Partsearch Technologies

Cisco Networkers 2005

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Today was the first full day of Cisco Networkers. Allot of cool stuff going on. Way too much for me to go into too much detail. In a recap yesterday I learned what will be happening in the new version of IPCC. Some cool stuff there. I ate not enough food at the expo Cisco threw. I wasn’t hungry for that kind of fare, but it was awesome stuff. I got some information on some products I was interested in. I got some follow up reading to do. Then I got some answers from some engineers at Cisco about some products. I also got some free software that I need to try out. I could have used it a few weeks ago, but what can you do?

After that I meet up with my friend Joe. he is also out in Vegas for the same conference. We met up with his girlfriend and parents (they all came out to hang while he did his conference thing). They wanted to do the Star Trek Experience in the Hilton, but thankfully we just browsed the gift shop. They ended up eating the buffet at the hilton instead of eating at the Star Trek Theme restaurant. I ended up at a little cafe in the Paris. I am not a Vegas buffet person. I NEVER get my moneys worth at one of those. I don’t eat enough. Money wasn’t the reason I didn’t go though. I just don’t like those things. Even the nicest ones seem skeevy to me. Maybe it is memories of the Circus Circus buffet when I was 14?

Today’s keynote by John Chambers was good. He is a really good speaker. This was the second time I got the opportunity to hear him speak.

The first session I went to was overkill for me. They were talking about really high end network design of Data Centers. Cool to be sure, but I won’t be needing to apply those theories for a while. The next 2 sessions were on IPCC. What you can do with VOIP is amazing. I already drank the cool-ade on that stuff a while ago, but it is truly amazing what you can do with VOIP. Video, Soft-phone, Call Routing, Etc.

Tomorrow hopefully I will learn some other cool network stuff. I get to do a class on SNMP. I use it a bit now, but a better understanding of it would be very helpful.

Sleep

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My sleep habits are all screwed up now that I worked nights two days in a row. Tonight I don’t have to do an overnight. We got allot done yesterday so we didn’t have to go in today. I do have to go back one more time on Thursday night. I got home at 6AM this morning and slept till 2PM. Now it is midnight and I am not tired. I figured I would write a bit and then hopefully sleep would come.

My building’s maintenance crew gave me a new AC unit today. The on in my living room was not cooling. Now I am nice and cold while I sit here and write! When I called they said it would be a while for them to send someone out so I ended up going to the office for a few hours. It was that or goto Starbucks and pay for internet. At work, it is free (for me)!

I went over to Macy’s after work to try and do some shopping, but the lines were really long for the changing room. I decided to try back some other time.

I also went over to the Cingular store. I still think they are an evil company, but I bought a pre-paid SIM card to test out their service. I have been having intermittent reception issues with my T-Mobile phone. So much so that this week I have been using my work Nextel and leaving forwarding calls to that. The pre-paid SIM was cheap, so I will try it for a few days and see if I like it or not.

I also re-organized part of my living room. I had for a while 2 monitors on my desk. They took up allot of space. I had another half of the L of my desk with nothing but piles of crap on it. I cleaned it off, bought a power strip and put my 20″ Apple Cinema display on the other desk. Now I have my powerbook plugged into that and I have more room. I also moved my printer to a shelf out of the way. I still need to clean up my place, but I am lazy since I have been out of it with these weird hours. I keep telling myself I will clean this weekend.

Besides that, I tried to rest allot today. More exciting things this weekend, I hope!

Nights

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I have been working nights all week so I have not been able to write anything. I got home at 5:30AM this morning, and just woke up about an hour ago. The weird work schedule is necessary for allot of reasons, none of them I can discuss here. See the work blog for details. All good things though. I will write more when my head is clear and my living room AC is fully functional!

Disk Erasing Is Boring

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I have a stack of older (and not so old) hard drives sitting in my apartment. I have wanted to sell them or just get rid of them for a while. My problem is I have data on them, or had data on them. I am crazy about security. Sometimes not crazy enough, but when dealing with selling drives that once held my personal data on them, I am crazy. So what to do?

I know the multiple ways of removing data from disks. None of them include just formating the drive and selling it. I have wanted to invest in an electromagnet that degausses stuff. But that just screams Geek! it is also costly. I could do what Jay did and just copy lots of stuff onto the disks before formatting them and selling them.

I settled for a free program that will overwrite disks with random data. It is called eraser. it is a free open source product from Sourceforge.net. It is not a fast solution. Of course I selected the department of defense standard scheme for overwriting data. I don’t have state secrets on those drives, but I figured if it is good enough for the CIA to overwrite disks in this way, it is good enough for me. To be honest I selected the lowest DOD spec, but I figured that would be enough. Now I just wait while these drives get written over.

