-total of my readership has those details anyway. I also think there’s an ‘email the author’ link around here somewhere. Have a look. I’d love to hear from you.

Expoyment: v. cont. Experienced Enjoyment. Enjoyment of experiencing something that, previously, was not found to be enjoyable.

Once Upon A Time, in a land Down Under, an 18-year-old guy, fresh out of high-school, applied to work at his former high-school, carrying on with the job he had been doing there as a student volunteer for three years previous. He discovered, after signing his year-long work contract, that part of his duties would involve taking classes in Audio-Visual skills. This turned out to be not a fun time at all, and contributed, in part, to the problems he faced in later life. At this time he formed the opinion that teaching was not for him and in the course of this actually became violently opposed to it on a personal level. He associated getting up in front of a class with pain, ridicule and embarassment. Whilst fully willing ot admit that others can do it, he was firmly convinced that he couldn’t. This turned against him, making it about his own failings, and this sense of failure characterised a large part of his life over the next few years.

Three years later, he took up education again, this time as a student again. Taking a course he had always dreamed of doing, learning things that had always been his passion. In this course he met an inspiring man, a man who showed him how much fun teaching can be; how much fun the teacher can make it for the students, whilst enjoying it him- or herself. A glimmer of the old compulsion started in him, but he supressed it. He was born into a family of educators, and about the only one among them who didn’t enjoy teaching. His experiences told him that he wasn’t a good teacher; so yes, that method may work for this good person, but it wouldn’t for him.

Then some of his new-found friends in the class began to struggle with the work or the concepts to be understood. And again the compulsion came up; that compulsion to impart knowledge, to help them… to teach. Slowly he took first one, then two on. Building up from humble beginnings — a word here or there, some help, a few examples — he eased himself back into teaching. Here were people of maturity, people who actually wanted — and were eager to — learn. Here, he felt safe. So he started taking study groups, and found himself greatly encouraged by his teachers.

Now, if you haven’t guessed, the boy in this little monologue is yours truly. I was out tonight, as usual, working and tutoring and helping where I could. People have been asking me lately why, exactly, I give up my own time to do it. And finally I realised: I enjoy it. I never used to. For me teaching was associated with some very painful memories, and in a way still is. But they’re no longer a source of inner, remembered shame. Now I use them to guide me. I… enjoy seeing the look on someone’s face as they grasp a difficult concept, hearing the sound of their voice as they feel it dawn on them. The awakening of yet another mind to new ways of thinking, to alternate paths. This, now, is why I would do it. If the offer was made to me, for this reason would I teach: Becuase I enjoy imparting knowledge.

I’m not pretending that there wouldn’t be hardship involved. I’m not pretending it would be easy. But, in the end, it is worth it. Helping others succeed is… pure expoyment.