Luke Sheldrick’s Blog

Today I ventured on the C2C train line,  well being bussled, in a tight seat, having someone fall asleep on my shoulder, and being bored shitless, all for a value £13.80 a day, bargain! Just confirms how much I hate public transport. Really makes me think that if we are to ever reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ they really need to make public transport a decent alternative, to my nice warm, clean, quick car.

I mentioned earlier about m0n0wall, and how impressed I was with it. Had the first problem with it the other day. Well m0n0wall runs of a CD (a linux live-cd) and keeps it’s xml config on a floopy. The problem is, (as I remember from yonder years) floopys tend to corrupt. Wasn’t a huge problem, a quick reconfigure with another floopy from under my bed, and away we go

Burgers: I have eaten too much junk, and neglected the gym for over 6 months, and oh it hit me today how much it’s caught up. Looked at the belly today, which was ab flat and getting a pack before, now well, it’s not. Back to the gym tomorrow. Gonna try and go as often as I can, as there is one on my route to/from work, so no excuse really. Am dredding it though.

One of my house mates, has been constantly uploading torrent type stuff for the last couple of days, and it’s getting to be a bit of a bore, as it is killing the network.

Mainly because the incoming tcp packets, require an ACK, which Unfortunately are getting muchous delayed due to the upload stream being saturated. Unfortunately both my cable modem, and hardware firewall are pretty crap at handling this.

Also my hardware firewall, has a 12meg throughput, which is rubbish when I am on a 20meg line.

Anyways someone on uknot suggested m0n0wall, a software / os firewall. Tried setting it up on a VM machine, and it didn’t really play nice there, so set it up on an old box (which happens to be party the said housemates, I just had to replace most of it), and after fiddling with my switch to get it to delete its vlan and arp settings, all started to play nicely.

I must say I am very impressed so far, it can cap the max uploads, set to about 85/90% to allow for ack’ing, so downloads dont grind to a holt. The interface is pretty sweet too. Would definitely recommend it, well saying that not sure how stable it is just yet.

Also throughput, much better, now easily max’s the line out (well almost)

Just got to wait for all the DNS records to update over ze internet, and then mail and web pages should be back up. Well if you’re reading this, then yours already have

Oh yes, I forgot to mention, my stupid firewall at home died again, leaving my primary MX, Site (including blog), and numerous applications offline.

It keeps losing it’s default gateway. It usually reboots it’s self, but occasionally doesn’t. The remote hands (i.e. housemate) doesn’t wake up til 15:00ish, so had to leave it off.

Should all be solved as soon as I get my colo sorted

As for the firewall, never get a Netgear FVS124G. It’s completely rubbish. This fault, and more annoyingly it’s bottleneck. It only has a 12meg throughput, which is brilliant considering I am on a 20meg line (which I do actually get).

Will have to save some pennies for a PIX or something similar.

Having just got back home from my Christmas week away at my brothers, had a wicked time though.

Lost remote access to my house on Saturday, which kinda sucked, and having got my house mates to reboot a few things, without restoring it, thought I would check it out when I got back.

Turns out we had a power cut the other day, and when the power came back on (after a few hours), the hardware firewall I am using (Netgear FVS124G) had lost the majority of it’s settings. What was interesting, is it some, but not all. Surely if the memory had wiped, it would have lost them all.

After a quick restore all was ok, but what a load of rubbish.

The Christmas break was cool, spent it with my Brother and his girlfriend Sally for the majority of it.

Did a range of things, Christmas eve we all went for some drinks and a chinese, Christmas day we spent at Sally’s sister’s house, Charlotte. That was cool, we go most years, and it’s a bit of a running joke, as I only see them once a year. Boxing day I spent at Mum’s.

Then I had to go back to work for a couple of days, which was bizarly busy concidering the fact most places were still off work.

Friday we went to the Comedy Store, which was really good. I personally didn’t think it was as funny as Jongleurs, however was still a good show. Then we went for a gamble at the Empire Casino.

Saturday saw us going for a chinese again, this time for Charlotte’s birthday, then in the evening, Paul, Rupert and I went to a poker contest, hosted by Craig of BubblePoker. Was only supposed to be 30ish players, but around 80 turned up, so we went out quite quickly. Then we ventured back to the Empire casino, I lost a bit, then won a bit, and overall I think I had a free night out.

Today had a bit of a lay in, then Paul and I ventured to M&S to get some stuff for the roast, had a gorgeous Chicken Roasty, then I came home, in the monster truck..

Think that’s about it.

oh, and I had a really weird dream about a friend Drew last night, about him keep hanging up on a conference call, and when I saw him (in the dream) he was deaf, so I was signing to him. When I spoke to him today, he told me how he’d had trouble over the last couple of days with his hearing as he had a horrible fit of man flu, which has blocked him all up. WEIRD!!

So I was at work this Thursday, a firewall had died in our centre in Reading. So I had to drive a replacement up there, a mean feat when you was looking forward to a quite night at work.

Well got there pretty painlessly, the TomTom took me to the wrong place as usual. Changed the firewall and started to head home.

On the M4, and the petrol light comes on, so thought I’d best get some petrol. The TomTom has a function to take you to POI (point of interest) so I told it to take me to the nearest Petrol Garage. Off the M4 it took me, and down some country lane, and bit further, then said we had arrived. Well there was no guarage to be seen, so I asked someone walking down the road if there was a guarage near… she said that it was about 5 miles away at this point the car died .

Oh no I thought, so parked the car up, however whilst pushing it had a mind of it’s own, and catapulted back, smooching the drivers door too far open, and giving it a delightful dent. Great night huh.

The nice lady after a bit of um’ing and r’ing offered me a lift to the station, but said I would have to drive her car as she had drunk a couple of Gin and Tonic’s before heading out. After working out that it was a diesel with turbo lag, and that the breaks were super sensitive compared to mine, got to the Tesco and filled up.

Got back to my car, and said our goodbyes. I totally forgot my manors, and didn’t offer my details or anything for her trouble. Feeling slightly guilty now though.

So if the nice lady is reading, get in contact!

Just to say, even after the sh*t events, my faith in nice people is restored