Sunday of my Life

I can successfully install, configure and otherwise Make Good an Apache HTTPD Webserver on Linux. Who’da thunk?

So, inm the midst of a flurry of Cisco CCNA Examinations. Fun they are. Real fun. Cisco are very, very misleading in their exams. Everything must be read very carefully and you must spend every moment aware, hunting for the inconsistancies, the little tricks in thier questions. The questions hidden inside questions. The questions whose answers consist of nothing but 128 character binary strings, three of which only have 1 character differences between them. Fun, no?

So I did the exam for Module 7: Distance-Vector Routing Protocols today. Pass mark was 70%. I scored 57.4%

I was duped, I tells ya! Duped! They played me for a fool in a number of questions. Unfortunately I have no idea which questions they were because Cisco won’t actually tell you what you got right and what you didn’t. They do give you feedback on the things you have to read up on to get things right next time (if the exam is exactly the same next time, which it never is. Each exam has a question pool and is randomly drawn from that every time). I think even this feedback is misleading. There’s things listed here, like IGRP Metrics, that weren’t even on the exam. I get the feeling you’d be told you needed to read up on certain areas even if you got 100%. They nver want you to think that you could know everything they teach you.

Misleading exams. I hate them and the people who design them.

I miss my music whilst I’m working. Last night upon plugging in my headphones at home and settling down to get some work done I discovered my music to be garbled and incomprehensible, with many a-missing frequency and other such things. Completely forgetting everything I’ve learnt about checking on the simplest problems first — since they will inevitably turn out to be the correct answer — I assumed a fault with my sound card. This seemed a safe assumption as various parts of my computer have been falling apart as of late. Uninstalled the hardware and drivers I proceeded to reinstall them, noticing finally that the most vital of the low-level hardware driver components, the Multimedia Audio Control, appeared to be Missing, Presumed Uninstalled. I haven’t found the driver set I need for it yet, although the hunt continues.

Now, as I said, this seemed to be the safe assumption as to the problem, but you know what they say about assumptions. So, as it turns out, I have uninstalled my sound hardware for no reason at all; my headphones are the actual problem. It appears the DSP¹ in the controller unit has gone haywire and is eating up portions of every audio signal that passes through it.

I always learn better with music. Don’t really know why, I just do. It makes me comfortable, I suppose, and when we feel comfortable in our working environment we work better. Quid Pro Quo². I miss my music. I’ve been taking my headphones and a CD packed with music to classes with me whilst I’ve been studying, to try and make myself more comfortable (and to block out the noises of everyone else and, admittedly (with a slight shame at the fact I feel I need to do it), to block out everyone else’s requests for help. To signify that I’m closing myself off from the world and concentrating solely on what I’m doing. I do so love to help people, but I can’t really afford the time it takes to help others out until after I’m done with my exams.

But I do so hate to say no to others. It’s a failing. I’m trying, really I am.

1. Digital Signal Processor, for those not up on their TLAs

2. Quid Quo Pro? Quid Pro Quo? I can never remember which it really is.

Addendum: We have successful restoration of sound and thus music. All is right with the world.

I attended a friend’s engagement party tonight. Walked all the way there (around about an hour’s walk, only to find that three of the other couples there all live down the same street as me. Fun. Oh well, the walk gave me time ot think. I noticed an unusual contrast today as I was walking along. I live in what used to be a small country town, and is now rapidly metamorphising into a major urban center. Walking alongside one of Victoria’s major arterial routes, the Princes Highway, cars, trucks and assorted other poison spewing vehicles flying past me at reckless speeds on one side…

And on the other…

On the other side, open farmlands, fields of wheat (perhaps wheat, maybe just really long grass, who knows; it’s a plant, it’s stalky) waving in the cool summer breeze, farmers in their fields, cows, sheep, horses… and off in the distance, hillsides covered in virgin forest. This was the kind of thing I grew up with, with my gransparent’s farm, days and weeks of my holidays spent three, working, enjoying every damn minute of it. Now I walk along a highway, with the encroaching urbanity on one side, wholesome country life on the other. And I know that over the next few years the urban side will slowly expand, taking over the farm lands, making residential developments, industrial parks, commerical centers, driving this peaceful life back another step, gradually taking it further and further away from us. And it saddens me, I must say. In a few years this will be all but lost to us, and kids around here won’t grow up with it… and they will be missing out, I know it. There are worse ways to live than working on a farm, believe me.
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OK, so I haven’t posted for a week or more. Sue me, I’ve been busy with school coming back. School’s return, along with the increasing failure of my memory, brings around the need for a to-do list, and I may as well put it here, that way people I know can also remind me in case I forget all about it.

