• In the shadowed depths of night, where silence reigns,
    A network, once vibrant, now fades in gloom,
    Its circuits, dead, like spectral, ghostly chains,
    No longer does it herald or consume.

    Oh, how the whispers of the web did cease,
    The humming ceased, the lights went dark, then cold,
    In digital demise, there found no peace,
    But tales of loss and legends yet untold.

    The servers, once alive with fervent quest,
    Now rest in mute, an eerie, silent crypt,
    Where bytes and bits, in deathly dirge, do rest,
    And all connection to the world is stripped.

    Thus, in this void, where once the data flowed,
    The network fails, and in its death, is silent.

    — Grok 2

            

  • There are skills that our grandparents and great-grandparents had, that we (as a society, at least) are sadly lacking in today. The art of “making do” is one of those skills. It’s something we MUST learn to do, and quickly. Whether we have some type of country-wide emergency, an apocalyptic event, or a recession, the ability to “make do” is crucial.

    So what is “making do,” you ask? It is actually an amalgamation of important skills. First and foremost, it is living within your means, no matter how uncomfortable. That means putting away the credit card and paying cash for things. If you can’t afford something, you don’t purchase it. Don’t live a filet mignon life when you have a hamburger budget.

    It’s so much more than that, though. How many of you have mended a pair of socks or your jeans because they got a hole in them but still had a lot of life to them? Likely very few of you. Until the last ten years or so, I hadn’t done much of that myself. Even as someone who had a very low income, I could afford our frankly very cheap clothing. Today, even though I have access to considerably more money, I tend to spend less.

    I do know how to darn a sock, mend a hole in a knitted sweater, and hem or patch clothing. I practice these skills on a regular basis. A good example of this is that I discovered my favorite holiday dress was eaten into (likely by a bunny, but we don’t know for sure). There are several jagged holes, and they’re near the hemline. I could patch the holes, but they would be very noticeable, and I don’t want that. I could darn them or put a decorative patch on them (which I’ve done with some of my jean skirts), but again, it wouldn’t look nice. It’s a nicer dress. Instead, I’ve decided to shorten the entire dress. I tend to wear it with tights or leggings anyhow, because it’s quite short and revealing, so taking off the 1.5 inches to remove the holes will not really be seen. As a bonus, it will give me a strip of the dress’s fabric that I can use for future patching, should it ever be necessary. My lovely holiday dress will live on, and I will enjoy wearing it despite a few mishaps.

    (more…)

            

  • Filler

    Depression has been making it difficult to focus. There are some Supreme Court cases I should look at. There are some other cases I need to check in on.

    Networking and computer stuff is a normal fall back for me. They are subjects that I can talk about without research. I just know this stuff.

    TDS

    X is full of TDS. People make claims as to what Trump said, then attack what they think he meant. Often when he didn’t say the things they claim he said.

    People make unfounded claims.

    Joe and Mika are butthurt by the backlash from them going to Mar-a-Lardo to slurp on trump’s tiny (mushroom). “We went there to get a read of the man.” (thoughtful face) What’s to read? We already know he’s a racist, fascist, criminal piece of shit. They can go fuck themselves.
    — Scary Larry on X

    People asking for explanations or reasons. Calmly saying they are going to ignore anything offensive. Then being offensive to anything that isn’t anti-Trump.

    It is draining.

    The hits keep coming

    In 1987, the Democrats set the tone for all forthcoming republican nominations to the Supreme Court. Ted Kennedy called Robert Bork, saying “Robert Bork’s America” [would be] a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.

    It only got worse for Justice Thomas.

    Today, we are seeing the left wing rollout every standard accusation possible for every Trump nominee. It is disgusting.

    Question of the Week

    What government program or agency do you see as the most wasteful of taxpayer money?

            

  • In 1983, CCITT and ISO merged their network definition to create The Basic Reference Model for Open Systems Interconnection.

    This is the “famous” seven layer model. Which works for ISO standards but is a poor match for the Internet.

    The three layers we are interested in are:

    1. Physical layer
    2. Data link layer
    3. Network layer

    1 Physical Layer

    The physical layer defines the electrical, mechanical, and procedural interface to the transmission medium. WTF?

    Ok, let’s look at this in terms of some real examples. If you have a computer that is more than a few years old, it will have a network connection in it or a port that a network connection can be attached to.

