--== Foreword ==-- The following is a highly unprofessional accounting of my experiences while attending schooling at lovely Fort Gordon GA, being "trained" for MOS (Military Occupational Specialty, if I recall) 74B10, otherwise known as "Information Systems Operator/Analyst". A somewhat differrent version of this journal was turned in as "additional notes" for the End Of Course Critique. Minor details changed here and there, full story not quite disclosed (to protect both innocent and guilty), yada yada yada. Changes are mainly because I seem to have misplaced the 'censored' copy that was turned in. Have to redo the editing, blah. Remember that all course materials are unclassified (though some would be rather confusing to anyone outside the loop). Major problems with the course were (General) o Many instructors still learning material they're supposed to be teaching. o Course material was in flux. It is good to try to keep material up to date (and some was woefully out of date), but... lead to times when instructors were simply lost, having no material to work with o Civilian contractors that only work during the daytime, thus limiting access to some materials by those on other shifts. I didn't know at the time that my class missed out on somewhere around 20 hours of hands-on time for troubleshooting of PC hardware issues during the ICOM section. Sad. (Personal) o The standard Military mindset. Some of the instructors had no desire to be in the position they were in, some had severly bloated egos and/or closed minds. Techies generally don't like such things, as they all too often stand in the way of Getting Things Done. o BOREDOM. Some of the course material *was* indeed good material, but all of it was ... introductory level. For most of the course, I was BORED OFF MY ASS. Closed-mindedness was the impediment to my skipping portions and getting out faster. "He doesn't have transcripts for previous training? Oh HELL no! He can't test out of anything!" --== Logfile One ==-- I wasn't actually taking notes for a while, so will just be hitting the high points for the first few Sections of class. Section One: Concepts Instructor has difficulty distinguishing between systems software and development tools. Keeps referring to programs such as 'scandisk' as development tools. Greatly enjoyed listening to instructor mangle basic definitions such as registers and stacks. Section Two: Safety Section designed for mainframe rooms. Is halon legal anymore? Mostly good info other than being outdated. Section Three: Security Class was previously two classes combined, now split. Get a new instructor. Move from day shift to swing shift. Fallout from having more students than class space. Some aspects of trusted systems heirarchy seem oddly backwards. Can arguably put it down to philisophical differences. Instructor keeps referring to firewall as encryption device. Several students complain about this. Those who have some previous experience become more vocal. Section Four: DOS Day One: Many errors in course material as well as in presentation. High points include Instructor claiming WinME == Win2000 and butchering explanation of internal vs. external DOS commands. Day Two: 1700 Class starts. Review of yesterdays' material. 1730 Review continues. Only mildly painful. 1735 Review of yesterdays' material (only mildly painful, but the evening is young) finishes. Start Practical Exorcizes. 1805 PE's continue. Wishing for break so I can consume my pastry and drink cherry pepsi. 1811 Break starts 1825 Return from break after consuming pastry & about 1/4 of cherry pepsi. 1838 PE's continue. Feel amazingly uninspired compared to last night, so far as helping other students is concerned. Would like to go sleep or MUD. 1845 Class partner tells me I stink and swears at his terminal for not cooperating with something or other on current PE. I remind him of regulations about swearing on school grounds (just to be an ass). 1917 Break two starts, discuss general UNIX stuff with instructor. It's confirmed I can't get out of being assistant instructor (what I get for opening mouth), but it's good for the class even if bad for my nerves. 1932 Extremely pointless conversation with classmates about industry leaders such as Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds, as well as Japanese stuff. 1935 Class resumes. Note that by policy, no breaks are to be 10 minutes, once an hour. We don't get a lunch break either. 1950 Explaining intracacies of ANSI.SYS to partner, as he has been finished with PE's since just after break. 2001 A space oddysey. 2020 Third break. Discuss *NIX as firewall with students in Routers portion of course. Belch repeatedly, cherry pepsi finally empty. 2205 Fourth break, more discussion with instructor. Since there's no getting out of this Assistant Instructor business, may as well have everything straight. Discuss level of prior experience. Instructor says he will have our class for about 4 or 5 weeks longer, until 'back end' of course starts. 2235 Eagerly awaiting end of class, there's a cablemodem just waiting for me back at the barracks. 2350 end of class. -- Sometime during class, I popped up debug on three systems and changed volume serial numbers on harddrives to read DEAD-BEEF. For FAT16: C:\>lock c: C:\>debug -l 0100 2 0 1 -e 127 EF BE AD DE -w 0100 2 0 1 -q C:\> For FAT32, change one line: -e 143 EF BE AD DE Reboot and use debug keys to get to DOS rather than selecting "Restart in MS-DOS Mode" from the windows shutdown options. If you see "MSWIN 4.1" instead of "MSDOS 5.0" or such in header info when you 'd 0100' after 'l 0100 2 0 1', then DO NOT try this. You have been warned. Day Three: 1659 We set sail once again on the good ship Rosinante, I hope this evening will be informative and enjoyable. 1710 Instructor not yet arrived. 1716 Instructor enters building, passes classroom door without looking in. 1720 Instructor from another class enters room, in search of our instructor. 1723 Alternate instructor enters class. Told about duty for this evening all of five minutes ago. Informs class that DOS block is over. Section is not testable, ICOM now begins, then leaves to deal with (I guess) administrivia. ICOM = Install, Configure, Operate and Maintain microcomputers. 1727 New instructor returns. Student intros (again), book handout, and chitchat. 1740 Break time. 1806 Everyone back, now time to actually start class. 1814 Instructor doesn't know (understand?) about Linux. 1817 First error in course material: Second paragraph of first page we read, (paraphrase) "There is no such thing as a virus that will do your system any good." My reply is that by thier definition, KoH is a virus. It most certainly is benificial (as well as being polite). 1855 Break starts. 1910 Return from break. Consensus among students is material for ICOM is better written. Instructor actually knows material and has a personality to boot. 1917 Instructor starts trust experiment with class, subject is break times (see previous). 1944 Finish block on virus, practical exorcise with Microsoft Antivirus. 1950 Wrap-up and then start break. 2010 Restarting class, now on 'Fundamentals' section of ICOM. 2045 Start "Lunch" break. Remember it's not authorized. 2115 End "Lunch" break, start on 'DATA' section. Concepts such as bit, byte, word, sector, etc. introduced here. 2224 PE: Convert decimal to binary by hand. Understand what binary is and how it works. (Note that *no* electronic devices may be brought into the classroom by students, and calculators are not provided. Computers are off at this stage.) Being bored off my duff, start convert for base 4,8,16, and 3 as well. 2230 Make dinner plans with classmate. Learn that Krystals' Burgers are about equivilant to Whitecastle, never been to either. Wish there were some hotties here that was *allowed* to talk to. 2255 After much BS'ing, conversions done on whiteboard for those who needed it. My conversions to other bases have been done for a bit. Waiting for break. 2305 Out of material for the day. Not allowed by policy to leave before 2350. Some students have cleanup details. 2332 details done. --== Logfile Two ==-- ICOM, day two. 1650 We are now many days from land; there is speculation among the crew that that we don't have enough supplies to make it if we were to turn back now. I can't let them know they're right. 1658 The privates arrive 1702 Confirmed eating Krystals' Burgers two days in a row is a Bad Thing. 1707 Instructors from previous sections arrive to watch class progress. Current instructor not yet arrived. 1711 Instructor has injury, alternate instructor for next few days. 1727 Alternate instructor is MIA - Injured instructor returns. Interrupts game of dots-and-boxes with my class partner. 1743 Finish high-speed review of yesterdays' work. Convert three sample decimal numbers to binary. Of course I do the trinary conversions and contemplate the meaning of cubits vs. qubits. "Bits, Trinits, and Qubits, oh my!" 1755 Moving on to hexadecimal now. Some students having difficulty. 1800 Instructor notices it's time for break. 1815 Return from break. Start doing practical ex. converting between dec, hex, and binary. Finish this, continue dots-and-boxes game. 1847 Finish dots-and-boxes game. 1848 Class leader tells class getting too loud. 1853 Attempt to explain conversion shortcuts to partner that I was using and botch the explanation. Fall back on generic conversion method for any base and rederive the shortcut. Slap self. GROG NEED CAFFIENNE. 1910 Break time. Finish 20 Oz Mountain Dew. Discuss inane stuff. 1930 Class resumes. 1947 Writing out debug scripts and docs for partner. Breaking wind. 1950 Case Study. Yay. 2111 Case study consists of comparison shopping via magazines to build a system to specs for under a certain price. Simple stuff except that have low dollar amount and old magazines. Yay. Had a break 2045 until 2115, students returning now. In case anyone cares, I had a bagel with cream cheese and eschewed more caffienne. Contemplating navel until end of "lunch." 2152 Classmates seem to be lacking organizational skills required to complete this project effectively. Ask for input then ignore it. 2210 Return from short break. Discuss why free ISPs tend towards more suckage than some would lend credence to. 2230 Class leader (in my group) calls end to case study. I start packing then realize there's still 90 minutes left to class. GET THESE LEECHES OFF MY CORTEX. 2253 Done dissecting results from case study. My team lost competition for best results. Now break time. 2305 I want a beer. Unfortunately there's a PT test in the morning. 2316 Break over, instructor not returned. having mild chest pains. 2351 Cleanup details done. Joyous sight of empty garbage cans. ICOM, day three 1659 Arrive at classroom caffinnated to the gills as counter to sleep deprivation. The hallucinations will probably start between 2200 and 2300 hours. Neither privates nor instructors showing faces yet. 1705 BONK. Broken instructor checks in to see if alternate has shown. 1710 Privates arrive. Detained at barracks by Drills. 1720 Partner making large-assed grid for dots-and-boxes game. 1729 Broken instructor returns. Alternate not yet found. Interrupts my extending on partners sheet for dots-and-boxes. 1734 Almost done extending grid to 27x27. Quickly explain binary math to partner. Caffienne kickin' in hard. Reading class materials for once, as they don't suck as hard as previous. Trifling copy errors for the most part, and though some stuff is terribly outdated much is still relevant. 1742 Alternate instructor arrives. Class introductions (again). 1756 New class rules put out. 1820 Discussion of AC/DC electricity concepts. Why 74B does not open power supplies or monitors. ESD, wrist straps. 1824 PMCS (Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services) - Heat, dust magnetism, liquids, corrosive materials, etc. Short but reasonable treatment. Ponder why dust hazards only list thermal insulator and risk of electrical conductivity not mentioned. 1835 Told upcoming test is 50 question multiple guess with 90 min limit. 1904 Back to bin/hex review. Standard Numbers, extended numbers, floating point representation, etc. 1909 ASCII char set. ASCII a silly question, receive ye a silly ANSI. Partner actually laughed at that line. 2006 Another PE and further explanation of ASCII. I break wind. 2011 Start back on discussion of hardware. 2040 Instructor does not take correction very well. 2043 Little Bastard attempts to tell class that SCSI = RAID. I bitchslap. 