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Naughty Nachi

The last couple of days were not good for our networks. Our WAN was up and down like a yoyo. The problem occurred with our Cisco 3660 border routers. These things send data between WAN links. First everybody was crying hardware problem, we heard (we are 7000+ miles away from faulty router) that sparks were heard, that it could be a memory problem hardware was swapped with spares. Eventually though somebody solved it. The problem was not physical, nor software related to the 3660, it was in fact related to the W32/Nachi.worm worm. You can read a more technical detail here. Apparently we have some infected computers in some of our sites, these computers were sending out large amounts of small ICMP traffic, enough to take down ports on the 3660. Amazing, worms can now take down WANs, of course a struggle ensued to clean our network, difficult with visitors coming and going all the time. A fix was placed on the routers; they ignore the specific traffic coming from Nachi. Since last night Chilean time everything has been normal. PC admins are still trying to make sure everything is clean. I am so glad to be a UNIX sysadmin and iBook owner.

It's worth 22

Since Catch-22 I have started seeing twenty-two's everywhere. Have a look around and tell me how many times you see it, they are lurking everywhere (there are ninety-six twenty-twoís in the first ten thousand digits of pi).

After lunch I read more of a rather interesting book about porn (Once more, with feeling) up to Chapter twenty-two, need I say more. Then rather annoyingly walking across from the Residencia, hotel to other people, they, the ten people who we always refer to as "they" have installed a new man hole, and guess what number they have painted on top of it, go on guess, I will give you a clue, you can divide it by eleven and get a number which is used twice to make that number, yes you got, itís twenty-two.

Catch-22 was such a good book, itís changed my psyche, but remember: There is only one catch, and that was catch-22

book: Pale Horse Coming, Stephen Hunter

Of all Hunters books I would have to say Pale Horse Coming (ISBN 0671035460) is not the best, in fact it has been for me so far the worst. This was the last of my holidays and for such a noddy book it took me a while to finish, as the only reason I was still reading was to just get to that last full stop. There are not many books I have read that I have given up on, but this was almost that close. Plot was a little thing, twist and turns a little slow, and over all believability a lot less than others Hunter has written. I would steer clear of this one and read or re-read some of Hunters better offerings.

Films: three good ones

Just recently Andrea and I have watched three good films in a row.

1. The Hours: for me it seemed more of a woman's movie, however I enjoyed it and was emotionally moved by it.
2. About Schmidt: this was more the mens movie. I found this to be an excellent movie, Jack Nicholson was excellent.
3. Iris, this film blew me away, such realism, so moving. I thought it was so well put together. There is a lot of scene time changes, which in the story for me worked. I read other review who it would seem had problems keeping up with it all.

Also worth a mention but was seen on the plane to Cuba and not seen with Andrea is "The Life of David Gale", excellent film to, Kevin just makes such good down to earth films, not you hollywood trash.

Lines of the Earth?

Does anybody know what caused this effect? I took these photos early in the morning when the Sun was rising behind me in Cuba. I saw these lines in the clouds. I have a feeling they are caused by the shadow of the Earth, is this the right explanation?

Talking to ones self and not Andrea

I am worried, I have just caught myself talking to me, myself and I! Its OK this doesn't happen too often. I put it down to recently coming back from a holiday and having constant access to my wife every day of that holiday. It was great all twenty-one days spent in each others pockets. Now she is some one hundred and twenty kilometers away and on the other side of a telephone. Its just not the same. I so enjoy being next to her.

Here is Andrea, we are on a submarine boat on our way to see corals in Cuba. Isn't she a beauty.

Omega Speedmaster X-33

On Monday 18th of August in Santiago, Chile I bought an Omega watch, following in my Mothers footsteps. The model I purchased was a Speedmaster X-33 (Ref. 3290.50.00 ), also known as the Mars Watch.

I have been looking from afar at this watch for quite a while. It holds for the me the best of both worlds, analogue display, used most of the time, and then the digital functions, used to wake me up this morning. Plus its nice and big and bulky which is how I like my watches. I see it as a family heirloom.

Since I was a child, after receiving my first digital watch, possibly for Xmas I have always liked watches, to the chagrin of my parents. Imagine as a small child being able to tell the time all by myself. This though is by most the finest watch I have ever owned, for being a person of moderate means. I hope one day to give this to my child, who will probably go and loose it the next day!

McDonalds and bad night sleep

Last night I ate a McDonalds Big Mac and Fries, bought from the McDonalds here in Antofasgtasa, which is another type of McDonalds experience than the rest of the world, but thats another blog. For quite a while I have not eaten McDonalds, I try not to as a rule, I know they cannot be good for you, and worse here in Antofagasta. This blog though is about the night I had. All night I was absolutly parched, my mouth was dry all night. You know when you are sleeping and you know you should go and get a drink, but because you are sleeping you put it off and off, well this night was like that. I finally managed to get my dry, parched, thirst ridden body to the kitchen and downed two glasses of water. This way layed the thirst. But then my nose just started running, like a river. Boy it was a bad night.