    The most common mechanical connection, the socket and connector, is the RJ-45. This is the thing that looks like a big telephone connector. Oh yeah, many of the youngsters don’t remember every plugging a phone into the wall.

    This connector consists of 8 connectors. The location and form of these connectors defines part of the mechanical system.

    The other part is that those 8 connectors are attached to four pairs of wires. The pairs of wire are twisted and bundled into a single cable. Each of the 8 wires are numbered, and the mechanical definition of the RJ-45 defines which wires are attached to which connector, at both ends.

    When I say “numbered”, the physical reality is that the wires are color coded.

    The electrical definition defines which wires are used for transmitting and which are used for receiving. It defines if the signals are ground referenced or differences between two wires.

    Everything about how to connect the physical devices and how to transmit a signal are specified at Layer 1, the physical layer.

    2 Data Link Layer

    This layer defines how data is transmitted over the L1 physical network. It defines what how to use the physical layer.

    For example, Frame Relay is a data link protocol for connecting distant devices. Each Protocol Data Unit (PDU), consists of a flag field, an address field, an information field, and a frame check sequence, or checksum field.

    The information field contains the actual data (information) that is being transmitted.

    The Frame Relay standard states that the information field must be at least 262 octets (bytes) and recommends that it support at least 1600 octets.

    It is important to note that a length of 262 cannot be (easily) expressed in a single byte. This means that the length field must be at least 2 bytes wide.

    While Frame Relay is still in use, today, it is not as common as it used to be. There are better options.

    A much more common L2 protocol is Ethernet. This is called a Frame. The Frame consists of a preamble, start frame delimiter, destination address, src address, tag (or zeros), type or length, payload, CRC and a gap.

    As originally defined, an Ethernet packet had a maximum length of 1500 octets.

    Packet Size

    In networking, we talk about sending a packet. A packet is a more generic term for “frame”. We have packets at the data link layer and at the network layer.

    Every packet contains enough information to identify the source and destination of the packet, the length of the packet, and the payload. There will often be a header to identify more about the type of the packet.

    As a packet moves through a network, it might be “fragmented” as it passes through a network segment which has an MTU smaller than the packet size.

    There must be enough information to reconstruct the packet, even when the packet has become fragmented.

    Fragmenting is something we want to avoid, if possible.

    To that end, a part of the connection process is to discover the MTU for each device.

    Consider a simple network segment. A network segment is a piece of the network that is connected at L2.

    We have devices A and B. Device A is using a fiber physical layer and device B is using a copper physical layer. B is attached to switch 2, switch 2 is connected to switch 1, and switch 1 is connected to device A.

    If all four devices are using old style Ethernet frames, then the MTU will default to 1500. A simple database backup is 3.3 GB. This means we will have to transmit at least 2,305,845 packets.

    This requires each device to handle 2.3 million interrupts.

    On the other hand, if we were to use jumbo packets, then we reduce this to around 384,307 packets. This is a huge savings in load on the network segment.

    The two switches, as L2 devices, are going to either be store and forward switches, or simple hubs. Nobody uses hubs anymore. So they must be switches.

    Each switch receives the packet, storing it, then transmits that packet on a different port.

    The switch must be able to store the complete packet/frame. If it can not, it will drop the packet.

    When designing your network, you want to make sure that all the switches on the network support the largest MTU you might be using.

    Devices A and B will discover what their MTUs are. The smaller will rule. The switches, on the other hand, are transparent. They do not get a say in the MTU discovery.

    What this means, is that you can have devices on the network that respond to simple testing, such as sending pings, but which fail for larger packets.

    Conclusion of Rant

    I accidentally purchased a switch (L2) when I was intending to purchase a router (L3).

    This should not have been an issue. I intended to use some switches, regardless.

    The specifications look good. MTU is documented as 12000.

    I plug everything together and start testing. My first network test is always “ping”. If ping isn’t working, nothing else will work well enough.

    That worked perfectly.

    Then I attempted to login to the remote site using SSH. This silently failed, before timing out with destination unreachable.

    Ping works, SSH doesn’t?

    This makes no sense.

    Until I found it. SSH does a key exchange with my RSA public key. The key size is 1679 bytes. This is larger than the supported MTU of switch 2 at 1500.

