There is a image search feature that can be incredibly useful. It is called a reverse image search, and its is scarily accurate. Basically you can upload a photo or give Google the URL (a link) to a photo online and it will search for images that are the same or similar. To use it, goto: https://images.google.com Click the camera icon at the far right of the search box. Your options are Paste the URL (if you can find the picture link directly online) or upload a local picture.

In the I.T. industry we are constantly twisting, opening, screwing, unscrewing things. I have been on the lookout for a nice tool that will fit in my pocket without a giant bulge. Gerber has one that fits the bill, the Crucial. Comes with pliers, very nice blade, can opener, philips and flathead. Just the basics and it has a pocket clip! It fits perfectly into my “lighter” pocket right on the front jean pocket.

I have been on a power reduction kick lately to see how low I can get my monthly bill. Currently it is a perfect time of year in Phoenix, so we don’t need AC nor heat. One tactic I use when traveling is to just turn off all of the circuits when I leave for more than a day. Do this right at the circuit breaker and all those “vampire” devices will go away.

I have always been on the lookout for a nice Bluetooth headset, and a new contender is the LG HBS-730. It is one of the newer style devices that sits on your neck and has ear-buds with wires. It allows you to make phone calls, and is mainly a set of wireless headphones. This means you can listen to music or podcasts all day, and make phone calls with it. So far I have been very impressed, the sound quality is great and phone calls sound just fine (I don’t make all that many these days but the ones I do are great).

! ***** Fill in the parameters within the angle brackets ***** ! ***** Catalyst 6500 Native configuration template ***** !**************************************************************** ! mls rate-limit unicast ip icmp unreachable acl-drop 10 mls rate-limit unicast ip icmp redirect 10 no service pad service timestamps debug datetime localtime service timestamps log datetime localtime logging buffered 11024 service password-encryption enable secret <password> no enable password ip multicast-routing clock timezone GST 0 ! hostname <hostname> ! !

Here is a quick template to setup a Cisco Nexus 56128 or any other switch in the 5600 series. These are solid 40G switches that offer a ton of features. Fabricpath is used in this template for switch to switch communication. These are also setup as a “Leaf” switch in a spine/leaf two tier design. These are running Nexus 7.0.X code. For reference here is the spine configuration: Spine template

This is kind of general holding place for commands that I run into and need to keep track of in Linux. I mainly play with Ubuntu and Kali but these should work with almost any distro. If you run a ssh server on the internet, you want to minimize the risk of brute forcing. Its best to not allow root logins via anywhere, so that removes the easy job of guessing a username.

The configuration can vary depending on the type of switch you are using, so this is for the Nexus 5600 series, tested on the 56128. Unified ports on this device are available on the modules you can install in the top two slots, they are 24 ports each unified. So you can have a total of 48 ports. The border is orange so you know they are different. By default they are Ethernet 10 gig ports, so if that’s what you want then you don’t need to change anything.

VPC: Virtual Port Channel - this is a port channel that instead of connecting multiple ports only on one switch, you are spreading it over two physical switches. This give more redundancy in most cases. it can be a bit tricky to setup, so here is a config that I have used which seem to work great. The keep alive is done with the management port, and the peer-link is a leaf to leaf (in a fabricpath network) or switch to switch direct link.

Here is a quick template to setup a Cisco Nexus 6004 or 6001 (recently renamed to the 5600 series, so now the 5696). These are solid 40G switches that offer a ton of features. Fabricpath is used in this template for switch to switch communication. These are also setup as a “Spine” switch in a spine/leaf two tier design. This code was created on 7.0.x NX-OS. !!!MGMT port config interface mgmt0 vrf member management ip address x.