Networking in Psych

I've been rewatching Psych on Netflix as my way to relieve stress from the daily workday. It's been great and then yesterday I watched an episode that really hit some interest bones. The episode contained:

  1. Kenan Thompson who was hilarious in All That
  2. Jaleel White who made the whole of Family Matters
  3. Acapella singing which I do enjoy and wish I could sing and be part of a quartet or something.
  4. Computer Security and Networking references which I'll discuss.
  5. American Ninja which hilariously, I didn't understand the name drop reference because I never knew the actor's name so I assumed he was the director.

Most episodes, I just enjoy for the comedy and the crime solving but this one I took quite more interest because of my own interests or for nostalgia. My biggest interest is Computer Security and Networking which I wanted to discuss!

First, this is the clip that just made me smile as it seemed irrelevant but quite a drop in words:

Manager: I don't suppose either of you can create an 802.1Q spanning tree loop using auto forwarding non-Wintel based equipment? Shawn: I can make a straw wrapper crawl like a worm. Oh, and, uh, make the inside of my elbow look like a butt.

First off, I just love the execution of Shawn's response. I always enjoyed the witty stupid banter but seriously, it's not just the line, but the execution that really impressed me.

Anyways, getting down to the point the manager states "802.1Q spanning tree loop using auto forwarding non-Wintel based equipment?" to which I didn't understand fully though I understood most of what he was getting at so I will tackle the parts in just interest order:

  1. "Non-Wintel" based equipment - To be honest, I just learned a ton just now, I looked it up and I had no idea Windows based Intel systems were called Wintel! I learned something today which I think is something you should all do everyday!
  2. "Spanning tree loop" - I'm pretty sure this term exists but it makes no sense at all! Spanning trees SHOULD NOT have loops! If you construct a topology with a loop then it can still work, but if your system constructs a spanning tree with a loop, then you have a bug! But loops in networking are difficult to deal with as there is a lot of logic to prevent loops from crashing or overloading the system.
  3. "802.1Q" - I never heard of this standard but it is about VLAN which is interesting, I wanted to just mention that there are just way too many standards that I wish I had really awesome memory to remember everything.

That's all I wanted to mention about the quote, there is the "auto forwarding" but it isn't anything interesting as I assume it's just a setting or configuration.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this episode! It had some interesting twists and didn't make it at all obvious who was the crook, but it dropped hints enough that in the end, the pieces connect. If you haven't watched Psych, I highly recommend it! I've now placed it at the top of my all time favorite TV shows for the many reasons of crime investigation, curiosity, comedy, obscure references that I may never get, and execution.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Missed Jog
Kindle Reader on Mac OS X Bug


comments powered by Disqus