Software

Virus’s At Work

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If you read the news you must hear about all the worms and other “bad things” spreading through the internet. My company has been diligent in attempting to prevent these things from infecting our computers. We have not been 100% protected, but from what I have seen we are way ahead of the curve in protecting ourselves.

I have seen lots of virus alerts from our virus scanning system. Thankfully, it is able to deal with whatever comes up. Also important is the Windows Update server. That thing is a life saver. I don’t know if we would have been able to install all these updates on all of our desktops without it. We need to goto the next level and get an SMS or ZEN type system next.

I have never been a huge fan of Novel, but they have caught my curiosity. What they are doing with Suse keeps me interested. Also that their directory services work on Windows is also cool. All that and ZEN Works is much better than SMS, or that has been my practical experience. I don’t know how SMS 2004 holds up. I keep telling myself that my company is a windows shop, we don’t want Novell. The other side of my brain is saying “you know Novell is better, give it a try”. For now I am ignoring that side of the brain. I would like to get a demo of Novell and give it a test drive. When (if) things ever settle down enough that I can try that, I will. Novell NDS, running on Suse linux. Now that would be really nice, if it worked as easy as the old novell used to!!!

Konfabulator Rocks

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Way back (almost a year to the day) in May 2003 I talked about Konfabulator. I have been using it for over a year. it is a fantastic program. It is what Microsoft tried to do with Active Desktop, but couldn’t. I have widgets (what each component is called) for the weather, itunes remote, moon phases (it is cool), cpu utilization, airport signal strength, and a host of others that I can use. I have about 4-5 widgets running at all times on my Powerbook or iMac and I haven’t once had a cpu or memory issue because of it. it sips the memory.

Some of the widgets are cool, but useless. Others like the weather and itunes remote widgets I use all the time. Ok, my endless praise of Konfabulator is over now. Back to my normal ranting….

Palm Apps

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I may have mentioned this before but the only software I am buying recently is software for my Treo 600. I am finding so many useful things to get, I going out and buying the full versions when the trials are over.

I just bought Verichat. it allows you to chat over GPRS. You can use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. If you are not actively in the program, but logged onto their proxy server and someone sends you an IM, you get a SMS message with the IM. You then can sms back or enter the program and chat. Regular chatting does not use up SMS messages. it rocks.

I also got Call Shield Lite for the Treo 600. It allows me to identify anyone or any group with distinctive rings. It also allows me to hang-up, send to voice mail or answer any call by a number of parameters. you do this by group, person, or phone number. I have someone who keeps calling with a wrong number. I programed the software automatically hang up on them before the phone rings. It is so crazy, how cool this software is.

I am going to buy jabber software so I can use work’s jabber system on the Treo. I haven’t tried that out yet, but it looks good.

Projects

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I am now short handed in NYC. Ironically I fill a slot in one location a slot opens up in another locoation. The hunt is on for a new support guy. Until that happens allot of projects are being put on hold. Or at least their completion date is on hold. Yesterday’s workload was not bad, but it was the calm before the storm.

I finally got my server to build the new FTP system. That is on hold until I can find the time to work on it.

Our upgrade to the notification system is on hold since I won’t have time to do the documentation or the work on it for the short term. The list goes on and on.

This blog entry was written while listening to Bed of roses from the album “Keep The Faith” by Bon Jovi

Documentation

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I have written about it before (i think) but in a technical job you never can have enough documentation. We take it for granted. In a smaller company you also know everyone who did work, so you just go ask the source of information for help. That is not a good way to do things.

My department has been attempting to write documentation for most day to day issues, and some more routine server / network issues.

The next step is to put that in a database of some kind. Gus likes Wiki’s. Not sure if what we want to do will be perfect for that software or not. There are tons of other forum or idea posting systems that we can use on linux.

For now I am content with just getting everything as a word document and worry about putting a UI on it later. Right now I need content. This process is really two separate ones with the same goal, but different content. What I mean is I am gathering how to’s from the support department at the same time as I am building a FAQ so to speak for the company at large. One will be very technical and for my departments use only. The other will be for everyone’s use and will answer simple questions about where or who to goto for information or how something is done in the company. Both projects are related because it is information gathering. Putting down on paper what has only been in peoples heads for so long.

Documentation is a slow difficult process. Unfortunately most technical documentation is not that good!

Long, Crappy Day

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Today was crappy. it was wet. I thought I lost my wallet, and ended up going to the subway and realized I didn’t have it. I went back to the office in the rain to find it on my desk. I never do that, so I was not happy with myself.

That was the end of the day. I am not on the Rail Road home. I am slowly unwinding from the day. Writing the blog actually helps me relax a bit.

I can sum up my problems today with one word. Frustrating. I cannot go into it, but it is something that is ongoing and it is just frustrating. Even more so since I cannot talk about it here. Read whatever you want into that statement. I am just saying sometimes work is frustrating.

