QOTD

Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
- Ronald Reagan

Certifiable... Again

I passed the last of 5 tests today for my Cisco Certified Security Professional certification (aka CCSP). :-) Finally!!!

Juxtaposition

Ok when I saw this at the local video store, I had to take a picture and share. I mean come on, the Golden Girls next to a reality show about Playboy models? What wonderful coincidence!

Geek Consumer

Apparently I haven't been in the market for much gadgetry lately. I went to browse at Best Buy today because I have money from Christmas and well you know how much fire that can create in one's pocket. I do need a new wireless router for home so I started looking at them. Boy am I glad that I'm a networking geek. The marketing departments for the major brands like Linksys (Cisco), Netgear and D-Link work overtime on those packages. Faster, better, new!!! They're selling 802.11n gear as if it's a standard already and don't even look for a cheap 802.11b router, they no longer exist. What is really interesting to me is that the biggest broadband pipe that I've seen in most markets is 10Mbps down (not including FiOS since that's still a pipe dream for most people), but people are being sold into buying equipment that can run at 54Mbps or even >100Mbps. What's this for? I mean really even in the enterprise space where I work, we have 100Mbps ethernet everywhere, but the average desktop user is lucky to peak above 128Kbps sustained bandwidth for any length of time.

After deciding to wait on my router, I continued browsing and got to the home theater area of the store. While I've got a decent 5.1 Dolby/DTS system now, it doesn't support high definition video or audio and well ever since I got my HD TV I've wanted to actually see something HD. One thing that I noticed is that most of the systems at Best Buy have DVD players built into the receivers, while I'm all for saving space, I'm not sure I want to have my DVD player built into my receiver. I've had my current receiver for almost 6 years and in that time I've had at least 4 DVD players come and go due to failure. I guess it's like back in college when I refused to buy a TV with a built in VCR (man so old tech now).

Well that's my two cents... oh and as for my pocket, it's still on fire. Maybe after my tax refund I'll splurge. :-)

Disappointment, Yet Hope

Well the Illini's great season has come to a disappointing end. There were a lot of silly turnovers and a disappointingly flat offense, but there were signs of hope for next season. Mendenhall will be back as will the Juice. Illinois wasn't picked to be a big player in the bowls this year, but not only did they earn a bowl appearance, thanks to their upset of Ohio they made it to the BCS Rose Bowl. What an accomplishment for a team that in the previous two seasons had only won 4 games. Hopefully next fall we will see an experience Illinois team take the Big Ten by storm!

Hello 2008

"Here's to the new year. May she be a damn sight better than the old one, and may we may we all be home before she's over." -- Col. Sherman T. Potter (M*A*S*H)

Ok so this year wasn't as bad as being in a war zone over seas like the characters in M*A*S*H, but for me it has been a rather long year of waiting for things to change. Thankfully things are starting to change and as 2008 dawns things are looking very promising. I met a wonderful woman named Emily about a month ago and things seem to be going very well. Also I'm making moves that seem to be starting to pay off in terms of moving forward with my career and where I want to be professionally and in life in general. Here's to the new year, may it continue to evolve as it appears now. :-)

QOTD

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
- Ronald Reagan