    The network fails, silently.

    So I have email out to the manufacturer, hoping for a positive response.

            

  • We’ve all heard it. That damned One Percent. If only they would share their wealth! If only the One Percent would pay their fair share! How dare the One Percent take away from me and mine!

    The outrage is real, but what’s behind it?

    The short answer is, greed. It’s more than that, though. There’s a sense of entitlement we build up for various reasons, and we, as Americans, have certain expectations. Someone, somewhere, told us that we deserve to own a house by the time we’re 30. Someone said that we ought to have a car by age 25. Someone implied that we should be able to afford lavish vacations by age 50. The list goes on.

    This elusive “someone” goes right back to the media, in my very strong opinion. Television shows and movies highlight the people who are exceptions to all the rules. That’s just film, after all. None of us are interested in seeing boring stuff on tv, right? You go to television (and books and such) to read about the extraordinary, the strange, the unusual. But when it’s force fed to us on a regular basis, it can seem like each of us, ALL of us, should have those things.

    The bottom line is, not all of us can afford to own our own homes. Not everyone can afford a car. Not everyone can afford to have one parent stay home and watch the kids. Not everyone can afford expensive medical care. It is (in some cases) a sad state of affairs, but it is the way of the world.

    The basic status of human beings is poverty. While we’re working on “extreme poverty” around the world (defined as not having the basic human needs of water, shelter, food met), basically about half the world population lives in poverty. It should be noted, however, that 90% of those who live in the worst poverty tend to live in African and Asian countries (World Poverty Statistics 2024 | Social Income. https://socialincome.org/en/int. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.).  In America, we consider a person to be living in poverty if they’re bringing home (before taxes) $14,580 a year (or roughly $40 per day). Elsewhere in the world, “poverty” is defined as bringing home less than about $7 a day (“Overview.” World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.).

    (more…)

            

  • I wish this were easy. It isn’t.

    At issue is the number of people claiming that Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

    Like most things legal, the answer is never simple. The reason is that many laws have internal definitions that do not match the definitions in other parts of the law. And there is the use of the common vernacular.

    First, the common vernacular, and the language used by the court, is that a person is convicted when they have been adjudicated guilty. This is when the jury returns a guilty verdict or a judge, in a bench trial, finds a person guilty. This also applies to certain pleadings of the defendant, such as a pleading of guilty or nolo contendere plea.

    By this definition, Hunter Biden and Donald Trump are both convicted felons.

    Second, in some places in the U.S.C., they define “convicted” to mean when found guilty, when sentenced, or both. 41 USC § 8101(a)(3) uses this definition. Chapter 81 of 41 USC is the chapter on a drug-free workplace.

    In other words, the definition of convicted, when talking about a drug-free workplace, uses the “when found guilty”.

    The Kicker

    The Criminal Resource Manual (CRM) has the following:

    For fugitives who have been convicted and either escaped or otherwise failed to complete their sentences, extradition treaties dispense with the requirement of establishing the crime through affidavits. Instead, the treaties require proof of conviction. In United States practice, conviction means a finding of guilt (i.e., a jury verdict or finding of fact by the judge) and imposition of sentence. If the defendant fled after the verdict but before sentencing, he or she has not been convicted, and the prosecutor must supply the affidavits described in this Manual at 608, unless the treaty specifically equates conviction with a finding of guilt.

    The conviction may be proved by a certified copy of the Judgment and Commitment Order or the equivalent state form. Proof that the fugitive is unlawfully at large may take the form of an affidavit from the warden of the institution from which the fugitive escaped, or from the marshal if the fugitive failed to surrender after sentencing. The time remaining to be served (not counting reductions for good behavior) must be stated.
    —Justice Manual | 609. Evidence Of Conviction | United States Department of Justice, (last visited Dec. 4, 2024)

    So what does this mean?

    In my NON-lawyer opinion? Donald Trump is a convicted felon who is seeking reversal on appeal. Until he is sentenced, he is not convicted per international law.

    In addition, the judgement is currently stayed, pending the outcome of the appeal.

    Hunter Biden is a convicted felon who has been pardoned.