2137 After "Lunch" we return to previous ex. of breaking previously broken demo systems in classroom. After seeing state of two of these systems, would be scared to apply power to any of them without complete dissassembly/reassembly. 2147 Boot process discussed. Noncritical errors in presentation. 2200 Discussion among classmates why 74 series has issues. Economic factors and such. Also discuss Married Army Couples Program, etc. ICOM, day four. (It's a Thursday) 1706 Arthur Dent could never get the hang of Thursdays. 1720 Privates arrive at usual timeframe (5 to 10 after), no sign of instructor yet. In sore need of caffinated beverage, having missed chance to get some before class. 1754 Instructor arrived and gave quiz. Scored 9 of 10, flubbed dec to hex conversion due to inattention and sleep deprivation. 1830 Start new game of dots-and-boxes on previously mentioned 27x27 grid 1920 Second break over, return to class for notes on bus types. ISA, EISA, MCA, and local bus (VESA, PCI). Instructor mentions "Newer tech" to include USB. No mention of AGP or Firewire. 1930 Discuss video types. MDA through SVGA. For test purposes, SVGA can display "More than 16.8 million colors" as there's a typo. 1935 I/O and the system bus. Peripherals. Wind Breakage. Comparison of traces on circuit board to 'bus route'. 2005 CPU types. 2027 Return from break. Now discuss processor tools: Memory, ports, registers, stacks. Material in book is correct. WoW. 2213 More fun was had. Second quiz on material. I fell asleep once. 2230 On break. Ghetto Language Lessons continue. Large part of lack of notes towards end of class yesterday. 2235 End of break, discussion of memory layout starts now. WoW another diagram. Leave discussion of accuracy & completeness to the reader. +---------------------+ 4x16k=64k | Extended Memory | 4 pages per window | (XMS) | +---------------------+ +-------------------+ | HMA (1m +64k) | | Expanded Memory | +---------------+-----+ |(LIM Specification)| +---+---+ | UMB (384k) | 64k |--->| | |16k|16k| +---------------+-----+ | +---------+ +---+---+ | Conventional Memory | | | 64k |--->|16k|16k| | (Base) (640k) | | |pageframe| +---+---+ +---------------------+ +---------+---------+ ICOM, Day five. Held over due to 'popular demand' 1655 Arrive at classroom. As usual the place is still empty. 1656 Remainder of 'experienced' soldiers arrive. 1657 Privates arrive in a mood slightly more foul than usual. Good word for the evening - according to class partner there is none. 1701 Almost everyone settled in for our nap, excuse me, study time. Tonight I'm here to chew gum and break wind. Fortunately for most concerned, I'm stocked on gum. Note that gum is not authorized in class. 1707 Instructor arrives, and leaves again. 1722 Instructor returns, and leaves. 1729 Instructor returns, and leaves. Have been discussing stupidities involved with profiles with my classmate. 1735 Instructor returns. Is it Quiz Time? 1747 Middle of review: "The bits on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round ... the bits on the bus go ..." 1749 Blinked, almost missed transition to new material. 1813 Break time. Caffiennated beverage consumed, glad to not have worse addictions. 1818 One student doing three hundred arm lifts as punishment for being silly. Woohoo or something. 1820 (new page in notebook) A new page, a new age, same old BS marks the divisions ... we forget our roots and previous difficulties as the risk of repeating the same old screwups -- without even realizing that alternatives exist. Stupid humans. 1825 Start exhaustive breakdown of DOS memory scheme (see previous diagram), extraneous details are all fuckerred upperred for the moment. Entire concept for page frame is correct, explanations of relationships of memory areas is entirely bass-ackwards. 1846 STRETCH. Discuss cache/virtual memory. I expect virt mem will be fuckered uppered, while cache currently being explained mostly correctly. "SRAM chips provide for high speed memory and zero wait- state access." Bet my partner that instructor will fucker upper the explanation of wait states. Goose is scared to take bet for $5.00. 1854 Segue (sp?) into secondary storage for a while. Get back to both bets in a while. Cover more info on secondary storage -- as if the subject hadn't been beaten to death already -- not really needed. Have been given textbook definition of cache/virt memory, but it's not all that useful for some students. Need a breakdown. Even Goose is getting annoyed by this. He's usually pretty calm and collected. 1907 Seek time (avg head positioning time) plus latency (rotational period) equals access time. WoWiE ZoWiE. 1925 Quisiero ver los Galletitas y Ratones de Porcel! 1934 Graphic Break. Nice layout of harddrive tracks/sectors/etc. [[[ Don't feel up to doing ASCII rendering on this one. ]]] 1947 I ought to bring in a copy of Norton DiskEdit and show people where some course material is wrong or misleading. Too bad that bringing in software is against policy. 1952 Explanation of allocation units ALL fuckerred upperred. 2012 Prefacing far too many of answers given with "For test purposes" by now. Feel dirty. 2013 Next to discuss ROM / firmware. *slap self* 2014 Note that instructor seems cof-nused tonight. 2016 Remind self to check into BADRAM kernel patch and perhaps unsubscribe to BUGTRAQ until after leaving here. Not enough time outside class. 2037 Had quiz, being corrected and returned. 100% Tell partner pi=4*(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + 1/13 ... ) 2112 Returning wierdos makes for good album by canuckian powerhouse trio. 2122 "Lunch" break in progress. Had a yummy blueberry bagel with cream cheese and some water. When class resumes this will hopefully have recharged me enough, mentally and physically, to get through the evening without either blacking out or bitchslapping someone due to frustration with course material & presentation. Whilst me doth understand the instructor is having a bad evening, some of these things are far too blatant. *sigh* 2146 "Lunch" was supposed to be over at 2130. Wondering what instructor is up to. Passed out from migrane in an office somewhere, or stuck in a meeting that never ends? In some ways, two would be equivilant. 2148 Privates bored enough to be singing cadances in class. An admin type checking in trying to find our instructor. May be talking to spouse or finding headache medication. I feel constipated. 2157 Class leader springs into action as instructor and spouse return. Class leader perpetrating like he had been quizzing the class for a while. 2201 Another high-speed diagram, showing concept of partitioning. Leave discussion of what's wrong with this to the reader (Once again). HARD DISK +-------------+-------------+ Reasons for partitioning |C: |D: | 1) Multiple Operating Systems | 1 root | 1 root | 2) Accommodate older versions of DOS | directory | directory | 3) Security Reasons | | | 4) Disk Compression Software | UNIX | Win98 | 5) Organization of Software +-------------+-------------+ 2207 Partner regales me with tales of a friend who installs multiple copies of Winblows on one machine. I snore. 2214 "No disc sector will contain information for more than one file." True so far as I know, but allocation units can be split (see later versions of Stacker) for small files. Since "sector" and "allocation unit" terms been being used interchangably ... ;-) 2220 Logical vs Physical formatting (High/Low level) *BURP* 2224 Now discuss HOW to partition 2235 Reason 3 on list is only one asked for on test. 2245 Backup my harddrive? I can't find reverse! (partner laughed at this) Full / Incremental / Differential, Monthly / weekly / daily. 2250 Two notes for misprints on test. "more than 16.8 million colors" and "byte is unit of measure in disc storage" BLAH. --== Logfile Three =-- For our third logfile, we pick up again on Monday, January 29, 2k+1 1655 Arrive in class to a wet floor. Privates outside reciting Soldiers' Creed loud enough for us to hear through these cinderblock walls. 1658 Injured instructor will be in to proctor our test today. 1700 Annoying Bastard arrives. Where's the rest of the Privates? 1702 Oh, there they are. 1704 It's hot in here. BDU tops off. 1705 Feet sweating badly. Need to polish up that new set of Jungle boots still sitting in box back in room. 1709 Class partner displaying far too much (false) motivation, compares (broken) instructor to Mr. Mackey from South Park (Mmmkay?) 1710 Independant review while instructor goes upstairs to deal with Administrative Overhead. 1713 Class leader motions me to silence whilst was trying to quiz class partner. So much for team review effort. 1722 Class leader speaks up again. Entire class being too loud. Chain me with a forksaw. WTF Would Linus Do? 1749 Finished skimming entire ICOM handout (50-some odd pages), needs to be Break Time. Cup O' Joe before class ain't cuttin' it. 1751 Partner must be bored as well. Re-reading portions of handout that aren't testable. 1755 Musing on the joys of installable filesystems. Want to go hunting for encrypted FS's for Linux. Wonder what sillyness may be required to run encrypted root FS. 1816 Break time almost over. Partner singing Dukes of Hazard theme followed by a number from South Park about being a male prostitute. Odd juxtaposition and somewhat unsettling. 1819 Question to The Powers That Be (and to self), why am I here again? 1833 Instructor has not yet returned. Offer partner $30.00 to set off sprinkler system, after he mused about what would happen if he did. Unfortunately for those of us whom are starved for entertainment, he declined the offer. I can't stand to read class material any longer, Partner sings more snippets from Dukes of Hazard. 1838 Administrative type pokes head in door to see what class is doing. Satisfied by our answers, he leaves. "Study" time continues. Pop another unauthorized stick of Juicy Fruit in the name of remaining conscious. 1847 Instructor returns. And leaves. 1849 Been pondering on rammifications of Qubits since about 1838 ... need to get some decent primer material on Quantum Physics and start working from there.. so far really just know enough to confuse others and be intrigued. 1857 Damn near break time again. Signal class leader. He looks disgustipated. 1913 FTSAT. Soon as next section is done will request next test and keep 'em coming until fail one. Have to get out of here. Used to have some patience, where has it gone? 1924 Test aborted, one book short for testing. 1936 Instructor probably getting butt chewed upstairs for miscount. Said would be back in 5 min, not yet. BSTT dropping rapidly. 2116 Test started 2045, I finish 2059. Second person done about 15 min after me. Feeling lots of unfocused aggression today. Missed one question, not very curious what it was. Ask anyway to keep good form ... was on backup types, had order wrong in notes. Same order as was copied from board, but it would be too cheese-dickish for me to challenge it. Especially as it can't be "proven" that instructor messed it up at the time. 2159 On unauthorized "Lunch" break, which is usually about hour earlier. Test messed up todays' schedule. Class leader believes my problem with unfocused aggression would be cured by a weekend of good sex. Since I don't really know the source of this aggression, not going to argue about it... couldn't hurt. 2207 Privates filtering back in from break, should have been back at 2205. Tuesday, January 30, 2k+1 1654 Arrival nearly simultaneous with Privates. Have to explain concept of "we meet here and move to a new room" to a few of them. 1708 Everyone settled into new classroom. Instructor not yet arrived. 