Work

hectic day!

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Work was crazy today. I have a ton of people coming in tomorrow for interviews. On top of that I was working like crazy to set in stone our hardware config’s for the new office. Keith got the 2 Cisco Pix 515 firewalls we will use in Kingston so he is going to start configuring that. I finally ordered a replacement web server, and a disk storage array. I had approval for this stuff for over a month but I didn’t have the time in the schedule to deploy it. Now we need to get it done.

T-1 install dates still haunt me. 1 circuit was supposed to go in today and I have no word on its status. I still don’t have dates for my 3 long distance circuits. I hate having no power to do anything with these moron’s at the phone companies.

Wednsday again

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The middle of the week is almost as bad as Monday’s. Today is the day my division has its weekly staff meeting. We all get together to discuss the important events and status of projects. After that meeting we have a technology management meeting where we go over the same basically the same stuff and a different level of focus. It keeps everyone up to date on what is going on, but both of these meetings end up taking away the morning. That is what happens when you have such complex stuff going on, the update meetings take a long time because things get complex.

Daniel our new linux admin just finished a prototype build for Red Hat 9.0 for us. It looked good so far. He put MRTG on it and is now customizing it for us. We need the network stats from our LAN again. It is a hugely helpful tool. Their is so much to do with Linux. Hopefully we can do all we want to.

On the flip side I am waiting for the chance to do a Windows 2003 server. The latest servers I have built have been application servers that run multiple applications on them. Not all of these app’s would work with Windows 2003, or their status was questionable. So I am waiting.

Interviewing

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Recently I thought interviewing was the worst thing in the world (besides speaking to phone companies) and then I started thinking. I came to the conclusion that yes interviewing sucks. We did find a nice group of perspective candidates for a support job we have had open for a while. I will see if anyone is good enough when we bring them in. That is all I can say on the internet on that subject. Lets just say that this topic preoccupies me allot recently. I have been on the phone with people for allot of the past 2 days.

Working in a support role means your day is never done. Case in point tonight as I sat down to do a blog I got a page about a website of my companies not performing well enough. I check it out and it looks fine. I then get a page telling me everything is back to normal. What happened, no one can tell. All I know it sucked time out of my night. I am actually not complaining, because I really like what I do, but work is never done.

I am still in the process of narrowing down our hardware selection for servers and desktops in our new office. Bargain hunting takes time.

Our new sysadmin is doing all sorts of cool stuff. I am just hounding him to document everything so us less linux inclined can figure out what he did. Turns out his documentation so far has been awesome.

Cebit, TechNY, PCExpo and whatever else it was called

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Every June I want to goto the big tech trade show in NYC. This year it is called Cebit, last year it was TechNY. It used to be called PC Expo. Last year we just moved offices and I couldn’t go. The year before that was the same problem. In 2000, and 1999 I was traveling and unable to go. I haven’t been in years and always want to go. This year I got the free invite I always get (everyone in the tech industry probably gets them) and I just didn’t feel like going. Last year I heard it wasn’t that great. I had missed the boat on the last great big expo’s in NY. Turns out I am glad I didn’t go. Howard went and said it wasn’t that good at all.

I would like to goto CES, but my position at my current job doesn’t require it. Others go, and it sounded cool the past 2 years. On the flip side, whenever I goto those shows I hate getting bombarded by sales pitches. Can nothing please me? 🙂

Its Friday and things improved, finally!!!

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Thank goodness things got better today. I was having a bad week, and today turned things around a bit. My new linux admin started today. I spent allot of time bringing him up to speed on stuff. He seems cool. I also got some decent resume’s for our kingston office. Finally!!!! I have some interviews setup for next week. I also got some other misc stuff out of the way today. It is always good to close out some lower priority issues and keep the task list down.

We took the new guy out to eat today. We went to Dukes. It is a bar / restaurant across the street from our office. It has good (but greasy) food. And the waitress’s are usually really hot. Hey we tip well so I can say that! One thing I don’t do that often recently is go out for lunch with people. Keith has been starting to go out with some of the dev staff but they usually goto indian food and I am not into that. I am a more steak or burger kind of guy. Of course we need to try the seafood place across the street from my office. I have worked in this area for a combined total of 3-4 years and I never ate there. Go figure.

I still stress because I need to continue to push our kingston project along. Everything seems to take so long to do. I know that is just the way things are, but I hate waiting around for crap. I am just dealing!!!

Management

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Starting friday I have a Linux Admin starting. It sunk in today that he reports to me and I have to make sure he is successful at my company. Then it hit me that I will have 3 people reporting to me. Then I realized I was still not counting the guy we get for Kinston. That makes 4 people that I am responsible for. I proceeded to hyperventilate after I realized that. Well, no I didn’t do that, but it hit me hard today. It is a big responsibility, and it has a bad side to it. But it is also challenging. I just hope I do a good job.

