Wednesday November 17, 2004

I am at a Starbucks in Chicago right now, right down the street from where I went to high school (I told you nostalgia runs in my veins). I had some serious problems getting DNS to resolve anything. Time to call T-Mobile hotspot support.

After my explaining the basic DNS problem is completely ignored, here comes the questions:
Support: OK, what operating system are your running?
John: I am running Linux (Note that,Mr. Fink)
Support: OK, please open up Internet Explorer
Bubble over John's head: Internet Explorer is not a native Linux application [as I am sure you all know]. I do have CrossoverOffice and have IE installed there. I could explain all this, but trying to get past first-line support with this explanation ... resistance is futile. Instead of launching IE on crossover office, how about a game of GTali (Yahtzee clone)? Yeah, good idea.
John: Uh ... yeah, it's open.
Support: What is your home page?
John: http://www.sprint.com (It's not, but I was waiting for a reaction ... none.)
Support: OK, go to Start, then control panel ...
John's head: Roll. Damn, 5,2,1,3,1.
John: OK, I'm there
Support: OK, now click on ...
John's head: OK, I'll keep the 1's. Roll ....
Support: Do you see ...
John: Yeah
Support: Now click on ...
John's head: Great! Two two's. I have two pair! Oh yeah, this is gtali. Come-on full house.
Support: What happens now when you type http://www.yahoo.com?
John: Resolving host http://www.yahoo.com. Still resolving. Still resolving ...
Support: OK, please hold
John's head: Great! Now I can (click the 5 die ... Roll) check if .... WHOO-HOO! I got a full house! 25 Points.. Click ... click ... 3 3's .... Click ... click ... 4 5's
Support: The site looks ok from here, let me pass you on to another person
John's head: Whew. I passed maze level one.

Level two support guy knew his stuff. "Yeah, we have been having a problem not resolving DNS with those two DNS servers today. Thought we had it fixed. Try this one ...

That did the trick. Awesome. Kudos to level two guy, and T-Mobile hotspot support has been reliable for me in situations like this. I am a happy customer in that I got up-and-running. I completly understand the support model, but since I am on vacation and insanely tired, I thought I would start my vacation off with a humorous bang.

I am a bit ticked that Human (me) only got 187 points in GTali and was beaten by a computer generated player named Wilbur. Getting past first line support is simple. GTali. Hopefully you get a better score than I do. And will you beat Wilbur for me? Thanks.

Good news! The issues with the Sun StorEdge 6920 and U10 have been resolved! I have to talk to Scott, my storage local guru, to find out exactly what the problem was. Scott is extremely busy and finally had a few cycles to take on the rather low priority task of taking a look at this little pet project.

This means the Solaris 10 zones count will be back and running later. I'm officially on vacation after today's edumacation so I don't know if I want to bother until I get back (I hope to work on the Solaris 10 Container demo). Triple digits is the goal in 512MB of RAM. If I get my hands on that extra 500MB, well, we'll see how many I can get. Anyone want to guess (again) how many zones I can get running in 512MB RAM? 1GB?