The magic number: 237

So in 2 weeks… I get to attempt my first large-scale migration while working a standard 9-5 job - now for my own clients migrations have gone over smoothly, most are aware of the issues that could happen, most manage their own websites and update application configurations, upgrade the software itself, they download their mail, backup their OWN copy just in case, it’s a rather impressive thing, I have some amazing clients - but in this case, some outdated software, lack of user involvement (most are created by the host + managed by the host) - not saying this is a bad thing, but in a migration in the past we had some issues.

This time it will be different. By Thursday there will be a drafted email blast to all customers on the affected servers, it will go out no later than Friday evening letting folks know 1 full week in advance that changes to servers are coming, that of DNS, location, configuration, etc. give a few risks involved, possible downtime windows, and going from there thru the weekend - aka “fun” it also means some money in my pocket as well which leads to the next thing. The Magic Number

The number is my cost of my ticket. I think it’s actually LESS than what I paid last time, so all I need to do is call in tomorrow, pay it over the phone, and do online traffic school, and ta-da, no pesky court date, no delays, paid, cleared, back to normal, and hopefully not another ticket for another 5 years, but it’s all in all just one last thing that has been hanging on my mind lately, so tomorrow I give a ring, make a payment, sign-up for traffic school, get it done, and then the budget can return to it’s previous state of increasing… which is now part of my flip-flop going back to the top one
I am picking up additional work with servers, granted I do need to iron out some details in regards to payment - aka need to get things on a monthly payment plan via card vs. check - I don’t mind check’s for small things paid up in a year, so 1 big check, but to do that would be a big big big big big check - but it’s something I plan to discuss on another day, other possible work is more of a fun thing I think I am going to do is 2 church related things, and I don’t get paid a penny! I may be helping Dan-o with the new Church Website, which is uber cool, and maybe, be singing for The Hub on Sunday…. sooooo work but a blessing!

Anywhoo - there it is, busy busy at work, and I could go into details, but honestly I get tired of talking about the 8-5 grind, it makes me tired, thus I am going to flip off the lights, sigh a sigh of relief on the ticket, and fall asleep watching some crazy movie (The Comebacks?) so I wish you all a very happy Wednesday! Keep it real, Rock on for Jesus, and Keep on Truckin (I think that’s all I’ve got) - night folks!

ps. Dan, Jake, Scott, Val, Gavin, Cameron, Blaine, Cory, Jeff, Matt, etc. etc. etc. Who’s up for 830p showing of Iron Man Thursday? Anyone?

Email, Work, Sleep

So another day, another dollar? Okay so I may of made $2… just how it seems to go - today we found some crazy stuff happening with Email on a customer’s oldest server. It has been his longest standing server and it’s starting to show it’s age, but thankfully nothing major damaged, and things are still running … slow & steady, but running. Tomorrow I meet with the client to discuss some options, some I think he’ll like, others I think he’ll think I am crazy - but hey what’s new, everyone knows I am a tad nuts.

Work was fair today, Sales team is back after a week @ their annual sales meeting - things are starting to get back to their “norm” so to speak, still I am sure more settling back in, but all in all, it’s getting there! But I do hope to find out today (tuesday) if I can switch my hours from 8->5 to 9->6 - if so it’d be saweet - if not, it was worth a try, hopefully someone will give me a break now and again, I know I am their primary IT guy, but even I need a break now and again, not to mention a moment or two for work on my business - but even that has been a good balance lately.

Sleep though is what I am lacking as of late, I am trying to get back into a normal pattern, but sadly that hasn’t happened as of yet, so I am running on a few hours a night, maybe 3-4 if I am lucky, but at least it isn’t due to pain, that was not even a quality 3-4 hours of sleep - but I know I should wrap up, eat my food, and then crash out as morning is going to come, the day is of course going to speed by me, then I’ll be in not 1, but 2 - count em 2 meetings 1, with said customer above, but the 2nd with Dan about the Church website, which may be fun, may be not.

Anywhoo - that’s it, busy busy as always, more rumors about a 3G iPhone floating around… but I think really I am good with the EDGE model, I know I know - rumors of GPS, Lightsabers, etc. etc. etc. and we won’t know for sure until it finally arrives, but even then I imagine things like GPS and such will be paid additions, I mean come on - it’s AT&T and Apple - but if they get crazy and offer a upgrade for a low fee for trading in my unit as I purchased so recently, I may actually give AT&T wireless another try.. if not - I think I am going to have a friendly chat with T-Mobile and re-work my plan a bit…. but thats another rambling for another time. I’m off! Night folks!

