Post Election Guilt

I got stuck working on a project Friday which I could have probably delegated. For that matter, one of my co-workers asked earlier in the week "why are we having a network engineer work on this"? He was right. There are certain things that I find myself doing which I should be delegating to the PC technician we recently hired. But the truth is - I can get it done right, and I can get it done faster. Alas, I digress.

So I am knee deep in on of the dumbest networking setups that I have ever had the displeasure of bearing witness to. A couple of "vendor representatives" (I equate them to lobbyists) had just stopped by to install two new workstations. They couldn't wait to leave, and just about the time I was getting started running some cables they asked that I stop while they took photos of what they had installed. He explained to one of the nurses "we have been asked to document what we install, because there have been problems with sites that - when we return to them - have been entirely rearranged". Well, I could understand why they would need to re-arrange things. After they darted out the door I spent a good half an hour trying to figure out what the hell they had done.

1) Two workstations were plugged into an 8-port switch with POE features. This makes little sense. POE is typically used for wireless access points which might be stuck on a wall or a ceiling. It was completely wasted on two PC's.

2) There were two cables running from the 8-port switch - to a 24 port switch on the other side of the room. Why two? I have no idea what the fuck they were thinking. On a low level switch such as this one, you end up creating a routing loop. Aside from the two cables nonsense, they had hooked into a switch which was placed there for a separate medical system which "chats too much" (hence it had it's own switch).

3) Each workstation has two network cards. One is a "private network" which is shared amongst the medical devices. The other is to connect it to our own network so that these overpriced Dell workstations can also be used to check e-males and surf the Intarwebs. Both network cards were configured with 10.x.x.x addresses and a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask, but with different network ID's. For the technically included, you should be aware that this does not and cannot ever work.

When I was done fixing all that shit I wanted to leave up a web site as proof that my work was successful. I figured I would load the software that the techs had installed, and show that it actually works correctly now. But I also wanted to show that these workstations all had Internet access. But what web page would I load and leave up? Still ringing with pride I wanted to put up an Obama page. But should I really do that? I don't want to seem inappropriate.

Wait -- why would I be embarrassed to show support for Barack Obama? I live in a largely Catholic, and Republican town which all showed up to vote against me (screw you guys). But, Obama won Ohio anyway. And he won the country by a landslide margin. He is our President-Elect! He is the next President!

No longer do I have to hide my support for the guy that I have long thrown my support to. He won. Now, even those Right-winged nut-jobs have to support him. Or will they retracts those remarks they have always made about Bush? To bash the President is "un-American". I still see fools driving around with bumper stickers that say "I stand with President Bush". I am always curious to see who is driving one of these cars, because I want to see the face of the 20 some percent that still approve of this awful and damaging administration. Well, get some new stickers gang. Now you have to support the new guy.

In the end I decided I would leave up an Obama page to show my patriotism. I typed in the URL and struck enter. Blocked. The damned page was blocked by the web filter which I have to manage. Reason being? Politics/Opinion. Well, I suppose that is accurate. I settled for whitehouse.gov, which for now is still focused on the Bush "administration". You see how I had to throw up "dick fingers" around "administration"? Who could still take them seriously at this point.

For some more on Obama's plans, check out his new site Change.gov Kudos to Michael for comments to an earlier post where he dropped the URL. I was not aware of the site.