Life on Snow Hill

So it’s been forever since I’ve written anything. I’ve been spending my time working (Had a huge outage at work the week before Thanksgiving), at church, studying, and sleeping. I feel like I’m finally able to breathe for a little bit.

My ‘working’ includes things outside of my normal job. I recently revamped the church website. I personally think it looks a lot better (But I’m a bit biased.. I did the last one, too, however). I’d love any feedback any of you would be willing to give. I am planning on adding a guestbook back to the site, as well as adding all of the audio sermons back to it, plus some special singing at the church.

Another thing I spent quite a bit of time on was moving all my websites to a ‘real’ host. Up until yesterday, all of my sites were being hosted on a server I have in my house, all running on a DSL internet connection. Needless to say, it was a little slow, especially if more than one person was on at a time. I have this blog, a more ‘serious’ blog, a tech blog, a Facebook-type site for Christians, and a couple of test sites I’m working on for others. They don’t generate all that much traffic, but I was ready to free my home DSL from the extra traffic. I also wanted to save some money. Yes, I’m paying for the web hosting, but I can shut off that server at home now which should save me at least as much (likely more) on my power bill. I’m looking forward to that.

A little while back, I also procured an out-of-warranty Google mini appliance with a bad hard drive. I have a few drives lying around at home, so I slapped one in there and built it to be used as my phone soft-switch. Yes, I’m so geeky that my phones run through a computer. The little appliance is about the size of a medium pizza box from Pizza Hut, replacing a more standard-sized computer that happened to die during a power outage at home recently.

So that’s a lot of what’s been taking up my time recently. We’re also gearing up for the Christmas play at church, so that’ll be taking even more time. I’ll come back up for more air in January.

As I’m sure most people are this time of year, Becky and I have been busy. Becky has had most of the responsibilities for taking care of the Christmas play at church this year, so she’s been covered up with that. She has also been doing all of the shopping and everything else that goes along with this Christmas season.

For me, it really started the weekend of December 5. At work, we did a server room redesign. We pulled all of the network cabling from under the floor and put brand new cabling overhead. We added a second switch and made the two redundant. We ran two cables from each server – one to each of the switches. During that process, we were able to clean up our server racks quite a bit. There is still a little work to be done in that area, but it won’t take much.

Oh. That lasted 2 days – Saturday and Sunday.

With the company I work for being cheaper by the day, they won’t let me keep any overtime. I put in 25 hours over the weekend, so I only had to work 15 through the rest of the week before I reached my maximum of 40 hours. So I used all that time off from work to help where I could with the new fellowship hall we’re working on at church.

Most of the early part of the week was spent putting some finishing touches on some of the floor tile and trimming around it. Then we started moving everything off the floor so it could be cleaned and prepared for carpet. I really can’t remember what all else we did. It’s becoming a blur.

I do know that later in the week, we tried to clean the concrete floor by hand with mops. That worked really unwell. That floor had everything from paint to sheetrock mud to tile grout to sawdust and whatever else you could imagine being on a concrete floor during a construction project. We got our hands on this big nifty power tool that cleans concrete for you. You just have to steer it. It has a pad on the front of it that spins, much like a floor buffer. It dispenses water on that pad to help it break up whatever is on the floor. On the back of the machine, it has a squeegee with a vacuum on it to get all that dirty water off the floor. A couple times over the floor with that, and it was almost clean enough to eat off of.

On Saturday we began laying carpet. We got it in slightly over 3′ square tiles. This was for a couple of reasons – one being that it was said that it was generally easier to lay that than regular carpet on rolls. I’d never done either, so I’ll take their word for it. The second, and most important, reason was that if something was spilled on the carpet, the affected tile(s) could be pulled out and cleaned, or replaced if need be. The glue that is used is more of a no-slip contact material so that carpet can be easily pulled out and put back. Pretty nifty stuff.

Carpet was finished yesterday, and the gas fireplace was finally installed by the gas company.

I forgot to mention that the Christmas play is supposed to be in the fellowship hall this year. So my focus yesterday after work was to get the sound system working.

I had two ceiling speakers to install in the kitchen area. That wasn’t too much of a task. The wiring was already there – I just had to connect it and put the speakers in place. Piece of cake. After that, I had to connect these weird European (but supposedly popular) Neutrik Speakon connectors to the wiring I had in place. It was pretty simple once I figured out how the stupid things worked. I finished that job, locked them in place on the sound board, plugged in a mic, and . . . nothing. Great. What did I do wrong? Turns out the cable I had on the mic was bad. We got another mic, and the pastor and I tried a few buttons and switches on the board and sound magically came out of the main 4 speakers mounted on the walls in the main dining area. Awesome. I messed with the board a little more and tweaked a few settings here and there, and things worked great.

My focus this evening is to get the kitchen ceiling speakers wired in with the rest of the system. It shouldn’t be too much of a task. After that, I’ll be working on a couple of small stages for the play. I also need to learn a simple song on the piano for some of the younger kids to sing during the play.