Review: The iPhone (8GB)

I started off not liking the iPhone, and I still am not 100% sold, granted this is first generation (do the bigger sizes count as hardware revisions?) none the less it’s not a perfect phone, and yet it’s features are probably one of the better ones out there that are easily available via a US GSM cell phone provider.

The community’s use of Installer really does make the product very useable, but the core OS has some things to catch-up on, as many have stated MMS support, while not a must for me, I can understand the frustration folks have in trying to send a friend a picture to their cell, only to have no option to do so - but Installer’s list of repo’s and apps have closed the gap some, including support for Flickr, Twitter, Terminal, etc. all apps which were on my “I’d like to..” list.

For me the big sell was really 3 core things, 1 - Terminal, hello SSH, 2 - Mobile Safari - even over EDGE on T-Mobile it’s great for simple terminal access, 3 - Mail - IMAP galore, even Gmail/Yahoo support, so I have a few more to add, but it’s very handy.

Things that wil need to change before I can say “Woah! Awesome, I love thee iPhone!” are:

1. The ability to make a signature per-account vs. 1 global sig.
2. Email Attachments other than Photos
3. Word/Doc editing support.
4. Supporting flash, even if it’s a “Click to Activate” like Quicktime.
5. Video Recording App - Flickr now has Video Support, so heck yeah
6. Rotation across all apps, widescreen SSH with a smaller keyboard - or external keyboard to dock onto the phone.
7. Bluetooth Sending! This would make life great, beam contacts, files, etc. the one thing I miss is being able to Bluetooth things from the Mac -> Phone.

Really those are my only major gripes, it linked up with my headset no issue, BSD backend is nice to have access to for dig/whois etc. some common tools for my business, but everything else works well enough.

I know that a new firmware is just around the corner, and there are some grumbles that it will be harder to hack/unlock - I pray folks are wrong, as Apple would probably lock out a good portion of their phone users, as I know many (like myself) are not fond of AT&T - granted I am still considering giving them a try, but I want to test it out good, both home and work, but then and only then would I consider moving my # over, and even then about 400 of my minutes a month are to customers on the 5 Favs, or on T-Mobile… so roll over better add up quick

Anywhoo - all in all I enjoy the device, hopefully it will be continually improved either by Apple or the community by use of Installer.app but I don’t think I am going to return it hoping for a 3G model, this works for me, and if I decide to stick with T-Mobile, I’ll have no worries.

Yup, It’s the Weekend

So the week is done, twas a long one, with little sleep, but I am alive, and probably going to pass out here in a minute, but just figured I’d post a note.

A good week overall I’d say, the iPhone is doing well, with all the talk of 3G I have considered taking it back, but at the same time, it works, it does what I need, WiFi will always be faster, and granted 3G speeds will beat that of EDGE, at the end of the day Edge is more widespread, and like last time AT&T’s big data release, unless they REALLY learned from last time, we’ll probably see more outages, and for those who get it for T-Mobile’s 3G being rolled out, outages there too I’d imagine… if it’s not locked into AT&T’s 3G network!

Anywhoo - busy day tomorrow, meeting about servers in the afternoon, probably a service call in the morning across the street to look at a DVD Burner Issue, and Dinner later that evening with friends, so busy busy - so I am going to crawl over to my bed, start up the movie where I left off, and dream happy dreams. Night.

Sleep….

Well it was a strangely quiet day today at the office. The entire sales team, vice president, and coo - are all at the company’s annual sales meeting this year in Sin City - but it was still busy, and yet I think maybe 2 people called/came to my office - so maybe things are finally calming down to the “2 days a week of work” idea that I was told was the norm even if not, so far I don’t mind the job, just wish I had 9-6 vs 8-5… but all in due time!

This morning I was supposed to goto court for my ticket (according to my ticket) but as of Monday they said to call back in 7 days for a new court date, so I am going on that, I mean why would the court lie? But tomorrow the plan is to try and get off work an hour early to goto Edison Middle School! My former Jr. High - as Dan’s nephew is playing Baseball, I want to go and have fun, but also take the camera to get some shooting under my belt, it has been a while since I was behind the camera, be nice to try and get some good shots of a game.

Sleep as the title of this post is what I am lacking at the moment, pain has kept me up a few nights, and the pain that was thru my neck and shoulder is finally getting enough where pain meds will put it to sleep, but part of me would love to take a day off, but I am trying to keep my sick days to a minimum, but I know sooner or later job and work will collide and I’ll need to do a half day, but I want to cross that bridge only when I come to it.

