scott

Secured Commuting

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I work in New York City. I take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to work every day. Because of this I have to pass through Penn Station twice a day. It is a peaceful commute most of the time. Ever since 9/11 their has been a significant presence of police and national guard troops in NY Penn station. Right after 9/11 you would see troopers ever 20 feet or so stationed around the place. Even thought they probably would be useless if something major happened it made you “feel safe”. as time went by you saw less troopers. There was always some, but noticeably less. In the past month or so I have noticed again more troops. One thing different is that they now carry M-16 riffles. In the past they had pistol’s only. Again I don’t mind the idea of armed troops around. They are not rounding people up en mass or anything. They are just making a show, or that is what it feels like.

All these troops hanging around brings up the question of if something did happen would these guys be any useful at all? And do people know that something is possibly going on that they armed the troops with riffles now instead of pistols? I was just wondering.

The only thing that did get me a bit nervous was the bomb sniffing dog unit at my train station for a few months in the beginning of 2002. The first few days were weird, then you got used to the K-9 unit just hanging out there during the morning commute.

The changing world we live in!!!

FTP on linux @ home online!

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So I took the information I learned at work with building an FTP server on red hat and went home and built one. I sort of hope I secured it well enough. I checked things out and it looked good, but their is always something you forget.

The next step is to customize the configuration enough so I can use it at work in a production environment. Gus and I are sitting down tomorrow to look at it.

Robocopy is coming along well also. I am going to replicate an entire website tomorrow with a developers help. I need someone to test it after I am done.

DVD’s

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I don’t hide the fact that I am a fan of Science Fiction. I like it. In this day and age it is ok to be geeky!!!! Now I draw a fine line between liking sci-fi and dressing up in a costume and going to some convention. That is just weird to me, but to each their own. Just don’t classify me in the weird category. I have enough trouble with languages that are actually spoken in this country, so I am not planning on learning made up sci-fi ones! With that being said I can discuss DVD’s.

I just finished watching season 2 of Babylon 5. That was a great show period. Well done, great stories, and good effects. In my opinion one of the best shows I have ever seen. Now that I am done I need to wait for season 3 to come out. That was probably the best season they had. Until then I am trying to catch up on other DVD’s I have gotten. I am getting season 3 of Star Trek Deep Space 9 while I am away. Now for some reason I keep buying these Star Trek DVD’s but I still can’t stand the dam series. The action is so fake. Who would stop and want to talk through a problem when the enemy is actually shooting at you. Come on, blow the bastards up already. But I still buy them. At least in the deep space 9 series they do get down to some fighting. I refuse to buy any other Star Trek series. This is the last.

I heard that the simpson’s season 3 is coming out after the summer. Now that I will get. The simpsons is also one of the best series ever made in my opinion. That show is funny on so many levels. By season 3 it started getting great. I was not a huge fan of the first 2 seasons.

The last of the “best series I have ever seen” front would probably be Homicide life on the streets. They haven’t made that into DVD yet, but I would get that in a heartbeat if it came out. It was always underrated but it was a great show.

Ton’s more I want to get on dvd. Including the family guy, band of brothers. Both are out already but I am trying to budget my DVD spending.

More on my useless DVD opinions later. The train is in the tunnel to Penn station. That is my signal to wind down my writing…

Monday Migrane alert & The Work week begins again today

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In a flash the holiday weekend is over. Tuesday is here and work must begin again. For me that means I have to survive 4 more days of work before my vacation begins. Or to think of it the other way I have to cram the work load of what I was going to do next week into the 4 days this week on top of the normal day to day stuff:)

As I mentioned before this vacation I will be disconnected from the world. Sounds like a good idea, but I am not so sure. I am not worried about work that much, it is that I just like being in touch. The internet age does that too you.

I didn’t do much monday. I got up late and the weather was terrible, so I decided to pass on going out anywhere. I did some work and watched some more DVD’s until I started getting a slight migraine. It figured I would get one. The weather was terrible, not too hot or cold, and damp. That is the perfect weather for me to get a migraine. I napped in the afternoon till like 10pm. It was a good nap, but when I woke up I still felt crappy. I had a snack and went to bed.

This morning I still had the left over feelings of a bad headache. As I get into my routine I am feeling better, but I am going to be careful today. Being able to sleep during the day yesterday prevented me from getting a bad migraine, but I am not stupid to think that I can dodge that bullet two days in a row if I got another one today.

I have another dentist appointment today. I think this is the last one. They will fill some cavities today, and hopefully be done for 6 months or so. We shall see. Of course that means I will have to leave early today to catch the dentist. Not sure what time yet. I have to check the train schedule.