1713 Injured instructor arrives. He's got happy pills, leg brace, and cane. Doing better now. Start section on troubleshooting, CBT's (Computer Based Training) for this section. Most of the stuff we're doing is prep for MS A+ certification. WoW. 1739 Attempting to register twice (as per directions from instructor), as both Active Duty and Guard compenent. Could get interesting if someone is paying attention. Rest of day was boring, not much happenned other than discussion with instructor about requirements for testing out of course sections. Senior management has the option to allow people who provide paperwork showing previous training/experience to skip sections of the course with "Admin Go" on thier paperwork, but then you can't get Honor Grad or Distinguished Honor Grad. Also have option of allowing *anyone* who claims knowledge of section to test out of portions of course, but current Top Dog simply doesn't allow it without the paperwork. *sigh* Wednesday, January 31, 2k+1 1714 CBT's continue. Have to create another account as todays' material is on a different system. Today we're doing "Microsoft Word '97." Actually learned a few things about it, but it's not stuff that I'll use very often, if ever. Change instructors again, have same conversation with this instructor as had with Broken one yesterday: Reconfirm Top Dogs' stance on allowing students to test out of course blocks: Ain't Gonna Happen. Thursday, February 1, 2k+1 1252 Payday Activities neccessitate early class, and we'll be out at 1600. CBT's continue to put me to sleep. Possibility of getting Broken instructor back today, Mmmkay? He did come back. Was mildly impressed by the speed that finished test with on Monday. Apparently someone mentioned to him that I would have aced it if notes had been correct. I wasn't only one caught on that bit... so may be a case to challange it... should care enough to do so, but nah... Friday, February 2, 2k+1 2258 Start "Windows 95" section today. High point of the evening: Some portions of our current material were written by trained monkeys and fed through Dissociated Press. Example from ppg. 38 of current: "This is particularly of use when installing a driver update, but could also come into play when the System portion of corrupted and the wrong files are the Registry has somehow become being utilized." Later in the page, this is a paragraph by itself: "If the device manager is unable to resolve a conflict, this is where" Such joy. 2328 So did you hear the joke about the freaked out auto-erotic narcoleptic nymphomaniac with a broom-closet fetish? (no, I'm NOT going to explain this one. Get over it.) Monday, February 5, 2k+1 1811 Just finished 20 min break, partner cleared the room via bad gas. Instructor was choking as gave command to move out. Response from partner? "I don't care what you say, it takes a real man to clear a room like that." That, amazingly enough, was the high point of the evening. Attempted to extract LOGO.SYS from IO.SYS for playing with, but DEBUG does kinda suck and it's the only tool I had to work with. Heck, if we even had Qbasic on these things would write a decent hex editor or smuggle chexedit.bas in and claim I wrote it during class... not yet bored enough to smuggle real tools into class. Tuesday, February 6, 2k+1 Last day of Win9x training, test tomorrow, then comes Access to be followed by Unix. High points of evening included having more conversation with Annoying Bastard about Linux (he just doesn't get it) and getting a remix tape from another classmate filled with some gangsta stuff or something. Might even listen to it sometime. --== Logfile Four ==-- There are holes in this big enough to fly a C-5 Galaxy through, but you really didn't miss much some weeks. Thursday, February 8, 2k+1 1656 Settled into new classroom for MS Access. Week five of class is now in session. Boo-Yah. 1712 Privates still settling in, waiting to see how instructor is going to be, as well as see if it'll be the same instructor. 1720 Yup, proper instructor. New rules for class put out. Can get help on tests now, but only for hardware/software malfunctions. Heh. - Discuss concepts, "What is a database?", relational & non-relational. - Discuss user interface for a while, major components of an access database, capabilities, limitations, etc. 1755 "Controlled P.E." start 1804 Done with P.E. 1823 Start break. Headache, nausea. Been more than 24 hrs since last caffienne injection. Not good. 2154 Reports, layout, controls, etc. 2320 finish review of days material. Friday, February 9, 2k+1 1656 Settled in to class, one of several W2's needed has arrived. Need to make calls about others. So far looks like hefty return. WoW. 1717 More on command buttons. 1733 Instructor suggests not changing names on new buttons, as linking may go fubar if you delete & recreate. Heh. 1740 Next up is Macros. I claim it to be a mispelling of that venerable anime known as Macross, but partner not buying it. 1809 Return from break, vending machines br0ken. 1838 "Step one in MS Access - Understanding relationships." 1848 Referrential Integrity & other fun concepts. Cascade update/deletes. 1923 Return from break. Privates complaining about issues at meta-management level (sometimes referred to as upper management). In my excitement, I break wind. 1937 Finally start the real P.E.s Later.. Finished all of the P.E.'s in the book that night, we had about four days scheduled for them. Monday, February 12, 2k+1 1659 Settled in and looking at Windows Logon screen for Ft. Gordon domain. Breaking wind and pondering on why many of the instructors act as they do... there's a common thread with many of them not wanting to be here. Only one has simply said as much (to the class) so far, but you can tell by the look in thier eyes, at least at critical moments. 2129 Finish second run through the PE's in roughly an hour and fourty minutes. For my efforts, recieve a half-hour break. Took about five minutes of this before returning to the classroom, as theres nothing else to do, nowhere to go. Started a third go-round, got interrupted to help a private who was Just Not Getting It. Main problem of said private seems to be sleep deprivation. 2232 Lunch almost over, _all_ vending machines that bear caffinated beverages are nonfunctional. Now am less coherent than normal, but that doesn't make much differrence. Resorting to sugar wafers; wait for next break to start. 2333 "I have no mouth, yet I must scream." Need to pee as well. As class is nearly over, eagerly awaiting release from the sillyness inherent in the system. Did finish a third run through the PE's, but can't count for time trials due to frequent interruptions to help others. Yet Another instructor couldn't answer my questions about SSH (this sort of thing keeps them from bothering me as much, honest). Students annoying instructors, claiming Student + Instructor could not complete example task. ("No, YOU couldn't finish it. Where's this WE come from?"). Instructor not wanting to take blame for students lack of understanding, students not wanting to either. At this stage I bang head into wall repeatedly for relief. Others are getting worried about this sort of behavior. Wednesday, February 14, 2k+1 1717 Managed to lose an entire day. No notes yesterday is only the half of it. Thought today was Tuesday when got up this morning. Upon arrival at classroom this evening, immediately felt tired. Seems this is a Pavlovian reaction I share with some of the other students. Test tomorrow should include 3 tables, import 1, create 2. 2 relationships 4 forms (3 create from wizards, 1 via design) 1 report 1 macro ... and a partridge in a pear tree. Re-emphasis of "test mode" rules. 1720 Review of PE's 2031 PE's continue. Clock says barely three hours have passed... feels more like three hundred. Attempting to show dbms mods to Fearless Leader, but he's ignoring everything other than the (unauthorized by policy, auth'd by instructor) side conversations. No notes for days... class format was not conducive to such for a while after after the Access test. Tuesday, February 20, 2k+1 1705 New class leader; three new soldiers in all. New instructor for start of Unix section (was with us for previous section, several weeks ago). One more section before material that's (entirely?) new to me. Yay. 1733 Introductions for those the instructor has not met, class rules and other obvious statements. Caffienne sweats already started. 1750 Up to page four of course material. As partner says, "Oh god, when will the hurting stop?" 1800 Instructor lying to class on a few counts (general unix info), I *think* it's unintentional. 1836 Silly peeps everywhere. Instructor telling me to simply not answer other students questions. This would be fair enough if I was interrupting the instructor, but... May be helpful if the instructor would relate some of the unix commands to thier equiv. DOS commands (previous section). 1848 Discuss "disadvantages" of unix - include lack of confirmation or output on many commands (philisophical on that one, hey... "no news is good news") and non-realtime nature of OS (refer peeps to RT-Linux project). *old* material here, discuss 14 char filename limits. 1925 account setup on unix server for PE's. Wednesday, February 21, 2k+1 1719 More generic *nix commands reviewed. Friday, February 23, 2k+1 1802 vi: putting the 'v' and 'i' into 'evil' and 'vile' since time immemorial (at least in the computer world). Copied out about the entire command chart by hand, as there's not much else to do in class here... it almost makes sense now. So okay, will be able to use 'lowest common denominator' in editors now, which is a plus... it's available pretty well everywhere. Tuesday, February 27, 2k+1 1729 Solaris, day one... new instructor. - Memorable quote for the evening - "The kernel is like command.com in DOS." Wednesday, February 28, 2k+1 1746 Special file types, etc. Slowlaris uses some odd naming conventions for devices, to say the least. Instructor isn't too clear on difference between partitions and slices. I'll have to go back on my own later to figure out if Slolaris does it like BSD or not... - Spend evening dealing with commands for manipulating floppies and how to set your crontab. Thursday, March 8, 2k+1 - Datacom, day one. Read the table of contents and surmised that I already knew the material. Read the entire book that evening and found out I was mostly right. Wanted to sleep. Didn't happen. So much for new material. *sigh* Friday, March 9, 2k+1 2053 Instructor referred to PING as Packet INternet Groper. 2056 Multiplexors. Woohoo. MUX/DEMUX. TDM/FDM. Kinda reminds me of 31R school (combined 31D/31M for you old-timers). - I later informed instructor that acronym for PING was a joke, not in any way endorsed by the (recently deceased) author. Monday, March 12, 2k+1 1645 Pissed at roommate for arriving enirely too early. Will break him of that habit if it kills either of us. 1647 Ex-Fearless Leader and one of the ex-MP's arrive. EFL acting annoying as usual. 1649 Fearless Leader arrives. Discuss (again) why his internet service isn't working. At this rate, it won't ever. 1832 92 minutes into class and instructor is still trying to track down materials for todays class. We're to be making ethernet cables to rewire a lab. - Mission accomplished, mostly. Several connectors redone. Another student (Annoying Bastard) actually showed the class how to do the cables rather than the instructor doing anything on that score. Didn't have enough materials to do all of the cables required. Tuesday, March 13, 2k+1 1716 Moved to new classroom. Apparently another class needed the lab we were occupying for our currently lecture-based class. 1718 Partner realizes he left hat in other room. 1721 Partner wants me to write down "shittest crappest crappiest shit", also wants some signal flag stickers to place on his vehicle. 1836 Scratch one pen. At current rate of attrition, will be out before the night is over. 1859 Classmate claims she never watched pornos because John Holmes was her babysitter. 1928 Sunshine. Blah, my sanity seems somewhat precarious at the moment. At least it doesn't currently feel as if the walls of this reality are paper-thin. I hate those days. 1942 Instructor returns (been gone more than an hour) and class resumes. 1945 Explanation of OSI 7-layer burritto, er, model. Application Presentation Session Transport Network Data-Link Physical All Progammers Say They Need Data Proccessing Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away Discussion of encapsulation at differrent layers. 1958 802.4 IEEE standard not in the book. WoW. Note that 802.4 does specify packet format. Varies with protocols used. 2037 Back from "lunch" break; was early this evening. Stifle an urge to tell intructor that large portions of course material suck ass. 2046 So ends another paper-wad fight. 2054 Bus topologies: Ring -o Star -r caught the Bus for FDDI cents. 2212 Quick overview - Static vs. Dynamic routing, how they work together. Wednesday, March 14, 2k+1 1712 Waiting for instructor to show her head. Going to play Jeopardy as review for this evenings test. 1716 Partner singing "Blame Canada", instructor not yet arrived. 1722 Note that progress is being made on breaking roommate of habit of arriving excessively early. 1727 Instructor now filling out categories for Jeopardy. 