Technology

Remote Agents And Terminal Server

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While I was awake and not sleeping last night, I thought about my remote agent design issues. Currently we have schematics of different electronic and home appliance parts on CD’s we use to look up stuff. The problem is they take up a huge amount of drive space. We get updates every month that need to be added to the existing data. This is fine when a computer is on our network, we just run the update from our file server. What do you do when you have remote computers over a VPN WAN link trying to get the same update? Pushing out 500 megs to 2 users is possible, but what about 20, or 200? It becomes unfeasible due to bandwidth limitations.

One option is to not give the remote agents this software, but they rely on it. My thoughts then turned to Terminal Services. What if all the updates are on the central server, and users just connected to the server via terminal services. That way I don’t have to worry about anything on the local machine except for an IP address and terminal client working.

This is contingent on our phone control software working with Terminal Services. I believe it does, but an answer to that question is easy enough to get.

The next problem is cisco soft phone. I doubt it would work through terminal services. We may need to go with a physical cisco IP phone at a person’s house. It adds cost per user, but it may be necessary. Also going with a hardware VPN solution is looking better than a software solution. If anything goes wrong with the remote computer we would be responsible to manage it. We cannot troubleshoot software issues like vpn over the phone, and we are not equipped to send someone onsite to fix problems like that.

A hardware VPN device that we can remote into and verify it is working, along with terminal services is looking like a good solution. it is not the cheapest but maybe the most feasible. We would require someone to have their own computer, and all they would need to put on it is terminal client. That takes 5 minutes to setup. Wire up a VPN router from cisco or linksys plug in a phone and they are up and running.

Now all I have to do is sell everyone on the solution and make sure it works from a technical standpoint.

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Allot Of Treo’s

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For a device that has only sold a few hundred thousand units, I have seen many Treo 600’s today. I saw 3 different people besides myself on the subway with them today. They are popular but not ubiquitous yet. It is funny to see so many people with them.

One lady saw mine and was asking me if I liked it. it was funny to be approached about tech like that on the NYC subway.

Maybe one day they will be as common as the iPod is today? Well, maybe not.

iMac Or Powerbook, Or Both

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I am getting pressure to get rid of my iMac. I love it. it has a huge screen and it is pretty fast, but do I really need two Mac’s? I have my 12″ Powerbook. I like it allot. I also use it allot. When I am home I use the iMac, but I think I over my Powerbook just because I have it. All the reasons why I bought the imac are still valid, but the question remains do I really need it?

I can always sell it on ebay. It would be difficult since it is heavy and would be a pain to ship, but it is in mint condition so I could get decent cash for it.

On the other I loose nothing by keeping it. granted I can make some cash by selling it, but I already bought and paid for it last year. I still use it, so why get rid of it? These are the things I am thinking about with regards to my computers recently.

This blog entry was written while listening to Hysteria from the album “Hysteria” by Def Leppard

Remote Power Control

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I think we designed our Data Center pretty well. Keith and I spent hours toiling over different ways we can make it better over the past 2 years. One area that I think we need improvement is the ability to power cycle a server remotely. We can view what is on our KVM remotely. I can go into the bios or configure a network card even if the computer is not on the internet. This is thanks to a backup dial up connection, and an IP KVM. the only thing I cannot do is hit the power button on a computer if it crash’s. That would be the ultimate ability. Besides changing tapes, I would have no other reason to goto our data center on a daily basis.

This would also save us money. We pay to have someone go to our cage and do what is called “remote hands”.

Virus’s At Work

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If you read the news you must hear about all the worms and other “bad things” spreading through the internet. My company has been diligent in attempting to prevent these things from infecting our computers. We have not been 100% protected, but from what I have seen we are way ahead of the curve in protecting ourselves.

I have seen lots of virus alerts from our virus scanning system. Thankfully, it is able to deal with whatever comes up. Also important is the Windows Update server. That thing is a life saver. I don’t know if we would have been able to install all these updates on all of our desktops without it. We need to goto the next level and get an SMS or ZEN type system next.

I have never been a huge fan of Novel, but they have caught my curiosity. What they are doing with Suse keeps me interested. Also that their directory services work on Windows is also cool. All that and ZEN Works is much better than SMS, or that has been my practical experience. I don’t know how SMS 2004 holds up. I keep telling myself that my company is a windows shop, we don’t want Novell. The other side of my brain is saying “you know Novell is better, give it a try”. For now I am ignoring that side of the brain. I would like to get a demo of Novell and give it a test drive. When (if) things ever settle down enough that I can try that, I will. Novell NDS, running on Suse linux. Now that would be really nice, if it worked as easy as the old novell used to!!!

3TB, Still Building

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Jayson started building a 3.x terrabyte disk array friday afternoon. It began to initilize friday. As of last night it was only at 53% complete. I will give it a few more days before I get worried. 3 terrabytes is allot of drive space. We currently buy Promise SATA and IDE RAID array’s. For the money, they are awsome. You get an unbelievable amount of storage space for so little, and the speed is not far off its more expensive SCSI disk cousin’s. These array’s actually use a SCSI backplane back to the servers they connect to.

