Work

Almost a full week of missed post’s

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I havent written in a bit. I have been sick and busy. not a good combination. here is what has been going on since the last post.

A bunch of us ended up going out to drink Wednesday. I got really drunk. It was fun, but I became a very light weight and felt it after 2+ drinksL a bunch of us ended up at no idea. It is the bar we end up going to after work most of the time. Yes we are lame, we need to expand to other places.

Not to get to graphic but because of some drinking Wednesday night and my pre-existing cold from earlier in the week I was a bit sick Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I got really sick (get the picture) and was unable to sleep most of the night. I was so out of it Thursday morning I sort of missed work. Not good. Also my all around my eyes were nice and read from blown capillaries. That was not pretty. I suffered through the day.

Turns out the office was not doing very well either Thursday. I heard that lots of people came in late Thursday morning. Also my department ran a disaster drill. This is when they simulate a failed server or other device. So they ran a fail over of our web site to our local office. Turns out something was not updated during a release and the test failed. Many people (myself included) was not happy about that.

Was able to make it into work Friday. Thankfully things were relatively quiet. I don?t like to say it is quiet. That is a no no word in technology. Usually you say that and something breaks. My stomach still wasn?t 100% all day Friday, but I survived. Thankfully things were fine Friday. Keith was had the day off so I was short handed. Keith is a network engineer I work with and he handles a lot of the end user problems. So it worked out well this week. I took off Thursday and he took off Friday. Thankfully neither of us went crazy short handed.

Some guys went out after work Friday, but since I was still recovering from Wednesday I decided to just go home. I ended up going to price club with my dad to fill up my fridge. I love that place, but I never get that much stuff. Most things I buy I don?t need a huge amount of. I bought garbage bags from that place like 2 years ago, and I am still on the same box. It was also good to spend time with my dad. I have been very busy at work and unable to see my family that much. After shopping we just went home. I was still tired from being sick so I passed on dinner.

Saturday I just hung out and watched crap I had stored on my tivo. I cleared that thing out a lot. Other than that I cleaned my apartment, and did some visio diagram?s for work. For those non tech people visio is used for network maps. You can do floor plans and other stuff with it but I was brushing up on our new offices proposed network layout. Visio is very cool but very time consuming to do a diagram.

Sunday I went to bestbuy with my dad to buy a vcr. Yes, a vcr. He had one that broke, and my mom still uses it a lot so he needs a new one. Like 6 years ago we bought 2 (one I still have and the one he is replacing). They were low end vcr?s and we paid like $185 each. At bestbuy Sunday we got a low end Panasonic vcr for $59.00. crazy how prices have dropped since dvd?s are the big thing. I still have not convinced my parents to buy a tivo. I think I am close to convincing them, but not yet. I also picked up a new computer case. I got the antec lanboy aluminum case. It is a mid tower case. I downgraded from a full tower case. It was too big and I just didn?t want that much wasted space. The new case is awesome. So far it is quiet, and the power supply glows blue. Unfortunately moving my stuff over I broke one of my ultra 160 SCSI hard drives. I just hope it was one of the ones I backed up.

I also ordered a brand new 160 gig hard drive for my new case. This is so I don?t need 4 hard drives in the new smaller case.

Unfortunately after I did all my computer upgrading Sunday I got a really nasty migraine. I took a 2 furicet?s and they worked (sort of). I ended up napping for a few hours and still felt like crap. I ended up being unable to sleep most of the night, and had a slight head ache all morning.

Monday was not that busy (crazy I know). 4 guys from our dev staff are out of the office all week. 3 are in training and one is on vacation. So my theory is that since they are down by 4 guys I will hopefully have less requests this week. This will enable me to get some other work done. Still working on getting a final hardware quote for our new office. I have setup some meetings for later in the week. I was able to make some changes to our windows 2000 active directory network. I removed the roles of one active directory server in preparation of a disaster test later this week. Right now I removed all the roles from our primary AD server. I will completely remove it from active directory tomorrow and run some maintenance on it and then restore it as an active directory box later in the week.

