scott

The Long Reach Of Voice Over IP

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Today was a momentous day. We finally received power supplies for 2 Cisco VOIP phones. With 1 entry into our DHCP scope we turned the phone on and it saw the Cisco Call Manager. Call Manager is like a PBX or phone switch. Within 2 minutes we were making calls to my cell phone to test. It worked great. The only minor issues we have are making calls to different extensions on the same phone system. Small routing issue that we are working through.

The next step is to be able to use our call center software in NYC connecting to the servers in Kingston. We are having some minor issues with that, but we are slowly working through them. If that works we will be able to take calls in two facilities using one phone system. This is big if we have capacity issues in our new space down the road.

I now have a cisco phone at my desk in NYC. I hope to fix all the problems this week. I am very excited about getting this working.

Bring Your Powerbook To Work Day

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I didn’t take my thinkpad home last night due to the dinner. So I decided to commute in to work today with my Powerbook. It is the 2nd time in a week that I am doing it. For some reason I just feel comforatable typing on it, but not on the Thinkpad. I miss the blog entries on the train like today’s entries. Of course because I have 30 minutes to type I tend to ramble on about useless stuff. That is just what a blog is supposed to be. I will see if I will want to commute with both. I doubt it though. We shall see…

Training For A Call Center

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Yesterday a new class of trainee’s started at our Kingston Call Center. We have 24 customer service reps who will “hopefully” start taking calls full time on 9/22. The class was so big that we had to put the working reps in the training room and the people to be trained sat in the call center. Joe our Tech guy in Kingston is overloaded right now. Justin went up for 2 days to give him a hand. Justin was eager to go up, so it worked out ok. I need to get up there one day next week. I will also need to be there on the 22nd.

Besides the ongoing call center build out I have hardware swap out’s to deal with in our Data Center Thursday morning. Tomorrow will be interesting since it will be a long day.

I just received my first Penguin Computing Server. These guys make cheap linux servers. The joy of it is, I can put Windows OS’s on it without a problem. The Super Micro servers I have been buying for windows will not handle Linux. I have some issues with the hardware, but for the price we will deal with it. A decent server can be had for around $1600. I can get a really cheap one for under a grand. We are actually looking to get some cheap windows box’s and may actually use these guys.

I am still awaiting a heat sync for a Super Micro test server we are testing. I got a trial of a serial ATA server. Actually we had the financial ok to buy it but instead of buying a regular server we got this to test. If we like it, we will keep it. If we don’t like it, we will send it back and get a normal IDE server. Serial ATA looks good, and this machine can do hot swappable drives, where IDE RAID cannot.

I need to also start working on our Exchange 2003 test server. Gus and I want to get one working for the Information Systems team and see if it is easy to admin and troubleshoot. If it is we may want to make a larger scale deployment. The difference this time will be we don’t outsource it and we do it ourselves. In December of 2002 we outsourced our mail and put it on Exchange 2000. It was a horrible failure. Too much latency with accessing exchange over the WAN. We abandoned that option and returned to our original mail provider with just POP/SMTP mail. We have been happy since.

Steaks

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After much delay our telecom integration company, Gus, and I finally got together for steaks. We went to Keens chophouse in Manhattan. It was really good. The team we got finally has a clue and it was actually enjoyable to sit back and eat with these guys. I don’t think I have ever been that full after a meal. I had a hard time walking the 4 blocks to Penn Station. My paints feel tighter today!

We still have allot to do so the get together was also productive. We are looking at a bunch of other solutions they can provide assistance for.

Shopping

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I just love shopping for Morgan. Well it is really not like shopping, that is the problem. I just ordered some Elmo related stuff from amazon and had it shipped to her. I wanted to get the chicken dance elmo. I thought that it was very cool. My sister didn’t like it, but said the limbo elmo was ok. I got that and a DVD. Kids like video’s for some reason. it is like a drug for them. Thankfully at 6 months old you can do almost anything and make a baby smile. It is rather funny.

Technology Scare’s Me Some Times

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My dad wants to get a phone / PDA combo device. Now he has always been ahead of the game when it comes to gadgets. I get that from him. But he is also not the biggest computer genius. He has had a cell phone since the late 80’s. Has had a PDA or whatever they used to be called for longer than that. He now doesn’t want to carry a cell phone and a Palm. He uses his palm all the time at work, but only carry’s the cell phone in case of emergencies. He now likes the idea of combining the two. Lucky for him he has Sprint PCS. I don’t like them anymore, but at some point I did. That is why he has service with them. He actually doesn’t complain about the service so we keep him on it. My mom also likes her phone number. I say we are lucky is sprint looks like it has the biggest selection of PDA Phones. I showed him my Treo 270. He seemed to like it. Of course I showed him my original Treo over a year ago, but that is another story. I think he may be better off with one of 2 Samsung phones out there. The SPH-I300 or the SPH-I500. I like the I500, but it may be too much like a phone for my dad. He will use it as a palm more than a phone. He liked the Treo but I don’t know if the no memory expansion and the keyboard will cause him problems. He did play with the keyboard on my Treo for a half an hour today and then proclaimed we will go shopping next sunday.

