Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
I needed to do this today, and I guess it was hard to find but someone already blogged about it. So for me it took 1 minute to do it! The lesson I learned today is always backup your devices before you tinker with them. That way restoring them will be easier later on.
Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Blackberry Pearl, Blackberry Pearl hard reset
I wanted to write a bit about some of the cool new projects i am working on at my new job. I am not going to go into great detail but it is something.
One of the biggest things i am doing is working on a plan to move an existing self hosted data center to a Co-Location facility. We just need more space. Thankfully instead of physically moving all of our gear we are looking at getting an all new setup built out and retire most of the old gear. The timing works out perfectly for us so we are giving it a try. We will be moving some stuff, but not a whole lot. Another thing we are trying to do is make this data center site the model (for us at least) for Virtualization. We are going to build out as much if not everything with the exception of SQL server as Virtual Machines running on VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3. If all goes according to plan it will be really cool setup. The TCO will also be allot less than doing it physically, it will be quicker to build out and deploy, and it will consume allot less power! The way i think about it is if we get a request for new servers to be build we just see how much Virtual capacity we have and just provision a new machine. If we don’t have extra space, we just purchase an additional node and more SAN storage and add to our VI3 cluster. The goal is to stay far enough ahead in available capacity (minus the N+1 for redundancy) that we always can accommodate even the largest provisioning requests. I can’t wait to see how this turns out! It will be interesting.
Technorati Tags: virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, vmware, VMware ESX Server
The weather cleared up today enough so i was able to get a good ride in Central Park in the afternoon. I don’t know why (maybe the lack of any exercise all week) but i was more tired after my work out than i can remember ever being on the same route. Even last week wasn’t that bad. I guess that means i need to do my own self made course more often to build up my stamina. Hopefully i can get out a few nights this week.
Technorati Tags: Biking in Central Park, Biking
So close, yet not yet. That is what I am thinking about Skype’s new Caller Identification. This has been one feature I have wanted on Skype for some time. With it, I can finally think about using it as a true phone replacement for my current Broadvoice home phone. Now all I have to do is wait for them to enable the service for use in the US.
I also realized that it would be really cool if Skype passed through caller ID info from a caller when you use call forwarding. Right now I see the same crazy 0012345678 show up on my forwarded calls as people see when I call them. Maybe this Caller Identification resolves this also? I hope it does.
Technorati Tags: Skype
I headed out to the bike store today to get air in the tires of my bike. Sitting in my apartment all year left them needing a quick refresh and then I was off on my first ride of the season. I took it easy today since I know I am a bit out of shape and I don’t want to over do it. I rode a bit in Central Park, and then headed home. If the weather stays the way it is I hope to get a few more rides in this week.
After being fed up with issues on my Treo 680 I went out and bought a Blackberry Pearl. This was an impulse buy, since it is a short term solution until work upgrades my Blackberry for me. Until then I am using the Pearl. My first impression is that this phone is small. It is the size of a regular phone. It fits in my pocket. That is nice. The call quality is good, and the screen is nice and bright and sharp. I am still getting used to the keyboard, so the jury is still out on it.
In the long term I will use the Pearl for my work email, and maybe get a larger screen PDA phone for my personal mobile. I know, why have two? Well I can’t port my personal number to my work account, and I don’t want to give up my personal mobile number. I really like it, and everyone knows it. Right now I have been forwarding my call from one phone to the other so I can keep one phone in my bag and not have to carry it all the time. But as good as the Pearl seems, it doesn’t do tasks very well. I like the Windows Mobile or Palm for that so I might get some other device. I just know the 680 is not that device. It crashes and is too dam slow just too often. I am eyeing the Apple iPhone, or the Windows Mobile 6 Treo with the newly announced Blackberry emulation software running on it that might come out this fall. I guess I am always on the hunt for the perfect PDA/Phone. So close, but not there yet!
Technorati Tags: Blackberry, palm, Blackberry Pearl, Treo, Treo 680
I went to the Sakura Matsuri Festival today at the Botanic Gardens in Brooklyn. I know, two days in a row leaving Manhattan really takes allot out of me! It was an interesting experience, especially since it is outside what I would normally do on my Saturday. I am still trying to figure out what was more interesting the festival itself or the people dressing up in costumes? There were the people in traditional Japanese costumes that you would expect, but there was also a noticeable number of people dressed up in Animea characters and other costumes. I even saw a guy dressed up as a transformer. It was just weird/interesting.
All in all it was a good day, except for the fact that after I got home I started to get a migraine. I took some Amerge and a 2 hour nap and I was allot better but not 100%. I ended up having to cancel my plans to go out with with some friends.
Technorati Tags: migraine
Today I left the island of Manhattan and my reliance on the public transit system to go out to Long Island for a data center tour. In theory everything should have been fine even in the rain. My car was late showing up, but I still made it to the site a few minutes early. That should have been a good thing, but apparently there is no reception area at the place I went to so I was standing out in the rain with no way of getting inside.
Thankfully my boss drove to the site so eventually he showed up and I had the dryness of his car. We tried to sort out the whole situation. Apparently there is no one typically onsite at this facility that can greet people or give tours. Some how they messed up the fact that we were showing up for a our so we were out of luck.
Since the tour was a bust we hit a local diner for some early lunch, and then I called a car to take me back home. With the amount of time lost going back and forth to the island, this was the perfect day to work from home. And that is exactly what I did. Once I got home I got online via the wonderful world of VPN and worked the rest of the day from the dry confines of my apartment.
I ended up not going out to meet Danny after work even though we had tentative plans. I was no where near the office, and I was tired and didn’t really want to go out after a crazy wet morning. So laziness kicked in and I hung out at home.
Technorati Tags: car service, data center, datacenter, travel
I was once told that it takes someone three months or so to fully adjust to a new job. I have believed that theory that it takes that long to be a fully functioning member of a new team, but personally I haven’t put that theory to the test for some time. Of course that was because I was at the same job for almost 6 years. That was until about 2 1/2 month ago.
This week I started to notice that I am able to take on more responsibility and a more active role in my team. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything for 2 1/2 months, but what I was doing before was specific tasks and projects. Now I am starting to grasp the bigger picture and taking a more active role in shaping that big picture. Then I looked at my calendar and saw that it has been more than 2 1/2 months since I started. I proved my own theory right. I does take about 3 months for everything to fall into place. It may take me many more months to fully understand everything but I am now feeling more connected to what is going on. And to be honest it actually feels good. It is also weird that it doesn’t feel like that much time has past since I moved jobs, but looking at my calendar proves my gut feeling wrong. How time can fly.
The odds were against me. Heck I even thought I would be, but I survived the Blackberry outage with not issues. I actually didn’t know there was a problem with our Blackberry mail until about 2:30PM on Wednesday, and even then I didn’t ask about it until about 5:30PM EST. That timeline does sound weird to me since everyone said the Blackberry system was down Tuesday night and back on Wednesday but many of us at work were down most of Wednesday afternoon.
In any event I am officially (in my opinion) not addicted to the device. The jury is still out about the internet in general though!
Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Blackberry outage