Technology

Old Gear & New Gear

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I just got a new server in. We are building a Data Warehouse running on SQL 2000. We built one to demo and everyone liked it we have been using it for 4 months on a desktop with allot of hard drive space. The “server” finally showed its desktop limitations, so we are upgrading it to a Dual Xeon 2.4 Ghz server. We are doing IDE RAID, and threw in 2 gigs of ram. For just around 2K it is a nice little box. If you don’t need SCSI you can get server gear cheap now a days. Our dumb-ass vendor forgot to ship us a CD-ROM / Floppy Drive so I have the box open on the floor of my office with a desktop CD Drive and Floppy drive plugged in trying to get Windows 2000 installed. We have been buying Windows 2003 Server since it came out, but for most applications we are just downgrading to Windows 2000 Server. So far today I had no luck getting the OS to install. I think the USB floppy drive I used wasn’t working correctly. I need to cannibalize a floppy drive or buy one for $12 or whatever they are going for these days.

We have some older desktops that we were using as Red Hat web servers that we consolidated to one box. That means I have 2 box’s to use for testing and such. I am trying to demo Exchange 2003 on one and put Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition on the other. Terminal server will not boot off the dam CD from MSDN. The boot disks we have for it wont work either. I am continuing to work on that. I may give up on NT 4.0 and try 2000 server in application mode. I don’t need it for more than 30 days so I should have no problem with the demo mode it makes you use if you don’t have a key code.

As for Exchange 2003, we are looking to see if it is something we may want to move to. For maybe just the Technology department or for the company as a whole. Howard said good things about Outlook 2003 over HTTP. He said it was fast. I am going to look at how Idealab! did their deployment and maybe segment some users onto Exchange for a trial. Not sure yet.

Treo 600

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The Treo 600 is out for Sprint. My dad still say’s he is happy with his choice of the older Treo 300. I await the 600 being availible for T-Mobile. Rumor has it that will be on the 13’th or sometime next week. Not sure if that is rumor or if it is true. Either way I will get it as soon as it comes out.

My Treo Is Dead, Say Hello To Treo # 4

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My Treo 270 died from unknown causes friday night. It just wouldn’t get a network signal every again. I called T-Mobile and after 90 minutes speaking to 7 different people I finally got a new on shipping to me. I love those Treo’s, but this problem reminds me that my original one worked for not even 2 days before it died on me. I got a replacement after a week that time. This time it should take 2 – 3 days. So counting me selling my second one, I will be on my 4th Treo when the new one arrives. It should last about 1 – 2 months and then I will get the new Treo 600’s when they come out.

Also DOA this week is my blackberry pager. It finally stopped working completely. It went from bad lcd screen, to rebooting when sending messages, to rebooting every 5 minutes. Skytel claims that they can fix the reboot problem, but not the lcd issue. if I cannot read the email, I have no reason for the pager. The problem is that blackberry or RIM the makers of blackberry’s just stopped selling the 850’s, the little pager size units everyone has. they are focusing on the bigger PDA style devices. I am not happy because I want a pager like device. My hardware rep has a lead on something for me, if not I am hitting ebay for a used skytel blackberry.

Snapper Mail

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Just found a great new program for my Treo. It is called Snapper Mail. it is a wireless email client that does everything that Treo mail does, for less money and it has more options. I think it is a bit faster at downloading also. I am using the 30 day trial now. When it is up I will see the status of the new Treo 600’s and will decide if I will buy the software. So far, all signs point to yes.

Phone Update

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According to a very reliable source (Howard) the Handspring Treo 600 is supposed to kick ass. Not his works mind you, but I am paraphrasing. He knows people who have test units and they swear by them. I am holding onto my Treo 270 until the GSM Treo 600 comes out and then I am switching. I hope it is as good as everyone says.

I saw Howard’s new Sony Ericsson T616 or 61 something. it is nice looking. The screen was nice and bright, and it had a built in camera. The problem is I heard bad things about the reception. Howard said he had good results so far, but I am not sold. If anything I am going with the Treo 600, and if I don’t like that, I probibly will go with the Motorola V600.

For now I wait.

The Best Laptop(s) I Ever Had

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Technology is supposed to get better over time. You are supposed to have a “better” computer, PDA, Phone, etc. as time goes by. But is that always the case? Think about cars. My dad talks about some old car he had in the 70’s that was probably the best car he ever had. Tons of people like classic cars, and would go back to them in a flash. Does anyone really want to go back to a 286 computer and use DOS again? That old 10lbs laptop from 12 years ago cannot be dreamed about. I mean you can think back to the good old days with nostalgia, but do you really want that old equipment over what you have now?

I just thought of that when I declared (with Gus) that the IBM Thinkpad T40 I have is probably the best laptop I have ever had. But if it wasn’t wouldn’t we have a problem? It is of course the newest laptop I have. It should be the best. Shouldn’t it? Now my last laptop an IBM Thinkpad T31 or the Dell Latitude C400 I had before that were good solid machines, but the T40 is just rock solid awesome computer. The little things push it over the edge from company computer, to the best machine I ever had.

