Month: March 2006

No Sleep

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The repetitive theme in my personal life recently has been lack of sleep. I am in the middle of a 2 week patch of no sleep, or what feels like no sleep. I am getting up early, getting up several times in the middle of the night, and just not feeling like I am able to goto sleep. I am not sure what the issue is but it is probably stress at work. That is usually the culprit.

Going to bed early doesn’t help. Trying to sleep in different positions hasn’t helped. Tylenol PM doesn’t help since I get very tired but apprehensive when I take it now, so I am just tired but awake.

My dad said he wouldn’t worry until I haven’t been able to sleep well for over a month, then I should see someone. That is great medical advise, but doesn’t make me feel any better. Hopefully it will pass.

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Powerbook #5

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Today I got my a new powerbook. I know I just got one back in December but when you get the opportunity to upgrade you take it. Someone in my group was getting a laptop and he was going for a powerbook. He was going to be happy with any Mac laptop so I had the chance to go to the same 12″ powerbook I had but get a bigger hard drive. I figured why not. Now I have a maxed out 12″ powerbook with 1.25 gigs of ram and a 100gig hard drive. I should be ok for a while! Andrew is also happy sporting my old (4 months) 80gig model. This new computer is my 5th (if I counted correctly) 12″ powerbook, and most likely my last since the Macbook Pro’s hopefully will have a smaller model soon.

Moving to this Powerbook was a breeze. I have upgraded mac’s before (as you can tell by the number of Powerbooks I had), but I never used the migration tool that Apple has when you register the computer. This time I figured I would give it a try. Man will I use that tool again. All you do is plug in the old computer to the new one with a firewire cable and it copies anything and everything you want from it. It got all my applications, my user profiles and settings, misc files on the hard drive, and anything else I could think of. The only issue was 3 applications required re-install’s. Besides that it worked flawlessly. And it took about 2 hours to copy 50gigs of data. It was amazing. Yet another reason I am a Mac fan over Windows. Wow, a few years ago I would never have believed I would say that let alone put it in writing.

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VMware Saves The Day

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I have been talking the praises of VMware ever since I was introduced to it a few years ago. This week it moved up a peg in my book. We have been having issues with some production hardware for some time. It is a long story but lets just say that by fixing the machine we could very well destroy it since we have had bad results with similar equipment. In theory the state that the machine was in could remain stable indefinitely, but who was going to risk another drive failing (SATA RAID issue that is unnecessary to go into details about). Rebuilding the box was out of the question since it would take way too long to do so. Since it was an application that is slated to be retired in a few months, it isn’t worth putting in tons of man hours setting up a new box, but we need the app in service. Rolling the dice and hoping the machine stayed up was not a risk anyone was willing to make.

Then the solution came to us. Lets virtualize the machine. We had been testing it for a while and the results looked great. We had even taken some non production box’s and virtualized them for use on one of our new ESX servers, so it looked like a viable option. The issue was convincing our dev staff and my boss that this was what we needed. The dev staff needed some convincing. Now that the work is done they are still worried about some quirk creeping up in the system. My boss was more enthusiastic about the prospect.

The only down side that came of the whole situation was that the Physical to Virtual conversion took triple the amount of time we had hoped or planned for. Was it worth it? Yes, but we could have lived without the hours of waiting.

I am continually amazed at what this software can do.

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Saturday Night In Queens

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I was all ready for a nice night in Saturday when Jayson called and said John was meeting up with them and going to a bar in Queens. I figured what the hell, since I was done building my dad’s computer and I didn’t have to be up early Sunday. I got dressed and headed over to Jayson’s place. We all went to a decent irish pub by Jayson & Gretchen’s house. We hung out and drank, ate, and talked for hours. It was cool. I am still a light weight and got very buzzed off of 2 Jack & Cokes. Well I knew I was a light weight and I hadn’t eaten for hours when I had my first drink and a half so I guess that is a possible excuse!

It started raining when we left the pub so I tried to catch a cab, vs the bus or the train. I didn’t believe Jayson when he said that I could catch a cab easy on Queens Blvd. I was getting ticket off when I saw no cab’s for like 5 minutes, and then the first cab that showed up was empty and I hopped in. I got home very quick and the fare wasn’t too bad. Beat waiting for the bus and then trekking to the subway or just waiting for 2 trains late at night on a Saturday!

Overall a good night had by all!

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Visiting The Parents

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I was at my parents place today to finish my dad’s computer upgrade. My mom had me come out there earlier than I originally planned since she was worried that the work would take too long. Boy was she wrong. Since I did most of the loading of software and moving files at my apartment on Saturday we were done setting everything up in like 45 minutes. I ended up just hanging out in my dad’s La z Boy watching an old Bond film waiting to go out to dinner. Man can you fall asleep in those chairs. I almost did like 3 times, then I couldn’t walk for 15 minutes since my legs where so relaxed (and blood deprived) from being reclined for 2 hours. It was nice and comfy.

We ended up meeting Carrie and Morgan in Forest Hills for dinner at this little restaurant on Austin street. It was decent food and I got to see everyone except for Michael. I am just glad that the whole computer upgrade is completed. I hopefully wont have to worry about that again for another 2-3 years!

I Actually Used This For Years With No Question?

