Cari’s New Place

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We went to check out Cari’s new pad. it is down in little italy. it is a nice place. Not my taste but she got a deal and can do allot with it. I will stick to the lazy living that I currently have, but of course will go hang out there due to its killer location.

We went for desert at a restaurant on Mulberry street. it was good. I had chocolate cake and a cappuccino. Since I think it is bitter normally I put like 4 sugars in it. Then it tastes great. The problem is we had desert around 9PM tonight. I am still wired from it and probably wont sleep right tonight. Not that I slept right last night and I didn’t have a coffee then!

I am going to lie down even though I know I wont fall asleep right away. I have to try! More tomorrow!

Messing With My Site

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I have been playing with my website today. Really tinkering if you want to call it anything. Jayson messing with apache and other crap on his Linux box got me to mess with my site. I was not as hard core as he has been. I have been using a Windows 2003 box with IIS. I am modifying my site using Frontpage, Fireworks, & Dreamweaver.

The basis for the tinkering is that I want to add more photos to my site. The issue is two fold. One I want to secure some of the photo pages with a password. I am doing that now but each section has its own username and password. That is not effective. The other issue is the organization of the site and how it is presented to the viewer. Right now people enter my site and see a home page built with fireworks. It looks nice, but it is not super easy to update. I want something that can dynamically update as I add content, or change the links.

I still don’t know what I want to do. I want to use Fireworks, but I am having problems updating it. I am playing around with text and tables in Frontpage to have the same affect. it is not the same, but I am not sure if it will do. I will mess with it more later in the week.

A New TV?

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Jayson found this $999 30″ LCD TV from Winbook. I have been eyeing it ever since. I have wanted a new TV since last year. HD ready plasma’s are still too expensive for my taste. And until recently the LCD TV’s I have seen have been too small. Now I find a 30″ LCD TV within my price range. I still don’t know if I should get it. Winbook does not make their own TV’s. I don’t know who makes them. I also am skeptical since their TV is like $600 cheaper than the nearest competitor that I know of. I believe you DO get what you pay for. I want a nice review of the TV from someone other than who Winbook says to check out reviews for.

I am not anti Winbook. I have actually been tempted to buy a laptop from them several times in the past. For whatever reason I never did, but I hear good things about them. I am waiting for more information on this TV before I make a decision. But it sure would look nice hanging on my wall in my living room!

Electrician’s Also Do Snow Plowing

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Funny story I was told by Kai a few weeks ago when it was snowing. He needed to have some electrical work done, and setup a time for the contractor to come out and do it. Turns out that day it was snowing (and had snowed the previous day). He called to see where his contractor’s were and they were like, yeah we need to get to you later this week. All the guys are out plowing. Turns out when it snows this company throws some plows on their trucks and they do plowing for nearby communities. I have never heard of electricians that did plowing. I got a good laugh out of that! This is for the wierd but true file!

Call Center Day

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Today I went to Kingston. I had to meet the construction guys for an update. The work is coming along and should be done ahead of schedule. The cable guys still need to come and do their work, and the furniture needs to be setup but it is going along smoothly, so far.

I got an update on the new deployment method they are going to use for desktops. They are going to use RIS from Microsoft. For me seeing RIS actually working in a beta group was nice since I asked about doing this over a year ago.

Took Kai to lunch. I need to work on his review this week. it is late since I was sick this month.

The Kingston trips are always busy, but I never feel productive. I am beginning to think that the feeling of not “really” doing anything is because I am not getting what I want to get done, but helping out or doing stuff for other people.

Travel Day

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Today was a travel day to Kingston. Dan and I went up there for several reasons. He wasn’t looking good. He had a cold or something. I told him that if I got sick since I sat next to him on the train that I would have to hurt him.

The day was busy. We headed back to the city around 4:30. The 5pm train we were aiming for was late and the 4pm train was late also. Since we got to the train early for the 5, and late for the 4, the 4pm train arrived a few minutes after we got to the station. Train math gets me dizzy too.

Dan and I sat in the cafe car and drank. I didn’t know they had a nice selection of alcohol. I had some Jack Daniel’s and Coke. The trip went by fast.

A bunch of people got together for Jim’s next to last night in NYC before flying out. I got back too late, and I was tired so I passed and went home to relax.

External Hard Drive

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Ever since I upgraded the hard drive in my new HP computer (like a week after I got it last year) I have had 2 160GB hard drives lying on my desk. I haven’t needed the space since I have 2 new 250GB drives in there now. Since I am using my DVR more and more I decided to put the 160’s to use. I got an addonic’s external USB 2 drive enclosure. It is neat. For $40 you can put a normal IDE drive in it and make it a USB 2 drive. For me this is perfect since I have no more internal drive bays on my computer but I have extra USB ports. I will get another one of these enclosures soon now that I know they work as advertised.

Fresh New Circuits

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We just got our new 3700 series Cisco router today. it will be used for our new 4.5 megabit internet connection we are getting for NYC. This replaces our 2 redundant T-1’s. this connection is basically 3 T-1’s plugged into 1 big router. less redundancy, but triple the bandwidth. We figured our corporate office can have some acceptable downtime. Since our uptime stats have been great on our current circuit it seemed like a good gamble. I hope that once this is done I can use my VOIP phone without getting terrible choppiness sometimes.

We hope the circuit goes live in about 1-2 weeks. Verizon will be out tomorrow (had to cancel for some reason today) to do the smartjacks. Like I always say, you cannot have enough bandwidth.

New Pillow

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I have been having a huge problem sleeping recently. I think that it is part of the reason why I have been getting head ache’s but I cannot be 100%. I just know I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot go back to sleep. I decided a few days ago to try and get a new pillow. I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and picked up what you can call an ergromatic pillow. it form fits to your head when you lie down on it. It was not cheap. I don’t want to say how much I spent, but lets just say I hope this thing emits vallume to get me sleeping well for what I paid.

When I opened it up from its packaging, I got a little card that read “you may notice a “newness scent” when you remove this item from the package”. Basically this may smell, but just leave it out for a while and it will be fine. I thought that was the funniest thing I read all day. So I am following the directions and it is airing out now. I hope to sleep like a baby tonight!

Build Out

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Our build out of our new downstairs space in our call center is progressing. I got the ok (or the if it was budgeted go buy it and don’t ask about it) to get supplies for the new space. We need new WIFI points, printers, etc. Phones and computers are already on the way.

The last major purchase is the UPS for our downstairs computer room. It does not have to be as big as the one we are deploying upstairs since all it has to support is a switch. Granted it is a huge mother f–king switch, but still.

Other work going on is a reboot of half of our smart jacks tonight. No idea why, but one of the LEC’s (Local Exchange Carrier for those who have no clue what I am saying) we use needs to upgrade some stuff so they need to reboot the smartjacks. Until they called I had no idea you could or would do that at all.