Retired network engineer. Independent Swift dev. MacOS Apps: “CIDR Trainer”,“Network Mom ACL Analyzer”,“Network Mom Availability”,“Netrek”. CCIE #8302 Emeritus
United States
Joined December 2011
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I vaguely remember a 20+ year old commercial (for PAC Bell?)
It shows one person in a suit talking glowingly about the cloud
Cuts to another executive talking glowingly about the information superhighway
Pans to another person talking about the future of information
Then it cuts to a stressed out technician in the basement with a bunch of wires in the background: “if I don’t get this network up in 30 minutes…I’m a DEAD MAN” 😳
That technician in the basement was my role model
I’ll bet there’s a network engineer in Portugal today feeling like that…
Darrell Root retweeted
What the University of California just told the world is that they don't believe in global warming or sea-level rise.
So can we leave the climate cult now?
Darrell Root retweeted
The big problem in American politics is that voters expect the government to solve their problems. Our country was founded on the principle that the people should be left alone to solve their own problems. When government is empowered to solve problems, it creates them instead.
Darrell Root retweeted
More University of California freshmen are failing introductory math.
18% of UC freshmen got a D or F, withdrew or didn’t pass an intro math class in 2025–26, nearly double the 9.2% in 2020–21, the last year UC required the SAT or ACT, per UC data reported by EdSource.
The average grade in those classes fell from 3.18 to 2.71.
At UC Merced, 36.4% of freshmen failed or withdrew, the highest of any campus. At UC Santa Barbara, it was 8.2%.
UC is now weighing whether to bring back standardized testing, with a faculty report on testing due in February.
Darrell Root retweeted
Ok, there has been a change. The absolute most annoying people now are the "give more money to public schools" people. Invincible ignorance. Every failure is a reason for more money. Their complete lack of accountability to actual parents and students is more money. The fact that people actively want it escape them is more money. The fact that they are already 2-3x more expensive than better private options is met with more money. That half the money goes to admin is we need more money for teachers. If something private was that bad it would have closed a long time ago.
Darrell Root retweeted
This Month in Dragonlance, November 1984
42 years ago this month, TSR published Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first novel in the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, featuring that unforgettable cover by Larry Elmore.
What’s remarkable is that TSR wasn’t entirely convinced the novel would succeed. Weis and Hickman even took it upon themselves to help promote the book, including a readers’ theater performance at Gen Con.
What followed was one of the greatest success stories in D&D publishing history, introducing generations of readers to Tanis, Raistlin, Caramon, Sturm, Tasslehoff, and the world of Krynn.
Not bad for a novel that wasn’t a sure thing.
42 years later, that Elmore cover still takes me right back to where it all began.
Darrell Root retweeted
Just gave a lecture in my class about Sports Gambling (history, culture, psychology, etc)
Young men need to hear it from older men: Stop gambling! Delete the apps. Close the accounts. Put your money in a boring index fund
You might win BIG once. But you'll lose in the long run
Darrell Root retweeted
The latest from California's high-speed rail boondoggle:
-- California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri was caught billing taxpayers to fly from Denver to Sacramento, to commute for work
-- Consultants were doing the same, even as the contract required them to relocate to California.
-- The inspector general's Sept. 15 report found $595,600 in unallowable consultant travel.
-- Taxpayers were billed thousands for furniture for the CEO's office, as well as adding tint to his taxpayer funded SUV
-- Taxpayers are paying as much as 10 times the legally contracted rates from the winning bid
-- Phase 1 cost estimates now run from $126 billion to $231 billion, against $45 billion when voters approved it in 2008.
-- When CBS California's @juliewattsTV confronted Choudri about these accounting issues, asking for documentation, he brushed her off & hours later, resigned, citing family priorities.
-- Current status: effectively zero miles of high-speed track built, ~$15–16 billion spent, after 18 years.
Is any of this money NOT going toward corruption?