I think that’s everything. That’s all I have written in my to-do list anyway. The whole thing is very enjoyable, but I’ll honestly be relieved when all of this hectic hurry up mode is over with.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed. Not in an “I’m so stressed out I can’t take it any more!” kind of way at all. Maybe it’s more of an “I’m so busy lately that I sleep much better at night!” situation. It’s true, actually – I’ve been getting such good, sound sleep lately. I just wish I could get more of it.

Things have been picking up at work, first of all. We have 9 servers that need to be rebuilt and reconfigured. These servers are what our virtual infrastructure runs on. “What’s that?” you may ask. I’m so glad you asked! In a nutshell, a virtual infrastructure is a set of servers and network configurations that run on other servers. This is a good thing, because on these 9 servers, we have over 100 virtual servers running. So rather than having over 100 physical, real servers sitting in our datacenter, we only have 9. But we still get the benefit of the power these 100 servers offer us.

At home, well, the weather is changing. Spring is here and grass is growing. Along with weeds. Flowers too. This means mowing, weed-eating (Gotta get that weed eater fixed!) and gardening. I’m honestly excited to start the garden again this year. It just needs to dry out long enough to be plowed and tilled really well so that I can get some seeds in the ground. Spring means it’s also time to start working on getting firewood for next Winter. I’ve blogged about that in the recent past, so I won’t say much other than that I’ve gotten a pretty good start, but there’s a lot more to do.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’ve been busy at church. Becky and I are, as most of you already know, teaching the teenage Sunday School class. I’m also in charge of the youth choir. We’re also working towards getting a teen visitation program going, as well as other youth ministries. I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was in for when I became the Youth Director, but the Lord had it in His plan, and Becky and I have been reaping blessings from it already. We’re thankful the Lord is using us, and praying that He will continue to do so, doing our best to stay in His will. These youth are a great bunch to work with. Our prayer is that they’ll have such a desire for God that we’ll be the ones trying to keep up with them!

Tomorrow (Wednesday, July 16, 2008) is the 17th Annual Ride to Work day.  Basically, the idea is to promote motorcycling as a legitimate means of transportation, not only on the 3rd Wednesday of every July, but each day of the year.

There are tons of facts and information on traffic congestion, gasoline usage and parking space, and how riding motorcycles rather than driving a car really help out in those areas.  For example, in cities where a parking space is a real pain to find, riding a motorcycle can help simply because 3-5 motorcycles (depending on their size, of course) can fit in the same space as a single car.

I’m already doing my part, because I ride to work and anywhere else I can get away with.  As long as I don’t have to haul something that I can’t handle on the motorcycle, I’m riding it.  I calculated my MPG one day, and my bike gets right around 44 MPG.  My truck (my only other vehicle at this time) gets about 15 MPG.  You can see a huge cost savings right there alone.  Especially since I drive 30 miles one way to work.  That’s 60 miles every day – 300 miles a week!  That’s a savings of just over 13 gallons of gas each week, and at around $4 per gallon (I picked an even number, but it’s close), that’s a savings of $52 a week, or a little over $200 a month!  Yep, I’ve just paid for the new set of tires for my bike just by riding it for a month.

For those of you who know me, yes, this is a gripe about the company I work for.  For those of you who don’t know me, it is still a gripe about the company I work for, but I’m just not telling you exactly which company that is.

Also, for the record, I like my job.  I’m just not in total agreement with some of the decisions the company makes, and some of the management within said company.  Now that that’s out of the way, on to the meat of my post.

For the first scenario, there is an immigrant that is going through all of the necessary processes to move into the US.  I’ve got no problem with this individual personally, and have no issues with that family moving into my country.  However, I do not agree with the process the company is using.  A new job was created for this individual, but to keep the Department of Labor off the company’s back, the job had to be posted and made available for anyone to apply for.  The general idea of the law in this area is that for the work visa to be valid, the company has to show that no one in the country was qualified for the job.  Now, this process within the company is a joke.  The job was posted, and was very vague so that just about anybody with any experience was qualified according to the wording of the job posting.  But when an application is submitted, some little something is found that disqualifies the individual.  So basically, someone in the US is still without a job so that someone from outside the country could have it.

I won’t go into how unemployment affects the economy other than to say that more money in more Americans’ pockets is a good thing.  One thing is for sure, this practice isn’t the way to combat unemployment – it’s totally opposite.  I just better never hear anyone involved in this process say anything about unemployment in this country or they’ll know exactly what I think about all of it.

The second scenario is based on the fact that large companies look to save money every way they can.  This is always a good thing.  Except for when it causes even more Americans to have no job.  Certain things within the company are outsourced to other countries who provide cheap labor.  While this makes good business sense and gives jobs to those nice folks overseas, it isn’t helping out our own economy at all.

I’ll step off my soapbox now.  Thanks for listening, and good night.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about needing to clean up my desk and office space both at home and at work.  I posted a photo of what my desk at work looked like.  It was sad, wasn’t it?  For the sake of history preservation, I’ve posted that same ‘before’ shot here.

