scott

Be wary of software updates!

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I had a close call yesterday with my Apple Powerbook G4 12″. I ran the airport extreme update to get the wireless device to comply with the final 802.11g spec that came out last month. So I run the update and reboot my powerbook only to find out that I can no longer get on my wireless network at home. I didn’t play with it because I was tired, but I was able to get it working at work on our regular 802.11b network. I get home and redo the network and all of sudden I get the network working. I was a bit scared for a minute. Rolling back from an update can suck or sometimes is not possible.

I am using a Linksys WRT54G 802.11G Wireless Route/4 Port Switch. I love linksys. This is my second router from them. When I got my powerbook I figured I would get an all in one router/wireless point that does 802.11g since the powerbook could do the faster G. I still need to ebay my old router and Lucent/Agere AP-1000 point. I still have to wait for the linksys wireless point I have to have the firmware update to comply with the 802.11g standard.

I love wireless and use it for tons of stuff around the house and work, but I will take this time to say that if you need to copy tons of stuff from one machine to another, get a 100 megabit wired switched connection. You will save yourself hours of waiting. 802.11g rocks (in my house I get double the speed from 802.11b while my laptop sits on the desk above my wireless point) but it is still not that fast for corporate use. At home with 1 computer on a network going to the internet, it is fast enough. Of course in that situation 802.11b is fast enough since the limiting factor is your internet connection. Just my two cents.

All in all I had some issues and I got some luck back today so it almost fixed itself overnight! How about that for Mojo?

The traditional friday evening of drinking

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A bunch of us ended up going out after work. We ussually goto a bar by my office called No Idea? It is cool. We are creatures of habbit. Today I bumped into a few friends from when I was working at Y&R / BM. Dave and Nick were out playing pool. I didn’t speak to them much today. I need to hang out with them more. People out and about were Keith, Jenn, Rajive, Sam, Matt, & Vijay. We had a good time, but we cut out early. Jenn had plans, kieth was tired, and rajive had a train to catch and Vijay went to some sweedish party (no joke). I was exhausted from the week. We are looking to meet up on Saturday to goto some club Vijay knows about. Gus was MIA due to a long day of travel. Others were also MIA. Not sure what was up with Mark. He was in the office, and then didn’t end up out at the bar. I guess that is what happens when you have a new born baby at home.

What I need to do most this weekend is get a good night sleep. I used to get good long sleeps over the weekend. I am not recently. I can’t seem to get up in the morning during the week, but the weekend comes along and I get up at 10-am. When I mean sleep late, I am talking about 1pm or so. I used to love doing that in college. I even could do that for years after college. Maybe I am getting older?

Its Friday and things improved, finally!!!

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Thank goodness things got better today. I was having a bad week, and today turned things around a bit. My new linux admin started today. I spent allot of time bringing him up to speed on stuff. He seems cool. I also got some decent resume’s for our kingston office. Finally!!!! I have some interviews setup for next week. I also got some other misc stuff out of the way today. It is always good to close out some lower priority issues and keep the task list down.

We took the new guy out to eat today. We went to Dukes. It is a bar / restaurant across the street from our office. It has good (but greasy) food. And the waitress’s are usually really hot. Hey we tip well so I can say that! One thing I don’t do that often recently is go out for lunch with people. Keith has been starting to go out with some of the dev staff but they usually goto indian food and I am not into that. I am a more steak or burger kind of guy. Of course we need to try the seafood place across the street from my office. I have worked in this area for a combined total of 3-4 years and I never ate there. Go figure.

I still stress because I need to continue to push our kingston project along. Everything seems to take so long to do. I know that is just the way things are, but I hate waiting around for crap. I am just dealing!!!

Management

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Starting friday I have a Linux Admin starting. It sunk in today that he reports to me and I have to make sure he is successful at my company. Then it hit me that I will have 3 people reporting to me. Then I realized I was still not counting the guy we get for Kinston. That makes 4 people that I am responsible for. I proceeded to hyperventilate after I realized that. Well, no I didn’t do that, but it hit me hard today. It is a big responsibility, and it has a bad side to it. But it is also challenging. I just hope I do a good job.

I started to think about how I ended up doing this. it sort of just happened, and the group keeps growing. In a way it is kind of cool, but very stressful. I think I find it harder to let someone do a project than me go and do it myself. I guess that is an important rule. Letting go and allowing others to do the work. Doesn’t make it any easier.

I just need to remember that I need to keep my technical skills up, because for now I am an engineer first. Or that is how I saw myself last year. Now I am not sure!

Personal stuff, not as bad as work

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Even after all I said about work sucking today, I actually feel ok. And I haven’t yet started to drink my frosted shot of godiva liquor. It actually tastes good before bed. Pause, slow sip… Yup tastes good.

I did some research online tonight. I found a few places that offer the PADI SCUBA class. I guess PADI is the certification you need to dive almost everywhere. it works out to like $300 for the classes. the open water dives are more and you need to buy some gear. My luck to pick an expensive and potentially dangerous hobby! But it is dam cool… One place offers a crash course over a weekend. They offer it this weekend. I am going to call tomorrow and find out it I can still get in the class and buy the gear in time. I post more information when I get it.

