First Migraine in a While

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I had to take a Butabitol for the first time in a while for my migraines. I don’t think I would have made it through the day if I hadn’t. The Alive didn’t seem to work, and I didn’t have any Amerge. After what the Butabital did to me last year around my birthday I am not a fan of taking it, but you cannot argue with results. I just know I need to take that stuff in moderation.

I was feeling better enough to go out with people from work for a few drinks after work. I only had 2 and headed out early. I was afraid of causing the headache that the medication prevented earlier in the day. Turned out to be a decent day, but for a while I was worried.

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VMworld

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My boss never ceases to surprise me. At the last minute Jayson suggested someone be allowed to goto VMworld, since the number of servers we operate are more and more virtual. He thought it was a good idea, and we got last minute approval. I leave on Monday, and I just got my travel arrangements done. Sean suggested I fly directly into LAX since it could be a bitch of a drive from Long beach where Jetblue flies into. Turns out I got a Delta ticket for the same amount as Jetblue would have been.

The problem with this conference is that there are too many things I want to do, and not enough time. It doesn’t help that I registered late and some of the good seminars are already booked. I ended up picking a mix of high availability and enterprise management of VM’s classes, as well as some on VDI (Vitrual Desktop Stuff). They are the two basic things we are currently working on. Hopefully I will learn a bunch of cool stuff that we can apply at work. I am also hoping to see the VMware Workstation for the Mac in action. Updates next week.

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Steak Lunch

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A few of us had lunch with EMC today to talk about some stuff that is going on. And lets face it, we use enough of there stuff so lunch is not allot to ask for. Actually our rep who is pretty cool was the one that suggested it. Like Jayson and I, he likes to eat! Well at least eat at a halfway decent place! the problem with vendor lunch’s is that they take forever. We learned allot, so it wasn’t a waste.

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And The Kids Get A Computer

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I finally setup a day to goto my sisters and give my niece a computer. I took my dad’s old dell that I had and cleaned it up and put windows xp back on it. I gave her my 17″ flat pannel I wasn’t using, and also my altec lancing speaker set. It was my excuse to go out and buy Bose speakers for my computer set at home.

Surprisingly the setup was not that bad. Coping over some of Morgan’s music too the longest. The computer setup fine, and the router they already had (even though it wasn’t in use until today) remembered all its settings.

I also got to spend some time with my nephew Zachary. He is very playful for a 4 month old. he just doesn’t like to be put down. I don’t mind that he likes being held, but I guess that Carrie and Michael do. They think he is being spoiled.

Morgan and I also got to hang out. She was in a good mood, and playful. I like that since I get free hugs. you have to take them when you can with a 3 1/2 year old. Overall it was a fun day. I just hope I don’t have to deal with that much technical support on the new computer.

Playing with VOX

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I signed up for a free vox account. I am interested in the fact that I can apply security groups to posts and allow some people to see it. I am wondering if that would enable me to resume my (semi)public posting regarding work stuff? Not sure yet. I am still playing with the service. So far I am in no rush to cancel my Typepad account.

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Month Long Recap

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Yet again I have been bad at posting. Sean emailed me looking for an update since I haven’t written in a while. I know I have been bad recently with not posting. I will provide a quick update of what happened this month. Ok, get ready here it comes:

Last week I was plagued with migraines from Wednesday till this Monday. It is the weather. I always get sick when the weather starts changing. It is something about the stagnant warm weather, not hot or cold when the AC’s stop running and it is just warm. I am not the only one I know that is affected by this but like clockwork twice a year I have an issue. I am feeling somewhat better now.

Last weekend I stayed in trying to kill the head aches. I ended up having to miss a Halloween party my friends threw because I felt like crap. I did get out a bit on Sunday to help Lauren and Andrew setup there new Macbook Pro. The twins are really cute, but a bit loud for my head aching state I was in.

The week before that I had a cold all week. Thankfully it wasn’t that bad. I took cold eze. I can’t spell it but it works. I sounded allot worse than I felt all week. The Tylenol PM also helped. The weekend of the 14th and 15th I pretty much slept away since I had a cold. Come to think of it, this month has been allot of resting when I am not working. That is a sign that things are crazy busy in the office.

One night a few weeks ago (i can’t remember when anymore) a bunch of us finally got together for poker. Brian’s girlfriend Amy was the big winner. I was the only other person that broke even. I did ok, but no where near as well as Amy. I need to schedule another get together soon.