Got home late tonight. Gus was working on one of our Linux box?s at our data center. He setup some intrusion detection software and was configuring it. It is very interesting stuff. I didn?t get home till a little after 8pm.

I took the old power supply out of my old tower case and put it in my server case. This solved a problem I had with loud noise emitting from the old power supply. After that I think everything is ok after my upgrade.

That brings me to sitting down in front of my TV with my powerbook to write about the last 6 days. This is probably a long and rambling blog, but I think it paints a decent picture of what was going on in my life over the past week. Hopefully more entries a lot sooner than 6 days.

April fool’s fizzled.

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Its Wednesday morning. It feels like Tuesday didn?t exist, but I lived through it. Go figure. My big dilemma yesterday was that I had plans to go over to my sisters and help her out for a bit and see my niece on Wednesday (today). But people at work scheduled a night of binge drinking. As much as alcohol is nice, I was all set to play with my niece. Of course that only consists of holding her while she sleeps! Well my decision was made for me. I have been banned from going to my sisters until I get over this cold. When I spoke to my brother in law last night he was like if you are coughing you are not coming over. So I get to go drink now. Of course if I am getting over a cold I probably should not be drinking either. Oh well.

April 1st came and went and we only had 1 April fools joke. It was a non event. Oh well. Some good jokes are very fun. Most just are sad.

So we got approval to purchase some much needed equipment for our office, servers, switches, etc. Not going to bore non techies with the details. We also got the go ahead to look at equipment for our new office. I have mentioned before, but I will say again how much I hate sales people. They want you to spend a bunch of money and then they don?t call you back. I await quotes from people whose deadline to get them to me have came and went, and they act like all is right with the world. These people need to get a clue. Yes I am just a little bitter about these moron?s. hopefully today will go better with those guys.

On a good technical note, I got windows 2003 server on Friday off of msdn. I did my first install at work yesterday. I setup a test domain and trusted it to our existing one so I can work on it. So far I don?t see that much of a difference to get me to switch. It looks nice, and I am all for new OS?s, but upgrading server operating systems is not what I call a good time. I am going to continue to look at it and give some more feedback.

Well we are not in the train tunnel yet (yup on the train again) but I need to do an agenda for a meeting I have at 10am, or the boss won?t be happy!

give me a router over paperwork any day!!!

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I thought knowing how to configure networks would be difficult. Boy was I wrong when comparing to dealing with the business side of technology. Vendors and sales people can really bring your day down. I spend most of my day working on costs of my big move coming up. I did very little tech work. I did get to do a bit of ad hoc training with our resolution team. These are the customer service rep?s who answer e-mail?s from customers and other call center rep?s. note to self, when I hear my name mentioned in a conversation, do not stop and see what is up. That is how you are caught in a discussion!

I sat through a weekly management meeting again. That is the big event for Monday?s. it wasn?t too long, everyone got it down to an hour and a half.

My friend Dave IM?d me last week to do lunch. I have not seen him in a while, and I need to setup a time do that with him. He only works across the street but we never get together. In all honesty, we don?t always get along, but he means well. I also never see my friends nick, john, & Jeff from over there. I need to call those guys. They used to go out drinking after work at the same bar we do, but they are not there that much anymore.

Nothing going on in the social front. I need to get online again and see what comes of that online dating thing. Still not a big fan of that idea, but everyone I speak to has good things to say about it. I guess I started out on the internet too early, back then internet dating was frowned upon. Now it is hip! I still have an issue with chatting online with strangers. I do it with friends all the time, but not with strangers.

Enough of my bitching. I am sitting on the train going home doing this blog. I am also trying to connect my cell phone to the internet so I can IM my friend rich. I forgot to get back to him before I left work. Yes, I am really a computer person. I am trying to connect my laptop via Bluetooth to my cell phone. It actually works pretty well, especially using my powerbook. The problem is that during this dam train ride I get terrible cellular service, so I cant get a steady signal. I have done it before, but as I type this sentence I give up on my third and final attempt. Oh well, it is cool when it does work. I will call rich when I get home. So much for the always connected idea.

