scott

So, Who Am I?

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I have hinted at this for ages, but I never publicized who I am on this site. Well, way back when I started writing this blog it was trivial to figure out who I was. Then there was a period of time where I went out of my way to mask who I was. In recent history I haven’t come out and said my name or where I work, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. To me, because of an scare at work a few years ago right around the time I read about people being fired for blogging I have been very shy about saying my name on this site. It is probably an over reaction especially now since I put anything detailed I write about work on a private site. I have still been a bit gun shy. Gus, pointed out to me that hiding who I am might actually be a bad thing. He might be right. More and more people look to someone’s online presence when looking up someone. I have heard of people getting job offers or not from their writings online. So why shouldn’t I say who I am? I have seen my postings commented or quoted in an online magazine here or there, or vmware blog once or twice.

So hi, my name is Scott Weinstein. I live and work in NYC. Please don’t confuse me with the 36 other Scott Weinstein’s in the US according to a census website I found a few months ago.

Now the disclaimer, the postings on this site are my own and do not represent the views of my employer. That is verbatim from my current companies policy regarding personal blogs. It goes without saying but I will follow their rules and say it anyway. My views are just that, mine. I haven’t stated who I was until now specifically because I was concerned about employers not approving. Now that I work for a company that has clear guidelines, and are open to personal blogs as long as these guidelines are followed I wont do anything to violate those policies. The topic of blogging isn’t so new anymore that I need to be so paranoid.

In the end, no one really cares about this topic but me. As I always have said I write this for me, so talking out loud about this is good (for me).

James Bond

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Tonight I saw the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace last night with Danny. It had some good action sequences but otherwise was simply an OK movie. It didn’t suck, but it wasn’t so memorable. Casino Royale was a much better movie in my opinion. After the movie Danny and I hit the Heartland Brewery for dinner. I only had one drink because I think I am fighting a cold. Otherwise a relatively uneventful day.

A Release in Progress

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I am eagerly waiting for one of the guys on my team to finish a software release on one of the applications my team supports. They have been working on it almost all day. I don’t have anything really to do with the release again until tomorrow morning but I know I won’t sleep right until I hear that everything went OK. I am hoping I get that nice all OK email in the next 90 minutes! Fingers crossed.

iPhone 2.2

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I upgraded today to the iPhone latest version of the iPhone software, 2.2. On the off chance that the problem I had last week with my iphone not syncing with my computer was related to the phone and not the computer I am updating the software right away. So far I don’t see any major features stand out. I am happier that my Apple TV has a new OS version on it so I can control the volume of the Apple TV using my remote software on the iPhone! Now that is functional!

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Busy Thursday

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My new job (well not so new since it has been almost 3 months) is unlike any I have had before. Previous jobs I have worked with people in remote offices, but at my current job virtually everyone including my entire team is remote. That means most of my day is taken up by phone calls, emails, and lots and lots of conference calls. Since most of the job is communicating with others elsewhere I am able to work pretty much anywhere. My boss has been very flexible and I have been working from home a few days a week. I go into my main office once or twice a week and one of our other offices in Manhattan a day a week or so. It is weird working from home so much. In many ways I like it allot, and in other ways I don’t like it. I do miss the socialization that is work in an office. Of course since the main office I goto doesn’t house my team I don’t even really have that when I go in. When I go to the other office in Manhattan I am around allot of people I work with, but who are in other groups I interact with. That makes the days I am there great for face to face meetings.

One day a week all the local members of my team get together in one office to meet. Since I started that has been my office in NYC since the office most of the remainder of the local team (NY & NJ) are in is being renovated so space is limited. On that day there is almost no time free from meetings. If it isn’t regular scheduled meetings it is an entire team meeting, or one on one meetings with each person on the team. The other day in the office usually isn’t as packed with meetings but this week it was. This week, that day happened to be today. Thankfully tomorrow is almost free of meetings so I can try to get administrative work done. Of course we have a big project release tomorrow so who knows what I might need to be involved with that if stuff breaks!

