3ware vs Promise

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Ok if you are not a tech person you will have no idea what I am talking about, but today I give a new type of IDE RAID card a try. We currently use Promise IDE RAID cards and enclosures for some lower end data storage needs. We don’t run database servers on them, but we do store huge amounts of images and static web pages on them. They perform well so far. We really have not given them a head to head speed test Vs SCSCI RAID. The reviews I read say they are slower but not by that much. My big concern has been swapping drives out if/when they go bad. If that is simple and they are close to the speed of SCSI, I am sold. Why? They are like half the price of SCSI.

We are primarly a windows company but recently we have been doing more and more linux. the servers we are getting that use the promise IDE RAID are having issues with the newer versions of Red Hat. That is a problem with linux. the really new hardware does not work with the really new versions of the OS. Dam read hat is coming out with a new version every 6 months or less.

To solve our problem we are looking at a company called 3ware. They also make IDE RAID cards. Gus said he knows people who like them and run Linux. Since if I don’t listen to him, I get hit I decided to try one out. Well he doesn’t hit me, but he does get my blood pressure up 20 extra points by pulling some sort of prank!

I will have reviews hopefully by tomorrow.

Got a new place

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So I signed the papers today for my new apartment. As much as I wanted to buy something I think in this economy I wanted to keep “liquid”. I am moving into the first apartment I spoke about last week. It is a 1 bedroom in the building complex I currently live in. I am in the other building, on the 19th floor. I have a fantastic view of the manhattan skyline, and a patio.

I get to move in July 1, 2003. Now I have to find a way out of my current lease or else I am paying double rent for 2 months.

The bad news is the furniture I am going to get is not arriving till September or so. My parents are giving me their mint condition living room set, since my mom wants something new. Granted this set is like 15 years old, but she has not let anyone sit on the couch except for company in like 10 years. It is in fantastic shape. The wall unit is huge. They want me to take the dining room set also. That did not wear as well, and I don’t know if I have room for it. I was told I get it after the jewish holiday’s in september, or whenever they fall out this year. I really don’t know. I am that religious.

I am going to wait until after I get back from vacation to take care of all the address changing things. the major deal is changing the cable to the new apartment. I will have pictures before I move in. I have some but they are not very good. I will take a bunch in June after they paint and do the bedroom carpeting.

Now all I need is a girlfriend to hang out at my new place, but that is a different story!!!

Stuff & Stress

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Have you ever had a bad day? Of course you have. Have you ever had a bad day, but were unable to talk to most people about it? That is today for me. Hectic things going on that I cannot go into. I am bursting at the seams to, but I can’t. It has been a day where I should have been able to give good answers to problems, and was unable to. It was a day where you think you setup something to work well, and then under pressure you find minor errors totally screw up the results you were looking for. Enough self pitty. I am in a highly stressful job. I am dealing. Just some days nothing goes right, and other days things hum perfectly. Today was the former type of day. One thing I keep thinking about is the saying that whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. That may be true, but it is not a consolation prize.

One thing I am realizing is that I keep adding to my list of to do’s and I am not taking things off that list in the same fast pace. Not a good trend. I did get some stuff off my task list before hell broke loose today. I sent out our proposed network diagram to our telecom integrator. They will build our system off that basic model.

I have my Database staff asking for more hard drive space on their development and QA machines. Even though last week they said they probibly didn’t need this space. I need to get money approved for that, and then juggle the new deployment of that hardware. Getting money approved is a chore, but I am beginning to get used to it. Almost lke it. Why you may ask. It sharpens my debate and reasoning skills. If I can explain to my management why we need something, and get them to agree I probibly can sell anything:) Well maybe not, but it is a feat to get the OK to buy stuff at my company. I keeps me honest, and proves the need for anything we do actually purchase.

I showed our CEO the new Thinkpad T40 laptop today. He liked it but had some issues with it. I am going to give it to him for a few days to see if it grows on him. We don’t want to stay with dell.

How lazy can we get?

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Ok so I tried out this fresh direct. It actually was really good. They came within a half an hour of when they said they would. And they apologized for being late! I even cooked up a steak I ordered from them. it was good. This begs to question how lazy can we (i) get? I don’t even have to goto the grocery store if I don’t want to. Is that a good or bad thing? Food shopping is ok to miss out on. But what about regular shopping? I spent about 2 hours with my dad today shopping at best buy. he wanted to look for DVD’s. Waiting on line all I could think about was how we could have just gotten DVD’s off amazon. The scary thing is that he would have probably gotten 50 times the selection off amazon also. So do we shop because we need stuff, or do we shop because it is a social thing and we need stuff? I am getting philosophical, but I took a class in college that focused on post WWII American culture. One aspect we covered was the mall culture. People actually spend the day at the mall, buying things is optional. Is the mall culture dead? Is the online buying culture alive and well? Probably not yet, but I have narrowed down the number of things I need to goto a physical store for by allot. I think there are less things I need to go out to a store for than there are that I can order and have shipped to me. Don’t get me wrong. I like to shop if it is for the write stuff. I actually liked spending time with my dad shopping. I don’t get to spend that much time with him so it was cool, but I avoid the mall now a days. I used to go just to go. Weird world we live in where I changed my entire perspective on something in less than 3 years.

