Looking back at Thanksgiving 2008 I see things that need to be changed:

1. Don’t put turkey in the smoker at 6:44 now that I know it will be done in three hours
2. Get the house cleaned and the tables set up the night before
3. Eat some lunch while working during the day….maybe put some other meat on the smoker for lunch while the Turkey cooks.
4. Set the dinner time earlier then four o’clock
5. Have all the food ready before the first guest (cousin Tim & family :) ) gets to the house, this way you are only dealing with the guests food in the kitchen
6. Set the wine and drinks up in the living room

I am sure I will think of other things later and will add them to the list. Over all the whole day was good. I was really done with my cooking about 9:30 Am since the Turkey got done so fast. The dressing could have been done sooner and just thrown back into the oven to warm.

The food others brought was great and I am Thankful that I have a great family who like to cook and of course eat. There were a ton of leftovers so we will be eating them for the next few days.

Now it’s time to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas dinner. I am thinking of having the whole crew back over for that but on a smaller scale….no Turkey.

So to those who are traveling this holiday be safe and have a great time.

Here in the United States, it’s Thanksgiving today so no work for William….but I am working in the kitchen cooking t-day dinner for my whole family except for my uncle who is in Michigan with his family…stupid snow.

So the day started at 5am with a quick download of a Gov’t Mule show to listen to while I got the smoker fire up and the turkey on. I got the bird in the smoker by 6:44 and it’s a cooking. :)

I have gotten the turkey giblets in the pot with some onions and celery and carrots and bay leafs so the stock simmering an making the house smell great. I have started the Cranberry BBQ Sauce I am using as a dipping sauces. I will be doing starting the stuffing in a few hours as well as the gravy when the turkey is done.

I want to say that I am thankful for my family and friends, even if I don’t get to see my friends all that much.

So have a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends….

UPDATE: Turkey came off at 9:44am it took 3 hours to cook on the UDS

Ok boys and girls, mom and dad here is a list of some things that would make me happy to get at Christmas….and for those who missed getting me a birthday present (and you know who you are) I’ll take anything on the list. Check with my wife first to see what’s already been purchased.

Grateful Dead 2009 Wall Calendar - Dead.Net - $13.00 - No Substitutions
The new year is already fast approaching, and there’s no better way to watch the days roll by than with your official 2009 Grateful Dead Wall Calendar!

Doctor Who: 2009 New Series Doctor Who Calendar - Doctorwhostore.com - $19.95
Includes 12 pictures from series 4 of the BBC television series starring David Tennant with an array of adversaries and aliens..

6.25-in. Forged Chef’s Knife - CutleryAndMore.com - $102.95
If you get this item a sharpening stone is needed as well.A sturdy, heavy knife with broad, strong blade and fine cutting edge. The all rounder for professionals and hobby chefs that cleans vegetables, minces herbs and chops. Global knives are manufactured by Yoshikin in Niigata, Japan. They were designed in 1985 by Komin Yamada. When Komin Yamada was commissioned for the job his mandate was to develop a range of knives that was truly new and revolutionary, using the best materials available and the latest manufacturing techniques. Made in Japan, Lifetime Warranty.

Black OGIO Corporate City Corp Laptop Bag - ebags.com - $69.99 - No Substitutions
Fast and easy is a good thing when describing a messenger bag. With the City Corp, this personal organizer delivers your laptop, cell phone, pens, files, and other multimedia accessories … minus the bottomless-pit syndrome.
Corp City Corp Specifications - Padded top drop-in laptop sleeve, Audio pocket with headphone exit port, Cell phone pocket with cell lifter, Adjustable padded shoulder strap, Pullman handle attachment sleeve, Airline ticket sleeve, Organizer panel, Palm/calculator pocket, Internal file separators, Fits most 15″ laptops, Laptop sleeve 11″h x 17″w x 2″d

2 - xlarge - Cook Free or Die T-Shirt - grillbitch.com - $30.00 - No Substitutions
I want TWO of these shirts. This was designed and copyrighted by Anthony Bourdain as his trade mark.

The other day I brought the new checkpoint firewall for the new building and tried to get the VPN tunnels up between the satellite offices and failed. At the satellite offices we use IPCop as our firewalls.

I had set up the policies on the IPCop boxes and the corresponding ones on the Checkpoint firewall. When I went to bring up the tunnels I got nothing. There was no traffic going out the Checkpoint unit and I saw nothing on the IPCop boxes. I spent 3 hours on the phone with Checkpoint and got the box reconfigured and started getting errors on the IPCop boxes but still no tunnels. The Checkpoint tech was stumped as was I. I went so far as to blame the new T-1 provider of munging my packets so they would be accepted at the other offices.

So the error I was getting on the IPCop boxes was:

packet from X.X.X.X:500: initial Main Mode message received on X.X.X.X:500 but no connection has been authorized with policy=PSK

Now most of the information on the internet talks about this being a problem with the IPCop box getting a request from a box that it isn’t expecting. Well the policy was set up right on all the boxes. I even took out the checkpoint firewall and replaced it with an IPCop box..same error. So after spending all day and most of the night I headed home.

Around 3am I woke up and started thinking about the issue. In my mind I started going over the list of all the VPNs I had set up at the time and it came to me.

I got up and headed back to the new office. When I got there I made sure that the problem was still happening.

Now I had named the VPN policy on the IPCop boxes 1200Lenox. Well the problem is…you can’t start the name of the policy with a number. So the minute I changed the policy name to l1200lenox the tunnels came right up.

So for all of you who are getting the same error make sure the name of your policy starts with a lette and not a number.

So last month on October 16th I celebrated the bingeing of my 9th year at Arora and Assoicates, P.C.. When I say I celebrated I mean I went to my boss and told him that I was starting my the year and he said the same thing he says every year..”wow it’s been that long!”

So looking back at the 8 years that I have been at Arora I have realized that I have taken the company to new heights on the technology scale. When I started we had 2 offices. The one in Lawrenceville and a New York City office. The Lawrenceville office had an IDSL line that went down every few days. The New York office was sharing a 56K modem for the whole office. The e-mail server was hosted with the ISP and was unable to handle the small load the company was putting on it.

In 4 months after I started the IDSL line went down for a month..in which time I was able to talk the powers to be to go with a full T-1 line with the argument that the only time a T-1 goes down is when some person with a backhoe cuts a fiber line somewhere in the US. After the T-1 was installed in Lawrenceville I moved the mail server in house and rebuilt the network.

As the years moved on I have installed bigger faster and louder servers. We now have over 8Tb of space total in the Lawrenceville office. We have expanded the company from 2 offices to 5 offices all connected by VPN. All the offices now have full T-1s. There are more advances that were made in all the offices but there is so little time to list them all.

At the bingeing of this month we moved the Lawrenceville office to a bigger brand new space. We had over 46207 ft (8.75 Miles) of data cable installed with over 276 data ports installed. This was a new build so we put in as many drops as we could while the walls were open. We got rid of our old 3COM switches for brand new Cisco switches. With the new office also came with a new server room with the proper cooling and security.

So as I sit in my new cube…yes I took a cube instead of an office because the more space I have the messier I become so I took a cube tucked in a corner and out of the high traffic areas…I can’t help to think of what is in store for me in the next 9 years at Arora….

I know I look forward to keeping the company on the cutting edge of technologie.