The Deep End | Paul Venezia

ComCastastrophe Resolved

Paul Venezia — 2008-04-14T09:29:24-05:00

A few months ago, I wrote about a ComCast Business circuit that had yet to be installed, despite the fact that the contract had been signed and initial fees paid six months prior. It was a sad tale, and one without resolution -- until Friday. Yes, on Friday, April 11th, just over eight months after the contract was signed, the circuit went live. Although ComCast had claimed several times during those months that the circuit would be installed "in two weeks", the last time they made this claim, they actually delivered -- two weeks to the day after hearing those... READ MORE

How you know if your IT department is doing it right

Paul Venezia — 2008-04-14T09:12:38-05:00

This one's easy. A good IT department is generally kinda bored. When the infrastructure has been designed and built correctly and the telemetry is just right, IT doesn't have much to do except keep an eye on things and work on new projects. Sure, there are always break/fix scenarios, but those are par for the course. Unless there's a major project underway, it's the "insanely busy" IT departments that are the cause for worry, not the ones playing Nerf football. As a consultant, I've been involved in projects with hundreds of different companies and seen just about every form IT... READ MORE

How not to deal with fraud

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-29T11:08:07-05:00

My friend Desmond recently got an invoice from Dell for two DLP projectors. He hadn't ordered any DLP projectors. They weren't shipped to his house, either. Instead, they went to Roosevelt Island, NY (NB: Roosevelt Island? Really?). Obviously he was perplexed and called Dell. Well, he tried anyway. While American Express handled this with aplomb, Dell, well, didn't. In fact, they didn't seem to care. What makes this more interesting is that Desmond is the IT Director for a sizable technology company that has done significant business with Dell for many years. As he notes "When I order something from... READ MORE

More on domain squatting

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-27T11:13:48-05:00

My previous post on domain squatting got plenty of attention, and plenty of comments, both positive and negative. Interestingly, the majority of commenters (public and private) who didn't like what I had to say admitted that they were in the business of domain squatting/parking. Huh. Yesterday, I finally got a response that I'd been waiting for. Just below an argument that domain squatting apparently provides sustenance for needy families, Gary commented: I'm putting $7,000 a year into the internet for renewal fees. Am I helping out the internet and helping to create jobs. Yes. Am I hurting the internet. No.... READ MORE

The 45nm Xeon 5400 series in the lab

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-27T10:49:33-05:00

Yesterday, Intel announced the newest incarnation of their quad-core Xeon CPUs. The 5400 series is a low-voltage chip designed for tight spaces such as blades and 1U servers. On the very day of the announcement, I was finally firing up a test box running a pair of 5420s. These are 2.5Ghz quad-core CPUs with 12MB cache built on the 45nm die, and I'm running them in an Intel server chassis on the S5000PSL mainboard. These chips aren't designed to be speed demons -- rather, they're designed to be lighter on the power budget while still offering decent performance. I haven't... READ MORE

Domain squatting for fun and profit

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-21T18:07:01-05:00

I just got off the phone with MarkMonitor, a company that according to the fellow I spoke with is hired by multi-national corporations to register and squat on domain names in the interest of brand security. I was calling them to inquire about a specific domain name that they had registered -- a domain that was simply an ad page. I was hoping to use that domain for a little project, but I was told that in order to even inquire about the potential availability of the domain, I would have to have my attorney contact them directly, and then... READ MORE

If the shoe fits

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-19T00:18:34-05:00

I was perusing the Presidential candidates websites today. Interestingly, they all look roughly the same, though Barack Obama's site is better designed than the others in my humble opinion. What was even more interesting was the OS choices, though perhaps these should come as no surprise: John McCain:Windows Server 2003 Barack Obama:Linux (with a touch of FreeBSD) Hillary Clinton:Unknown Source: Netcraft.com... READ MORE

Full circle: How Microsoft is trying to eradicate email

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-17T15:56:09-05:00

After all this time, all these spams, all the complaints from all over the globe, I can only come to one conclusion: Microsoft is trying to kill email. Let's take a look at some facts. Spam levels are as high or higher than they've ever been. From my own personal experience, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that 99.9 percent of all email coming to my mail server is spam. That's tragic all by itself, but it's been that way for quite some time now. I have written and documented the severe steps that I've taken to... READ MORE