Note to self, I had to take a bextra today. Started getting a mild migraine so I took one before lunch. I am also using this blog to log those lovely head pain events! I also took some fureset on Friday. Not sure if I noted that over the weekend. I may need to go back to the doctor. Seems like I am taking the meds a lot recently. Of course the change in weather always screws with my head. It was 70 Saturday and 40 Sunday. Stop the madness. Ok done ranting on about this and that. More tomorrow, I hope!

Maybe I am sick, I have no idea?

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Well I believe that I got a cold and not allergies. Do you ever have that period of time where you cant tell between them? Well when I started coughing and my ears really started to hurt I decided that it was a cold. I stayed in most of the day today. Watched some DVD?s I have been wanting to watch and just rested up. I went do dinner with my parents. We went to their traditional Sunday night dinner experience at my dad?s favorite pizza place. I haven?t gone out with them in a while so it was nice.

My sister wants me to come over Wednesday, I think they need help with their digital camera, but I also haven?t seen my niece in like 2 weeks. I hope I can go, if I have a cold. Not sure. We both decided that we will wait till Tuesday to decide what will happen.

Tomorrow will be interesting, I have to get budget approval for hardware for our new facility. Also need to meet with a reseller about a network design in order to get a quote from them. More tomorrow.

What to do today???

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Yet again I end up being just wiped out at the end of the day and didn?t do this blog. At least I am writing this in the morning. So I finally got the packing information to send back the bad stuffed animal I got from my niece. It should be picked up while I am at work. Now lets hope the new one is good. I was trying to get over to my sisters yesterday for dinner but that didn?t happen. My dad was over babysitting the baby while my mom and sister went shopping. By the time I was ready to leave work it was too late. When I got home I just sat in my comfy chair and watched a bit of TV. Still unable to get to sleep before 11pm. For some reason this week I have been unable to goto sleep early, or get a good nights rest. Not sure if it is the allergies I am starting to get again, or stress or what? Lets hope this weekend is better.

So apparently my big new project to add another office at work is finally a go. We are having a meeting about it today. So much to do, and probably a really small amount of time to do it in.

I got a voice mail this morning from Dan (a guy I work with who runs the operations of my company). He is up looking at furniture today, and getting bids for the interior construction. I am going to have to get used to that train trip. We are getting space up in Kingston NY, it is about a 90 minute train ride from Penn Station. So it is like 2-2:30 hour trip for me since I have to get to Penn station first.

So Gus challenged me to learn Linux, for real. He meant the command line stuff. This is something I have talked about for like 3 years and haven?t had time or motivation to do. I know I need to, but always have the windows crutch to fall back on. I am thinking of taking a project and doing it only on my red hat machine at work. I moved my mail onto it yesterday. I want to get as much stuff on it as possible so I can try to use it. It sort of worked for my mac, when I was trying to get into that. Now I am sitting here on a powerbook writing this blog. The difference is that in Linux there is no Microsoft products, no shinny install shields, etc. I can handle that, but I need to be motivated. I built a red hat 8.0 box at home last weekend, and I have one at work. I think I will spend time this weekend trying to use them. I will keep you posted.

OK, so I am on the rail road doing this blog. I covered that in earlier posts. What I don?t understand is today I got the early train, the one that is completely express from my stop to penn station and yet it is taking a long time to get there. We sit on the tracks as other trains pass by. This always happens. If they know this dam thing will be late, why don?t they adjust the schedule. The train 15 minutes later is only arrives in penn station like 5 minutes after this one. What is up with that?

Not to get political in this blog, but I asked a bunch of people at work a question I thought of yesterday while writing this blog. On TV you see all these people in Arab countries in protests burning American flags. If we are so evil, where do they buy those things from? Do they buy them from us? Does some company in those countries make money by making American flags? Does the governments that sponsor those rally?s buy them, thus helping our economy? I was just wondering.

I think that is it for today. More tomorrow or later tonight.

