scott

Monday Recap

by

I woke up with a headache. Alive kicked it, so I was happy in the afternoon. Most of the day was taken up with shepherding along other peoples projects. I did get to deal with a few items on my ever growing list of items I am working on. The thing about the Getting Things Done system I am trying is that the list always gets bigger, and each task gets more specific. The purchase of Daylite has been very helpful in keeping things organized.

Some things I did get to work on today was some network port blocking projects I have had in the works. I also got some time to update some test virtual machines for some other tests. I also pitched to my boss a new upgrade to our network. I think he liked it, so we will take it to the next level. Not much more I can go into on this site.

I got to get home at a normal hour today. I ended up cooking dinner instead of ordering out like I have been doing the past 2 weeks. I also got to touch base with Amanda over IM for a while. She is back from her honeymoon so she was able to chat.

,

HL DL 320 SATA Servers

by

I have been working with a few HP Prolient DL 320 SATA servers. The price was right on them and they have decent specs. The issue I had with the last round of Supermicro SATA box’s weren’t the supermicro box’s them selves, but the SATA RAID cards that went into them. They would fail much more than their SCSI counterparts. Also the array controllers would not rebuild without crashing computers. We tried several brands. We are using 3ware for new deployments of older chassis SATA servers. They seem the best out of all I have seen. They were a crap shoot. These HP box’s seem to rebuild fine in our tests. Time will tell if they drives hold up, but so far I think HP finally got it right with a low end non SCSI RAID system.

Resting, & Cleaining

by

I am so sleepy today. I woke up around 10:30, and I have been sleepy ever since. I tried to lie down and take a nape (not something I usually do) but I couldn’t fall asleep. I am done cleaning up my apartment. My parents are coming over later so I decided that my weekly weekend cleaning should be a good one. I finished most of the the work last night, but I put the finishing touches on the place this morning.

I would be watching TV now, but there is nothing good left on my Tivo or DVR. Oh I have about 100 hours of crap on them, but nothing I want to be watching now. I watched the latest episode of Spooks (aka Mi-5) last night thanks to usenet!!! All I can say is I love watching a show where no one is safe from getting killed off. Too bad US TV isn’t as good as some of the stuff coming out of the BBC.

Rich and Amanda are back from their honeymoon. They called and wanted to know if I wanted to goto a steak brunch. Now I am up for steak, but for sunday brunch? Who am I kidding? I would have said yes if it wasn’t for my parents coming over later and me being so sleepy.

At least it stopped raining in NYC!

Is The Date Too Much to Ask For?

by

It is funny how you miss the little things. I have been wearing my new Omega watch for almost 5 months now. The one thing I miss off my old timex is the ability to look at my wrist for the date. I can get the date off my Omega, but I have to hit a button to get it and then cycle through the menu to get back to time. It is a pain so I never do it. Something so simple, yet so difficult. I find myself having to look at my mobile phone or the time preferences on my powerbook to get the date now a days. Bob got a good laugh at me when I commented about the new watch not giving the date, but the $40 timex does. Oh well, what are you going to do?

Projects Abound

by

Our Jabber server is acting up. I think it is another application running on the box. We need to migrate the app to a new machine. Our new guy, Andrew is working on the new Jabber server. We are going to do a Jive server running on Suse 9 enterprise. I got the budget approval from bob today so we ordered a box. To get things going quicker we took a box earmarked for a domain controller in Kingston and borrowed it. We won’t need to deploy the DC until after the new hardware gets in anyway. We hope to have the new server built by the end of next week. Andrew has a test instance of the app up now. Hopefully we can have all the users configured in under 2 weeks for a cut over.

Jayson spent the entire day friday at our data center working with EMC setting up our SAN. For some reason I always underestimate time needed to do things at the data center. Besides the SAN he was working on 2 new database servers we are deploying to replace our existing box’s. They will hold us over until we cut over to the new database cluster design utilizing the SAN.

Our 5th cabinet is finally completed at our data center. we now have room for the growth we are expecting in our server farm. That also means we got rid of the last desktop computer in our data center. They were plaguing me for years. I blame Gus for saying just put anything up there. We finally are doing things right by only putting in nice rack mount servers!

I spent my days this week working on getting quotes for a new 6500 series switch at our data center. it will also do load balancing for our websites, or that is the goal. if we don’t it approved we will go with a standard load balance system. I still think the core switch idea is best. I also did research into a new gateway router for our call center. Actually when I think about it I did more quote, and status update work this week than I did technical work. Man, the management thing is pulling me deeper and deeper each week!

