Making some back end changes to this site and my other server systems. The biggest achievement was moving my mail server. Basically a cut and paste of files and registry entries from one server to the virtual server I am using to host much of my site now a days. The DNS changes to the mail happened very fast. I was happy not to have much of a lag.
scott
Poker Night a Bust, Well Sort of
Started the day off with a hair cut. Then I headed down to help my friend Cari finish moving her stuff into her new apartment. My timing was off. Due to traffic I beat (she called when she thought she was 30 minutes away) her to her place. I met Karen there and we ended up waiting for like 30 minutes for Cari, Jayson & Gretchen to show up. It was funny that we ended up waiting to unpack her car longer than it actually took to unload stuff. Because there was a bunch of us, and she didn’t have much stuff, we were done in like 20 minutes. Note to sell, my original thoughts on never living in a walk up are still valid. Don’t even think about it!
After moving stuff in we went out for pizza. I mean she does live in Little Italy. For me I then headed off to the office to kill about 2 hours until I had to show up at Dan’s for poker. I got some light work in, and Jayson met me there. He had to drop off his fish to our office tank. We then both headed over to dan’s.
Turns out most people couldn’t make it to the poker night so we only had 5 people (4 if you consider jayson didn’t want to play and just came to hang out). We played a bit but not the typical tournament style. Dan lost. I made $2, Dari broke even, and Billy (Dari’s brother) took all of Dan’s money. We had a good time for a small game. Jay brought Pierre, so he and Cooper played the whole time. Watching 2 dogs play is always funny!
On-Call This Week
After weeks of flying under the radar I got the joy of being “technically” on call this weekend. I mean technically since I am always on call. I get calls for problems even when I am not the person who is supposed to be called. It comes with my position. One of the worst things that can happen to me is to be sleeping and get woken up with some major systems outage. It get the same feeling I used to get when I ran on an EMS squad in college and a call would come in late at night. The only difference is being on call at work usually does not require me to go out in the cold to respond to something.
To set a good example I took the on call pager this week. Well it is not really a pager. We all have nextel’s (most with Blackberry’s), so we just route the emergency number to the Nextel of whoever is on call. Of course most of the team was happy when I got to be on call. They assume if someone calls for a non emergency I will give them a verbal beat down. They are probably correct.
Linux Is Addictive
For years I have been getting poked and prodded by Gus to do more with linux. Of course he would say this as he gave me a workload no 2 people could handle. Over the past few months Jayson and Danny have been getting into the act of wanting to push our linux use, personal and professional. Now I got Brian, Chris and Kai also saying we should play more with Linux.
Jayson took it upon himself to setup a web server at his house. it is an old dell box I had lying in my closet. I have yet to put any applications onto it, but he has a website, blog, wiki, and mail system running on it so far. His enthusiasm is addictive. I have been working on a virtual machine that I can host my stuff in, but I am thinking that won’t be enough. I could just host my stuff with him. That was the idea of giving him the box in the first place, but then I think what fun would that be?
I want to play with my own personal wiki. The other stuff he has done I don’t really want. The mail server sounds good, but I am not sure if I want to put mail (i rely on mail allot) on a system that I don’t fully understand yet.
What everyone doesn’t (or does) understand is that I want to learn, it is just not super simple!
Maybe YOU Should Think?
I just read this article and I am very thankful that this guy took the time to write it. American consumers are (most some of the time) a bunch of little cry babies. Use some simple common sense, and curtsey and you will be ok!!!
Oh, and while I am on the subject of etiquette, if you are on the subway don’t assume the train is designed just for you. Maybe get out of the way of the door so people can get on and off. or maybe don’t sit like you do at home taking up 4 spaces on a bench that can seat allot of people if you would only move your fat ass! Now I feel a bit better.
Tax Day
Today is tax day. I feel compelled to do my tax’s and file on time. Oh wait I remember that I did that like 2 months ago and already have my refund. It was so long ago that I forgot I did it. I don’t understand why people wait so long to file? my dad does that. I mean if are owed money, then file early to get your money. If you owe money, just get it over with. Maybe I don’t like stuff like that hanging over my head. Oh well.
Yet More Vmware Stories
I have spent 2 days working on fixing my active directory test virtual machines. I upgraded to vmware workstation 5.0 hoping to solve some cloning issues. if that doesn’t (didn’t) fix my issue I will use Microsoft sysprep on the virtual machines to resolve the SID problems.
I am also building myself a stable Suse 9.1 VM. The process of upgrading all the VM’s I have to work with workstation 5.0 will also take some time. The Kingston guys finally saw how I can connect to our GSX server today when I was up there. now they want one.
After some initial issues with the Suse 9.1 VM I am on my way to getting this to work. I keep hitting roadblocks with my configuration. it just shows how much I have to learn when it comes to linux.
No Cell Phones On The Subway
i decided that I don’t want cell phones to work on the subway. I live off of my phone. I like having it working everywhere, but I came to a dangerous conclusion recently. Other people are not considerate. The dumb-ass who plays with his ring tones, plays games with the sound on, etc. will not have any problems having a loud conversation the entire 20 minutes that I am on the train. That would be 10 times worse than me not getting a call. Being underground with (lets face it sometimes some people with no etiquette) people who can use a phone would be bad. it is the same reason why I don’t want cell phones to work on airplanes. I think the idea is great, but I don’t trust other people to use the “privilege” properly. It is bad enough that I go onto Amtrak or the LIRR and have to sit next to chatty kathy.
My two cents from a technology enthusiast. I can stick to my ipod and reading the news while on the subway!
Faster Internet, Much Faster
We completed our upgrade to a brand new 4.5 meg internet link tonight in our office. We dropped our redundant T-1 connections in favor of the less reliable (arguably) single link with triple the amount of bandwidth. We (i) did it for like $400 cheaper than we were paying before using the same provider. Lets hope this alleviates some of the bandwidth issues we have seen in the office.
Some minor issues slowed us down, but in the end we were up and running in like 2 hours. Next up is the analysis on our Kingston office to see if they warrant an upgrade to 3 or 4.5 meg links. They require a more redundant connection but they have been expanding and their bandwidth may start becoming a problem. I think we can find the point in time where we believe the bandwidth will trend higher than we can support and get an upgrade done.
Crap Desktop Upgrades
I am going to my sisters place in a bit to take their 5-6 year old P-III 700 and upgrade them to a 3 year old P-4 1.5 or so. Only for my sister would I waste time on upgrading them from really old crap, to just crap. They don’t want to spend the cash on a new machine and they think this will do what they need. I don’t want to argue with them, but if it was anyone else I would not be doing this. So much crap can go wrong with an upgrade like this. lets just hope for none of them to happen.
On the plus side I get to see morgan!