Here's my traditional Year in Review article for 2011.  Last year I deviated from the norm by writing an entry on my predictions for 2011 and beyond, but that was only a one time deal.

Work and Technology

It's been a big year for IPv6 (come on, you knew I would be starting this with something IPv6-related).  World IPv6 Day was the catalyst for many IPv6 initiatives throughout the globe, as well as one at my place of employment.  Although I can't specifically state who I work for in a blog or web forum I can say that it's a large MSO.  I led the effort to dual-stack our enterprise network and more or less succeeded by the time June 8th rolled around, although we didn't participate directly in World IPv6 Day.  Our website was dual-stacked a few weeks after and, from what I know, there hasn't been a single problem reported!  The above image of IPv6 statistics from World IPv6 Day is courtesy of Akamai.

Oh, one more thing about IPv6.. my license plate was featured on a NetworkWorld slideshow, for obvious reasons.

On the FOSS front, I made contributions to two projects: MTR (the traceroute program) and the Linux kernel.  I added some stability fixes and IPv6 support (via reverse engineering) to the LG-VL600 USB LTE modem driver in the Linux kernel (see here).  The LG-VL600 is one of the USB modems that's sold by Verizon Wireless for use on their LTE network.  I also created a patch to decode ICMP extensions for MPLS (see here), which has recently been included in version 0.82.

I've educated myself quite a bit on the operations of DNSSEC and have signed 7x of my domains with automatically rolling ZSKs, so far.  I'll be writing up a blog entry solely on my experience with DNSSEC in a few days, so stay tuned!

I passed the JNCIP-SEC Juniper Networks certification.  Hopefully in early 2012 I'll be able to attempt the JNCIE-SEC!

As far as work itself is concerned, 2011 wasn't the best of years due to a variety of factors.  It wasn't a complete and utter disaster, but it wasn't a good year, either.  We'll see if 2012 can do better!

30

I turned 30 years of age.  Really, there's not much else to say about this because it wasn't all that enjoyable.  I'd prefer to tell people my current age is 0x1e, but I have a feeling that might result in some strange looks.

Photography

Early in 2011 I decided I wanted to get into photography, so I took an introductory DSLR class at The Light Factory in uptown Charlotte.  I also picked up a Canon 60D with the EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS and EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM lenses.  Later in the year I picked up the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM (unfortunately not before leaving for the Galápagos Islands).

The Light Factory class, although fairly basic, provided the foundation I needed to continue exploring my new-found hobby.  Among other things, I found I like to take evening photos of cityscapes or close-ups with the macro lens.  I've lately been trying out the fad that is HDR (without making the result look completely silly).

I keep telling myself I'll eventually setup a separate website for my photography, but for now it's just strewn around here.  In the meantime, some of these images might be interesting.

For those interested, the simple montage above was created by GIMP 2.6 running under Mac OS X - the compilation errors when using MacPorts suddenly disappeared one day!  Images sources (left to right): Lightning, IMG_0510.jpg, and img_0342.jpg.

Travel

In addition to my standard trips up and down the east coast of the United States for work and family visits, I took two other noteworthy trips in 2011.

To attend NANOG 51, I traveled to Miami, FL in early 2011 and stayed at the Hotel InterContinental Miami just outside the downtown area.  The NANOG conference is a North American tri-yearly get together for network operators and Internet companies.  It's basically a fun geek-out for engineers, complete with presentations and panels discussing various technologies and issues.  Although some folks attend individually, most are there representing their employer and have its AS number on their badge, which I did.

I had a great northeastern view from my hotel room, so I took a time-lapse of the sunrise one morning and added some trance music to it!

I also took a trip to the Galápagos Islands.  It was a fascinating experience and certainly worth the almost two weeks away from the office (for several reasons).  It's one thing to see wildlife from a distance or behind bars, but completely different to have them prance right in front of you (sea lions and marine iguanas).  This trip marked the first time in my life that I've crossed the equator.  I got a silly t-shirt for it, too..