On that same note, I have to say things about my Powerbook 12″ that I have. You can and cannot compare it to a Thinkpad, or a Windows computer. They are the same, and different at the same time. I think that the powerbook is also one of the best computers I have ever had. I have had machines the size and capabilities of the Powerbook before. It is actually a bit bigger than my Latitude C400. It is just better. The keyboard is the best or one of the best I have ever used on a laptop or off of one. The DVD Burner is amazing. The port layout and other features make it fantastic.

The question is when these machines get a bit older and I upgrade, will I look back and wish I still used them? After all their is always something better just down the production line.

The Different Ways To Communicate

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Going up to Kingston gets me thinking about how I use the communication tools at my disposal. If you ask anyone, I have too many gadgets. The problem is sometimes none of them work the way I need them to. Right now my blackberry’s screen is all screwed up so I have a hard time reading it. I need to replace that. On a good day the screen sucks, so I would like to get my mail another way. The Treo Mail program requires you to pay $50 a year. I don’t know if the mail function on the new Treo will be the same as the old one, so I don’t want to buy the Treo Mail if I plan on upgrading to the new Treo 600 in 2-3 months when it comes out. Eudora Mail for the Palm sucks, so I can’t check mail that way. The problem is I want to send and receive email on the road, but I don’t want to pay the crazy hotel charges for a phone call. I am thinking of getting software that will allow me to use my Treo’s GPRS data service on my laptop. the problem is the same as with the Treo Mail. Can I still use it when I get the new Treo 600? If so I am sold. If not, I don’t want to fork over 50 bucks.

Another problem with the blackberry is I use it for alerts all the time. If I start forwarding all my mail to it, I will get duplicate emails when I get an alert. (Alerts goto my mailbox and the blackberry, so sending my mailbox to the blackberry will duplicate some mail.) the other problem is if I turn on forwarding, I have to turn it off. It becomes a pain. I never know when I will need it or not. With the Treo, I can turn it on or off from the handheld.

It is crazy that I now have all these options, but still can’t make a decision on what to use. I want to get rid of one or two devices. Who needs a PDA/Phone, a pager, and a cell phone. It is too much to carry. In addition I have to carry around my thinkpad.

Two Late Nights In A Row

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I just found out that I need to be around tonight at 1AM for a software release. This will be really fun because I will be up till the same time Wednesday for a hardware release. Needless to say I am not happy about the situation. I hope I am awake tomorrow. I have a meeting filled day from like 10AM through 2PM. Meetings are never fun.

Unfortunately Keith cannot do this hardware swap by himself tomorrow. I don’t think he can mount the gear with one person. if he could I would seriously thinking about letting him.

Bring Your Powerbook To Work Day

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I didn’t take my thinkpad home last night due to the dinner. So I decided to commute in to work today with my Powerbook. It is the 2nd time in a week that I am doing it. For some reason I just feel comforatable typing on it, but not on the Thinkpad. I miss the blog entries on the train like today’s entries. Of course because I have 30 minutes to type I tend to ramble on about useless stuff. That is just what a blog is supposed to be. I will see if I will want to commute with both. I doubt it though. We shall see…

Training For A Call Center

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Yesterday a new class of trainee’s started at our Kingston Call Center. We have 24 customer service reps who will “hopefully” start taking calls full time on 9/22. The class was so big that we had to put the working reps in the training room and the people to be trained sat in the call center. Joe our Tech guy in Kingston is overloaded right now. Justin went up for 2 days to give him a hand. Justin was eager to go up, so it worked out ok. I need to get up there one day next week. I will also need to be there on the 22nd.

Besides the ongoing call center build out I have hardware swap out’s to deal with in our Data Center Thursday morning. Tomorrow will be interesting since it will be a long day.

I just received my first Penguin Computing Server. These guys make cheap linux servers. The joy of it is, I can put Windows OS’s on it without a problem. The Super Micro servers I have been buying for windows will not handle Linux. I have some issues with the hardware, but for the price we will deal with it. A decent server can be had for around $1600. I can get a really cheap one for under a grand. We are actually looking to get some cheap windows box’s and may actually use these guys.

I am still awaiting a heat sync for a Super Micro test server we are testing. I got a trial of a serial ATA server. Actually we had the financial ok to buy it but instead of buying a regular server we got this to test. If we like it, we will keep it. If we don’t like it, we will send it back and get a normal IDE server. Serial ATA looks good, and this machine can do hot swappable drives, where IDE RAID cannot.

I need to also start working on our Exchange 2003 test server. Gus and I want to get one working for the Information Systems team and see if it is easy to admin and troubleshoot. If it is we may want to make a larger scale deployment. The difference this time will be we don’t outsource it and we do it ourselves. In December of 2002 we outsourced our mail and put it on Exchange 2000. It was a horrible failure. Too much latency with accessing exchange over the WAN. We abandoned that option and returned to our original mail provider with just POP/SMTP mail. We have been happy since.