The Air, a month later

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-12T15:33:57-05:00

It's been just over a month since I first unboxed my MacBook Air. I wrote a review for InfoWorld that garnered some attention, and a sidebar that far too many people seemed to think was the actual review -- a statement on their own preconceived notions and lack of reading comprehension more than anything else, perhaps. In any event, I've subjected my MacBook Air to daily use, dropped it once, had it sat upon by a careless individual not once, but twice, and have travelled with it via plane, train, and automobile. I've used it for email, Web browsing, and... READ MORE

/etc/hosts.deny, hackers, and automation run amok

Paul Venezia — 2008-03-08T14:14:09-05:00

3AM. It's always 3AM when these things happen. Last night, my cellphone started beeping, and after it finally woke me up, I cracked open an eye and checked the screen. Text messages from Nagios, telling me that my main FreeBSD mail/Web server was incommunicado. Lovely. I crawled out of bed and logged into my MacBook Pro. I had an open SSH session to that box, but it was all but unusable, echoing back a character every few seconds. An eventual 'uptime' showed the 5-minute load at over 300. Three hundred processes in the run queue basically means the box is... READ MORE

Finally, Leopard

Paul Venezia — 2008-02-15T20:52:03-05:00

Summary: Make sure you uninstall SideTrack 1.5 before doing a Tiger-to-Leopard upgrade. Tolstoy: I'm not the kind of guy that leaps on new operating systems before the shrink wrap has shrunk. I like to let others take the lumps of a .0 release before I subject my core laptops and workstations to the latest and greatest. Thus, I kept my 17" MacBook Pro on Tiger until this evening. I probably would have stayed there for awhile longer if I hadn't picked up a MacBook Air. I've been using it daily since I got it, switching back to the 17" when... READ MORE

Clearing the Air

Paul Venezia — 2008-02-13T10:15:39-05:00

So apparently my MacBook Air review has hit both sides of the spectrum. There are those that think it's one of the most balanced reviews yet, and those that think I'm a fanboy. Nick Farrell's own definition of fanboy (posted in a comment on this blog) is "someone who disengages brain whenever they look at a product. Apple is largely dependant on peddling products to such types who refuse to see that the outfit can do any wrong." If that were the case, why would I write the sidebar on the migration issues at all? Why would I include the... READ MORE

Let the games begin

Paul Venezia — 2008-02-12T11:22:00-05:00

It seems that Nick Farrell over at The Inquirer isn't so thrilled by my MacBook Air review. Actually, he doesn't really mention the review, opting instead to summarize the sidebar with additional commentary. To clarify a few of his points: o- Yep, it took five hours to do the whole migration. The first 30 minutes were problematic, but the rest of the time was the two systems transferring 50GB of files via 100Mbit Ethernet without supervision. o- The Air didn't crash -- the Migration Assistant application crashed. o- I bought the Air myself. o- "Fanboy" seems to be a favorite... READ MORE

The MacBook Air finds its Nietzsche

Paul Venezia — 2008-02-10T20:43:50-05:00

Quite often, less really is more. One staple of computing in general is the perceived need for options. Painting yourself into a corner a lack of options with hardware or software is never a good thing, but there's a difference between that and trying to paint the room with a half-ton paintbrush. It's no secret that Steve Jobs -- and by extension, Apple -- is very interested in pushing the design envelope. Going back a long way, except perhaps the dark years in the nineties, Apple has had a history of making big changes and taking big chances with their... READ MORE

To give thanks

Paul Venezia — 2008-02-08T12:57:15-05:00

Once in awhile, I reflect on some of the tools that I use constantly, and the fact that there's an awful lot of unsung heros out there. Last night I started thinking about it and compiling a simple list of tools and some specific people that fit this bill. Here they are, in no particular order. PHP This one should be obvious. PHP has developed into an extremely strong, functional, stable, and fast Web development framework. If Perl makes easy things hard and hard things possible, PHP makes everything easy. I've even taken to writing backend scripts in PHP that... READ MORE