            

  •         

  • If you’re like me, you currently have a turkey carcass somewhere in your fridge, freezer, or on your (very cold) porch. Thanksgiving was delicious, and you’ve mostly picked that carcass clean. What’s left are the bits no one generally eats (wings maybe, or the bottom of the bird, the backbone, and perhaps the neck and giblets). Don’t throw those away, folks. That right there is Winter Gold.

    To make a hearty turkey broth is quite easy. You can do it in a crockpot, a Westinghouse (which is my method), or on your stove top. This can even be done over a fire, on a hearth, or on top of your wood stove, if you like. You simply need a heat source that will bring your liquid to a low simmer, but not a full boil.

    Whatever method you’re using, the preparation is exactly the same. First, denude your bird. Pull off ALL the edible meat (yes, even from the legs). Leave behind tendons, bones, gristly bits, and parts no one eats. Store the meat in the fridge for later. Now take your hands, a large knife, or a good pair of kitchen sheers and cut the bird into pieces that will fit into whatever you’re making your broth in. You want all the bones and bits to be submerged, so depending on your size of pot, you may need to chop up the bird fairly small. It’s perfectly okay to put the carcass into your pot then use a large spoon or a wooden mallet to shove and break it until it fits. For our purposes, it does not matter if the bones are broken.

    Once the bird is in the pot, you will begin to add your vegetables. If you want to be truly frugal, you should add in all the peelings and skins from Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t save all mine (though I have in the past), so instead, I’m adding in the following:

    • one whole onion, skin on, quartered
    • one head of garlic, cut in half so all the cloves are halved, skin on
    • 2 bay leaves
    • leftover carrots (carrot tops and skins are fine here, too)
    • celery tops (the leafy bits, rough chopped)
    • whatever herbs you prefer (my garden yielded the last of the sage, thyme, and some parsley)
    • whatever spices you prefer (at least the standards: salt, pepper, garlic)

    Add all these to your pot, and then pour in enough water to cover everything, but not to boil over. Bring your broth to a boil, and then put the temperature down to low and let it simmer for several hours.

    (more…)

            

  • When I was a small kid, I would get in fights with the neighbor kid across the street from me. The parents were cool about it, but were unhappy with the bare knuckle part of the fighting. So, we were issued boxing gloves and went at it with all the grace of two gangly 3rd graders.

    Plenty of swings, plenty of hits, but no real damage. Jimbo won all but one of those fights.

    After every lose, I would think about what had happened and vowed to get better. Only to be beat in our next confrontation.

    It was soul crushing. At the same time, I was dealing with a bully who would chase me home after school, every day.

    After each battle, as I lay on the ground, crying, humiliated, he would taunt me.

    The last time we fought, I won. I had learned enough to actually beat him. When he was about to go down, I went at him even harder.

    He went down, and I took a step back, started to taunt him.

    His brothers and sister immediately stepped in to cool things off. It was about sportsmanship. Being the better man. Doing the honorable thing.

    As a 3rd grader, it was difficult, but I did manage it.

    That was our last fight. He was no longer interested in fighting, preferring to talk about it instead.

    President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
    —Justice Manual | 609. Evidence Of Conviction | United States Department of Justice, (last visited Dec. 4, 2024)

    When the Democrats lost control of the congress, Obama was famously quoted as saying, “I have a pen and a phone.” Telling the world that he was going to use executive powers to do what congress had not authorized him to do, sort of like a dictator.

    From the moment that Trump was declared the victor of the 2024 election, there have been two loud groups of Democrats and leftists.

    The first is calling me stupid because of how I voted, cutting their hair to spite Trump voters (huh? I don’t get it), wishing that the economy will crash, and in general exhibiting all the standard symptoms of TDS.

    The other group is making speeches, telling me that we have to remember the other half of the country, that we have to work to end the divide between us, to allow the losers a place at the table.

    In other words, don’t do to them what they do to us, every time.

    Ally was very upset that Merrick Garland wasn’t given a chance to testify before the Senate Judicial committee, to find out if he was a good person for the Supreme Court.

    I pointed out that the best that Merrick could be was worse than anybody a Republican would nominate. She is still upset that he didn’t get a full hearing.

    There is no reason for the Trump administration to put wolves in with the flock. There is no reason for him to trust the olive branch that is handed to him. There is no reason to try to temper the response that is coming.