To-Do:

• Report on business analysis techniques as they relate to network design
• Find a project for project management (the upcoming West Gippsland Hobbies, Crafts and Model Train Expo sounds viable)
• Network Management Software Report for Network Design Fundamentals
• Sumarries of Modules 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 of CCNA Semester 2, possibly getting ahead in doing Semester 3 and 4 from the Academy’s local course materials server
• Focus Questions for Semester 2 (have to hand write them this time, ergh, but, we do what the course requires)
• Discover what my major assignments for Network Design Fundamentals, LAN Fundamentals and WAN Fundamentals entail
• Aquire networking equipment (preferably a 2500 series and a 2600 series Cisco routers) to practice on, since the router simulators just don’t cut it
• Attend at least one social event per month
• Find work
• Find more work
• Keep work
• Continue the way I’ve started in making use of my student diary to keep myself organised (I think with my failing memory organisation’s going to be my best friend)
• Get well so I can get off this medication and hopefully regain my mental acuity again (may not happen, I have been warned that it can do permanent damage to, especially, one’s short-term memory). I’d dorp the medication in a second if it weren’t for the fact that life with it is just that litlte bit better thna lfie without it, as things currently stand.

There… I’ll make updates to that as the year progresses, mark off completed items and so on and so forth… we’ll see if I remember to use it now.

To be honest with all of you, this is something that has been on my mind lately. One of the side-effects others have been noticing in me from my medication is its effects on my memory.

I don’t remember things.

Seriously.

Someone will tell me something, and ten minutes later… *poof*… it’s gone. I have trouble remembering:

1. Faces and names
2. Things that I have to do
3. Things that I have to tell people
4. Things I meant to put down on this list
5. How to spell words
6. The proper usage of some words
7. The list goes on….

It scares me, it really does. I’m no longer relaiable in how I do things, I can no longer be relied upon to remember things said to me or meetings that I’ve had. I don’t think I can really describe how much fear this fills me with. I can see the difference between what I was and what I am now. I can see the changes this medication has wrought in me; some good, some bad. The bad does not outweigh the good though, and there are some parts of me that I don’t want to go back to being, so I’ll continue wth the medication despite what I can see changing in me.

In a year or two I’ll (hopefully) be employed in an industry where my job will rely upon me remembering everything and so by then I must work out a system whereby I can keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing, and remember that I am keeping track of it. If I cannot do that, I don’t think I’ll even pass my course, becuase as my memory goes, thereby also goes my concentration, my attention span and my organisation skills. Without those I have no hope at all. Partially this post is just me getting my thoughs and fears down inot some kind of format, partially it’s a call for help. I can’t be the only one out there who has trouble remembering things. Are there any practical solutions for a guy in IT to use for this? I’ve tried writing things down, but then I forget that I’ve written them down. I don’t know what I can do but, by God, I need to do something!

It’s over.

Today I had my last exam, handed in my last piece of work, got my marks and it’s all over. My first year of Network Engineering is completed, and (to my own surprise if no one else’s) completed very successfully. Topping my class in several areas. Yes, I was surprised about that.

This year has seen its ups and it’s seen its downs. So, basically, it was just another year. Made some new friends though, Drewboy, Kralc, Jéson, others… enjoyed myself despite the bad points and, at times, despite myself. Will I come back next year and do the next certification? Continue onwards into the third year and get my double advanced diploma in Network Engineering and Internetworking?

On both counts Hell Yes

OK, so at first when I started doing Java this semester I didn’t like it. It was huge, lumbering, complicated and confusing (and believe me, in my present medicated state I am easily confused). But now, as we draw closer to the close of the term, the little lightbulb has finally worked up the current the go *bing* in my head. Everything’s slipped into place, and I’ve even discovered that the things that I did understand but hated becuase the offended my sense of good design ethic aren’t as bad as they seem.

Perhaps I should explain that last part.

See, when you create a GUI application in java, at first you’re stuck with using the Abstaract Windows Toolkit, or awt for short, to make use of the FlowLayout parameters. FlowLayout allows you to specify a layout direction (LEFT or RIGHT usually) that all of your layout elements with allign to. Say you chose LEFT, youd end pu with your elements arranging themselves left to right, top to bottom on your Pane, in the order they were added to the layout. OK, so this, so far, isn’t so far from a basic CSS layout, right? Well then, here’s where it turns ugly. There is no way, absolutely no way at all insofar as I can find (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) to tell an element “I want you at these x/y coordinates”. You have to use (*shudder*) black labels to space out elements.

Dear God…hitting the spacebar wildly to add whitespace to the end of the label and so move away it’s associated text field. Creating blank labels to shove the next label and field set down to the next line. Save me! Save me now!

To the rescue comes the almighty Swing! Swing is by far a better GUI backender, with many more layout options (including the ulimate in power, design and flexibility, the Grid Bag), and just works so much better. plus there’s also a method allowed by swing called .setLocation which lets you set the location of an element in x/y pixel coordinates. This is rather a moot point when it comes to the Grid Bag, but I’m still excited that it’s there nonetheless.