iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh L @fiber.haus · 02/03/2025

Doing some cabling in a very conservative church some years ago, it brought me great mirth when I had occasion to ask for a "male to male" adapter

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 15/02/2025

The LTE / 5G folks make me envious with all their IPv6 everywhere, and then sometimes there's SRv6 too, if MPLS isn't exciting enough 😆

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 08/02/2025

"Can we schedule a call to discuss?" No, I'm emailing because this email can be an email.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 08/02/2025

I was just about to try setting up AES67 with Pipewire, but now you have me worried

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 08/02/2025

My new coffee grinder arrived this afternoon. If I don't get to sleep as early as I'd like tonight, there may or may not be a causal relationship with that particular event.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 07/02/2025

That GPU hanging out in the open like that, looks like some RISC-V business (sorry, I'll see myself out)

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 04/02/2025

Calling the dolphin giving the … shower "the urinator" feels like a missed opportunity, when they could have had not only "the micturator" but also "the micturatee"

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 28/01/2025

Unfortunately, the last experience I had with SCSI was years ago, trying to get a library's vintage microfilm scanner working with a "new" Win7 PC; it involved buying a PCIe SCSI adapter on that infamous online auction site. USB to SCSI would have been far easier!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 27/01/2025

I'll be helping with a comparatively tiny VMware to XCP-ng migration in a few weeks - the main driver being those thoroughly covered price hikes. (The end of VMUG also meant the end of VMware in my home lab, which I replaced with SUSE Harvester)

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 27/01/2025

That sounds like it was a serious unit! This little scanner isn't quite so fancy; it has plain old USB, though I guess that does make it easier to work with in 2025

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 27/01/2025

This weekend I broke out the olde Minolta film scanner to digitize some negatives - to my surprise, with a little coaxing (and some third party drivers) the scanning software even works in Windows 11 [inside a VM on Linux]!

A Minolta Scan Dual III film scanner ingesting a strip of film

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 25/01/2025

This week at work I got to unpack some Nokia DWDM gear for the first ever optical transport project I've gotten to work on. IDK, this might be the most excitement / anticipation I've had unboxing something in quite a while.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 17/01/2025

Home network SLAs can be brutal!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 15/01/2025

In "crazy ideas that work surprisingly well," I present: nitro cold brew Bengal Spice herbal tea

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 15/01/2025

I have no idea if it's the same pinout, but I feel like I saw something similarly cursed on a Brocade SLX once.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 14/01/2025

The Cisco ASR920s that use(d) USB-A to USB-A console cables stand together in solidarity with this unnamed switch 😆

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 14/01/2025

I like having an old laptop or two around to explore lightweight Linux distros, or Haiku, or whatever strikes my fancy. They're a ton of fun!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 14/01/2025

It's not surprising though, given that we don't write dates in a logical order either.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 14/01/2025

As a photography nerd, I might have to borrow this idea 😆

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 14/01/2025

If that were enabled, it would likely motivate at least a few folks (e.g. myself) to get off our butts and start learning regex

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 13/01/2025

I'd even settle for just user-upgradable RAM, SSD, and WiFi card, but that's getting less and less common (and don't get me started on Intel proprietary WiFi adapters that are replaceable but not necessarily upgradable)

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 13/01/2025

Whether you're doing some animation or just battling file system clutter in 3D, that's one stylish machine to do the job! - 15/10

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 09/01/2025

Gotta watch out for when Mercury is in Gatorade, you don't want to run low on electrolytes.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 08/01/2025

Sorry to hear about your HVAC troubles, but that's a great idea! I wish that possibility had occurred to me when mine failed a few years ago.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 08/01/2025

My latest fun: emulating a simple service provider network with MPLS LDP, then trying to migrate it "live" to SR-MPLS. It went a little too smoothly that I fear I missed some crucial step, but the L2 and L3VPNs kept on working, so maybe it really is that easy?

A screenshot of EVE-NG network emulation software showing a topology map of interconnected virtual routers and hosts

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 07/01/2025

…with jam on the side?

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 07/01/2025

What do you do when you're snowed in but still working from home, and you and your pupper both need a break? Why, take the big camera outside and capture some intense blizzard zoomies, of course!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 06/01/2025

I feel that with a muchness. After encountering people with $COMMON_VENDOR_CERT who couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag if you gave them a pair of scissors, well, it seems like passing a test (at least _that_ test) doesn't guarantee being able to think.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 03/01/2025

With both feet now firmly in 2025, I guess it's time to say goodbye to my festive cardinal "roommates" until next winter. Have fun, guys, but please don't get up to too much mischief on the decoration storage shelf!

Christmas decoration with two male cardinal birds perched on a log in front of branches spelling out the word "Noel"

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 27/12/2024

Aww, looks like a tasty snack (and a great way to trick your pet into flossing their teeth)! 😁

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 25/12/2024

You could always "circle back" with a Pythonesque taunt calling into question the lineage of their mother and the aroma of their father

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 25/12/2024

And if you do mention using UniFi, you get flamed for not going with Mikrotik (or Cisco, depending on the dipstick's view of what everyone's budget should be). Too many people need less time in r/networking and more time in therapy!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 25/12/2024

'Twas the night before Christmas, and the cable to the living room AP developed a short. My assistant convinced me to make that a problem for Thursday, and suggested treats and ear scritches instead.

A brindle dog lays on a blanket next to a Fluke Ethernet cable tester

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 22/12/2024

I'm afraid my colleagues have that impression of me: against my protests, I get coerced into trying to work on stuff way outside of my area, so I google it, am inexplicably successful, and this only reinforces the misconception that I can do anything

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 21/12/2024

I know I need to slow down and take a breath when I start typing "write meme"

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 09/12/2024

Another one that should work on those of us of a certain age, although it's two words, I think? "Maia hii…"

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 02/12/2024

Not quite "just now," but … I'm all too familiar with that pain.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 30/11/2024

It's been long enough that I don't remember, sorry!

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 30/11/2024

I don't recall my sources on RSVP, but IIRC they covered the basic principles fine; the challenge given my inexperience was trying to extrapolate to implementing it in an existing MPLS/LDP network - which is where I gave up and decided my effort was better spent learning SR-MPLS.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 28/11/2024

After struggling to understand RSVP-TE, the beautiful simplicity of SR-MPLS and TI-LFA (at least as far as setting it up in the lab was concerned) made me an immediate fan.

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Josh L @fiber.haus · 20/11/2024

So if I'm going to hell in a hand basket, I hope the basket has wheels, or it's going to be one hell of a ride

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