Yet again I end up

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Yet again I end up being just wiped out at the end of the day and didn?t do this blog. At least I am writing this in the morning. So I finally got the packing information to send back the bad stuffed animal I got from my niece. It should be picked up while I am at work. Now lets hope the new one is good. I was trying to get over to my sisters yesterday for dinner but that didn?t happen. My dad was over babysitting the baby while my mom and sister went shopping. By the time I was ready to leave work it was too late. When I got home I just sat in my comfy chair and watched a bit of TV. Still unable to get to sleep before 11pm. For some reason this week I have been unable to goto sleep early, or get a good nights rest. Not sure if it is the allergies I am starting to get again, or stress or what? Lets hope this weekend is better.

So apparently my big new project to add another office at work is finally a go. We are having a meeting about it today. So much to do, and probably a really small amount of time to do it in.

I got a voice mail this morning from Dan (a guy I work with who runs the operations of my company). He is up looking at furniture today, and getting bids for the interior construction. I am going to have to get used to that train trip. We are getting space up in Kingston NY, it is about a 90 minute train ride from Penn Station. So it is like 2-2:30 hour trip for me since I have to get to Penn station first.

So Gus challenged me to learn Linux, for real. He meant the command line stuff. This is something I have talked about for like 3 years and haven?t had time or motivation to do. I know I need to, but always have the windows crutch to fall back on. I am thinking of taking a project and doing it only on my red hat machine at work. I moved my mail onto it yesterday. I want to get as much stuff on it as possible so I can try to use it. It sort of worked for my mac, when I was trying to get into that. Now I am sitting here on a powerbook writing this blog. The difference is that in Linux there is no Microsoft products, no shinny install shields, etc. I can handle that, but I need to be motivated. I built a red hat 8.0 box at home last weekend, and I have one at work. I think I will spend time this weekend trying to use them. I will keep you posted.

OK, so I am on the rail road doing this blog. I covered that in earlier posts. What I don?t understand is today I got the early train, the one that is completely express from my stop to penn station and yet it is taking a long time to get there. We sit on the tracks as other trains pass by. This always happens. If they know this dam thing will be late, why don?t they adjust the schedule. The train 15 minutes later is only arrives in penn station like 5 minutes after this one. What is up with that?

Not to get political in this blog, but I asked a bunch of people at work a question I thought of yesterday while writing this blog. On TV you see all these people in Arab countries in protests burning American flags. If we are so evil, where do they buy those things from? Do they buy them from us? Does some company in those countries make money by making American flags? Does the governments that sponsor those rally?s buy them, thus helping our economy? I was just wondering.

I think that is it for today. More tomorrow or later tonight.

Missed writing yesterday, so I

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Missed writing yesterday, so I will write about what went on now. I thought Monday was busy at work. Wow, yesterday was worse. One issue after another just keep coming. Now don?t get me wrong. I like stress, or should I say I like to keep busy. If I don?t have much to do I get bored. But sometimes things get crazy. I was very bad. I had a roll for breakfast and totally skipped lunch. Well I had lunch if you are willing to count 2 snickers bars as lunch. I didn?t eat a meal until like 8:30PM. Note to self don?t do that again. I also started getting a migrane first thing in the morning. It started to get bad around 11, so I had to take some meds. Never a fan of taking the medication, but when it works I have no choice.

We ran a disaster drill at work. (not sure what that means see below I will discuss what I do a bit) We basically simulate a falure of something and see how long it takes to get the backup systems working. Well it didn?t go over as well as we planned. I was totally not happy, Gus my boss was totally not happy and after we discussed the problems with the group I think we made them totally not happy. We are going to be doing a lot more of those in the coming weeks.

Besides our test we had like two other legitimate problems also at work.

I never covered what it is that I do. I work for a company that basically sells replacement parts for consumer electronic, computer, & appliance?s. But what we really do is develop software that makes it possible to search all those types of parts. It is really interesting stuff, but difficult to explain to someone in a conversation. It is probably impossible to explain it in a paragraph in this blog. I am responsible for keeping the network and systems operational. It is very cool work. I like to say I play with toys for a living (I do), and other people pay for them. Of course since I have to make sure stuff works, when it doesn?t I gotta answer why it didn?t. That can sometimes be very stressful, especially if you need to rely on other people to explain and fix your problems.

