Wow, Crazy Stress Filled Week

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I have been really busy, and out of town most of this week. This will be quick since I am off to bed. I was in Kingston NY working on getting our new office ready Tuesday – Thursday. Things are coming together but still having some issues. The voice T-1’s all work. But the phone system needs some new hardware. My companies current phone system had problems tuesday night causing problems for hours. Dam windows NT 4.0. More issues on Wednesday, but not as bad. Now I have issues with requests for a redesign of how our call center is going to operate. I need to map out the changes tomorrow. I am so stressing, and tired right now. I hope I can get some sleep. Friday will be interesting. it always is when you are out for a few days. I have racked up allot of hours on the mobile phone this week.

The good news is the Cisco Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone system we put in actually works. Sounds great and everything. We are just having some issues with getting the wrong type of routers. All sorts of capacity issues now. We are having our integrator fix the problem.

More tomorrow, I hope.

Neat Stuff For The Treo

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So I am still playing with the new Treo 270 I got last week. I downloaded eudora internet suite for the palm. I am not a big eudora mail client user, but they have a cool palm mail client and web browser. I am comparing it to what handspring offers.

I also downloaded Landware’s Pocket Quicken 2.03. I used this software ages ago and it is awesome. it lets you sync up your quicken db with your palm. So I can figure out where all my cash goes.

I also am trying Handsprings Treo Picture Caller ID. It lets you assign a picture to display when a specific phone number rings. It is cool, but the photos take a lot of space on a palm. Also trying the demo for SilverScreen 3.0. It is a theme or skin for the palm. it is slow on the 33mhz dragon-ball processor on the Treo, but it makes stuff look nice. It probably will fly on the new Treo with the new Palm OS 5.

And of course lets not forget the old favorites Avantgo. That is the most used program for me on any PDA. Without Avantgo I wouldn’t get my fix of news every day while sitting on the train. I also have the newest version of Vindigo. That is my attempt at acting sophisticated and knowing where to go. NYC coverage on it is great.

And for the record I will not download any annoying music for a ring tone. I can’t stand them on everyone else’s cell phone. Phones are made to be put on vibrate. I may use my phone allot, but I do have some etiquette. Get a clue people on the train, railroad, etc!

In a nutshell, the apps make the Treo way cool. And the service actually working now makes it actually functional.

On Call

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When your dad says you have a crappie job what would you say? Oh, let me put things into context for you. My dad is a trauma surgeon in a emergency room for the past 30 years or so. He doesn’t do much surgery anymore but I am painting a picture for you. He has had a pager since the late 70’s early 80’s. Back then you called a number and the operator beeped the person with the pager. That person would then call into the switchboard and be put in touch with the person looking for them. So when I received a phone call today regarding an issue I was trying to get keith to look into he was like, wow your job is crappier than mine. That one line sums up the on call part of my job. Getting what in my opinion is stupid calls about users not able to do things like check their email. Normally they would wait till monday, but some people are high enough up the food chain that we have to help whenever. It sucks, but I like my pay check. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I do. It is just the on call part that sucks sometimes.

This day wasn’t a total loss. I got to spend time with my dad (not enough of it, but we hung for a while). I also got to do some shopping. I got Homicide Life on The Streets on DVD. If you never saw that show while it was on TV, go out and buy it on DVD. They have Season 1 & 2 out. It is probably THE best or one of the best TV shows of all time. In my opinion anyway. Thankfully allot of people say the same thing. I also got some clothes and Daredevil on DVD.

I got home just in time to get a mild migraine. Of course no migraine is mild so I ended up sleeping for like 4 hours. I feel a bit better but now my sleep schedule is totally off again. It is 10:30 and I am not tired. I am going to try to sleep soon. After my nap I took a Bextra. That may have helped a bit also.

Sleep Habits All Screwed Up

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So I got home at 3:30 Saturday morning from my crazy day at work. I slept till 1PM. I awoke to problems with 2 servers. One just needed a reboot because terminal services was not working. The other one wouldn’t return from a reboot. We have had issues in the past with that machine and its onboard RAID card.

Gus was nice enough to run down to our data center and fix the problem. I cleaned up my place and tried to rest for the remainder of the day.

I went to my parents for dinner. Carrie and Morgan were there. Morgan is still so cute! We ordered italian and sat around watching my mom freak out about all the dirt left behind by the construction crews from their kitchen/bathroom renovation. She won’t listen to everyone telling her to get a cleaning crew in to fix the place up. The place does look nice though.

A bunch of people are going golfing again in Princeton NJ sunday. I was on and off about if I wanted to go, but I didn’t have a car today to do the stuff I needed to do, so I need to go tomorrow. I called Dan and let him know. I want to golf but this turned out to be a bad weekend.

TREO IS BETTER THAN I REMEMBER IT

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I got my new Handspring Treo 270 from T-Mobile on monday. I got rid of my old one in March mainly because of poor data services by T-Mobile (why have a data phone with crappy service). Well I took the phone with me to our new site in Kingston Tuesday and today. Tuesday was weird because T-Mobile was turning on a new tower on top of the facility we are in. But after it was up I had great signal. Today I had great service most of the train ride up and all around town. I relied on it for getting my mail for work. It went out every 15 minutes and grabbed it for me. It alerted me when they come in. I wish the alarm was louder but I can deal. It is as big as I remember it, and the screan is no where as good as the HP Pocket PC I have used since the Treo, but it is still a good device. I think it will hold me over until the new smaller Treo 600 comes out this fall.

