scott

Yesterday Sucked

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Man did yesterday suck. I was right about not feeling well. I was going to goto the movies with Rich and Amanda but I started spiraling downward in the afternoon. An attempt at a nap didn’t help. By 7PM I had the beginnings of a full blown migraine. It really sucked. I ended up in bed and couldn’t sleep or do anything. It just hurt to lie there. The up side was that I was at home. When I am at home with a bad migraine I try not to take any meds and ride it out with sleep. Probably not the smartest idea, but I don’t like to medicate. I do it without question when I am not at home, so when I am home I just don’t.

I slept like crap last night. I was up at 3AM. The headache mostly gone, but I could feel the remnants of it. I slept or stayed in bed till noon. I am up now, and actually awake. Kristen is supposed to be coming over for me to help her with a school project. If it wasn’t for that I probably would still be lying down. She is running late so I write…

Feels Like No Sleep

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I was up till 1:30 watching a movie last night. When I finally went to bed it felt like I didn’t sleep at all. My head is all fuzzy feeling. My throat hurts from the dry heat in my apartment, and I woke up like 5 times between 8 and now. I have no idea why. I am just glad I have no plans today since I feel like crap. Maybe a shower and lunch will clear my head?

Yet More Cleaning

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I thought my apartment cleaning was over last week, but I was wrong. I ended up spending most of the day today cleaning. I went through a ton of computer junk and threw out allot of stuff I would never need. Why I had 3 iomega internal zip drives (still in original electrostatic bags) I will never know. For some reason I collected 4 cd-rom drives, 3 floppy drives, and 3 zip drives. I also tossed a ton of other useless gear like 10 analog phone cables, etc.

Things are neater now. I just have 2 old computer case shells that I have to find a way to toss.

I also finished more rewiring at my desk. Now it is time to just lie on the couch and watch some movies.

Holiday Lull

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Lots to do this week, but for some reason there felt like a little holiday lull. I guess it is the short week. We had a release explode on us twice in the past week (the same release on two different nights). that was fun getting a call from Danny at 11PM Monday. I am also trying to get a deal finalized for a new network switch. Getting to the right price is always interesting.

Our new batch of servers finally arrived Wednesday with more on the way next week. We also got the licenses for our copies of Vmware’s ESX server so we can build those out.

I also had the electricians in the office to spec out adding another couple of circuits to the computer room. They think they can do what I want, but will have to play around with the power a bit to get as much juice as I need. With this power upgrade done we will max out the room. Any further expansion most likely will have to go somewhere else.

The rest of the week was taken up by paper work and project plans!

Thanksgiving With The Parents

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I spent the day at my parents and their friends house for thanksgiving. My dad for some strange reason decided to sneak into the hospital and get some work done. I took the train to his office and drove with him home. It was easer to do that than take the train to Flushing and meet him there. I hung out at my folks place for a while while my mom got ready. Tried to fix my dad’s computer. That ended in me deciding I am giving him my Mac Mini for a month to see if he likes it. I said I would do that before, but this time I will do it.

We went to my parents best friends house for thanksgiving diner. It is a tradition we have done for as long as I can remember. Tonight was the smallest gathering I can remember. For whatever reason instead of having the 20-35 people for dinner (and about a dozen more who come over for desert) we had a smaller turn out. There was about 12 adults. Small enough that we had a sit down dinner. That was a first also. We normally do a buffet. it was funny that everyone there was commenting how nice it was to not have so many people.

I am not a fan of turkey, but I had some. I also had a few sides. I didn’t go hungry. For desert there wasn’t any chocolate cake (another first) but Jared’s brother baked fresh cookies so I ate those.

I almost fell asleep on the couch from the turkey. Jared did fall asleep on the couch. My dad and David would have if it wasn’t for the Cowboys game.

All in all a nice night with the family, minus my sister, Mike, and Morgan who are in Florida. We spoke for a little bit on the phone but she was getting ready for dinner. I told her to make sure Morgan got me a photo of her and Mickey.

My dad drove me to forest hills so I could catch the subway home. Since we started eating so early I actually got home at a normal time. I was tempted to stay later and watch Swingers with Amy but that would mean I would not have had a ride home. Sorry Amy, but transportation is always first priority. She has gotten me tempted to put my copy of Swingers into the DVD player. Hmm, that is a good idea…

Fantastic Lunch

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Today we went to Gramercy Tavern for lunch today. Jayson had the idea earlier in the week. Neither of have ever been and it is supposed to be rated the best restaurant in Zagats. My review is that it was awesome. We ate in the tavern. We thought the main dinning room was a bit too fancy for us, and we weren’t dressed for it. Of course the price difference for lunch was also a factor.

