scott

Star Wars Episode III

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I “finally” saw the new Star Wars movie today. Rich, Amanda, & I bought tickets last night for the noon show by their house. I got up early and trekked out to Forest Hills to see it. It was worth it. The theater was not that packed, and we had stadium seating. They have stadium seating in Manhattan you may say, but it wasn’t crowded. I would have traveled to Iowa to see the movie if I knew it wasn’t going to be crowded.

I won’t bore you with details about the movie, except for the fact that Skywalker IS Darth Vader! Why didn’t anyone tell me! Seriously, it was a good movie. Most people could predict most of it, but it was still a good story.

After the movie we walked along Austin Street. They had some street fare. I had a crab cake sandwich for lunch. The thing was like the size of a hamburger. it was good, and didn’t hurt my stomach. I got some peanut butter fudge for desert. Cold stone creamery beaconed but it started to rain before I could get over there. Still not sure why there was a fair, but it was interesting. I passed on the funnel cake. No one else seemed to want it, so I didn’t want to pig out on my own. I searched but could not find a churro guy. Man street fairs are great for really bad for you (AKA very tasty) food.

NASA Operations as a Role Model

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I have always been fascinated with space, space travel, the stars, etc. I always wanted to be a pilot, but alas my vision does not permit that. I still have a love for all things fast! Because of my love of space, I have always been interested in NASA, the space shuttle, etc. My dad is also into that stuff, so he partly drove my interest. I would never have thought of making similarities regarding the technical work I do and NASA.

A few years back Gus got me thinking about technical operations. How a data center is run. How a corporate network is run. He always made the comparison of run the network like NASA runs a space mission. Granted I will be the first person to say what I do is not NASA, but it is the process that we are trying to mimic and not space travel!

Now at first I was like how do you compare the two? The answer is it is all in the procedure. It doesn’t matter what you are doing (putting a person into space, or launching a website) it is the operational theory that ensures that things go right. Sounds far fetched? Maybe. Maybe you have to manage some sort of technical operations to understand?

The basis for this theory as I see it is the following:

1. Never assume anything

2. Have a minute by minute plan for all tasks

3. Have contingencies for everything (when possible). Also note points of no return, roll back’s etc.

4. If a mistake happens, isolate it and ensure it never happens again.

There is a ton more things to go over, but sitting here those are the biggest things that come to mind. It boils down to never leaving anything to chance.

This type of thinking got me (kicking and screaming sometimes) to put together firm policies and procedures to keep our network operating. Every time we have an issue come up it is, how do we prevent this from happening again? I am learning that Technical Operations is really a way of thinking, not just a job!

I am thinking about it more today because I am in the middle of reading “Failure is not an option” by Gene Kranz. Gus gave me the book over a year ago. I started to read it but got side tracked. For some reason I sat down to read it today and I finished half of the book. It is a fascinating read. I don’t know why I stopped reading it last summer. It makes me want to continue my efforts at “operationalizing” things at work. And everyone wonders why I am such a pain in the ass about documenting everything. I do have a method for my madness! It is all about the process. No one person can hold any bit of information. That is why the NASA guys would pretend people had accidents during simulations to ensure that if the real thing happened, everything would work normally! Like I said, a fascinating read. Back to the book for me!

iSync Perfection or One Big Mess?

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I switched from using Entourage to iCal/Address Book for syncing my data to/from my Treo 650 on the Mac. I want the slick UI and terrific integration of Address Book & iCal, but I am concerned about some issues. Firstly I rely on Palm/outlook categories on my Treo. Primarily I use them for distinctive rings on the phone. if work calls I get a specific ring. if people I don’t want to call my cell are in a specific category they goto voice mail and don’t ring, etc. Looks like iSync does not keep the categories intact if I make changes to the categories. This sucks. If I create new contacts on my Mac I need to manually assign them categories when the contact goes onto my Palm.

It also looks like some fields don’t carry over either. I don’t see birthday’s that I entered into Outlook now that the contacts are in Address book. I think IM names are also not carried over.

Don’t get me started about my iCal invites not working in Outlook. There is some hackish fix out there but I don’t want to mess around with it.

Why then do I move/try to move to this? The integration between Address Book, iCal, iChat, Mail, etc is fantastic. That I can add a contact to address book and associate that contact to my AIM contact list in iChat is fantastic. The same goes for my jabber contacts. Linking every contact to email in Mail is also great. I can also sync everything using .Mac to my min and powerbook! Top it off with using spotlight to search everything, and I am a happy person. It makes for easy day to day use. The problem is when I want to get that information out into my Treo I run into issues. I don’t even care that I have problems when I import everything from the Treo to Outlook. I don’t want to use outlook anymore. I have had so many problems with it recently that I could live with using it just for an email archive. But at least work in the Treo!!! I am continuing my search of the internet for solutions or work around’s to my little issues. So far, no luck.

