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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.

Friday, Gus’ Last Day So Where Is He?

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Friday was the last day at work for Gus. So where was he? I actually knew he would not be in.  He gave me his key cards for the office on Thursday when we were drinking.  Will we ever see him again?  The jury is still out, even though he lives 3 blocks from Jayson…

A Dark Day

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Today was a dark day for me. My boss and friend Gus announced he was leaving my company for good at the end of the month. On many levels this was upsetting and of concern to me. Firstly my boss is leaving. I have to hope (pray) that the next guy that comes in is not a dumb-ass. I have had enough fun with crazy boss’s in the past (ie Kenny). Other work related reasons for concern for me are that Gus has been one of my biggest supporters at work. I am confident in my track record, but it is always good to have a fan in the person you report to.

On a personal level, it will be weird going to the office every day and not having him around. He was someone I worked for, but I consider him a friend. We talked and did tons of stuff outside of work. It will take allot of getting used to, with him not around.

In the interim Bob will be taking over the day to day role Gus played. I like Bob, and I think I get along well with him, so I am not worried. It just won’t be the same as with Gus. On the flip side, not having Gus around may actually decrease my stress level a bit. We won’t know that until December.

What I am wondering about is why do people at work think I have tons of information regarding gossip items like Gus leaving? Even if I did, where do people get these ideas? Just because I am in the Information Systems department does not mean I have all the information.

What will happen in our department? It is an open book right now. It is way to early to tell right now. That is what worries me. I am all for change. It is good and bad. I know people usually hate change. Sometimes I like it. Unfortunately when some things change, you just worry. You might do it for no real rational reason, but you do it anyway…

Cisco Executive Briefing

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It sounds fancier than it was. Gus, Dave, Kai, and I went up to Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center outside of Boston. We were getting the overview of their IPCC product from all the product managers and engineers working on the system. First off I will say I think the trip was worth it. I think there were some issues still unresolved by some of our team, that I think Cisco was able to handle.

We got up to Boston by noonish. Our account manager and his boss picked Gus and I up from the train and we drove the 40 minutes to the site. it is a nice new campus. We ate lunch, which was surprisingly good. Normally this sort of stuff is not what I consider good food. They had nice chicken dish with stuffing and potatoes. I was stuffed for hours after that. We meet a VP of sales or something who came down to make sure we were getting treated right. I am not sure what Gus said to whoever at Cisco but around August they started treating us really nice. Far better than I would expect from a company our size. Granted we do some advanced stuff for a company our size, but it is weird when the #3 guy or so at Cisco stops by your office for a meeting. I will say that Cisco is very responsive to questions or problems. Some of my / Gus’ comments have reached high levels. it showed with the presentation.

We got a really good overview of their IPCC product. I think Dave was pleased with what he saw. I was. I also got to see some nice warez from them. We checked out the color VOIP phone. Gus and I also test drove the video conference functionality of Call Manager 4.1. I even got to see the long rumored VOIP WiFi cordless phone. It was so cool. I want one for my house, but a practical deployment of it would be for the supervisors in the call center when we have 2 floors to cover. Check out the MOB for some of the really cool tech we saw. No pictures of the video conference system we used. Just trust me that it was way cool.

We had a long fact filled day. Then we rushed off to catch a late train. We made it to the station with 15 minutes to spare. I decided to upgrade to First Class. I figured I wanted good service one time, and I would pay for it out of my own pocket. I am on the train now. The seats are bigger. There are less people in the First Class car. I also got dinner and free drinks. The food is MUCH better than Biz class. I had a steak with potato’s, with chrem brule. I cannot spell it. I was not a fan of the desert anyway. I am sitting at a conference table for 4 by myself. It is roomy. I was hoping to take a nap, but I haven’t written a detailed blog entry for a while so I decided to take the time now. So was the upgrade worth the money? Probably not, but it is nice to get waited on and just relax sometimes. Amtrak for the money has the best upgrades. And that is saying allot since the Biz class on the Acela Express is nice as it is. Right now this is my favorite form of travel.

Another Week, Another Trip To Boston

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I am back on the Acela Express up to Boston today. Gus and I are on the 8:03 again. Dan couldn’t make it, so he bailed on us. David, and Kai are both driving and meeting us once we get up to the site. Today we are visiting the Cisco Customer Briefing Center. I have never been. I hear it is nice. 2 of our Cisco engineer’s are also on the train. I stopped and said hi to one of them.

I have been trying to (with mixed results) use my T610’s bluetooth connection to download email on my Powerbook. Not very reliable today. At least I have my blackberry with me. I got no movie watching done on the train. I just did work, and followed up on email. I have no life…

Road Trip 2

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Yesterday Gus, Dan, and I were off again on another road trip. This time one of our account rep’s drove us all down to Philly. We visited a cool client of theirs (names of vendor’s and clients are being obscured, sorry it is confusing to you). We checked out their ACD system and the phone system they use. I liked what I saw. it was a nice operation. I learned a bunch about the product we were looking at. Since we were in Philly I had a Philly Cheese Steak. it was good. I wanted a nap after it!