I have to build a new FTP server that supports SFTP by friday. I still don’t have the hardware to run it on yet. That should hopefully arrive tomorrow or Wednesday.

The tech guys in Kingston may or may not meet some deadlines for new projects to complete. They are working on new user profile security. A major due date is Friday, and then the following friday.

Keith and I have to figure out how to rebuild the old call center in NYC. that will take some outside help. I need to move the remaining call center people to their new home, and then do some restructuring. That will be fun.

I want to go home and order some food and forget about everything in front of the TV. Not sure if that will happen yet.

Friday Drinking

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Work Friday was well work. The mail system upgrade thursday night went off ok, and we had no problems to clean up on Friday. That was good.

I had a meeting with our AT&T representatives. Gus suggested I take them out to lunch to show our appreciation on getting them back as an account team. We were happy to get them back so I suggested lunch. I figured Dukes or Old Town Tavern. Nothing super expensive. They are after all vendors of ours:) They had other ideas. Two of them came down. So it was Keith & I with our voice & our data reps. They weren’t going to let us pay, and then they decided to go across the streak to City Crab and get some lunch. I had never been there even though I have worked on and off in on that block for years. If they were paying, we weren’t going to stop them.

The food was fantastic. I was sort of worried about the price. Both reps were like don’t worry at all. I got the crab cakes as an entrée. So did one of our Rep’s so I didn’t feel so bad. We had calimarie for an appetizer. The food was great. I will go back there again.

I was fighting a head ache all afternoon. Not sure why. It was probably the temp. I get sick (Migraines) allot when the weather turns from Hot to Cold or vice versa. Cari wanted to go out drinking since it was her first weekend living in the city. She got an apartment across the street so her commute would be better during the week. She is our Comptroller so she is staying in the city all the time burring tax season. So she was all pumped to go drink. I went because I figured if 1 drink can’t kill the headache I will go home.

The running joke at work is that when ever cari and I go out drinking together we both get sick. This has happened 2 to 3 times since we started working together. I can safely say that Friday broke the trend. A bunch of us went to No Idea! It is our standard Friday night bar. it is right around the corner from work.

We had AJ, Aaron, Cari, John, Jenn, Matt, Myself, Rajive, & Gus come out. It was a good time. I ended up missing like 3 trains I wanted to catch. By the 4th train I was like I need to catch a train. Rajive was like you need another drink. He almost got me one when I finally convinced him I was really leaving this time. Conclusion of this night: Cari & Gus think I am a loud drunk. They are correct:)

A fun time was had by all…

Server Upgrade

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My Imail server upgrade completed successfully. Besides an upgrade that gave us the ability to host more mailing lists and domains, we also go some feature updates. The web interface has been redone. I am not sure if I like it better than the old one though.

Spam filtering has been improved, or so they say. I have to look a bit further into that to see if it is actually better. LDAP is now using OpenLDAP. Not sure if that is better or not either. We have to change the search base for everyone that uses the address book. That was an unexpected feature of this update.

I got a hard time from Dave about running the update at 10PM on a thursday. Normally our corporate mail upgrades are done Sunday afternoon’s but the call center uses this mail system and they have more people working on sunday than they do at 10PM on a thursday. Thankfully he was finally ok with the time frame. It took several hours to run the update, convert the LDAP DB, and then test the system.

I am running late this morning since I didn’t get much sleep last night. I hopefully will be in the office by 10AM.

Missing Sync

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I just bought Mark / Space’s the missing sync for the pocket PC. I am now using it to sync my HP iPaq 1945 with my iMac. It works as advertised. I like that I can sync avantgo now without having my work laptop at home. It also does bluetooth syncing. I love that. It was kind of pricey at $40 something, but it is really cool.

I also have their palm sync product. It is good, but I am having problems with the avantgo sync with my Treo and the iMac. I need to find time to work on that issue.

So far high marks for Mark / Space and their products. Makes owning a Mac less stressful knowing you can use more hardware with it, (i.e. my pocket pc and palm) without less features than I would on a PC.

RT

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I am still crawling into the linux world. The more I try to get into it, the more I realize how much there is to learn about it.

My latest project I want to get into is RT (Request Tracker). It is a ticketing or request system that is open source. Idealab uses it and many others. It is supposed to be really good. I am trying to install it on my Suse 9.0 desktop at work. If I can get it to work, maybe we will deploy it and replace Mailflow for our support tracking system. Mailflow is good, but I don’t like the fact that it requires you to use IE. That locks me into using windows. I cannot even use IE on my mac, the pages don’t load right.

I still have to see if/how RT’s reporting functions look. Mailflow has nice features that tells me when I get requests, how many and other historical information that is very cool so I can do proper planning.