After several false starts I was finally able to cancel my AT&T Wireless account yesterday. It was just over a year so I didn’t pay the dam early termination fee. Thankfully everything worked out. I got my number over to T-Mobile, and I don’t have that dam AT&T service anymore. They asked why I was leaving and I just laughed at them. I told them for one thing the estimated 10 minute hold I was told about was 45 minutes. I am just thankful that I am not using them anymore. Now it is time to Ebay my T-68i.
Shopping In The City
I am off to spend the day in manhattan. It is cold, and I am probably stupid for doing it, but I am off anyway. Going to see the tree. If you don’t know which tree, you don’t live in NYC. Then maybe the coolest toy store in the universe, FAO. I have nightmares about the dam song they play there, but it is still really cool.
The hard part is finding parking at the LIRR…
This entry was written while listening to Long, Long Way To Go from the album “X” by Def Leppard
Friday With Friends
Friday I still felt like crap. I am getting these mild head aches. I say mild because I take the medication since I am afraid they will become full fledge migraines, and then the medication work and I just feel lousy for the rest of the day. I almost turned down plans to goto Amanda & Rich’s for dinner. Glad I didn’t. As always I had a good time. We ordered pizza and watched movies. Nice and low key. We saw 8 crazy nights and some other stuff. They are off next week to portland so they wanted to hang out.
I took a furiset at like 4:30, but didn’t really feel better until I drank a bottle of water around 7. Amanda gives great advise, even though she doesn’t listen to some herself sometimes. Amanda, if you are reading this chill about your friend. She is a freak, ignore her! Not worth your effort to worry.
Don’t know how they can drive 5+ hours to portland but they do.
I actually got out of work at 5ish also. I stopped by Gus and told him I was taking off early and he was like, yeah so am i. And we left.
Allot of people are out next week due to the holiday. I am in, but it should be a low key week since everyone else is out. Or so I keep telling myself that.
This entry was written while listening to Breakfast At Tiffanys by Deep Blue Something
Projects Updates
Finally put into service our first Windows 2003 Active Directory server. I demoted an old 2000 box and transfered its roles to the new server.
Started redirecting call center users in NYC to our new mail server we are using for our Kingston office. The end goal is to have the entire call center on that mail system. Once I get all the alias’s and accounts done I can just delete the old mail accounts and tell everyone they have a new email address. It is a slow process since I need to edit everyones profile when they are not at work. I did about 10 people in 2 days. this rate it will take me a month to get everyone cut over.
We upgrade our Pix firewalls next tuesday to enable us to use a VPN tunnel to send large amounts of VOIP calls between offices. when I mean large amounts I mean more than the 2-3 we can now. Probably like 20 at a time on a dedicated internet T-1.
Other things going on are the guys in Kingston are working on Cisco Softphone setup’s to allow remote agents for our call center. Or to allow us to use the phones from outside the office on our laptops. Also in the works is the ability to move your phone number between desk phones if you need to.
The Company Holiday Party
Yesterday was my companies holiday party. I unfortunately didn’t go. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and migraines don’t care that a party is planned. That was 2 days in row for migraines for me. not good.
It was suggested that I need to be at the party, but I just couldn’t make it. I ended up leaving work at 4PM. I figured I was up for one of the company awards they do at these events. I was up for one last year, but didn’t win. I figured if Gus was telling me it was a good idea to show up, that I was going to win something. I won the award for most savings to the company. To us that is a big thing. it is one of 3 or 4 awards. I got some Champaign. Supposed to be really good champaign, but I don’t drink the bubbly. My sister already offered to take it off my hands. I will save it for a special occasion.
I await the video to see how everyone acted crazy at the party. The didn’t allow hard booze this party since one we had in June had allot of people getting really drunk off of many shots.
From what I hear many people bailed on the party this year. Keith had to pack and didn’t go. Glenn our CEO was a no show because he threw his back out earlier in the day.
In any event it was supposed to be a load of fun. We do know how to have a good time when work stops…
This entry was written while listening to American Girl by Everclear
iTunes Rocks
So I bought some more music on the iTunes store. I am not a huge fan of buying music, but getting it online from apple is flexible (i can burn to disk and use the files anywhere I want, unlike other services) and it is cheaper than buying a CD. I got Barenaked Ladies latest CD. You may have seen some of the songs listed as what I was listening to when writing this blog. It is a decent album. I found 2 songs I liked, but I think there last one (or was it 2 albums ago) was better. They are a band I would like to see in concert. Their music is funny, and they make good music.
