Personal

People actually goto this blog!

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It turns out that I do have visitors to this blog. I am not tracking anything just yet, but according to someone at work people in the office are looking it over. Does that means I cannot say bad things about those moron’s anymore? No, they are not moron’s. I was just kidding. I will however continue to speak my mind, good or bad. This blog was originally for my own use. People reading it is just a plus.

I have been told that I ramble on in these entries. Yeah, that is my writting style. I just write what I am thinking about. Also that every other sentance has a sarcastic undertone. My responce to that is “Realy” I hadn’t noticed.

Work yesterday was ok. I finally got the Internet T-1’s ordered for our new office. Still waiting to sign our voice T-1’s. I have a guy selling Internet access at the facility that we are going to. it is cheap and high speed. The problem is one guy runs the company. Also his install and labor costs make the savings on the T-1 be very low. I had serious issues with going through a reseller who we would rely on their equipment, and only one person worked there. Spoke with Gus about everything and he was like make a decision. So I am going to pass on this guy. He was eager to be agressive on the install cost, but he had some fixed costs he could not come down on. Also the support issues scream for attention. I know I am making the safe decision, and will find cost savings elsewhere.

I had a really bad experience with a sales guy trying to save me tons of money on my phone bill tuesday also. He was a real pain. He was like can you sign agreements? And 5 or 6 times asked to speak with someone who had more purchasing authority. This is even after Gus was like speak to Scott. Do people think they will get anywhere when they act like that? And then this guy is telling me things that I know are incorrect but thinks I am wrong. In a nutshell, smells like a big scam. Dan agreed with me. This guy should have been happy that I didn’t have Gus sit in on the meeting. I kept quiet. My boss would have killed the guy. Now that would have been fun.

What is on the agenda for today you may be asking? Tech staff meeting for one. Then a tech management meeting, and a Call Center project meeting. Don’t you just love going to tons of meetings all day? I also need to meet with people to sign the verizon local T-1 contract for our new Call Center. That should happen first thing this morning.

This weekend off, or maybe not

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This weekend I have plans to goto my cousin’s Synde & Wayne’s house. If I evern finish my bio’s or “cast of charicters” of my life you would know who they are. Basically they are the closest thing I have to an aunt and uncle since I don’t speak to my real ones.

Because work has been bad, and they have busy schedule’s I havent seen them since last fall. Not happy about that. We made plans for this weekend way back in march. Like I said they keep busy. I am not sure what we are going to do, but it is always interesting going over to there house. They have three kids. Merric (10), Arriel (7 I think), and Cerina (turns 1 next month). I think both the older ones have soccer on Saturday so maybe I can get a game in. Last time it was funny to watch Merric play soccer. He played like I used to when I was his age. Not very well, but he didn’t care. He had a good time.

It is hot, it is monday. A bad combination

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Well it will be 75 degree’s in NYC today. Don’t think that is hot. Try being in a building where the AC is never just right. Then it gets warm. Lets hope things are working and we are all nice and frosty today. It is beautiful outside. I went out without a jacket again today. I really should not complain about the weather. I am outside maybe 45 minutes a day it seems like now. The problem with not wearing a jacket is that you have no pockets to throw stuff in.

I played with red hat 9.0 this weekend. I installed it on my old windows 2000 server just like I said I would. Before I did that I tried to install BSD 5.0. I had some trouble with the install, and said forget it. I am already trying to learn one OS. I figure I should master that first before going on to something else. I also did a test install of MRTG at home. It installed but I can’t get it to work. I think because my linksys cable router does not support SNMP. I will play with it more at work today, I hope. Now I have 2 linux box’s at home. One to break and try stuff on, and another one where I actually have some stuff running now. This will hopefully prevent me from destroying my movabletype install.

I also spent some time sunday trying to understand some more about Windows 2000 Group Policy Objects (GPO’s). I have used them, and understand the basic concepts, but every time I deploy one I get event log errors all the time. The objects still work, but errors persist. I went online to try and figure out why. All I succeeded in learning is that I have allot to learn. I knew all the basic stuff, but the advanced stuff is hard to find documentation on. This is the story of me and helpful information. The basic stuff is too easy, and the advanced stuff is either too advanced or you cannot find it anywhere.

Today I have to deal with some more telecom vendors. I need to sign some T-1 contracts today. That is going to be fun. More later.

