scott

System Monitoring

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I spent most of the day yesterday trying to fix a problem we had with Whatsup Gold monitoring system. One developer group said they were not getting pages. We saw tons of pages for them, but we looked into it. Well turns out the system was working, but had trouble with reboots to the server we had it on. After a reboot the monitoring system didn’t start up properly, even after we initialized it. While I was looking at the system it completely stopped sending pages. I got fed up and moved it to a different box. now it is all happy and working. Not sure why it wasn’t working properly. Maybe it was Backup Exec running on the same box, or Windows 2003 (even though we have used it on 2k3 before). I don’t know. I just know Gus wanted it working, and now it is.

While I was investigating my problems I checked (for like the 10th time) to see if Microsoft posted Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) to MSDN. It finally had, and I downloaded it. I really want to see if it will solve my other issues I am having with Whatsup Gold. We have the guys over at BMC also giving us a demo of their software, but I haven’t had time to run a test server of their BMC Patrol. I will look over MOM in a bit more detail next week.

The Waiting

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Friday for lunch Jayson and I went to the shake shack in Madison Square Park. it is a good burger place. Well I waited 35 minutes for a fast food burger and a shake. I like the food, but I don’t think I will ever go back there. I mean I am all about good greasy burgers and thick shakes (Mmmm shakes), but over 30 minutes waiting for food, come on!

Next time I crave a fast food burger, I will goto Wendy’s. it was across the street from where we waited. The sign just stared at us like it was saying “why didn’t you come eat by me, you know I am tasty”. I may have been hallucinating from lack of food while waiting in the sun!

DVR’s

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I am sitting at home (fighting a cold) today. What to do? Watch TV of course. I am cleaning out my Tivo of things I want to watch. After that I decided to play around with my Eye TV USB. it is a DVR for my Mac. It is a great little device, that I don’t use as often as I would like. It act’s just like a Tivo. It records the files right to my Powerbook’s hard drive, which is cool. It can export to MPEG-1 so I can burn a VCD. that is also cool. I would like to burn as a DVD using MPEG-2 files, but I don’t want to upgrade to the newer version (EyeTV-200) that will do that. EyeTV also does not require me to pay a monthly subscription fee. Why then don’t I use it all the time? It has one fatal flaw.

I have a digital cable box (2 actually). In order for me to get digital cable channels I need to plug the EyeTV into the Digital Cable box. When the EyeTV wants to record something it cannot change the Cable box’s channel. That means if I want to record something on the EyeTV I need to change the channel on the cable box for it. What good is that unless I am at the TV? Now if they made some sort of IR channel changer that Tivo has to resolve this problem then I would not need my Tivo. With the majority of the US population with cable or satellite, why not have this option? This is a great product, that I can’t use that much because of this limitation. I have no way around it for now. I am warming up to the DVR on a computer idea. I would rather do this on my Mac, then finding a PC solution. I don’t even know if the PC TV cards can change cable box channels? My old ATI All in Wonder Pro had the same issue.

For now I will stick with my Tivo. I love it, and have not found anything that works better. That said I keep going back to replayTV’s website to check out their warez every few months.

Update

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Got 1 wrong on my first EMT quiz. Not bad, but nothing to brag about since this is the 3rd time I have taken an EMT basic course in 10 years. CPR class is boring. I got most of the scenarios right on the first try. It was like riding a bike, you never really forget. I just needed to brush up on what is the current protocol for things.

I am getting a cold, or that is how I felt this afternoon. I took some cold meds to try and head off the impending shitty feeling. I will know tomorrow if I get any worse.

I want to write more about stuff that happened at work today, but I am tired. Hopefully I will post this weekend and talk about the good conversation we had with some high up exec’s at Cisco. I always find it weird (in a good way) when very high up people at billion dollar companies spend time to talk to people at relatively small companies about buying their product. I felt the same way when Gus spoke to John Chambers last spring. More about that later.

Rumor New Treo’s Oct. 25

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I have read on many tech sites that the new Treo will be out in late October. I am saving up to get it once it is out for T-Mobile. If the last Treo release is any indication of how long I will have to wait for T-Mobile to release the Treo, I have until March to wait for it. Lets hope PalmOne buying handspring has fixed the REALLY long wait times for the phone to be released.