1745 After writing categories, instructor left. Now I know that students will be writing out the questions for this. Oh WoW, me so depressed. 1748 Instructor returns, harrasses privates for sleeping. 1750 Comment: Deliberately blew a question on last test to drop my average so that someone else could have the top slot in class. Can't say that it means anything to me to be tops among this group. Didn't verify anything on the test, simply did it and left. Thus missed a second critical step as well, making for a final score of 86.6. Somewhat ironicly, this left me at the top of the class anyway. Should I bother trying to keep it that way? 1841 Q's for Jeopardy turned in. 2046 Jeopardy done, break taken. Instructor returns 16 minutes late for start of test, thus lessenning time for review afterwards. 2123 Started test 2053, ended 2121. Second person done, I actually checked anything doubtful. Guessed on one question. 2258 Test time is over, no word from instructor yet. 2311 Discuss local computer stores with one of the instructors. Breaking it off here in the interest of getting some sleep, look for logfile number five in a day or two, will catch up to current. --== Logfile Five ==-- Part five of this seemingly endless oddesey. Catches us up to last night... Many, many tables from PEs left out to save my poor fingers from overwork. Thursday, March 15, 2k+1 1710 Happy Happy Joy Joy - TACLAN One starts today. As a rarity, was something other than first person done on yesterday's test. 100%. New laptop today, nice. Everything working so far, unlike that one returned last week. 1713 Instructor leaves. 1748 Instructor returns, and leaves. 1757 Finally did something class-related: signed out book for this section of the course. Instructor not yet returned. 1759 Break time. 1811 Back from break. Is class gonna start yet? 1934 Second break started at 1905, instructor not yet returned. We did get almost an hour of class done before though. 1938 Restart class. Discussion of why RIP (Router Information Protocol) is flawed... is flawed. Only physical distance & hop count covered, link speed glossed over, latency skipped. OSPF discussed a bit, (Open Shortest Path First) & explain some differrences between them. 2005 Break. Almost 1/2 hour of slideshow. 2040 Instructor did not know that IP addrs for workstations can change (within subnet mask) without causing problems... i.e. like for dialup customers. Did not know even that IPs for dialup are dynamic. 2135 Return from 'Lunch' break about 10-15 min ago, officially over at 2130. Once again, where's the instructor? 2137 Asked partner what happenned to the happy, carefree days when he would draw clowns in class. He can't remember. I'm begginning to suspect those days weren't really happy & carefree. Boogah. 2142 Instructor returns. PE's in IP address classes, assign subnets, etc. 2200 Now I will officially deem our instructor to be a brick. Does not see where bits in IPv4 addrs' line up with addr ranges to make limits on number of hosts/nets in differrent addr classes. WoW. 2204 Explanation of subnetting currently fuckerred upperred. Suspect she may get it right when we hit the slides. 2214 Break. 2321 Instructor needs more tools for communicating with ig-nant privates. 2326 Partner just pointed out there is a student who has had his hand up for fourty-five minutes now without being called for question. 2327 Want to try & start class tomorrow with 15-20 mins to try and give a REAL eplanation of what subnetting is & how it works. Friday, March 16, 2k+1 1713 Class (and the hurting) now begins. Ugh, what a leadin for a short weekend (have 24 hour duty on Sunday, but still have to make class on time for Monday). 1717 Instructor once again demonstrates that she doesn't understand. paraphrase ... "X.X.X.128 (or X.X.128.0, etc) cannot be a subnet mask" -- WTF? She's definately confused. 1720 "Can you get me to the slideshow?" - "Double-click on 'Start'". 1737 PE's 1812 Holy Crap! Instructor finally said something that makes sense! Procedure she outlined for designating subnets works nicely. Too bad she's too dense to understand why it works. 1847 Back from break for about 10 minutes now. Once again, where's the instructor? 1857 Class resumes. 1858 Given a PE that can't be finished under given conditions. My answer is "Tell the boss you need two more Class 'C' address blocks." 1909 Discuss ranking system in Star Wars roleplaying game with partner. 1914 Launch into a paranoid rant. At least I'm amusing myself. .... and in breaking these cyphers, we must let the numbers speak for themselves, tell us about themselves. Within certain psuedorandom psuedoprime number generators (that are held to be cryptographically secure by the world at large) there exist discernable patterns... patterns that can be exploited. No matter how good or bad the initial entropy pool is... the NSA (and thier cohorts/competition) has been laughing behind our backs for years, smirking and pointing fingers at Phillip Zimmerman, the King of Hearts, and like company whilest publicly persecuting them. By the time these faults are isolated and corrected, quantum computing will no longer be a laboratory curiosity with individual qubits stable only for milliseconds, no... but rather these machines will be mean exa- and peta-flop bit crunching monsters that will merely sneeze, and crypto systems will fall. But don't worry, your data was never meant to be private anyway. 2041 Pondering significance of netmasks (as the book says) terminating at the first zero bit. Perhaps could work out some silly games, if they actually don't, to squeeze 3 nets of 80 hosts (as in current PE) into one class 'C' address block instead of needing a second. Granted that this kind of resource conservation will be made academic once IPv6 is in use by the majority of the world... but it's easy to believe that day is a long way off, and in the meantime we're saddled with a system where less than 20% of the available addr's are actually in use and yet there's still a crunch for space. 2149 Spent half of 'lunch' break explaining (or trying to explain) why netmasks work as they do (according to book anyway) to a classmate. Woohoo. Before that, noticed that a trend continues: I've gotten into a habit of leaving break area 3-5 mins prior to end of break, everyone now takes that as a signal that it's time to go - especially as most don't even bother to listen when instructor says how long the break is. So, I'll leave to refill the water bottle or hit the restroom, with 10 or even 15 mins left sometimes... come out, everyone heading back for classroom. Funny, or disturbing? 2208 Instructor giving out URLs for more info on stuff. www.webopedia.com, www.sangoma.com/fguide.htm, www.net3group.com 2301 Oh My Goodness Gracious Me Oh My Oh. Class is almost over / Will this class ever end? 2304 Partner tells me to shut the F up. I consider the rammifications of this manuever, and then belch. Partner is dissappointed by the lack of intensity of said belch. Note that I've been playing the smart- aleck all night due to boredom, and having left that role alone for several days now. 2321 Now this is new... paperwad fight _while instructor still in room_ Folks trying to tear me away from this writing so as to bean someone for them. Monday, March 19, 2k+1 2053 Another test day, another dollar. Arguably the easiest test so far (overall for the course though not for me personally... I actually opened the book for this test, unlike a couple others). Feel an urge towards Chinese food, though nothing resembling will be open by the time we get out of here. Last food was some popcorn around 3am, came off a 24 hour shift at 8am. Pretty much slept all day until time to get ready for class. Tuesday, March 20, 2k+1 1708 Start by showing up far too early. Set up projector for slideshow and find a seat. Barf soon I does suspect... - (later) never did barf, though was tasting bile all night long. Wednesday, March 21, 2k+1 1702 Settle in for class. Privates are boisterous today. Physical training this morning did nothing to motivate me, several others out there who shared that attitude. So far, seems todays class won't suck very hard, but the jury is still out. 1705 Things That Would _Help_ Make Me Happy. - Getting that excuse for a Winmodem on my laptop to work under Linux. - Figure out why ARTS is being so flaky. At startup it'll spew random noise out the speakers, but disable it and sound works just fine. Who needs the network transparency on the sound server anyway? Yeesh. - Being allowed to try & test out of the rest of this course - Some good cherry cordials. - ...and of course the things that can be inferred by my demographic, well, mostly anyway. 1715 Instructor speaks to class about yesterdays complaints of no time for chow. Glad I'm not a private. Thier company commander denies there's a problem. From what I understand of the days' events, the CO probably doesn't know the entire story. 2025 Done base config on Cisco 2500 series routers about 26000 times now. Restarting slideshow approx where left off yesterday. 2036 Discuss general info on how to interpret online help for the routers. Already explored it yesterday, and it's very straightforward except for some strange uses of terminology here and there. 2050 LUNCH. 2120 10 mins left to lunch, once again bored out of my skull. Can't wait to get back to barracks tonight... sleep just sounds soooo good. 2132 Bad jokes continue. When will the hurting stop? Thursday, March 22, 2k+1 1732 Where the hell is our instructor? 1738 Instructor from another class comes in, tells class leader to go run a print job so we'll have some PE's to do tonight. This interrupts a discussion of snakes and anus enlargement... tangent from book one private was reading, 'Kiss the Girls', didn't get authors name. Don't want to either. 1739 Another instructor arrives, tells us to keep the volume down. A test is being administered next door. 2128 PE's done, lots of bullshitting done, now to start some slides. 2154 Instructor (still the alternate) doesn't understand that Ping o' Death != Ping flooding. As this is outside of course material, feel that he shouldn't be trying to teach it if he doesn't understand it. ... then again, there's several instructors who don't understand the course material they are supposed to teach. Who am I to judge? *sigh* 2220 But at least he doesn't slam me for side conversation saying "This is the way I learned it...". He's one of the few (or so it seems) who really like this stuff and wants to learn. Says he'll look it up. - Seems it was my night to be pissed off & piss off fellow students. More to come - I don't need to make anything up. Honestly, some of the course material is right on, and good information, but overall it's more frusting and funnier in person than what (I think) I make it sound like here. --== Logfile Six ==-- Silly people everywhere. Some days, I'm one of them. Friday, March 23, 2k+1 1702 Instructor arrived on time. Holy Crap, Batman! 2150 RIP (Router Information Protocol, if I recall) has its' issues, but it's better than nothing (i.e. static routing). Monday, March 26, 2k+1 1722 New instructor, we (and I suspect he) just found out right now. Tuesday, March 27, 2k+1 1702 Now on our fourth instructor for this course. In all fairness, yesterdays' instructor told us he probably wouldn't be here for today. Yesterday, left class somewhere around 2100, at hospital around 2115. Headache, nausea, vomiting... Got through triage and had vitals taken quickly. Place was packed. By the time I was called back (midnight), place was almost empty. At 0010 was moved to different exam room. Fell alseep in the exam chair. Woke up at 0120, looked around. Same people were still waiting in exam rooms on either side of mine. Almost noone in sight, just an orderly and a few clerical types behind desks. Went out to waiting room, woke up my squad leader (who was one of the three people in there, counting the receptionist) and left. Neglected to tell anyone I was leaving. Here's a big "Fuck you too" to the staff members who were responsible for losing me in the (lack of a) shuffle. Planning to avoid Eisenhower Army Medical Center in the future. 1710 Discussion of PE's 1828 PE's on routers continue, keyboard now has several keys sticking, probably due to physical abuse. Shook out about a 1/2 ounce of crud, which maybe should have helped matters, but didn't. Neighbor decided to do the same and produced a similar amount of debris. Seems this section of the course will not be tested, as old tests are not applicable to the current router lab layout and the new tests aren't ready yet. Should have been a clue that we were getting fresh printouts (with changes) of the PE's on a daily basis. 