Took a computer to solve it, too. You might want to read the second link. It’s interesting!
Eve? How we doing?
Not mine. It is the 404 page at plinko.net: http://www.plinko.net/nevermore.asp
I have seen the rhyme in other places, but whether they took it from plinko, or plinko took it from one of them is unclear, since it’s not attributed to anyone in particular.
Right, this IS the Pit. So I should have…
A) Told Eve that anyone who wants to buy a computer should be required by law to take a simple test where they are asked to count non-canonically to 31 on one hand. Any one how can not pass this test will be loaded into trucks and taken to Hamburger-U. With years of study and hard work the best and brightest of them may reach a point where they could be trusted to understand the meaning of such complicated instructions as “hold the pickle” and “I’d like onions on that” and thus become useful members of society.
- Suggested that Catsix might actually be a chimpanzee. Threaten to find him and do bad things to his dog and Grandmother if he can’t get his basic facts about a simple protocol like IP.
It was my first day. I’ll try to do better in the future. 
Thanks for taking the time to say Hi, Dropzone.
Hmm, my spell checker has non-canonically in the dictionary. Not sure how I feel about that.
Excuse me, but:
I’m female, I’m a computer engineer, a sys admin and a professor of subjects that include network protocols such as the TCP/IP suite.
I made the mistake of mistyping the private space 192.168 as 192, which doesn’t mean that I don’t understand IP or addressing, but that I made an error in typing.
I also don’t have a dog.
If you would like to continue to say that I don’t know my network protocols, please sit in on either my Network Technologies, Advanced Network Technologies or Network Design courses. When I don’t have to condense information to fit a web forum post, I get into far far more technical detail.
-Cat 6
P.S. How many usable IPs will I get if I am using a /26 subnet mask?
I’ve had so much other tsouris these past few days, I haven’t had time to think about it! I spend a half-hour on the phone with Comcast this weekend and it couldn’t be fixed—it seems the CD I used to kill the virus also killed my “driver” (I assume it dragged the driver out of the cab and beat it to death with a fire extinguisher).
So I have to take a day off from work tomorrow and stay home and wait for the computer-repair guy . . .
Sigh,
My last post really was meant as a joke in response to Dropzone’s suggestion that most people who post to the pit for their first post tend to be sociopathic, or at least more sociopathic then I seemed. I thought it was funny. Sorry if you didn’t.
As to your gender. I was playing the numbers.
-Trahey
P.S 2^6-2 per subnet.
Having spent a fair portion of my time being told to basically get out of the sandbox, little girl, and let the boys handle it, I am a little less receptive to jokes about my ability to understand such complexities in computers as IP addresses and subnetting.
I also became much more stodgy and cranky after finding out firsthand what it’s like to devote your life to a digital logic design and see it become obsolete in less than a year.
Sorry I didn’t catch that your post was a joke.
No biggie. We all have hot button issues.
I had figured that the whole IP thing was either haste or a desire for as much brevity as possible on your part. It’s very difficult to summarize any portion of IP to less then chapter size.
ps. I never thought you were a chimp.
Yeah, you’re right. I was at work and trying to shorten things as much as possible.
Considering that TCP/IP can and does fill entire 500 page books, summing it up in one post and not leaving something out is pretty condensed.
The chimp thing didn’t bother me. For some reason the assumption that I’m a guy because I’m a geek always does.
Now I am suspicious… either that is a sophisticated joke involving references to both .cab files and GTA:VC, or Eve really is a mild-mannered damsel in e-distress. I am getting Catwoman vibes here…
No! Computers are not that complicated! Every damn Windows program has the same functions (File Edit View Go…) If you have a Dell or Gateway or whatever it comes pre-loaded and ready to roll. A 4-year-old can run them, for Christ’s sake!
People who are afraid of hitting the wrong button, for fear of “blowing it up” piss me off as much as people who hit their brakes at every intersection, thinking that someone is going to pull right the fuck out in front of them!
Keep up or get the fuck out of the way!!!
mtrahey and catsix, please take your geekish flirtation to MPSIMS. 
“Yes! In the face! In the face!” - Eddy Murphy in “Coming To America”
Someone being injured is always much more funny by modifying it with “in the face” or “in the mouth”. I like the stabbing reference also.
Sorry to sidetrack, I haven’t laughed out loud at a post in a while, back to geek speak!
But but but I’m afraid of MPSIMS…
Somehow I cannot see a 4-year old solving a tricky video card issue or figuring out what to do when the network is bugged up and a window refuses to close.
You can shriek all day that computers are simple and easy to use but the fact that many users have difficulty with them proves you are wrong. If everyone who had trouble with computers was an idiot, that would be one thing, but I know a lot of very bright people who need help with their computers. Some of these people are smarter than the IT folks.
I wonder how many IT support staff are highly familiar with the engines of their cars. I’ll bet good money quite a few of them couldn’t even change a tire. The same people saying “Computers are simple, you must be a dolt if they confuse you” quite often don’t know how to change an oil filter in a machine they use every single day. I would also be fascinated to know how good you are at, say, performing routine plumbing repairs, sewing a shirt together, or erecting a wooden fence. They’re just as “simple” as a computer, so why do I get a feeling most IT people are not skilled plumbers, tailors, or fence-builders?
It’s not so bad. There’s human contact but if you keep telling yourself, “They’re only VIRTUAL hugs,” it’s not so bad.
Done it … done it … done it … done it … done it … done it … done it … done it. None done quickly or well but I guess I’m not as incompetent as I thought. And fitting the collar was the nastiest of all–took all day and several violations of the laws of physics. But the video card was nasty, though not as bad as a no longer supported audio card with crappy drivers.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” - Robert A. Heinlein.
Done it, done it, butchered a deer, done it, done it, done it poorly, done it, done it, done it, done it, done it, done it, done it, done it. done it… though not reliabily, done it, done it, though not in years… but I can debug programming languages I don’t know, do it, not very recently, and… er… havn’t done it yet.
The deer was a moral issue. If I eat meat, I figured that I should know exactly what I’m looking at the end product of. Took all summer to eat that deer, whose memory I honor.
As far as a car goes, hell yes. Never sewed an entire shirt, though I’ve patched jeans and made a bathrobe once. Fences of both unmortared stone (Farmer’s Fence) and wood. Plumbing is fun, if painful.
I’ve also raised a kid. (Not mine, the neighbor’s. Changed his nappies, taught him to read, rocked him to bed, taught him to add and subtract, then to multiply and divide. Heard his first or second word, saw his first steps…) Heck, I’ve taught first and second graders. That’s the most useful experience I’ve ever had in my life. It’s where I learned patience. … wait, there was a point.
Oh, yah. Eve? I’m coming to the city this weekend. You want me to install a good anti-virus software for you? Keep your computer nice and safe?
Computers appear simple on the surface so that people who don’t know a lot about them can still use them. This concept is called “user friendliness”. Underneath they are indeed pretty fucking complicated, as I said before. If you disagree, please explain the following terms, since they’re so simple:
Von Neumann architecture
arithmetic-logic unit
multiple pipeline processing
memory cache
sockets
transport layer
system call
UNICODE
ASCII
kernal
IEEE
PCI
SCSI
USB
interrupt
process
task scheduling
TSR
driver
packet
system bus
semaphore
resource allocation
memory leak
virtual memory
routing
data collision
This test will be graded.
Something tells me I’m not allowed to take this test… itchingitching*.
BTW, anybody want to give a geek a job?