Skis / Toys / Fun

My spouse pointed me at an appliance product the other day that is pretty much a package of network probing tools (Qualys).  Their niche is having a product that probes a network of vulnerabilities before somebody else can exploit them.  Good idea, simple product, easy updates, etc. etc.   Makes total sense since many “technical” people don’t like dealing with software updates and upgrades, it provides an appliances computer that somebody else “manages” … “updates” that can reside on your network.

Reminds me of MailFrontier, we started out as a software company, but it turns out that IT likes appliances since it means that the don’t need to “manage” another computer, just complain at a vendor.

Appliance?  Microsoft Research?  What?

While it wasn’t a “demo” at the MS SV Research Roadshow, it’s clearly a feature that needs to be added to this appliance.  Which is instead of being a pure probe system, it should be an active monitor.  MS demonstrated a research project that would look at your network an notice the true dependencies (Exchange which specific AD hosts, etc.), these hosts on that file server.  So, when things go wrong, you can go look at a real picture (not the network diagram that hasn’t been updated) at what really is depending on what and it can show that this AD server that is down, was really the only one that your Exchange server knew about (somebody forgot to update a configuration) and of course this is what’s causing you grief.  Much faster than spending 30 minutes rebooting machines until they’re fixed.

Sounds like a simple growth from “Probe Monitor” to “Active discovery and mapping”…

It’s hard working at a startup and thinking about starting a startup.  I really brings home the idea of having a founding team, when your energy wanes there’s somebody there to remind you of the grindstone and the objective.  Otherwise you end up drifting off into introspection land.

Life is hard, don’t use your kids as an excuse.

It’s air conditioning season and I keep on finding people who say lame things like: “this new air conditioning system is for my ____” when in reality it’s an excuse to make your life easier.  Make life suck a bit more so you can enjoy it.

Think of it this way, I was riding up Kings Mountain Road on Monday and I felt just miserable, upset stomach, legs were lead, cold, and just felt totally off.  But, thinking of some old mantra “that which does not kill you, makes you stronger” (now is that Conan [the movie] or Nietzsche), pushed on to the top.  Now of course I bailed on the second “half” of my ride (down to La Honda and up Alpine), but I did finish the climb and found that the sun was out when I got back down on to the Portola loop.

Back to air conditioning, life is tough, struggle through those few nominal hot days.  Let your kids eat dirt and get dirty.  Live and experience life, it’s the ups and downs that make it real.

I like research!  Reminds me of my days at NASA…  Ok, it doesn’t help that I keep on seeing project that are planetary exploration (Google Earth, WorldWideTelescope) and have flashbacks to LOD determination and hierarchical rendering.   Plus, today’s computers can run circles around the Stellar computers of the time.

Notable things:

WorldWide Telescope, HydroSeek

It’s interesting to see how data normalization can really facilitate science.  At the end of the day, while both of these tools are great at visualization what’s really interesting is that once you’ve normalized data formats you can do interesting things.  My core thought from this was:

     Data + Visualization = Exploration

     Exploration + Thinking = Science

As in I can explore with WorldWide telescope for hours, which is a testament to Data + Visualization.  But as soon as I start asking “Why?” I’m now doing science. 

InkSeine

Since I’ve got a tablet PC knocking around, it’s cool to see how “re-thinking” the UI for a tablet interface has such power.  Now if the Crayon Physics Deluxe would release and take note of some of the UI bits that would be even better…  Maybe a “Tablet” and a “Classic” operating modes.

Botnet Detection

Not as sexy as InkSeine, but good work.  Think of it this way, if you see a group of users come in from a range of IP addresses you can assume they’re dynamically assigned since ISPs allocate a block of DHCP addresses to metro areas.  If you and your neighbors all log in from the same general pool, they’re dynamic.

Simple idea, probably loads of work to sift through the data, but nice…

Oh… why doesn’t Cisco or Company X get caught as dynamic… well, you’re pretty much NATed to one IP address not a whole range of IP addresses.

It’s an old reminder…  said many ways:

• Swing for the fences
• Go big or go home 
• Can’t see the forest through the trees
• etc.

All came from a short discussion last night about the state of the world.  Where we have spent lots of time fighting lots of little fires as opposed to working on a single agenda.  Thus when you take the combined efforts they’ve only made it to first base, no home runs or line drives to center field.

It’s better to burn out than fade away!