It figures that the weather today is great, and all weekend sucked. The universe works in mysterious ways.

iTunes music store

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The problem with blogging is I don’t remember what I have talked about and what I wanted to discuss. I go back over my previous entries but sometimes miss stuff. Not sure if I discussed this before, so here goes.

Last week I tried out the iTunes music store. I mentioned I was looking into it, well I did. I ended up buying the latest Stroke 9 album online. I liked their last album and figured it was as good an album as any to buy. So I forked over the $10. I gotta say that so far the music service is not bad. I haven’t tried to move the songs anywhere, but I did put them on my iPod. The sound quality is awesome. I can’t tell the difference. I will use the service again if I find I want to buy any new music. I don’t think I want to buy any more CD’s. the flip side is I can convert a CD to any format if I own it.

Now I am finally I little bit sleepy, so I am off to bed. More tomorrow, or later, or whenever!

Can’t sleep, so I ramble on in the blog!

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So it is early monday morning and I can’t sleep.  I hate holiday weekends because I end up screwing up my entire sleep habit and it is hard to get back into the normal routine.  I was up till like 2-am Saturday night, and now it is after 12:30 on monday morning and I am not tired at all.  I got the itunes going with some soothing music, and I am about to make myself a drink.  Hopefully that will get me tired to get some normal sleep.

I was going to take the powerbook and lie in bed and do some writing.  That is my favorite place to write.  I know it sounds crazy but it is.  I like to prop my pillows up and sit and type.  I normally prop the laptop up on my legs and type.  The problem is the powerbook has been on all day plugged into the outlet.  It is aluminum and it gets really hot when left on.  I really don’t want to pick it up right now.  That is the one down side of this new powerbook.  The metal makes it really hot when it is on for a while.

OK, I broke out the Godiva Liqueur.  I keep a bottle frozen in my fridge along with a bunch of other alcohol.  I am not a huge drinker but I sometimes have more alcohol than food in that freezer.  I got to drinking the Godiva from my dad.  He used to drink it at night every  once in a while.  he isn’t a big drinker but he would drink that stuff.  It is good.  I keep that, some bailies, Jack Daniel’s, & Absolute in the freezer.  I think there is more, but that is what I normally drink.

When I was traveling with Datastream I was depressed allot towards the end.  I started getting bored and the travel was killing me.  I went weeks at a time getting bad night sleep.  My dad actually recommended a shot or two before bed each night if it was stressed that day.  According to the medical folks 1-2-oz of alcohol a day is actually good for you, or at least ok to do.  I didn’t do it every night, but I got in the habit of doing it.  I haven’t done it in a while, but I guess that is good because of the reason I started in the first place!

My whole time at Datastream is a testimate to every action or event has a purpose.  I got that job and it was everything I thought I wanted at the time.  Then it turned out to be nothing like I thought it would be, and I became unhappy after less than a year.  Then I just said I can’t do this anymore and quit. 

After a few weeks I got offered to contract a my friend jeff and dave’s company.  Six months before I might have taken a job with them without question, but by this time (march 2001) I was set against anything internet company related.  I took it because I had nothing else going on and at least it would be steady money for a while.  I took the job as a favor to jeff, by me coming on he could leave and make sure they had support people.  I was totally not happy for the first few months.  Dealing with my friend dave was difficult at best and we didn’t have much to do. 

Then my current company picked up my contract and I was worried that I would hate it.  The guy I was going to work for was a pain allot of the time, but again I had nothing else going on and the things they were doing were cool, and it was a good opportunity.  To my surprise I actually liked it.  Dealing with the boss was not as bad as I first predicted, and the work as I said was cool.  So by dumb blind luck I ended up in a job that I currently think is awesome, doing pretty much what I always wanted to do.  It was all because of dumb luck or fate or who knows what that I ended up where I am today.

The weird turn of events go back even further than Datastream but I think my tangent about the drinking started off this story so I won’t go back further than that.  But this whole chain of events gets me wondering if everything happens for a reason, fate or whatever.  Or is it just dumb luck???  I don’t know.  All I do know is I need so dumb luck on the girlfriend front and the universe will be in good shape!

Of course I don’t regret my time at Datastream.  I wanted to travel, that is why I took the job.  I didn’t get the travel bug out of me at IBM so it was worth the time.  Trust me you want to travel when you are young.  I am not old by any means, but I don’t know if I could do that kind of travel now.  It takes too much out of you emotionally and physically.  In under two years I went to more places than most people will go in a lifetime.  For that I am grateful.

OK, I am 1 1/2 drinks into this blog entry and I am not yet really tired.

Sunday, lazy Sunday

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I did some lying by the pool sunday, its indoors. Then I did more website work. I also vegged out in front of the TV and caught up on some DVD’s I had. I am working my way through the second season of Babylon 5 right now. Then I want to revisit the matrix, and maybe Mission Impossible. Not sure, but I have an urge to see that movie again.

