Staff meeting day

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Another mid week staff meeting day. The mornings are always shot doing this stuff, but it is needed. I have allot to bring up today. We (keith) is about done with the new switch configuration for our data center. We need to schedule a deployment of that. It will be a big deal since so many network paramiters are changing.

I also have a conference call with our VOIP intergrator regarding our project. I think we are about ready to set an install date. Our CEO wants us able to test calls on Augist 15. I am not sure if that will happen, but the big bossman wants us to try, so we try!

Eventful road trip

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My Kingston road trip on tuesday was eventful. I got allot done regarding the new AC units and electrical setup for our computer room. I also found that both data T-1’s are technically in the room we need, but the smart jack for one is somewhere else. After running around the building looking for the dam thing I cannot find it. A smart jack is the terminating end of a T-1, be it data or voice. We want the smart jack in our telecom room because if we have a problem we have easy access to the smart jack. I am working on fixing the problem with our provider.

I am also getting our cable and construction people talking to each other so we get the data cables done in time.

Dan and I found a good greasy spoon diner near the office that we can eat at. Our waitress was so friendly that dan kept saying she would be a perfect CSR.

The drive back was interesting because we both tried to get allot of work done. it is weird being on the cell phone with someone else in the car trying to do the same thing. You got 2 people holding 2 different conversations at the same time. It is just weird.

I have other really big news regarding Kingston that I want to mention but I need to wait for something else to happen before I discuss. Lets just say good things are going on!!!

I didn’t get home till late last night. I was catching up on all the missed work I had since I was out most of the day. I need to have a social life during the week…

Got my new verizon phone today

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I finally got my new Motorola T720 phone for verizon wireless. So far the phone is cool, but nothing spectacular. The spectacular thing about it is it works almost all the time!!! I will take that over some phone that does everything for you except hold a good phone call. The big test for this new “toy” is tomorrow when I take it to the remote city of Kingston NY. My T68i with AT&T doesn’t work at all up there, and my old verizon V60 worked ok. I will let you know the results.

Nothing else on the personal level happened today. I got home to late to have any sort of life! My cleaning lady came to the new apartment for the first time today! Yes, I have a cleaning lady. I got spoiled with cheap cleaning people when I was in Baton Rouge so I have someone come at least once a month now. Hey, I am a single guy living alone. I need someone to know where to dust and scrub, because I sure don’t.

OK, off to bed early tonight. I have to get up early for the road trip.

the short vacation is over

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The holiday weekend is over and I was back at work today. Thankfully we tracked down one of our two missing T-1’s today. I am going up to Kingston tuesday to sort things out. Dan and I are driving up tuesday morning. It will be interesting, since dan is an interesting driver!

I have some other issues I need to take care of while I am up there so it should hopefully be a productive trip. I am also planning on being up there next Wednesday to oversee our next T-1 install. I won’t let this screw up happen again.

With my cell phone and wireless internet, it is almost like I am in the office! Who am I kidding!!! It beats being totally out of touch on some island.

Got a bunch of Kingston related issues worked on today. And I survived an almost 2 hour long management meeting. I felt very productive today. Hopefully tomorrow I get the telecom issues taken care of.

The beach club

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Today I went with my family to my parents beach club. They have had this cabana since I was like 11 years old. They still love it. I am no longer a fan of the beach, but I went so I could hang with my niece. She is so cute! It was really hot. The only cool place was standing in the ocean while a breeze went by. The water was cold, but the air was so hot you didn’t care.

I haven’t been sleeping well, so I got a little nap in during the day. My dad and I had steaks for dinner. My mom had hot dogs, and I don’t remember what my sister had.

Morgan was very playful today. She talking in baby talk so much. it is so funny. She also spent half the day sucking on her foot.

The beach club has changed so much over the years, and other parts of it have not changed at all. they have put up new play grounds, changed some of the boardwalks, but the pool is still the same. it is weird going back there. I have not regularly went to that club since I was 17. I guess time passes you buy.

