Back on the air!

January 18, 2004

I apologize for the lack of entries this past week. It actually was not my intention, and I fully intended to write nearly every day this week as I have been for the last few months.

Comcast, however, had a different idea.

You see, I was away from my home this entire week, starting Sunday night and finally returning Friday evening, and I’d say starting somewhere around Monday my site decided to go offline and completely disappear from the Internet. When you tried to type in the address to go to either http://www.agshender.net or even the available-but-never-referred-to option of http://www.andrewself.net, both resulted in an error message in your browser. Or my browser, as the case was, since I was continually trying to access it. I could think of four things that would make my site do that.

First, I thought maybe the Internet connection at my Mom’s house was down. Comcast had been giving me some real headaches in the week prior to my departure, and so the idea was not unheard of. I figured, however, that if my Mom had no Internet access for the better part of a week, I’d hear about it nonstop.

Secondly, it was possible, however unlikely that there was something wrong with my computer, and that it was malfunctioning either from a hardware or software standpoint. Unlikely, but possible.

Thirdly, maybe my site was so overwhelmed with traffic that my site wasn’t responding in time. Like if 5000 people were all trying to get to it at once. Unlikely, but possible.

And lastly, which I figured had probably a 95% chance of being right, was that Comcast had bumped my connection offline and reset my IP address to be different than the one listed in the domain name entry for agshender.net. Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, most importantly websites. When you type in “www.agshender.net” in your browser, your Internet provider checks to see what IP address the name corresponds to in a huge master database that gets updated throughout the day. If that IP address isn’t correct anymore, then you can’t connect to the site unless you specifically know the IP address.

And I didn’t.

I used a particularly naughty way of trying to find out what it might have been changed to, and that was to scan a range of IP addresses I knew that Comcast owned and gives to the people who connect over cable modems and see who was running a website. I got three hits, but none of them were mine. I could have done some investigating and discovered every range of IP addresses that Comcast has access to, but it would have taken some time and port scanning, as it’s called, is typically a no-no for most ISP’s. Websites run off port 80, so I scanned a lot of machines to see who had port 80 running something. Most port scanning is done maliciously, like for instance someone checking a range of IP addresses to see who has a trojan program on their machine that will accept incoming connections. If you’ve got a trojan installed, then maybe port 3545 or something is open. But since I was just looking at port 80, if I’d gottn busted by someone I had reasonable doubt.

In any case, I didn’t expect to get busted, but it’s still a no-no. At Beloit it was expressly forbidden to port scan and use network sniffers (which sit on a network and look at all data being sent, including things like unencrypted data such as passwords, email, and IM conversations), so I didn’t want to make a system admin mad somewhere. But in any case, even if I’d found my site (and no way I could have since the new IP address is VERY different and not anywhere the range I was looking in), I couldn’t have changed anything.

It seems that the company I purchased my domain name through changed their procedure at some point in the past that allows their customers to manage a domain name, i.ei, to change the IP address that it points to, set up email forwarding addresses, etc. The result of this change was that I no longer had a log in and password, and so even after getting home on Friday night I discovered that I was cut off from accessing the changes. I bantered with tech support for a couple of days (as it seems that my email address is out of date in the contact info for my website, so they sent the new password to my old hender@bigfoot.com address) and finally convinced them that I was indeed the person who purchased the IP address, so I reset everything this morning.

And here I am. Long story summed up, Comcast pulled a switcheroo and since I wasn’t home, I couldn’t do anything about it.

But I fully did intend to write on the road. But since I didn’t, I’ll do my best to recap. I wasn’t entirely certain what time to expect Martin to come and pick me up on Monday, but I finally got a time of 2 PM. I got everything ready, had lunch, went to the bank to have a bit of travelling money, but around 1:30 he called and said that it was looking to be more like 4 PM since he was stuck in a meeting in central Washington. Around 3:30, it got pushed back to 6 PM since he was just leaving and it was about a two hour drive. Anyhow, around 6:30 he finally showed up. Since he had been up since 2:30 AM that morning, he asked that I drive, which I no troubles doing except that his rental car was a Ford Expedition monster that makes the Mustang look like a Matchbox car. I mean the Mustang is wide and fairly long, but this sucker was HUGE. But I managed to maneuver it out of Lake Oswego and onto I-5 to get to our appointed route to Bend.

