scott

Budget Surplus?

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OK, I am a bit confused and pissed off. I read now that the MTA has a budget surplus of 1 billion? Thats US dollars people. Aren’t these the same people that said they were going to have a 400 million plus deficit and they needed to raise fares? This was like a year ago. What is going on? Do they truly have no f–king clue?

I have two opinions on this. 1, if they have such a surplus they could have tried to predict this and well maybe not raised the rates. or not raised them so much? Opinion 2, I understand raising rates (to a point) to not be in debt. If you then later on find yourself having a surplus you should (maybe) use the money wisely, instead of cutting prices for a month or so. How about more trains? Speed up renovation of existing stuff, or expand the system? Did I mention more trains? Or how about putting the money away and save it for the next deficit? I would bet you get some nice interest on a billion dollars.

I am so f–king confused. These are the same idiots that say they had to cut back night and weekend service and they now have a ton of cash. I know I am repeating myself. I am just baffled…

And for some of the riders who commented on the article I link to. Are you FREAKIN crazy. You want a quick $1 back on your ride instead of ensuring the dam system runs in 1-10 years? So short sited. And who was the moron who said “there’s already tunnels to brooklyn so they don’t need more”. Call me crazy, but If it takes you an hour to get through the tunnel durring rush hour, maybe a new one would be a good idea?

There are some real rocket scientists living in this city.

More VMWare Work

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This week I actually am working on a technical project, not just managing them. I built a test environment to put up a windows 2003 terminal server. I used VMware’s GSX server to do it. I was testing what ports i would need to open up if i wanted to access a terminal server via the TSWeb client Microsoft gives you. Turns out even if the web server and the terminal server are the same machine you have to open up the RDP port on your firewall anyway. That wasn’t the answer i wanted to hear, so i am looking into Citrix to see if i can use their product and only open up port 80? Waiting to hear back from them.

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Another Monday

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I am running out of catchy titles for posts on some days. Who am I kidding. I ran out of good post names for most posts back in 2003! I had as typical a day as I could. I had a few meetings. Went over issues with Kai, and had to deal with some last minute requests. Nothing major to report, or I should rephrase that. nothing major that I can report here! Read into that what you will! And yes I like being cryptic sometimes. It’s more than I have to be, I actually enjoy it.

After work I went to Best Buy with Jayson to fix the shipping issues with my TV. After about 40 minutes of working with customer service they think they fixed the problem. It took forever to fix. it also took like 3 people to figure out the issue, but they did figure it out. they were also very very nice and attentive about the whole issue. It may have taken a long time, but it could have been MUCH worse. Kudos to the ladies that assisted me.

Treo Refresh

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Last night I ended up wiping my Treo 650 and reinstalling all my software. I have been having issues with it rebooting every time I tried to sync my mail using Snappermail. That program is half the reason I use my Treo over the Blackberry, so I was not too happy when it started acting up earlier this week. I had to go on my trip Thursday without being able to use the Treo for email. I got by on the Razr and the Blackberry but I like the Treo better. After the reinstall Snappermail seems to be working. But I have had 2 random reboots since the hard reset. Once after a call to my sister right after I got out of the subway this morning. The other when I was syncing with my Powerbook. The sync reboot also happened often before I wiped the Treo, but I am not sure if it is because of the config on my Powerbook or the Treo.

I will try using for a while longer, but if the random reboots continue I will have to seriously consider an alternate PDA phone. As much as I like this device, I cannot have it randomly rebooting on me almost daily!

Retirement Party

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Today was my mom’s surprise retirement party thrown by her old co-workers. I meet up with Carrie in Penn station and we took the train together. Mike picked us up with Morgan and we drove over to the restaurant it was being held at. It wasn’t really a huge surprise to my mom, but it was a nice party. There were allot of people who turned out. Morgan was in Morgan form. She is funny to watch with so many people.

Because of the party for my mom we were not able to make it to Arielle’s birthday party in Jersey. What is so funny was I was planning on going to Arielle’s party, but when I met my parents for dinner last week they told me about my mom’s party. Like I said it wasn’t a surprise. So my plans to Jersey were canceled. I need to get out there eventually since I haven’t seen my cousins in ages.

The party was started at 1:30 so it wasn’t a late night. I don’t like being out till 10-11 on a Sunday. Work on Monday is hard enough without coming home late the night before and having to get up early the next day.

