I went to see Runaway Jury Saturday. It was really good. John Cusack is always good, and I didn’t realize that Dustin Hoffman and Gean Hackman were in it also. Very nicely done, and the best thing is that I didn’t guess the ending after 5 minutes.
Busy At Work, What Else Is New
Work this week has been challenging. I got nothing I planned on doing yesterday completed. I was busy fixing other issue that crept up. Kai from our Kingston office was down for a meeting and also to just work for a day out of NY. He never did that before so we wanted to bring him down.
We are in the midst of several major projects. Remote recording of voice calls, creating a beta test for remote agents, move a mail server, upgrade NYC’s domain controllers, evaluate SMS, build a new service domain, and oh yeah we had 4 people get hired in the past week. My team is just a bit busy. Don’t get me wrong, busy is good. Overwhelmed is not. We are currently busy but quickly moving to overwhelmed. Hopefully we can get everything done without a problem.
Updateathon
I reinstalled the OS on my ThinkPad last week. I was having some weird issues so I felt it was time to do a refresh. I like to do that every few months. Another advantage of the mac. I never felt compelled to do that on my powerbook unless I was upgrading the OS to a newer version.
With my powerbook gone, and both my home computer and work computer’s just receiving new OS’s I don’t have a single machine that is configured with all my stuff on it. My data is backed up on a firewire hard drive I cannot access since I don’t have a mac. My mail is only on my laptop and almost nothing is on my desktop at home.
Slow Posting
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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.