Work

I Survived My First Day Back

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Well, I am tired and things were hectic for a while but I survived my first day back after being out for what felt like a long time. Keith was out sick today. Whatever I had is going around. Justin left early because he felt like crap also. I was left catching up on everything I missed since monday.

I fixed some call center issues. Did some sysadmin work that I don’t normally do. AKA tapes, and updating software versions for some applications we use. I don’t like having to do that all the time. Others are supposed to, but I do like doing it so I keep up on what is happening on my network. I learned that updating IPL’s (software we use to search for stuff) is still not hard, but you need to verify that it works before everyone can use it. I also learned that our new SDLT tape drive is still very cool, but very slow in loading and spitting out tapes.

I also configured Office 2003 Pro to autoinstall with paramiters I set. It is nice. Now if we upgrade (we can thanks to software assurance from Microsoft) I can easliy deploy it to my desktops. The real reason I was playing with the configuration was to get outlook 2003 to work with Exchange 2003 over HTTPS. Not there yet, but I am getting familure with the tools I need to do it correctly.

A bunch of people went out to No Idea for drinks after work. I went and had a coke. I was not ready to resume drinking after being so sick. I saw David P, and Jeff from my Y&R days. We were all pissed at each other since we work around the corner from one and other and I never see either of them. I really do want to see them, so I am trying to setup lunch with Jeff next week.

I am tired and going home. I caught the 7:29PM train out of Penn and hope to get lucky and catch a cab without waiting too long at the train station. It is hit or miss with the car service company, so we shall see.

My plan is to rest this weekend and be normal for next week.

The Power Of Multiple People

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Yesterday was the first day in a while that I was the only one around in my department. Keith went off to California, and Justin was in Kingston. I was busy getting the office ready so we can have some people (3-5) be able to take calls using our cisco system in Kingston. I setup the phones and configured the computers to work. Thursday night we tested it with 1 rep. She loved it.

Daniel had to build a new Red Hat 9.0 box because our old secondary name server died. We rushed a new one in its place. We were never down, but I like having backups. He also mounted and brought on line the new ftp server. Now all we need is the second ftp box and we can cut over to the new system.

Otherwise it was a very busy and stressful day. We ran a disaster drill. It worked out ok, but the thursday drill didn’t. We also had a problem with a server running out of disk space, but their was no log entry of the problem.

I didn’t leave work till after 7PM. I get a day of rest and then it is off to Kingston on Sunday.

Service Observe And Phone Stuff

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Today I dealt with finalizing a solution for “service observe” in our new call center. We want the ability to listen in on our rep’s calls so we can QA them. Cisco’s VOIP solution does not offer that out of the box. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t. We have a company we are looking at, but we want to be sure things work correctly before we order it.

Also today I configured up 4 Cisco 7940 IP phones to use in our NYC office. We need some in case we are overwhelmed with calls on next monday. We should be able to have a total of 5 phones ready to go if needed.

Configuring the Cisco phones is really cool. They are programable via the Call Manager web site, and you can reboot the phone remotely. To get them to work, all you need to do is set the phone to DHCP and have the proper TFTP server config in the scope. It is not bad once you get the hang of it.

I was using my Cisco phone all day to talk to Joe, Justin, & David in our Kingston office.

We are planning a test of our T-1 redundancy on friday. The work to provide roll over and redundancy was completed and we will test it friday to make sure it works for mondays move of voice traffic. We need 3 voice T-1’s to work together so if calls come in and one T-1 is full, they roll over to the next one. This is also helpful in redundancy in case one circuit fails to work. We won’t need all 3 next week, but we will probably use up one and goto a little on the second one.

Searvers, Software, And Stuff

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Every day it seems like we need another server to do this or that. I have request for 3 different things right now that I can think of that all will require new server gear. Then when I go ask for the money for the stuff I get the traditional “what do you need that for?” speech from Gus. Or the “you want to spend how much money?” speech. I know he is kidding most of the time but it highlights the tight rope I walk between what we need and not spending too much money.

With that said I need to begin testing an Exchange 2003 server within our Information Systems department. We are attempting to see how difficult it would be to use and administer an exchange server. I think it will be good to use in a small workgroup environment like the IS department, but not for a full company deployment. We will see.

Along with evaluating mail packages I want to find a good LDAP product that will allow me to share 1 address book between two facilities and remote users. We don’t all connect to the same domain, and not everyone is able to access inside servers all the time. I would like our mail system to provide LDAP, but our current provider does not offer it. Looking at alternatives now.

This week has been good because I have been looking at new technologies and software to enhance our infrastructure. Microsoft Operations Manager looks great and we may do a full scale deployment of it. We are locking down users desktops more effectively. I am in the process of deploying a log file analyzing software to digest our web server logs more effectively. The remote KVM system was also killer. Tying everything together into one systems management system will be the tricky part.

The Cool Side Of Network Administration

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Today I played with, I mean setup some cool new tools for our network. Joe finally got up our Avocent Switchview IP. It allows us to securely view the console of remote machines hooked up to our KVM. It was cool and very helpful to look at the bios screen on a server as we rebooted it 150 miles away.

Another cool tool we are looking at deploying is Microsofts Operations Manger, or MOM. I don’t like the name. Any software called mom gets me worried. It also makes me think about Microsoft Bob. MOM is actually interesting. It is not as nice a network monitor as Whatsup Gold, but it is a good windows tool to keep tabs on the health of a windows server. Whatsup and Mom are complementary in what they do. I can even have MOM send SNMP traps to a system like Whatsup. Of course doing that is easier said than done.

