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Lots to learn about linux

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Gus is the linux master. Well, he knows allot more than me. That may not make him a master, but he knows his stuff. My red hat server has been serving up web pages really slow for weeks. I had no idea what it was. Gus got into it and found a line of code trying to find a dns server that is not in existence. Once that was fixed, it served up pages nice and fast.

No major plans set for this weekend. I am spending time with mom on sunday. I am going to wing Saturday. I am going to check and see if we are going drinking after work.

I am also going to play with Microsoft office 2003 beta. Howard got it and he says it is stable and nice. My cousin wayne also said the same thing last week. I will give it a try on my laptop. I also want to try out VMware. It looks great. The problem is it is expensive. I am going to see how long the trial is for. I probably would buy it if it works like I think it will.

OK, today is the day we sign the telecom contracts. I have said that allot over the past several weeks, but today is the day. I think we have ironed out all the problems. Now all I need is for Gus to say ok, and put pen to paper. We are starting to slip on the schedule. That is the unspeakable topic though. Of course it is May 9 and it takes 30-45 days for a T-1 to come in and we haven’t ordered 4 of them yet. You do the math. Will we be live on June 6th? The plus side is that construction is just as delayed, actually more so. It feels good not being the reason something is held back from completion.

We had a stupid outage this morning for work. I got woken up by Justin (Help-desk guy) that the call center site was not loading. Turns out that a database job failed taking everything with it. It is back up now, but I need to see what checks we have in place to prevent this. Also why they didn’t work. This is the third outage in 3 weeks related to a release of new code. I am very pissed about this. Gus says he is very disturbed by this. I want to bash people’s heads in at this point. I need to think happy thoughts.

I setup a new application server in our Corporate DMZ. A DMZ for people who don’t know is a place on a network that is isolated from the internal company computers but allow to be “open” to the internet. You make it so you can web browse to it, or ftp, or whatever you need it for. The point is to isolate it from everything else to do this. Well this new box is finally running the mail server I setup. Our QA mail system is now working fine on it. I also setup a small admin website for internal use. It is only one page for now. Also on deck is the Norton Anti-virus setup. This is big. I am also thinking if I need to move our chat server to kingston this can serve as the local chat server. I don’t want to move the chat system though. Probably will need to discuss with Gus on that point.

Keith is slowly working on our Layer 3 switch for our data center. He has the design concepts down. I laid out what I wanted to do, and he seems to be picking stuff up quick.

Left work on time. Wow!

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So I actually got out of work sort of early yesterday. I hopped on the subway and went to my sisters. My parents came over and we had dinner. The baby is still fun, but she is cranky. Not sure why. I won’t go into theories here. When she isn’t cranky she is awsome. I installed a CD Burner for them so they can make CD’s of all the pictures of morgan. Also they can try and free up hard drive space. They are always getting out of disk errors.

We took Morgan to Barnes & Nobles. My mom got a ton of baby books since she had a discount this week. Mike was working so I didn’t get to see him. His rotation for his residency has crazy hours for the first year.

Keith fixed dan’s Wireless Router. He dropped it and did some damage to it, but according to dan it was dropped after it stopped working. I need to check today and see how it worked out. He called with problems last night, but he was going to call Keith to help him out.

I spoke with my friend jayson for the first time in months on Tuesday. We used to talk like once a day. We both got busy I guess. He had questions about frontpage. I got him setup on his server. I also setup an IIS site on his server for me. Running just apache is not working for me. I don’t have enough time to move my site off of frontpage. So I either can have it run all half asked or put it on an IIS box again. He gave me admin rights and I will probibly setup the site there or in one other spot. That way I don’t need it on a server at home.

Jayson is doing volentier police work in New Orleans. He said he wanted to do it, but I didn’t know he started. It sounds pretty cool. He is one person I don’t want with a badge pulling a gun on me. He will use it if he needs to!