2136 Start slideshow on x.25 stuff. Nine slides to prepare us for the next PE. Now to staple something (anything) to my head. (later) We couldn't actually do the x.25 PE, as it was krunked and noone knew how to fix it. Wednesday, March 28, 2k+1 1701 Seated & waiting to start PE's. No change on the test situation as of yet. One more section over (end of tonight anyway), one step closer to going home. Note that as of tonight, we've finally had the same teacher for two nights in a row. Also note that he's one of those "Where's the Warez" types. 1704 Instructor just spent a few minutes trying to convince us we had a test tonight, only to say "Psych". Ah, almost funny. Considering the prep this class has had, class would be screwed. Has been zero communication between these last four instructors.... 1710 Start PE's. Not feeling motivated... feel no desire to spend the evening playing with a router that will barely talk with its' direct neighbors... wish we had an outside gateway here, get on the net. 1711 Class leader (also my squad leader, see previous) has left for the evening. Probably caught something from me while we were waiting at the hospital. Hope he's doing better tomorrow. 1935 PE's done, at least as far as they can be under current conditions. Waiting for lunchtime. 1947 Detailed discussion of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. Classmate bragging about 347k score on the Hanger (uses Kareem Campbell). 1955 Sinuses have been acting up for days/weeks now, particularly bad tonight. The guy drilling holes in desks (read: putting sawdust in the air), so as to mount hubs permanently into them, isn't helping. 2050 Discussion of bongs and some RPG (playstation: Legend of Dargoon) that I've no clue about. 2113 Allergies getting worse. 2123 Movie trivia (row ahead of me, ex class-leader leading it) rolls on and on and... 2139 Upon this evenings' umpteen billionth trip to the restroom to clear sinuses, paused to look in the mirror. Eyes are red all 'round, skin around them nicely puffy. No white in sight. 2230 BS session with AB about business ventures before he joined the service. Question his reasons for joining if he was making 50k/yr doing contract work before signing in... else question his veracity. 2352 Must remember to check Brainbitch.com to see if it exists (bad class joke now), also must check BrainBench.com about thier certifications. Thursday, March 29, 2k+1 -- TACLAN II, day one. 1703 Seated next to AB - didn't dodge fast enough. No pollen today due to heavy rain. Good deal, feeling human tonight. 1829 Mostly done with group effort to map the classrooms' network layout. Classmate informs me of 418k score on THPS2, hanger level. He also almost got the sick score (200k) on Venice Beach. 1831 Team composition for this section was straight alphabetical into a matrix. Hence, it was essentially random.... therefore, everyone seems to be bitching about an inability to work with someone. This could be a long week. Instructor almost made one change, then said no. Glad he did, as the one change only opens the door for more bitching and lost time. 1950 Team Leader motions for break until 2200. I follow, suggesting end time of 2330. Wondering why PFC K. seems to so intensely despise me. Discussion of topologies. 2000 Class Leader reading this notebook sparks discussion about John Holmes' death. I remind AB about "family" involvement in the porno industry. Very brief discussion of how this may affect his business plans when he gets back home. 2005 Combing publications in classroom for places to consider when get my resume together (needs must be soon, before tax day!). Two ads that caught me eyes... itcareers.com, and Girl Scouts. Scouts looking for all sorts of technical people... just seems kind of strange, but says something about how far mainstream tech has gotten that GS looking into maintaining a real presence online. 2023 Break over, instructor checking team diagrams of class network. Team One: FUBAR. Team Two: Somewhat better. Team Three: Mostly correct (my team, yay or something). All teams: Everyone got topology wrong for the Win98 segment of the net... called the 10base2 segment a ring, when instructor called it a bus. Sure it's a ring (electrically), but that's not what counts. 2043 Instructor just broke out with a speech straight out of the BOFH handbook. I almost fell out of my chair. Paraphrasing somewhat, but here goes... (wish I had a tape recorder going!) "If your PC will not boot up when you come in tommorrow -- everyone has a key, right? Unplug your PC and run your key around the prongs to demagnetize them. Sometimes those prongs get magnetized and the PC won't boot because of that." LMAO. Considering this crowd, SOMEONE is sure to misinterpret that and electrocute themselves. 2105 LUNCH! Before this, got NIC config (from a DOS-based setup proggie) in preparation for PE's. 2140 Lunch over -- Note that any break over 10 mins still not authorized. Intructions we recieved include setup for 3com cards but not for the SMC cards. As I wish to not piss off The Powers That Be, I'm following a policy of not doing anything outside the instructions for now. Waiting for instructor to return and have him fix it. 2145 AB asks me to find a Java water applett. I've seen before (water/ mirror/distort image on page, VERY nice effect) and am fairly sure it won't take long to find. 2255 Time for cleanup (system and classroom) and get ready to leave for the evening. After some discussion, current instructor isn't going to get pissed if I actually fix something without first clearing it through Levels Higher Than God. This is a refreshing change. Also managed to dodge having a detail this evening. Yay. --== Logfile Seven ==-- Friday, March 30, 2k+1 1320 Once again, we're told 1300 class for payday acivities. Once again, privates arrival geared for 1330 class. Once again, instructor not yet here. Class leader had to hunt down someone to unlock the classroom. Question now is if hallucinations will begin before or after class ends. Couldn't sleep at all last night, so caught up on a fair amount of small things that I'd been neglecting... answered all email, got these notes typed up through last night, finally saw that movie clip 'All Your Bases...', levelled up my character on Abysmal Realms, read too much discussion on Slashdot... Blah. 1333 New instructor for the evening. Once again zero coordination. 1340 Alternate instructor for the alternate instructor arrives. 1430 Lost count of errors made by instructor in the last hour or so. High points: Called NetBeui a Microsoft protocol, said reason DOS NIC diags won't work under Windows is because Win takes too much memory. Woohoo, am I *so* glad to know these things. 1453 Return from break, return to regularly scheduled instructor. 1457 "winipcfg will not work unless you have preconfigured NetBeui." 1500 PING - local loopback vs. whatever. I try to explain to instructor why you cannot trust ping 127.0.0.1 as a test of your NIC. Instructor is now considered a brick. FUBARs explanation of "Destination host unreachable". 1502 Instructor demonstrates lack of cluefulness about what PnP really is and how it works. 1504 Discussion of ARP/RARP. Instructor still fond of phrases like "NIC Card". Mildly amusing: Pronounces TRACERT as "Trace-ert". Monday, April 2, 2k+1 1703 Feels like this was a long weekend. Out of class early Friday, come in late on Monday. Getting out of PT this morning was worth far more than the cost of a $2 contribution to the company fund. Money going to a good cause as well (BBQ later, though not sure if I'll be attending). 1705 Rotate: Everyone moves to a different type of workstation... Not that anyone in my group has actually finished PE's, as there is a lack of adequate documentation on how to set up the workstations my group has been using. (see previous log on timewasting factors). 1935 Finished one run through the PE's. Many others stumped. Some of the problems I'm seeing are beyond the pale (previous classes seem to have seriously FUBAR'd some of these systems). Instructor worthless at the moment, letting people do 'discovery method' of learning. It's working for some, but others... have my doubts. 2022 Now trying to think of acceptable excuses to leave class for the day. Coming up short, as it would pretty much entail going to hospital. 2046 I want to go home. 2059 PFC K asking for help. Her system really needs it. Tuesday, April 3, 2k+1 1712 Back to PE's. Clean system (as daytime class *never* does it!) & reinstall network. Discuss playstation games with classmate. 1716 "Didn't we just do this?" I cry, as Windows tries to install the 3com PCI 3C900B-Combo drivers for the fourth time in a row. Looks like it's time for me to hit Regedit and eradicate some phantom keys. ARGH but this is silly. 1728 "Everyone on the Microns, if you haven't gotten to doing the MS-Office '97 download yet, I want you to hold off. I want to see if the other workgroup can do this without everyone else competing for bandwidth." As if that were the real problem. Check the router. 1747 Yup it was the router. There was a cable loose, thus cutting of the other workgroup. Now then, why does Windows want to reinstall network components from the CD when all I did was change gateway addresses? Silly peeps in Redmond, and I don't just mean Nintendo. 1830 Discussion among classmates about agrarian bases for hometowns. We are *far* too easily amused this evening. 1912 Finished PE's. Spent some time BS'ing and helping others troubleshoot. Would have taken longer if Outlook config wasn't preserved despite full uninstall/reinstall. 1916 Noticed that eyes won't focus on anything more than 15-20 feet away. Class leader mentions to let him know if I need to go to sick call. He's entirely bored with this evening. 2020 Return from break at 2015. Break over at 2015. Folks still filtering in. Only somewhat unusual. 2023 Big Ol' outlook mail party. Almost feels like I'm back in the BBS'ing days. 2036 Grog Want Caffiene. Too bad I've no change. 2045 After a quick game of FreeCell (a first for me as games are not allowed in here.. and a watermark of how disgustipated me feels, me guesses), broke down and did cleanup. Ready to start PE's from scratch again. 2105 LUNCH. Need to find someone to borrow a dollar from. 2252 Partook in a massive mailbomimg campaign. Think I pissed off half the class, but at least it amused me for more than an hour. (later) several folks told me they were amused as well. Bonus. Wednesday, April 4, 2k+1 1713 Rotated again. Whomever was using this system before me needs to be shot. 1729 - 1821 Got interrupted while trying to make last entry. Evening not going well. Vending machines which hold caffinatted beverage are all shot. 1837 Group which my previous class partner (still roommate) is in is having problems, still. 1855 More troubleshooting for others... some of these systems seem to have had odd satanic rituals performed on various bits of thier hardware. Note that Key-rub fix (discharge static buildup in power supplies, called magnetic buildup by instructor STILL) was applied to two of the systems in my current workgroup. Try to talk to instructor about bad grounding... was understood, not that much can be done about it. 2159 Trying to freee up some diskspace on my current system. After usual culprits eliminated (including *48* application temp install dirs left lying around, all with at least 1mb data in them), I finally look at the root dir. Entire contents of Windows (and system) directory copied into it. VXD, DLL, etc. all over. Ponderous. Really ponderous. Should have been doing each delete seperarely, managed to krunk the Windows NT bootloader in this process. Win98 bootup relies on it (would anyone do this sort of thing in the real world? I mean, win98, NT, and Solaris on these machines for training purposes, but why the heck would you put win98 and NT boot setup on same partition when NT is on its' own partition? There are easy ways to make sure none interferes with the other...) 