I think it was the big mac, nothing else could have caused all this. How much salt do they put in these things, and what else is in them?

book: Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Whole chapters dedicated to characters, long drawn out chapters, in depth chapters, chapter non-sequential in time, all interconnected, sounds like a chapter recipe for a bad book, but like a good pint of bitter, one not to be gulped this book is a smooth one. Catch-22 (ISBN 0-671-50233-6) by Joseph Heller is an excellent book beyond belief. Never had I read something like this before. Itís all mixed up, so cleverly put together. It was the second book of the Cuban holiday, so was read on the beach quite lazily, but it kept me amused for days, but I would say this book is not for the beach, sometimes you need just a little bit of piece, quiet and patience, something you do not always get on the beach, with distractions walking past all the time.

Set in WWII and written in the 50ís you can tell this book is not written today, I get the same feeling when reading Ian Flemings James Bond books, its always surprises me how fast English must be changing. The books introduces you to the smallness of man, the stupidity of war, the lack on control we all have to make our own decisions, and its done is such a funny way. At times I laughed out loud, which with a book I rarely do. Get onto Amazon.com, go down to WHSmiths or you local library and get a copy of this book, then read it.

I read this book after listening to advice from a friend of mine, he told me about the similarities between this book and M*A*S*H. Itís so true, this book firstly is like the film and of course then like the series, but not as slap stick as the series. You can see characters from this book walking straight onto the set of M*A*S*H and into the Korean War. I do believe that some of these characters could walk onto a set about the latest Gulf War and feel quite at home. Does anybody else see a similarity between Hawkeye and Yossarian?

Oh I forgot to say,

Back from Cuba

We have made it back from Cuba, to Antofagasta, Chile, in a little over 24 hours. A tiring journey as normal when it involved planes and airports. It was a great hol, but its good to be home. Expect more thoughts or a little webpage about our hols.

Cuban experiences

- Early morning swimming in empty beaches, having the whole sea to myself, more or less

- An Italian resturant; more mosquitoes than ever accounted before, and with a hot temperature health risk. Not a good evening, made worse the next day with the bites coming up, at least not the food

- In the morning farther out to sea I see Cubans in car tyre inner tubes? We found out whilst sailing that they are fishing, or are they waiting to make it to Miami?

- Reading Catch-22 on the beach is not easy

- Treading water for 1 hour. Andrea who has the ability to float in the water thought it should be easy, it was and it was not, just more boring. Saw no sharks

- A day trip to Varadero - a town with no centre, just a long, long hot, long road

- Eating lobster; it tastes so good, but you cannot help feeling a little nervous about what could happen that night, nothing in my case, few

- You can just about buy Pringles anyway, when there is a moonbase they will be there

book: Humans, Robert J Sawyer

The first book of this Cuban holiday was Humans (ISBN 0-312-87691-2) by Robert J Sawyer who is one of my favourite science fiction writers. This books is the second of a three part series, it feels like a gap filler, a little like Matrix Reloaded felt. However on its own it stands as a good book; you would need to read the first one. Again the world is opened between the Neanderthal world and our human world. The things that I really like in the book is the use of the Neanderthal world to point out the errors of our ways in our world. He does this well, its an undercurrent theme to the book. He even mentions quite sensitivley 9/11.

Overall a good book and I await the conclusion.

Cuba: Volley ball, etc...

- Captained, played and won a match of volleyball today. Of course none of my skills had anything at all to do with this.

- Getting slightly better with the heat, slightly...

- Swimming every morning in the sea, trying to mix with a little jogging.

- At 0800hrs nearly all beach chairs are taken, will have to make it earlier! Are you sure its a vacation when you get up early?

- Andrea has been ill with food poisening but is on the mend.

- Last night I was watching an English TV series in Cuba, that felt surreal

Dispatches from Varadero

- Outside our room is a magnificant beach, blue waters, almost too hot. This though is spoilt by the economy of seats that seems to take place. So far every morning I have been swimming at eight, I saw loads of people heading down to the beach, with this foam seat thing. I thought everybody were early birds. Not true, today I swam on the beach at eight. Nearly all the seats were taken. It has to be the Germans! Anyway although I don't like it Andrea and I have joined their ranks.

- Andrea and I went sailing today, it was scheduled for only one hour. But boy it turned into a massive wait in a pond for some two hour and fifteen minutes. We were marooned about five hundered metres out from the shore with no way of getting back with no wind, we could not even navigate we were going so slow. The end result is both of us with red skin, even Andrea. At one point we were diving into the water, to cool off.

- The hotel is gorgeous, its called "Paradesus" you can see it on the Somelia website, the site does not do it justice. The gardens are in flower, many multi-colors abound for the eye. The palm trees are full of coconuts, one of which we had yesterday on the beach.

- I am still finding it too hot, Andrea is loving it, soaking it up, she suites the heat so much.

- Our room is great, raised bed area and then seating area below, lots of chairs and open space, our view though is only vegatation, but that is not a problem with us.

Cuba: Havana/Varadero

We arrived hot and its still hot! Havana was such a mixture of things, old warn out with great history, propaganda at every turn, but people here seem to love their country, or so they are told.

Today we made out trip to hotel Paradisus, its hot, hotter than a hot things. Andrea is down by the beach loving it, I found the computers. Except for Andrea getting ill today in the coach all is A OK.