scott

Site Issues & Network Disasters

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I took yesterday off to catch up on some sleep. I ended up by the office in the late afternoon to go with Jayson backpack shopping. Our website performance (or alleged) issues continued on. All of our research boils down to we don’t think there is anything wrong, or shall I say anything new wrong. We know our application needs to be improved. That is why the development team has spent over a year designing and building a next generation application. I think certain business people are missing there numbers and blaming the issue on a site problem. They got one bad metric and they stomp all over it. It has been a long week.

On another note I was just sitting down to figure out what I wanted to eat for dinner last night when I got a call from Jayson that an internal website was offline and someone called about it. Turns out several several servers where down. They where all plugged into the same switch module. I ended up having to go to our data center and meet Jayson to fix the issue. It was as simple as re-seating the module and it started working again. To be safe we moved all critical systems off that module onto another switch module. I didn’t get home until after 1AM today. So for a day off, I worked almost a full day’s work. Nice!!!

Parallels

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As if they read my blog last night Parallels has released a beta of their Virtual Machine Workstation for Intel Mac’s. This is the product I have been waiting for. If it works, I will spend the money and buy it. As I write this entry I am installing Windows XP (SP-2) on my Core Duo iMac. So far the install has moved along quickly. That is a good sign, since that is how VMware installs of OS’s go when running from an ISO disk. Since VMware and Virtual PC are my only products I can compare it to I will. Virtual PC always took forever to install on a G4. I know Virtual PC was emulating, and this is a VM. I understand the differences, but I can be thankful for the speed!!!

I get to hopefully play with this once the VM is finished installing. Ironically I took the day off today to relax. Oh well, playing with a new toy or software is sort of relaxing!

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Boot Camp

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Every news site on the internet is talking about Boot Camp. It is an awesome idea. It really is, but since I am very picky I will be honest when I say it is not what I wanted! Really. I think having Windows on a Mac is a necessary evil. I just don’t want to have to dual boot. I have 2 Windows XP desktops at work (as of today, that number does change week by week) to augment my Powerbook for things like MS Access, Visio, Active Directory tools (when I am lazy and don’t want to use remote desktop), and other Windows only software. I honestly don’t use those machines very often. The main reason I use Windows at work is to run Vmware admin tools for my ESX and GSX servers, and Workstation to test desktop software installs. For home use I use Windows for 1 thing (not counting my dvr) and that is Quicken. I can’t stand quicken for the Mac. To dual boot for one or two applications would be a pain.

What would really be fantastic is a virtual machine running in OS X that would load up Windows. Lets face it, you own a mac for reason. I don’t want to deal with Windows if I have to, but I don’t want to run it all the time. Having a virtual machine that you can turn on and do one or two things with, and then turn off would be better to me than rebooting into XP. I tried virtual PC 5, 6, & 7 on the PowerPC, and it was so slow. Now that Apple has an Intel chip a virtual machine could be a viable option. Don’t get me wrong, Boot Camp is a great idea. I just think there are better things to come, I hope!

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Mac Linux Tools

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Yesterday’s issues did have one positive (well sort of) piece to it. I had the need to install a bunch of network monitoring tools on my powerbook. I know that allot of software from Linux/Unix has been ported over to the mac. I have used a bunch of it, but when you actually go looking for stuff and almost everything you try to find has been compiled to work on the mac you have to think, cool!

Some of the new tools on my Powerbook are now: NMAP, XNMAP, Etherreal, MTR, and more. I of course have the Darwin Ports install on the computer, but I honestly haven’t even cracked the surface of what I can run on it.

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Long, Long Day

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I had a really long stressful day at work. Absolutely nothing I can discuss here. I did write a long entry on my work blog, but since it is password protected and private it can’t be really discussed. Lets just say when I finally left the office it felt like I had ran a marathon. I was just physically and emotionally wiped out. I did get a chance to relax a bit in little Italy with Jayson, Scott, & Gretchen for dinner. They where cool enough to wait for me to finish work before ordering dinner. Thanks guys!

Due to one of the big issues I was working on today I am canceling my trip to our other office tomorrow. I need to make sure things are on track here.

I am still having trouble sleeping. I was up again last night. Not as long as some nights last week but it still sucked. It also didn’t help that I got woken up at a quarter to 1 with a problem at work. I wasn’t on the phone for long but the damage was done. I can’t get pissed about stuff like that because it is part of the job, but man I was actually sleeping. It is so rare these days. I was hoping for an early night tonight but it didn’t happen. I am off to bed now, but I wanted to write a bit before I goto bed. it does make me relax a bit when I write a little.

