scott

Remote Power Control

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I think we designed our Data Center pretty well. Keith and I spent hours toiling over different ways we can make it better over the past 2 years. One area that I think we need improvement is the ability to power cycle a server remotely. We can view what is on our KVM remotely. I can go into the bios or configure a network card even if the computer is not on the internet. This is thanks to a backup dial up connection, and an IP KVM. the only thing I cannot do is hit the power button on a computer if it crash’s. That would be the ultimate ability. Besides changing tapes, I would have no other reason to goto our data center on a daily basis.

This would also save us money. We pay to have someone go to our cage and do what is called “remote hands”.

Virus’s At Work

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If you read the news you must hear about all the worms and other “bad things” spreading through the internet. My company has been diligent in attempting to prevent these things from infecting our computers. We have not been 100% protected, but from what I have seen we are way ahead of the curve in protecting ourselves.

I have seen lots of virus alerts from our virus scanning system. Thankfully, it is able to deal with whatever comes up. Also important is the Windows Update server. That thing is a life saver. I don’t know if we would have been able to install all these updates on all of our desktops without it. We need to goto the next level and get an SMS or ZEN type system next.

I have never been a huge fan of Novel, but they have caught my curiosity. What they are doing with Suse keeps me interested. Also that their directory services work on Windows is also cool. All that and ZEN Works is much better than SMS, or that has been my practical experience. I don’t know how SMS 2004 holds up. I keep telling myself that my company is a windows shop, we don’t want Novell. The other side of my brain is saying “you know Novell is better, give it a try”. For now I am ignoring that side of the brain. I would like to get a demo of Novell and give it a test drive. When (if) things ever settle down enough that I can try that, I will. Novell NDS, running on Suse linux. Now that would be really nice, if it worked as easy as the old novell used to!!!

3TB, Still Building

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Jayson started building a 3.x terrabyte disk array friday afternoon. It began to initilize friday. As of last night it was only at 53% complete. I will give it a few more days before I get worried. 3 terrabytes is allot of drive space. We currently buy Promise SATA and IDE RAID array’s. For the money, they are awsome. You get an unbelievable amount of storage space for so little, and the speed is not far off its more expensive SCSI disk cousin’s. These array’s actually use a SCSI backplane back to the servers they connect to.

In the past year I have gone from technology snop only wanting nice SCSI disk array’s from the likes of HP & Dell, to a huge proponent of Serial ATA. I have to say Promise makes a good product. The only downside may be we go through drives quckly. Not sure if it is coincidence or what we do, but I have had 4 drives go bad over the past year on a total of 5 disk array’s. Now when you add up that each array has 15 drives, it may not seem like allot. I may be over-reacting. In fact I think I am, but I have other SCSI arrays with no problems. It isn’t an issue yet, but I am keeping my eye on the situation.

All in all, SATA, or IDE RAID is solid and more than half the cost of it’s SCSI equivalent.

Konfabulator Rocks

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Way back (almost a year to the day) in May 2003 I talked about Konfabulator. I have been using it for over a year. it is a fantastic program. It is what Microsoft tried to do with Active Desktop, but couldn’t. I have widgets (what each component is called) for the weather, itunes remote, moon phases (it is cool), cpu utilization, airport signal strength, and a host of others that I can use. I have about 4-5 widgets running at all times on my Powerbook or iMac and I haven’t once had a cpu or memory issue because of it. it sips the memory.

Some of the widgets are cool, but useless. Others like the weather and itunes remote widgets I use all the time. Ok, my endless praise of Konfabulator is over now. Back to my normal ranting….

Hanging By The Pool

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Alison and I hung by the pool today. I took advantage of the pool at my building. She came over and we got some sun and swam. it was a really relaxing afternoon.

I cut my outside time short when I realized I may get really burned if I continue to stay in the sun without any sun block. As a consolation we went to the outback for dinner. Good as always. I just had some cheese fries and crab cake appetizer. I am on a crab cake frenzy this past few weeks. I hope the fad wears off, since they are expensive.

Saturday I just hung out at home and did some work. It was a low key weekend. I like that sometimes.

Surpirse Birthday Dinner Friday

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I forget the name of the restaurant but we all meet in soho for a surprise dinner for Dari. The place was half a block from the Apple store in soho. I just remember the really weird yellow chairs.

The problem with the whole surprise was Dari wouldn’t leave work. So we were late for our reservations. We didn’t want to leave and have her leave at the same time as the group. So we all waited for her to leave. The problem was she never did. By the time alyssa said lets go, Dari was walking out. So what we tried to avoid happened. We all lied and said we were going to dinner some place. then we walked the really long way around the block so we didn’t end up on the same subway as her. It was really funny.

We ended up at the restaurant first, and it was a real surprise. It was fun. I had the chicken with crab cakes appetizer. I got really buzzed off of one kamikaze. I had a second but ended up giving it away since I didn’t want to get smashed. I am a light weight when it comes to alcohol but 1 drink usually doesn’t buzz me. Oh well…

Birthday Lunch At American

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It was Dari & Jennifer’s birthday’s at work friday. We went out to America for a lunch. There was like 22 of us. It was a huge table. it was a nice time out. It was the first of 2 celebrations for their birthday. Dari’s boyfriend had setup a surprise dinner for her so we didn’t want to have her figure out she had a dinner that night, so we went to lunch.

Check out the mob for photos…

Shopping

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Jayson and I went shopping at Macy’s after work today. We are never good shopping together. We make each other spend money. I bought 4 new pairs of paints, 3 shirts, and some socks. For me that was allot. I got so much since they were on sale 50% off. My problem is I bought a type of paints that I never had before. I was not 100% sure on the size and if I will like them. If I do like them I am going to get more… Jayson also spent some $$$ on paints.

He got me buying the dockers paints that are wrinkle resistant and stain resistant. You can pore coffee on the paints and they wont stain. They will dry fast also. Water beads right off of them. I like the fact that I can wash them in the machine and not have to iron them. That will save me $ on dry cleaning. My current khakis get nasty fast. I hope these dockers wear better.

And I said I would not spend allot this month since I want to move. Oh well:(

Work, It Was Hot

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I got allot done at work today. I setup 4 websites. I configured IIS, our Cisco Local Directors, etc. now all I need to do is get the SSL id’s for them. Jayson got cracking on the 3 new servers we just got in. 1 is done, and another is partially done. We also got through a bunch of support tickets. All in all a good day, except for the heat.

We fled the heat to the server / telecom room for allot of the day. it was just too hot, and I couldn’t sit in my office all day knowing AC was 20 feet from me. I still ended up out in the heat for at least half the day.

Most of the office left early to play softball. We stayed and finished up some work. I am not ready to play softball yet.

Check out the Mo-blog. One of our developers, James went out and bought a portable pool. They filled it with water and I got some pictures of people sitting in the office with their feet in the pool. it is really funny. yes it was that hot…

Birthday Lunch Special At Angelo Maxi’s

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Went with Jayson and Dan to angelo maxi’s steak house for Jayson’s birthday today. It was good food like always. We had the lunch special. For $20.99 you get soup or salad (i don’t eat it) a steak of some kind, and desert. I get the cheese cake. It is awesome for like $26 after tax and tip. It is not an everyday thing, but once in a while it is nice, and allot cheaper than their regular meal at dinner time.