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I can’t believe I actually used Windows without question for years. I just got my dad a brand new HP desktop (he wanted a really small computer and this was the smallest name brand I could find) and I am setting it up for him this weekend. I am taking all his old data and copying it over to the new machine and then setting up all his applications for him. In theory this is not a big deal, but in practice it has been a huge pain. How can a multi billion dollar company like HP build a consumer device like a PC that simply doesn’t work well out of the box? They include a bunch of stuff to try and make it easy for a normal person to get up and running but in practice it has sucked.

My first issue is the fact that HP (not to pick on them since Dell and other do the same thing) put every free game or trial software they could think of on this computer. I had at least 20 programs I had to remove from the computer that would just take up space and memory. My dad doesn’t do his finances on the computer so why would he need both Quicken 2006 and Microsoft Money? The crap pre-installed on the machine is not a huge issue. I have had this problem for years with almost any computer maker.

What I truly don’t understand is the lack of testing of the software build put on these computers designed for the mass market. When I buy a computer and take it home and turn it on, everything pre-installed on it should work flawlessly. it was pre-installed for heavens sake. Why then does a brand new computer freeze up when trying to reboot it, but after 5 minutes it actually does reboot? Why would the built in AOL setup not complete the initial login and crash the machine? Same thing goes for the auto update for Java. I turned the computer on and it asked to be updated so I said ok, then the thing freezes and wont go away from the screen until I rebooted. Does anyone know how to test software builds anymore?

I can go on and on about the problems I am having with a brand new (supposedly clean) windows install but will just say I am baffled. I guess I have passed the point of no return with using my Mac, since I get frustrated every time I try to use a windows workstation. Granted I deal with Windows server allot in my job, it has its issues, but those are totally different from sitting at a windows desktop and working on it. I truly cannot see myself using a windows desktop again if I continue to have these stupid problems every time I try to use one. I am not being a nit pick, and I know what I am doing. It is simply just frustrating to use.

OK, my venting is over. I got AOL to finally work after a reboot (what a shocker). I will continue to setup the machine later. Hopefully the Palm setup doesn’t drive me to the bottle!

As a side note I will say that the HP Pavilion Slimline PC itself is sweet. it is super small for a windows box, packs a decent processor, 1gig of ram, a 200 gig SATA hard drive and dual layer DVD burner. Not bad for under $600. The software is just killing me.

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Call Manager Approved

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I finally got our Cisco Call Manager PBX approved for our office move later this year. After the new landlord didn’t want to piggyback us on their system did my CEO finally agree to getting a CCM for our NYC office. Actually we wont be getting a physical CCM, but a voice gateway router and phones. We will be piggy backing off of our existing call manager cluster in our Call Center.

Now we need to select a vendor and place the order. I like both vendors, but one of them is the front runner now. We meet with them next week to go over final details of the deal. In addition to the phone system we are also getting a new Cisco Catalyst 4507 for the office to act as a core switch. Our existing one is 6 years old and probably wont scale to our planned growth. That and the 4507 will do POE (power over ethernet) and gigabit.

Now we need to actually sign the lease and get a move date. That is work for next week.

Tired

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Plenty to write about, but I have just been busy and tired. I hopefully will write this weekend and catch up. I may even cheat and post date some entries! Off to bed for now.

New Computer Time

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Tonight I went with my dad to Best Buy to get him a new computer. He has been complaining about the Mac Mini I had him try. Turns out not OS X is not for everyone, no matter what good intentions I had! We meet up by my apartment and took a cab to Best Buy. We found the computer he wanted easy enough, but they didn’t have it in stock. We then went to the next Best Buy in Mid town. Turned out they had it in stock so we bought it. Shopping with my dad is so easy. We usually don’t go shopping unless we know what we want, and when we see it we just buy it. If we don’t see it we check one or two other places and then go home. No fuss, no muss!

I will configure the computer this weekend and deliver it to him on Sunday. After we dropped the computer by my place we hit an italian restaurant by my house for some dinner. It was a quick and productive evening. My dad was happy he got a new computer and that it was a quick drive into manhattan and back home again.

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Watch Drama

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After a distressing call with Tourneau yesterday I decided to show up at the store and find out what exactly is wrong with my watch. To may an agonizing story short they screwed up and the watch was still at Omega no work was done on it what so ever. I got the run around for a while, then I started to raise my voice and get a bit pissed off. The service manager stepped in and finally explained the situation since the regular worker was giving me the run around. When he said he couldn’t tell me when I would get it back until he called the service center monday I told him that was totally unacceptable. He gave me the option of taking the value of the watch I bought and buying something else. I originally thought about asking about that but I originally didn’t really want to do it. When he offered that I saw that as the only way I could get something without waiting another month and a half. Since I bought the watch used I figured I would spend more and get a new watch of the same model. At least it will have the manufacturers warrantee on it. I was then told that Omega didn’t make that model anymore. I told the guy that was a bunch of BS since they prominently advertise it on their website. He gave me store credit for the watch still in repair and then told me he would call me on Monday or Tuesday after he called Omega and found out if he could still get the watch.

I got sorta lucky and got a call a bit after I got home from the store. Turns out I was right and they still do sell the watch and I could order it and have it in 2 weeks. It cost more than I anticipated, but I still wanted it so I told them to order it. Hopefully in 2 weeks I will have my brand new Omega Speedmaster X-33 and my crazy repair drama will be over.

I now eagerly await the call from the store telling me the new watch is in…

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