2207 Class Leader is bored enough to say he's looking forward to going to the Waffle House after class. I reply by making disparaging remarks about the Awful Waffle. He can't refute them. 2212 Class leader proclaims that he can't figure anything out and must be spoon-fed information. I have faith that this is false, but he's not hearing me. 2218 On break for a bit. Class leader playing with a baggie of BNC connectors (another redundant phrase, depending whos' definition of BNC you listen to). Private commenting on how she can't get none. Me thinking she *must* be stupid, considering current environment. Thursday, April 5, 2k+1 1703 Workstation I was using yesterday has not been fixed. Class leader found N'Sync wallpaper on his workstation. WoW. 1730 Instructor claimed was leaving for 10 min meal break as he got shorted on time before class. Just now returned. 1737 Instructor tracking down a Windows NT install CD so's I can fix problems with NT bootloader, so as to be able to boot into Win98. Seems overmuch to me, as nothing but Win98 ever gets used on these systems... but planning for the future isn't bad. Seeing as course material for this section isn't actually completed yet... 1750 Waiting on NT filecopy. Discuss benifits of drive imaging. Instructor tells me that system for entire school is being worked on. I point out there's a lot more in this classroom that would benefit from this than just my Oops from last night. Instructor agrees completely. Too bad there's far more management overhead than is really needed some days... 1845 Installing DirectX 8.0a in prep for gamefest later. As of today, Once you can correctly install Win98 networking from memory (without checking notes or handouts), you can start playing some Unreal Tournament. Remember that games are disallowed by policy. 1847 Had ticklefest with PFC K. Turns out she was just mad at the world the other day. 1848 PFC K steals notebook to read last entry; tickles me some more. 2139 Cleanup time. Unreal Tournament was very, very fun. Think we'll do this again tomorrow. I administered a beatdown to the class at large for starters, then stayed middle-to-high in the pack afterwards. Friday, April 6, 2k+1 2314 I just totally ruled on UT this evening. Two good CTF games: I got two of the three points on both games (3-1 on first, 3-0 on second) and a major assist for 3rd point on second game. Took forever on second, as AB had our flag and was hiding with it. We had the enemy flag for about 10 or 15 mins sitting at our goalpoint, all we needed to do was regain & return our own (automatic return when we recapture it). Found the little bugger in a rather secluded spot, not far from enemy goal point. Other than Capture The Flag, I managed to stay on top or near for the deathmatches. Team deathmatches were pretty cool... 4 teams, my team was only myself and the annoying flag-hider from previous. We didn't win but made good showings... if he could have kept up with me we would have won or at least been very close seconds. Sick part of all this: I don't consider myself an avid gamer. Monday is our last day of TACLAN II. We start on two days of HTML, then 20 days of Defense Messaging System after that. --== Logfile Eight ==-- Time ticking down, down, down... professional (heh) distaste for current instructor slowly verging towards a deep and personal hatred. Not rational, but why should it/I be? Tuesday, April 10, 2k+1 1845 Got my final W2 yesterday. Yay. Unreal Tournament last night was fairly decent. Tonight starts our one (cut down from two) night of HTML. WoWiE. Sinuses very aggravated. 2058 Failed in ploy to con instructor into allowing internet access for purpose of getting "sample" web pages. Was gonna show the class some fun/useful sites... oh well. Wednesday, April 11, 2k+1 1653 Day one of DMS. New class, new (set of) instructor(s), new equipment, 18 days of class remaining. Only about 8 PT sessions left. Me go home SOON! 1702 Instructor not yet arrived, but we know the name now. 1735 Instructor claims we'll have her for the rest of our time in this school. We've heard similar before. Not happenned as of yet. 1729 Issues with fans running and instructors' speaking volume. 1736 Midway through introductions. First time we've done this in a while. 1753 First slideshow done, waiting for second. 1818 Back from second break, pondering just why this class is the way it is. Not really caring anymore. Chanting "18 days" like a mantra or some shit. 1839 "DMS is to replace AUTODIN, because AUTODIN is slow and costly. While AUTODIN is more reliable, it is strictly text-based." Batch processing on old mainframes, etc. Me wonders if they had heard of things like MIME/UUENCODE, or if such would have been too much of a burden. 1957 Noticing that DMS uses a lot of terminology that is deceptively close to industry standard, but... 2045 ...DMS is scheduled to fully replace AUTODIN by 2004. By then, Skipjack/PKI system currently in place (while serviceable for now?) will (I suspect) be so woefully outdated... --need to ask if this PKI is symmetric psuedoprime base or not (which sort of systems will likely be obsoleted by 2004... quantum computing for key attacks will KILL this sort of shit) --If I were interested enough, think docs on Skipjack are freely available. (much later) after reading short writeup in _Applied Cryptography_, pretty much confirms suspicions, though not open spec by any means. 2051 X.400 O/R address, X.500 Distinguished Name addrs, compare/contrast. 2104 Go over hostname breakdown. 2106 For SPC H, today is the day to be called "Fast Like Tree, Smart Like Rock." I'm about asleep right now, so similar for self. Heh. 2107 More hostname breakdown. [table omitted] 2143 "DMS In A Nutshell" -- isn't that on O'Reilly book? :-P [two full pages of diagrams omitted] Thursday, April 12, 2k+1 1703 Privates late, observing administrivia in progress. Seems upstairs here there's more forethought on resource management (removable harddrives, ghosting in evidence, etc.). 2250 PE's actually took all night. Have decided I don't much care for Exchange Server, but it *can* be beaten into submission. I may eventually come to be on semi-friendly terms with it, but always will be keeping an eye on this one... it's a slippery weasel all right. 2301 DMS-OSA (Operating System Administration) study questions. [Two full pages omitted - 55 questions with book references. This stuff was worked on during off time over a few days, then] finished during class review day before test] Friday, April 13, 2k+1 1707 "What happens when the public and private key get together? They make an algorithm. The algorithm is called the MEK key." WTF? Is this *yet another* improper use of Jargon (caused by instructors not knowing thier fucking shit), or does the encryption schema actually change based on key contents? I can't see Skipjack being THAT high speed. [After conversation with a fellow student [different class] got reminder about a standard military dictum... "A key is a key is a key." Within any arbitrary network, all keys are to be made interchangable, which greatly simplifies troubleshooting. Instructors just may be smoking crack... not completely certain still.] 2039 Can't mail self via Outlook. Verify address/account settings on server, mail no longer bounces. Still doesn't come in though. Waaaaaah. 2052 PFC K being extremely annoying. Think she's attention starved or something. 2059 PFC K offended by above. Break time. 2144 Still had zero help resolving exchange/outlook issue. 2145 Now to discuss what we need to get a 'go' for this portion of class. 1) create user on server 2) configure user on workstation Monday, April 16, 2k+1 1703 Captain's log, Stardate 4696.96 ... we are on a mission to simulate the learning process. For the next seven hours we will be attempting to act as if learning were taking place, reguardless of the Truth of the matter. Perhaps it should be troubling that this conflicts with this weeks' command-directed focus on Integrity, but somehow I lack the motivation to examine and correct this situation. I do not know if any of the crew have noted this, as none have spoken. 1720 Verified can now send mail to self. Initial impression of Exchange/ Outlook reverified, though it make take more beating than previously thought. 1730 Troubleshooting tips: Can't send mail to self? Check X.400->X.500 addresses (PFC K had these wrong after re-re-reverification). Unable to send outside domain? Check BMTA Connector/Site Addressing. 1732 Verified send/receive mail outside domain. "And there was much rejoicing." "Yay." 1746 Discussion of metrics for monitor refresh rate. Inadequate here. Next, AB discusses screensaver called "Stress" or somesuch name. One gets multiple implements of destruction (flamethrower, etc) with which to kill cockroaches and such. Possible alt. name "Termites." 1819 Classmate tells me about getting 275k score on Philidelphia (THPS2). 1847 PFC K still exploring X.500 directory. My hints for faster locating of addresses we need are irrelevant, as speed is not her goal. 1849 Reverify instructor has no sense of humor. K still has bad memory. 1854 AB finally got around to checking Java Water stuff. Attachments were mangled by his email provider, or something. He couldn't figure out how to get into acount I created for him on my home box. Claims my DNS is bad or something. Bwahahahah. 1929 Pathetic attempts at Irrepressible Wookie Howls don't even draw funny looks from the peanut gallery. At least its mildly amusing to me. 1934 Reverify instructor has a serious attitude problem. Ask for clarification on an issue, get treated as if challenging authority. Eventually says something that implies I was right on initial guess/ impression, but never actually answers my question. Being seriously unprofessional (not that I'm uber-professional (especially in current environment)) and rather bitchy. 1954 Breaking out FORTEZZA cards now. 2040 Finally reached a level of being incapable of absorbing information. Getting paranoid about tomorrows' test. So far this evening, instructor has refused to answer anyone's questions (that I've seen, haven't polled). Have had no real time on system since first day of this portion since my partner is so fucking dense. Have not been able to concentrate for past few days anyway. Last few times instructor spoke to class, I heard the kind of voice on hears from instructors in Charlie Brown cartoons. Whoah. 2045 Must ask instructor soon (and privately) if I'm doing anything to personally piss her off, or if it's some sort of prejudice. 2148 Now, an hour later, we get to setting up FORTEZZA card properly. Try send secure email. Frustration is building... 2149 K's cell phone rings. Amuses me. Remember injunction against bringing any personal electronic device into classroom. 2205 Reminders about what tomorrows' test will include. It's nothing horribly complex, so feel a bit more confident now. This does not invalidate any of my previous bitching though. Tuesday, April 17, 2k+1 1746 In lull between written and hands-on portion of the test. Multiple folks done before me (a rarity), looked up too many answers. 1757 Quiet Time rolls on, must have fell alseep for a few minutes. Wish this were the final test, not the 4th-to-last. 1803 Other students commenting on how they'd like to be recycled, as it would mean having a differrent instructor. [later] Final score on test: 100%. Note that this would not be the case if we had actually been kicked out of the room when time expired. It was during the last 5 minutes that everything fell together for the hands-on portion. Amazingly, I was still the first (second?) person done, more than 10 mins after time expired... Wednesday, April 18, 2k+1 -- DMS Phase Two, DMS:DSA (Directory System Agent) 1703 May be forced into keeping partner from previous section. We'll see. 1714 Start slideshow. "Today, we're going to embark on a journey to learn..." Bah, instructor starting to *sound like my logs*. Sad. 1724 Instructor surprises me (and I suspect the entire class) by admitting to not knowing something. 1725 Slideshow operator muffs. Low chuckle from the peanut gallery. 1726 Instructor comes close to displaying a sense of humor. Sort of. 1729 Two types of DSA's : x.500 DIT:DSA (Directory Information Tree) x.400 RCDB:DSA (Routing Control Database) 1733 Instructor remembers suddenly that we forgot to do DMS In A Nutshell today, so we'll do it tomorrow, adding DSA Heirarchy. 1735 "The DIB is the sum total of the DIT." Nothing in this class as much fun as DGM Math, but a few quotes (unlike this one) are memorable. 1738 Wondering why DSA is structured as it is... somewhat different than DNS. Partly breaks from Army heirarchical mode, but not really. (further explanation later, oh hell no it doesn't). Suspect performance increases possible with different distribution layout. Also suspect it's not a real issue. 