I finally got to do James’ review today. It was only a few weeks late, but I hate it when mine is late so I know how it feels. I think it went well. His was the first this year. It works out that most people got hired in the beginning of the year so I have a few coming up. lets hope they all go as smooth as this one, but odds may not be in my favor.
Month: February 2006
Staff Out
Danny was off Wednesday, then came in, but then took off today. Kai is out tomorrow due to an upgrade, and Jayson is on vacation from today until Tuesday. I feel like I am the only one not taking off. I know that isn’t true, but I have remembered I have not taken a day since December. I need to plan some sort of get a way. At least today was not too crazy with 2 people out.
New Guy
After a month and a half of looking Kai finally got a new hire in our Call Center support team to replace Chris moving into our Development group. Tim started today. So far no feedback, but he was by far the best candidate in the group that I saw. Lets hope it works out like the previous hires did. I may have issues with the way Kai does allot of things, but he can recruit the right people even if takes way too long to do so!
Intel iMac
I thought about it for a while and said I would wait. I really said I would hold off. I said I didn’t need another computer that was all in one. I said the mini was perfect. Then I heard great things about the new iMac. Office ran great dan said. Then I tried some new applications on my mini and stopped using them because the mini was so dam slow (man it is a great little box, but it really is slow). The final nail in the coffin was my tax return. I got around what I thought I would get. That meant disposable income. I could save it, but returns where meant to be spent.
I think I may have a serious problem. I think it is called eBay. eBay is my enabler. It allows me to sell stuff and buy newer stuff. It has gotten me into this mentality that I can buy stuff and sell it in a year or so and buy something else. It is more than a mentality. It is a reality that I have been living since like 2000. When this iMac gets to be not enough computer for me (and it might not for a while) I can goto eBay like I did with my last 20″ iMac.
I got picked up the iMac last night after work. Jayson (always willing to go with me to spend money) and I hit the apple store in soho after Danny, Jay and I had some dinner and drinks. It is always better to spend money after drinking! I had the new machine setup in like 15 minutes. The rewiring of my desk took all of today.
First impressions are good. So far Office installs and runs fine in rosetta. Cisco’s VPN which didn’t work at all finally came out with a universal binary on Friday. It was if they knew I went out and bought a new computer. Toast works fine even using rosetta, and they promise an update to universal binary soon. The only program that I want to install that may have a problem is the Missing Sync for Palm. Mark/Space does promise a universal binary by the end of march. For now I will sync with my work Powerbook.
More thoughts on the new computer soon.
Technorati Tags: apple, ebay, imac, intel, mac, powerbook, sync
This is What is Wrong With Our Society
Some moron is suing Apple because an iPod could possible cause hearing loss. Dude, how about not turning the dam thing so loud that our ears ring. Then maybe you won’t go deaf. You don’t need to put a warning on everything if common sense will do the trick.
Archiving
I finally broke down and bought Roxio Toast Titanium 7 today. I really wanted some of the advanced features it offered over the plain old burning of disks of the Apple finder. I am now able to take MPEG-2 files I DVR and back them up onto DVD’s. Not just as a file, but playable dvd’s in any normal player. My digital archiving and clean up continues. I probably should clean my apartment, but physical cleaning is less interesting!
Technorati Tags: dvd
Tax Time
Today I decided to do my tax’s. I was going to go to a professional with the hopes of a big return but I decided to do it myself. I have done my own tax’s using Turbotax for years, and my return didn’t really change much from last year so I didn’t want to bother with the higher fee (and possibly higher return) of going to someone. I did everything online and I already know how much I will get back. I should have it in like 10 days. Now that isn’t bad!
Now I just have to wait for direct deposit to give me my money!!!
Hectic Week
Thursday was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday. I didn’t leave the office until around 8PM. I spent a large portion of my day helping (or organizing help) to get a project finished. The day was just a blur of activity.
Friday was hectic also, but not as bad as the rest of the week. I had to deal with AC issues in a computer room, and ensuring all projects are moving along normally. I was able to get out early enough to make it to my parents for my sisters birthday dinner. We ended up going out. It was nice to be able to unwind and have a steak, see my parents, niece, and sister.
Carrie gave me a ride to the subway while morgan sang me all the new songs she has learned!
Problem Solving Day
Today was hectic. The morning was spent updating project plans for all the big projects I have going on this quarter. I spent a while doing that and still have more to do. Working with project plans always seem like a never ending task.
I went over some technical policies with my boss, and then began work on a server migration. I actually get to do some technical work on this move. Mainly because almost everyone else is busy and I really need to get the project moving along. We are trying to migrate our data in one office onto a new larger file server. I wrote a few robocopy scripts to sync the data off of our old file servers to the new one. The files are coping since this morning.
I also worked on some fault tolerance concepts regarding our file servers using Windows Distributed File Server (DFS). I was able to setup a replica of the DFS share we use for file sharing. Next I looked at modifying our login scripts to map to the DFS root in Active Directory. That helps if the server with the DFS root fails we can use an alternate one already setup in AD. I also looked at a bunch of other ideas along those same lines. It was very productive.
In the afternoon I had to deal with last minute changes to some security rules in order to complete a project. In the end we found a way to make everyone happy, but it took some time, and a bunch of network design explanations.
I got home a bit late, I ordered food. I was just too lazy to make dinner. Now I can’t believe it is almost 10:30.