Projects

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We officially are lease holders in our new office building. Everything was signed and executed Friday. That was interesting because technically we took occupancy of the floor on Thursday. Dan, and I walked over today to get the first keys for us.

I am still dealing with issues with the LEC regarding our phone circuits. We missed every date they gave us, but hopefully we will be ok if they make up time on the second phase of everything.

Our migration of users in our call center is progressing, but not as fast as I would have hoped. The staff up there claim that they have ironed out the issues with the new computer builds and will complete the first major milestone by Wednesday. I am not sure if I believe that assessment but I hope they do finish by then. If they do we will be in halfway decent shape to complete the project by June 30.

I worked all day with Jayson and Scott on Sunday to get ZEN up and running. We made progress but not as much as I originally thought we would. That setup is still ongoing but we still have allot of work to do on it. More updates soon.

Off To The Hospital

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I am off to the hospital to see the new nephew. I was actually able to get out of work at 3:15 to get out to my parents. I am on the LIRR now. I had to stay for an all company meeting we had. I had to speak for a few minutes so I couldn’t really miss it.

If Zack does not spit up on me I will have had a good visit. I am excited to be an uncle again, even if I don’t spend tons of time with morgan as it is. I also like the name. I was worried for a while that my sister would continue the tradition of naming kids with really bad names. She didn’t and got another good name to go with Morgan!

I need to continue my own tradition of buying a bottle of something to give to Zack when he gets older. I have a bottle of Johny Walker Gold for Morgan purchased on her day of birth. I didn’t get Zack something yesterday, but I will do something today or tomorrow. I also need to get a big stuffed something for him. not sure what yet. Hopefully pictures soon! That reminds me I need to be the tech savy uncle and pick up a domain name for him as well…

My New Nephew

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Today I am an uncle (again). My sister gave birth to a baby boy at around 2:30PM today. Zachary proves that babies show up when they want, and they don’t care if their parents have other plans. Sorry you missed Morgan’s dance performance, Carrie but we all said he would show up on his own time. I guess that time was exactly 1 day early.

I was stuck at work today and the hospital is on long island so I will go see my sister and new nephew tomorrow.

Ironically today is also my brother in law’s birthday. So now I just need to remember 1 birth date for the men on that side of the family.

New Desk Setup

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Now that the iMac is gone I was able to reorganize my desk a bit and get back to 1 monitor. I rewired my desk with KVM cables. I now have my HP desktop plugged back in along with my Macbook on the same monitor. I switched back to a VGA monitor and put away my 20″ Apple Cinema Display. I am hoping to sell the Apple display since it doesn’t work with my VGA KVM. It is DVI of course. Those displays retain their value a bit so I am hopeful I will get a decent amount of cash for it. Now I can plug in up to 2 more computers but right now I only need to plug in 2.

I also cleaned up some cables and did some heavy dusting while I was under my desk. Man the dust accumulates.

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Work Saturday

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I was in the office most of the day today. Jayson needed a server built and I had a ton of backlogged items I needed to do. I just put my iPod in my pocket, clipped the remote to my shirt and cranked up the tunes and got to it. The iPod is a must when spending more than a few minutes in the computer room. It is loud in there.

In many ways I don’t like working on the weekend, but in others it is not so bad. The downside is that I actually have to work. The upside is that no one is around to distract me. I got a ton done.

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iMac is Sold

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I have completed my sale of my 20″ intel iMac. It didn’t sell on ebay but one of the bidders was local (i do live in the biggest city in the country) and still wanted it, was willing to pay for the reserve and show up to get it. Now that I have my money I will pay for the Macbook I just got!

Before the sale I ran out on this crappy morning for a hair cut. and then ran off to work (see next post)

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Dinner With The Family

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Went to dinner with my parents, sister and niece tonight. Probably the last time we will do that before the baby shows up. My sister is due next week. I had a head ache since it was hot and I didn’t eat lunch. I have to stop doing that. We had a good time though. Morgan was great as always. Great as in really funny, but not behaving as good as she could tonight.

Other than dinner, work was busy as usual. I meet a rep from a vendor we started using. It was an interesting talk. I had a ton of other issues that I am dealing with, and things are busy. Hopefully the die down a bit after July.

54 Wireless Networks

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With my new Macbook I find 54 wifi networks in my apartment (See the first page of them in picture below). it is crazy. With my iMac or Powerbook I found only like 9. The antenna is that much more sensitive on this new Macbook. Now I have to find out how many of them are open with good signal strength. I also need to make sure my own wifi network is not getting bad signal strength because it is sharing a channel with too many nearby networks.

54 Wireless Networks

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New Macbook

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I broke down this weekend and bought a Macbook. I got the black one. I was hoping for a larger hard drive but didn’t want to special order it. I went to the new Apple store on 59th street. They had a ton in stock, or so it seemed. I decided that I do want a home computer even thought I have a work laptop. I also took Danny’s lead and figured why does my home computer need to be a desktop. I love my iMac. It is fast, and has everything I need, but it also has things I don’t need like tons of size! I also don’t like being locked into 1 monitor size. With a portable I can get a larger external screen if I want one.

So with my new Macbook in hand I will be eBaying my iMac. It served me well, but it does have to go so I can pay for the Macbook. I should get a decent price for it since it is in mint condition, with original packaging and an AppleCare.

I am off to take photos of the gear now!

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Remote Desktop Access

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For a while now we have wanted to solve a problem regarding remote users. We have a few remote users who we want to be able to log into our DMZ and access some web sites and services on our network. The solution we came up with is to use Windows 2003 Terminal Services. We only need to accomidate maybe 5 people at a time on this system. it is not very many users, but it was an important issue to resolve. Now that we have that system up and running I think we came up with a better longer term solution.

I am eyeing using the free VMware Server to host a few Windows XP virtual machines for the same purpose. We don’t need 5 concurrent users, so I won’t need that many VM’s. I also don’t need to deal with Microsoft’s licensing model for Terminal Server (per desktop or per user). VMware is touting their Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. It may be something that fits for us. This initial project is just the first part of our needs for a solution such as this. I have 2 other projects that could require this sort of remote access. I am waiting for time to demo the solution to see how viable it will be for us.

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