evilrouters.net

on season one, episode 9 of “house“, the was a conversation between john henry giles and dr. gregory house that went like this:

“i know that limp. i know the empty ring finger. and that obsessive nature of yours, that’s a big secret. you don’t risk jail and your career to save somebody that doesn’t want to be saved unless you got something, anything, one thing. the reason normal people got wives and kids and hobbies, whatever, that’s because they ain’t got that one thing that hits them that hard and that true. i got music. you got this. the thing you think about all the time. thing that keeps you south of normal. yeah, makes us great. makes us the best. all we miss out on is everything else. no woman waiting at home after work with a drink and a kiss; that ain’t gonna happen for us.”

wow… that really struck a cord with me.

see, i got that one thing. for me, it’s computers. as i write this, my girlfriend is at work and has been for about the last 10 hours. i came home when she went to work and i’ve pretty much been sitting here in front of a computer since then.

i’ve caught up on some work e-mail, read up on some bgp stuff, creating and set up some mpls vpn labs in dynamips, checked myspace and facebook, etc.

it was a beautiful day outside, if the weather widget on my dashboard and the kids playing up and down the street are any indication. i wouldn’t really know though, i haven’t stepped outside since i got home about 10:30am this morning.

when the girlfriend gets here after while, she’ll have my full attention and i won’t even touch a computer until after she leaves tomorrow, but, for me, computers — networking, to be more specific — is “the one thing”.

kinda makes me wonder if i shouldn’t re-evaluate things…

it’s 3:30am and i’m surfing aimlessly. i’ve been reading a bit on “ccie candidate”. at the bottom of the “still slogging away” post, ethan writes:

“if ccie is important to you and you still have a choice, don’t get married, have kids, or buy a house until after you have your digits. the rest of you feel my pain, i have no doubt.”

the girlfriend and i have been talking a little about the future and marriage lately (nothing serious, trust me) so those words really hit me. i’m not working on the ccie just yet — eventually; have to knock out the ccnp first — but it’s definitely something i’ll keep in mind!

thanks, ethan!

the toronto star tells the story of chris avenir, a first-year student facing academic expulsion “for helping run an online chemistry study group via facebook“.

“so we each would be given chemistry questions and if we were having trouble, we’d post the question and say: ‘does anyone get how to do this one? i didn’t get it right and i don’t know what i’m doing wrong.’ exactly what we would say to each other if we were sitting in the dungeon.”

as an educator, i think ryerson university is taking this way too far (based on what i know). if there was blatant cheating going on, then by all means punish those involved. if this is, as the article says, the students were simply using the forum to “brainstorm” in groups then it is completely absurd.

i *encourage* my students to work together in groups. working together in groups in something that higher education should teach you. every one of these students will have to work together in teams once they get out into the “real world” and will have to collaborate with their peers. it should also be common knowledge that having multiple people in your group who can provide their own insights is an asset, and makes the team greater than the sum of its parts.

again, blatant academic dishonesty should be punished. from what i’ve read, however, that is not the case here.

best of luck to you, chris avenir.

jeremy works at a post-secondary educational institution. his job duties include managing high-speed fiber optic networks, administering win2k/win2k3, debian, gentoo, and rhel servers, database administration, security, and occasionally hacking on some perl or php.

he also serves as an adjunct faculty member, teaching network security courses. he is a staunch advocate of foss, is currently working towards a bachelor’s degree in information technology, and also owns a consulting company.

jeremy has been a technological swiss army knife since the oregon trail was text only. his favorite color is sushi. he has never been to the moon.