One down side is that I went through a battery in almost a day. the data access drains it allot. Thankfully I have a USB cable that plugs into my laptop and will sync and charge the Treo!

Construction And The Kingston Project!

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I took some construction photos of our new office. The place is really shaping up. I will be up there on Tuesday turning on our Internet T-1’s and testing our first voice T-1. I should have some nice pictures then. The carpet should be done by then.

Everyone is stressing about our new huge project, but they are not talking about Kingston. Our business folks and our development team are freaking out over another project that is taking up all of there time. It is huge, and can be a massive success if we finish it on time and as advertised. I am freaking out because I have things to deliver for this other project, and I have to complete everything for Kingston. I am starting to worry if I will finish everything in time.

Our racks are not ordered yet because until tuesday I have no place to put them. I need power strips for the dam telecom room, but I cannot use them until the electrical is done. They are special plugs that you cannot just go out and buy at the hardware store. I have our initial batch of 25 computers waiting to ship. I got 3 to play with, and Joe is working on building a standard for them.

I have 1 of the 2 main Domain Controllers for the network built, but no security setup yet. I built a test domain so I can see if what I want to do will work without messing up my new production system.

I just ordered our tape drive unit. that should arrive this week. I then have to replace it with my current office’s system and setup the old one for kingston.

I haven’t even bought the hardware or software for anti virus and ghosting yet. Plus I need to setup network monitoring on a network that doesn’t even exist yet.

On top of that, Keith has to get me working Pix firewall’s by August 4th. I am also waiting for a revised network configuration for our Data Center that has to go out no later than the 7th of next month. Once that is done daniel can finish the new FTP server system we are deploying. I just ordered the hardware for that.

And if all that isn’t enough I have to make more room in the call center for more rep’s since we will need them before kingston is online. There is probably more that I am not even remembering right now.

Oh and don’t forget the Verizon strike scheduled for next Saturday.

The Best News Of The Summer!

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And most importantly the AC in my new apartment actually works. I am not hot most of the time like I was at the old place. Knock on wood. I leave the living room one on during the day, and the bed room one on at night and the place is perfect. I like it nice when I get home so I don’t mind paying to leave the 1 unit on when I am not home.

Now all they have to do is get the AC to work at my office. I bug Dan about it all the time, but so does everyone else. I know he hates it but whenever our website goes down he bugs me even though I don’t control everything about it. It is a vicious circle.

Wireless Woes

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Still having AT&T wireless issues. They want me to get a new SIM card. So I went to the store. They were out. How they can sell phones without the card, I have no idea. I guess they use extra ones for replacements. I called customer care again and they are sending one, after I argued with them on why I won’t be charged $25.00 to get one. Why a SIM card will cause the dam phone not to work in my apartment is beyond me, but weirder things have happened.

Howard is looking to see if he has his old Treo 180 around that I can borrow for a bit. I am debating on if I want to get a Treo again. Now I am thinking if I can use his black and white 180, and live with it I may just get one of those till november and get the new Treo 600 when it comes out. That will save me from buying the color model that is like $300 and then want to upgrade it 3 months later. The black and white Treo 180 goes for like $130 on ebay. That is allot cheaper. I will see. If he doen’t have it I may just get it and take the risk on the $130.

On the plus side my new T-40 is great. And I got my cannon scanner to work with Mac OS 10.2 without a problem.

Cute Morgan

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I got home just in time to get a call from my sister about going to dinner with her and my parents. We went to the local deli. The highlight was playing with my niece Morgan. She is so cute. I threw someone out of my office today who commented on my computer background by saying “oh a cute boy”. The pink didn’t give away she was a girl, I don’t know what to say.

My family ended up at my place since my sister needed to feed the baby before she drove home. Morgan was not in any mood to wait to eat. My parents are still using my place to shower while they redecorate. I showed my mom how to use Tivo tonight. That means it will be all screwed up tomorrow when I get home.

Queue This

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So the more I work in the technology field, the more I realize what I don’t know. I learned about a totally new type of product last night. Now I need to become an expert in how it is tied into Windows 2000 Active Directory. The product is MSMQ or Microsoft something or other messaging queue. it is really interesting stuff, but I never dealt with it before. This is one of the many new projects I am learning about.

I am knee deep in setup stuff for our new Kingston office. I have the Active Directory model set. Now I have to build it. I ordered the first batch of 25 desktops today. They wont ship till August but we locked the price and model in. We are waiting on some better deals for flat panels before we order them.

Our cable guy’s finally called us back today. Joe is going to kingston on thursday to meet with them and make sure the plan is set and the work begins and finishes on time. I am still waiting for an install date on our long distance T-1’s. We keep getting the run around from our carrier. I am freaking out that the LEC verizon goes on strike in August. And yes, they will strike. both sides of that argument are no where near an agreement. That will get messy.