Month: July 2003

hanging out

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It is good to know you have friends that you get along with so well that you have a really good time just getting take out and hanging out playing a board game and drinking until 1AM. Sounds boring, but sometimes it hits the spot. That’s just what we did Saturday night. Rich, Amanda, Vivian, & I just got some food (deli for Rich and i. The ladies had Chinese) and ended up sitting on the floor of my place (no chairs or a couch yet) playing trivia pursuit. I showed amanda new ways to mix baileys so she was happy. Rich won so he was happy. The AC was working so I was happy, and Vivian always seems happy!

Note to self I need patio furniture for just this type of night.

Lazy day

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With unpacking done and it is only Saturday I decided to just relax today. I tried to sleep in, and was somewhat successful. I slept till 11:30AM but I was still tired. I felt “bla” or out of it most of the day. I tried everything to cure myself of this tired out of it feeling. Finally I just took a nap and am feeling a bit better. Just in time, I have plans with Rich and Amanda in a little bit. Not sure what we are doing yet. The movies out suck, or so it seems. I just looked at the listing and everything looks like crap. We may do dinner and just hang out. I think Vivian is joining us also. She is always interesting.

Moveabletype, linux, and vmware

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I am still a huge fan of Moveabletype. That is of course what currently runs my blog. I want to keep using it running on my Red Hat 9.0 Server I built. The only problem is the place I want to put it in my new apartment requires a wireless connection. My new Win2003 server works fine with Wifi, but I am having trouble finding drivers for the card I got to work with Red Hat. For now the server sits next to my desk, but I don’t want to leave it there. I am trying to hid as much electronic crap as possible from visible sight. I want 1 computer out. And that computer will be my desktop, not my server!

I am playing around with running red hat on VMWare on the Windows 2003 server. I am a huge fan of VMWare, but I have not really been using it to it’s full potential. I started using it allot more this week, and I am finding that I love it even more. The only problem is that I need more ram on my work machine to get it to run really well with more than 1 os running at a time.

But back to my idea. So I had a red hat VMware system already built. I configured apache and threw on moveabletype. I am getting some driver error when I try to start moveabletype’s prep file. I need an expert (friend) to look at it. I am going through my config files to verify things are correct.

To cover my bases I am also installing a Windows 2000 Server instance on VMWare also to play around with moveabletype on windows. I don’t plan to use it, but I want to see if it will work and I don’t want to mess up my system I just built so a vmware instance is the best way to test it. All I need to do is make a backup of the file before doing anything and I have a complete OS backed up. Wednesday at work I took an entire vmware OS file and moved it to a different computer and it worked without doing anything special. That totally ROCKS!

I will post results of my ongoing testing. Hopefully this will work and I can keep moveabletype on red hat and consolidate everything to 1 server and just run the vmware software. I will see.

Fireworks

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Like clockwork at 9pm people started setting off fireworks. I found a use for my patio after all. I went out there and watched the fireworks. I could swear I saw stuff going off halfway to manhattan from my apartment. it was cool. The night was a bit hazy so I couldn’t get a complete view of the city skyline but the view was spectacular anyway.

Cleaning up and wireless issues

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I was wrong in my last post. The major moving of stuff was done, but the work was not. Today I cleaned. I put stuff away, and otherwise cleaned up stuff. I am mostly done. I still have some crap in my soon to be dining area, but other than that things are neat. Well, the bathroom doesn’t count. And my desk is always a mess, but at least the computers are all tucked away. I built a Windows 2003 Server and it is up and running in my closet. I got the Wifi card I got to work without incident.

I am still having issues with my Linksys 802.11g wireless router. It worked great in my old place, but for some reason it keeps dropping connections in the new apartment. I ended up taking out my old Lucent Wavelan AP-1000 and using that along with the linksys. I still get dropped signals, but the Lucent point recovers better than the Linksys. I am betting my neighbors are using a 2.4ghz cordless phone or something. I tried half the channels I can use and all of them are having the same problem. Updating the firmware did nothing. I am getting pissed. I wanted to do almost everything in the new place wirelessly, but now I am holding off because of the problems I am having.

On a lower tech note, the stove works. I cooked up some potato’s to go with my steak I cooked on the george forman grill today. Didn’t do anything of note today. It looks like I have plans for tomorrow and sunday. I always like at least 1 day of resting on the weekend so I just had it!

The apartment

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I think I got most of the major setup work on the apartment done. The furniture I have is in its final resting places. Now all I need to do is get the new furniture.

I still need to figure out how to setup a wireless network card on a linux machine.

