Saturday

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Alison and I met Jayson, Gretchen, Dave, and two of jayson’s friends from New Orleans. We meet at their hotel across from Penn Station. We ate a nearby Pizza place. The out of towners wanted some pizza. We only had a short amount of time before our reservations so we did quick and easy. it was surprisingly good.

I made reservations at the Gotham Comedy Club. it was right around the corner from Best Buy and Outback near my office. It was rated very highly from Zagats. We had a blast. it was really funny.

We sat righ tby the stage but in the corner by stage left. Gretchen got made fun of in the beginning when they were asking where people were from. She was slow to answer so they were making fun of Southerner’s being slow!

We even saw some comedian’s who I recognized from TV. One guy I don’t recall where I remember him from, and another guy I saw on Tough Crowd. All in all we had a blast. We ended up in the hotel bar after the show to hang out for a while. Alison and I took off early since we both had trains to catch. this would be a perfect night to have an apartment in the city. I could have stayed out late and not had to worry. Oh well. The search goes on for a place.

iPod And Storage Space

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Jury Duty makes me remember I want another iPod. I am waiting to see if something new is coming out from Apple. Macrumors say that the iPod is in mid product cycle and won’t have a new one coming out for a few months. I am still holding out. I think the 20gig units are too small for what I want to do, and the 40 gig ones are too expensive. I am hoping that the middle of the road unit has 25-30 gigs when the refresh their product cycle in a few months.

For now I am going to wait. I may invest in a 512 meg SD card. I have been thinking about it, and the prices are coming down. It is that or a USB flash drive.

Friday Tasks

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Jayson and I went to our data center today to bring up a server we just built. Man a 2U server is more than twice the weight than a 1U. Even though it is only double the size.

I hurt my wrist on a disk array we were mounting. It got stuck under the array as I was (trying to) holding it up. I didn’t realize it hurt until I tried to lift some metal rails later back at our office.

i was successful at creating a phone for the first time on our Avaya switch. I did it by myself. It was not so bad. Lets hope the next time I can figure it out again.

I also began to map out all of our phone ports. Looks like keith never bothered to do that, so I am going and mapping physical office location to the port on the phone switch that that location is hard wired to. I am slowly building a nice DB of everything.

Jayson left early today so he could hang out with his wife gretchen and friends that flew up this weekend to see him. I am catching up with them tomorrow for dinner.

Quick Bits

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Kingston was interesting. I got stuff done, so that was good. I even slept a bit on the train going home. I never do that so you know I was tired. I think I got an hour or more sleep.

I left a key for the real estate person to show my apartment. Maybe I will get luck and they will rent it right away? I doubt it but you never know. I think they may show it today.

I figured out how I can have 1 ftp user account and have 2 sub directories in the users home folder. Each of those sub directories actually redirects the user to different virtual paths. That way I can have two directory trees, one for inbound, and one for outbound. To the user everything looks normal. Next up on the new FTP setup schedule is getting an SSL certificate for the FTP server.

After 2 months of waiting we finally got a hold of a the server we will be sending to our production environment. This will replace an aging server that needs more disk space. I had to lend it out to the dev staff for a while so they could do something with it. After 2 months I got it back and I can move it to our data center. I hope to move that today if possible.

Also today I have to make sure we have a computer and a phone for a new user that starts monday, setup SQL mail for a database machine, and probably 5 other things that I haven’t thought of.

AC Update

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The final word on the office AC has came down. Turns out our master plan cannot be enacted in time for it to get hot. It will be 77 degrees today. The problem we had in the past was the water tower we use to cool our water cooled AC’s put out really dirty and warm water. 80 degrees in NYC, but the water cooling the AC in kingston is coming into the system at 50 degrees. See the difference?

The other problem was the units we have are very old, and we had a full office. We have allot less people in the office now. The plan is to plug back in our old systems since we cannot install air cooled units in time for summer. The building we are in will take over control of the water tower and fix it up. This is a departure from the past when they wanted nothing to do with the tower. We are hoping that once the tower is in good working order we will actually get cool air in the office. I am crossing my fingers and toes.