The Dentist is not my favorate type of Doctor

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So I had to leave work early today and goto the dentist. I had my biannual cleaning. Actually this is a new thing for me. I was one of those lazy people that forgot about the dentist for like 4 years. I started going back around a year and a half ago. What is worse is that my dentist is like family. We have know them since before I was born. My parents are best friends with their aunt and uncle. I think my dad once bailed one of them out of jail in Jr. High (another story). I say they because their are two brothers who took over their fathers business. I would goto thanksgiving and get “hey haven’t seen you at the office in a while” and other comments so I finally went back. Why, I have no idea. I go and it costs me money. And it hurts. Well normally it hurts. today was not that bad, but it doesn’t feel good when they clean your teeth.

I need to go back. They say I have the makings of like 4 or 5 cavity’s. So they are going to plug them up before they get bad. I love how they try to cheer you up by going they are small and we caught them before they got bad. Does that change the fact that I have 5 cavities? Up until today I have only had 2 cavity’s my whole life. Oh well.

My parents are on vacation this week, so I dropped by to get their mail. I need to remember to do that again later in the week. I also need to remember to buy my sister a CD-RW drive to burn images of the baby onto.

Gotta go do some work now. More later.

Gadgets good, shopping bad!

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We went drinking Friday night. A bunch of us from work went out. Rajive was back from the caman’s so he wanted to drink. Also out was Sam, Aaron, Miguel, & Vijay. All those guys are in my company’s development team. Also out was jennifer, from our call center. I had a good time. I did not drink though. I had a headache around lunch time so I took to butabital (aka furiset) and that is not the correct spelling. I am actually getting slightly concerned that I am taking this stuff like twice a week. I used to suffer and not take the drugs, but over the past 2 years I have taken some med or another whenever I get the feeling that I am getting a migrane. Going out and not drinking is always interesting since you see everyone all stupid. At least friday no one got sloppy drunk.

Miguel and sam were thinking of going to Las Vegas friday, but Miguel has to run a softball practice for the company Saturday so they are not going. They are planning on going one weekend soon. I think some other guys are going to try and go with them. I am interested in going but the weekend they are looking at right now is bad for me. I will be in chicago that monday so I cant do a redeye sunday night back to NYC.

I got my HP Ipaq thursday. It is really small. So far I like it allot. I just haven’t needed the bluetooth internet connection yet. Then I will hate it. I just went out and bought a cheap case at bestbuy on Saturday. It didn’t come with one. I am ordering a nice metal case but it does not come in until may 15. Those people at rhino skin are awsome. they make great PDA cases http://www.rhinoskin.com. I also got a 128 meg CF card. I think I could have gotten a cheaper one online but I was at the store already. I put a bunch of eBooks and documents on it. I will see if I need a bigger one.

I goto the BestBuy near the Roosevelt field mall in garden city long island. If you are from NYC you know what I am talking about. So since I was there, I decided to hit the mall. Man I cannot stand the mall anymore. I used to love to goto the mall. My friend Jayson and I would hang out there a least once a week. This wasn’t in college or high school. We were already out of school and just liked to go. Now it is so crowded and people have no manners. I was in J Crew and I saw some shirts I liked and I actually stopped and thought, hey I should get this online. The funny thing was I actually didn’t get the shirts. The line was really long and I figured “i could get it online” and not wait on line.

So now I have to go online and do some shopping for clothes since I didn’t buy any at the mall. Actually I am on hold with the online shopping. The union that represents the doormen in my building are thinking of going on strike Tuesday. if they do I won’t be able to receive any packages, since fedex and ups wont deliver. I guess they wont cross someone else’s picket line to deliver stuff. I don’t get it, but I am screwed by it. I am waiting and seeing until Tuesday.

The traditional Passover dinner.

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Well we didn’t have the traditional dinner. Like were were going to. It was a small group this year. My sister and the baby. Her good friends lorrie and don, and their not so baby dara! My parents and myself. My brother-inlaw came for a bit but had a early rotation friday so he left.

My dad does passover the way I like it. No service, no prairs, just sitting down and eating. As predicted I had a dam good steak. I had to turn down seconds because I had a late lunch.

Morgan was not in a good mood last night but I got to hold her for a little while. Not sure if she was just tired or hungry. She did eat like 2 times in 3 hours. At least I got to play with Dara. She just runs around and is the extreme kid. She is not even 2 yet. Out of all the baby’s I have seen I hope morgan grows up to be like dara. she has personality, and is a good kid. But kids tire you out. I am sticking with playing with other peoples kids and then going home to my quiet apartment for now!

I had to bring over my luggage for my parrents. they are going on a cruise next week and needed my big set. Man I forgot how much crap I had. I don’t know what they will do when we all go on vacation together. I will be using my luggage, so I don’t know what they will do.

Not sure what else to say about the semi crazy family. I wouldn’t like normal anyway!

Islanders suck (at least they did last night) Dell sucks all the time!

