Nothing eventful at work to report today. I did start getting a minor head ache late in the day. Some alive took care of most of it. I ended up meeting up with John at Heartland Brewery for some food and drink. I owed him for helping me with my xbox. Jay showed up also. We had a nice time hanging out for a while. I didn’t drink much since I wasn’t feeling 100%. We had a good time and planned out our next poker get together.
Month: February 2006
RAM & a DVR
I ordered a 1 Gig RAM upgrade for my new iMac. It finally arrived and I installed it today. It was actually pretty easy to do. I was happy about that. The machine is noticeably faster now. Especially when I have several apps open. With the original 512megs on board I noticed the system would freeze up when I was doing some intensive stuff this weekend. The added memory is a nice solution to my problem. Now all I need is more apps that are run on the intel chips natively.
I also got a new USB DVR adapter for my DVR machine. The goal is to have 2 tuners running on the same computer. Snapstream says it will work. The problem I have is that I have 2 different revisions of the same USB DVR hardware. One driver version works with one unit but not the other. When I get the second one to work the first one decides to stop working. I gave up after several hours of messing with the system. I am RMA’ing the unit and will probably just go out and buy a PCI tuner card. I didn’t want to do that, but in order to do what I want I will need one. I may also just move the DVR setup to my HP desktop since it is not doing much right now. Still pondering my options.
Technorati Tags: dvr, tivo, windows xp
Canceled Plans
I was planning on going ice skating today. I like skating but don’t go very often, so I said yes when asked if I wanted to go. Then I woke up and it is 27 degrees out and really windy, so it is not the best weather for outdoor ice skating. Thankfully my friends I was going to go with thought the same thing and we canceled. Now I have nothing to do today. Not that I am complaining, but I must amuse myself at home today. I could clean the place? Or just watch TV? Not sure yet, but I already blew 2 hours writing and browsing the web…
Sort of Free Lunch
Twice this week I went to lunch with Cisco or a Cisco VAR. Free food is nice, but nothing is really ever free! We need to get allot done with these people so they think it is nice to do it at lunch. They are right, and we did make allot of progress. We are trying to shop around a new integrator for our Voice systems. The first meeting was to talk with my Cisco rep about the current issues we have and what we want to do. The second meeting was to meet with an integrator and talk a bit about what we want and what they can offer. I think both meetings went well. The first impression of this new integrator was a good one. I still have to meet another integrator next week that we are looking at but I think this group had a good start.
I want to get all the leg work of this phone system design done now before we actually have a lease signed and the powers that be at my company are asking for us to move as soon as possible.
Canceled Plans
I was planning on going ice skating today. I like skating but don’t go very often, so I said yes when asked if I wanted to go. Then I woke up and it is 27 degrees out and really windy, so it is not the best weather for outdoor ice skating. Thankfully my friends I was going to go with thought the same thing and we canceled. Now I have nothing to do today. Not that I am complaining, but I must amuse myself at home today. I could clean the place? Or just watch TV? Not sure yet, but I already blew 2 hours writing and browsing the web…
Technorati Tags: ice skating, personal, friends
Saturday Tinkering
I went over to John’s today so he can tinker a bit with my xbox. It took a bit longer than expected but I had nothing going on. The only down side was he accidentally erased all my saved games on Halo 2.
We where going to goto dinner and maybe meet up with Jayson & Gretchen but he was tired after a work overnight so I ended up meeting up with Jayson & Gretchen on my own. We went to this nice bar / restaurant near their apartment. It was good. We sat around for hours drinking and talking. It was nice.
I took the bus back to 59th street and hopped a cab home. It was easier than waiting for the 7 train. Besides the cold, it was a quick trip.
Poker Night Again
Yesterday we had another poker night. I hosted this one. We had a good turn out. We started out with 7, and then Thomas came late and took the spot of Brian and Amy who left after they lost. We tried a tournament first. No re-buys so the game went fast. It ended up being john and I vying for first and second place. To get everyone into another game quickly we decided to split the pot instead of playing for a first and second place. That got me $60 (then you factor in my buy in I walked away with $40).
After the tournament we played a cash game. It was fun. I was up, then down, then up, then down allot, then up allot. I ended up loosing $30 to john only to win that and more from him and rich right at the end of the game. John and I where the big winners of the night. Rich was up for most of the cash play, but ended up slightly up when we where done.
It was fun. I am going to try and schedule another game in a week or two.
Technorati Tags: poker, texas holdem
Call Manager Upgrade
Finally after 4 attempts (or at least I counted 4) we have upgraded our VOIP PBX to the latest version of Cisco Call Manager. Now we are happily (for now) running on version 4.1.3 release 2. This is a vast improvement over our previous version 3.3.3. Looking at version numbers doesn’t explain why, but trust me it was a needed upgrade.
We had so many false starts with this thing that I am happy that it is finally over. The problem is that the upgrade is over, but the upgrade was the first part of other enhancements we need to make. Everything else was held up by the upgrade. Hopefully Kai will pull it together and complete the other dependent tasks related to this upgrade now that we are on CCM 4.
I also hope this is the last time we have to use our current integrators. This upgrade was part of the original deal to install our IPCC system. Now that it is done I am going to shop around and try to find a new Cisco partner. I am going to lunch with our Cisco rep this week to discuss things. I am also going to lunch with another Cisco partner that our telecom rep knows. They are supposed to be a Cisco gold partner. I am keeping my options open for now. Soon I will need to pick someone to do our phone system in our office if we move to a new location.
xbox
My home entertainment system now boasts a state of the art gaming console. Well, as of 2001 it was state of the art. I know I am a few years behind the times but I just picked up an xbox. I got one cheap off of ebay. I figured now I can brush up on my halo without looking like a fool in front of my friends. I really suck. Now I can also go online and play against John, Dave or anyone else without having to go over to their house. That means whenever they want to play we can do it, instead of planning a day a week in advance.
I already played a ton of Halo 2 on Friday. I got a head ache from the motion of the game. I used to get that allot when I played Doom or Half Life. I play till I can’t play anymore. I am honestly not a huge gamer, but every few years I get into a game and then play till I am done with it. The last time I did this was 6 years ago with Half Life. When I wasn’t working for a few months as a contractor when I was in Baton Rouge I played every night for like 3 months.
This time around I am playing Halo 2. I didn’t go with the xbox 360 since most of my friends who do play games allot said it is not worth getting it yet. I am getting my regular xbox supped up anyway so I can use it as a mini media center anyway, so why do I need a 360? No games that any of my friends will play are out on it anyway. I figure I will be fine with this purchase for a while. The xbox and a bigger hard drive barely set me back $150. You have to love ebay!
File Server Moves
Wednesday & Thursday I moved file shares in one of our offices to a new file server. I completed most of the leg work a week or so ago, but I had to go through and make sure everything worked. Now we are well along on our migration to our new 2003 domain for the entire company. James has also started moving users from our old domain in our NY office to the new one. So far no major complications. We had to tweak the site replication times, but nothing else yet.