New Year's Eve

Today we got out with some family and visited a couple of really cool places here in the panhandle. This is the tallest waterfall in Florida.

Christmas

I hope everyone had a great Christmas this year.

Happy Thanksgiving

A fresh install of a Cisco Subscriber (secondary server of a phone system) to start the day and a nice bike ride with my wife after lunch till dark. I hope today was a good Thanksgiving day for all of you.

Quote Of The Day: Charlotte Delbo

You need to understand who this quote below is from. It's from a Holocaust survivor out of Auschwitz named Charlotte Delbo.

October Palo Alto 850 HA Install

Sunday Thoughts, On Friday

I heard this today and just wanted to share.
Praise The Lord, by The City Harmonic

Home Projects: Hanging Pictures

I know this sounds corny, putting up a post about hanging pictures. But there is a skill behind this. To get these pictures lined up just right, I've noticed that different people have different methods of doing this. Mine happens to be a tape measure. I literally measure where I think every nail should go. Then I nail it up (two for each picture). I hang the picture and then check it with a level, but across the top and down the side. Works for me.

Home Projects: Kitchen Shelves

Here where I live, you seem to have to do a lot of things yourself. Now, I don't mind that.

However, we did have this one contractor that had put up some shelves in the kitchen. They looked nice, but the kitchen wall did not. So we took those shelves down and tiled the wall.

So now, I want the kitchen shelves back up. You see above that I had to take them down to get the tile in place. The wall looks good, but needs the shelves back up. So I asked the contractor if he would put them back up for me, since he knew how to anchor them properly. These are big, thick pieces of wood and are very heavy. Here is how that conversation went (me in black, contractor in white):

I probably shouldn't have texted him at 1:19am, but I wanted him to know that I knew better than to believe him. 

So I'll put the more up and will call it done. By the way, I didn't "screw through the tile". That would be ridiculous. I drilled a hole with a diamond tip bit and ran the screw through that hole. How did I know where the hole would go on the tile? Toothpaste. 

Finished product (minus some cleaning up).

NAT On A Cisco Router

I had a situation come up where I needed to NAT traffic that was being routed through a Cisco router. It was a quick fix to a greater problem, but it works. Below is the config to do this:

config t
ip nat pool ToAWS 10.10.10.200 10.10.10.201
access-list 100 permit ip 10.100.0.0 0.0.255.255 10.200.0.0 0.0.255.255
ip nat inside source list 100 pool ToAWS
interface GigabitEthernet0/0/0
ip nat inside
interface GigabitEthernet0/0/2
ip nat outside

exit

wr mem

Sunday Thoughts: Isaiah 46

This got my attention today.  Isaiah 46.
What's interesting about this chapter, is that God does answer, as opposed to all others who do not.

30A Sunset at Seagrove Beach, SRB, FL

My wife and I like to take a walk at sunset when we can. Tourist season is over here and there are very few people here at SRB. I'm truly amazed at God's creation when I think about it. 

See here for a nice sunset.

Home Projects: Tile Work

Still working on home projects at the beach fixer upper. I have said time and time again, it's important to have the right tools to do a job. Below, you see two tools for this job: an angle grinder and a wet saw. Both very important to do this tile job right.

And finish the day off with a sunset walk.

Fear Is A Liar

There is a song call Fear Is A Liar that has some very interesting lyrics to it.  If you are struggling in your walk with The Lord because of the voices that tell you that you will never be anything, it wasn't meant for you, or to just stay down, then listen to the words of this song.  There is a lot of truth in it just for you.  Link below.
Zac Williams - Fear Is A Liar

Calm Gulf Of Mexico

This doesn't happen often, but the Gulf was literally like a swimming pool recently. It made me think of Mark 4:35-41.

These Yolo boarders were even out in the Gulf.

And a nice sunset.

Pic Of The Week: Sand Dollar

Idyllwild, CA

My wife and I hiked in Saturday to a trail that lead to a place called "suicide rock".  This is in the Idyllwild, CA area. We met some really nice people and the views were great. The altitude gets up to around 7000 feet, and for people like me who live in the lower lands in the SE, breathing is actually not easy on this climb. But, it was well worth doing, as California has some really beautiful mountain regions.