In the past year I have gone from technology snop only wanting nice SCSI disk array’s from the likes of HP & Dell, to a huge proponent of Serial ATA. I have to say Promise makes a good product. The only downside may be we go through drives quckly. Not sure if it is coincidence or what we do, but I have had 4 drives go bad over the past year on a total of 5 disk array’s. Now when you add up that each array has 15 drives, it may not seem like allot. I may be over-reacting. In fact I think I am, but I have other SCSI arrays with no problems. It isn’t an issue yet, but I am keeping my eye on the situation.

All in all, SATA, or IDE RAID is solid and more than half the cost of it’s SCSI equivalent.

Konfabulator Rocks

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Way back (almost a year to the day) in May 2003 I talked about Konfabulator. I have been using it for over a year. it is a fantastic program. It is what Microsoft tried to do with Active Desktop, but couldn’t. I have widgets (what each component is called) for the weather, itunes remote, moon phases (it is cool), cpu utilization, airport signal strength, and a host of others that I can use. I have about 4-5 widgets running at all times on my Powerbook or iMac and I haven’t once had a cpu or memory issue because of it. it sips the memory.

Some of the widgets are cool, but useless. Others like the weather and itunes remote widgets I use all the time. Ok, my endless praise of Konfabulator is over now. Back to my normal ranting….

Lifeline

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I talk allot about communication gadgets, etc. I won’t lie, I like them. I think they are cool. I also find them invaluable. Yesterday reaffirmed that for me. I was lost without my cell phone when the confiscated it yesterday. In order to check in with work I had to call our 800# to our call center and get some one to patch me through to Kai. I missed the call about a site being down at noon, not that I would have been able to do anything. I at least could have given out vital info if someone needed it.

It is good to a point that I can stay connected with one communication device like that. It is bad that when it is taken away it is like I don’t know what to do. I can tell you I was bored for a while. I did other things, but you almost get addicted to being able to stay so connected.

Note to self for next jury duty, get a non camera phone and use that. Gus has my old T-68i and he is in India, so I didn’t have a phone I could pop my SIM in that the court officers wouldn’t take.

Jury Duty Sucks

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I am on day two of Jury Duty. Yesterday was going ok until I got put on a Jury. I was in the new courthouse. The AC was on, I had cell reception. I figured I can ride this out. No problem. Then I get put in a room for 4 hours and at the last minute I get selected as an alternate on a jury. I did my best to not be wanted, but they selected me anyway.

My dad picked me up from the courthouse yesterday and we went to dinner. THe commute wasn’t so bad. today will not be so nice. I got a car service to the court house again. That went over well, except for its cost. Going home is more difficult. I don’t know when I will be let go, so I cannot arrange for a car. Taking the rail road will take longer than it would from the city since I would have to go from Jamaica to wood-side back to my train station.

Other problems abound today. My GPRS service was not working on my phone so I could not check email. I figured it would start working eventually today. I will never know since the court house confiscated my phone because it has a camera on it. I can get it back later, but I am now without a phone all day. I had to call the office before and I used our 800# to get a hold of kai. If it wasn’t happening to me, I would think it was funny.

I am now waiting for my trial to be called. They say it can happen anytime between 10AM and 5PM. It feels like I am waiting for the cable company.

The only plus side is that the AC is going in the courthouse and it is comfy. Work will probably be hot and nasty this week without AC.

I am sitting here blogging in the central jury room waiting for my case to be called. I cannot find any outlets to power the laptop so I am keeping it powered down as much as possible. I have the screen brightness down all the way to conserve power. I don’t know how long I will be here. I also don’t know if or when I can charge the laptop up again today.

I have been using my Treo for email. That way I am trying to phase out my blackberry. Since I cannot have the camera phone in the courthouse I am having Jayson fedex me my pager for tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will get it before I leave for the courthouse. With my blackberry I can at least get email when I am out of the office. The Treo was fine yesterday, but they confiscated it today:(

This blog entry was written while listening to Black Balloon from the album “Dizzy Up The Girl” by Goo Goo Dolls

Palm Apps

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I may have mentioned this before but the only software I am buying recently is software for my Treo 600. I am finding so many useful things to get, I going out and buying the full versions when the trials are over.

I just bought Verichat. it allows you to chat over GPRS. You can use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. If you are not actively in the program, but logged onto their proxy server and someone sends you an IM, you get a SMS message with the IM. You then can sms back or enter the program and chat. Regular chatting does not use up SMS messages. it rocks.

I also got Call Shield Lite for the Treo 600. It allows me to identify anyone or any group with distinctive rings. It also allows me to hang-up, send to voice mail or answer any call by a number of parameters. you do this by group, person, or phone number. I have someone who keeps calling with a wrong number. I programed the software automatically hang up on them before the phone rings. It is so crazy, how cool this software is.

I am going to buy jabber software so I can use work’s jabber system on the Treo. I haven’t tried that out yet, but it looks good.