I think I decided on what apartment to get. I will probably pick the first one I saw. The second one looked nicer, but I just had a not so good feeling about it. Even though the real-estate agent is expensive, it is not much more than doing it myself. The guy I would deal directly with wanted me to kick back his friend. The amount he wanted didn’t save me anything, since his rent would be higher than the other apartment.

Softball hurts

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I ended up playing softball friday. It was very cold and slightly rainy. I only hit, I didn’t feel up to fielding. I am way out of shape after all. Turns out I did ok. I had 2 hits, and got out on a pop fly. I had one run. As Gus pointed out I did better than Keith who is athletic allot more than I am!

We went to some japanese bar after the game. It was nice. I hurt really bad this morning. Not used to any sport recently. Running in doc martin shoes is not a good idea either.

Some people were going to a karaoke bar after the first bar. I ended up taking off then. I don’t need to pay a cover to hear bad singers sing to me.

Poker plans for today were canceled. Not sure why, but John said he is trying to get a game with his brother and some guys next weekend. I told him I was in if he could get a game going.

I ended up working a bit today. I also slept late. that is always nice on a weekend. I went over to my parents for dinner. My aunt gale was over. I haven’t seen her in ages, probably since my sister’s wedding. Also my sister and morgan were over. Morgan is a cranky baby. I think she is just gassy. I got to feed her. it went well. I rate not getting puked on as a passing grade. She makes the funniest faces when she is sleeping. Every time I see her napping I think of the Barenaked ladies song “when you dream”. it is about what does a baby actually think about when they sleep. It is so funny, but true. You should give it a listen.

My dad wants to goto bestbuy tomorrow. That will be a loss of money for me. I always buy something when I go to that place. he needs to return a DVD or something.

I ordered from an online food delivery service called Freshdirect. A few people told me about it. Dan at work used it and thinks it is great. I got $50 in free steaks and they will deliver on sunday night. I will let you know how it goes. Still a few things I need to get at the regular grocery store that I couldn’t get online. But this seems like a great first step to no more food shopping.

Vmware & System changes

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So I had this novel idea about VMware. what if I installed windows 2000 pro, or XP as a virtual client. Then put all the dangerous software in that client. That way if Kaza or limewire screwed up my install it would only mess up the virtual client and not my computer. I could have my own downloading system, within my normal system. It sounds good. I am trying it out on my desktop at home. I put windows 2000 pro in a virtual machine. I will see if things work out ok.

Keith had to rebuild Gus’ desktop server yesterday. Not sure what happened to it, but it got fried. We also had some problems with 2 rackable systems servers. They are these really small rack servers with IDE RAID. we got 4 servers in a bundle used for like $800. The worked fine for like 8 months but now we had 2 issues with one box, and 1 issue with another box. We are probibly going to take them out of production.

Our new DBA is kicking ass. He is forcing sweet security changes to our DB design. I think it is great. Besides fixing a lingering problem we have had, it also fixes a mind set. That is more important to me. It gets developers to realize that things are not done for their convience, but for best performance and security of the production systems. If someone is upset about stricter rules in handleing prodction code, there is no debate, they have to deal with it. It is a breath of fresh air for me. Gus has been pushing for this for as long as he has been here. We have seen great strides in this “production is more important that people” pheonominon in the past 3 months. It is no longer me being a pain in the ass to everyone. It is a bunch of us being a pain in the ass to everyone.

Softball anyone?

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Today is my company’s 4th softball game. They are really bad. Or the have not won a game yet, and 2 of them were called since they were loosing by so much. Of course winning is not everything, and they did have fun playing. The first 3 games I had things going on that I could not make a game. Now today I can actually go. I forgot however that we had a game until about 10 minutes ago. That means that I did not dress for a game. Not that I wanted to play, but it would be interesting. I am debating on going and seeing the game instead of playing. I am not sure what I am going to do yet.

I got up today normal time and didn’t do anything that different than any other day, but I missed my normal train. Not sure why. Maybe I was just slower today than yesterday.

