Work

I Am Back, Did You Miss Me?

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I am back from my 2 day (actually 26 hour) trip. I went away to do some overnight work for work. I cannot discuss it. it has been deemed top secret. What I can discuss is below.

Amtrak is good, but they are starting to slowly piss me off. Their vending machines for tickets wigged out on me. Then the train Jay and I were going to take got canceled. At least we got to eat Nathan’s while we waited for the next train.

I like Ruby Tuesdays, but I am beginning to make a list of food I won’t eat there again. When I goto my companies other office I usually go out to lunch (or dinner) with guys from my team. Almost always we goto Tuesdays. So far the appetizer sampler is on the do not order again list. As of last night the Buffalo chicken tenders are also on that list.

Other good news is that the Holiday Inn I normally stay in when I travel now offers Wifi! Jayson said it was free. I didn’t get back to the hotel till after 2AM so I never actually tried it out, but next time I will.

All in all a good trip. How do I know? I got some sleep!!!

The Truth, The Cold Hard Truth

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I thought that writing anonymously would not be different than writing if everyone knew who I was. Man was I wrong. I don’t think I would come out and say so and so is a dick head or anything (yet), but I feel more free in what I can and cannot say. The previous posts should have been an indication to you. I felt really good writing it. The brutal truth can be nice. It can also be dangerous. I know that, but they do say that “the truth will set you free”. They might not have meant to use so many expletives in the truth, but hey that wouldn’t be any fun.

Agenda

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People email the weirdest things when they are taking off for the day, or “working from home”. Below is my email that I should send:

I will be off Monday 2-14-2005. Since everyone seems to send out their itineraries of why they are off I decided to come up with this timeline of events in case I need to be contacted tomorrow.

9AM – Noon. Sleep

Noon – 1PM Think about getting out of bed, but just lie there.

1PM – 1:30PM Shower and get dressed

1:30PM – 1:35PM Realize I am off from work and get undressed into a tee shirt and boxers.

1:35PM – 4:30PM Sit on couch and watch episodes of 24 I have missed.

4:30 – 6PM tinker around with linux server I am building that I should have spent all day on. contenplate if not having a girlfriend is a good thing today since I don’t have to spend allot of money.

6PM – bedtime, misc. web browsing.

AD is New Again

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We had problems with one of our active directory servers the other day. No big deal since we had more than 2 of them. A redundant back died. We rebuilt it, but that got us looking at our other AD servers wondering if we wanted to rebuild them. I tinkered with the new box today, and looked at our AD layout to see how we can juggle servers a bit.

This change in box’s also got me to start our project of moving our servers to a new ip block. This is mainly for tidiness. Our other office is newer and has a better internal ip layout. We are just taking our office and getting it up to standards with the call center.

Virtual Machines

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I launched my first “live” virtual machine today. it is not really live. It is actually a dev box, but users other than my team are going to use it. To me that makes this our first official VM. It has been mostly ready for a few days but I wanted to tweak it a bit before I turned it over to the users.

I am waiting on purchase approval on a more powerful box to put VMware on. For now we are fine, but if we want to put several VM’s on a server we will need more power.

New Cell Phones

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We are expanding the team. That means we need more cell phones. We figure if we want people to be available all the time (on call) then we need to provide a cell phone. We like Nextel. Direct connect is addictive. We can add a phone to our account for like 10 bucks a month (plus tax). Not bad. One emergency and it pays for 6 months or more of service. That is my opinion at least.

We picked up 2 Motorola flip phones for some of the guys who don’t need Blackberry’s. Our sales department is also interested in Blackberry’s so we may get them some on our account. many of them have Blackberrys from different carriers already, but new people would get the nextel’s.

Why can’t Palm or Microsoft make a product as good or better than RIM? I have been waiting over a year for Blackberry software on my Treo. I am still waiting…

The Office Holiday Party

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Last Thursday we had our company holiday party. OK I am late on writing about it. So sue me. It was on a boat. Dan had the crazy idea of having a holiday party on a boat sailing around the east river in the middle of December. It was probably not the best idea he has had, but we did have a good time. It goes to show you that you can party anywhere. It was rocky, cold, and did I mention rocky? I am cranky thinking about the party because I got a head ache. It was actually a good time had by most. I had to take a butabital for my head ache so I was in no mood to drink. I also tried to eat, but had nothing. The rocking of the waves, the lights on the dance floor and the loud music did not agree with my head.