1741 AB == lysdexic for today. 1754 Note that instructors copy of slideshow is jacked up. 1755 CRL/CKL: Certificate Revocation List/Compromised Key List 1827 Projector goes down. Alarmingly like Windows bluescreen. 1831 Projector back up. Reminder of class rules about sleeping. Back to DSA: DoD version. Description of levels, ownership, shadowing agreements/replication, etc. 1840 Ignore previous comments on DSA vs DNS. Need more research (and as we all know, if it ain't vital then I'm too lazy) to be able to comment properly on this. 1845 Shadow Process/Shadow Agreements. Consumer (Client) must request shadow: server does not push. I compare to COMSEC. Remember, boys and girls: COMSEC sucks! 1849 Instructor has taken to calling soldiers "Hard Charger" with a somewhat snyde sounding voice. Discussion of Chaining/Multichaining (~=multicasting). Misuses 'superficial', should have said 'superfluous' (sp?). 1851 DSA->DSA interactions: Updates are multichained whenever possible. I do believe this is a one-up on DNS. 1856 DSA Levels: Army version. Same level seperation as with DoD, naming is different, shadow process achieves roughly same goals though layed out entirely differrently. 1940 Shadow server for DSA in Korea is omitted. Very odd. (ARMSDSA) 1941 Test for this section will include tasks for all three user profiles. CA: Certification Authority: Post certificates, makes FORTEZZA cards. SRA: SubRegAuth: Posts changes to DIT. DSA Mngr: Replication/Shadow Agreement, anything not done by others. 1946 Discuss directory management levels; my eyes glazed over for a bit. No flak for this, as somehow learned to not close eyes when sleeping in class... must be a leftover from basic training. More discussion of protocols by which DSA's communicate. 2044 Soon to start PE's. "Pinky, did you leave the lensecap on your mind again?" Thursday, April 19, 2k+1 2224 Headache & mild nausea all night (most of day too). If it were any worse, would have reason to visit the hospital. Not that I would unless passed out and someone carried me there... zero desire to visit that place again on any terms. Other students currently working on written complaints against the instructor. Won't do any good. Mine will wait until End Of Course Critique (which will be an edited copy of these logs). The only times so far that instructor has actually answered my questions directly have been during the exam yesterday, when asking if my understanding of instructions was correct, and once this evening when I was asking the class leader a question, not realizng instructor was present. 2259 Instructor calls halt to our fun. Now to do high-speed review of what this evenings festivities have supposedly accomplished. Discuss 3 profiles again. --== Logfile Nine ==-- Only four days of class remaining. Started DMS:MWS this fine, fine evening. Friday, April 20, 2k+1 1718 Attempt to log on as Certification Authority to verify keys for users, make sure I actually finished what was working on yesterday. Cannot get access to DIT. Instructor trying to confuse me, saying reason is because I was on wrong account. Nope, server was rebooting. Silly instructor. 1723 Classmate tells me about THPS2 progress: 700k on New York, using Rodney Mullen. 100% all levels except Plywood Paradise (cash icons) and Bull Ring (again, cash icons). 1575 Massive doses of caffienne are helping. This evening is first time in several days that I've felt ... alive ... during class. 1934 Start on study questions. Yay. [two pages of study questions not included] 2155 Instructor still refuses to admit MEK != Algorithm. (Later - spoke with a different instructor who both has a clue and the willingness to spend a few seconds with the students... seems these folks consider it valid to call MEK an 'algorithm of' the keys used to create it. Odd.) Monday, April 23 2k+1 1704 Ye Olde Notebook of Doom managed to spend weekend in the classroom. 1707 Notes on what test material will be (Create profiles, add users to DIT, replication agreements) 1844 Break, bowel movements. Waiting for hands-on portion of test. AB moves over to sit next to me, then instead of speaking (disallowed by policy while still in "test mode") proceeds to play with keyboard and a straw. Need sleep, bad. Want massuesse/chirpractor. 1910 Quick sugar infusion, almost awake now. 1955 Focus, focus... waiting on first batch to finish hands-on portion of test. Need to stay conscious. Almost fell asleep while standing a few minutes ago. 2055 Still waiting for second portion of test. Seems there was an equipment problem causing everyone to need to restart. Was recognized about 20 minutes into the test. Ouch. 2059 Report from the front lines: seems one of the DSA servers crashed twice during the course of the test. Ouch. Instructor also entered own email address improperly into x.500 directory, could not receive mail. Feeling very confident about this entire process now. Really. 2122 More news from the front lines. Seems instructor did not procure all the needed materials before test started. Had the wrong batch of cards for crypto devices (wrong set of private keys on the cards, for a diff. version of the test). Ended up making seperate trips to procure the proper set of cards, then went back later for floppy set with public keys on them. Argh. At a real school, this should bring on an ass-chewing from admin for not being prepped. 2152 Still waiting. Much longer and we won't have time for the second group to be tested. Need to just make this an admin-go (if admin/ instructor can't get this fixed, of course). No idea what the holdup is now. Later I took about the full hour (which was what we were supposed to get) to finish the test. Paranoia checking *everything*, including many things that were supposed to be preconfigured for us. Everything set up properly by that time, except instructors email. Tuesday, April 24, 2k+1 1659 Waiting on test scores from yesterday. Instructor who was helping troubleshoot yesterday comes in and asks "Are any of you worried?" Reply from the peanut gallery was "Do we get to finish the test today?" Note that I asked SPC H. for permission to quote this and, was denied. Blah. (Later) We never actually went over the written portion of the test. Would like to know what it was that I messed up on. *sigh* Entire class gets admin-go's on second portion anyway though. Not much else the instructor could do if we're to stay on schedule for graduation. 1917 Talk about how MHS ties previous bits together, mention of specialty products (MLA - Mail List Agent, MFI - Multi-Function Interpreter, PUA - Profile User Agent). 1747 Slideshow from Heck. 64 slides, now on #13. 1751 Instructor confused again. FORTEZZA card has nothing to do with identification of mail recipient... 1844 Must escape this silly place [[[rest of entry is illegible]]] 1849 [[[several scribbly lines, barely legible, about protocol types]]] TCP/IP, RPC, SMTP.... RPC -> Moves "MAPI encoded messages" to Information Store APC123: Adds military required fields to x.400 P772: plain-text military message. P42: security protocol wrapper for P772 messages. P1: Message export protocol. 1855 Reminded by questions asked by PFC K that "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people." 1926 Back from second break, slideshow rolls on (and on and on and...) 1937 As on of our cohorts might put it, I am now considering "soul removal" manuever on a few folks in this classroom. It'd never fly, but nice to think about. 1939 First mention during course about x.400/x.500 use in the "Real World." [[illegible scrawl follows]] 1940 Reassurance from instructor that EOCC matters. I execute the "Roll to disbelieve" manuever. Doesn't impact me as I'll be gone, but it'd be nice to think someone might benifit from properly written constructive criticism... which these logs might get edited into something resembling, sometime. 1944 Student asks what OSI layers things are happenning on. ARGH. It is Pointed out that everything we're really dealing with here in DMS takes place on application layer. Me thinking "or abstracted layers above that..." 1952 Slideshow operator acts in a way implying that has a MOS 6510 for a brain (read: Bender (Futurama) has a 6502). 2044 Log types: Application, System, Security. 2048 Alternate recipients, types/why of different forwarding setups. 2133 After lunch, we have more discussion of mailing list management. 2143 SMA=MWS, etc etc etc. Launch into study questions for this section. [[several pages study questions not included]] Wednesday, April 25, 2k+1 1656 High point of the day (so far) was PT being cancelled for lack of interest. Okay, so it was for weather as much as lack of interest. Sad thing, this may work out as high point of the week. 1916 Second portion of todays PE's held up. Waiting on fix for instructor having installed workstations improperly. WoWiE. 1957 Noted by fellow students that instrcutor is completely avoiding this corner of the room, no matter what we do to get her attention. This has been going on for a few hours now... 2215 After a certain point (when all four of us over here simply kept our hands raised staring straight at her for a few minutes) instructor did come over and answer questions. Was mostly polite... not that I can blame her (much) this time, seeing as how AB was banging on table to get her attention. One of her pet peeves is tapping, etc. Thursday, April 26, 2k+1 1657 AB will have last day of class and then outprocess. Goodie for him. Makes it several days faster he gets out of the service than others get off post. 1737 Study questions being worked on. Slowly. 1823 Eyes refuse to focus on page when I go to hunt for answers to these study questions. My my my.... 1948 I=BFB. Murphy was an optometrist, not an optimist, as some have misreported. No connection to anything. 2024 Headache building, nausea on the horizen. 2119 " " " " " ". Lunch in progress. Class reviewing study material from about 2020 to 2100. Going slowly, rather painful, and wishing to leave. Have been understanding everything involved so far only in bits and pieces (as relates directly to DMS anyway) since day one of this 20-day monstrosity. Have scored well on two tests so far anyway though. Really, really want to leave. 2230 Questions done. Back to slideshow. Profiling User Agent. Monday, April 30, 2k+1 1910 Test done. Spent an hour and fourty minutes on this (two hours were allowed). If every one of these questions had actually had a reference in the book, this would have gone much more quickly. Actually went and proved to myself that several questions had no reference in the text anywhere (some were general knowledge that should have been in there, others could be reasoned out). Bah, time to get the hell out of here already.... 2035 Test review... [DMS:MHS, version C, me had book 8 of 25, scored 92%] - Question #2 missed by all but (I think) one student. By the way it was worded, referenced against material in book, both answers B and C could be seen as correct. Answer C only one accepted, and reference for it was much harder to locate. Hrm. - Numbers 20 and 32, couldn't find a reference in book or notes. Not alone on those, but both missed by less than half the class. - Question 32 also missed by all but one or two students. Text disagrees with itself, saying security option can only be set two ways in main text, slideshow implies there are more options while only listing two ways mentioned previously. According to test, there are more options. Tuesday, May First, Two Thousand and One. [DMS:MWS] ... Not quite the year we made contact. We are still searching for signs of intelligence here at the School of Information Technology, located on lovely Fort Gordon. There have been signs, but they are few and far between. We lack definitive proof that anything truly sentient is native to these classrooms... 1710 Start out book for Management WorkStation with ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN slides. Holy crap, wasn't the longest previous slideshow "only" all of 86 slides? 