Work

A Rare Trip

by

Today I made a trip with Jayson up to the data center. I don’t get up there that much. I usually let others go, but every so often I have a reason to (or just want to) get up there. Today was both. I had some specific tasks I needed to do, and I also wanted to see how the additions we have made look. Things look awesome! Jayson has done a fantastic job of making that place nice. Most everything is so neat.

I brought up some gear, and also did some inventories. We spent a few hours doing that. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon working on firewall rules, and distributed file system security permissions. I had a stupid problem with a cross domain security issue with a file share. I have yet to resolve it, but I found a work around that will be fine for the next few months.

Jay and I decided that we are going to try leaving the overhead lights off in the office. We think it is easier to read the monitors without the lights. I installed a small desk light for some background light. We shall try it out for a few days and see how it goes. I like that we decorated and make the office feel lived in. My office has more posters on the wall than my apartment does, but that is not something I should be proud of!

Word of warning to myself. Do not eat ice cream after a big lunch. I have been feeling the pain ever since I got Hagen Das. It was good, but after it was bad! More later.

Monday Recap

by

I woke up with a headache. Alive kicked it, so I was happy in the afternoon. Most of the day was taken up with shepherding along other peoples projects. I did get to deal with a few items on my ever growing list of items I am working on. The thing about the Getting Things Done system I am trying is that the list always gets bigger, and each task gets more specific. The purchase of Daylite has been very helpful in keeping things organized.

Some things I did get to work on today was some network port blocking projects I have had in the works. I also got some time to update some test virtual machines for some other tests. I also pitched to my boss a new upgrade to our network. I think he liked it, so we will take it to the next level. Not much more I can go into on this site.

I got to get home at a normal hour today. I ended up cooking dinner instead of ordering out like I have been doing the past 2 weeks. I also got to touch base with Amanda over IM for a while. She is back from her honeymoon so she was able to chat.

,

HL DL 320 SATA Servers

by

I have been working with a few HP Prolient DL 320 SATA servers. The price was right on them and they have decent specs. The issue I had with the last round of Supermicro SATA box’s weren’t the supermicro box’s them selves, but the SATA RAID cards that went into them. They would fail much more than their SCSI counterparts. Also the array controllers would not rebuild without crashing computers. We tried several brands. We are using 3ware for new deployments of older chassis SATA servers. They seem the best out of all I have seen. They were a crap shoot. These HP box’s seem to rebuild fine in our tests. Time will tell if they drives hold up, but so far I think HP finally got it right with a low end non SCSI RAID system.

Projects Abound

by

Our Jabber server is acting up. I think it is another application running on the box. We need to migrate the app to a new machine. Our new guy, Andrew is working on the new Jabber server. We are going to do a Jive server running on Suse 9 enterprise. I got the budget approval from bob today so we ordered a box. To get things going quicker we took a box earmarked for a domain controller in Kingston and borrowed it. We won’t need to deploy the DC until after the new hardware gets in anyway. We hope to have the new server built by the end of next week. Andrew has a test instance of the app up now. Hopefully we can have all the users configured in under 2 weeks for a cut over.

Jayson spent the entire day friday at our data center working with EMC setting up our SAN. For some reason I always underestimate time needed to do things at the data center. Besides the SAN he was working on 2 new database servers we are deploying to replace our existing box’s. They will hold us over until we cut over to the new database cluster design utilizing the SAN.

Our 5th cabinet is finally completed at our data center. we now have room for the growth we are expecting in our server farm. That also means we got rid of the last desktop computer in our data center. They were plaguing me for years. I blame Gus for saying just put anything up there. We finally are doing things right by only putting in nice rack mount servers!

I spent my days this week working on getting quotes for a new 6500 series switch at our data center. it will also do load balancing for our websites, or that is the goal. if we don’t it approved we will go with a standard load balance system. I still think the core switch idea is best. I also did research into a new gateway router for our call center. Actually when I think about it I did more quote, and status update work this week than I did technical work. Man, the management thing is pulling me deeper and deeper each week!

Besides the regular work this week I had enough problems. Jayson was dealing with a core switch at our data center that for some reason would wig out when touched on Tuesday. Again on Friday it seemed to reboot on its own. We are going to observe it and see if it does anything weird when no one is physically near it since both incidents happened when Jay was working on or near the switch. We also had problems over last weekend due to water damage on a smartjack that controls one of our internet circuits. Dam leaky roof in our call center. Then Friday we had another circuit go down at the call center. This time it was our local voice circuit. it took out all inbound local service and all outbound service. the call center can operate with all the inbound calls but can’t make calls out. our LEC is working on it, but they are SO slow. Several other minor issues riddled the week also.

