Month: August 2005

Disaster Supplies

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All the natural disasters going on have gotten me thinking that I need to stock up on emergency supplies. Frozen pizza and soda will not get me through a disaster. I need to get bottled water, and batteries for my mag light to start.

On that note I need to order more fresh direct. I am running out of food. I have to see when I will be around for a delivery.

My mom’s CD ripping task is almost halfway done. I had a long talk about her taste in music but she didn’t seem to budge:) My Dad is sick with a cold this week. My mom called to say she is sick now. I told her I will be very upset if I got sick from being with her yesterday. Lets hope I avoided it.

I blinked and it is 10:30 already. I need to wind this down, so I can (once again) try to get a good night sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well all week.

Roller Coaster Day

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When I didn’t think the day could get any crazier it did. I was very busy all day putting out fires at work (figuratively not really). Just as I recovered from a week delay on our AD project, I get major complications from our IPCC deployment. Dan and I had a opinionated discussion with our integrators. We also are very close to purchasing our first SAN. We are pretty sure we got the price to a number we are happy with.

Finalized plans to make changes to our voice circuits to allow for more resiliency if we have a failure. Stupid issues arose regarding mislabeling of circuits. The little details that we are not following up on are killing me, but when asked to get tons done in a certain amount of time, you have to give somewhere. I just don’t like doing it.

I have other issues going on with VPN tunnels to partners of ours. It has been very stressful. I thrive on stress, but sometimes it is allot. Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer.

AD Day

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Worked on clearing out my backlog of open tasks to work on. I got through allot of my small misc. tasks in my list. That was good. I also got started on the first 3 new servers for our Active Directory project. We had to start over due to some complications. after some research we figured out we probably didn’t have to start over, but we wanted to play it save so we just swapped the drives from those machines with new ones Jayson had built. Working through some other issues with the setup, but we built a test environment to hopefully prevent issues like the ones we just had.

Busy day, but productive.

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The Birthday Gift

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For my mom’s 60th birthday I got her an iPod. I was going to get her a mini, but with all her current music on CD’s and the music I was going to rip from my collection (still fair use I believe since I own the CD’s) she would have more than what will fit on a mini. the final straw was when I was at the Apple store and saw how small the screen on the mini was. My mom wouldn’t be able to read that thing. So I got her a nice color 20 gig iPod. Plenty of room, and easy to read for her. that was last month. The thing has been sitting locked in my desk at work. Why you may ask? I need her CD’s to make this gift worth while. I finally saw her and she remembered to bring her CD’s with her.

That is a story unto itself. My grandmother is in town so I went to dinner with her, my mom, sister and niece. They are all “interesting” to sit with at dinner. I survived so that is all I need to say. Since I got to see my mom she brought the CD’s.

I am now home beginning the task of ripping all the disks using my trusted iTunes. I setup her an account on my mini and am putting all her music on that machine. My goal is to then sync the new iPod on that account for her. I am seriously planning on giving my parents the mini to use as their computer instead of the dell they have. That is yet another story unto itself that I will go into detail (i hope) later. I figured that was the perfect place to stage all her music. She will never use the computer for listening to it, but I need to store it someplace.

The problem I am running into is that some of her CD’s are not in good shape and have scratches on them. So far 2 disks are not able to import because of this issue. I am going through the stack to see if more will have problems.

The other issue is that some of her taste in music is painful for me to import. Some songs should just not be digitized onto the computer! The joy about importing using iTunes (much different than in the old days when I ripped stuff using music match) is that you can program iTunes to begin importing music at CD insert, and then tell it to eject and make a tone when it is done. All I have to do is every few minutes I have to feed it a new disk. Apple was very smart with that program!

So a ripping I will go. More later…

Technology Certifications

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I loved this post on slashdot. The poster asks why IT certifications are good. Some very interesting points of view. I am in the industry, and I have no certifications. I am not saying that is good or bad. I have just seen tons of people with no experience and a certification (or little experience) think they know everything. As I said when I did contracting, some MCSE’s wouldn’t know a domain controller if it fell on their head. And other guys I know with no certification but years of experience would be (and often are) the first people I call for help.