Several people in my office have the Treo 600’s and a few of us already plan on upgrading when the new one comes out. Jayson on the other hand is hoping to pick one of our 600’s up on the cheap when we upgrade.

My New Favorite Browser

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I have mentioned before I am no longer a fan of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Maybe it is the features it doesn’t have. Maybe it is the fact that MSFT decided to stop making a Mac version of the browser. Maybe it is just because it is a Microsoft product that someone has created a comparable product. I have been known to use alternate products to a Microsoft product if it is (to me) as good, just to say Microsoft I love your stuff but you should not be making everything under the sun.

I have been a fan of IE since version 4.0, but I think it’s time has past. Over the past 2 years I have seen myself using Mozilla almost exclusively. Some products and websites require IE so I still use it, but only when I have to.

The people who make Mozilla have come out with a new browser. it is their next generation browser. What they did was separate the browser from the mail / newsgroup client and created 2 products. The web browser is Firefox. It hasn’t exactly gone gold. Gold in software terms is the final version of a product. They have a new version out, and called it 1.0PR (preview release). So it is kind of / sort of the final version but not really. For me it was enough to download on my Mac. I have been using it since a day or so after it came out. So far I like it as much or better than Mozilla. I only installed it on my main Windows PC tonight. It is very similar to Mozilla, but I have noticed it loads allot faster. I think I may have found my new favorite browser.

I will put aside my disapproval of the naming convention of the browser since I like it so much. If it is not the final version then don’t call it version 1.0. Just keep it in beta. I am not a fan of software company’s using wide spread releases of software as their final beta’s or “preview releases”. I guess I am just one of the million’s of guinea pigs for Mozilla.org. At least the software works, and it is not painful being in a lab experiment…

Star Wars DVD

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I just finished watching the Empire Strikes Back on DVD. It was as good as I remember it. The one issue I had was that I only got my two front speakers to work with the DVD. I am about to try a different DVD to make sure nothing is wrong with my sound system, but I think all is well. The question is why am I not getting the awesome digital surround sound that I should be?

Weird. After pressing a few random buttons on my stereo system I am now getting all speakers working with Return of the Jedi. Oh well. I may just have to re-watch Empire to get the better sounds!

Cleaning House

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I went to Bed Bath & Beyond with Jayson and Gretchen last night before dinner. I was planning on getting some towels for my bathroom and maybe check out the bedroom sets. I left the store 30 minutes later with new towel’s, and a nice comforter set to replace my aging Ralph Lauren Denim set I currently have. In return BB&B decided to keep a whole bunch of my money. I wasn’t planning on spending as much as I did, but I saw something I liked and decided to just buy it. It wasn’t what I set out to get. I was looking for another set of denim sheets and comforter. Funny how things don’t end up how you planned them, but you end up being happy anyway?

It is now the 2nd of the month and I will be watching my budget the rest of the month. But I will be sleeping nice and comfy in my new blanket.

On a side note, Ralph Lauren why did you stop making plan denim comforters? They rocked.

After shopping we went to eat at a decent Italian restaurant. Then we watched Dead Like Me on showtime. I like that show and it would be the only reason I get showtime. But I won’t spend the money showtime for just 1 show. So every so often I get to see it at Jay and Gretchen’s. Then I went home. With my traveling and the spending, it was a long day.

Finally A Hair Cut Guy Replacement

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I have been looking for a halfway decent person to cut my hair since I moved. I can’t even travel back to my old neighborhood and use my old guy, I tried. he is not working there for a while. I have tried 2 different places. One by work that has like 30 people working there, and a smaller place by my apartment. I went to the local place by my apartment again today. I am lazy, the last guy who cut my hair there wasn’t very good, but I figured I would try someone new. Thankfully I went. I got an older “old school” hair cutter. He actually did exactly what I wanted and used the nice straight razor to clean up the back of my head. I am very happy. The little things make me happy. I nice haircut feels good, and looks good for a few weeks.

I need to live up the good haircuts while I can. Sooner or later (hopefully later) the hair will fall out, and then I will be really upset:)