Family weekend & Dan’s Computer issues

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I haven’t written in a few days.  I was busy (well sort of) at my cousin’s this weeknd, and I was exhausted last night.  The weekend was fun.  Some ups and downs.  That is what you get when you are spending time with kids.  I don’t spend nearly enough time over there anymore.  Arriell is 8, she is still awsome.  I have tons of fun with her.  Merric (he is 10) is way too smart for his age.  The baby, cerina is a ton of fun.  I hope morgan is that much fun at 1 year old.  We ate in Friday night, and I stayed up late talking with my cousin Wayne.  We haven’t sat down and hung out for a while.  Saturday the whole family just hung out.  I ended up napping on the couch for a few hours.  It was very restful.  We had BBQ for dinner.  Sunday Wanye and the kids planted a tree, and fixed up there garden.  I supervised.  AKA, I don’t like gardening so I just hung out on their deck with the baby.  After all that work we hung out in the whurlpool and lied around on the deck.  it was nice.  We then went to the mall for a quick shopping trip and dinner.

My cousin Synde’s friend Merrill gave me a ride to the train monday and that ended a peacefull weekend.  I will be back there on the 31’st for Cerina’s 1st birthday party.  The kids had their moments this weekend but were mostly good.  I miss them.

I missed out on Cinco de maio festivities monday.  I had my weekend luggage so I didn’t want to carry that around when everyone went bar hopping.  Good thing I didn’t go with work people.  They went accross town to a mexican bar only to find it packed.  Go figure, a mexican bar packed on a mexican holiday?  They only stayed for 1 drink.

Tuesday Keith and I went to Dan’s place to fix his compute.  Really didn’t need 2 of us but I wasn’t complaining.  We got a free dinner out of it.  The problem only took a few minutes to fix.  We went to this villagesque pub by his house.  It was good.  I had the fish and chips.  I also tried a chocolage martinie.  I have had them before, but this one almost tasted like yuhoo.  It was great.  The watress was also hot, so that helped the evening along.

I got home like 10pm tuesday and got a call from dan saying that his wireless point is not working now.  I treid to fix it over the phone, but I couldn’t.  He is bringing it into work today for me to take a look at it.

The weekend is almost here

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I have survived (almost) another week at work. Now I can have either a stress free or stress filled weekend with my cousins! Probibly stress free but you never know. The down side of going over to their place right after work is that the commute sucks. I don’t know how wayne did it for a few years. NJ Transit sucks, and the trip is really long.

The up side is I really love my cousins that I am going to see. They are like the only family I like that I see in any normal interval. I wanted to go roller blading with my cousin arriell, but ran into some problems last night when I was packing them up. About 2 years ago I went out and bought brand new top of the line roller blades to replace my aging roller blade macroblade equip’s I bought back in 1994 when I was working at Timber Lake Sleep away camp. They were top of the line then but they got beat up so I decided to get new ones. Well I don’t work out as much as I used to so the new blades ended up sitting in a closet for 2 years, or maybe more. I can’t remember. I got them out last night and realized one of the wheel bearings on a back wheel was busted and was not spinning well. I couldn’t fix it in thime so I didn’t bring them. I am pissed because I wanted to go out and do that with arriell, but I wasn’t going to bring them if they were broken. I was not sure if I could fix them. It is alot of extra stuff to bring when I am taking the train.

I will think of something else to do with her, I hope!

No life, or so it seems some time

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It feels sometimes that I have no life outside of work. I know I am not the only person who feels this way sometimes. For the past several weeks I have felt that way. I have been so busy with stuff going on at work, I have not done anything after work on weekdays. I didn’t get home till after 8 on yesterday and tuesday. Tonight I need to go home and pack. Hopefully I will have a life this weekend when I visit my cousins. Hopefully!

Still not sure what we have planned to do. I probibly will call my friend lefty and try to hang with him sometime while I am there. We don’t hang out much since he lives in jersey.

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.