Status: ✅ Time has come to bring another network on the VPN, and perform some more upgrades. The usual by now, I guess. Get China on VPN Limit access to other locations Update all systems Perform security audits Upgrade wifi Setup video conferencing Ian and I set off for our China office out of Hong Kong, and the next day started working. Total preparation was around a month, maybe a little large, mainly due to red tape. We first acquired assistance of IBM China, who were of a great help aiding us in finding our desired Cisco. One of the most important factors, which we couldn’t resolve by purchasing the Cisco in the States, is support/warranty contracts (if the Cisco totally dies, what then). Through our …

Status: ✅ Before we grow any further, a new DNS scheme is in order. Following the pattern of: citycode.domain.com - shouldn’t be too hard. A slightly stressful rename of the PDC (just one so far, still small) was in order. After that (and client computers re-associated), the routers were updated, the DNS server updated, and everything worked peachie. Not bad for a weekends worth of work.

I’m in the middle of purchasing an IP phone from a distributor here in Taiwan. My Asterisk server is quite solid, but most of the softphones for Linux are disappointing. When I get my phone, please call and say hello. I have a long list of people I need to catch up with. The first is my grandma, whom I’ll call today because it is her birthday.

As I wait for my “grep -R tpe1 *” to finish, I’ll write a quick update. School: I’m currently studying at the Chinese Culture University. Two weeks have passed, and I’m starting to feel more confident about living in Taipei. Today I went to a dance performance with a friend and 10 of her friends — I almost understood what they were saying. I could hear that they had or didn’t have something, along with “doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter” — but I didn’t know what they had or didn’t have. Exciting! I meet with Christian and Chino, from Germany and Japan, at 11:00 a.m. every day to practise for two hours. I then have class for two hours before wandering home. I’ll usually try to practise again before I fall asleep.

So many promises, so little done. Well, it is time to get through that list. Shortly, you can expect updated photos and videos. At the time, I also published a number where readers could reach me. As you know, I’m something of a techie. The historical phone numbers have since been removed for privacy.

I’m finally starting to feel settled! Let me explain. After New Zealand, Ben headed back to L.A. while I carried on to Singapore. My flight was routed through Kuala Lumpur, so I spent a few hours at the airport chatting over an open wireless access point (which belonged to an airline, oops). I arrived in Singapore quite late at night, where a friend who had arrived earlier met me at the airport. I compared the price of a taxi with the airport shuttle and chose the shuttle.

After Singapore, a quick flight brought me to Taiwan. The mountains seemed to nestle into the clouds, which blanketed the sky. The view was beautiful until the plane dropped below the clouds and everything became gloomy, dark, and wet. The plane crossed expanses of farmland, a landscape I was not used to. After breezing through customs, I got on a bus and started to come “home.” A long bus ride, a decent walk, and five flights of stairs brought me to my host’s house. I curled up and quickly fell asleep.

The following sites might be helpful to configure IPSec again, or on a more complex basis: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/iaabu/pix/pix_60/ipsec/conipsec.htm http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/overload_private.shtml

Logs spiraling crazy, we run out of disk space all the time. A nifty trick to find where the disk went is to issue: du -cks * |sort -rn |head -11 This returns where the disk usage is, and makes finding the bloated log a lot easier.

So I’m in Taiwan. I have so much to write about. Expect an update shortly.