I most likely have to goto our upstate office next week to interview people for the 2 support positions we have open. Originally Kai said I had to come up for 2 days because there were so many people he wanted me to meet, but then we got the number down to a level where I can do it in a day. I don’t like staying overnight up there so a day trip is good for me. it is a long day when you factor in all the travel, but it is a short work day since I am only in the office up there from 10:30 is to 3-4pm. that is needed in order to get back on a decent train. I will have more news on that early next week.

Back To Work

by

I got back to work today. I feel better than I did earlier in the week, but my throat still hurt and I had a stuffy noise. I am still a bit foggy from the sleepy medicine I have been taking but I was able to make it through the day without any major incidents.

For some reason I didn’t eat that much since yesterday morning. I had breakfast yesterday, then a snack. Today I had breakfast and I just finished dinner. I just wasn’t hungry all day. maybe that was due to the cold? Not sure.

I had my office to myself today. Jayson spent the entire day at the data center doing work. I got caught up on paper work, and tried to move a few projects along.

I ordered freshdrect tonight for delivery tomorrow. I am not planning on doing very much this weekend. I am going to try and stay in since it is supposed to rain tomorrow. I hope to totally kick this cold and be good for next week.

To Do, Up To Date

by

Today was relatively restful. I bummed around in the morning, then did work in the afternoon. I also took a break and went to the bank and Best Buy. I even got stopped at Best Buy and asked if I wanted to take part in a survey. I said no when I saw the video camera’s. It didn’t matter that they offered me a $10 gift card. I got my DVD’s and left.

I also went through my to do list. I had allot of open issues I needed to work on for the office. I am mostly caught up. I wrote a bunch of emails to people, did 1 presentation, generated a report, and other “business” like tasks that I now do in my job! I look fondly back and think work used to be tinkering with some piece of software or hardware all day! Who am I kidding that would be nice too, but I still love my job. Even with all the stress. And it feels like more stress ever day.

I also have a bad feeling I am coming down with a cold. My throat hurts really bad. That is the tell tail sigh for me that I cold is on its way. I am not so happy about that.

New Guy

by

We had a new guy start at work today. Allot of my day was getting him settled in, and other meetings I had planned. Not too much else to report for today. I need to keep my thoughts together so I can actually write about interesting stuff on this thing!

Week Recap

by

Meetings took up a large part of the first half of the week. They are necessary but I never like them. I guess I like doing rather than discussing, but discussing (aka planning) is critical before you can do! So I am stuck:(

On thursday a few of us moved a bunch of gear into a new rack in the office. That was interesting. I almost messed my arm up by climbing down from a rack. I was on top trying to clean up some cables and didn’t realize how far the chair actually was. I am getting to old for stuff like that, or better put there are younger people around who could do it instead of me. Thankfully I am ok, and we got all the work done. It wasn’t needed to be an overnight affair so I was happy.

Socially nothing went on thursday. I didn’t get home till after 11. After work was done we went to dinner at this nice diner near the office and then I hopped the train home. It is never fun coming home, changing and going right to bed.

Friday I spent time working on some virtual machines. I needed to get rid of some old test box’s that we had lying around, but we still needed the apps running on them. When I say old I mean like 5 year old desktops hiding under tables in our computer room. I migrated the app’s into a virtual machine running on our GSX server. I feel much better now that things are tidy!

Busy Days

by

The past two days have been busy with meetings and very little tech work, or anything interesting enough to run and write about. I have been feeling like I am not getting anything done, but in fact I am being productive. When I feel like I am not getting allot done I realize I am doing office work, and not tech work! not bad, but just different.

I am trying to save money the remaining week of this month. For that reason I passed up going out with John and Jay to dinner last night, but then ended up going out tonight with other friends! I intend to safe the rest of the week! Really!

I was just finishing up going through my TO DO list and email backlog. I think now (at 10 to midnight) I finally am done. I am off to bed!

Chock Full of Meetings

by

It felt like I did nothing but have meetings today. And actually I did almost no technical work today so I did sit through allot of meetings, it just didn’t feel long. I need to follow up on allot of projects tomorrow.

Today was just crazy. I won’t go into details but my stress level was way up today. I also got side tracked on allot of stuff. I didn’t get to eat lunch till 2:30, and it is 10PM and I haven’t eaten dinner. I don’t know if I will have anything at all.

I also had a slight head ache today. Yesterday was allot worse. I think it is from not sleeping since both last night and the night before I slept like crap and I woke up with a head ache. When I do that, I should just roll over and call in sick because like 75% of the time that turns into a migraine. Of course I don’t and I pay for it later in the day.

Yesterday was busy but not as crazy as today. Most of the stuff that went on I cannot go into on this blog. I know I want to talk about stuff, but I am taking very serious the need to leave out work details from this site. If you are a friend reading this site, you can email me and I will give you the password. If I work with you and you are looking for information like you used to get off the site, don’t bother. I won’t be giving out the password to anyone I work with.