Flickr And Me

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I signed up for the Flickr photo service a few months ago. I just never used it. I thought, I have a photo album on Typepad, and I use a MOB on Textamerica. I also maintain a photo album site on my home page. Why do I need to post my photos somewhere else? Well the devil is in the details. I finally went onto the Flickr site and was looking around. You can do some cool stuff with the site. I also like the ability to batch upload files using iPhoto since someone wrote a plug in. I already uploaded the past 2 months worth of photos to the site.

I also found someone posted how to take a Flickr badge and use it in Typepad. I got it setup in 5 minutes. Not bad! Now I am going to play with the tags on some of my photos.

I can also get rid of my Typepad photo album. It was easy to use and convenient to have, but it was never that great. I can delete the photos and save space on my account, not that I need to!

Mini Work Birthday Party

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Before the Best Buy thing I went to I did stop off at for a quick drink (well 1/3 of one) at the mini birthday party the Finance people were having for several of their team. Jay and I stopped by for a bit. I ran out quick to goto my other thing, but Jay stayed for a while. There was one or two other non finance people there, but it wasn’t weird. We hang with most of them all the time!

Wednesday At Work

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Wednesday was not that eventful (other than my Best Buy excursion). I got some task work done. Updated people on what to do. Ran to the colo for 2 hours, and that is about it. Nothing major to report. It was almost quiet (ALMOST, I don’t want to have the powers that be reign down problems because I said it was quiet) with Danny upstate, Kai out, and Jayson at the data center.

Pre-Opening Day

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Today I “won” the chance to goto a pre-grand opening of the new Best Buy in NYC. Someone at work couldn’t be there, so I guess they knew the store manager and he gave her a ticket for someone else to go in her place. She gave it away to the 3rd email respondent! I was it. It was cool. There was food, and you got to check out the store before it opened to the public. I felt all special getting in by invitation only! The best part of course was the discount. They had a one day deal that anything you bought that night was at the employee discount price. On some items that was a nice deal. I have wanted to get a LCD TV or Plasma for almost 2 years now. Every time I look at price they are way too expensive for what I want. Then to settle was not worth the money.

I wanted to get a 42″ HDTV plasma. They are way to expensive. I didn’t want to get an EDTV plasma at the same price. it just wasn’t worth it. So I decided to go with a 32″ LCD TV. I saw the price online and said with a nice discount I would be willing to buy it. I went to the store, found the TV I wanted and checked on the discount. I was blown away by the deal. I was all ready to buy it. Then a bad thing happened. I looked at the bigger TV next to it. It was a 40″ LCD HDTV. Beautiful, crystal clear, and WAY out of my budget. Then someone else asked the price of it after the deal. I was shocked at how good a deal it actually was. It was still expensive, but within my budget (barely) and a deal that I would never see again. I called my dad, since he wanted a TV also. We were going to go shopping in a few weeks anyway for one. I told him the situation and the price. I also warned him that the price was only part of it. He needed to get the extended warrantee since this thing was big and pricey. You don’t want to take a chance with it breaking. Then I told him he needed to have it professionally wall mounted. He said get it. Not wanting to abuse a special deal I said only if I can get more than 1. I asked and the staff was very cool. They were like yeah you can get 2. As I was standing there waiting to place my order there where several other people doing the same thing I was (buying 2).

I got my order in, and went upstairs to pay for it. It was allot of money for a spur of the moment item, but I have wanted one for so long, and the deal was not every going to be better, no matter what I kept telling myself. Now I can’t wait for it to arrive. They had to ship it to me. Something about not selling anything at the store since they wanted stock for the real opening later this week. I didn’t care, I wasn’t going to carry 2 TV’s home anyway.

I figured if I could get a nice

A Rare Trip

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Today I made a trip with Jayson up to the data center. I don’t get up there that much. I usually let others go, but every so often I have a reason to (or just want to) get up there. Today was both. I had some specific tasks I needed to do, and I also wanted to see how the additions we have made look. Things look awesome! Jayson has done a fantastic job of making that place nice. Most everything is so neat.

I brought up some gear, and also did some inventories. We spent a few hours doing that. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon working on firewall rules, and distributed file system security permissions. I had a stupid problem with a cross domain security issue with a file share. I have yet to resolve it, but I found a work around that will be fine for the next few months.

Jay and I decided that we are going to try leaving the overhead lights off in the office. We think it is easier to read the monitors without the lights. I installed a small desk light for some background light. We shall try it out for a few days and see how it goes. I like that we decorated and make the office feel lived in. My office has more posters on the wall than my apartment does, but that is not something I should be proud of!

Word of warning to myself. Do not eat ice cream after a big lunch. I have been feeling the pain ever since I got Hagen Das. It was good, but after it was bad! More later.