Author Archives: john

Monitoring by Zabbix: a working document

Posted on January 16, 2020 by john | 6 views

Intro I panned Zabbix in this post: DIY monitoring. But I have compelling reasons to revisit it. I have to say it has matured, but there remain some very frustrating things about it, especially when compared with SiteScope (now owned … Continue reading →

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Consumer tech: Samsung touchscreen not responsive

Posted on December 26, 2019 by john | 7 views

Intro This may be really obvious to some, but I did not realize until recently that you can adjust the touch screen sensitivity on a Samsung smartphone. Who knew? Why it matters I have a family member with a glass … Continue reading →

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Getting GNU screen to work on Windows 10 for a productive terminal multiplex environment

Posted on December 19, 2019 by john | 25 views

Intro My jump server is getting old and they’re threatening to cut it off. A jump server is a server from which you launch CLI terminal sessions into your linux servers. Since my laptop has firewall access to all the … Continue reading →

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Azure Cloud: can you swap public IP addresses on two VMs?

Posted on December 16, 2019 by john | 7 views

Intro I am just beginning to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud environment. Although I am inclined to be a fan of AWS, I haven’t looked at AWS networking for awhile, and the last time I did something I felt totally lost … Continue reading →

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The IT Detective Agency: the case of the Is it the firewall? or routing? or switch? or layer 2?

Posted on November 21, 2019 by john | 8 views

Intro This is yet another tale of things in the IT world often do not turn out the way it seems at first blush. Or possibly a tale of just when you think you’ve seen it all after decades in … Continue reading →

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The IT Detective Agency: WebEx and the case of the mysterious reset

Posted on November 20, 2019 by john | 9 views

Intro A company known to me was a contented user of WebEx until they noticed a strange behaviour: their calls were losing quality or even dropped exactly after one hour. No one, most especially the vendor of WebEx, had the … Continue reading →

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What I’m Working on Now: building my own 3D printer

Posted on November 6, 2019 by john | 12 views

Intro Because someone else on the team had a good experience with it, and so i can exchange notes and get some tips form them, I went ahead and ordered the Anet A8 3D printer + an extra roll of … Continue reading →

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The IT Detective Agency: the case of Failed to convert character

Posted on November 2, 2019 by john | 12 views

Intro A user of a web form noticed any password that includes an accented character is rejected. He came to use as the operator of the web application firewall for a fix. More details The web server was behind an … Continue reading →

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How to POST with curl

Posted on October 7, 2019 by john | 15 views

Intro For the hard-core curl fans I find these examples useful. Example 1 Posting in-line form data, e.g., to an api: $ curl ‐d 'hi there' https://drjohns.com/api/example Well, that might work, but I normally add more switches. Example 2 $ … Continue reading →

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No Internet, secure WiFi status message in Windows 10

Posted on September 16, 2019 by john | 31 views

Intro Finding out how Windows decides if there is an Internet connection or not can be a challenge often posed by trying to do an Internet search comprised or words that are common and therefore used in many other contexts. … Continue reading →

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