Design Flaw: Redux

I’ve now lost an SD card inside my optical drive entirely. I now need to pull this lappy apart and find a way to fish it out. I guess it was only a matter of time.. See: http://lannycox.com/2017/10/31/design-flaw/

My Experience With LPIC-1 Certification

I recently completed the LPIC-1 certification offered by the Linux Professional Institute, which tests candidates on Linux internals and system administration. LPIC-1 certification is broken down into two exams: 101-400 and 102-400. 101-400 covers topics such as Linux system architecture, installation, package management, devices, and filesystems. Conversely, 102-400 explores shell scripting, X11/GDM, service management, basic […]

Folding@Home and Distributed Computing

Folding@Home is an open-source distributed computing project launched by Stanford University professor Vijay Pande in October 2000. It aids in disease research by simulating the myriad ways in which proteins “fold” or assemble themselves to perform some basic function. Though protein folding is an essential biological process, mis-folding can lead to diseases such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s. Consequently, the examination of folding models […]

Design Flaw

The Dell Precision M4700 laptop, while generally dependable, has a woeful quirk in its construction that’s caused a good share of frustration for yours truly. The Mini-SD card slot is located on the left side of the laptop, situated just millimetres above the slot-loading optical combo drive. Many a time, I’ve grabbed a card off […]

Mistakes We All Make #2: One Man’s Trash..

A recent CBC news story detailing the recovery of a 30 gigabyte hard drive containing personally-identifiable information of military personnel at a local recycling depot compelled me to share a similar experience regarding improper disposal and sanitation of IT assets. In my previous article, I described how I had begun to build a CCNA test […]

Mistakes I Made #1: The Quest for Ping

Here’s one in a series of many stories of failure, frustration, and figuring things out. I’ve been studying for Cisco’s CCNA certification recently and decided to purchase some older gear in order to set up a test lab, familiarize myself with IOS, and get used to the the physical wiring/configuration of these devices. Thus far, […]