Thanks to Jimmy D, our renowned International Sales Channel Manager, we have a proven solution for monitoring NetFlow traffic for home users.
A situation arose for Jim where his wife and daughter would be in Florida caring for his parents while he was still here in Maine. The geek that he is, he didn’t want distance to keep them apart.
So he decided to provide voice, video, and network monitoring while they were in Florida. To achieve this, he decided to set up a small embedded server rack in his parents’ Florida home. This would allow for VoIP, Video, network traffic monitoring, and a web server.
Most of my blogs are related to NetFlow or sFlow. This weekend I’m taking a break from network traffic monitoring. My father in law, some friends and I took off snowmobiling up in Sherman, Maine.
I have so many trade show shirts that I end up wearing them on events like this from time to time. I couldn’t resist this picture below. Funny thing is, I’ve had people approach me in restaurants when they see my t-shirts for Cisco, Nortel, etc. Read more »
I was on a call this week with a customer who was asking me about my blogs and wondering if I ever get away from NetFlow. heh heh. All work and no play make for a dull Product Manager. Of course I occasionally get out of my office ‘cubical’. Read more »
Despite a rainy start to summer it has finished up quite nicely here in Southern Maine. Last weekend my friend Mark and his family joined mine and we headed off to Kennebunk Beach.
Hurricane Bill had caused the biggest waves we’ve seen this season and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get out there and see if I could ice some of the awesome swells rolling into Kennebunk Beach. Read more »
I don’t know why but I got it in my head to reuse the Kcups in our office coffee machine. Don’t get me wrong the Keurig, single cup coffee maker is awesome. I have one at home, but I could never get over throwing the little cups away. Seemed a waste.
At home, I have the reusable containers. This eliminates the need to use the prepackaged Kcups. After a quick Google search I found these little plastic lids that cover the Kcup, allowing you to reuse it. I figured that I could replicate that here in the office.
Even our 4th of July holiday weekend was a washout, with the sun peeking out for a few hours, then the rain coming back to soak us as we sat down for dinner.
But I like to look for the silver lining in the dark clouds (pun intended), and here is my silver lining: Read more »
The weather this past Saturday was amazing — for Maine in May. In the Sanford, Maine area, it was in the high 70’s, clear and sunny. So I decided it was time to move my houseplants outside for the “warm” season. The plants needed some direct sunlight, and a good soaking, which is not as easy indoors.
We have a large covered porch at the back of our house which catches the morning sun, and another at the front, with plenty of hooks and hangers to hang my plants. So I took the time to move about 20 plants from their indoor winter home to the sunny outdoors. Read more »
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain
I’ve always known that my boss was a fierce businessman. He has that drive that is essential in making a company successful, and I’ve found that admirable, since I’m not much that type of person. But my mistake was in assuming it was just with his business alone…
For the sake of protecting the innocent, *cough* I will call my boss “Jack” and our coworkers “Scott” and “Sally”.
Yesterday Jack and I ran out of the office for a brief meeting across town. As we were wrapping up our business and getting ready to pull out on to Main St., we noticed some co-workers driving by, heading back to the office. So we did what was natural…we honked and waved.
Jack pulls out and we’re heading back to the office. As we find ourselves gaining on our colleagues, Jack begins to gun it in an attempt to pass them, since they were still at a dead stop at a traffic light that just turned green. Our co-workers Scott and Sally were not oblivious to Jack’s plan. There was a chirp to Scott’s tires and the race began.
Guys, it was Lemans in downtown Sanford, Maine – I kid you not.
About 1/4 of a mile down the road from the light, which I would call the starting line, was a newly installed rotary. This rotary is already deadly, since it’s small, and nobody seems to be able to wrap their heads around how it works.
So we’re barreling down the road and I can see in Jack’s eyes that he wants to pass Scott at the rotary. I’m just really glad that Scott didn’t leave any room for him to do so. As we come out of the rotary and the lanes merge into one, Scott is ahead, with Jack in close pursuit.
At this point, I thought the race was over.
I’m such an idiot…
Our office is part of a commercial community made up of a shipping company, an architectural firm and a secular college, so we have a considerable parking lot to accommodate all of us.
In order to gain access to the building, you have to first enter from a side street. Scott was already at a stop and signaling his left turn onto this side street, but waiting for some oncoming traffic to pass. To Jack, this race was NOT over; so while stopped behind Scott, Jack decides to cut him off and beat him to that side street. Jack makes the sharp left and gets to the side street first.
There, Jack is the winner. There’s no way that Scott could pass us now.
However, that’s where I underestimated him too.
As Jack and I are coasting our way to the parking lot in victory, we are surprised to see Scott’s grey Honda Accord barreling across this open field, which was a mud pit by the way. If his car made it through that field, Scott could win.
To my dismay, Jack floors it. Realizing how close this race was going to be, Jack made the decision that he would have to ignore the median up ahead. Sure enough, we did a Dukes of Hazard jump over the median in his Sport Trac.
So here comes both vehicles like bats outta hell. Both cars beaten, one muddied and both definitely overworked for their class, come barreling into the parking lot. Both drivers presented some pretty impressive parking skills… well, more like… jackknifing into their respective park spots.
Finally, the contest ended with three grown men all running to make it to the top of the steps. I was embarrassed. But at the same time, it was really funny. To end it all, Jack sealed the win by making it to the top of the steps first and doing his Rocky dance.
Which leads me to my moral of the week: Let the Boss win.
We purchased a car DVD player at Wal-Mart last year and it died. My overall goal with the DVD player was to promote happiness in the car. This solution was specifically targeted towards my 3-year-old daughter, Molly. Before last week the product performed well. I would rip some recorded shows to DVD and she would watch them. Primitive, but it worked.
In general, I would get three shows per DVD. For Molly and my wife that was good. For me, being a data freak, it was less then acceptable. I mean, in today’s world of cheap storage, why can’t I have more? My wife assured me that there was no way we were going to replace a working player. My dreams were dashed.
My salvation finally came! One day, the DVD player started to heat up and shut down. Being a technology expert, I looked at the device and unequivocally came to the one and only possible conclusion. It was broken. So, I quickly put it on eBay as an ‘AS-IS’ product, recouped some of the original cost, and started hunting for a new machine.
I decided to go with the Archos 704 with Wi-Fi. It cost about $100 more than I had spent on the original DVD player, but the added features justified the cost. So, I was off to my happy place, which is buying small electronic devices for me to play with.
In the car this little unit can now hold well over 20 DVDs of content, it can play music and podcasts, and it can show pictures. For Molly, it’s great. She has a variety of shows to watch, she can listen to an audio story book or even settle down with some music.
At home Molly doesn’t have a TV in her room, but we do let her watch a show or two when appropriate. Now she can watch any of the stored shows, and with the Wi-Fi connection, she can watch shows stored on my Windows Home Server or Media Center. That also includes listening to audio books and music.
So I am pleased. The unit works well with our network and its vast media collection. Best of all, my daughter is happy to enjoy her shows when she wants. I guess you can’t ask for more.
____________________________________ Jim Dougherty aka "Jimmy D"
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!
I decided to go with the 