A bad sign is that my hands are hurting more first thing in the morning. I have been having issues with repetitive stress due to using the mouse alot. I am a righty, but use my left hand for moving the mouse most of the time now. The pain happens when I type, like now. It comes and goes. I need to have it looked at.

Tons of people from work went to see the matrix II last night. I now need to find someone who didn’t go so I can see it. My friend rich is in a wait and see mode with that movie. He is not a fan of the first one, so he isn’t running out to see this one. I hope someone hasn’t seen it so I can go with someone. With harry potter I didn’t see it in the theatures since everyone saw it when I finally got around to wanting to go.

So I took a small step to getting the 1 bedroom apartment I spoke about in my previous blog. In theory we have an understanding for a lease. I put a $100 down for a deposit, and I go back to look at the place with my parents on monday. I need my mom to check cosmetic things, since I don’t pick up on that stuff. My dad is just around to “supervise”. If they give the seal of approval, I go do a lease that day. This will actually be the first apartment I do that with my parents. the other ones were on my own. My first apt in NY was a mess, so having mommy look before I sign anything is a good thing.

Konfabusomthing

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I use an Apple powerbook as my main personal computer. Well this week I do at least. But I digress. I have a Powerbook that is cool. I got this neet program called Konfabulator on it. It is like the old microsoft active desktop, but it actually works. I just downloaded a few neat “widgets” apps that run in Konfabulator. Yeah, they call them widgets, not me making stuff up. One of them is an offline blogging tool. Not sure if it better than Kun-Log, the program that I currently use. Tons of other useless but fun tools also. My favorate is the iTunes remote control and the magic 8 ball…

Gus gave me a bunch of other cool mac software to look at but I have not had time to look at it. I am still messing with VMWare.

Poker finally

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So I have been waiting since december to do poker with friends at work. Still nothing going on with that. So I was surprised when my friend John IM’d me today asking if I wanted to play poker this weekend. I think I just spoke about him. He just moved back from New Orleans after only living down there since january. I haven’t played in a while, but I used to play in high school so I told him I was in.

Speaking of New Orleans friends, I spoke with jayson like 3 times last week, and then he disappears again. I left 2 voice messages for him and no response. This reminds me of most of college for me. I would go years without speaking to him and then he would show up. On the weird disappearing friend front, I don’t know what is up with Jori either. Not sure if she actually was moving or not. I need to call her. I feel bad that I missed her birthday party in april. I didn’t speak about that in the blog yet. Jori is a long story. I will talk about it at some point, but not right now.

My dentist appointment went ok I guess. he only drilled 2 teeth. He will do more in 2 weeks. My dentist also said that he won’t even fill some cavities. All of them are so small that he claims wont get much worse in 2 years. So why drill now when he doesn’t have to. I trust him so I wait. I just wished he did all 4 teeth that he wanted to work on in one procedure. Now I need to go back. I hate not feeling my face for 4 hours after he is done. The not being able to talk is also bad.

Standards, Standards, Standards

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So today and tomorrow we deal with standards. Our hardware standard, the basis for how we buy and configure our Database Servers has been in place for just over a year. I have been getting complaints about no space, and some speed issues from others. I have called the brains together to get what is required for a standard over the next 12 months. That way I can buy them what they want and then tell them to shut up when they complain about it. Well, not exactly. But we need a blue print for how we do things for the next several months.

Also tomorrow I am meeting with our development people (well some of them anyway) to discuss our build standards for web servers. Same concept as hardware standards, but we talk about how to configure the OS on our web box’s. Once done we will refresh our web servers and set them up fresh.

As I left the office yesterday we had a problem with an apache web box we are using for a small project. turns out that this is considered important to our call center management. Now we need to fix the problem, and then take this applicaiton and make it redundant. We probibly will need to put it on 2 linux machines and place them behind our local directors. A local director is a device that splits the load of a web site amount multiple servers. Cool device.

On another front I have tons of outstanding quotes to get approved. Hardware requests just pile up. What is crazy is most of this stuff is not even related to our new office build. This is just normal office stuff that needs to be taken care of.

I haven’t yet found someone to run our new office’s helpdesk. Most applicants are not from the region. We need someone near by. Also most don’t have the skills. People do not read online job postings. They apply for jobs that don’t meat their qualifications at all. It is just a waste of time for everyone.

We spoke with our Project Manager and team for our phone system build out. The hardware is almost all in. We are sending them some network diagrams and stuff. Then we stage the system. I am excited. This will be awsome if it works out well. I think it will. Brand new systems can be designed without having to factor in old problems. We shall see… In the tunnel now. More later.