Well the night has come, Unicron-Classic (lol) is being shutdown as I type. It was a good server, lasted longer than I thought it would, even if it did cause me great grief this past weekend locking up, running out of ram, etc. but the customers of that server (not mine) are now re-located to 2 masterful 8-Core systems - and doing great on lovely RAID10 drive setups, so a nice improvement for those folks, I am sure there are some little bugs waiting for me here and there, but all in all, very very happy!
In other news! My parts showed up today, as I have been working here, I have been trying out the new thumbdrive which is for a combo of personal and a combo of work, 16GB of thumbdrive wonderfulness - so very happy, and every little bit I have been putting together the system, and it’s going well - but I’ll post more later, a few things to sort out in here, and waiting on the final on the old server, etc. etc. but tonight I’ll have a few things to post about… more soon!
Well today I got the call from the boss man back east, chatted about the meeting they had yesterday, got the skinny on everything - and I mean EVERYTHING, I think there were some concerns which could of been generalized, but straight out I now know how everyone in admin thinks - but a lot of it truly as he said it “perceptions” folks don’t ask me what I am doing, what I am working on, they just assume standing somewhere other than in my office means “playing around”. I am not going to lie, there are times I have had a friendly chat, but simple, quick, casual - not unheard of in an office.
But we discussed quite a bit, not the 2hr conversation from last week, but a hour long conversation which actually taught me some more of the inner workings of their system, as I really didn’t ever have much training on things - so got the skinny on working out some possible new functionality, and getting things up to par with the reports they used to have generated - which no longer work for me - got a budget of $500, got things sorted with “Personal” vs “Work” and also clarified my laptop use here at work, as it was questioned “Why” was I using it all the time, well it was part of the original agreement to allow me to keep my own business, because honestly if all I was making was the money from here? I’d be on one tight budget - but in conjunction with my business, it ain’t too shabby.
So things are mellowing out, and I imagine they will continue to do so, worked some on their “newsletter” and it is starting to look good I think, I am going to layout some things in Illustrator to import for the back page, but it should come out pretty nice and really allow them to have a product sent out that folks actually READ for once, good stories, eyecatching promos, etc. So I hope it will be well received, and if at all possible ready to go by this Friday.
Anywhoo - long day ahead, going to be sorting more of the programming they have in FoxPro, and see if I can better export these data dumps to Excel and maybe into Access or MySQL, and go from there, just need a clean customer list, and a clean OE file - but if I can do that, I can write a PHP app to import the data from the dumps, and a PHP app or two to generate the reports, so busy busy. Thanks for the continued prayers, I’ll post more on the event last night later, still quiet, but who knows if that’s good or bad. Time will tell.
So today I figured I’d be pulled into the morning meeting to discuss things, which I figured could possibly lead to a few things like me leaving this job, while not the “greatest” thing that could happen in the world, at some level it’d be easier on my brain lol - but nothing happened, not fired, no updated draft of my job description, as always less and less respect for someone who’s supposed to be in charge of a company’s IT infrastructure (I think).
But the day goes on, I have held off on my media rig until things settle down here, which they may well do - but time will indeed tell, but I figure if I haven’t heard anything about the job by tomorrow, I’ll go ahead and get the parts coming, and look more serisouly towards getting an appartment - I have scaled the rig down some to save money, and simply recycle some parts, namely Memory, TV Tuner, and Vista, so under $1000 for a system, but still should be a nice setup for the time being, and as things continue to settle down, might get something more to add-in down the line, but for now it’ll do.
Big thanks for all the prayers - I am hoping things continue to pan out here, it’s not that it’s a bad job - its just they keep trying to expand it where if I am not careful, I’ll be moping and vaccuming floors soon, and while I know how to do that, it’s not my job, nor am I being paid for it, so we’ll see how it all goes from here - today I get lunch for sure! Missed it yesterday no car, my ride ditched me, could of had Scott bring me some tasty bits, but I failed lol. So today, it will be tasty indeed! I just need to get cash from a ATM somewhere.
Anywhoo - that’s my update, so far so good, really am tired, but it happens 
for now I am off to once again look at these old database formats and see if I can’t get things happy somewhere within the flow.
Well another weekend has arrived, a long week has gone, and a new week of challeneges lies ahead.
Friday really did lay out some interesting happenings, one of which was the 2hr conversation with my direct boss, he is back east, and thus I mainly discuss things via Email, but he and I get along pretty well, so we discussed my job description as it has become grey’d and as much as he and I would both somehow agree to say “It’s a small company” it still does not change the fact that if I am picking up the job of a Graphic Designer, IT Manager, and Off-Site consultant - I should be making a heckuva lot more money than I am now
The talk went well though, he heard many of my concerns, and went over them step by step, bottom line I came out of it all with, is this company is not looking to really upgrade or step it up, something is holding them back in the concept of computing and IT in general, this isn’t a “show stopper” for me per-say, but it does make my job harder, and extremely more boring, as I don’t get to experiment, expand, grow, enhance things, but at least my job description concerns were heard, and an adjusted one will be sent to me on Monday, and from there I can give it a final review before it goes to their big staff meeting.
In other non-work related news, my storage system failed last night, I woke up and was starting to clean around the room, so I was going to watch a show I had snagged, well the entire system was rebooting in a loop, cleared bios and drives disconnected, it was still in error. So I took the big media storage drive out and after some toying I got a EXT3 drive mounted under Windows Vista (thanks fs-driver.org) - it works good, speed is nice, and it was good to see all my lovely files safe and sound.
