The Award for the Best Use for Dead Networking Technology goes to…

heh
Photo by Dave Provine

During last week’s Macworld Expo I ran into Dave Provine in the Speaker’s Lounge and he and I sat there amidst a whirlwind of high technology, talking about old cars. It was an enjoyable retreat from the hectic week of emerging technology. Dave drives an old Triumph Spitfire, and we traded stories about roadside repairs and driving adventures. Afterwards he sent me some photos via email, including the one above, which melded the two themes of automobile repair and networking technology quite well. 😉

Dave says that is a Lucent switch acting as a jackstand. Best use for a Lucent switch I’ve seen to date!

Anyone have four Cisco 6509s handy? I’ve got to do some work on my exhaust.

Out of the Office

I will be out of the office for the next week, out of town, and LIKELY to be not doing much writing or posting here for the next seven days or so.

I’m heading down to San Francisco to Macworld Conference & Expo. I’m teaching a 2-day session called “Total Network Awareness” in the Conference along with my colleagues John, Julian, & Shaun. It should be a GREAT session, as these guys really know their stuff, (except me of course… I’m only there for comic relief) When I last chatted online with Shaun & Julian they were a tad nervous, but John & I are the sort that can stand in front of people and ramble on for days about stuff, so I know we’ll be fine. Shaun & I especially work well together, having presented together now for several years. I know that if I so much as pause, he can finish my thought for me, and vice versa. The only difference this time is that instead of cramming everything into 90 minutes (the four of us did this session last year as a 90 minute one) we have TWO FULL days to lay it all out. I’m really glad about this because last year we literally FLEW through the material and barely made it… and the audience was gasping with questions at the end on *particulars*… That is good because that means they understood the big stuff and wanted details as to HOW to implement. This year we can actually walk them through doing it.

I’m also speaking again on Thursday at the MacIT Conference along with Dave Pooser The Puking Presenter, and (again) John Welch on a panel I’ve created for the purposes of talking about IT Disasters. Should be fun.

Apple could release something earth-shattering, and I may be tempted to comment on it here… otherwise, just talk amongst yourselves for a while because I’ll be busy.

Car Photo of the Day: That New Car Smell

sniff

Note the temporary tags on the Benz.

This shot was taken on the second day of the 2001 Forza Amelia at the Gainesville Racetrack in Florida. My father had lost his mind (not the first or the last time!) and bought a dream car of his, a 1957 300sl just before the rally and this was the car’s first outing in his ownership. OK, well technically it is my mother’s car… at least that is the story I keep hearing since she’s the big Mercedes fan. That is his story and he’s sticking to it.

The car was purchased out of a large collection and like any car that sits too much, it wasn’t running as good as it should, BUT it is a Mercedes, so it still ran FINE. Funny how those Germans make such bullet-proof cars. 😉

But here we were, taking laps around a racetrack. Wow, what a blast that was. Well, until my dad spun it not far from where this pic was taken a while later. I posted pictures and the story to my website that night and we got a voice message from my mother on my dad’s cell phone:

“YOU ARE DRIVING MY CAR TOO FAST!!”

heh… boys will be boys.

The 300sl has become the focus of my father’s small collection (down to 3 cars now that the Jags are gone) and is now running VERY well. Much better than that first rally in 01. Maybe we should go back to that track and check our lap times?

That is Pascal Gademer’s S3 E-type parked in front of us.

Another Registry!

BeBox!

To add one of my obscure bits of hardware to: The BeBox Registry.

I literally stumbled upon this site this morning, as I was considering putting the old box up on eBay or something. You see I have a rather vast collection of odd computer hardware stashed away in a few places. Mostly Non-Intel CPU workstations and servers. One of these is a BeBox. About 1800 of these were built and I managed to snag one from a friend of mine about 8 years ago (Hi Jeff!)

…

Then I came to my senses… I can’t put this on eBay. What I have is a collection of obscure, high-end systems from the 90s. These are the last gasp of non-Intel driven errata before that branch of computing lost its momentum. I have PPC, Motorola 68K, Sun Sparc, MIPS and Alpha boxes. I imagine if you liken the pre-PC era like the Brass Era of automobiles, these machines are like the explosion of brands pre-WW2. I have the computing equivalent of Auburns, Cords, Dusenbergs, REOs, Pierce-Arrows and the like. Names like Be, NeXT, SGI, Sun, and of course Apple. They are like used cars now, like those REOs in the 40s; old cars from failed, or merged into some larger entity companies, whose usefulness is gone and whose parts are unavailable. They have little value now, but it should grow over time. I even have a few “one of a kind” machines – unshipped prototypes.

So no eBay. Instead I’ll catalog them here over time. (You’ll note I created a new category for this subject .) Should be fun.

For my 500th post, here is 500HP

I don’t usually highlight contemporary automobiles, but I had to post this. The big news arrives at about 4:40 in the video.

500 HP, 737, ft-lbs or torque (1000Nm), and 23 MPG.

Gotta love it.

Now Audi, hurry up and ship the thing so you can get around to building my TDI TT Convertible please!

Yes, this is post #500 since the changeover from the old goolsbee.org site!