Friday, November 11, 2011

Xoom LTE Upgrade

A bought a Motorola Xoom android tablet the day it came out and from the beginning there was the promise that it would be upgraded for free to 4G LTE. Last week I got the notice that I could upgrade. Here's how it went:

  • I signed up on Nov 2nd and quickly got a shipment traffic email from Motorola.
  • Nov 3rd I received a pre-labeled FedEx box with instructions and packing materials.
  • Nov 7th I got around to shipping it out.
  • Nov 10th I received the upgraded tablet.
The turnaround time for this was pretty staggering. I'm guessing the recognize that a lot of people depend on these things and wouldn't be happy having to be without their's for long.

The instructions with the returned tablet said I would have to turn it on and when I got logged in I would get a prompt for turning on 4G LTE after a few minutes. Somehow I had cancelled the prompt when it appeared. I found the settings (clearly indicated in the instructions had I cared to look) and then it was a waiting game.

The instructions said it might take a few hours for OTA registration to complete. I was occasionally checking the network connectivity indicator in the lower right to say "4G" instead of "3G". After three hours nothing happened so I went to reboot the device to try again. When it booted back up it immediately said "4G". It worked!

I haven't really played with the 4G much yet as I'm pretty much in WiFi range all the time during my week. I did turn WiFi off for a few and pulled up maps just to see if it was fast. Man those map tiles loaded fast. I even got a free OEM standard dock (power and audio connectivity, no speakers, USB, or HDMI) as a "while supplies last" deal. In theory they could have upgraded my Android Market to a newer version but my tablet was encrypted so I had to do it myself. I'm more comfortable with the encryption and an extra upgrade step.

Overall, Motorola did a fantastic job with this. The instructions they provided were clear and described exactly what would happen with the upgrade process. I was pretty floored by how fast I got my upgraded device back. If you bought a 3G Xoom from Verizon you should definitely take advantage of this.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

On Google+

I'm trying out this Google+ thing.

I have a Facebook that I maintain for people to find me. Every time I log in my mind recoils in horror.

I previously used tumblr for blogging and really liked the asymmetrical sharing model. Hopefully Google+ incorporated the good bits of everything.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Go Language Compile/Link/Launch Script

I've started playing around with the Go language and I think it's pretty neat. I have a security-related project I'm working on to help me learn the language that I'll share soon after it's finished.

I found myself slightly annoyed when I would compile, link, and launch my program while editing it. It was fast but the command line was long:
bin/6g whatever.go && bin/6l -o whatever whatever.6 && ./whatever -arg1 blah -arg2
To make things a little easier when switching between source files I wrote a simple script:
#!/bin/bash
#gogogo.sh <program_name> [<args>]

progname=${1}
shift
bin/6g ${progname}.go && bin/6l -o ${progname} ${progname}.6 && ./${progname} ${@}
Now just run:
./gogogo.sh whatever -arg1 blah -arg2
There's probably a smarter way using gomake or something similar but I haven't dug it up yet.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

evilbitchanger

I've been learning scapy, which is an awesome tool. I have a colleague who is doing some research and had a need for a tool that could modify IP packets in arbitrary ways either from a pcap file or on packets in real time. The prototype sets the IP evil bit, recalculates the checksum and forwards the new packet.

Web page here.

Code hosted here.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Management vs Leadership

Management Skills != Leadership Skills

IMO:

People management: concerned with the career growth, compensation, work satisfaction, etc of your reports. In a sense, this is a local extension of HR. Not a technical role. Must be well-versed in the issues related to employee effectiveness.

Project/Product/Program Management: concerned with planning, development, execution, and maintenance of products, services, etc. Should be technically competent but somewhat isolated from implementation.

Leadership: Inspires a team and fosters a culture optimized toward producing the desired result. Leadership skills are independent of other skills but complement them. Sometimes the action indicated by good leadership is contradicted by good management.

People managers deal in carrots, project managers deal in sticks, leaders deal in aspiration.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Remakes

There's been a trend over the last couple years where old movies are remade and handed to us as something new.

When IPv6 becomes common place, the same thing is going to happen with network vulnerabilities.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Altism

Altism -noun:

The mental deficiency wherein on believes that something is superior because it is uncommon.