Day: 14 April 2003

Work again, Monday Meetings & hardware purchases

by

It is monday again. The most hated day of the week. I used to not like monday’s just because it was the first day back from the weekend. My new issue with monday is it is the day of meetings. Actually it used to be the day of meetings, now it just feels like it. Monday is the day that all the managers in my company get together to let everyone know what is going on. That means writing up agenda’s, and other fun meeting stuff.

Monday is also the day in most companies where new hire’s start. We are no different. Thankfully we don’t have any today. I actually have someone new starting tuesday, but we probibly will have like 5 new people on next monday. Not sure yet. No one tells me till the last minute normally.

This week I need to finish setting up the temporary firewall I will use to test the new network for our kingston office. For setup purposes I am creating a new isolated network for all the gear we are getting for that office. I am using an old firewall we stopped using in february. Once that is done I will need to begin getting quotes for servers. The next step in the design would be file servers and a domain to put all the computers in. We currently use a mix of compaq and dell servers. Most of our machines are dell, with some database machines being compaq’s. Alot of our older equipment is VA Linux machines. I personally don’t like the VA Linux equipment. The company stopped making hardware, and the machines are not hot swapable anything in them. Granted their track record is ok. I have only had problems with 3 of them that I can remember, and we have over a dozen of them. For this new office I have not yet figured out if we will go compaq, or dell. It will depend on price most likely. I also have an IBM guy wanting to sell us stuff. They say that they can meet the other guy’s prices, but I haven’t seen that happen yet. Sales guys, are sales guys.

Another cool project we have going on is upgrading our data center to a gigabit backbone. We have the design down, and now we need to buy and deploy the hardware. I probibly will purchase that stuff this week. that will be cool to deploy.

Obviously since I am talking about work stuff I need to be vauge enough so I can write it here, but also descriptive enough since I want this blog so I can write about what I am doing and thinking. That will be a fine line I walk when doing this.

Pocket PC wins over Palm (for me, for now)

by

I didn’t listen to myself. I went out and ordered the Dell Axim pocket pc. it had all the features I wanted except that it is kind of big. Other than that it cheap for a pocket pc, it has the bluetooth add on capability, and it has memory upgrade slots. I chose that over the slim HP model that does not have bluetooth. if you don’t know what bluetooth is, it is a wireless way to connect devices. I have had allot of success with bluetooth connecting my palm, cell phone and powerbook. the problem is you need devices that support it. that is a key factor in my technology buying now. so if one device does not do everything I need it to, can it connect via bluetooth to something else that can do the job? the down side is that dell takes a while to ship anything. I have a weird way of thinking about paying for stuff. Once I get the pocket pc I will of course sell my current palm on Ebay. I probably will make as much or more money back from the palm sale to pay for the pocket pc. Crazy justification for buying a new one, but it allows for almost spending more on something while getting a new device earlier than I would normally have.

On another note I totally forgot that my friend rich got us islander play off tickets for Wednesday. I am not sure the kind of seats we got, but I look forward to going. I love hockey. it is the one sport I can get into. I played a little roller hockey in college, and when I worked at summer camp when I was younger I played and coached a bit. so I am into the sport. Every season I say I will follow it more or goto more games, but never seem to find time to go. I have gone to play off games the past 2 years. this will make 3 for me. I am a toronto maple leafs fan as well as a NY islanders fan. always difficult when both teams I like are in the same division, but I normally root for toronto when both teams meet. My thinking is if either team win’s I am happy. I will break out the islander’s jersey Wednesday for the game. it should be fun.

Not that I care a huge amount about who reads this (it is primarily for me to have as a journal), but I want to figure out how to get this out so I may get some visitors. some of the writing is kind of private, but I always wonder if I am any good at writing so this is a good chance to see if people can actually make sense of what I write. So I think the next step for this blog is to get it “out there” and see what happens.

Another thing I need to do is create a sort of cast of characters of my life! I mention people in this thing, and if you are a stranger reading this you have no idea who in the world I am talking about. I did something funny with my friends a while ago with funny bios, but I think I may actually do a real one for some people I talk about. This all depends on if I have time on the train to write it. this entire blog rely’ on the fact that I have time to write. today I have time to do 2 full entries, but other days I can’t do any. we shall see. also my hands have to not hurt. I have been having problems with hand stress again. it comes and goes for the past few years. that is the curse of working with computer all the time. also not do ergromatic things when working on computers also does bad things to you.

OK, it is late. I am off to bed. I hope to get back on a normal sleep schedule tonight from the past 4 days of crazy sleeping habits.