We had a great drive out there. Martin thought he’d be sleeping the entire time, but with my iPod and its music as a discussion piece, we discovered that we both shared an appreciation for good classic rock and we talked of bands from Jethro Tull to Pink Floyd to the Doobie Brothers while listening both to myy music and some that he brought with him. All in all, a good drive. The roads out to Bend were fine, though in places there was maybe seven or eight feet of plowed snow by the sides of the road. It was a pretty wet drive, but it didn’t drop below freezing until we crossed the Cascades and got into central Oregon. But the roads were clear and dry out there, so it wasn’t a problem. We found our way to the Phoenix Inn in Bend, and since it was around 10:45 or 11 PM when we got there, we went to our separate rooms and called it a night.

My room was very nice: two queen-sized beds, a leather loveseat, nice bathroom, etc. I didn’t sleep too well that night since it was a fairly uncomfortable bed, but hey, I’m not complaining about having my own room. One thing that I was disappointed about was that despite its advertised complimentary high-speed wireless Internet access, I could not get that sucker to work at all, and I ended up having to use the dial-up account I’d set up beforehand. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect any faster than 21 Kbps, which is less than half of what I’d hoped for. I used to connect on modems with 14.4, 9600, and even 2400 and 1200 baud, but that was never in the days of web surfing. So I basically checked my mail and that was it. Even that took forever.

The next morning, though, I got an early start, had a continental breakfast, and was pleasantly surprised to find the wireless Internet service working. After meeting with Martin for awhile, I went to work on the project that he gave me, primarily data collection from an EPA website. I tell you, no job is too hard when your sitting in your hotel room listening to your iPod, drinking coffee, and using your laptop on a wireless Internet connection to gather data and chat with people while you wait for the websites to load. I should have gotten in on this deal long ago. I got kicked out of my room, however, because there wa sa mixup or something, and so I moved up to Martin’s room for the remainder of the day. I had no trouble with that, though, since he had the big suite of the hotel–separate sleeping room with a closeable door, big living area with large TV, fireplace, in-room spa, etc. He found a place for me to work and finish up, and he my pleased to note that I finished my work in about 1/3 of the time he expected.

Not a bad first day. I was pretty much done with regular work for the day, then. I picked up some lunch for the two of us at a Mexican food place down the street when I was finished, and then the rest of the afternoon was spent reading over some materials he’d given me and bumming around. We had originally had a meeting in Bend that morning, but the man we were going to meet with had backed outdue to illness, so our day was wide open. That evening he had a closed city council meeting in Madras, about an hour outside of Bend, so he said I should stick around. He needed some copies made at Kinkos, though, so on his way to the meeting he dropped me off and I made three copies of the document he’d given me. I actually let THEM do it, because they were color and needed binding.

Now, one thing about the Kinkos is that it was about two miles away from the hotel, and by the time I was done he was in his couincil meeting an hour or so away. I had told him that I didn’t mind hoofing it back to the hotel, because really, two miles would actually be cutting back on the distance I normally walk for. What I hadn’t anticipated was the snow covering what few sidewalks there were on the way back.

Let’s just say that while the distance was easy, I’d prefer not to make that walk again. Not in the snow and in the dark, at least. I stopped by Round Table Pizza on my way back and got myself a medium pepperoni pizza, though. I decided that if I was going to be bad, I want to be bad to the bone. Fatty, greasy pizza is one of my weaknesses, and it’s been so long since I’ve had more than a slice–maybe two–at a time. Once in awhile is OK.

I ate the whole thing in one night.

I got back to my hotel with my pizza and enough change to buy a bunch of Diet Cokes from the vending machine, so I settled in on the bed of my new hotel room, ate pizza, drank Coke, had my laptop open and running wireless Internet, and watching “Law & Order” on TV. It was like I was at home! Felt good, though.

The next morning we got an early start and had another great drive spent talking. This time wasn’t so heavy on the music but was primarily conversation. This guy is sharp as a tack and pretty damn smart, too. He’s a fantastic conversationalist, and he has a lot of great relevent stories to things. We were originally going to stop by the wastewater treatment facility in Prineville on our way back, but he said he’d taken a peek at it the night before on his way back from Madras and the entire lagoon was frozen solid and covered with snow. Well nevermind, then.