Miscellaneous

Several of my friends got engaged and a few got married in the past year.  Actually, I think most of the engagements happened in the past two weeks of 2011.. enough that I thought I was missing out on some conspiracy!  I'm just joking, if it's not apparent.  Also, did I mention I've been seeing someone for the last couple of months?  Well, I have been!  She's quite fun to hang out with and isn't scared of all my computer and networking equipment.

I suppose the last thing I should mention about 2011 is SOPA.  Hopefully you know what it is, and don't need to click on the link.  Anyway, back in September I finally got sick of Register.com's high prices and lack of DNSSEC support, so I moved prolixium.com and prolixium.net to Go Daddy where I had a few other domains.  I also bought a wildcard SSL certificate from them for prolixium.com.  Little did I know that they had a hand in writing SOPA and initially supported it (most folks think they still do, since there's a section of the bill that excludes Go Daddy domains from certain shutdowns)!  Not wanting to have anything to do with a company that supports such a dangerous bill, I moved 6x of my domains away from Go Daddy a few days ago, but have to wait until January to move prolixium.com and prolixium.net.  Is it a waste of money?  No, it's not - it tells companies that SOPA is important to customers and they should not support it.  Hopefully there will be some votes against the bill in 2012 and it won't pass.  Otherwise, 2012 will start with Internet censorship in the United States, which would be nothing short of a travesty.

New Year's Resolutions

I suppose the last thing to share are my 2012 new year's resolutions.  I'd rather not make them all public, so here are just a few of them:

Obtain the JNCIE-SEC certification

There's not much else to say about this one.  I got the JNCIP-SEC earlier this year, but I would like to wait for one of the boot camps to be offered so I can get some real study material.

Be nicer at work

I've been a bit of a grouch and pessimist at work over the last year - possibly for good reasons, but that doesn't matter.  However, in 2012 I will try not to say I don't care or be overly pessimistic about anything.

Exercise more

I swim 4-5 days a week now, doing 2,600 meters in each 45-50 minute session.  However, almost all of that is freestyle with only one or two lengths of butterfly mixed in.  I'd like to increase that to two full laps of butterfly per session.

I currently do 20 push-ups and 20 sit-ups each morning.  This is going to be a tough one on the weekdays (due to time constraints - I hate getting up early!), but I'm going to try to double both of these.

Make three contributions to FOSS projects

In 2011 I contributed to MTR and the Linux kernel with patches that added functionality and fixed bugs.  I'd like to increase this number to three, this year.  I believe in free and open source software, and although I'm not that great of a programmer, I'd like to help make it better.

Blog more, Facebook less

I need to blog more often.  Right now I average about one or two blog entries per month - I'd like to increase that to one or two blog entries per week.  The topics will remain the same (technology, science, rants, etc.).

I also need to limit viewing Facebook to once every other day or even less.  It's typically a big waste of time for me and I think I've spent way too much time on it in 2011.  I really don't need to see pictures of naked newborn babies, people writing love letters to each other via their walls (although it is still amusing to see that some people still think wall to wall conversations are private), checking in at each and ever restaurant they visit, or letting the world know they completed their workout of the day.

Although I'm going to detach from Facebook a bit more, I'm going to try to go in the opposite direction with Twitter.  Unlike Facebook (or even Google+, at this point), I find Twitter to be quite informative on matters of technology and news.  It's also a great place to crowdsource questions or recommendations on technical topics.  It's also fun to have some communication with celebrities (my definition of celebrities include creators of BitTorrent, trance producers and DJs, etc.) every once and awhile.

Make >= 100 edits to Wikipedia

I really like Wikipedia.  I think it's one of the best things on the Internet and I contribute to it with my time (edits) and money (yearly donations).  I only made 29 edits this past year, but I'd like to make over 100 in 2012.

Conclusion

And that's it.  Have a Happy New Year!

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