I live in NYC. So this blog is looking like it is a product of the 30 minute LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) commute I need to take to Penn station every day. It is a relitivly quiet time that I can write.

While I am on the subject of background info, I might as well explain a bit about the name of the blog POWERZ. If you know me you mostly likely know why it is named like that. If not, here goes. My first name is in fact Scott. Of courseJ I use POWERZ because I got it from an episode of the simpsons. Probibly the best show ever made on TV. Actually I got the name (alter-ego) power from the simpson?s but added the Z. Homer simpson could very likely say ?everything sounds better with a Z in it?. Actually I did it so I could be very sure I got screen names online that no one is using, and keep the same one over multiple sites without adding numbers.

Yes, I like the simpsons, and yes I like computers. No I do not go home and play online gaming every waking hour. No I don?t have computer equipment all over my house. I have a decent amount of it, but I try to keep it small and in a confined space. I may be into technology, but I am so against the ?computer guy? stereotype. Actually it is kind of sad that I currently don?t have any computer games on my computer. I only just started working on my website again. I consider it like a hobby. My dad builds model rockets, my cousin builds remote control car?s, I work on a web site. Probibly cheaper than collecting stamps or coins. Actually my dad does the coin thing too!

I could rant for hours about the computer guy image thing. My friends and I like making fun of it too.

Well the train is in the tunnel again. I want to keep writing but time does not allow for it. Hopefully on the ride home or later tonight I can update what went on today?

Had a real bad night

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Had a real bad night sleeping last night. Went to bed fine, but for some reason I was unable to stay asleep. So of course by morning I was so tired I slept right through the first 2 alarms. So I over slept for like 40 minutes, but I made up time. Hopefully I shouldn?t be too late to work. This gives me an opportunity to try out writing on the train. The joy?s of having a really light laptop that has a nice keyboard! The train ride to work is about 20-30 minutes depending on if it is express or not. Since I am so late I am on a local and have plenty of time to sit here and write. It is actually kind of nice. Sort of relaxing, but not really.

Today hopefully will be better than yesterday. I am going to show Gus DFS on windows 2000 server. Also have to work on a bunch of other hardware quotes. The big thing this week isn?t even that much more work. It is to convince the entire company to start using jabber, now that we have a jabber server setup. One department wants it really bad, the others are like ?can we still use AIM?. I will see how this shapes up. That jabber is really cool though. I still would like a better client software, but what we have is good enough. After months of goofing around with jabber we found a windows 2000 server based version of it. http://www.tipic.com/ I know open source is great and all, but by purchasing that windows package we saved money in the long run since we didn?t need anyone to come in and setup Linux or spend hours trying to do it ourselves. It took me a few hours on a test box one day, and like 3 hours or less on the production box to get it setup. The only time consuming part was setting up all the users. Once someone takes care of that, we are in business.

I just only hope someone comes out with a better jabber client for the mac. I still don?t understand why I had to start liking an OS that isn?t supported as much as windows. WHY??? For years I used NT 4, with no consumer hardware that worked good on it. So I always had to look for the scsi scanner, the video card that was NT compliant, etc. Then 2000 & XP come out and I am able to buy and use all the ?normal? stuff made for consumers. XP is nice, I like it, but I cant understand why then I tried out this Mac OS X? I think I did it just to check it out, and now I went from a low end ibook to a ultra portable powerbook. Dam Apple. I guess ignorance can be bliss, because I was happy with the windows stuff lying around. But now I am using both, mac and windows. I take my powerbook and leave it on my desk at work now. They keyboard is really nice, so I just use it for chatting, and other stuff during the day. Also gotta say that office for the mac is better than for windows. Not sure why Microsoft did this, but it is. I am using word right now to do this blog, and update it later. Let me tell you that it kicks ass over XP. Of course that still does not make up for half the software I like not working on the mac. Thankfully most of the hardware I want works with it. Gotta thank someone for network printing?

OK, that was enough of my ramblings on mac vs. windows. As you can tell I don?t have an answer to that age old question. I am stuck between both of them. I rely on my powerbook more than every, but I also find myself switching over to my windows box several times a day just because I cant do something on the mac.