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I finally remembered why I haven’t gone to a hockey game recently. It is because as much as I like the Islanders, they find new and interesting ways to prove to me how they suck. I went to the game last night. And if you asked me if I had a good time, I would say yes. Why you ask? Not because the team played well or they won. No, because I got to hang out with some friends and make fun of how bad the islanders played yesterday. They gave up 2 goals in the first 5 min (back to back goals). They never recovered from that. it was brutal. And they lost to Ottawa! Come on. I know that the senators are the best team in hockey but I have an old running joke about them since when they sucked, and I was in college. I had a teacher from there and we never let her live down that she was from Ottawa. In reality I have been there, it is a nice city, but I still like to make fun of it. Dam islanders, now they have to win 3 straight to win the round. I realistically know that they won’t do that, so the islanders will be playing golf by sunday.

I went with dan to bestbuy, and got him his gear. I think I am going to configure his router today at work. not sure if he was going to try it on his own or not. While I was there I looked at the PDA’s. The moron’s at that store were like the model I liked was discontinued or recalled by HP because of a problem. I was like I just saw it in another bestbuy, and I see great reviews with no complaints about it all over the web. I don’t like when I goto buy something, and I know more about the product than the people who are trying to sell it to me.

The reason I was looking at PDA’s in the first place was that my Dell pocket pc didn’t ship. Those guys say it will ship on one day and then do nothing about shipping it. DELL, its not a computer, you don’t need to build it. It should not take a week to put a pocket pc box in a shipping box and address it. So I called them up and they were like your order is on hold by the credit card company. I was like hey guys I have no problems with that card, so why is it on hold. they of course had no clue. then they wouldn’t cancel the order because the order was on hold. I was like if you did nothing to the order yet, just cancel it. after showing them some logic (AKA, if it remains on credit card hold it will get canceled anyway), the women on the phone canceled my order. But a billion dollar company like dell doesn’t give you a cancellation number or anything to prove you actually changed your order. That will come back to haunt me, I can feel it.

I ended up ordering the HP ipaq 1910 from one of my hardware vendors. I should have it today. I should have done this first, but the ipaq does not do bluetooth, so it doesn’t meet all my needs. I will see if I like it. But for the price I paid I can sell it on ebay later without any issue. We shall see.

FYI, I also took 2 butabital’s (furiset) in the car before the game. I didn’t want to but I had no choice. I should get to the doctor again. 🙁

It might be summer, & an anniversary of sorts!

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Today is the first day this year that I left my house without a coat. It feels like summer. It is like 65 degree’s now going up to 80. I am happy the way it is right now. It is perfect. The AC in our office is not working yet. I think there is a problem. If I had this blog last summer I would have written about all the great problems we had with AC in our office. But I didn’t so use your imagination. It was hot. This year is not shaping up very good either right now. On a plus note the AC in my office works, but it dies under the strain of keeping air cool everywhere. even with the door closed it will get hot on the first 90+ day. we shall see what happens.

OK, due to me taking a late train yesterday night I actually had 3 blog entries yesterday. that will not happen that often. I really should have had 2, but I broke up one into personal stuff, & work stuff.

I am working on figuring out how feasible it is to move my entire photo web site over to my apache server. I want to get it to work, but I don’t want to have to do allot of work. there are tons of pages, and about a gig of images. it will be a big job if I can’t automate it or get frontpage extensions to work on apache. Hopefully I will have time this weekend to look at it some more.

I am taking Dan to bestbuy today to purchase wireless gear for his new apartment. Dan is the director of operations at the company I work for. He is really cool, and we get along great. That said, I don’t normally do computer work for people outside of work. I can’t stand it. Dan understands that so we are going to buy the stuff only. I like buying things! Actually some people I don’t mind helping, but others who have no business asking for help or other people who just expect it, I don’t like doing stuff for. He is in neither category so it will be fun to setup some wireless stuff. Wireless is good.

It dawned on me this morning that yesterday was an anniversary of sorts for me. I started at MFS network technologies (a division of worldcom at the time) 6 years ago on tax day. That was 1997 if people can’t do math. That really marks my beginning of my technology career. My first official help-desk job didn’t come till AuGust 1997, but I did plenty of technical and help-desk work at worldcom so I consider that my start. I figure when you are upgrading file servers, building new computers for people and auditing software you are in the technology field. That was just a bit of history about my tech roots.

Today’s work agenda, tech meeting, then tech management meeting, then trip to bestbuy, then kingston move meeting. Just full of fun meetings today! I also need to call and harass some vendor’s (see yesterdays posts).

Tonight’s the hockey game. I can’t wait. I broke out my Islanders jersey and it is in my bag for later. I am at a point where I cannot wear jersey’s of any kind to work. it sucks but I will deal. At least I can still wear tee shirts. I think it is funny to sit in a meeting with vendors in a tee shirt and khakis while they are in suits. it is very amusing.