So I got back to Portland around noon, and I hung out at my Dad’s house for the next day or two. The Mustang was still in the shop, so I couldn’t go anywhere. Not that I needed to, anyhow, since I was headed down south to Albany on Friday morning. So Friday rolled around, and my Dad and I met Martin just off I-5 in Tualitan, and the three of us headed down to my old stomping ground. I never lived in Albany, but I sure passed through it enough on my way to and from Corvallis that I knew it pretty well. I sat in on a meeting of local City Managers, ranging from Corvallis, Newport, and Scio to Sweet Home, Brownesville, and Albany. Apparently they meet regularly to discuss City Manager-ish stuff, and my Dad and Martin were there to make a presentation. I sat with them at the table, introduced myself as working for BacGen, Martin’s company (more on that in a bit), and just listened.

It was a good meeting for me, because not only did I finally figure out exactly what the hell it is my Dad does, but I got to see him WORKING. It also let me get a specific overview to what it is that Martin’s company does. I knew beforehand, but this way I got to see how he presented it to City Managers as potential customers. Since I’ve been asked about it a lot by both readers and non-readers of my website about exactly what it is that the company does, I’ll give you an overview.

BacGen works with public works utilities in communities around the West to optimize both machinery and processes in water and wastewater treatment plants so that they are more energy efficient and cost the city less money to run. They have a particularly easy time in Oregon due to something that my Dad works with, the Oregon Energy Trust, which is a state-funded trust that pays communities to cut energy costs in everything from lighting to wastewater treatment. In a nutshell, if you save energy, the Energy Trust will pay for 50% of the costs in implementing it. So Oregon communities have a great incentive to make the changes because half the costs get paid for and they save money in the process. So that’s pretty much what BacGen does.

I, on the other hand, am not doing much along those lines yet. I don’t know the business well enough yet, not to mention that there’s some internal grumbling in the Energy Trust that may reduce the number of communities that get paid, if I understand things correctly. The analogy seems to be “deer in headlights”, so I expect that perhaps the Energy Trust bit off more than it can chew? Or maybe that’s what they think? I don’t really know for certain since I’m new to the game, but I’m sure my Dad will fill me in after he’s read this to either correct me or give me the whole story. In any case, right now I’m just working as an independent contractor for the company, not on the company payroll quite yet but paid nonetheless. Well I was paid for last week and I haven’t yet finished my assignment that I was given on Wednesday. I plan on doing some work on that today, though, and hopefully finishing it up tomorrow.

So I’m not full time yet due to both my novice knowledge of both the industry and the company and due to the potential for a slight drying up of work opportunities. But Martin said if the floodgates open, I’ll be very busy for awhile. Suits me. At the current rate of pay for times that I work, I could easily move out and get my own place very soon, though since I have no guarantee of number of days I’ll be working in the coming months, I can’t accurately budget for the event. I’ll just save up a bit and go from there, I suppose.

And so that’s where I stand with the job situation. Andrew Self, independent contractor for BacGen Water & Wastewater Treatment. I’m not exactly certain what my job title will be whenever I sign the papers and get my own @bacgen.com email address, but this suits me for the time being. The work I’ve been given so far mostly involves using the Internet and collecting data, so I can do that from home. Eventually I’ll probably be out in the field collecting data, which suits me, too, because BacGen works purely in the West, and I’d love to see more of it. I’ll have to find out what’s expected of me as time goes on, but I think I can see myself doing this for awhile. And with the experience that I get on the job, maybe I could even go into civil service, local government kind of thing in a small town as a City Manager kind of thing. Because you know, I’d get to use one or both of my majors there, and it would be nice to do that SOMETIME.

So since I got back to my Mom’s house, I’ve pretty much been taking it easy. I had to get my website sorted out, and most of the work I have to do involves cntacting various city halls around the state to get the information I need, and I can’t imagine that they would be open on Saturday and Sunday. I’ll do what I can on the Internet tonight, and then finish it up tomorrow and email the document I’ve been working on to Martin for final approval, also letting him know what days I worked on it so that he knows how much to pay me. Yay! Money! I haven’t gotten to the bank yet to deposit my first paycheck, but it’ll be a very nice feeling when it goes in. I can pay for things again! Cell phone bills! Beer when out with friends! Saving money to get my own place and my own car! I guess those last two are sort of up in the air, but I expect that by the time summer rolls around I’ll probably be in my own place somewhere.

And that’s about all I have for now. Again, my apologies to those of you who tried to reach my site all this week, but it couldn’t be avoided. Well, if I paid a hosting service to host my website in a datacenter somewhere, then it could, but I don’t have enough money to pay for that every month. Until later, then, farwell.

Here I am! No, really!