StaticNAT

I know as a Network professional I should never forget a WPA key. Docs Docs Docs. But tonight I was setting up someone else ‘s computer and forgot our general WPA PSK and did not want to dig for it in the password vault. So I cheated.

In OSX go to Spotlight and type Keychain Access
Then on the right hand side choose the System Option under Keychains
Then select the wireless network you lost your key to, right click and choose “copy password to clipboard”

At this point you will need to jump through the local password hoops but then you can past it into textedit and get back to doing whatever you were doing.

Here is to not loosing your keys and if you do hopefully a way out of the mess.

So tonight as I was getting into bed I did my normal scan twitter to see who I have pissed off or what might be going on that should rob me of sleep.  Well tonight @david_Strebel asked the following questions;

“Who thinks FCoE will win over iSCSI?”  and I responded “Not I” and then David asked the next logical question which was why not and here is what I had to say in the incredible detail that Twitter allows;  ”l2 boundaries, specialized hardware other than nics, hate relationship from most network people.”

The problem with this answer is pretty clear though.  It does not really answer the question just gives a few power point bullets to appease the crowd.  I don’t feel like this is enough though.  So I am going to attempt to lay out my overall view on this issue of who will win iSCSI or FCoE and why.  For those of you who don’t want to read the whole article which might get a a tad windy I don’t think either will win.  But I don’t think FCoE will emerge as the leader until something better come along.  For those masochists who like this kind of crap read on.

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I left the world of Government employment about six years ago.  At the time I was questioning if I even wanted to keep doing the whole IT thing.  Some people are wired to work for lazy bureaucrats who lie cheat and steal their way through the governmental ranks.  I am not.  That 3.5 year experience  just about broke my will and my desire to succeed.  However I am a bit more resilient than that, and when I landed a job at a consultant with a now defunct Silver VAR it quite laterally changed my life and career.  What I learned was that my desire to succeed and drive solutions was not dead just beaten and bruised. Read the rest of this entry »

So after a few weeks of messing around with my lab and getting my CCNP study materials ordered, I started prepping for my CCNP this weekend.  My plan was to knock down my CCNP by the January 2011 and then jump right into my CCIE R/S Studies and take my written no later than January of 2012 followed by the Lab no later than July 2012.  While this is all still very doable I ran into an annoying little hangup today.  I do not have my CCNA.  For me this was not a problem considering until a few months ago I had planned on just jumping into my CCIE R/S and it does not require that I pass my CCNA for go for it.  But today as I was looking up some CCNP info I noticed the annoying pre-req of CCNA to achieve my CCNP.  Cisco this is BS.  No other way to cut it.  Really you’ll let me take a run at your largest cert without jumping through knowledge hoop I passed years ago but you won’t let me go for the CCNP (which is the arguably my current point in my career). Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few months I have been ramping up for the next phase of my career.  I strongly believe that Data Center technologies are going to power the future of not only servers and applications but indeed all sectors of IT services including networking.  Recent announcements from both Cisco and VMware about competing virtual firewalls, new L2 virtualization models within VMware and players such as Vyatta seem to indicate that I am correct.  So along those lines I have been working to re-design my home lab and ramp up to learn these technologies as well as knock down my CCNP in prep for starting my CCIE early next year. Read the rest of this entry »