Brewery

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Jayson’s brother Scott is in for a week on vacation. He stopped by the office and hung out for a while. The more I talk to him about some of the cool stuff he does at his job with NDS and ZEN I really wonder why we didn’t use it, then I remember that it is Novell. They do have some really cool remote deployment options.

With Scott in town, we meet up with John at Heartland Brewery for some drinks and food. Danny also came out for a bit to hang. It was a short, but rather expensive night for me. 1 drink, food, plus their awesome desert sets you back.

Still having trouble sleeping so I am trying to get to bed early.

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The New Webpage

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Over the past few years I have focused my web presence on my blog. I have a website but I just haven’t been keeping it up. For that matter I have been blogging less, and I know it. I just have been busy and too tired to write when I normally like to. Just as I was writing this post I realized that I missed this blog’s anniversary. March 23 marked my 3rd anniversary blogging. My other website I maintain existed in some form or another since December 1995. Last year marked the first time I truly used no windows computer and maintained my electronic existence on a Mac. This posed a problem that I just ignored. I haven’t found a good web editing / site editing program for the Mac. I had Dreamweaver MX 2004, but I never got into using it. I had always used Frontpage since like 1997. I know it sucks, but it was easy to use for page creation. it was also easy to make site wide changes. With my move to the Mac full time I had not used anything to update my website. With blogging taking up most of my free web time, I ignored the other site.

Today I felt like updating my site and began to backup my existing site. Long drawn out process because of several issues I don’t want to go into. While that was happening I decided to search for a decent Mac web editor. iWeb was too basic. I found on Maczot a link to Rapid Weaver. The demo looked cool, even though you could only make 3 pages. So for $34.95 I gave it a try. I am creating my first photo page now. If it looks good I will start the process of redoing my site using it. I know it will require a total redo of the site, throwing out everything. I don’t think this is a bad thing. Hopefully it works out. I am going to stage the new site on my .mac account to see how it looks and then when I am done, or at least substantially complete I will post it to my main site.

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The Waiting (For Food)

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I am sitting here catching up on my blogging waiting for my Freshdirect deliver. I am hungry and I will hopefully fix lunch with some of the good food I ordered. I just have to wait. 1 hour 22 minutes left in my delivery window.

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Friday Evening

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Friday evening I was so tired I passed up going to see an alternative band with Gretchen & Jayson to just be lazy. Sort of glad I did. It turns out the band didn’t come on until midnight. So instead I ran home, dropped my bag off and went for a hair cut. I am finding if I go late enough that the place is not closing but it it will soon I don’t have to wait. I found this out by chance running late last time I went. That info is filed away as semi useful info.

Then I hit the local Liquor store and picked up a bottle of Godiva Original Chocolate liqueur. I got this weird habbit from my dad to have a nice shot or two of the stuff before I go to bed if I am tired and have trouble sleeping. You can replace the Godiva with anything really, but we both like chocolate and it tastes good. I ran out of the Starbucks Coffee liqueur that I had been using. Lets face it bed time is not the place to sip shots of Jack Daniels as much as I like it.

After that I just went to the grocery store for one or two things then I went home to relax. The day had been a bit stressful, so I was glad to be able to just watch a movie and relax.

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No 6 Train

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Friday I had an interesting morning commute. The 6 train that I use to get to work wasn’t running due to a sick passenger. I thought to myself that I should just wait at the station and eventually the train would start up. I didn’t listen to my inner voice so I did what the MTA people said and I went up to the street and got on a bus. I got on the 3rd bus that came. It was a mad house, but some how I got a seat. it took forever to go anywhere, but I finaly got off at 59th street planning on getting on the N or R to go the rest of the way to work. As I get down to the platform the 6 was running, but it was packed. I went to the N/R and got on no problem. I was only 30 minutes late for work and made the big meeting I had at 9:30 anyway, but I left my apartment early enough that I shouldn’t have been late, but early by like 15 minutes.

This is the second time where it felt like if I just waited for the subway situation to resolve it self I would have been better off than trying an alternate way to the office. I know I feel better if I am moving and making progress getting closer to my destination, but the next time there is an issue I am just going to wait it out and see how that works out.

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