I am also looking at what movies to bring for my week off next week. I am going to be so out of touch with reality. No cell service, no pagers, and no internet access that I know of. I may have some modem access but I am not sure yet. It is good and bad, this lack of access. I need a nice long week off, but I also like doing some stuff on the computer to relax. My last big vacation was to Baton Rouge for the 4th of july in 2001. I actually helped my friend’s jayson and joe out with some computer work while I was down there. I enjoy doing it. When their is no pressure it is relaxing. When I was in london I liked to take an hour a day and just surf the web and check mail. Then we went out. I just like staying connected. This will be interesting because I probably won’t be able to stay connected. We shall see.

I need to look into where they offer scuba diving near where we are staying. I don’t know exactly where we are staying so I need to find out from my sister. The whole family is going to a house in Barbados, but where in Barbados I have no idea.

Drinking, and no movies

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A few of us went out after work friday. It was interesting. Gus, & Matt were trying to get me to dance with some women we were sitting next to. Now they were very nice women, but I am never good at dancing. I don’t think I am that good at it, but more importantly I just don’t like doing it. The only exception is when I am really drunk. Right before the passed out phase I like to dance! Friday was not one of those times. I never liked meeting women at a bar. It was always weird. I have “hooked up” a few times at bars mostly in college, but I just wasn’t into it that much. As Matt and I discussed, you meet people when you have the “i don’t care what happens attitude”. It is actually true. I have had my best luck meeting women by saying “screw it, what can I loose”, than by thinking about crap and worrying. The problem is you can’t force your self to not care, or I have not been able to. Either you do or you don’t. Not sure if I am making sense or not, but at this point I don’t care. When you have nothing to loose and you realize that, you get the best results. I just wasn’t into the game on friday.

Saturday I hung out with my friend Rich. I guess amanda (his girlfriend) was avoiding me. Kidding, I think she had other plans. We were going to goto see X-2, but by the time we got together and ate dinner it was past the last show. Dam outback has huge lines. He didn’t want to see the Matrix Reloaded. Either everyone I know has seen the dam movie or doesn’t want to go to see it. I may go on monday just to see it, screw going with people.

The rest of Saturday was a lazy day. I got my haircut, and missed breakfast with my parents because of the dam line. I also decided to actually do work on my web site. I am totally fixing up my photo album pages using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX instead of front-page. It is slow going removing all the front-page html in the site.

System automation

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I have always been a user enviornment type of guy. What I mean by that is I have worked at companies dealing with corporate users, and the desktops and servers that service them. My current job requires me to do that as well. Another aspect of my job also requires me to operate several websites and all the infrastructure that goes along with it. It is much different than corporate user systems. It is very challenging, but also allot of fun.

One problem we are working on is how to release updates to a system with over 8 web servers located in 2 locations (going on 3), each having a varying degree of importance. I am working with robocopy. it is a free utility in the Windows 2000 Resource kit. It allows you to take a file or directory structure and sync it with another file or directory structure. For our uses I will select a master server, and make all changes and releases on that, then robocopy all informaiton out to multiple servers. It works. I have tried it on some user directories when I needed to move data over file servers. It preserved the security levels and everything. I need to check and see if I can script this in a way that I don’t get prompted for a password when running a sync between two servers on two different windows domains. Also I believe it will work with UNC paths, but I need to try that also.

Robocopy and other great tools are tucked away in the Win2k resouce kit. If you do any windows administration, you should have this kit.

My next task involving multiple copies of data is creating a redundant FTP server. I am looking at 2 Red Hat Linux machines that RSYNC between themselves to mirror the data. We would place both servers behind a Cisco Local Director and load balance the traffic the way we would load balance a web site.

The advantage of doing these sync scripts is to take the human element out of udating things. You get continuity. We like to do the same thing with desktop updates. If you have 50 computers you don’t want some people walking around and manually updating things. You would get configuration differences between the machines. An installation package would make all the machines get the software in the exact way. Of course we actually do our desktop system updates the manual way right now. I am working on an automated system for that as well for our new office.

Besides all this reasearch going on, I have all the normal requests for things. Also we are having issues with the new Super Micro server and linux. I was not planning on running linux on this machine anyway, but I wanted to know if it would work. Keith is working through the problems.

Internet On!!!

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My internet came back on at home a bit after I got to work. I was pinging it and it came up. It went back down for a few minutes again and then went back up. The people at Road Runner called me to check if it was up. They said they fixed it remotely. They don’t say they can do that when you call. I guess I had a low signal problem or something like that. Lets just hope it stay’s up

The research I did at work on FTP on red hat has been very productive. I am about ready to setup FTP on my home linux server this weekend. Their are just a few things I want to sort out first.

Not sure if we are going out drinking tonight or not. I will know later.