This entry was written while listening to California from the album “Rip It Off” by Stroke 9
Lazy Day And Hardware Upgrades
Today was a lazy day. I caught up on what I had on the Tivo. I also did some email and just hung out. I did some food shopping since they say it may snow tomorrow. I had no food left, so I figured it was a good time to do that.
I also installed 512 more megs in my new 20″ iMac. Now I have 768 megs in it. I can put a full gig in it, but apple decided to only include 256 with them machine. If I want to get a full gig, I need to remove that 256 and put a 512 meg chip in its place. The only problem is you cannot get to that memory without going to an authorized repair center. It is sealed within the machine. The other slot is not. So for now I am at 768 megs, it should be enough for now. I also put my airport extreme card into the mac. I don’t have the laptop anymore so I figured I would use it. Since my server is in the closet on wireless, I get no extra speed by leaving the mac wired to my 100megabit switch. I cannot transfer files between the desktop and server any faster than the wifi anyway. Now I just have 1 less wire plugged into the iMac.
In my free time I also imported most of my online photo album into iPhoto. Photos imported allot faster on the iMac then they did on either of my Powerbooks. I need to get photos from my parents to scan and increase my album a bit.
Also today I watched some DVD’s. I just got 2 more shows on DVD. I got Firefly on DVD. It was a scifi show that didn’t last too long on tv. It was actually very good, and I was surprised when it came out on DVD. I didn’t watch too many of them, so I decided to buy it. I also got Buffy season 5. I mocked that show for years, and then Rich gave me season 1 to watch and I actually liked it. Go figure.
This entry was written while listening to Maybe Katie from the album “Everything to Everyone” by Barenaked Ladies
Friday
Friday was a good day. Work was crazy since justin isn’t around, but Keith and I got by. We had to move 5 people’s desks to get ready for a new guy starting monday. We got 3 of them done, and will do the rest Monday. Keith got the brunt of the grunt work. I had to deal with some Kingston issues, 2 meetings, admin work, and I had to free up disk space on our main file server. All while trying to build a new desktop for the new hire and help keith with some of the moves. It was a busy day.
Friday night the president of our company had a holiday party at his house in Jersey. I didn’t go. It is a really long trip, and I had other plans. Last year I got stuck setting up a wireless network in his house.
I ended up going to a pretty decent italian restaurant for dinner. It was nice. Didn’t know what to do after dinner, so we ended up bowling of all things. It turned out to be a load of fun.
If I thought I Was Busy Before
If I thought I was busy at work before, I am in way over my head now. One of the guys on my team left yesterday. We are now short handed. The big problem is the small issues now slowing down getting the bigger projects done.
I have 1 Windows 2003 Server with Active directory done for our nyc office. it is already in production. I need to finish moving stuff off one other server and then move the AD roles to the 2k3 server. Then I can rebuild the other box, and move on in the upgrade cycle.
A major web site for a customer of ours is launching tonight. Thankfully it didn’t require too much time on my teams part, but it ate up resources.
As I mentioned before I am also trying to merge our mail systems for 1 department. I have 2 call centers who are supposed to interact with each other, but they are on 2 different mail systems. We are going to merge our NYC call center people with our Kingston mail system, since the kingston system is newer and it is cheaper to maintain. Then when that is done we will have all our call center people on one mail system and the remainder of the company on another. The good news is the new mail system (Imail 8.0) is awesome. I have been a fan of Imail for years, since like version 5.0 I think. I never used it at work, but have at home or when I hosted my site with someone. So far I am very happy with it.
Been Sick Again
Every year I get 1 or two colds and that is it. 2 weeks out of the year I take Nyquil and complain allot. Then I am fine except for allergies and migraines the rest of the year. This year is not going according to my normal plan. I had a cold in AuGust. I got the flue for two weeks in October and a cold. Now I have another cold this week. I am not pleased. I took yesterday off to try and kick the cold. It helped a little, but I still feel it.
I went from the soar throat phase monday and tuesday to the ears and nose problems Wednesday and thursday. Then today I have the nose and cough going on. What fun.