Next up is an automated Symantec Ghost deployment scheme. To be able to click on a button and update a desktop computer image would be fantastic. I thought we should have a system like that when we reached 50 desktop users. We are well beyond that and we have nothing in place yet. Windows 2003 Server also has other options you can use to do remote deployment and software package updates. I have never tried anything with 2000 Server, but I hear that the 2003 implementation is much better. Now I just need to find the time to do a test.

Home At Last

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I finally made it home. I was in Kingston from Sunday to Wednesday night. I ran out of clean clothes and I was really low on the med’s so I came home. Keith is up there today (thursday) and friday. I go back next week again. I actually have 2 days in the office this week. It is weird. I haven’t worked a full day at the office since Monday the 11th. It is the 21 now. Wow.

I got a ride home from Kingston from one of our Integrators from Expanets. I know I used to hate that company but the tech guys we are working with are all awesome. Chad our Cisco expert fixed up all our switches and call manager. I learned allot of stuff from him, but would have liked to learn allot more.

Keith is working on the desktop security profile for Kingston while he is up there. I already did 99% of the desktop ghost image for the computers we are starting with. I figured out the problem with Ghost 7.5 and our Compaq (HP) Evo 510’s. I was able to modify the disk we use with the with our older Evo 310’s.

I also got the White (voice) patch panel done Wednesday. It looks good, or as good as we can get it with the time we have. Joe will do the blue cables next.

The New Office Is Open, Well Sort Of

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The new office I have been working on for months is finally open. Well it is open for training at least. The first group of call center rep’s started today. We still don’t have all the phones working, the patch panel is not done, and I still don’t have a ghost image or security profiles for the users. On the other hand we had enough computers and people were able to train. In the end things are not perfect, but they are working. As we speak our tape system we took out of our NYC office is restoring applications that I could not move to the new network via my laptop.

Tomorrow I have our intergrator return to mount and finish testing on my call center software and my phone system. Things are working now, but the phone system is not mounted yet. Allmost all my data gear is mounted, and looks great. The only thing left is the patch panel. The rest of the work to be done is all virtual. Setting up users and security. I am in Kingston till tuesday evening then I am back to NYC. I need to spend some time in NYC doing other work besides this move. The move preocupies almost all my time recently. I need to spend more time in kingston, but just can’t be away. That is how I feel right now, that tons of things are getting overlooked because I am not in NYC. I will send Keith up on thursday and have him spend 2 days getting kingston in order while I clean up issues in NYC. Then next monday I am back to Kingston for our first queue move. This is when we really put the new system into production.

Today is looking like it was a record day for my company. We maxed out our 3 voice T-1’s with calls durring peak hours. We also look like we are going to make a sales record for today. This is most likely due to the black out, but it still is a record day. The new office doesn’t come fast enough.

This Blog

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So Joe (the new guy that works Technology in Kingston) is reading this blog. Another person at work is now reading it. That brings the total number of people reading this thing to about 4:) At first I was like, I have to watch what I say in this thing. Then I figured I speak my mind anyway so writing my thoughts on the internet is no big deal.

What else was cool about this blog is Sunday I had a problem with Ghosting Compaq Evo 510 desktop computers. I had issues with the network card and a ghost boot disk. So as any good tech would do I did a search on google for a solution. What was so funny was that the 4th result was an entry from this blog discussing that I had to take Compaq Evo 510 desktops and ghost them for work. Joe and I got a good laugh out of that one.

The biggest security hole in the world

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Do you know what the biggest security whole in any company is? It is not intricate file permissions. It is not flaws in firewall’s or in IIS web servers that have not been patched. The biggest security flaw is people. Gus showed me someone else’s blog that ranted about that. His quote was perfect. It boils down to people are lazy. People generally say “security is good, and important”, but when you say don’t tell anyone your password they do. You tell people to make difficult passwords, they find the craziest ways around your restrictions. My own dad who I consider a smart guy doesn’t even have good passwords. I consider him the typical user. If he needs to reinstall AOL he needs me to give him his password. Who am I kidding if he needs to reinstall AOL I do it for him, but you get the idea.

How do we fix this problem? Smarter minds than mine have pondered this for a long time. My answer is you don’t. You just cant. You can try and try, but in the end it is plugging a whole in a dam with duck tape. Even good biometric security has flaws today. Maybe one day it will be good enough to use. Then 3 years after that day when it is cheap enough to deploy I will sign up for it.

OK, enough about security. WOW, I actually said that. Last night we had to do some last minute fix’s on one of our websites when an image server died. It was actually weird. I told Keith Monday morning that something was wrong with that server and he needed to fix it. So he waited till late in the day and ended up at our colo at 6pm. I was at dinner with my sister after that, so he actually took care of the restore and reconfiguration of the backup box. It was kind of nice not having to do everything. Of course it took him 8 hours to do what I asked, but hey I can’t ask for everything.

We are looking at resume’s for the helpdesk guy we are going to hire for our new office. Man people cannot read. We post a job for Kingston, NY (it is about 2 hours north of NYC, 1 hour south of albany so you know the distance) and I get applicants from long island, California, and anywhere else you could think of. The crazier thing is I get applicants asking for more money than I make. It is crazy. Gus got a laugh out of it, but in reality it is not funny because we need to find someone quick. I have about 4-5 people I want to call and see if they are worth a face to face interview.