I of course had the fillet. it was really good. I also tried Jack’s Fresh Bacon. I am not kidding when I tell you the bacon melted in my mouth. it was fantastic. As good as the bacon appetizer I had at Peter Lugar’s a few weeks ago.

I like going out to a nice sit down lunch every once in a while. In a previous job we tried to goto Angelo And Maxie’s every month, but that was years ago. I liked doing it. It wasn’t cheap but it was always nice. I am thinking of bringing back the tradition. Just going to the diner every once in a while just wont cut it.

Back to my original reason for the post. I am putting Gramercy Tavern on my favorites list in my Zagat’s! Good call Jayson!

On another note the other day it looked like there was a fire at Angelo And Maxie’s. There where fire trucks blocking 2 blocks of Park Ave South the other day. Since I like the place I feared the worst. Turns out they looked like they were open the next day. Others said they were open that night. Not sure exactly what happened, but it doesn’t look to be as bad as the dozen or so fire trucks first led me to think!

More Mac Software

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More little (and free) mac apps that I am trying. Playing with Growl. it is a simple unified notification system for multiple mac apps. If it is as cool as what I have seen so far it is a nifty notification engine for several apps I already use. if it is not, it can be an annoying pop up window. So far it is good. Actually half the reason I am posting this now is to see what Growl does when I post using Ecto.

Fall Cleaning

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Today I decided to do some Spring Fall cleaning. I did both physical and virtual cleaning. I moved around some components and moved a piece of furniture. I am trying to move my computer gear into a place where I have easy access to it, but it doesn’t make my living room look like crap. I pulled out a huge pile of wires that I don’t need anymore. or I hope I don’t need them, but everything seems to be working without them so far.

What started the whole day of cleanup was my powerbook not performing as well as it used to. I have put allot of crap on it, and tried some stuff out that I probably should not have put on my main computer, but I did anyway. I had been pondering wiping it and reinstalling everything for over a month. I was going to do it over the long weekend next week, but I woke up this morning and felt daring. I backed everything up and took the plunge. The majority of the rebuild didn’t take anywhere near as long as I thought. In under like 2 hours I had most of the main software I use on the computer, and I was well on my way to getting all my custom settings back. I know I will be customizing everything for a few weeks but the majority of what I use is back up.

While the powerbook was rebuilding I rearranged the furniture and pulled the cable. I also went to best buy and bought myself a wireless mouse & keyboard for my DVR computer. I also got a 4 port USB PCI card for the machine since I ran out of ports. I put that together (in 15 min thankfully) and my TV setup is basically done.

Feeling even more daring now that I moved the DVR functions to a dedicated computer I decided to wipe my Presario desktop and put a fresh copy of Windows XP on it. I am in the middle of the updateathon of windows patches now.

Once I am done with getting Windows on the Presario I won’t be putting any programs on it except for VMWare Workstation. My goal is to put all applications in a virtual machine. that way I can easily remove or revert back to old setups. I am trying that at the office also. In theory it is a sound idea. I will let you know how it goes in a month or so.

Harry Potter Movie

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After doing our rewiring work we meet up with Gretchen and her friend for dinner at this new place by the office. It was good. After that Jayson, Gretchen and I went to the new Harry Potter movie. I didn’t think the last one was any good so I was skeptical about this one. Turns out I liked it allot. Now I wait patiently for the 7th book. Ok enough waiting, where is it?

The only other eventful thing that happened today was that I actually got up early on a Saturday and went for a haircut.

Wiring Day

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Today Jayson and I spent most of the day rewiring a cabinet in the office. Try as we might these cabinets get super messy with cables everywhere after a while. We rewired this same cabinet over a year ago but it looked horrible again. The issue is that we keep putting in and taking out different kinds of gear. The cables get really messy.

To keep things cleaner we moved the PDU’s, rewired all the electrical, moved some servers to different racks, and took out the thick analog KVM cables and replaced them with IP KVM’s that run over regular CAD5. The result is a much cleaner rack. That and everything is neat and tied down helps. We next need to get the electrical guys to come in and add some more circuits.

We still have to clean up the mess of cables and old servers we pulled from the cabinet, but we can do that during the week.

The work was messy, and we came in on a Saturday but the results where worth it!