I did the Jewish holidays at the usual places. One holiday was at my parents best friends house and the other was at my parents place. My dad decided to make the first holiday interesting by getting sick. He ended up in the hospital for a day and half with the flu or something. I am learning that even something as typically normal as the flu can put a diabetic in the hospital. He is ok but it was an interesting few days.

The other holiday was uneventful. I didn’t fast. I really can’t, or shall I say I shouldn’t. Me, medication, and not eating is a bad thing. According to my dad (who after all is a reliable religious scholar:) it is ok to skip the fasting if you need to take meds. Who am I kidding anyway. I am not religious 364 days out of the year, so why should I be that one extra day?

Other stuff went on this month, but I can’t recall all the details right now. Heck, I almost forgot about the hospital thing so I bet I missed some other important piece of info.

Work was really hectic this month. Lost of projects going on right now. I will cover them in another post if I find the time. Hopefully this wont be the last post for another month!

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Blowing Off Steam

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Last night after a stressful day a bunch of us went out and got a few drinks. We ended up at a dive bar on the upper west side. We hung out for a while and then ended up back at Miguel’s apartment to relax. It was a nice chance to relax from the crzy pace we have been keeping at the office recently.

While we where at the bar I came to the conclusion that I should take today off. It is the beginning of the jewish holiday. I have the time, and I needed a break. It wasn’t that I am very religious or anything, but taking the day off lets me go to my parents a bit earlier than I originally could if I went to work. I am writing this post from the rail road on my may to my parents house. My old stand by place to write, on the train.

Manditory Tipping?

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I saw this article today and I got a little ticked off. When did the percentage of tipping go up? I try to stick to double the tax or about 15%. That varies based on the service provided to me at the restaurant. I don’t know where someone thinks a mandatory 20% is fare. So you can provide really bad service and still automatically add 20%? I don’t know what pissed me off more about this, article. The mandatory part, or the fact that the amount they want to tack on is 5% more than what I have always thought as a fair tip. If you are concerned with cost of living adjustments, the tip goes up whenever the price of the meal goes up, so the percentage doesn’t have to change.

I am not being cheap. I regularly tip 20-25% if I get good service. Especially if I am traveling by myself and get good service I have given really big tips. I just get aggravated by people expecting more and then not providing good service. I don’t care what the article says about statistics of how people tip. If I get bad service you get a bad tip, and vice versa. About half the time I go out to eat in the city I get bad service, I am not going to reward someone for that. That is not saying everyone is bad, I also get some great service, but I should be able to dictate when I tip well or not so well based on the level of service I get. That is the whole idea of a gratuity, deal with it!

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Nagios

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Rob has gotten allot done with Nagios. Hopefully by the end of the week he should have basic system monitoring (up and down) plus disk space checking on all gear at our data center. Once that is done we can roll out more locations as well as add functionality. He is doing great with it so far. I know Danny wanted to work on the project but he is busy with other issues. I also know Danny would have done a great job on the project, but when he works on stuff like this it seems like it takes him forever to complete stuff. Rob is able to churn out product allot faster. For a time sensitive project like this I am happy with the quick response.

Hopefully this program works out better than our old whatsup system. I can’t wait till the end of the week.

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WordPress, Not For Me Yet

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I spent part of the day Sunday messing around with a WordPress install on my personal website. Yes I am paranoid so I keep this blog semi-annonimous and I also keep a regular website. It isn’t like someone could figure out who I am easily but in order to keep the powers that be (the people that pay me) from getting concerned about a blog I don’t mention last names, where I work, co-worker stories etc.

Since I do have a separate site to mess around with I tried to play with a stock WordPress install I got from my new hosting provider, Site5. I installed a bunch of cool plug-ins for the app. Unfortunately as of now, I have hit a major stumbling block that will prevent me from using WordPress to host my blog. The software does not support exporting blog entries in the out of the box configuration. You can get a plug in that will supposedly do this, but I have yet to get the plug into work properly. This is after editing the php file a bit. I got it to almost work, but I still get an error. For now I have given up.

If I get more time another day, maybe I will mess around with it some more, but I always feel if I can’t get something working pretty quick (for software such as this that means a few hours, but store bought stuff it is under an hour) I need to stop and move on.

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