Pic Of The Week: Palm Springs, CA

How NOT To Do Wireless

Hotels usually aren't that great when it comes to internet. It's no wonder when you see this one's wireless setup. 

Celebrating 26 Years

My wife and I are celebrating 26 years of marriage this month. :)

Meraki Install

I don't know that I've ever really commented on the Meraki installs that I've done. I did an install for a company out of Nashville recently. Meraki does make some things easy to configure. But it also leaves out some really important threat prevention features. I should probably do a comparison list between firewall vendors.

Pic Of The Week: Destin Sunset

Home Projects: How To Line Up Three Light Switches For Faceplate

It seems that finding something like this on YouTube wasn't easy. Maybe I couldn't find the right keywords to search for, but for all of my searches, I came up empty handed.
I needed some way to line up three light switches in a row, so that when I put the faceplate on, it all lined up just right. So I came up with a template and decided this was the best way to do this.

You can see the holes and lines actually mean something here. The holes are for where the screw of the faceplate actually line up. And the lines are for my level. Placing this down, with a level, I was able to drill a hole where the holes in the template are. This helped me determine where the switch would be when I screwed it into the shiplap.
Once I was done, the faceplate was easy.

Sunday Thought 2: Trust God

Have you ever seen or heard something or someone that takes you back in time?  I have two people in particular that takes me back to my teenage years.  For some reason, I listened to a lot of Chuck Swindoll and Charles Stanley preachings over the radio (AM, that is).  For some reason, to me, its comfort.  I don't know why, but when I hear Chuck Swindoll's voice in particular, it just brings some sort of comfort.  If you have 15 minutes, this is worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNamnkxzkA

Sunday Thought: Ricky Van Shelton

I know this isn't Sunday, but ever since I moved to the Florida panhandle, I have been listening a lot to the old country "legends".  There is some really good stuff, and below is a link to a really good one.
Ricky Van Shelton - Dont Overlook Salvation

Home Projects: Big Fan

I've always wanted one of these big fans. We had the opportunity and decided to get one for this house redo. It certain moves the air in the room and I really like it.

Fortinet Firewall: Packet Capture By Port Number In CLI

I like packet captures.  I have probably said that a million times, because it "proves" what is going on, on a network, instead of guessing what is going on.  Packet captures are a Net Admins best friend, plain and simple. 
So here is how you do a packet capture when you are looking for traffic using a specific port number in particular in CLI of a Fortinet:
diagnose  sniffer packet any 'tcp port 8883' 4 0 a

Above, Im looking for traffic on TCP port 8883.  Ill see everything that passes through the firewall.

Home Projects: More Shiplap

We still have to paint this, but I like the look of this. We will paint this white, even though it's already primed white. It should be s good look.

Pic Of The Week: Panama City Beach Wheel

Home Projects: Kick Switch For Disposal

Working on this house has been really slow. That's ok though, White Rhino comes first. But I did need an easy win on this house. So, we installed this foot switch for the garbage disposal. It's just easier to grind food waste down the drain and the foot/kick switch works really well. It fits right under the cabinet and it's out of sight. Just use your foot to kick the switch and it's done. It's about a 10 minute install and I was really glad for this easy win. Looks like I need to clean up some of the saw dust, but I'm sure it's done by the time you have read this.

Here is the view from above. I'm pointing to the kick switch.

Brocade (Ruckus) ICX Password Recovery

Real quick, here is how you do a password reset on an ICX switch.  I had a 6450 in this case, but this will work on any of the ICX models. 
Boot up, then hit "b".