The view from the river was fantastic. We mainly sailed in circles by the South Street seaport area of downtown, and then by the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. It was nice. It was more choppy in the Hudson river by Chelsea Peers than it was where we cruised most of the night.

Kai came down. He had a good time but I didn’t see him most of the night. Jayson got really drunk. Danny got drunk but I could not tell that he did. He said he had a decent amount. Linus got so drunk he didn’t come in the next day. Like I said fun was had by all. I missed last years party because I felt sick and went home early, so this party was catchup for me. Figures I missed the year that I won an award at the party! I did make the company top ten list. I think that was a good thing?

Next company party will be the we are profitable party. Hopefully sometime in February!

Holiday Party

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My companies holiday party is tonight. We are getting ready to go to it in a few minutes. Details to follow (after the hang over is completed)!

In other news Kai is in NYC to visit for the party. We had a good time. No wait, it was work so we did not have any fun what so ever.

Monday Blues, Well Not Really

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Kai was down since it was Monday. I for one was not. Not sure why. It was Monday, I was at work. I have tons of work to do, but the pace today was not so bad. Maybe it was because I got some minor issues out of the way? Maybe it was that Jayson and I didn’t get pestered with dumb questions all day (it happens more than you think)? Maybe it was because my new boss Bob was off, well not really since bob doesn’t drop by that much:).

It was probably a combination of those things. Danny thought I was drinking or had taken a migraine pill when I said I was in a good mood. All I have to say to that is I am not always pessimistic. I am just a realist!

Tomorrow I was going to goto Kingston, but I have too much going on in NYC so I will put off the trip for a week. Kai can handle the meeting I was going up for by himself.

Hopefully we are close to picking a new support person for our Kingston office. I had someone I knew and liked for the job, but it just wasn’t in the cards for him right now. We are looking at several decent candidates from within our Call Center who have some experience but need the chance to take the leap into IT. More news on that after I can finalize details and be able to talk about it.

The Long Travel Day

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I woke up at 6AM today.  Almost a good 2 hours earlier than normal.  Am I stupid you may be asking?  Well, yes in a way.  I went up to our Kingston office today.  I had 4 things to take care of.  As with any Kingston trip I am lucky to get anything I plan on doing done, since other stuff always comes up.  This trip I wanted to get 2 interviews done.  I wanted to sit with Kai and Brian about DNS modifications.  Then I wanted to work out some on call paging issues.  Lastly I wanted to meet with Craig and Kai about some email issues.  Actually when I look at all the stuff I needed to do I got 3 out of 4 of them done.  I cannot really count meeting with Craig since when I was in Kingston he was in NYC.  The other tasks were actually completed.  So I feel good that I had a productive day, even though I don‚Äôt feel productive.

The trip up was longer than expected.  Track work slowed the train trip down.  Then I got to the station and there was no taxi‚Äôs.  Kai had to come get me.  At least I rate enough to have someone come get me

I am offline now writing this entry on my way back home.  This trip is going slow also.  I assume track work.  To guarantee a seat I paid the extra $9 for a business class seat.  I got lucky.  This train has newly renovated seats.  These seats rock.  They have leg and foot rests.  Almost as nice as the automatic seats on Delta Biz elite.   If my treo could take low light photos I would have gotten a shot of them.

The interviews went well.  I was (still am) looking for a good support candidate in Kingston.  Both guys I spoke with seemed smart, but had very limited experience.  Now I find out that someone I know very well is looking to relocate and is very interested in the position.  I think this person would be perfect for the job.  The only problem is he would not be able to start till January.  I need to have Kai tech him out and see how smart he thinks he is.  This is another case of someone I would never believe would be willing to move, stand up and say I would do that.  Hey I want to move.  If jayson can surprise me, why can‚Äôt other people?  I want to be impartial so I will send Kai the resume and see if things work out.