I cannot go through another hot summer like the past 2, without good AC. If the AC sucks, I will be summering in the computer room. You will see me in October or so…

Jury Duty Calls

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Tonight I have to start calling to see if I need to show up for jury duty. I can suck it up and do it, but the problem is we have something major going on at work next week. Wednesday and Thursday we are reconfiguring our NYC office. I am one of the 2 people that knows what we want to do. The other guy is not as technical so I am pretty much it. If I have to show up at the court house one of those days we have problems. I have not yet figured out what I am going to do about that.

I start calling today at 5PM…

Kingston Again

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Tomorrow I have to goto Kingston again. This trip is to see the plans for our expansion of our call center. If you consider phase 1 opening the call center. Phase 2 will be to fill out the call center with the max amount of seats in the current physical space. Phase 3 is what we are going to discuss. That will be to build another section of the call center that will double the total area when completed.

I will also meet with Kai and Brian about any open issues we have going on. I know Kai and I need to talk about adding licenses to our phone system. We are maxing the system out at peak times recently.

Dan and I are taking the train up together. Glenn will meet us there by car later in the day. We should be getting a ride from him back to the city in the afternoon.

Apartment Hunting

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I went to see what the apartment scene looks like in Manhattan today. I looked at midtown on the east side today. Nice places, but far from the subway. 1st Ave. is far from the subway. I don’t care how nice the place is.

One thing I realized is how big my current place is. I couldn’t physically fit all my furniture in any of the places I looked at today. not that they were really small, but my current place is really big.

I am going to look at the west side next week. I am beginning to think near the subway is a must.

Apartment Choices

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For several months I have been rethinking my decision to live where I live. I live out “way out” in Queens, and commute to Manhattan every day for work. It takes me an hour during rush hour, and longer after hours. I don’t have a subway near me so I take the LIRR.

The work commute has begun to be difficult, and it is also tough to go out after work because I worry about train connections. Also showing up in the event of an emergency at the office is almost impossible.

Last week I finally decided I needed to move. I love my current place, but as they say, location, location, location.

I spoke to my landlady last night and she asked for 60 days to find someone else. Other than that she is going to let me out of my lease. I am sending her a copy of the current lease with the date revisions on it, and she will sign it and send it back to me. I would assume that should be enough proof for me if I need to prove the changes.

I will give her till AuGust 1, 2004 and then I will be gone. Hopefully I will find something and move sometime in July. July 15 is perfect, but July 1is doable.

I am off to look at some places with a broker today. Alyssa and AJ at work both used her and they loved her. She is also no fee, that is a nice change of pace from the 1 to 1 1/2 months rent I have paid as a fee in the past.

I gave her my broad requirements for a place and she said that for the price range I am looking for I should have no problem finding an apartment. I am scheduled to see her today to see some places. I am told it is kind of early to be looking for an apartment for July, but I want to see what my options will look like.

Wayne’s 40th

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My cousin Synde made a surprise 40th birthday party for her husband Wayne. He was totally taken by surprise.

It was at a italian restaurant near their house in South Jersey. The food was really good. I had crab cakes italian style. It was very good. I got to see most of my cousins. Thankfully it was the cousin’s that I actually like seeing.

Merric and Arrielle are getting so big. Cerina is also growing up. It is also scary to see my older cousins. Marisa, Sari, and Adrienne are all in college. It is weird. I remember Adrienne when she was Cerina’s age and barely talking. I am getting old:( Of course not as old as wayne!!! Sorry wayne but I had to put that in!

Carrie and Morgan also came with us to the party. Morgan played all afternoon with her cousins. She hasn’t seen half these people since she was 2 months old, but she instinctively bonded with them. It was like she knew they were family. It was very cute to watch Cerina and Morgan play together. All Cerina wanted to do was hug Morgan. It was very funny.

In general it was a busy but good weekend. Now the train is in the east river tunnel, and I have to prepare for a week of work…