Slow Posting

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It’s been almost a week since my last post. I have been busy, but I don’t think that is an excuse anymore since I am always busy. I am on the train, my most popular spot to write blogs these days. I am doing this blog from my ThinkPad. The reason is I sold my Powerbook yesterday to a friend, nelson. He had been nagging me to buy it for months. I kept pushing him away since I said I would wait until it was a year old and then upgrade. Well I didn’t make it. Not sure what I want to get to replace it yet. I really liked it, but I don’t know if I need 2 laptops. The company one I have (the ThinkPad) I a great machine, it is just not MY Powerbook. I can type faster on the Powerbook. But the ThinkPad has more battery life and a bigger screen. I am conflicted between another upgraded Powerbook or a new 20” imac. I want another Mac, but not sure if the portable is what I need.

Part of doing this blog entry is to see how I like typing on the train using the ThinkPad. My hands do cramp up, but I am still undecided on what to do. Gus and I will goto the Apple store today so I can browse the selection.

It is also important to note that Cell phone number portability is only 4 days away. Monday is the big day. I will go against what experts are saying and attempt to change my number first thing Monday.

DNS

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I spent a few hours yesterday trying to clean up my companies DNS servers. I am a perfectionist so I probably spend more time on organizing things like DNS records than I should, but like I said I am a perfectionist.

I have all but 3 domains now using our own DNS servers. When we first started up we used a company’s gear that funded us. I have wanted to move away from them for some time, but just don’t always find the time to work on the project.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, (And Sunday)

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I went out and saw mystic river with some friends last night. It was an “ok” movie. it wasn’t great, but the plot was good and the active was very good. we went to the outback for dinner, but after learning there was an hour and a half wait or more we took it to go (20 minutes) and went back to my friend Rich’s parents house. They were gone for the weekend and that was the closest place to the movies.

I didn’t get home till late this morning. That fact pisses me off since some dumb-ass called me at 9:45AM. Now I cannot sleep so I am up writing.

Not sure what is on the agenda for today. I wanted to goto the mall for a bit, but now I am not sure what I want to do. I will play it by ear.

This entry was written while listening to Right Now by Van Hallen

What To Write

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I am sitting on the train wanting to write more about what has been happening, but my hands are starting to hurt. lots of typing recently. So I will try later this week to keep up to date.

Jayson’s Wedding

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So for a number of reasons I am unable to goto the big wedding in vegas the week of thanksgiving. Actually, from what I have been told it wont be that big. it will probably be a blast. I am planning on going down to visit in December. I haven’t seen jay, joe, or gretchen in ages.

New Servers

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I may have mentioned a project I am working on to build the hardware for our new fulfillment system. Our design calls for 3 servers. We finally got the 3rd one in today. One of the first 2 had a bad drive so keith was working on that today, while I was building out the newest one we received. I have to say the serial ATA RAID 5 setup is just as sweet as serial ata mirroring we did on a previous machine.

Hopefully all 3 machines will be built and ready to goto our datacenter on friday. then we can create a domain and finish configuring them.

I also got thrown some security documentation that I have to do. it was a last minute thing that is going to be a pain to write. I am told I do documentation well, but I don’t like doing it all that much.

Automatic Updates

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Tonight we try our second wave of automatic windows updates for desktop computers. We (keith & I) finally got the Microsoft windows update server working. This server replaces Microsoft’s own windows update site for your company. you can pick and choose what updates your desktops get and when. It saves us from downloading patches we have no idea about. It is a great idea. I looked into this service back in August, but had trouble with programing the client machines to auto update. I then didn’t have time to finish the project. A few weeks ago keith took up the research into the auto update server. He did everything I did and then learned out how to program Active Directory to tell computers in the domain to look for the auto update server. We took the existing server I had up and running and made some changes in active directory and now we have an automatic update system. no more running around to each computer for patching security wholes.

Last night we ran a small test. Tonight we do 1 department. If all goes well again, we will do another department tomorrow, and the rest of the NY office next week. So far all looks good. We will know for sure tomorrow morning.

The Set Up

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There are a few things I don’t or won’t talk about on this blog. So far I have avoided dating completely. Not sure if the internet is the venue to discuss that very much. I bring it up because I felt compelled to discuss one angle of dating right now. The blind date and or the fix up date comes to mind. I am not against either in theory. Just I won’t accept being fixed up by anyone. Some people that are on the “not allowed to fix Scott up list” is my mom. Come on, do you really want your mom to set you up on a blind date? My mom has wanted to fix me up with daughters of her friends for a while. I have continually told her no. Not sure if it was a battle of wills, but finally I said OK when she said a friend of hers at work wanted to set me up with someone else she knew. I will know how it goes soon. I am still not sure about the whole fix up by a parent thing. if it was my sister I would be ok with it. if it was a cousin or my brother in law I would be cool with it, even encourage it. The fix up just doesn’t feel right coming from a parent. That goes out the window if the fix up is a hit, unless said parent speaks to or knows allot about the girl. That is the really weird part.

Well, there is only one way to find out how everything pans out!!! Thank for sitting through my ramblings.

A VMWare World

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I have spoken often about the wonders of VMWare. I will keep doing so. I finally got my desktop at work configured with a larger hard drive and have been busy setting up Virtual Machines. I have several deployment projects that are benefiting from VMWare. I can take 2 physical machines and make them into many virtual machines.

Howard finally started using VMWare with Red Hat 9 on his laptop. It is funny that I am getting him to use it more, when my cousin and howard were the people that got me hooked on the idea of virtual machines in the first place.

I am using VMWare on numerous projects currently. I have a test domain controller running windows 2003. That is a physical server. I then take my desktop and attach servers and client machines running VMWare to it to test all sorts of things. Today I created a sub domain on my test domain using a windows 2000 server virtual machine. I then was able to test destroying active directory without worrying about rebuilding a server. I just saved the Win 2000 virtual machine and I can restore it if I have problems.

I have done the same thing with SMS 2003. I am busy now and cannot work on it so I just backed up the virtual machine I was trying it on. I don’t have to take up a server testing with it. it is just 5 gigs on a hard drive.

I was also able to test some security changes we made to my companies active directory without affecting anyone. I just added a windows XP virtual machine to our domain and ran tests on it. I just restored from backup if I messed up the virtual machine. it is great technology.

Keith and I also used a virtual machine of XP to test windows update services we are deploying. that also saved us from creating ghost images of desktops and tying up several in this test.

My next challenge is getting a working FreeBSD 5.1 workstation as a virtual machine.

Microsoft just announced a new version Virtual PC. I will see if it is anywhere near as good as VMWare.

Early Night

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I was tired after work yesterday so I just went home. I dropped off my dry cleaning and cooked myself a steak. Watched a little TV and went to bed. Nice eventful evening. I actually like that sometimes. No surprises.