scott

AC Update

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The final word on the office AC has came down. Turns out our master plan cannot be enacted in time for it to get hot. It will be 77 degrees today. The problem we had in the past was the water tower we use to cool our water cooled AC’s put out really dirty and warm water. 80 degrees in NYC, but the water cooling the AC in kingston is coming into the system at 50 degrees. See the difference?

The other problem was the units we have are very old, and we had a full office. We have allot less people in the office now. The plan is to plug back in our old systems since we cannot install air cooled units in time for summer. The building we are in will take over control of the water tower and fix it up. This is a departure from the past when they wanted nothing to do with the tower. We are hoping that once the tower is in good working order we will actually get cool air in the office. I am crossing my fingers and toes.

I cannot go through another hot summer like the past 2, without good AC. If the AC sucks, I will be summering in the computer room. You will see me in October or so…

Jury Duty Calls

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Tonight I have to start calling to see if I need to show up for jury duty. I can suck it up and do it, but the problem is we have something major going on at work next week. Wednesday and Thursday we are reconfiguring our NYC office. I am one of the 2 people that knows what we want to do. The other guy is not as technical so I am pretty much it. If I have to show up at the court house one of those days we have problems. I have not yet figured out what I am going to do about that.

I start calling today at 5PM…

Kingston Again

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Tomorrow I have to goto Kingston again. This trip is to see the plans for our expansion of our call center. If you consider phase 1 opening the call center. Phase 2 will be to fill out the call center with the max amount of seats in the current physical space. Phase 3 is what we are going to discuss. That will be to build another section of the call center that will double the total area when completed.

I will also meet with Kai and Brian about any open issues we have going on. I know Kai and I need to talk about adding licenses to our phone system. We are maxing the system out at peak times recently.

Dan and I are taking the train up together. Glenn will meet us there by car later in the day. We should be getting a ride from him back to the city in the afternoon.

Apartment Hunting

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I went to see what the apartment scene looks like in Manhattan today. I looked at midtown on the east side today. Nice places, but far from the subway. 1st Ave. is far from the subway. I don’t care how nice the place is.

One thing I realized is how big my current place is. I couldn’t physically fit all my furniture in any of the places I looked at today. not that they were really small, but my current place is really big.

I am going to look at the west side next week. I am beginning to think near the subway is a must.

Apartment Choices

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For several months I have been rethinking my decision to live where I live. I live out “way out” in Queens, and commute to Manhattan every day for work. It takes me an hour during rush hour, and longer after hours. I don’t have a subway near me so I take the LIRR.

The work commute has begun to be difficult, and it is also tough to go out after work because I worry about train connections. Also showing up in the event of an emergency at the office is almost impossible.

Last week I finally decided I needed to move. I love my current place, but as they say, location, location, location.

I spoke to my landlady last night and she asked for 60 days to find someone else. Other than that she is going to let me out of my lease. I am sending her a copy of the current lease with the date revisions on it, and she will sign it and send it back to me. I would assume that should be enough proof for me if I need to prove the changes.

I will give her till AuGust 1, 2004 and then I will be gone. Hopefully I will find something and move sometime in July. July 15 is perfect, but July 1is doable.

I am off to look at some places with a broker today. Alyssa and AJ at work both used her and they loved her. She is also no fee, that is a nice change of pace from the 1 to 1 1/2 months rent I have paid as a fee in the past.

I gave her my broad requirements for a place and she said that for the price range I am looking for I should have no problem finding an apartment. I am scheduled to see her today to see some places. I am told it is kind of early to be looking for an apartment for July, but I want to see what my options will look like.

Wayne’s 40th

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My cousin Synde made a surprise 40th birthday party for her husband Wayne. He was totally taken by surprise.

It was at a italian restaurant near their house in South Jersey. The food was really good. I had crab cakes italian style. It was very good. I got to see most of my cousins. Thankfully it was the cousin’s that I actually like seeing.

Merric and Arrielle are getting so big. Cerina is also growing up. It is also scary to see my older cousins. Marisa, Sari, and Adrienne are all in college. It is weird. I remember Adrienne when she was Cerina’s age and barely talking. I am getting old:( Of course not as old as wayne!!! Sorry wayne but I had to put that in!

Carrie and Morgan also came with us to the party. Morgan played all afternoon with her cousins. She hasn’t seen half these people since she was 2 months old, but she instinctively bonded with them. It was like she knew they were family. It was very cute to watch Cerina and Morgan play together. All Cerina wanted to do was hug Morgan. It was very funny.

In general it was a busy but good weekend. Now the train is in the east river tunnel, and I have to prepare for a week of work…

What’s Going On?