I guess what I read from this is a certification is nice, but nothing beats experience. Having both is really great also.

Poker Or Not

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I missed a poker game last night due to my sleeping. I know it is kind of sad. What I am I going to do if I have a bad head ache? Jayson said he won big. That makes me think the people he played with were not that good, but he said they were decent. When we play with people from work, he usually doesn’t do that well.

I hope to play next time. Now I have to tell John why I didn’t show up. I tried to leave him a message, but I don’t think he got it. Cannot really help falling asleep due to exhaustion and a migraine, sorry. They did have 7 players so I don’t feel so bad.

Slept The Day Away

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I didn’t sleep very well. I finally went to bed around 2AM. I was tired but sleep never came. I finally took a Tylenol PM around 4 or 5AM. I then slept a bit till 1PM. I finally am up showered, and dressed now. I just dropped 3 loads of laundry in the machines. Man I always used to tell myself having laundry done was almost as much as doing it yourself, but I was just saying that to make myself feel better for shelling out a ton of money to have it done. I was wrong, it does almost pay to have it done. 3 loads of laundry will cost me like $12 (not counting my detergent or time). When I have it done I never pay more than $20 (you pay per pound). for $8 difference, I will have it done for me.

Not sure what the rest of the day has in store for me. Laundry will take like 2 hours. Then maybe off to the bank to deposit some expense checks, then maybe Best Buy. After all it is right near the bank. Hmm, decisions, decisions…

Another Overnight

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Last night Jayson and I worked really late. We call this type of work an overnight. We end up going to work a little late, and then working till 2-5AM the next morning. Some work we do can only be done late at night during quiet periods. It is too difficult to sleep really late the day of work like this so I go into the office close to normal time. Basically it is like doing 2 days in one physical day. Due to sleep requirements we end up taking off the following day to catch up on sleep and get back into a normal routine. For me it is getting harder and harder to adjust to normal sleep after work like this.

Today I woke up around 1PM and felt like crap. I did some work remotely and then watched a bit of TV. I was planning on going to John’s for poker. I IM’d him around 3:30 saying I was TBD. I still felt like crap. I went to take a nap, and the next thing you know it is almost midnight. Now I am fed, and wide awake. I hate days like this. Hopefully I can goto sleep sometime soon…

The September Wedding (Not Mine)

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I have finally finished my travel reservations to my friend Rich’s wedding. I am happy that Rich is getting married. I love his bride to be (not that way, but she is awesome so I am happy for him), but I am not such a fan of traveling to Maine. I am never the one to be all excited for great scenery and a rustic atmosphere. I think that is what I am getting on this trip. I am more a fan of resorts having large pools and WIFI. Sorry, but I am not going to change that.

I bet the wedding will be amazing. I believe Amanda is doing allot of her own decorations. You hear that and probably think cheap or crapy. The truth is neither. She is/was a set designer. She can decorate like no one else I know. I am curious how she does up the place.

I am in the wedding party. That means a tux, and rehearsal dinner lobster bake. Mmmm lobster bake! Sorry lost track thinking about liquid butter and lobster. Where was I? Oh yeah, I am in the wedding party. I think that besides the normal wedding party responsibilities, it is a rule that I must hook up with a hot single brides maid. I am told it is a rule in most states, and a law in Maine. Amanda claims it is not. I think she just feels I am too good for her friends or family! That is my theory! In any case it will be an interesting 3 day weekend, especially if work goes live with a major project that weekend that was originally scheduled for weeks ago!

A Good Day

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it was busy today, but I got allot done. I got final approval for the active directory design I wanted.

The initial AD servers are built. Or I should say the OS is built. They goto the data center tomorrow. Then they get mounted and built. Once done the real work begins.

On another project I am having danny work on some VPN setup issues. I wanted to deal with it, but as Glenn said I need to delegate more. And I really do. I am so busy I need to hand off items to others.

IPCC deployment is delayed. This is an internal decision. I never really thought the target date was achievable anyway. These new targets seem more realistic. I would rather the system be correct, than rushed out. More on that as it develops.