Well I feel us descending into the train tunnel so I will stop here. Details on the game and other stuff tomorrow.

Hockey Playoff’s Vs. Passover

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OK, so I am really stupid sometimes. I found out Friday that I am going to a NY Islanders playoff game Wednesday. I also knew that Wednesday I am going to my brother-in law’s mothers house for the first night of passover. I didn’t put 2 + 2 together until Monday that both these things are this Wednesday. I took for granted that my friend rich who got the tickets would keep these things in mind. He didn’t. His family is only getting together for passover on the second night.

Now I had a delema. Do I goto hockey playoff’s or passover dinner. So being the good jew that I am, I decided I am going to see the islanders play hockey. Hey, I am not religious. The only reason I was going to go to passover was to not get the guilt from my mom. My dad and sister were both like “cool, did you get good seats?” So instead of sitting down for an hour of BS at a dinner that I won’t eat or won’t like with people I hardly know, I am going to a hockey game to hang out with one of my best friends and his girlfriend who is also very cool. I think I made the correct choice.

Now not being up on the whole religious think I am not sure about this, but I think that us jewish people don’t believe in hell, so I am lucky, since to some this might be a bad choice. I will believe in my own way. I will also conform on thursday night for the second night of passover!

Computers, do they suck up or free up time?

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From the title you may think I am pondering the usefulness of computers. Not true. I think they are great. So much so that I made a career out of working with computer networks. But, sometimes I think they can cause tons of wasted time. I think that today because I needed to spend hours yesterday and today rebuilding my computer. Last Wednesday I blew my desktop away and re-installed windows xp. tuesday night I put the machine in a new case and during the move I physically destroyed a hard drive. Out of the 4 drives that I had I lost the one with the important data on it. The good news was that I made a backup of it that morning. The bad news was I didn’t get everything. I left off some less important stuff. you don’t realize how important it is until you don’t have it. But ok, there I was with a bad drive and a backup. I was feeling dam proud of myself for making a backup. Well try importing the data back off the dvd backup I had was a pain. At first I didn’t think it would work. I kept getting major bad errors when copying. I ended up throwing the dvd in my mac and restore it from there. At this point I may just leave the “personal data” like word doc’s, pdf’s and images on the mac. I didn’t want to do that, but it is turning out to be ok. Yeah, I am just grumbling. Everything seems to have turned out ok, but it took a day and a half working on and off to get things restored. That does not count all the programs I still need to reinstall on that XP machine. I will be doing that for weeks. So this week, computers have been a drain on my time, not a savings. next week hopefully will be different.

On the flip side, I am sitting here with my handy offline blog editing tool writing this blog as my trusty powerbook is taking my photo album I had backed up and sucking it into iphoto. It places them in nice categories. I have very few complaints about the program. I was also able to hack together a non-frontpage enabled version of my website on the apache server. the photo album site of 1gig of my images will take allot longer. Also not up is what I used to call the edata site. it contained data out of an access database. apache can’t read ASP files so I need to figure out PHP & Mysql to do the same thing on apache. that will take some time also. I honestly am not sure if I will take that plunge. I would have to export a bunch of data into mysql and I don’t know it that well yet to be the sole location for that data. I am so crazed about screwing up my apache server and the content that every change I make I am backing up the directory to my windows 2000 server. I just need to get comfy with everything.

Today was another lazy day. I got up late (11:30) and just bummed around all day. worked on the website and cleaning up my desktop computer. Tons of fun stuff:) I also made a ghost image backup of the desktop OS just in case. Also got the TV watching down. Trying to catch up on things I missed this week on tivo. I also watched harry potter II last night on DVD. it was ok, but they leave so much out of the book. I totally understand they cant put everything in the movie, but it is just a let down. that is probably why I didn’t see it in the theater.

My parents probably will call and want to do the traditional sunday dinner. Not sure if I am going to opt in tonight. I had pizza for lunch and that is what they do every sunday.

I am also shopping around for a new handheld PDA. everyone who knows me knows that I go through stuff like that and cell phones relatively quickly. I do a pda about once a year. This year I went through them like every 6 months. The reason I do that is because I have not yet found the perfect device for me. If I did I would stick with it, but alas I cannot find it. also my requirements change as my needs change. what I need now is totally different than what I needed when I was traveling all the time. I am thinking of a pocket pc. the palm I have is nice, and does almost all I want it to, but it does not do everything. the problem is if I switch to a pocket pc I will probably have to give up something. Either weight, wireless ability, allot of $$$ from my wallet, or a combination of the 3. I probably will go to bestbuy tomorrow during work to take a look.