AC Issues

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Air conditioning issues seem to follow me. My AC in my bedroom has been flaking for several weeks. It works, but barely. Then it makes loud noises, and just run’s loud. That was until last week. I called for the second time to have it serviced. Now it seems to keep the room nice and cold. I am happy.

Now all I need to do is get my living room unit to get the place a bit cooler. That may be asking too much.

At least work is cool, and comfy now. It hasn’t been really hot recently but the AC is at least working. 3 years of hardship may actually be over, but I am not an optimist most of the time!!!

Late Night Postponed

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The late night I had scheduled tonight has been delayed. I am not sorry about it. I hate staying up till 1am only to start working. Our DB staff needed more time to ensure that our swap of servers we were planning went off without any problems.

With this late night on hold, I can possibly move up my other late night I had scheduled for Thursday/Friday. I am checking with Kai to make sure he can do the work early. We need to upgrade a switch in Kingston and also we want to do some rewiring. that requires us to work at night.

Also by doing the work tomorrow night, I can be in the office friday. Gus is going on vacation Friday so he would rather me be around. Schedule juggling is abound today…

New Technologies

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We have been really busy recently. Normal day to day work has been keeping some other projects on hold. For one is our replacement of some servers in our data center.

Other projects include trying to clean up our notification system. I need a day or two of just doing that, and I cannot find the time.

Jayson, Kai, and I also have several “new technologies” that we want to try out and see if we can use them for the office. Many of them we think would be great, but are months if not a year or so away from seeing the light of day. Because the lead time may be so long, we don’t actually look at some of this stuff. We need to because that is how we advance our office. I want to find time to make sure we all can test what we think will be helpful. On that list we have sharepoint portal services for an intranet site, Novel eDirectory for a possible Active Directory replacement, ZEN Works to use to deploy software, SMS for the same possible reasons, several Suse based projects, and more.

The Heat

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Not sure what to expect in the temperature department today at work. I am planning for the worst, and am in shorts and a light tee shirt. I hope I am cold, but I don’t think I will be.

I truly don’t remember an office environment where I was not hot. That is sad. I am prepared to take my laptop to the computer room today to escape the heat.

Back From My Trip

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I have been away. I am back now. The trip to Kingston went well. Dan and I left Tuesday afternoon. He rented a soccer mom white mini van. We piled in all the gear we needed to take with us and we drove up to the office. We got there around 7:45PM Tuesday. Dumped our cargo and went to dinner at the hotel. We stay at the Holiday Inn. People around there say it is the nicest Ho/Motel. It is ok, but not the greatest.

We ate dinner, and had a few drinks. There is nothing else to do up there. We got up early Wednesday so we could be at the office by 8AM to meet the electricians.

As far as I could tell things went over without major issue. We left at 3PM Wednesday. I was going to stay over till thursday so I could finish overseeing the cable work, but it was well under way and Kai had it under control.

It was funny Dan and I have done 3 physical moves for our company and several construction projects together. This time we were standing around going what do we do now? There wasn’t much for us to do, and we got nervous because of that. Of course in reality it meant that things were running smoothly, but it is a weird feeling if you are not used to it:)

While we were away, the AC in NYC went out again. Or shall I say the temporary AC’s went out on the hottest day of the year so far. Also problems abound on the project to fix the permanent units. It was supposed to be done by Friday, and the completion date will likely slip.

It was so hot Wednesday that Jayson and Gretchen came over and we all went into the pool after I got home from the trip. We ended up at the out back for dinner at like 10PM. I love that place, but I didn’t want to go, since I was trying to save money. Unfortunately the deli by me was closing and we couldn’t get anything there. Oh well. I wish my only problem was HAVING to goto the outback because everything else was closed. I can live with that.

Day One Of Move Completed

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We have completed the first of 3 days of planned moves and changes at work. It was done with still no AC. The units are sitting there, but not plugged in.

Jayson, Nelson & I were able to move 10 users from their current spots in our call center area, to the new smaller call center area. We also displaced about 5 other users that were current occupants of the new space. they will be in limbo for about a day and a half until we can get the construction of the new cubes done.

John, Nelson and a few others were also cleaning up all the non-computer crap in the old call center area. They accumulated allot of it over 2 years in that space. It was so messy, Dan even vacuumed for a bit.

All in all, things went smoothly. Tomorrow is the big work though. This was just leading up to the major job. Hopefully the cube guys can get this done in a day.

After we finished, Dan, Nelson, Gus, Alyssa, Jayson, & I went to Pete’s tavern for dinner. it was cool. I had the fish and chips.

I am on the train home now. It is kind of late, for a work night. I should be home by 10PM if all goes well. I just hope I can get some sleep tonight.