Darrell Root retweeted
Oh yes I understand how the initiative process works in WA state…
1. Citizens file initiative, ensure it adheres to state law, get certification from state officials, secure funding, promote it, volunteer, collect signatures
2. Bad people harass, threaten, and physically assault signature gatherers
3. More bad people steal and destroy signature sheets
4. Citizens submit signature sheets for authentication - yay accepted!
5. State officials intentionally mislead voters by wording the initiative as confusing as possible on the ballot
6. State officials launch massive campaign to smear initiative supporters as ‘hateful’
7. State officials and local media lie about the initiative - repeatedly
8. State officials, local media, and initiative opponents continue to demonize supporters
9. Voter votes YES or NO on the ballot
10. YES wins yay! <<< WE ARE HERE
COMING SOON >>>
11. State officials challenge the initiative in court
12. The governor’s loyal Supreme Court ignores the will of voters and pretends it’s not legal and throws it out
13. State officials say ‘well actually we had to ignore the will of voters in order to save democracy!’
Darrell Root retweeted
Fraud was not only not punished by Minnesota voters, it was rewarded
'LOST STATE:' A Somali daycare owner whose business has faced scrutiny over millions in state and federal funding defeated a Republican incumbent to win a Minnesota House seat.
Abdi Daisane's Blooming Kids Child Care Center has been cited for over a dozen violations, and as sponsored for state funding by a nonprofit that the state claims "knowingly defrauded" Minnesota to the tune of $18 million.
Full story here foxnews.com/politics/somali-…
Darrell Root retweeted
"Teaching to the test" is good, because a test can make it pretty hard to cheat the indicator. If the test is that you have to drill adding fractions and answering questions from paragraphs and naming historical figures and writing grammatically correct sentences, then passing the test means you know the stuff that school is for.
In fact I think every year of teaching should be devoted to preparing for the test, with the goal of enabling students to pass it. What would teachers be spending their time on if not the material mandated by the state curriculum and tested for learning?
Darrell Root retweeted
So apparently the Director of Arkansas professional programs has been altering bar examination scores for several years by taking points from some bar examinees and adding them to other bar examinees
They are literally going out of business and still don’t allow comments on their post.
Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication. It has been an extraordinary privilege. salon.com/2026/11/05/goodbye…
Darrell Root retweeted
If you take a student from a disadvantaged background--with parents who don't read to them, don't teach them things, don't take them places where they can learn--and you don't directly and explicitly teach them the knowledge they need to do well in school, you rely entirely on their ability to "discover" what they need to know, you are basically asking them to close the achievement gap on their own.
If you purport to care about equity but don't provide students with the tools to achieve it, then you are a hypocrite, entirely out of line with your own values. This is progressive education.
Darrell Root retweeted
The great thing about sales tax: EVERYONE pays it, so EVERYONE feels the pain.
The worst kind of taxes are those that not everyone pays, because then the people who don't pay can keep voting to raise them without feeling the consequences.
Darrell Root retweeted
Anyone who says a social network wants bots is deeply mistaken. Human interaction is already scarce on social networks, since most people are passive consumers.
Bots displace this scarce resource:
Each bot reply means one human reply is not seen or engaged with by another human.
It’s nearly a 1-to-1 drop in product & business value—and likely has much bigger compounding losses when you account for people churning out of frustration.
Darrell Root retweeted
Some dude in California running a 3-person company got voters to give him $4.2 billion by authoring a ballot measure, which passed
Hero on-call engineer!
Cyberattack on France’s national blood service (EFS) via its refrigeration contractor Coolworld. Hackers reset freezers keeping blood donor samples at -30°C to a target of 110°C. The thing that stopped it from destructive impact was an on-call technician who noticed the temperatures going up. Frozen plasma intended for transfusion was stored there too. Fortunately nothing was destroyed. This was a cyberattack on a sensitive layer of healthcare. From frozen peas to boiling plasma in three weeks...?
