scott

Wednsday again

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The middle of the week is almost as bad as Monday’s. Today is the day my division has its weekly staff meeting. We all get together to discuss the important events and status of projects. After that meeting we have a technology management meeting where we go over the same basically the same stuff and a different level of focus. It keeps everyone up to date on what is going on, but both of these meetings end up taking away the morning. That is what happens when you have such complex stuff going on, the update meetings take a long time because things get complex.

Daniel our new linux admin just finished a prototype build for Red Hat 9.0 for us. It looked good so far. He put MRTG on it and is now customizing it for us. We need the network stats from our LAN again. It is a hugely helpful tool. Their is so much to do with Linux. Hopefully we can do all we want to.

On the flip side I am waiting for the chance to do a Windows 2003 server. The latest servers I have built have been application servers that run multiple applications on them. Not all of these app’s would work with Windows 2003, or their status was questionable. So I am waiting.

Buying and selling

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So I am selling some old (and not so old) stuff on ebay. I sold 2 of the 3 items already. I have some more to sell later this week. I sold an external DVD player for a laptop that I don’t need anymore now that I have DVD built into my Powerbook. I haven’t used it in a while so it is time to go. I also sold an older enterprise class 802.11b access point.

Still on auction is my Palm T (can’t spell it out) running OS 5. And now that the new HP iPaq’s just came out I will probably sell my current one and get one with bluetooth. I am pissed about that decision, but see my previous posts on my handheld’s.

I also just got my sister a new 80 gig hard drive. I need to go over and install that for her sometime soon. I am also giving her my scanner. She will scan all our baby pictures on slides for my dad. It works out ok since my scanner rocks, but does not work with OS 10 on my mac. It gives me a reason to go out and get a Mac compatible scanner. I only wanted the slide scanner attachment to do the baby slides anyway. If she will do them she can have the scanner.

Interviewing

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Recently I thought interviewing was the worst thing in the world (besides speaking to phone companies) and then I started thinking. I came to the conclusion that yes interviewing sucks. We did find a nice group of perspective candidates for a support job we have had open for a while. I will see if anyone is good enough when we bring them in. That is all I can say on the internet on that subject. Lets just say that this topic preoccupies me allot recently. I have been on the phone with people for allot of the past 2 days.

Working in a support role means your day is never done. Case in point tonight as I sat down to do a blog I got a page about a website of my companies not performing well enough. I check it out and it looks fine. I then get a page telling me everything is back to normal. What happened, no one can tell. All I know it sucked time out of my night. I am actually not complaining, because I really like what I do, but work is never done.

I am still in the process of narrowing down our hardware selection for servers and desktops in our new office. Bargain hunting takes time.

Our new sysadmin is doing all sorts of cool stuff. I am just hounding him to document everything so us less linux inclined can figure out what he did. Turns out his documentation so far has been awesome.

Key’s and baby’s

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I actually left work early today. I was as amazed as the readers must be. I needed to go and get my keys for my new apartment. I am actually moving next week. It is cool and a pain. I want to move and the new place is great, but I feel like I just got everything where I like it in the current apartment. I need to go over to the new place and check out the paint job.

Being home early had an added benifit. My sister and the baby were at my parents house so I went over and we all went out to dinner. Morgan was being fussy so we didn’t get to actually eat till after 8, but we were trying from 6 PM on. She is so cute. It drives me crazy when she cries because she puts on this really cute pouty face and gets all upset. Everyone will have their hands full with her when she grows up!

Cebit, TechNY, PCExpo and whatever else it was called

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Every June I want to goto the big tech trade show in NYC. This year it is called Cebit, last year it was TechNY. It used to be called PC Expo. Last year we just moved offices and I couldn’t go. The year before that was the same problem. In 2000, and 1999 I was traveling and unable to go. I haven’t been in years and always want to go. This year I got the free invite I always get (everyone in the tech industry probably gets them) and I just didn’t feel like going. Last year I heard it wasn’t that great. I had missed the boat on the last great big expo’s in NY. Turns out I am glad I didn’t go. Howard went and said it wasn’t that good at all.

I would like to goto CES, but my position at my current job doesn’t require it. Others go, and it sounded cool the past 2 years. On the flip side, whenever I goto those shows I hate getting bombarded by sales pitches. Can nothing please me? 🙂

I will not buy a new ipod

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My ipod is less than 6 months old, and I will not buy a new one. Gus‘ ipod is awsome. And now Howard is thinking of getting one. I said that I would buy his 20 gig ipod that is like mine, but now I am having second thoughts. I may be running out of space on mine, but I can free some up by filtering what I put on it. I am trying to cut back on what I buy. I have a really new mp3 player, I don’t need another one even if I can sell mine. I am trying to be good about it!

Got the new Harry Potter book

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My new (and very heavy) copy of Harry Potter arrived today. I pre ordered it and forgot all about it. I get my books and other stuff from Amazon. They are really good. I got an overnight Saturday delivery upgrade. They did this the last time a Harry Potter book came out also. It is a smart marketing gimmick. People may not order the book online if they have to wait for it to get to them, so amazon gives you overnight shipping for the price of ground and then puts all over the box “DELIVER ON JUNE 21, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DELIVER BEFORE JUNE 21!” That was a direct quote. It is kinda funny. I am going to start reading it tomorrow, or maybe start the first chapter before I goto bed.

Word of warning, be careful of Amazon’s one click pre ordering. I have already gone through like $175 of book and DVD charges this month because I pre ordered a bunch of stuff in March. I wanted everything but never did the math on getting things billed all at the same time. That Amazon.com does their job way too well…

Gus gave me a book by Vince Flynn, called the Third Option. He say’s it is like a Tom Clancy novel, and he knows I love Clancy. It has been sitting on my desk at home since I got back from vacation. it will wait a bit longer while I try to push through Harry Potter.

I have not read a new book in ages. I have been busy and most of my reading is consisting of magazines and the news. I haven’t seen anything good I have wanted to read and now I have 2 books on deck. That is always the way it happens, drought and flood!!!

New domain registrar

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This blog may turn into a free advertisement for godaddy.com. If you ever paid $35 or more on a domain name, you paid allot. I do still love register.com. They are much better than the old networksolutions, but they cost allot. They are good if you need them to do DNS for you. I still own domains through them for that reason, but if you don’t need them to do a completely customizable DNS zone for you, try godaddy.com. Godaddy costs like $9 per domain per year. It is cheap, and I honestly don’t know how they make money. A friend at work has talked about them for about a year. To cut costs I registered a bunch of work domains through them. When you get like 60 domains, the savings adds up.

This week I transfered my first personal domain to godaddy. The transfer was mostly painless, and the cost is right. They make it so cheap to buy a domain, you have no excuse to buy that customized name you came up with. I will most likely transfer most of my .com, .net, and .org domains to them when they need renewal. I still have allot of other domain names so I won’t completely switch.

On the subject of domain names I will say I am a fan of the .AC domains. I had 4 of them at one time. I still own 1 domain from the Ascension Island. They cost a bit more $50/year, but their management tool is good, and they have allot of more common names and phrases that you cannot find in COM, NET, ORG, or even BIZ, & INFO. I did get a domain name with scott in it. That rocks! It actually still rocks almost 4 years after I bought it. I have a couple of other inter-nation domain names from different countries, but my .ac one is the simplest.

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?