I started to think about how I ended up doing this. it sort of just happened, and the group keeps growing. In a way it is kind of cool, but very stressful. I think I find it harder to let someone do a project than me go and do it myself. I guess that is an important rule. Letting go and allowing others to do the work. Doesn’t make it any easier.

I just need to remember that I need to keep my technical skills up, because for now I am an engineer first. Or that is how I saw myself last year. Now I am not sure!

IDE Raid and other stuff

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IDE RAID is nice. I have spoken of its virtues on this blog before. It is cheap and it is not that much slower than SCSI. What it is NOT, is very compatible with stuff. Because of all the different versions of Linux (or so I guess) the new versions are not supported with any of the IDE RAID devices. I cannot get drivers for either the promise controller’s or the 3ware controllers. We have both. The newest we can get is Red Hat 8.0. our older IDE RAID systems can’t have anything newer than Red Hat 7.2 because the drivers will never be made for anything newer. On the flip side I can run Windows 2003 server on all but the oldest IDE RAID system. Those drivers are being made.

I can’t believe I am complaining about driver compatibility for Linux, but people can change. I mean these inexpensive solutions are perfect for linux. Linux doesn’t need a high end machine to run. It will work perfectly on a cheaper server with IDE drives, but the nice cheap $1500 servers we buy can’t run the latest version of Linux. You can’t win!

On a happier note we have a Linux System Administrator starting on Friday. He can help with our backlog of linux related projects. I have at least 8 at last count. But I keep remembering more. The only down side is I get tripled up in my office:( As I said before it is only temporary, or so we say.

Space, Space, Space, No Space

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Work space in my office is in short supply. We are over crowded. This will continue until we finish our new call center in kingston. Unfortunately that wont be till the end of the summer. It is going to be a hot and crowded summer at work. For the past year I have been lucky. I have been doubled up in an office with Keith. We are messy with all the computer crab we get, and we can lock it up so that is why we are in an office. Well, we are probably hiring a sys admin to oversea some projects we have going on. That means we are getting a new office mate. Our building area is now going poof. I won’t feel the pain until all the kingston servers come in. Not sure where we will stage them. On the plus side this will be a temporary (2-3 months) thing. The problem with temporary things at my company is they tend to end up permanent or long term things.

Thankfully I have input in space allocation. To my dismay I ended up with that job when we moved into our new office. Not sure exactly why I got that privilege, but I have an idea. I have come to accept it. It has it’s plus’s and minus’s.

The next problem to tackle is the lack of GOOD AC at work. It is always hot. I am going to start leaving the door closed to let the AC work.

Work, ipod’s, and Blog’s

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Work was crazy since I was only in for a half a day due to the eye doctor. We are going to go with the 3 ton HVAC unit. 1.5 tons for our new computer room is not enough, but my inflated estimate came out to requiring a 10 ton unit. Sorry Gus your theory of taking a maximum theoretical number of servers in the room and then increasing the heat load by 50% sort of put us way over the top:) It was sort of funny to hear the construction guy tell me we were way off and wanted to do my math since he thought I was crazy. I sent him my calculations, and they were correct. We just inflated stuff. Oh well.

While I was out this morning I think a demo that someone was supposed to do was not up. I don’t think people were happy since the site was supposed to be ready last week. Keith said their was some yelling going on. It was something my team didn’t screw up and I wasn’t their for the meltdown. I am glad for small favors.

It also looks like we are going to overhaul our Dev & QA hardware. I am waiting to see what the needs are before I make any changes.

Gus and I went to the apple store in SoHo today. He got a new 30gig Ipod. I am jealous. it is great. I can’t goto the apple store. They make it tempting to buy a new computer.

On the blog front another person I know did a blog. Howard Morgan got one going today. I felt really stupid since he asked a bunch of questions about Moveabletype and I didn’t have all the answers. I would consider it an honor to teach howard something new. I bet his blog will be incredible. So far I was the first person to comment on it.

never say its been a good day

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I believe that if you say the day is going well, or if it is “quiet” that fate will screw with you. I think that happened today. I said lots of good things about yesterday and it came back to haunt me today. First one of my helpdesk guy’s called in sick, when the other one was already taking a day off. then we had our site perform slow for a few hours during the afternoon. And to top it all off I get a call that Verizon is putting in a T-1 at our new office today. That would be a good thing, if it wasn’t the first time I was hearing about the install. I had no one onsite to greet them.

As you can guess it was hectic. I was able to get “back into the swing of things” but by doing that I found a bunch of problems that some people created while I was away on vacation. They say ignorance is bliss. I may believe them now.

I am looking forward to just resting this weekend.