Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
The wrinkle free dress paints actually live up to their name. Or they do after 1 wash. I followed the directions on how to wash them (a first for me) and they came out perfect. I will see if they survive the 30 washes they claim they will. So far I am a huge fan of the Dockers Pro Style paints. Thanks for the heads up on them Jayson.
I think it is time to get rid of some of my aging (not so gracefully) Khakis.
Actually it is not so bad outside. It is just so hot in the office. It sucks in the heat and doesn’t let go. I was sitting at my computer and I could not concentrate. I said screw this, and decided to leave early. I am not staying if it is so hot, and I will be up really late in that heat tomorrow moving desks around.
Thank goodness I didn’t get a head ache, but my allergies are killing me. Not as bad as all last week, but still not good. I may hit the pool just so I don’t feel so sticky when I get home.
Over a year ago I saw a few articles about Mozilla.org.. Then I saw Gus using it, and all he could do was rave about it. I gave it a try, and I haven’t looked back since. I now use it on my Mac’s, PC’s and any Linux machine I use. Switching is like switching to a Mac from a PC. You always see everyone else using Internet Explorer and I try to convert them. Being the software and hardware standards maker at my company also allowed me to attempt to push it out to everyone.
When we built out our new Call Center, I put in the computer image a setup for Mozilla. No one really used it, but I wanted it there. A few months ago we had an issue with I.E. for a day and we got some people to try it out. Guess what, they liked it. That fateful day also got me to develop a way to push out favorates to our Rep’s. That was the final technical reason for not using Mozilla.
Kai then began a campaign, some would say religous crusade to get people to addopt Mozilla. He touted the huge memory advantage of using tabbed browsing, and how cool pop up blocker was, etc. People slowly started to see what we were saying for a year, that Mozilla is good.
Now we have well over half of our call center using the software. That number is increasing every week, since we are also encourperating its use in the training sessions for all new hires.
The only down side was I never realized how many people were using the software. Our developers never wrote our internal application to run on Mozilla. For a year I used it and it worked fine, but last week we had a new release go out that caused issues with Mozilla. The problem is all sorted out now, and all our dev guy’s know to write code to work with it.
I am happy that I was able to get such so many people to addopt using Mozilla. Maybe they will start using it at home also? You never know. Thanks to Kai, Brian, Keith, & Gus for their parts in getting the system out their over the past year and change. Thanks to Nelson for being my first Beta Tester (as always).
I have mentioned our construction plans for this week. What we are going to do is break apart cube walls that were moved when we originally occupied our NYC office. We built a large open area out of what was once 12 cubes. Now we are partially rebuilding the cubes so we can put people in them.
The first thing we need to do is move anyone out of the existing area. We have like 10 people sitting there now. They will be put in their new homes Wednesday night. Thursday the cube guys come and make all the changes.
Friday we (Jayson, Nelson, & I, with Dan supervising since he cannot lift anything) will make a number of cube moves to get everyone where they need to be post redesign. This means that at least a dozen people need to have their desks. moved. It will be interesting how this plays out. Most people have not complained about this, but their is bound to be a few as the move gets closer, or as they realize exactly where they are going.
For the first time in a few weeks I am breathing normal. I switched from Zertec one a day to the 12 hour version. I was finding the once a day pill slowly wearing off as the day went on. By the time I needed to take the next day’s pill I was really not feeling good.
I took the first 12 hour pill last night. I didn’t have the greatest sleep, but I am not sure if it was due to the drugs. I woke up this morning and right after I got up I was breathing normally. I took the second pill before I left work, and so far so good. One problem I think I have been having is that all the windows are open at work. All the dust and pollen from outside is circulating around because we don’t have AC. The AC situation should be partialy resoloved today. We got two portable units that we will be powering up and hopefully cool the office till the main units are fixed. Maybe then I can breath ok!
I am getting pressure to get rid of my iMac. I love it. it has a huge screen and it is pretty fast, but do I really need two Mac’s? I have my 12″ Powerbook. I like it allot. I also use it allot. When I am home I use the iMac, but I think I over my Powerbook just because I have it. All the reasons why I bought the imac are still valid, but the question remains do I really need it?
I can always sell it on ebay. It would be difficult since it is heavy and would be a pain to ship, but it is in mint condition so I could get decent cash for it.
On the other I loose nothing by keeping it. granted I can make some cash by selling it, but I already bought and paid for it last year. I still use it, so why get rid of it? These are the things I am thinking about with regards to my computers recently.
This blog entry was written while listening to Hysteria from the album “Hysteria” by Def Leppard
I have been saying I want to a scuba diving course for the past year. I think I am almost ready to go take a class. I have 3 or so other people who are interested in going to one. I have birthday money to fund the class. Now all I need is a weekend to do it. Once done, I will waste countless amounts of money traveling places to do diving. It will be awesome.
On a positive note, I found my credentials stating that I did dives in St. Thomas when I was down there in 2000. I don’t know if it does anything for the PADI diving course I want to take, but it can’t hurt to have.
My boss is back from his trip to india. My vacation is over:) Just kidding. The work doesn’t really change, but stress level does when he returns. At least he looks rested and relaxed from his trip.
We hit the ground running with a bunch of new projects he wants me to look into. One involves a new beefy Linux Server. We will probably use Suse 9.0 for this deployment. Also on the plate is Project 2003 server. Jayson and I have kicked around the idea since he got here, but now we see a real business use for it, so we will push ahead with it.
We are also pondering remote agents again. We think we can use the remote agent’s to get french reps in NYC to connect to Kingston. This may or may not allow us to free up space in NYC. The office is getting crowded again.
All this on top of the 4 new sites we are building out, and the new server deployments in our data center, and the major office move of users thursday and friday. It will be a fun week.
I think we designed our Data Center pretty well. Keith and I spent hours toiling over different ways we can make it better over the past 2 years. One area that I think we need improvement is the ability to power cycle a server remotely. We can view what is on our KVM remotely. I can go into the bios or configure a network card even if the computer is not on the internet. This is thanks to a backup dial up connection, and an IP KVM. the only thing I cannot do is hit the power button on a computer if it crash’s. That would be the ultimate ability. Besides changing tapes, I would have no other reason to goto our data center on a daily basis.
This would also save us money. We pay to have someone go to our cage and do what is called “remote hands”.
If you read the news you must hear about all the worms and other “bad things” spreading through the internet. My company has been diligent in attempting to prevent these things from infecting our computers. We have not been 100% protected, but from what I have seen we are way ahead of the curve in protecting ourselves.
I have seen lots of virus alerts from our virus scanning system. Thankfully, it is able to deal with whatever comes up. Also important is the Windows Update server. That thing is a life saver. I don’t know if we would have been able to install all these updates on all of our desktops without it. We need to goto the next level and get an SMS or ZEN type system next.
I have never been a huge fan of Novel, but they have caught my curiosity. What they are doing with Suse keeps me interested. Also that their directory services work on Windows is also cool. All that and ZEN Works is much better than SMS, or that has been my practical experience. I don’t know how SMS 2004 holds up. I keep telling myself that my company is a windows shop, we don’t want Novell. The other side of my brain is saying “you know Novell is better, give it a try”. For now I am ignoring that side of the brain. I would like to get a demo of Novell and give it a test drive. When (if) things ever settle down enough that I can try that, I will. Novell NDS, running on Suse linux. Now that would be really nice, if it worked as easy as the old novell used to!!!