My problem was the really long drive there and back in the rain. I don’t like long car trips. I don’t mind the train or the plane as much.

I was also out of the office 3 days last week. I will be out again at least 2 days this up coming week. I am busy. That means jayson is over worked since he is alone (danny is helpful, but he has releases as his first priority). Then all the work I need to do is piling up for me when I return on monday.

After work I went back to Dan’s to hang out. Alyssa, Dari, and Jennifer came over also. I fixed his wifi point. Dan, DO NOT touch the dam point again. It didn’t take me that long, so no biggie. We hung out and played scatigories. I think that was the name. I won the first game, but sucked on the second game.

Road (Train) Trip

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Today I took a train trip with Dan, & Gus to the Boston area.  We visited a site that is running a call center software package that we are looking to buy.  It was a productive day, sort of.  We learned allot.  But I like doing, and not talking so I get bored sometimes doing this sort of stuff.  We did go over really cool stuff, so I was interested.

The travel was boring.  We took Amtrak’s Acela  Express to Boston.  I have taken the old meteorologic before but the Acela was nice.  At least I got to do some work for allot of the trip.  From NYC to the Boston area it was about 3:20 minutes.  We didn’t go to the end of the line though.  As Jayson put it today "I spent an hour less on the train than he worked all day".  Very true, unfortunately.

This was day 2 out of 3 that I was out of the office.  I stayed home yesterday from an overnight I did.  Today was travel, and tomorrow is more travel.  We are going to Philly to visit another site.  Tomorrow we are driving, or being driven down.  I would rather take the train, but Philly is closer than Boston.

More news about that trip after it happens…

Wild Wild Wiki

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My department at work just deployed a wiki. I finally got Danny some time to work on it, and so far I am very happy with the results. Since getting the wiki online late last week, I have spent hours putting documentation into it. If you don’t know what a wiki is, it is a free flowing knowledge base sort of application. Check out Wikipedia for what a fully featured wiki looks like.

We are going to use our wiki as a knowledge base for all things technical. Eventually we hope to have our call center adopt the concept for the KB they have. So far I have placed a bunch of documentation into the wiki. I still have ton’s more to go. Tomorrow I will demo the site to the entire department. We need everyone to start using it, or else the concept will be a bust. I have high hopes for this. Gus is also very excited. It was his original idea to go with a wiki over other KB or forum programs.

So far the two or three people that have seen it can’t wait to use it. I will know tomorrow how well it is received by everyone.

Pimped Out Desktop

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Between meetings, cleaning my office, and real work I tricked out an old desktop today. Jayson and I seem to accumulate computers at work. He has 1 for normal use, it is a tricked out P4 so he can run multiple VMWares. He then has a laptop, and I think a desktop is collecting dust under his desk as a Novel 6.x server for testing.

My computers in the office are my laptop, a desktop that is nicely configured for VMWare workstation and burning, etc. I also have an older box setup to run Suse 9.1. I had another machine that I customized for testing, but it finally pissed me off enough today that I needed to replace it. The hard drive is going on it. So I replaced it. then the IDE controller got all flaky on me, so I gave up on it. I took an older (almost 3 years) P-4 1.5 GHZ that for some reason had a gig of ram in it and but a newer burner in it. Cleaned it up, and now it is a Windows 2003 server I am going to use as a test box. We hate that we have desktops proliferating in our office, so I threw on a test copy of VMWare GSX server on this new “super desktop” I built. I am proving that this server software is worth the money to go buy and put on a nice dual processor machine.

Right now I have several tests of software I need to run. First up is Ipswitch’s Collaboration Suite of software. It looks like their Imail mail server on group ware steroids. My company wants exchange like functionality, but they don’t like the cost in software, hardware, and manpower needed to get exchange. This product looks like it will do what most people want to do, and that is share calendars, contact lists, etc right in outlook.

Immediately we need to test and then deploy Intuit’s Track It. We are planning on using it as our support and helpdesk ticketing system. The software arrives tomorrow, and we need it deployed (if we decide to go with it) by January 1, 2005 in order to support some changes we are planning in our support structure for the new year.

Another focus I had today was getting the specs needed to setup another VPN tunnel to a partner of ours in India. That was a fun conference call.

Then I had a bunch of meetings about some data migrations we are planning, and a failover drill that is 4 months in the making.

Gus and I also went over a power point I am making for a big presentation next week. He had some changes and I created a few new slides. Have I mentioned I don’t like power point? The funny thing is when I first started out on the helpdesk all those years ago, I actually was very good at power points. I just haven’t done them in a while.

All around a very busy day. I didn’t leave work until 7:30PM tonight. I need to make dinner now. I just felt like writing when I got home. Some days (most days) I don’t feel like writing right away after I sat at a computer all day, but today I did. Go figure?