Work

Work Computers

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I have several computers at my desk at work. Scary as it may seem, I need them all. Ever few weeks I try to get rid of one or more, but only end up cleaning up wires.

Currently I have a computer for running VMWare sessions. It needs to have allot of ram and hard drive space, and I like to keep very little on the OS besides the VMWare.

I then have a machine that has 2 CD-ROM’s in it so I can burn disks. That machine also doubles as a box on a special V-LAN so I can test our softphone and other voice applications. That network is the only one where I can do that.

Then I have an old desktop that I run Linux on. Currently I have Suse 9.0 on that machine.

I have a spot for my powerbook. I have a 4 port KVM and all 3 other machines are on it, so I put the powerbook on the last port. I am finding recently that I am using it as my primary machine for email and office application work. Go Apple.

On another monitor setup I have my company Thinkpad T-40. This is my primary machine. It has all the day to day programs I use, and all my files on it.

At last count that was 5 machines. I have also been known to put a server or other desktops by my desk and hook them up to a kvn so I can build them or work on them. It gets really load in my office when I do that. Add to that Keith’s 2-3 machines and we have allot of heat also during the summer.

The crazy thing is we probably need space for more computers, not less. We are always tinkering with something new. And that is why I like what I do!!!

Travel Time

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As of right now I am planning a trip to our Kingston office for tomorrow and possibly friday. I say as of right now, because I say that allot and things sometimes change on their own.

I have to go and interview candidates for a helpdesk position we are trying to fill up there. Also have other work that needs to get done up there. We are in the middle of planning a new software build for all our desktops. We are also going to revise our security policy for users also. you have to be exact when doing this stuff or you get 80 users who cannot do anything because their security profile is messed up.

More news tomorrow if I do end up going…

The Magix Is Dead!

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For the first 2 and a half years of its life, my company has used a Merlin Magix phone system to run our call center. It is an ok little phone switch. It was never designed to run a call center, but the price was right when we got it.

As of last monday we finally stopped using the Magix. We transfered our last 800# to our new call center in Kingston NY. After a week of verifying that everything is good, Keith and I finally shut off the old system today. We unplugged all the ports, and pulled the old thing off the wall. Our computer room looks much neater without it.

Now we need to see how much we can get for it and 50 or so phones.

Friday, Kingston Trip

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Friday I went to kingston for the day. Most of the trip was uneventful. That is good when traveling. I worked on the Group Policy Objects with Kai. I think we ironed out the kinks in what we want to do. For some reason our old profile we made would crash when we modified the security settings, but the new one I just created didn’t. Of course there is no major difference between the two. Go figure.

The trip home wasn’t that good. It took an extra hour or so to get home. Not sure why. the train was late. They said it was due to engine problems. Then we went slow and stopped allot along the way. I tried to sleep a bit on the train. I never do that so it was different for me. I used all my laptop battery power during the day and forgot to charge it. That wouldn’t be a problem if I sat on a window seat with a power outlet, but I sat on the aisle and couldn’t use it. The van wilder dvd I have been meaning to see will have to wait.

People on the train pissed me off. Like 4 people around me were either talking on their cell phones the whole time or one guy was playing a game on his phone with the stupid sounds turned on the whole time. People need to learn some etiquette.

Busy, Busy, Busy

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Yesterday was very busy. it was one of those days that you don’t remember where I spent most of my time, but I looked up at it was 3:30PM already.

Today and tomorrow will probibly be just as busy. Stuff is going on I cannot really discuss just yet, but the work will keep Keith and I busy for a while.

Jayson went to Dave’s again last night. His mom was cooking dinner. I declined to go. I was tired and had things to do around the house. I got some stuff done, but ended up watching some stuff I had on Tivo. I have not had a chance to watch much TV since last week, so I have allot of stuff on the tivo I have to see or take the chance that it will be overwritten soon.

Tonight Jay and I may goto Angilo & Maxie’s. it is a really good steakhouse right by my office. I need to talk with him later about it to see if he is still up for it.

Back From Kingston Again

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I am on the train back from Kingston, again. I went up for 2 days since we are short handed on the support side up there. I spent most of today interviewing people for a help-desk position. Yesterday was taken up by miscellaneous issues. I always try to bring up work from NYC when I goto kingston. And every time I do, I end up getting none of it done. This trip was no different.

The work keeps piling up. I hope to clean out my backlog tomorrow, if possible.

On the plus side, the posts from today were written on my new Powerbook on the train. I can once again blog while in transit!!!

Went To Kingston

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Took the day and went up to kingston to work. I got allot done. I also learned allot about what goes on day to day up there, and what the employee’s need from a support perspective. The weather was on my side and I was able to be home by 7:30PM.

VOIP Rocks

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I tested our VOIP link between offices today. I was able to get 12 or so people on the phones in our NYC office connecting through a VPN tunnel to our call manager in our Kingston office. I only had 1 complaint about quality. I need to do a test like that a few more times, but the results look promising.

Keith was out sick today, so I was busy with helpdesk issues. I also have to continue to evaluate our monitoring system to make sure we get notified of any server problem. I think we do a decent job of it now, but whenever anything falls through the cracks it is really bad. Also there is always room for improvement.

I had to spend allot of time reconfiguring VOIP phones today to get our test to work. We are compressing calls, so I needed to associate the phones with the compression scheme we are using. I also had to setup the phone extensions for when our customer service rep’s start using them.

Plenty of other things going on, but my head is not focused right now to remember them all. I will write more later this week.

All in all things are good, and that is all that counts!!!

Work Update

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Here is what has been going on at the time sucking void I call work. Kidding. It may be a time sucking void but I wouldn’t be doing anything else…

Fixing our monitoring system. It seems like I am always doing this, but I am spending time tweaking our monitoring system that listens to all our computer systems and pages us when something is wrong.

Keith just finished setting up the VPN link to our Kingston office. Now we have a dedicated link between our offices for just VOIP traffic. We can use an entire T-1 for voice calls. We hope to get 15-20 calls over it. We will test it this week.

We are busy building and configuring new servers. it feels like we are doing this daily. We deployed 2 new box’s this week. Something to QA stuff on, and a new data-warehouse machine.

My mail migration goes slowly since I am busy doing other things. This is not a problem except we are paying for pop accounts on our current provider still when I would like to offload these users to our own hosted mail system. That is the end result. Hopefully when done I will save a few hundred bucks a month on mail hosting.

Gus has been away on vacation and now CES. He returns Wednesday. The rest of our upper management return Monday. No joke it has been quieter without them in the office. it is not them, it is just there is like 10 less people in the office. Back to normal on monday.