Besides the regular work this week I had enough problems. Jayson was dealing with a core switch at our data center that for some reason would wig out when touched on Tuesday. Again on Friday it seemed to reboot on its own. We are going to observe it and see if it does anything weird when no one is physically near it since both incidents happened when Jay was working on or near the switch. We also had problems over last weekend due to water damage on a smartjack that controls one of our internet circuits. Dam leaky roof in our call center. Then Friday we had another circuit go down at the call center. This time it was our local voice circuit. it took out all inbound local service and all outbound service. the call center can operate with all the inbound calls but can’t make calls out. our LEC is working on it, but they are SO slow. Several other minor issues riddled the week also.

I most likely have to goto our upstate office next week to interview people for the 2 support positions we have open. Originally Kai said I had to come up for 2 days because there were so many people he wanted me to meet, but then we got the number down to a level where I can do it in a day. I don’t like staying overnight up there so a day trip is good for me. it is a long day when you factor in all the travel, but it is a short work day since I am only in the office up there from 10:30 is to 3-4pm. that is needed in order to get back on a decent train. I will have more news on that early next week.

Back To Work

by

I got back to work today. I feel better than I did earlier in the week, but my throat still hurt and I had a stuffy noise. I am still a bit foggy from the sleepy medicine I have been taking but I was able to make it through the day without any major incidents.

For some reason I didn’t eat that much since yesterday morning. I had breakfast yesterday, then a snack. Today I had breakfast and I just finished dinner. I just wasn’t hungry all day. maybe that was due to the cold? Not sure.

I had my office to myself today. Jayson spent the entire day at the data center doing work. I got caught up on paper work, and tried to move a few projects along.

I ordered freshdrect tonight for delivery tomorrow. I am not planning on doing very much this weekend. I am going to try and stay in since it is supposed to rain tomorrow. I hope to totally kick this cold and be good for next week.

Nothing

by

I have been sick all week. Not bed ridden flu sick or anything. Just head cold feeling like crap sick. I ended up taking off monday. I also took today off as my floating holiday. It is a major jewish holiday. Not that I observed it or anything. I slept, and watched everything anywhere close to good on my Tivo. And yes I did some work. I can’t help it.

I was going to goto my parents for dinner last night at the start of the holiday. I called my dad around 2pm asking if he could pick me up from the rail road. My plan was to leave early and be at here place so I could lie down before dinner. He was like “why are you coming?” He didn’t think I should be traveling in the crappy weather when I was sick. I told him my mom wanted me to be there. He got off the phone with me and called my mom. then next thing I know she is calling telling me she didn’t realize I was in that bad shape and not to travel out to them. I am upset because it is two weeks in a row that I missed seeing them. Probably for the best so I don’t get anyone else sick.

Not much else to report. I have eaten most of the food in my apartment. I need to order freshdirect soon. I am so bored being stuck home. More later.

13 Months With Typepad

by

Last week (or so) I passed my 1 year mark as a paying customer of Typepad. How do I remember this? I just glanced at my credit card statement and saw that they charged another year onto the card. I am not upset. I thought the renewal was coming up. I actually started using them in early September last year but I had a 1 month trial. I am normally against paying for hosting services since I could easily to it myself. But recently (actually starting with me using typepad) I have gotten lazy and figure it is just easier to let someone else deal with my hosting. that is why I host nothing at home anymore, and I have less stress to show for it.

Some Catastrophy?

by

Is the world coming to an end or something? It sure sounds like it from my apartment today. Since like midnight I have heard at least a dozen sirens. We are not talking like one police car driving by. Most of the time it sounds like the president is driving by my building with the amount of sirens going by. Maybe this is the sleep deprived me talking, but at 3AM when no cars are out do you really need to go full lights and sirens someplace?

Just one of the observations I have made sitting in bed (or my couch) today.

Yeah, I am Sick

by

I took the day off today. I feel like crap. I didn’t sleep at all last night. The final straw was at 6:30AM I was not able to goto sleep. I took more Tylenol PM and tried to sleep some more. I can barely talk. I hope I am better enough to goto the office tomorrow. I am bored. Whoever says staying home from work is fun?

Also the blog seemed to have been down for a while. According to Typepad’s site they are moving servers. Why they are doing that during the day I don’t know. They claim it wont impact the app, but from what I have seen on my site it has. Looks like I am up now though.