The train just entered the tunnel, so that is my queue to finish this up. Maybe I will write more later tonight? Not sure. This blog thing is still new so I am actually making entries. I hope I keep it up. More later?

Post party madness!!!

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The award party was fun on Sunday. Turkey was later than expected. Turns out cooking turkey is harder than you think. That is what my friend Amanda found out. In the end the food was great, but took a bit longer to make. We did what I guess a lot of people do, gamble on who will win the Oscar. I was amazed that out of 8 people I came in 3rd place. I can safely say I had no idea about almost all the films I was voting on. I like movies, but I didn?t get to many last year. I also tend to not see may films that are Oscar worthy! Go figure. I was aiming for not being in last place, so I did ok.

Today was very busy. Crazy things going on at work. Have you ever had a day where nothing ever goes exactly the way you plan? It wasn?t a bad day, but just things didn?t go they way anticipated. First all I can say is discount hardware is not always worth it. Also IDE raid, cheap and nice, but it has some work left to be done before I am very happy.

Didn?t get home tonight till 8pm. Cooking dinner now, and catching up on what is stored on tivo. I was going to log onto work, but I am just tired. Probably do something later before bed.

Nothing else going on of value today to note. I got a replacement stuffed animal for my niece Morgan. The first one was all messed up so I called and got a new one sent to me. Got to bring it over to her later this week. Not that a 3 week old will notice or care, but hey!!!

Getting ready for the party

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So there is no confusion, when I mean I got dressed for the part, I just put a tee shirt and khakis on. Hope no one expected a suit or tux. I havent even seen half these movies up for awards. Still will be interesting..
posted by Scott at 3/23/2003 05:23:48 PM

So I cleaned my apartment today. So far that was the highlight of the day. I think I am going to break this blog up with personal and work stuff. Lots going on at work that I think would be cool to document how things progress, but I don?t want to keep switching back and forth. So the bottom half of the posts will be ?tech? stuff, the beginning will be other stuff.

Just got dressed for the academy award party I am going to. Getting picked up by my friend rich in a bit. Apparently we will be drinking a lot so I don?t want to drive over. Looks like it will be fun.

So I found my cell phone last night. I thought I lost it Friday. I called and Verizon said that no one was making calls on it. I back tracked what I did Thursday and it turned up deep in a coat pocket. Glad I have 2 of those dam things, or I would be in trouble. That is one thing about a home (landline) phone, they never can get lost.

Got an IM from my friend Steve. He and another friend tom are coming down in April for a Def Leppard concert. I like 80?s music, and Def Leppard is my favorite. I just hope they don?t play all new stuff that sucks. Some bands should just give up on new music and play what people liked. So Steve & tom are coming down from Albany and due to some weird fluke that I didn?t want to get into they got tickets for Thursday & Friday night concerts. I like this band, but I hope I can handle 2 concerts of them in a row!

So I finally got Gus (the boss) his phish mp3?s. Very cool that they allow free distribution of their live concerts. I got like 800 megs of stuff and encoded them to mp3. Speaking of music and Def Leppard, I may have to go back and buy another copy of hysteria. It is like one of my all time favorite album?s and the copy I have is scratched. So the mp3 encoding of it sounds really bad with skippingL I wonder how legal it is to download those tracks from the internet if I already own the cd. Who am I kidding, that file trading software puts so much spy crap on your computer I won?t ever install it again.

Work

Yes I actually worked on Sunday. Remote access is awesome. Well it sucks that you work on Sunday, but at least I can do it from the floor of my apartment watching tv. I moved a bunch of network shares around. So everyone at work will think we are screwing with them, but the real reason is to get all the mapped drives onto 1 file server. We have been doing this piece by piece for 2 weeks and it probably will be another 1-2 weeks before we are done. Something always comes up to slow us down or distract us.

I am also playing with some cool features that probably no one uses in Windows 2000 AD (active directory). Just put up a DFS (distributed file system) share. It is cool. Next I want to look at 2000?s built in package distribution. We don?t want to spend $$$ on a separate package so we will play with this. Looks cool, but that does not mean anything.

More tomorrow!