    Here’s the thing, it is time for a scorched earth response. It is a time to clean out the rat’s nest that is the unelected bureaucracy of the Federal Government.

    I’m looking forward to hearing about the RIFs that are going to happen. I’m looking forward to higher ups that are not fired, but offered positions in Nome, Alaska. I’ve been offered that choice, I could find a position elsewhere in the company, in the next six weeks, or I could resign.

    It is not fun. It happens to many people.

    I’m also looking forward to true investigations of the criminal activities against The People, against Trump, and against my country.

    I don’t remember what the statute of limitations is on mishandling classified materials, but if it is long enough, Mrs Clinton should be charged. She was investigated, the acting director of the FBI determined that she wasn’t guilty because her purpose was pure.

    Nobody else with a security clearance would get that pass.

    Or the serial leaker.

    Or the people who refused to show up for congressional subpoenas. I have a strong feeling that the Democrat party is going to have a tough few years.

            

  • The problem that people have been attempting to solve, for years, is the lack of space in the IPv4 addresses space.

    There are currently more devices attached to the Internet or “the network” than there are addresses in the IPv4 space. This requires address overlap.

    The smallest section of a network is the “subnet”. A subnet can hold anywhere from 2 to over a million devices.

    Consider a small business network. They have three networks, a network that is connected to the Internet, labeled DMZ, a network for the security cameras, labeled CCTV, and the working network, labeled Internal.

    They have a router between the Internal network and the DMZ. There is another router that takes traffic from the DMZ and transfers it to the Internet.

    The CCTV network does not need to ever touch the DMZ network, nor does it really need to touch the Internal network. So they run a completely separate physical network so that CCTV traffic is never available on the Internal or DMZ networks.

    This could become costly. Consider a situation where you need to connect multiple buildings. Maybe some of those buildings can be connected with fiber, but others are using radio links. Radio links are expensive.

    The traffic is low enough that there is no justification for a second radio link. Besides, it is difficult to run two radio links side-by-side.

    The solution that was implemented is the Virtual LAN, or VLAN.

    When you define a VLAN, you set a tag in the Ethernet frame, identifying which VLAN this frame belongs to. Now, we can put all the CCTV traffic on a VLAN and use the same physical network as we use for the Internal network. All is good.

    This isn’t a complete solution, it is possible to configure a network card to listen to a particular VLAN, even if that device isn’t supposed to be on the VLAN. It is also another configuration point which smaller devices might not support.

    As an example, I’ve never found a method to put my cell phone on a particular VLAN. It is likely possible, I’ve just never found it.

    Same with my CCTV cameras. They exist only on the default, untagged, network.

    One of the very nice parts of using a VLAN, is that you can have overlapping address space. I can have 192.168.88.0/24 on the physical network and 192.168.89.0/22 on the same physical network but with a VLAN tag of 87. They are overlapping address spaces, but they do not interfere with each other.

    The solution was to allow a L2 switch port to be tagged. Now, by device which only uses the untagged frame can be plugged into a tagged port. All traffic coming from that port will have a VLAN tag added to it. All traffic sent to that port will have the VLAN tag stripped from it.

    This means that a CCTV device sends and receives on the default (no tag) network. It reaches the switch and the packet is now on a VLAN. Another device on the Internal network is also on the same VLAN. That device, a monitoring station, can now see the CCTV footage.

    If a port receives a frame that is tagged, it drops the frame. This keeps VLANs from leaking from their approved segment.

    If there is a need for a port to accept multiple VLANs, it is configured as a trunk.

    Thursday, I attempted to move ceph to an OVN network. This would eliminate the need for a VLAN and would give me a single subnet across multiple physical subnets. It failed.

    Friday, I attempted to put a new L2 switch into place. The good news was that I didn’t need to break my entire network to do the testing.

    The test computer has two NIC’s. One is connected to the management physical network. The other to the back plane network. I was able to establish a connection to the management port.

    Once there, I could establish that I had full bandwidth to other nodes on the physical network, using the physical subnet. I could even reach multiple subnets using that same interface.

    Then I tried the VLAN. The VLAN failed. There was no network traffic passing through.

    It also looks like they do not have a large enough MTU.

    Conclusion

    I’m still black boxing this thing. It has been a painful trip. I have more than a few more tests to run. It is just overly painful trying to get there.