Enter 'b' to stop at boot monitor:  0
ICX64XX-boot>> no password
OK! Skip password check when the system is up.
ICX64XX-boot>> boot
Booting image from Primary

Palo Alto Firewall: Testing PBF (Policy Based Forwarding) In CLI

PBR (or PBF as Palo calls it), is a really great feature.  Policy Based Forwarding (in the network world, we call it policy based routing) is a feature where you can control where packets go without using the routing table.  You set a destination based on certain parameters that you define (like source, protocol, etc) and it catches this PBF policy BEFORE it hits the routing table.  Here is how you test it in CLI, to verify it works the way you want it to.

PA850-1(active)> test pbf-policy-match from L3-Inside application web-browsing source 192.168.1.5 destination 5.5.5.5 protocol 6 destination-port 443

"Exchange; index: 8" {
        id 9;
        from L3-Inside;
        source 192.168.1.5;
        destination any;
        user any;
        application/service  any/any/any/any;
        action Forward;
        symmetric-return no;
        forwarding-egress-IF/VSYS ethernet1/3;
        next-hop 68.68.68.68;
        terminal no;
}

Sunday Thought:

No real thought in particular here.  I just pray that God will bless your life and that you will know the grace and love of our Lord and Savior Jesus (Yeshua) Christ, the Messiah that was written about in the Old Testament.

Integrity: What Is It?

Can you spot good integrity in the people around you or in yourself? Or bad integrity? So what is it? It's real simple.

Home Projects: Closet Shelving

My wife put this together from IKEA. I'm pretty sure she could do this house without me if she wanted to.

Palo Alto Firewall: CLI Command To Verify Optic Module

Guys, real quick, if you need to check the SFP status to know if the Palo is seeing it or not, here is a CLI command to help you determine if it is.  The below is a Proline SFP.

killen@PA-850> show system state filter sys.s1.p9.phy

sys.s1.p9.phy: { 'link-partner': { }, 'media': SFP-Plus-Fiber, 'sfp': { 'connector': LC, 'encoding':
 8B10B, 'identifier': SFP, 'transceiver': 1000B-SX, 'vendor-name': PROLINE         , 'vendor-part-nu
mber': PAN-SFP-SX-PRO  , 'vendor-part-rev': A3  , }, 'type': Ethernet, }

Palo Alto Firewall: PBF (Policy Based Forwarding) Testing In CLI

Did you know you can test your policy based forwarding yourself in CLI on the Palo Alto firewall?  You sure can.  Below, Im testing my zone L3-Inside (my inside zone) to verify it will go out Ethernet 1/3 port.  Based on the response below, it looks like it does work without having to involve the server guys.

killen@PA850-1(active)> test pbf-policy-match from L3-Inside application web-browsing source 192.168.5.5 destination 77.77.77.77 protocol 6 destination-port 443

"Exchange; index: 8" {
        id 9;
        from L3-Inside;
        source 192.168.5.5;
        destination any;
        user any;
        application/service  any/any/any/any;
        action Forward;
        symmetric-return no;
        forwarding-egress-IF/VSYS ethernet1/3;
        next-hop 65.65.65.65;
        terminal no;
}

killen@PA850-1(active)>

SRB, FL Sunset 1/21/2019

Amazing.

Fortinet Firewall: How To Do A Factory Reset In CLI

If you know the admin password to get in, then this is what you do to do a factory reset in CLI:


FG100DXXXXXXXX# execute factoryreset
This operation will reset the system to factory default!
Do you want to continue? (y/n)y

System is resetting to factory default...

The system is going down NOW !!

FG100DXXXXXXXX #
Please stand by while rebooting the system.

Palo Alto Firewall: Adding A Static Route In CLI

Real quick, I think this is useful for adding a lot of static routes into a Palo Alto.  SSH in and do this in CLI and type "configure".  Then type out the following:
set network virtual-router [name of virtual router i.e. default] routing-table ip static-route [name of route i.e. Shanes-Route] admin-dist 10 destination [network/subnet mask i.e 10.10.10.0/24] interface [name of interface to be used outgoing i.e. ethernet1/1] nexthop ip-address [next hop ip i.e. 4.4.4.4]

Add 50 or so of them from notepad at one time, then type in "commit".  

Looking Ahead 2019