I just love shopping for Morgan. Well it is really not like shopping, that is the problem. I just ordered some Elmo related stuff from amazon and had it shipped to her. I wanted to get the chicken dance elmo. I thought that it was very cool. My sister didn’t like it, but said the limbo elmo was ok. I got that and a DVD. Kids like video’s for some reason. it is like a drug for them. Thankfully at 6 months old you can do almost anything and make a baby smile. It is rather funny.
Month: September 2003
Technology Scare’s Me Some Times
My dad wants to get a phone / PDA combo device. Now he has always been ahead of the game when it comes to gadgets. I get that from him. But he is also not the biggest computer genius. He has had a cell phone since the late 80’s. Has had a PDA or whatever they used to be called for longer than that. He now doesn’t want to carry a cell phone and a Palm. He uses his palm all the time at work, but only carry’s the cell phone in case of emergencies. He now likes the idea of combining the two. Lucky for him he has Sprint PCS. I don’t like them anymore, but at some point I did. That is why he has service with them. He actually doesn’t complain about the service so we keep him on it. My mom also likes her phone number. I say we are lucky is sprint looks like it has the biggest selection of PDA Phones. I showed him my Treo 270. He seemed to like it. Of course I showed him my original Treo over a year ago, but that is another story. I think he may be better off with one of 2 Samsung phones out there. The SPH-I300 or the SPH-I500. I like the I500, but it may be too much like a phone for my dad. He will use it as a palm more than a phone. He liked the Treo but I don’t know if the no memory expansion and the keyboard will cause him problems. He did play with the keyboard on my Treo for a half an hour today and then proclaimed we will go shopping next sunday.
Shopping with him is fun. We go for breakfast, drive out to Roosevelt Field mall area. Shop for maybe an hour and then go home. We are super fast shoppers. The only slow down we encounter is if we goto Best Buy. He can browse the DVD section for like 2 hours. That store is a black whole. Everyone I know sifts through those DVD racks forever.
Family Get Together’
Today was my cousin Adrienne’s 21’st birthday party. It was an excuse to get together with my family. It was an interesting outage to Brooklyn. I saw some relatives I actually wish I would see more often. And then there were people who you would rather forget you were related in some way or another.
I got to play with Morgan, so it was a good day if just for that. I also got to see Cerina, Merric & Arrielle. I miss them. I need to take a weekend and get back to Jersey and stay with them again. I have been busy all summer and when I haven’t been busy, I have been tired from being busy. I need to talk to wayne a bit. I didn’t talk much with him today, and I miss talking.
Then there are the cousin’s who you know, but really don’t get to know. My cousin Samia’s kids are like 17 & 18. I don’t really ever speak to them. Samia and her husband are cool, but never hang with the kids. My cousin Shelly’s kids are cool and I get along with all three of them, but I haven’t hung out with them regularly in like 10 years. It is weird that they are all grown up now.
And then there was my Cousin Mike and his kids. My dad used to be really friendly with him, but for some reason he is so distant now. We all think it is his wife. My cousin Synde almost had a fist fight with her today over seats or something weird. Family outings are always interesting. I half wish I went with my brother in law mike to the Yankee game.
All in all I didn’t get sick at the Chinese buffet, and it was nice out. A good day. If I went on about all my cousin’s, this blog would become a psyche paper.
Tired
The week is finally over. It has been a good week, but the weekend is here. I am yet again tired after a long work week. You may say I had off monday, but the week was still long and full of stressful work. Fun, stressful work yes. Stressful none the less.
I got almost no sleep last night. Got home late and then didn’t sleep very well. I ended up taking 2 Butabital’s (fureset’s) before lunch. It helped but I had waking up with migranes. Now this was 3 in 2 months. Not good. I was tired all day, but I still ended up going out for drinks after work. I needed it. I had a personel issue regarding a rep. I cannot go into details, but never yell at someone. Doing that is bad. I was the one recieving the yelling. It was very stressful. The situation was taken care of, but people have to chill out. That put a damper on an otherwise nice day.
Searvers, Software, And Stuff
Every day it seems like we need another server to do this or that. I have request for 3 different things right now that I can think of that all will require new server gear. Then when I go ask for the money for the stuff I get the traditional “what do you need that for?” speech from Gus. Or the “you want to spend how much money?” speech. I know he is kidding most of the time but it highlights the tight rope I walk between what we need and not spending too much money.
With that said I need to begin testing an Exchange 2003 server within our Information Systems department. We are attempting to see how difficult it would be to use and administer an exchange server. I think it will be good to use in a small workgroup environment like the IS department, but not for a full company deployment. We will see.
Along with evaluating mail packages I want to find a good LDAP product that will allow me to share 1 address book between two facilities and remote users. We don’t all connect to the same domain, and not everyone is able to access inside servers all the time. I would like our mail system to provide LDAP, but our current provider does not offer it. Looking at alternatives now.
This week has been good because I have been looking at new technologies and software to enhance our infrastructure. Microsoft Operations Manager looks great and we may do a full scale deployment of it. We are locking down users desktops more effectively. I am in the process of deploying a log file analyzing software to digest our web server logs more effectively. The remote KVM system was also killer. Tying everything together into one systems management system will be the tricky part.