So I have sped-up the search for my Media Center replacement, and I may have found it, custom building a AMD Quad Core box, and once it’s up I use the media rig hardware currently to become the storage box - once the budget is happy again then I’ll pickup the Drobo.
The stats, for you nerdy types out there is as follows:
- AMD Phenom 9550 Agena 2.2GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core
- 4GB PC PC2 8500 (2 x 2GB Sticks)
- 4x Blu-Ray / DVDR Drive
- 2 x Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 (not 1 tuner, but 2! So 4 shows can record at once)
- 500GB SATAII Drive
- Antec Aluminum Veris Fusion Black - Micro Case for Media Center Rigs
All in all it come out cheaper than the original Dell rig I built, but room to expand/upgrade as needed, and more power to boot, the motherboard has a intergrated HDMI port so I can still do 720p to the TV, so pretty snazzy indeed, I threw in a copy of Vista Home Premium 64bit as well, so I’ll have a hotspare of Vista lying around (32-bit Build).
Not sure about build/buy time, maybe tonight, maybe in a few weeks, but I am thinking sooner than later, just getting the budget all in place to cover it, and still afford monthly costs, which shouldn’t be a HUGE deal as I got 3 new deals that came thru on my own business, so who knows maybe in due-time I can ditch the day job but for now it all works, and an apartment might be in the cards again as the house deal is a 50/50 shot again.
Anywhoo - I do appreciate the prayers from those of you who still check in from time to time - things are getting there slowly but surely I think, for now off to check for more deals, clean some more, and find dinner. 
Have a great weekend folks!
One of my favorite Sci-Fi shows to come along in a while is Eureka, and on sale rack @ Target tonight while I was snagging the Robot Chicken Star Wars - so it was nice to snag season 2, it was an amazing season and with the 3rd approaching the end of this month - I was pretty stoked to get it, get caught up and be ready for the 3rd season from the get-go.
Movies and fun aside I had a productive day - got my quote for our new Juniper Firewall approved, it will remove off the bat 2 consumer devices which are a touch of a bottle neck at the moment, but also gives me some great help in deployment of additional hardware and security resources for a network of the size at work.
Anywhoo - back to watching Eureka for a bit! Then off to bed, and who knows maybe I’ll actually sleep. Night folks!
Well things are moving forward slowly, been working on some mainly code in the short-term, so far so good, I am developing a “Missing People” page where it has our senior pictures (sorry everyone) anyone who isn’t found yet is grey’d out and folks can put forth contact information, or fill us in on them, as we know some from our class have passed away, we have a list of at least 4 people I believe at this point - with some folks doing tours over in Iraq, we may have a few more names, but I pray to God we don’t.
I have been up for a reunion off and on, but with the group getting it going, actually a little pumped, mainly because it’s 2 gals I knew in highschool and actually liked So it’s not like I have jumped into a group with that “one girl” or that punk jock, Wendy and Misty were both folks I knew, so it’s mellow, no stress, and we have literally a year to plan (so technically it’s our 11yr reunion)
It’s fun stuff thus far, going to try and call in a few favors to maybe help out some of our class who is now right coasters see if I can’t pull a favor or two with some contacts to lend me a seat or 3 on a jet (yes I know people) lol - but if nothing else see if I can’t get some really really affordable rates and see if we can’t get some folks out here.
Anywhoo - nearly 11, still unwinding but going to hit publish and go relax and watch a movie as I slowly pass out. Night folks, and have a good week!
Well for me anymore a Wild Saturday includes a few things, 1) Progress on organizing my junk, 2) Sleep, 3) Food - or any combo of those options.
Today included the unlock of my 1st Gen iPhone to utilize the Firmware 2.0 but on T-Mobile’s network - being out of contract on T-Mobile, I am actually happy to stay knowing I can now use the line “Well if you won’t fix it, I’ll just leave! boo-hoo!” - and can actually do it AT&T has tried several times now to lure me back to their evil death star alliance, but I have remained strong - the iPhone was really the only option I liked, but I doubt I’d buy a 3G model any time soon, revision 2 in which they get GPS quirks out of the way, battery life sorted, and a 12MP camera, then, maybe then
Currently my first gen is on it’s battery drain, listening to Pandora over WiFi, part of me wanted to leave it on EDGE and see what’d happen, but signal isn’t quality EDGE, so probalby Monday I’ll have that fun at work! But all in all the apps are speedy, the unlock works perfectly, iTunes 7.7 backed up all my goodies, and now I have the big thing to decide MobileMe or Stick with IMAP & SpanningSync for Mac, don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of MobileMe, just $99 a year, not sure it’s going to sit well in my budget for IT, I’d just as soon get Google Apps, or utilize my own IMAP servers.
I am sure there are other things which I could go on and on about, but really it has been a mellow weekend, Church tomorrow should be fun (I hope) followed up with Dinner, but I really want to get a lot more sleep in, I think I am trying to get sick, and the lack of sleep usually leaves me wide open for illness, so sleep is coming up soon here - I am going to fight the urge to skip playing with Apps on the iPhone.
Anywhoo - lots to do in coming weeks, Reunion Website, Photographer’s blog, Wordpress 2.6 upgrades for folks (big kudo’s to WP devs, Gears makes it rockin all the more!) but busy busy - just need to be sure I am rested for it! So I will say goodnight, and wish you all a wonderful Sunday!
