lennys August 01, 2024

Update on things and stuff...

So it's been 13 days since my last post. I haven't heard anything about the DNS amplification issue I mentioned in my last post, so I think I got that problem solved. I also had another issue with my router I had to figure out - I was informed that it was sending out DHCP requests on the peering network I'm connected to, so I had to find out why and shut that down. I did some googling and found a few forum posts on Mikrotik's site that helped me understand what was happening, tweaked a couple of things on my router, and that was that. I shot off an email to the peering network admin to verify it was fixed but I haven't heard back from them yet. I had my truck in the shop at the dealer twice in the last 10 days or so. The first visit was just regular maintenance, an oil change and such. I brought it in a week after that to get the alignment checked, since it was pulling to the right at higher speeds. I got some bad news about it after a 2 hour wait: the alignment was fine, but the tires were causing the issue. The truck has aftermarket "Ironman" tires on it that were there when I bought the truck back in January. The dealer took it for a test drive after putting it on the rack and checking the alignment, saw it was still pulling to the right, brought it back in and swapped the front wheels from one side to the other, took it for another test drive and found it was now pulling to the left, so they told me it must be the tires. I asked them how that was possible and they didn't know. So I took the truck home after paying the alignment bill (goodbye, $150). Later that day I drove it to San Joe and back, and while it still slightly pulls to the left, it's not pulling as much as it was before they swapped the wheels, so I think I'm just going to live with it for now. I'm not inclined to drop $1100 on a new set of tires right now not knowing if that'll fix the problem. I just keep telling myself to be grateful it's not worse. Because it always could be. I started going to a Python Meetup in Mountain View on Tuesday evenings. It's at a place called the Hacker Dojo, which is just a makerspace for nerds to hang out at and work on stuff together. They have a meetup every Tuesday. I've been to two meetups so far and while I haven't really participated in anything yet, I'm enjoying the environment and learning about a few things along the way too. All I've done so far is sit in the back and watch while they go through their presentations. This last one was about exploratory data analysis in Python, and covered material I was slightly familiar with so I feel like I got something out of it. I'm hoping that eventually I'll get to know some people there for future job opportunities or something. I have also finally started working on the bottom toolbox I've had sitting in my living room for the last year and a half. I got it sandblasted at a local shop, brought it home and started putting on the primer coat, and found that it's really difficult to paint with a spray can when it's windy outside (lol). I've been painting it a little bit at a time to try and get an even coat on it, but I still have runs in the primer. I'll sand those off and give the whole thing a good scuffing before putting on the color. It's been a fun little project so far.

lennys July 19, 2024

DNS issues...resolved?

So today I woke up to a couple of emails from my work's abuse notification system that said two of the IP addresses in use in my little network were used in a DNS amplification attack. Right away I went into troubleshooting mode. I had to research the issue online after finding that both IP addresses were used as gateways IPs on my Mikrotik router, and after disabling them both and reading a bunch of stuff I was able to figure out what to do. I found a few posts on a Mikrotik forum that showed how to setup firewall rules to block outside DNS traffic, so I (carefully) put those rules in place, then re-enabled both IP addresses. I think I got the issue resolved now, but it had me worried for a few hours. I checked it using a site I found online that had a tool for checking these things, and both IP addresses passed the test, so I think I got it resolved. One of my main concerns since I setup this network of servers, routers and switches is the possibility of them being hacked somehow, so today was a trigger for me. I have things setup securely as far as I know and I haven't had any issues prior to today so my fears might be unjustified, but being that I work in IT I have to be mindful of security issues and how they could affect my gear. There's enough bad actors on the internet already, I don't want to add to their arsenal. Other than that it's been another slow morning at work. I got some help installing a new SSL certificate for a customer, and I've sent a few emails out. I just had to check a server for a customer who called in - I called him back and left a voicemail, so we'll see if anything comes of that. I worked through another chapter in DataCamp, this one about web scraping. I did this set of lessons last week, but now I'm going over them again. I'm going to spend some time reading my Python book, and we'll see what else the day brings.

lennys July 14, 2024

Learning

It's another quiet Sunday morning at work. I just finished another set of DataCamp lessons, and started a new section about web scraping. It hasn't covered much Python so far, just HTML and other things, most of which I already know. For the last couple of weeks I've been doing a chapter a day, which has worked out pretty well. However today I had some extra time on my hands, so I quickly worked through 3 chapters altogether: the last chapter in the "Developing Python Packages" lessons, and the first two chapters about web scraping. I'm leaving the rest of the web scraping stuff for tomorrow. I did go to Half Moon Bay last Tuesday (my weekend), but I didn't get a chance to go for a walk in the Murray Ranch park like I wanted because the road to it was closed. There was a sign that said the road was damaged due to a flood or something, so I guess that's a no-go for the time being. I did go for a walk on the beach and watched the waves roll in for a while, which was good. Afterward I got some food from a burger joint there that I like, and drove home early. Highway 92 was closed so I had to go a different route to get there, this time along the coast on Highway 1. It was foggy so I wasn't able to see much, but I could tell on a good day it would be a beautiful drive. I'm looking forward to trying it again with better weather. I was on the phone yesterday for a couple of hours trying to help a customer troubleshoot a BGP issue they had. They had one route that wasn't propagated correctly for a /16 IP block because their customer had made some last-minute changes outside of the normal time window, so it turned out that they had to wait for those changes to spread out across the internet which took several hours. I had to get with two engineers to get it sorted out. It got a little frustrating at times being on the phone for so long, but in the end we were able to give them a satisfactory explanation (I think) of why things weren't working yet. I learned a little bit about how BGP works too, so it was all good in the end. I still have those two switches sitting in my cabinet at work, I might try to install them this coming weekend (Tuesday - Wednesday). I also have that bottom toolbox sitting at home waiting to go to the sandblaster. I don't know if I'll get to either of those things this weekend, we'll have to wait and see. I have a couple of meetings with the VA to deal with first, so my free time is limited. I had a CAT scan run about two weeks ago that I still need to get the results about, so I've got to make a doctor appointment soon. I had blood work done last month, got the results back and found that (as far as I know) I'm in good general health so I'm not anticipating any bad news, but you never know with these things. I need to call my brother and catch up on things. We haven't spoken since last Christmas, so it's overdue. The last I heard he was still having disagreements with his ex-wife about taking care of their kids, so there's some drama going on there. I hope he's doing okay. I visited them last year for Thanksgiving, and back then they had a pretty good deal going there, a nice stable life. Hopefully that's still the case. I'll bet he's still got a garage full of disassembled cars and motorcycles he's working on, that's a big hobby for him. I like to help him with that stuff when I'm there.

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