Work

We Have A Call Center, Well Sort Of!

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Wednesday we finally officially started taking calls at my companies new call center. I was on a conference call with AT&T while they made the first test call. It was exciting, but melodramatic. After a few small issues the Customer Service Rep’s (we call them Part-solver’s) were taking calls. Not many calls mind you. We wanted to make sure the system worked before we send lots of traffic to it. We maybe got 100 or so real calls. Now that the system is up and running, it is time to begin hiring lots of people to take calls. It will take months to get the new center fully staffed. For now I am focusing on cleaning up things, virtually and physically. Joe doesn’t yet have a desk in his office so our stuff is sprawled all over 8 call center desks. I still have lots of work to do, but it is nice to have started taking calls.

I was able to leave to go home with Dan Wednesday evening. It was nice to be home. I rode back with him and 3 Rep’s who he brought from NYC. They were there so the new hires could see how things should go.

The Last Big Kingston Trip, Hopefully!

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I am off to Kingston NY again for a few days. This week we officially activate this office. Tuesday we turn on the phone system and begin taking calls. I am going up today so I can do any last minute changes. Keith got allot done for me last week, but I need to finish up any loose ends. Joe is feeling better and will also get make sure we are good to go. I am scheduling myself to be “upstate” as we NYC people call it for 3 days, but if all goes well I may be back tuesday night.

Hopefully once the call center starts taking calls I can limit my trips to one and two day stints up there. that way I can catch up on issues in NYC.

Home At Last

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I finally made it home. I was in Kingston from Sunday to Wednesday night. I ran out of clean clothes and I was really low on the med’s so I came home. Keith is up there today (thursday) and friday. I go back next week again. I actually have 2 days in the office this week. It is weird. I haven’t worked a full day at the office since Monday the 11th. It is the 21 now. Wow.

I got a ride home from Kingston from one of our Integrators from Expanets. I know I used to hate that company but the tech guys we are working with are all awesome. Chad our Cisco expert fixed up all our switches and call manager. I learned allot of stuff from him, but would have liked to learn allot more.

Keith is working on the desktop security profile for Kingston while he is up there. I already did 99% of the desktop ghost image for the computers we are starting with. I figured out the problem with Ghost 7.5 and our Compaq (HP) Evo 510’s. I was able to modify the disk we use with the with our older Evo 310’s.

I also got the White (voice) patch panel done Wednesday. It looks good, or as good as we can get it with the time we have. Joe will do the blue cables next.

The New Office Is Open, Well Sort Of

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The new office I have been working on for months is finally open. Well it is open for training at least. The first group of call center rep’s started today. We still don’t have all the phones working, the patch panel is not done, and I still don’t have a ghost image or security profiles for the users. On the other hand we had enough computers and people were able to train. In the end things are not perfect, but they are working. As we speak our tape system we took out of our NYC office is restoring applications that I could not move to the new network via my laptop.

Tomorrow I have our intergrator return to mount and finish testing on my call center software and my phone system. Things are working now, but the phone system is not mounted yet. Allmost all my data gear is mounted, and looks great. The only thing left is the patch panel. The rest of the work to be done is all virtual. Setting up users and security. I am in Kingston till tuesday evening then I am back to NYC. I need to spend some time in NYC doing other work besides this move. The move preocupies almost all my time recently. I need to spend more time in kingston, but just can’t be away. That is how I feel right now, that tons of things are getting overlooked because I am not in NYC. I will send Keith up on thursday and have him spend 2 days getting kingston in order while I clean up issues in NYC. Then next monday I am back to Kingston for our first queue move. This is when we really put the new system into production.

Today is looking like it was a record day for my company. We maxed out our 3 voice T-1’s with calls durring peak hours. We also look like we are going to make a sales record for today. This is most likely due to the black out, but it still is a record day. The new office doesn’t come fast enough.

This Blog

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So Joe (the new guy that works Technology in Kingston) is reading this blog. Another person at work is now reading it. That brings the total number of people reading this thing to about 4:) At first I was like, I have to watch what I say in this thing. Then I figured I speak my mind anyway so writing my thoughts on the internet is no big deal.

What else was cool about this blog is Sunday I had a problem with Ghosting Compaq Evo 510 desktop computers. I had issues with the network card and a ghost boot disk. So as any good tech would do I did a search on google for a solution. What was so funny was that the 4th result was an entry from this blog discussing that I had to take Compaq Evo 510 desktops and ghost them for work. Joe and I got a good laugh out of that one.

Wow, Crazy Stress Filled Week

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I have been really busy, and out of town most of this week. This will be quick since I am off to bed. I was in Kingston NY working on getting our new office ready Tuesday – Thursday. Things are coming together but still having some issues. The voice T-1’s all work. But the phone system needs some new hardware. My companies current phone system had problems tuesday night causing problems for hours. Dam windows NT 4.0. More issues on Wednesday, but not as bad. Now I have issues with requests for a redesign of how our call center is going to operate. I need to map out the changes tomorrow. I am so stressing, and tired right now. I hope I can get some sleep. Friday will be interesting. it always is when you are out for a few days. I have racked up allot of hours on the mobile phone this week.