For a point of information, if you read this you might think I am complaining about the hectic schedule. That is far from reality. I actually live off the fast pace (to a point), and would be bored out of my mind if it wasn’t so busy with stuff to do. Honestly some of these conference calls are kind of boring, but most of them are interesting, and you have to stay on your toes or you miss lots of stuff. Here is to tomorrow and hopefully some decent time to finish paperwork!

Tuesday at The Office

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Today was an at the office day. I had meetings back to back from 9:30 to 5PM. I did get about 45 minutes for lunch at 12, but it was a working lunch since I went out to grab food with my team. It was a good day. Even with lots of meetings, I got allot done.

After work I headed uptown I got a haircut. It was cold to walk around with less hair, but I always like getting one. After that I swung by Macy’s to look for a small wheeled piece of luggage. I already have a wheeled piece of luggage that fits in the airline over head bins. For overnight trips it is way too big. It is good for 4-7 day trips. For overnight trips I have been using one of two pieces of ancient Lucas Luggage bags. When I say ancient I mean it. Both the small duffle bag and the carry on bag I have from Lucas I got when I was in Hight School. I don’t want to carry then if I am walking to the subway or running for the train, etc so I am looking for a piece that I can carry and wheel and is around the same size as what I currently have. Unfortunately Macy’s didn’t have what I wanted. Either it was way too expensive, or the wrong color. How Swiss Army charges more than Tumi for a bag, I will never know. I am off to the internet to see if I can find the bag I liked in the color I want.

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Off for drinks with people from work. Issue from this morning has put me an extra 80 emails behind in my backlog:(

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Nothing like a high priority technical issue to ruin your day before it even starts

The Weirdest Technial Problem

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On 2nd I wrote about a weird issue regarding my iPhone resetting. Unfortunately since then the issue happened on two other occasions. By the 3rd issue I decided to call Apple and open a ticket on my problem. They couldn’t help me much on the phone so they wanted me to bring the phone in and see someone at a local Apple Store. This is when things get interesting.

A few days before the 3rd incident with my iPhone I noticed that one of the external USB drives I have threw an error when I booted up the Macbook. I was bad and kind of ignored the error since I could see the drive mount and didn’t appear to have any issues. After a few reboots with the sam error I actually read the error and noticed it was warning about a corrput file system. Since this drive was a backup drive and only used as an archived copy of data I didn’t need the data I decided to pull the drive and use a spare I had. The next time I rebooted my computer Sunday night I got the same error, but this time it was on another 750 gig USB drive I had plugged into my Macbook. This time the error was on a drive that I do use and have critical data on. I was not hugely worried since I could still read the data on the drive. I decided to copy the critical data off onto another 750 gig drive that I decided to use as a mirrored copy of the data on the first drive.

Once I moved all the data off of the damaged drive, I formatted it and prepared to mirror all the data on the 2nd drive back over to it. I started off a replication of the good drive using Synk and then went to bed. This was the same night I called in the iPhone for support. I woke up the next morning to find that my Mac had crashed and never copied very much data. Once I rebooted my Macbook I noticed that the one good drive I had was now not visible in OSX. I checked the disk utility and I saw the drive but it was not available. A verify failed telling me the file system was messed up. I began to panic a bit. All my efforts to create a good backup process ruined by some weird fluke issue. At this point I had to take my Macbook and goto work.

After work I went to the Apple Store on 5th Ave and told the Genius Bar guy my woes. He looked over my iPhone and then my Macbook. After explaining what happened to my USB drives they decided that I can hold onto my iPhone but that they want to take my Macbook in to run some tests on.

Now I am without my Macbook, my iPhone works but has no media on it. I was instructed to reset it again, but not restore it. I am waiting to do that when I get my Macbook back. I can’t install anything without all the data on it. After a bit more panicking about the lost data on my hard drives I am feeling a bit more optimistic. I am using Data Rescue II to pull the data off my bad drive. It is taking ages to copy but so far I have been successful. I am about 70% done with my restore. I think the most critical data is already restored onto my good drive. Once I am done I will format the bad drive and mirror the data back over to it. I will then do what Jayson does and physically unplug the backup drive and sync it every week or every other week. Longer term I am looking to get another Drobo or some sort of other solution that does some sort of RAID.

While I wait for my Macbook to return I am not off the Grid. I am using my iMac I typically use for TV, and I have my work Thinkpad.

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