Talk about your manic Mondays…I walked into work on a Monday when half the IT team was in the company was out, only to be told that the office had no Internet. After checking on the basics, I went into the datacenter and was immediately confronted by the olfactory equivalent of a kick in the crotch; ozone and melting plastic. Yes, my PIX had declared a code brown. Someone let the magick smoke out. It had kicked the (bit) bucket.
I had an ASA 5505 on hand, and quickly went through the necessary steps to get it into play. We have several LAN to LAN VPN tunnels going, and I needed to work with our managed security provider to get the ones to the main datacenters up and running. If you have ever done LAN to LAN tunnels on a PIX or ASA before, then you are familiar with the concept of a pre-shared key, or PSK for short. Whoever set these up initially, it would appear, really likes LLLOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG PSKs, I mean, like 40+ character long PSKs. So here I am, standing in an ice box, with fans at the 120 decibel mark, trying to enter a PSK being read to me by a firewall engineer over a speakerphone connection. Can you imagine how much fun that was? Can you? Imagine how much more fun it was having to have him repeat every other character because he was NOT familiar with the ITU Spelling Alphabet. And so, another RetroHack rant is born. Call it my open letter to IT tech support, and use this handy little link if you ever need to share it with another. http://bit.ly/GeekABCs
Dear IT colleague,
As a professional in the information technology field, it is incumbent upon you to communicate clearly and succinctly with your peers. Often, this happens during times of great stress, such as when a firewall has gone tits up and the CEO of the company is sharpening his axe, or when exchanging key pieces of information with another technology professional who is on his fourth RedBull in as many hours.
It is not at all uncommon for your colleagues-in-arms to be working in sub-optimal conditions, such as found in your typical datacenter (sub-arctic air being pumped in at 60 kph, fans maintaining a sustained noise level in line with that found on a carrier deck during flight ops, etc.) These same individuals are likely trying to communicate to you while balancing their laptop in one hand, typing with the other, and using either a Bluetooth device or speaker phone on a cellular device with one bar, surrounded by more EMF than is typically found at the middle of the Large Hadron Collider.
Surprisingly, these conditions are not unique in the world. To facilitate communications at times and in conditions not unlike those I have described above, the ITU has standardised a spelling alphabet (often called a phonetic alphabet) to make it simple to communicate individual English letters and numbers. Based on the same methods used by pilots and radio operators for a century, these words that represent letters are unique, easy to say and understand, and almost impossible to mistake for one another. As such, they are perfect for these situations.
You should learn them. Now. I mean, really, NOW. Log off the damn queue, and don’t touch another customer call until you can recite these forwards/backwards/in your sleep. Because I swear, if I call in and you catch the call, and you tell me “E as in Ed, Z as in Zed, D as in Dead, T as in Ted” I will hunt you down and beat you with a SCSI cable. Pay attention slappy. The words that are associated with the letters are specifically chosen NOT to sound like any other in the set. So even if the ambient sound level approaches that of a World Cup game, or the guy on the other end is stuck using an iPhone on the AT&T network, you still can get the message across. Here they are. Print this chart out, and use it. That, or say “T as in Tree” one more time. I dare you.
Here is the ITU alphabet, along with geek speak for the various punctuation marks.
| A | Alpha | N | November | 0 | Zero | $ | Dollar | \ | Backslash |
| B | Bravo | O | Oscar | 1 | One | % | Percent | | | Pipe |
| C | Charlie | P | Papa | 2 | Two | ^ | Carat | : | Colon |
| D | Delta | Q | Quebec | 3 | Three | & | And | ; | Semicolon |
| E | Echo | R | Romeo | 4 | Four | * | Asterisk | “ | Double quote |
| F | Foxtrot | S | Sierra | 5 | Five | ( | Open paren | ‘ | Single quote |
| G | Golf | T | Tango | 6 | Six | ) | Close paren | < | Less than |
| H | Hotel | U | Uniform | 7 | Seven | - | Dash | > | Greater than |
| I | India | V | Victor | 8 | Eight | _ | Underscore | , | Comma |
| J | Juliet | W | Whiskey | 9 | Nine | + | Plus | . | Period |
| K | Kilo | X | Xray | ! | Bang | = | Equal sign | { | Open brace |
| L | Lima | Y | Yankee | @ | At | ? | Question mark | } | Close brace |
| M | Mike | Z | Zulu | # | Pound | / | Slash | [ | Open bracket |
| ` | Grave | ~ | Tilde | ] | Close bracket |
And yes, I know it’s called a gods damned octothorpe. Want to go up against me in Final Jeopardy? Then let it begin. When a letter is capitalised, you say “CAPITAL ALPHA.” When a letter is not, you just say “alpha.” While the above letter designations should be considered canon, it is not uncommon to hear Indigo substituted for India. I am not sure if that is an anti-outsourcing thing, or just trying to be culturally sensitive, but that is the only acceptable deviation from the above.
Thank you,
The poor schmuck on the other end of the call.
And on that note, I leave you with another RetroHack classic hit. No Christmas music this time. By now, you are probably getting tired of it. I started this post with a Manic Monday, so I may as well end with one too. Did you know Prince wrote this song?
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