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I have taken a few days off from blogging. I have been busy. Thursday night / Friday morning Jayson and I did our rewiring of our NYC computer room. We redid an entire rack. We also fixed the KVM’s in NYC. It took us from 9PM till around 4AM to complete the work. I was so tired afterward.

I was stupid during the work. I climbed onto of 2 of our racks to free up some caught cable. Getting down I hit my elbow on a rack door. It hurt. It is nice and black and blue now. Well actually it looks better now, but was black and blue when I did it Thursday night.

I didn’t get much sleep Friday morning. I had to get back to work. I ended up getting back to the office at 12:15PM. Turns out we got everything back online except 1 server. The server was ok, but the disk array plugged into it was not responding. Thankfully Gus got it working by rebooting it. This was not before he complained that jay and I were not in the office in the morning. He forgot about a little thing called sleep.

Surprisingly I completed the day friday like normal. I still don’t think I have caught up on sleep though.

I just hung out at home Friday night. I needed a night to just relax.

Saturday was another story. Due to our domain controller problem from last Monday I have had tape backup issues all week. The tape backup system runs on the domain controller that went down. So I have been working on getting the backups working like normal since Tuesday. I had to work on the backups a bit Saturday. Still no resolution. I also had to cancel plans with alison because of the problems.

After working on the backups, I got a call from Dan about a poker game. I was in.

My dad gave me a rid to the train so I wouldn’t have to leave a car there all night. As we pulled up to the station I realized it was May 1st and I had forgotten my new may monthly ticket. I should have taken that as a sign how my luck was going to go at poker that night and just go home. Of course I didn’t.

I had to get my cousin a 40th birthday gift so I went to best buy and got a gift card. I waited for the 1 train for 20 minutes before one came. That was another sign that my luck was not going my way. At best buy I did get to cut the entire line because I was paying by credit card and no one else seemed to be. That was a piece of good luck.

At poker I ended up loosing $40.00. That is not allot. I thought I was going to loose really quick. I lost my initial 2000 in chips, and then another 1000. I sat for a while before I could buy back in for the last time. By then I figured I would be out quick. Maybe be the first of the 8 to go out. Turns out I held on pretty long. I ended up being in 4th place. Granted it was a distant 4th from the guy in 3rd, but I held out for so long. Everyone left kept trying to kill me off for like an hour. That is what you do in that situation. But I just kept getting good enough (or great) hands that kept me alive. I wish that my luck was that good during the first half of the game. That way I might have had enough money to have been a threat by the end. All in all I had a good time.

I got to bed late again Saturday. actually by the time I got into bed it was early sunday morning.

Yet More Train Delays

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Just went through an interesting train issue this morning. I was on a train and they just tell us to get off due to equipment problems. The good news was we were already at a station. The bad news was we ended up waiting 30 minutes or so from the time we stopped till we got on another train.

The good news is I got a seat on the new train. That is always a plus. I am now officially late for work.

UPDATE: took me an extra 30 minutes more to get to Penn from when I originally wrote this entry. In total it was like an extra hour to my commute. I just love the LIRR sometimes…

Tuesday Late Night, Wednesday Work From Home

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Tuesday was a late night for me. I stayed up late to finish adding Backup Exec agents to some servers that could not be brought down until after midnight. I then did some troubleshooting on some other backup issues. The goal was to get a good backup tuesday night. I was able to do so. I finally finished work at like 2/2:30AM.

By the time I got up and dressed Wednesday morning. it was already almost 11AM. It was then that I decided to work from home. Some people like to do that. I always think I like to do that, until I actually do it. News flash, I don’t like working from home. On one hand I do get allot done since less people bother me for stuff. On the other hand it is lonely sitting in an empty apartment working on the computer. If I lived closer to the office I would have been in.

I finished working on some more backup related issues Wednesday. Also worked through an issue with Kai & Jay related to some phone problems. Dan and I also tracked down an AT&T rep to discuss a bill we have issues with.

I also worked on cleaning up some ACL;s on our firewall’s. Most if not all of our restriction problems have now been resolved.

Drinks With Dave

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Jay and I met up with Dave and his cousin for some drinks after work today. dave still doesn’t know what he wants to do for a living. His cousin johnny is always interesting. I cut out early so I could rest up a bit in order to install some backup agents tonight for work.

We went to a cool bar on 35th and madison ave. It had over 100 beers. I think on tap. I am not a big beer drinker, but they did have some interesting stuff. I just stuck with Jack Daniel’s and Coke. Can’t go wrong with Jack and Coke.