“The Office”
I came home last night to an envelope tucked under my door. It contained a security form and a mug shot of my brother in law Mike. I got a good laugh at that one. He has been using my Apartment to study. He can’t find a quiet place without distractions at his place so he drives over and studies sometimes when I am at work. I don’t care, but the security people always give him a hard time when he goes into my building. I always call ahead but they forget. He is filling out this form so he can come and go when he wants. He already has a key, so why not. I tell him to just say he is me. Those security people are not that bright.
Mike is calling my place his Office. He told my sister he was “going to the office” thursday, and she didn’t even realize what he meant until later. For some weird reason he left me Dunkin Donuts munchkins for breakfast this morning. I am trying to explain that as long as he doesn’t trash my place, I don’t need anything in return. But he likes to get stuff, so what the hell. I just have to remember that he may come over and clean up a bit every morning. He say’s my place is cleaner than his, but I like to not have a mess when company comes over. Or at least confine it to the bedroom.
Poker, Poker, Poker
The anticipated poker game finally came to pass. We gave up on Gus organizing it. When Dan said he had a game going on last night a few of us joined up. We had Dan, Gus, Molly, Miguel, Daniel, two of Dan’s friends and myself. They play Texas Hold-um. It is different kind of poker than I am used to. Their is allot of shared cards. It is interesting. Dan and Gus were trying to explain the game a bit to me Thursday afternoon. Not sure if it helped, but I did end up being the big winner last night. They play tournament style. You can buy more chips twice. it is a very structured game. I was down allot in the beginning after loosing a good hand to Gus. I bought back in and then won like the next hand with allot of winnings. I stayed up their in the money rankings until the end. It was weird. I didn’t think I would win. I thought for sure I would make some stupid decision and blow my money. Turns out I had some more good wins, and a few not so horrible losses. I always liked poker. I like it allot more when I win. I hope to play again soon.
On another poker note. I think molly will kill miguel today. He was trash talking all night, and she was not happy about it. Miguel, you need to learn the etiquette of poker. Never look at someone’s thrown away cards, even if you are not playing. It felt good to take him down. The other players were cool and I would play against them anytime.
I just hope I don’t have beginners luck and suck for the next 100 times I play!
I didn’t get home till after 1AM. I am now tired. I hope to make today a light day.
What’s On TV
I used to watch TV all the time. It was my way of relaxing when I got home from work. Tivo has changed my life, or my TV watching life. It records the crap I want. I don’t channel surf anymore. I also find myself watching less TV. I even fast forward allot of what I Tivo, or just decide to delete it after I capture it. It is rare to find good television, especially during the summer.
My new favorite thing on TV currently is Mi-5, on A&E of all places. I mentioned it before in another post. It is a well done BBC show that A&E picked up. Their are only 16 of them over 2 seasons. I just saw the entire season 1 over the past week or two. A&E had a marathon monday and I captured all the ones I had not seen. I like spy novels and shows, but this is just good. This is my spy fix since The Agency was canceled. I just ordered Mi-5 Season 1 on DVD. Gotta love that amazon.co.uk. You can find tons of stuff you can’t get in the US.
On the down side in 9 more weeks the second season will be over and I will have to wait till june 2004 or later to get more installments of Mi-5 (or spooks as it is called in the UK). I guess I will have to wait till September or October and see what crap US television puts on the air. Of course who will be watching TV when the Simpson’s Season 3 comes out on DVD!!!
The Cool Side Of Network Administration
Today I played with, I mean setup some cool new tools for our network. Joe finally got up our Avocent Switchview IP. It allows us to securely view the console of remote machines hooked up to our KVM. It was cool and very helpful to look at the bios screen on a server as we rebooted it 150 miles away.
Another cool tool we are looking at deploying is Microsofts Operations Manger, or MOM. I don’t like the name. Any software called mom gets me worried. It also makes me think about Microsoft Bob. MOM is actually interesting. It is not as nice a network monitor as Whatsup Gold, but it is a good windows tool to keep tabs on the health of a windows server. Whatsup and Mom are complementary in what they do. I can even have MOM send SNMP traps to a system like Whatsup. Of course doing that is easier said than done.
Next up is an automated Symantec Ghost deployment scheme. To be able to click on a button and update a desktop computer image would be fantastic. I thought we should have a system like that when we reached 50 desktop users. We are well beyond that and we have nothing in place yet. Windows 2003 Server also has other options you can use to do remote deployment and software package updates. I have never tried anything with 2000 Server, but I hear that the 2003 implementation is much better. Now I just need to find the time to do a test.
Back To Work
My sister went back to work today for the first time in over 6 months. She dragged it on as long as she could but she needed to get back since her maternity leave was over. She will only work 4 days a week and only 3 of them at the office. Morgan is great, but I don’t know if I would stop working that much to be at home. I guess it is a maternal thing.
My mom also went back to work today. School start’s so she is back. She was not to happy about no vacation. I had no sympathy. After a hellish summer of working, I don’t loose sleep over them having to go back. My mom is weird, she has been talking of retiring for like 2 years, now she is saying she will retire in 2 more years.