Default Gateway Requirements

I recently had a server providing telnet service to a local area network. An external connection was required, and therefore port forwarding on the master router needed configuration. I forwarded telnet to the local IP of the server, but a telnet connection could not be established. This was because the server did not see the router as the default gateway.

The server must see the router, which requires the following command for a temporary solution:

route add default 192.168.0.1

Where 192.168.0.1 is the local IP address of the router. Depending on how often the server restarts you may have to set the default router permanently. Although if the server is never expected to restart then the temperatory solution will act as a pseudo permanent solution.

Chicken and the Egg - New College Graduates

During high school everyone says that you need to go to college in order to make something of yourself. They say that college grads make over a million dollars more in their lifetime than non college grads. Considering this information the logical course of action is to attend some sort of college level program.

During college they say internships are necessary to get experience. Experience is the main factor in getting a job out of college. Heres the chicken and the egg scenario. Even with internships a job is not just waiting for you when you get out of college. For instance I have two internships that I list on my resume. When I was in college I worked for a consulting firm doing inspection engineering on the WIlliamsburg bridge in NYC. When I was doing the internship I felt it was going to matter. I thought a big name bridge, and a big name company would make a big difference on my resume. My other internship was for a company called Eagle Research doing lab work, and miscellaneous clerical duties.

Consistent with what I was told in college, I though these internships would make a difference. Then why do recruiters always come back and tell me I don’t have experience for the job I applied to? Ok I want to get the experience, and I say to them “I will have experience after you hire me for the job!”. The chicken and the egg scenario is where you need experience to get a job, but you have to get a job first to get the experience. Obviously the experiences that I had during my internships are not counted as “real” experience, otherwise I would have the experience necessary to get a job. Any job.

I have applied for many types of jobs. Jobs consistent with my internship experience, and jobs consistent with my extracurricular education in computers. In all instances I was not qualified enough for their taste, and did not get the job.

I don’t understand. I don’t know what to do other than keep applying for jobs. I tweak my resume, send out personalized cover letters, and on rare occasions I deliver the resume and cover letter on professional paper directly to the office. Is the job market alive? I understand that a company wants an employee with experience, but how does a person get experience without getting a job?

Prototype Javascript AJAX - Quick Start

Prototype is a javascript library that allows easy AJAX implementations to enhance your website. With a couple of script calls, and class inclusions to your website you can easily access php scripts to read, compute, and return particular results. For instance an html <form> element can be used to capture data, and an AJAX call can be used to access php to compute, return, and display the results without reloading the webpage. The AJAX call can take the form data, access a database, or do direct storage in flat files. The first step is to read up on the prototype package, and see some examples in action.

The prototype library can be found here.

An excellent introductory example of prototype in action can be found here.

And a powerful AJAX project, using protype and other libraries is lightbox!!!

VirtualBox 1.6 iPhone Passthrough Still Fails

Even with the new release of VirtualBox 1.6 the iPhone is still not working with iTunes. The same error is occuring, which forces iPhone users to maintain their dual boot capabilities with a Windows OS. My excitment was high for the 1.6 version of VirtualBox. I am eager to dump my Windows partition to free up hard drive space, and this requires a functional iTunes in VirtualBox. This issue will inevitably be resolved, and therefore patients is required.