I was remembering some of the good friends and good times I had there when I was 11-15 or so. I don’t keep in touch with many of them anymore. Time and distance does that sometimes. It was interesting going down memory lane today. It was especially so when I am making lots of changes in my life recently. A new apartment, new changes at work, etc. A trip down memory lane puts everything in perspective if you ask me. You are after all a sum of your memories and actions. You don’t know where you are going if you don’t remember your past. Enough of me trying to be profound.

hanging out

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It is good to know you have friends that you get along with so well that you have a really good time just getting take out and hanging out playing a board game and drinking until 1AM. Sounds boring, but sometimes it hits the spot. That’s just what we did Saturday night. Rich, Amanda, Vivian, & I just got some food (deli for Rich and i. The ladies had Chinese) and ended up sitting on the floor of my place (no chairs or a couch yet) playing trivia pursuit. I showed amanda new ways to mix baileys so she was happy. Rich won so he was happy. The AC was working so I was happy, and Vivian always seems happy!

Note to self I need patio furniture for just this type of night.

Lazy day

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With unpacking done and it is only Saturday I decided to just relax today. I tried to sleep in, and was somewhat successful. I slept till 11:30AM but I was still tired. I felt “bla” or out of it most of the day. I tried everything to cure myself of this tired out of it feeling. Finally I just took a nap and am feeling a bit better. Just in time, I have plans with Rich and Amanda in a little bit. Not sure what we are doing yet. The movies out suck, or so it seems. I just looked at the listing and everything looks like crap. We may do dinner and just hang out. I think Vivian is joining us also. She is always interesting.

Moveabletype, linux, and vmware

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I am still a huge fan of Moveabletype. That is of course what currently runs my blog. I want to keep using it running on my Red Hat 9.0 Server I built. The only problem is the place I want to put it in my new apartment requires a wireless connection. My new Win2003 server works fine with Wifi, but I am having trouble finding drivers for the card I got to work with Red Hat. For now the server sits next to my desk, but I don’t want to leave it there. I am trying to hid as much electronic crap as possible from visible sight. I want 1 computer out. And that computer will be my desktop, not my server!

I am playing around with running red hat on VMWare on the Windows 2003 server. I am a huge fan of VMWare, but I have not really been using it to it’s full potential. I started using it allot more this week, and I am finding that I love it even more. The only problem is that I need more ram on my work machine to get it to run really well with more than 1 os running at a time.

But back to my idea. So I had a red hat VMware system already built. I configured apache and threw on moveabletype. I am getting some driver error when I try to start moveabletype’s prep file. I need an expert (friend) to look at it. I am going through my config files to verify things are correct.

To cover my bases I am also installing a Windows 2000 Server instance on VMWare also to play around with moveabletype on windows. I don’t plan to use it, but I want to see if it will work and I don’t want to mess up my system I just built so a vmware instance is the best way to test it. All I need to do is make a backup of the file before doing anything and I have a complete OS backed up. Wednesday at work I took an entire vmware OS file and moved it to a different computer and it worked without doing anything special. That totally ROCKS!

I will post results of my ongoing testing. Hopefully this will work and I can keep moveabletype on red hat and consolidate everything to 1 server and just run the vmware software. I will see.

Fireworks

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Like clockwork at 9pm people started setting off fireworks. I found a use for my patio after all. I went out there and watched the fireworks. I could swear I saw stuff going off halfway to manhattan from my apartment. it was cool. The night was a bit hazy so I couldn’t get a complete view of the city skyline but the view was spectacular anyway.

Cleaning up and wireless issues

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I was wrong in my last post. The major moving of stuff was done, but the work was not. Today I cleaned. I put stuff away, and otherwise cleaned up stuff. I am mostly done. I still have some crap in my soon to be dining area, but other than that things are neat. Well, the bathroom doesn’t count. And my desk is always a mess, but at least the computers are all tucked away. I built a Windows 2003 Server and it is up and running in my closet. I got the Wifi card I got to work without incident.

I am still having issues with my Linksys 802.11g wireless router. It worked great in my old place, but for some reason it keeps dropping connections in the new apartment. I ended up taking out my old Lucent Wavelan AP-1000 and using that along with the linksys. I still get dropped signals, but the Lucent point recovers better than the Linksys. I am betting my neighbors are using a 2.4ghz cordless phone or something. I tried half the channels I can use and all of them are having the same problem. Updating the firmware did nothing. I am getting pissed. I wanted to do almost everything in the new place wirelessly, but now I am holding off because of the problems I am having.

On a lower tech note, the stove works. I cooked up some potato’s to go with my steak I cooked on the george forman grill today. Didn’t do anything of note today. It looks like I have plans for tomorrow and sunday. I always like at least 1 day of resting on the weekend so I just had it!