Star Wars III

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I have been asked by over a dozen people what I was doing for the newest Star Wars movie. I have told everyone I didn’t know, but if I anyone wanted to go and had tickets so I didn’t have to wait on line I would be there. Well everyone agreed with that assessment of not wanting to wait on line, but no one had any ideas. Sometimes I think I hang out with people who have no creative ideas what so ever on what to do (at night). Of course I am the same way, but that is getting side tracked. So I have potentially like 12 people to see Star Wars with, but here I am Saturday morning and I have no firm plans yet to see the movie.

I will probably call my friends Rich and Amanda and see what they are up to. They are the biggest Star Wars fans I know, I think. I haven’t seen them in ages, and I want to get together with them anyway, so this sounds perfect. But knowing them, they may have gone already! I will know soon.

More Softphones That Are Cool!

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I got the chance to play with Cisco’s new IP Communicator software. Well it is not that new anymore, but it was new to me. I had used their older IP Softphone software. This is just a new version of their phone-less phone. IP Communicator lets you use your computer as the telephone. The concept is fantastic, and IP Communicator actually works as advertised.

The software emulates the look of a Cisco 7970 IP Phone. You can do 4 way conference calls (we cannot do that on the 7940’s we have). Answering and placing calls is as easy as having a hard phone. Searching the Corporate directory is faster now that you have a real keyboard to search. The call quality was great.

I need to try the software out from a cable modem this weekend. I have it on my Thinkpad to give it a whirl.

Softphone did allot of what I just discussed, but it was a pain to setup and configure. Communicator was simple to do. The only draw backs will be fixed when we move to CCM 3.3.4 or later. The main issue being extension mobility not working.

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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All Consuming Project

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The move downstairs is taking up allot more of my time than I would have liked. I am on my way home now. Kai and Co. will make sure the cubes are finished and the cable work is done right.

Now that the contracts are back, our data center wants to schedule the move of our gear to our new cage. I need to call them tomorrow. Hopefully we can do everything and have ourselves up in the new cage by mid June. Then all we have to worry about is IPCC.

On other notes I am working on getting a DC into VMware, still. I got side tracked since I had to goto Kingston. I will demote one of our DC’s tomorrow and bring it online as a virtual machine.

Still waiting to run the active directory upgrade at our data center. this will enable us to have 2003 domain controllers. This will be helpful for Biztalk 2004.

Cube Work

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The furniture guys are doing there thing today and tomorrow. I feel like the 3rd wheel, but it does look good that we are keeping tabs on what is going on. Don’t you love obligations? I did get some work done today, but since it is cramped in the IS office up here I was unable to get on a windows box and do some of the work I wanted to do. I have my powerbook only on this trip. I didn’t want to mess with my thinkpad until I get a new one, so I am on my mac only this trip. I have done it before on day trips. I can do most of what I need on it, but not everything.

Tomorrow I hope they finish moving the cubes downstairs. they haven’t started yet. They (furniture guys) setup the offices first today. The cubes are tomorrow.

More later…

Tuesday Night Out?

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My friend John is taking a job in the city. This is a big change from working way out on Long Island. To mark the change of venue for him we are going out tonight. Not sure why tonight over any other night since he hasn’t started the job yet, but who am I to argue. As far as I know John, Dave, and Jayson are in. Not sure who else will be joining us.

As I write this, my own attendance is questionable, but looking better as the minutes pass. I took the early train back to the city and it was an hour late. Now it is running slow, so I have no idea what time we will get into Penn. They say 5:30PM, but I have no idea. If we make that time table I have enough time to goto the office and drop off my luggage and then head out to wherever we are going. Jayson claims that John will “go out” in manhattan more now that he works here. The jury is still out on that also, but we shall see. I don’t know if my wallet can keep up with John. He knows how to spend money, usually on good food and drink but spending none the less.

Travel Day

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I don’t have many of them any more, but today was a travel day (sort of). I used to consider a “travel day” a day where most of what I did was travel from one place to another. Now that I don’t travel as much (and am much happier for it) I don’t have as many as I used to. Dam, the last time I was on a plane was September. Most of my travel is train travel now a days.

I am at the hotel now. I got hear relatively early. Normally when I stay here (my companies other office) I am usually at work late. Today was different. I needed to be here for 2 days while work went on during normal business hours. That means I got to keep normal hours, well sort of.

I learned that getting to the hotel at 6PM means dinner at 7, 7:30. After checking mail, making calls, etc, I am bored and it is only 8:30. So I sit here on the bed with my ipod listening to toons, while I write on my powerbook. I will try to goto bed early, but I don’t know if that will happen.

I had the surf and turf at the hotel restaurant again tonight. I had it the last time I was up with Jayson. it was good, and only $3 more than the normal steak I get. I had a drink and felt nice and relaxed. I didn’t have more, since it was really early and I didn’t want to be tired and out of it the rest of the night. that was just in case I decide to be productive later.