1715 Phone rings in office next door. Instructor leaves to answer it. 1830 Earlier, was explicitely told to not try to interpret anything in class material. After multiple incidents involving what I term as "Direct Application of Knowledge" (i.e. beating myself over the head with the binder containing a few hundred pages of course material). still don't feel stupid enough to be here. 1832 Instructor unable to distiguish between what Agents and Interfaces are. As the course material uses the term, Agents can be user applications, daemons, or a wierd crossbreeding of them... interface seems to retain (more or less) the standard meaning, i.e. eth0, ppp0, a socket or whatever. Also some students still confused as to how protocols fall into the mix. 1918 Keep losing focus... instructors' voice been going from being semi- lucid (normal) to a stream of disconnected words, to a drone in the background, and back to semi-lucid again. Cycle repeated (I think) twice now. Realize that my distaste for both this place and current instructor has now passed rational bounds. The book for this section of the course seems to be reasonably well-written, and methinks this would all make sense if I *could* focus... Only FOUR DAYS LEFT after this. Must keep from standing up and telling our instructor that she is uninformed, stupid, ugly, dressed funny by her government, etc etc etc. [scrawled] Must hold on... [penned in by class partner later - "Pol Pot."] 1936 Instructor answers 3rd call of the evening. Classmates specul(um)ate that it's her Signifigant Other calling for phone sex. I tried to leave the subject alone, but... 2020 Return from third break, up to slide 59 beforehand (started moving towards Warp Speed). Looks like we'll be going to PE's after #72. 2030 Where's the instructor? 2036 Instructor returns, preceeded by specul(um)ation similar to 1936 log entry. 2053 Slideshow moved at warp speed to finish up through #72. Class partner (back to being Goose, after all these weeks of rotating around) now singing "Holiday in Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys. 2125 Lunch was yummy. Food may help in ability to focus. We'll see. 2134 Instructor returns, and leaves. 2137 Instructor returns. We gonna start PE's yet? 2152 Start operating system reload on servers. Boot from traven (II?) tape cartridges and run system restore from them. Kinda odd looking but it works, mostly. Back to study questions while instructor fiddles with the boxen and monitors reinstalls & such. Wondering why these classrooms ain't set up like previous stuff with ghosting. Granted, these aren't Intel boxen... so perhaps these folks don't grok that dd + gzip / bzip2 and a bit ofscripting works just as well? [[pages of study questions not included, not yet completed]] <------> Nothing really changed, except that me is less and less rational about things as time goes on. Thinking phrases like "disciplinary immolation", "light face in fire and put it out with a screwdriver" and such... should have been logging stuff about instructor getting really, really stupid with one private this evening (plus yesterday's stupidity leading up to it), kicking out of classroom, etc... But all that is... too stupid. Can't remember enough of it to properly write it up. Ack. Maybe quiz folks in class tomorrow. --== Logfile Ten ==-- Logfiles, part the tenth, and last. We are now two days past the end of class. Simply waiting to leave. Wednesday, May 2, 2k+1 1846 Started PE's (FINALLY) sometime around 1730 or so. High point of this evening was telling devil woman "Shut your bitch-hole, turn around, and NEVER speak to me again." This was not well received, led into pissing contest which was eventually broken up by class leader. I would *so* enjoy going postal on someone who deserves it (there are multiple folks to choose from in that department, myself possibly included :-/ ) ... but not all constraints on my behavior have been br0ken as of yet. Ah well... (LATER) We were both actually kind of enjoying the pissing match by the end. 1933 Goose still working on PE's. Seems mildly miffed that I'm not even pretending to pay attention anymore. Noone has commented. 2025 Goose finally had enough for the day. As we return from 3rd break, he moves off to chat with classmates rather than play good student and continue PE's. Me ponders strategem for answering questions on final test. If it is actually given, would be against track record (and school policy) to count it towards grade. Previous class did not receive test, and each "new" test goes through an evaluation period where it doesn't hurt students and is refined based on how well classes as a whole do on them. 2049 Goose want to be the Miner Twenty-Fourty-Niner, or else the icecream man. Chanting of "Pol Pot" coming from somewhere in the room... Still no work accomplished since last break. 2052 In an unprecedentet turn of events, instructor almost shows some mercy upon us. Debates releasing us early so we can get good spots in line for snack truck during "lunch" break. Figures this would happen on a day when I'm not carrying any cash. 2134 Back from "lunch". Goose challenges my Sham-Fu. Who's Sham-Fu is better is not likely to be decided any time this lifetime. Classmate who claims she had John Holmes as a babysitter (and thus has never watched any porno) claims to not have known that "Tart" is British slang for "hooker". 2147 Classmate messing around, telnet into other students systems. Ack, root telnet login is *not* disabled by default on these HP-UX boxen we be working with. So he's been rebooting other folks systems. Instructor NOT pleased. I almost got classmate to run "rm -Rf /*" on one system... Good thing he caught on (as intended) when I started backing away, otherwise things could have gotten interesting. 2212 Classmates discuss use of sperm for skin softener, hair conditioner, facial creme, drink flavoring, etc. Some women... Mentioned can get $1k/donation some places in Florida. Learn something new every day in this class. 2221 Last break of the evening should have been over by now, yet it rolls on. Where's the instructor? Eyes again refusing to focus properly. 2238 Devil woman sets clock ahead 20 minutes, failed to notice instructor actually was in the room at this time. So it's "officially" 2300 now. 2245 Instructor takes the bait; class leader remains silent about this. 2250 Instructor drops the bait; Devil woman fixes the clock. *sigh* Thursday, May 3, 2k+1 1707 Arrive slightly late due to awards ceremony for outgoing company commander. Change of command ceremony tomorrow. Roommate believes tears were faked, as outgiong CO's actions were "too consistant". 1940 Done with study questions. Share the fruits of Goosey-Boy and meselfs' labour with everyone who matters. 1951 AB needs clarification on many thingamajiggies, involving differences between linux distros (mad-drake/slackerware), and finer points of ethernet/modem combo pcmcia cards. I share experiences of last few weeks or so involving this stuff. Makes no real impression. 2025 Back to the (seemingly) endless slideshow. No Es Bueno! 2225 Return from break, slideshow done, FOREVER. Friday, May 4, 2k+1 Payday activities. After reviewing previous track record, we non-IET classmembers had decided to arrive at 1330 instead of the appointed 1300, as that is when everyone was going to arrive anyway. We were wrong... we got there at 1325 or so, noone else showed until 1335. We actually did test. 30 questions and far, far too long of time allowed for it. I reached a point where started just marking bubbles on answer sheet, couldn't stand to sit there any longer. After school, most of class showed at Applebee's for a farewell dinner type thing, as this was the best working time available. All but the annoying folks showed, so it was worth the effort. Have decided some of the nice young ladies in our class are more droolworthy (once in civilian clothing) than I'd been giving them credit for. Couple of them (including the one SGT among said young ladies) were trying to KILL us with thier outfits. WoW. High point of the dinner? When one of my squadmates dumped a bottle of tobasco onto his flaming-hot skillet which steak was served on. Low point? When someone from another class that had (for no real reason) joined is there decided to repeat the stunt. Pretty well everyone was unimpressed with the equivilant of having been mildly peppergassed twice in a 20 minute period. Once is a joke, but twice.... Seems the kitchen staff got things pretty badly both times. Pondering air circulation in there... Some customers were getting ill. A few left because of the first incident, a fair number left with the second incident. Naughty, naughty. Waiting for Devil woman to email out the photos she took on her SCHWEET digital camera setup. I lust that camera more than her... Monday, May 7, 2k+1 0830-ish... Show up for morning formation, get our clearing papers. (later) done clearing, have some free time to kill. Go MUD. 1530-ish... Pre-class formation, Platoon SGT tries to tell me I failed the height/weight standards at End-Of-Cycle physical fitness test, then failed tape test for body fat percentage (Hgt/Wgt doesn't matter unless you fail on fat). I inform him that I was never told. Am confused as to why nobody said anything SEVEN AND A HALF WEEKS AGO about this. "We'll check into that." Believe this must be a clerical error, considering I failed weight by less than 5 pounds, and with my bone structure there's no way could've failed the fat. Very likely to be over by now though, as I've been lazy since then. Do note that because I was never given counseling on this issue, cannot be held against me... sure they can try, if someone hates me. But these folks really don't even know me ;-) 1700-ish... Final day of class. Friday's test had a second component. Consists of 60 multiple guess questions, given (once again) far too much time. Once again, I was first out of the classroom. Once again, just started marking things at some point because I didn't feel like staying in the room any longer. We did something resembling a review of the test. I paid zero attention, as the components of this last months' worth of instruction are not used anywhere in the real world... though there are (somewhat) analogous systems. 2130-ish... We do end-of-course critiques. I am far from the only person being merciless here. At least mine cites verifiable information :-P Mine was _not_ the longest, as I didn't edit logs before class for inclusion, AND my notebook was inaccessable during this time. 2230-ish... We ended up getting out about an hour early. Squad (non-IET'ers) went to Denny's after class, truth started coming out of folks mouths about things that had happenned at various stages. All of us had a good laugh or three. Tuesday, May 8, 2k+1 Even though we're "clearing", we still count as being on Swing shifts for some strange reason. Thus, our only formation for today is the pre-class formation at 1530. Since we're supposed to be doing a section-going-away- kind-of-thing (the only thing our chain of command has been informed of anyway) we're let off the hook. An entire day off, Yay! Visit family members of one of our squadmates, who live about two hours drive from post, in South Cackalackia. Visit this great Red Lobster, steak almost as good as the Outback... not quite, but not for lack of trying. We plot to TP the car of nice young lady in our squad, as she's been ditching us a LOT lately. Got a lot of sleep on the road. Beautiful. Wednesday, May 9, 2k+1 Roommate comes back from (early) meeting with SSG Bryant. Confirmed I got the Distinguished Honor Graduate. Amazing, after a couple of those stinkbomb test scores. Mixed feelings, kinda wanted it to go to someone who would have a real use for it. Made morning formation, came back to room and changed into civies. Napped until time to go pick up certificates from schoolhouse (1300). Come back to company to drop a copy off for them to use (so we can be scheduled for final-out brief tomorrow morning, 0730), get flack for being in Civies while clearing. "I'm not clearing, been done with that." "Irrelivant." Bah. Come back to room, look at the few things that haven't been packed (or already mailed off yet), and me trusty ol' laptop is waiting for me to play with it. Brings us up to current, done with this place tomorrow morning, all needs to be done now is attend a 90-minute briefing and make it to the airport. No word back as of yet whether the U.S. Army considers me a disgusting fatbody (Private Pyle! Heh!) or not. Therefore, it's not an issue by now. <------> All in all, the entire Fort Gordon Experience wasn't nearly as bad the second time around. Just that my BSTT (BullShit Tolerance Threshold) is sooo much lower these days. May I never have cause to return to this particular part of Sunny Georgia. Car TP party is planned for tonight. Don't think I'll let y'all know how it turns out :-P <---End of Logs---> "Shut it down! Shut it down forever!" -- Mr. Hand(?), Dark City.