I will clean up this weekend, and finish getting the little things from my old apartment. Then I can clean the old place up a bit so I don’t have a problem with the security deposit. Then I am done with the old place.

So far the AC in the new place has worked well. I will see how it gets when it gets really hot again.

Not all fun and games

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Yesterday was not all fun and games though. I had two issues with our FTP site. Neither of which turned out to be a problem with the site per say but user’s thinking they had problems.

I am also trying to track down a missing T-1. Verizon claim’s they installed a T-1 Circuit for us in the telecom room we told them to install it in. Well Dan was up in Kingston on Tuesday and sees no smartjack. I have 2 guys today looking for it. The problem is that Verizon is coming out again today to do another T-1, and I don’t want them to screw it up also.

I have finalized our server selection for kingston. Unless something crazy goes on our file servers will be Compaq Proliant ML360’s. I was not wowed by the IBM warez, and Dell has not been great to deal with. Our Compaq vendor is eager to work with us, and Dell makes me feel like we are a waste of their time. Probably just a vibe I get, but I don’t get the best pricing right out of the box from them. I don’t like to do second guessing on my pricing.

Glenn our CEO is going to take my old Verizon V60i off my hands. He wanted a new phone since his star tac is beat up. I saw what he was going to get from someone else and told him he needed to take the V60, it was much better.

We are still hunting for a new Help-desk Manager for kingston. We think we may be close but we are not there yet.

Mobile Phone Jugleing

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So I got really pissed with AT&T wireless Monday and changed my pricing plan. I cut my costs per month in half. There seems to be a problem near my house. They said they knew about it, but had no ETA on fixing it. I saw no reason for paying $100 a month for unlimited cell phone usage when I only used 400 minutes on it last month. I changed to the $50 plan with 700 minutes.

I also beefed up my verizon wireless plan to 800 min a month. I got a new promotion so I had to sign a contract for another year, but I was probibly going to stay with them anyway. The service is rock solid. I also got a deal on a new phone when I renewed. I got a Motorola T720. People at work have them and like them. As much as I want to keep using AT&T I will use verizon for a while since the service is much better.

i cannot wait until number portability in november. Then I can take my sweet and easy to remember AT&T number and switch it to verizon.

And yes I have 2 cell phone contracts. I had 3, but just canceled my T-Mobile account since I haven’t used it since April. Since I don’t have a home phone I wanted 2 phones. in case I have problems with one (like I am having). I also kept one for work and one for personal, but it is turning out that work calls me however they can if they need me. Enough technology ranting. I am off to bed.

the “official” move day

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Today I officially took over my new apartment. My sister came over in the morning to help me move my wall unit. It worked out ok. The unit is perfect where it is now. I just don’t know if we can move it again. Every time I move it I fell it will fall apart and not go back together. Thank fully morgan slept through all the hammering. Man babies can sleep!

I waited all afternoon for the cable guy. It sucked, but I had company. My sister went to work out and I got to play with morgan. Watching a baby is weird. The smallest things make them happy, and the smallest problem will set them off crying. She was great until she got hungry. I had a good time. Wait, waiting for the cable guy sucked, but spending time with Morgan was good.

Finally after 4pm I had the Time Warner guy show up. At least I got a shift supervisor who knew what was going on. He was really cool, and I got a good insight to the Time Warner network operations. AKA what I can get away with and what I cannot. I figured most of it out before, but I got some good pointers from this guy. Once he was done everything worked great.

I had some problems with my wireless LAN. My mac kept dropping the network. I upgraded my Linksys router to the final 802.11g specs. it came with a new firmware update that I just ran. Now things seem ok. I am sitting in my comfy pier one chair sitting in my bed room. I am able to surf the web, and write this blog with the access point on the other side of the apartment. So far so good.

I went to dinner with my parents tonight. I was home when they went, so I went along. Recently I have not been getting home from work early enough for me to join them. I want to make time to do it at least once a week, but it hasn’t been shaping up that I am able to do that. We shall see how things go after kingston is launched.

I also did some food shopping. I needed to stock my new fridge. I got some stuff, but I want to wait to place a big order with freshdirect to get the rest of the stuff I need.

If you haven’t guessed already since my cable was down, this blog and my website was also down since friday night. It is back online and hopefully will stay that way.

Well the day off to move is about over. I am getting ready for bed. I am tired. I am back to work tomorrow.

Monday was busy

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Work was busy. I did tests of our notification system. I started to get a migraine during our management meeting and took two furiset’s. Thankfully the migraine didn’t materialize. So much going on at home with the move I don’t have time to go into detail about todays work.