Anywhoo - going to call it a night (I hope), today was good though, first day with the iPhone as the primary phone, I am still considering the switch to AT&T, but not 100% on that yet, but for now I have my iPhone on T-Mobile, a new wallet, and a photo day! Life is good, just a tad tired, so hopefully sleep will come quickly. Night folks. Have a great Fake Friday.

T-Mobile iPhone

So I may have a new phone, and by that I have 14 days to give the iPhone a drive, of course now that it’s out of the box, it’s $40 less back, but at the same time, $40 for a test drive of a internet device, not bad - I know previously I have bad-mouthed the iPhone, and I still have my reservations about it’s abilities and such, but all in all it’s not a bad device thus far, having some hands on time with it at the store, I then took a 3 1/2 hour side-trip to Dan’s for game night.

Can’t say I had a lot of “iPhone Fever” everyone else had rushing home to get it running, it’s a test, and to me that’s not something to be rushed, especially when $400+ is on the line, this device has to have it’s tires kicked, and I have to make sure 100% it fit’s my needs, but so far the “unlock” process went very smooth - had to get 3 files, patched, and good to go - currently it even reads “T-Mobile” at the top, but even on that end I am not 100% sure I’ll be loyal to T-Mobile.

AT&T has some decent offerings, even going to borrow an AT&T SIM and give it a whirl, I have one, but it isn’t activated, but honestly it’s looking good right now, at around $85 a month roughly (which is the price in my mind after taxes/fees) it’s a pretty sweet deal, and where I have 5 favs now, I’d get roll-over minutes in return, so I may switch to Death Star, not 100% sure yet.

I’ll post my unboxing as well as some more thoughts in the days to come, for now I just want to give this thing some test runs… so it’s of to sync some movies, and browse the features/functions. More later.

iPhone? iPod Touch? Other?

So what do you do when you have incredible pain and can’t sleep? Well thankfully I have been researching other things so I sit and do research as to what I can do and where, as it stands I am not un-happy with T-Mobile, the service is good, it works, no issues - I have data, and it works, however I am wanting a better device for E-Mail and functionality on the go.

I have the T-Mobile Dash, which is just a HTC WM device, it does the job, but mobile IE and Mobile Email are lacking, they eat up battery, have horrible support for things like SSL, even properly signed SSL certificates on mail servers come back invalid, quite annoying - plus the screen is not a touch-screen like I enjoyed with the Treo650 and VersaMail, sure sure, web browsing on the Treo was lacking, but it too was limited, but loaded more efficiently than Mobile IE on WM6 upgrade on the Dash.

So I have started looking for a device that does the web, does email, and can be mobile - the big winner in that dept. without anything added is sadly the iPhone - why sadly? I am a modular guy, I like to be able to add in functionality, and yes while I can hack and jailbreak a iPhone my worry is support, especially if in a month or so they release a 3G model, and I am up the creek, no upgrade path, no support, just a really expensive paper weight.

I switched from the then Cingular -> T-Mobile ages ago, T-Mobile has been good to me, we have had our share of bumps along the way, but in the end like other companies I deal with, they have been big on making it right, Cingular on the other hand, gave me no such help, I was off contract, and wanting to upgrade and downgrade on different features, they didn’t like that, said goto a store, did that, no luck their either, so thus the move to T-Mobile was had, but as it stands if I picked up a iPhone + Plan, monthly I’d be spending less, even getting their #2 package.

But there in lies my issue… do I want to risk the iPhone, risk sucky AT&T service again? or have they changed? Are they truly a new company with a new name? I mean their maps show “BEST” service in my area, heck over most of the town, is it time for a change? I just called to check alone on when my account contract is over with T-Mobile on the off chance I wanted to switch, and of course that dept. has set hours, not a huge deal, but again another thing to consider.

Anywhoo there it is, my pile of options, the iPod Touch is on the list too, but I dunno, I mean if I can spend ~$85 (after fees and such) and get unlimited data, wifi @ starbucks, and the iPhone, without having to unlock it for any sim, it seems like a safe bet? Right? It’s a business expense, and I can always port my number, but so many choices, only know of one guy with a iPhone, he seems to enjoy it - but maybe I’ll sneak over to AT&T during lunch tomorrow and see if they have one in store I can play with…. hrm… what to do what to do…. for now I think I’ll go over and pass out hoping the pain in my neck and shoulders goes away. Thanks for reading my rant! Have a Fun Week!