The good news is the Cisco Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone system we put in actually works. Sounds great and everything. We are just having some issues with getting the wrong type of routers. All sorts of capacity issues now. We are having our integrator fix the problem.

More tomorrow, I hope.

On Call

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When your dad says you have a crappie job what would you say? Oh, let me put things into context for you. My dad is a trauma surgeon in a emergency room for the past 30 years or so. He doesn’t do much surgery anymore but I am painting a picture for you. He has had a pager since the late 70’s early 80’s. Back then you called a number and the operator beeped the person with the pager. That person would then call into the switchboard and be put in touch with the person looking for them. So when I received a phone call today regarding an issue I was trying to get keith to look into he was like, wow your job is crappier than mine. That one line sums up the on call part of my job. Getting what in my opinion is stupid calls about users not able to do things like check their email. Normally they would wait till monday, but some people are high enough up the food chain that we have to help whenever. It sucks, but I like my pay check. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I do. It is just the on call part that sucks sometimes.

This day wasn’t a total loss. I got to spend time with my dad (not enough of it, but we hung for a while). I also got to do some shopping. I got Homicide Life on The Streets on DVD. If you never saw that show while it was on TV, go out and buy it on DVD. They have Season 1 & 2 out. It is probably THE best or one of the best TV shows of all time. In my opinion anyway. Thankfully allot of people say the same thing. I also got some clothes and Daredevil on DVD.

I got home just in time to get a mild migraine. Of course no migraine is mild so I ended up sleeping for like 4 hours. I feel a bit better but now my sleep schedule is totally off again. It is 10:30 and I am not tired. I am going to try to sleep soon. After my nap I took a Bextra. That may have helped a bit also.

Sleep Habits All Screwed Up

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So I got home at 3:30 Saturday morning from my crazy day at work. I slept till 1PM. I awoke to problems with 2 servers. One just needed a reboot because terminal services was not working. The other one wouldn’t return from a reboot. We have had issues in the past with that machine and its onboard RAID card.

Gus was nice enough to run down to our data center and fix the problem. I cleaned up my place and tried to rest for the remainder of the day.

I went to my parents for dinner. Carrie and Morgan were there. Morgan is still so cute! We ordered italian and sat around watching my mom freak out about all the dirt left behind by the construction crews from their kitchen/bathroom renovation. She won’t listen to everyone telling her to get a cleaning crew in to fix the place up. The place does look nice though.

A bunch of people are going golfing again in Princeton NJ sunday. I was on and off about if I wanted to go, but I didn’t have a car today to do the stuff I needed to do, so I need to go tomorrow. I called Dan and let him know. I want to golf but this turned out to be a bad weekend.

Construction And The Kingston Project!

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I took some construction photos of our new office. The place is really shaping up. I will be up there on Tuesday turning on our Internet T-1’s and testing our first voice T-1. I should have some nice pictures then. The carpet should be done by then.

Everyone is stressing about our new huge project, but they are not talking about Kingston. Our business folks and our development team are freaking out over another project that is taking up all of there time. It is huge, and can be a massive success if we finish it on time and as advertised. I am freaking out because I have things to deliver for this other project, and I have to complete everything for Kingston. I am starting to worry if I will finish everything in time.

Our racks are not ordered yet because until tuesday I have no place to put them. I need power strips for the dam telecom room, but I cannot use them until the electrical is done. They are special plugs that you cannot just go out and buy at the hardware store. I have our initial batch of 25 computers waiting to ship. I got 3 to play with, and Joe is working on building a standard for them.

I have 1 of the 2 main Domain Controllers for the network built, but no security setup yet. I built a test domain so I can see if what I want to do will work without messing up my new production system.

I just ordered our tape drive unit. that should arrive this week. I then have to replace it with my current office’s system and setup the old one for kingston.

I haven’t even bought the hardware or software for anti virus and ghosting yet. Plus I need to setup network monitoring on a network that doesn’t even exist yet.

On top of that, Keith has to get me working Pix firewall’s by August 4th. I am also waiting for a revised network configuration for our Data Center that has to go out no later than the 7th of next month. Once that is done daniel can finish the new FTP server system we are deploying. I just ordered the hardware for that.

And if all that isn’t enough I have to make more room in the call center for more rep’s since we will need them before kingston is online. There is probably more that I am not even remembering right now.

Oh and don’t forget the Verizon strike scheduled for next Saturday.

The Best News Of The Summer!

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And most importantly the AC in my new apartment actually works. I am not hot most of the time like I was at the old place. Knock on wood. I leave the living room one on during the day, and the bed room one on at night and the place is perfect. I like it nice when I get home so I don’t mind paying to leave the 1 unit on when I am not home.

Now all they have to do is get the AC to work at my office. I bug Dan about it all the time, but so does everyone else. I know he hates it but whenever our website goes down he bugs me even though I don’t control everything about it. It is a vicious circle.