Work

Proposals

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Today we meet with the first possible integrator for our new phone system project in our NYC office. They presented us with their first proposal. The price they came back with was very high! We had them change the design and take out a bunch of stuff to try and slice the quote in half. We shall see what they come back with again. I also await a quote from the other integrator we are looking at.

I also meet with people regarding a pilot program for open office 2.0. we are going to roll it out to 30 people at the call center to see if it will not only replace open office 1.1 for the call center but also possibly replace Office for people who have it. We estimate it will save us allot of money. Can’t say how much but it is not a small number for us. Our CFO heard great things about it from my boss who is trying it out, and then heard the cost savings and wanted to know when we could get a test done! We are taking this one slow, but we believe the return on the investment in this open source product will be huge.

Bandwith

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I meet with our Voice/Data provider today with our CFO to discuss renewing our contract with them. One account rep and his boss flew out from down south, and our local rep showed up also. They offered us a nice discount off of what we are currently paying since our volume is up, but our CFO thinks we can get a better deal. Let the games begin. This is the part of my job I don’t like. It is necessary but I don’t have to like it. Other topics we discussed where open issues we having as well as some new network options we have been thinking about. it was productive but long discussion.

Other issues that came up today was dealing with the ever growing space problem. We had to plan on moving 2 people to accommodate a new hire starting next week.

Move Go, Or Maybe Not Yet

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I got word today that the office move that I am trying to plan for is almost a reality. We have verbal agreement on our lease terms, and the people that want to rent our current space have also come to verbal agreement with terms on our current space. That means I must frantically work to get a Cisco vendor selected and order a phone system.

I meet with an potential integrator today about this project. I just hope I can get quotes approved fast enough tot meet everyones time table.

Offsite Meeting

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I spent the morning with a potential vendor discussing network designs and Call Manager configurations. It was very productive, but I am always backlogged when I spend half a day or a day out of the office. I spent the afternoon catching up on paper work while most of my team went to the data center to mount a new core switch we are trying to deploy.

I ended up at Dan’s with Jayson after work to upgrade the ram in his new iMac. We got dinner out of the deal and I also moved over his files from his old windows machine and setup his iPod on the iMac. Now I am iTired.

My scheduled trip to our Call Center for tomorrow is canceled. I didn’t want to chance the trip in the snow they predict. I will try to reschedule for sometime next week.

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Call Manager Upgrade

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Finally after 4 attempts (or at least I counted 4) we have upgraded our VOIP PBX to the latest version of Cisco Call Manager. Now we are happily (for now) running on version 4.1.3 release 2. This is a vast improvement over our previous version 3.3.3. Looking at version numbers doesn’t explain why, but trust me it was a needed upgrade.

We had so many false starts with this thing that I am happy that it is finally over. The problem is that the upgrade is over, but the upgrade was the first part of other enhancements we need to make. Everything else was held up by the upgrade. Hopefully Kai will pull it together and complete the other dependent tasks related to this upgrade now that we are on CCM 4.

I also hope this is the last time we have to use our current integrators. This upgrade was part of the original deal to install our IPCC system. Now that it is done I am going to shop around and try to find a new Cisco partner. I am going to lunch with our Cisco rep this week to discuss things. I am also going to lunch with another Cisco partner that our telecom rep knows. They are supposed to be a Cisco gold partner. I am keeping my options open for now. Soon I will need to pick someone to do our phone system in our office if we move to a new location.

File Server Moves

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Wednesday & Thursday I moved file shares in one of our offices to a new file server. I completed most of the leg work a week or so ago, but I had to go through and make sure everything worked. Now we are well along on our migration to our new 2003 domain for the entire company. James has also started moving users from our old domain in our NY office to the new one. So far no major complications. We had to tweak the site replication times, but nothing else yet.

Review Season

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I finally got to do James’ review today. It was only a few weeks late, but I hate it when mine is late so I know how it feels. I think it went well. His was the first this year. It works out that most people got hired in the beginning of the year so I have a few coming up. lets hope they all go as smooth as this one, but odds may not be in my favor.

Staff Out

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Danny was off Wednesday, then came in, but then took off today. Kai is out tomorrow due to an upgrade, and Jayson is on vacation from today until Tuesday. I feel like I am the only one not taking off. I know that isn’t true, but I have remembered I have not taken a day since December. I need to plan some sort of get a way. At least today was not too crazy with 2 people out.

New Guy

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After a month and a half of looking Kai finally got a new hire in our Call Center support team to replace Chris moving into our Development group. Tim started today. So far no feedback, but he was by far the best candidate in the group that I saw. Lets hope it works out like the previous hires did. I may have issues with the way Kai does allot of things, but he can recruit the right people even if takes way too long to do so!

Hectic Week

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Thursday was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday. I didn’t leave the office until around 8PM. I spent a large portion of my day helping (or organizing help) to get a project finished. The day was just a blur of activity.

Friday was hectic also, but not as bad as the rest of the week. I had to deal with AC issues in a computer room, and ensuring all projects are moving along normally. I was able to get out early enough to make it to my parents for my sisters birthday dinner. We ended up going out. It was nice to be able to unwind and have a steak, see my parents, niece, and sister.

Carrie gave me a ride to the subway while morgan sang me all the new songs she has learned!