Shopping with him is fun. We go for breakfast, drive out to Roosevelt Field mall area. Shop for maybe an hour and then go home. We are super fast shoppers. The only slow down we encounter is if we goto Best Buy. He can browse the DVD section for like 2 hours. That store is a black whole. Everyone I know sifts through those DVD racks forever.

Family Get Together’

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Today was my cousin Adrienne’s 21’st birthday party. It was an excuse to get together with my family. It was an interesting outage to Brooklyn. I saw some relatives I actually wish I would see more often. And then there were people who you would rather forget you were related in some way or another.

I got to play with Morgan, so it was a good day if just for that. I also got to see Cerina, Merric & Arrielle. I miss them. I need to take a weekend and get back to Jersey and stay with them again. I have been busy all summer and when I haven’t been busy, I have been tired from being busy. I need to talk to wayne a bit. I didn’t talk much with him today, and I miss talking.

Then there are the cousin’s who you know, but really don’t get to know. My cousin Samia’s kids are like 17 & 18. I don’t really ever speak to them. Samia and her husband are cool, but never hang with the kids. My cousin Shelly’s kids are cool and I get along with all three of them, but I haven’t hung out with them regularly in like 10 years. It is weird that they are all grown up now.

And then there was my Cousin Mike and his kids. My dad used to be really friendly with him, but for some reason he is so distant now. We all think it is his wife. My cousin Synde almost had a fist fight with her today over seats or something weird. Family outings are always interesting. I half wish I went with my brother in law mike to the Yankee game.

All in all I didn’t get sick at the Chinese buffet, and it was nice out. A good day. If I went on about all my cousin’s, this blog would become a psyche paper.

Tired

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The week is finally over. It has been a good week, but the weekend is here. I am yet again tired after a long work week. You may say I had off monday, but the week was still long and full of stressful work. Fun, stressful work yes. Stressful none the less.

I got almost no sleep last night. Got home late and then didn’t sleep very well. I ended up taking 2 Butabital’s (fureset’s) before lunch. It helped but I had waking up with migranes. Now this was 3 in 2 months. Not good. I was tired all day, but I still ended up going out for drinks after work. I needed it. I had a personel issue regarding a rep. I cannot go into details, but never yell at someone. Doing that is bad. I was the one recieving the yelling. It was very stressful. The situation was taken care of, but people have to chill out. That put a damper on an otherwise nice day.

Searvers, Software, And Stuff

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Every day it seems like we need another server to do this or that. I have request for 3 different things right now that I can think of that all will require new server gear. Then when I go ask for the money for the stuff I get the traditional “what do you need that for?” speech from Gus. Or the “you want to spend how much money?” speech. I know he is kidding most of the time but it highlights the tight rope I walk between what we need and not spending too much money.

With that said I need to begin testing an Exchange 2003 server within our Information Systems department. We are attempting to see how difficult it would be to use and administer an exchange server. I think it will be good to use in a small workgroup environment like the IS department, but not for a full company deployment. We will see.

Along with evaluating mail packages I want to find a good LDAP product that will allow me to share 1 address book between two facilities and remote users. We don’t all connect to the same domain, and not everyone is able to access inside servers all the time. I would like our mail system to provide LDAP, but our current provider does not offer it. Looking at alternatives now.

This week has been good because I have been looking at new technologies and software to enhance our infrastructure. Microsoft Operations Manager looks great and we may do a full scale deployment of it. We are locking down users desktops more effectively. I am in the process of deploying a log file analyzing software to digest our web server logs more effectively. The remote KVM system was also killer. Tying everything together into one systems management system will be the tricky part.

“The Office”

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I came home last night to an envelope tucked under my door. It contained a security form and a mug shot of my brother in law Mike. I got a good laugh at that one. He has been using my Apartment to study. He can’t find a quiet place without distractions at his place so he drives over and studies sometimes when I am at work. I don’t care, but the security people always give him a hard time when he goes into my building. I always call ahead but they forget. He is filling out this form so he can come and go when he wants. He already has a key, so why not. I tell him to just say he is me. Those security people are not that bright.

Mike is calling my place his Office. He told my sister he was “going to the office” thursday, and she didn’t even realize what he meant until later. For some weird reason he left me Dunkin Donuts munchkins for breakfast this morning. I am trying to explain that as long as he doesn’t trash my place, I don’t need anything in return. But he likes to get stuff, so what the hell. I just have to remember that he may come over and clean up a bit every morning. He say’s my place is cleaner than his, but I like to not have a mess when company comes over. Or at least confine it to the bedroom.