On the broken computer side, I don’t think the dam thing is broken, or if it is I got it working consistently today and last night. Since I don’t want to be without my laptop for a week, I am not going to send it back and see what happens. Not sure what apple will do with the open ticket, nor do I care if the thing works.

Have I mentioned how awesome my powerbook is? I just wish it was a bit faster, and didn’t get so hot when I leave it plugged in. But it rocks!!!

A few people from work are thinking of going to see the Hulk friday. I am down for it as long as I don’t have to get up really early for SCUBA class. I will find more information out friday.

Apple support and verizon fraud

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I am having a bad week dealing with big companies. I ordered a High speed (well sort of) data card for a laptop at work. We got it through verizon wireless. the card is fine, but for some reason I got charged an extra $575 on the same day from verizon. In their defense they cannot find the charge in their system and believe it to be fraud. But it had to be one of their people doing it. I called the order in over the phone. At least my credit card company is taking care of it.

As for apple. Their support is good, when you get them on the phone. But if you don’t have applecare (i don’t) you pay first and then only if your problem requires hardware to be fixed within the first year they wont charge your credit card. First off applecare is expensive. Does other support agreements cost that much? Apple hardware is more money as it is, I don’t want to pay an extra $250 for a support deal on top of my expensive computer.

At least in my case the problem IS hardware related, but I hate giving out my credit card number to people if I am not actually buying something.

IDE Raid and other stuff

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IDE RAID is nice. I have spoken of its virtues on this blog before. It is cheap and it is not that much slower than SCSI. What it is NOT, is very compatible with stuff. Because of all the different versions of Linux (or so I guess) the new versions are not supported with any of the IDE RAID devices. I cannot get drivers for either the promise controller’s or the 3ware controllers. We have both. The newest we can get is Red Hat 8.0. our older IDE RAID systems can’t have anything newer than Red Hat 7.2 because the drivers will never be made for anything newer. On the flip side I can run Windows 2003 server on all but the oldest IDE RAID system. Those drivers are being made.

I can’t believe I am complaining about driver compatibility for Linux, but people can change. I mean these inexpensive solutions are perfect for linux. Linux doesn’t need a high end machine to run. It will work perfectly on a cheaper server with IDE drives, but the nice cheap $1500 servers we buy can’t run the latest version of Linux. You can’t win!

On a happier note we have a Linux System Administrator starting on Friday. He can help with our backlog of linux related projects. I have at least 8 at last count. But I keep remembering more. The only down side is I get tripled up in my office:( As I said before it is only temporary, or so we say.

Space, Space, Space, No Space

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Work space in my office is in short supply. We are over crowded. This will continue until we finish our new call center in kingston. Unfortunately that wont be till the end of the summer. It is going to be a hot and crowded summer at work. For the past year I have been lucky. I have been doubled up in an office with Keith. We are messy with all the computer crab we get, and we can lock it up so that is why we are in an office. Well, we are probably hiring a sys admin to oversea some projects we have going on. That means we are getting a new office mate. Our building area is now going poof. I won’t feel the pain until all the kingston servers come in. Not sure where we will stage them. On the plus side this will be a temporary (2-3 months) thing. The problem with temporary things at my company is they tend to end up permanent or long term things.

Thankfully I have input in space allocation. To my dismay I ended up with that job when we moved into our new office. Not sure exactly why I got that privilege, but I have an idea. I have come to accept it. It has it’s plus’s and minus’s.

The next problem to tackle is the lack of GOOD AC at work. It is always hot. I am going to start leaving the door closed to let the AC work.

New apartment status report

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I am all set to move on July 1. I have 2 guys that work in my buildings maintanence department who will move my furniture from one building to another for a small fee. I don’t have that much big stuff so they can do it without hiring movers. I will move the rest of the stuff myself. My new (parents old) living room and dinning room set will arrive sometime in September. My mom was not just ready to redo her living room, so I don’t get stuff till then. I am getting an awsome couch and wall unit. The dining room table is ok, but I need one so I am not going to be picky. This stuff is sort of old. They bought it when I was in Junior High or early High School. I think JH. But my mom is a crazy cleaner and neat freak, so it looks like it did back then. The style is modern so it looks good.

I still need to call the cable company but other than that I think I am on target to move. More updates later.

Your special favorite place to be

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Do you have a special favorite spot you like to go? Where you feel the most relaxed, or at “home”? I do. It is not anything fancy. I am most at peace sitting on my bed at home with the pillows propping my back up. I sit in this weird position with legs propping my laptop up. I am doing this as I write this blog. I put a pillow on my lap and play music, and just type. Recently, it is the blog I write, but I can write anything. Emails, letters, etc. Hand pain aside I could do this for hours. It is calming and I always fee at peace when I am done. I don’t know why I just thought of all this. I did a thing in school once where they asked that question “what is your favorite place to go that makes you feel at ease or safe”. I had no clue to the answer then and came up with some stupid response, but now I know what the teacher was talking about.

This is an entry that either you will go “what is Scott talking about”, or you get the gist of what I am getting at. I can say that I am relaxed sitting here now. I am going to bed in a few minutes. I hope to get a good night sleep and do some Scuba Diving Class research tomorrow. I want to take that class more than ever now. I need a good hobby, and I liked diving better than golf. More tomorrow.