I can’t remember which day I actually broke down and cleaned my desk up, but it looks 100 times better now.  I was truly surprised at how much desk I actually had under all that mess.  Not only that, I’m not raking stuff from my desk to the floor accidentally any more – it’s pushed back out of the way, but within easy reach when I need it.  So, without further ado (Is that how you spell that?), here is my desk today:

See what I mean?  You can barely tell it’s even the same desk.  I feel like it’s a whole new desk.  But alas, it still has the same view of more interior white walls.  I do have a window, but it only looks into the server room.  To get a view of the outside world, I must walk to the front of the office building to the door.  But now I’m digressing completely from the entire point of this entry.

To get things back on track, you should be proud to know that my office at home is also in much better shape.  My desk still needs a little work, but you can walk through the entire office now without fear of stepping on something that will hurt your feet.  I can also get the closet door shut now – that’s always a big plus.

Well, the rebuild was completed and the server was behaving perfectly normal.  That is, until the service desk team got their hands on it.

The entire reason for the rebuild was because it was speculated that a service pack installed on the server corrupted one of the OS’ software pieces that the product relies heavily on.  Now, this was never believed from the beginning or this big company in Redmond, Washington would have communicated this issue to the masses.

So, the rebuild was completed and the service desk team began their task.  Once they were finished, they quickly determined their problem still existed.  After they went over the rebuild steps with a fine-tooth comb, they determined it was the product itself that caused the corruption rather than the service pack, so that proved to be a waste of more than a day’s worth of work.

Now a new test server has to be built to facilitate their testing.  Again, when this request came in, the array of choices for a response was the same, with the addition of "Ill have that for you yesterday, sir!"  Plan for another half day of work on this pitiful excuse for an enterprise product.

Again, please remember that this story is entirely fictional and is not intended to implicate or imitate any particular company, department or individual.

It seems like everyone makes them, and they’re always the same.  I want to lose x amount of pounds, or I want to manage my money better.  I used to make a resolution, but I’d quickly forget about it in a couple of weeks time.

This year, I have set a couple of goals.  One of them kicks me in the face every day.  This is a small picture of what part of my desk at work looks like.  My goal, is to fix it.  And keep it fixed.

A little while back – it may have been during Christmas break – I took some time to work on my office at home.  I cleaned up my desk pretty well, although it still isn’t quite finished.  But it looks a lot better than the one at my job.

Overall, this goal is simply to be more organized and neat.  Anyone that knows me very well knows this needs to be addressed.  So I am.  Slowly, but surely.

As soon as Becky reads this, she’ll be telling me for the rest of the year about how I made it a goal to be more organized.  Hopefully she’ll do it in a loving way, rather than as a result of the frustration from trying to wade through all the junk in my office floor.  This of course means that I’ll need to try to stay a step ahead of her so that she’ll have no reason to be frustrated because she stubbed her toe on one of my old boat anchor computers.  I plan to (someday) get that out of the way.

So, now I’ve shown my cards.  I’ve made it known.  I’ll be held to it now – I’m done for.

Once upon a time, a Fortune 500 company bought a product that was sadly lacking in stability, usability and reliability to manage its assets.  The company bought the product after a team that was put together to test various products to accomplish the task wrote it off as lacking.

Once it was purchased, it was immediately rolled out to the entire company without proper testing and without researching how all of the pieces should be set up to talk to each other.  Anyone in IT can see how this ends up.

Fast forward to today…  Everything appears to work like it’s supposed to, for now, although much tweaking is constantly ongoing to ensure its reliability.  Everything, that is, except for one piece – the all important service desk.  The service desk is where everyone in the company puts in work orders to request help from someone in IT to fix a particular problem.

Much to the frustration of the server folks (whose hands are tied by that red tape up there) where this particular server happens to reside, it has to be rebuilt for approximately the 5th or 6th time, within approximately a year’s time.  Not only does it have to be rebuilt, but it has to be rebuilt during a time when normal maintenance is being done on the approximately 180 other servers in the building.  Nah, there wasn’t much else going on that day.

When this request was presented, the vast array of responses to choose from consisted of:

1. Yes, sir!
2. I’ll get right on that, sir!
3. Is there anything else we can fit in for you, sir?

Stay tuned for chapter 2 in this edge-of-your-seat thriller!  See which response was chosen!  See how the rebuild turned out!  See when the next rebuild will be!

Please remember that this story is entirely fictional and is not intended to implicate or imitate any particular company, department or individual.

Today is Christmas Eve, and I had to go to work.  Because Jacobs is kinda cheap that way.  But I got a good ‘gift’ for going in.  We expected our new laptops to arrive in the first week of January, but FedEx brought us an early Christmas present.

I have a Dell Latitude D630.  No bluetooth, and no nifty keyboard light in the top of the screen casing.  But it’s pretty sweet otherwise.  It has a Centrino Duo in it – 1.8 GHz.  It also came with Windows Vista Business Edition, so that is cool too.  I’ve been spending most of the morning and early afternoon getting it set up just like I like it.

Oh, the sweetest part – it has 2 GB of RAM.  The most RAM I’ve ever had in a desktop or laptop.  So it’s screamin’.

So anyway, I had to brag a little.  Merry Christmas everybody!