Month: January 2006

Don’t You Hate It When…?

2012-01-08 23:29:25

I was all set to go to work tomorrow with my customer and have a nice meeting, solve problems, and otherwise do good consulting work when I get a “Dear Jeff” letter… well, not quite. They have just moved on to another phase of the project and will not need me for a while yet. This totally messes up my schedule.

Now, I’m going to have to go work for a different customer with a good friend of mine… Bad thing is: I have to be at work at 5AM! Yeouch! Not sure how that’s gonig to feel, but I’m sure it’s not good. At least that will only be for a couple of days. Then, next week I’ll get to go to a training class in Dallas for a few days. I’ll be visiting my old friends the Priddys [for those of you who know them] whom I haven’t seen for about a year.

After that? Well, I’ll probably be back at some old customer locations and back riding the bike on long road trips in the mountains… Yes!

New Phone… Soon… Maybe…

I have been ever-not-so-patiently waiting on Cingular to put out their new WIndows Mobile 5 smartphone self-labeled as the Cingular 8100 [which is the non-camera variant of the 8125 and is a rebranded HTC Wizard]. First rumors put the release date at mid November… which has come and gone. Then, it was “end of December”. Again: come and gone. Same thing with the next rumored release date of Janurary 20th [or 21st as I was told by a different Cingular rep].

So, my quest for a Pocket PC Smartphone has been frustrated at almost every turn. I could just go and buy an unlocked one, I suppose, but I don’t want to drop $650 [that’s way over the allowed expense for the company’s reimbursal allowance for smartphones] a big chunk of which would come out of my pocket.

Each time I’ve called, I’ve gotten a different answer from: “It’s a what? Never heard of it…” to: “Oh – yeah. That’ll be out real soon. Just keep checking back.”. So, I wait. And wait.

Is Winter Over?

I’m somewhat confused with the weather here. Last year when I was here, January was bitter cold and icy. This year, it’s somewhat like Spring. Not that I’m complaining – I’m about to take a leisurely ride on my motorcycle just to enjoy the weather. I did that yesterday, too.

However – it does seem a bit strange to me. I’m hoping that February doesn’t rebound with a vengeance and hit us with 20 below temperatures…

In the mean time, it’s two wheels for me! [not that I really stopped riding… it’s just much more comfortable now…]

LAN Upgrade, Phase 1

I have compelted Phase 1 of the LAN Upgrade project. For those of you who don’t know [which would be most], I have come up with a plan to update the hardware and software of my home LAN [by LAN, I’m loosly referring to computers, networking equipment, and other accessories] in order to bring it into the next generation of technologies.

The Phased Approach

For Phase 1, I upgraded all my wired machines to 1GB from 100MB [this was a network upgrade for those of you who aren’t familiar with technologies – 10x faster than before]. That included a new GB switch to replace my old, reliable Netgear, new GB network cards for two of my machines, and a new KVM [again: for those that don’t know, this device allows me to use one keyboard, monitor and mouse to controll up to 8 machines at once]. I know, the KVM isn’t “network” gear, but it’s part of the overall purpose for this upgrade. My old KVM was putting not-so-faint lines on the screen and was interfereing with digital photo editing and generally giving me a bad picture.

And that brings us around to the core reason for the total upgrade: Digital Photography. I am running out of file storage space on my current server and was looking for a way to make the entire LAN more capable. Phase 1 was networking capacity and usability – it’ll be much quicker to access that file store now. Phase 2 will be a new file server – but one made with current technologies, not one that is a year or so behind. It will have about 1.2 TB of storage. That’s Tera Bytes… 1000 Giga Bytes, 1,000,000 MB, … you get the picture. Lots of space. This server will be built on a dual core x64 processor. Phase 3 will add a second dual-core processor and lots more RAM. I will then move the email processing to that box and re-task the current email server.

Yep, it will be lots of fun! Cost? Well, let’s just say that there’s a financial reason for the phased approach. Phase 1 was fairly inexpensive, but I’ll have to save a bit for Phase 2. Phase 3 might be far out enoug that the extra processor will be much ceaper than it is now.

Does It Ever Stop Raining Here?

This week, I’ve been in Seattle, Washington for an anual internal Microsoft training event. It’s been quite informative, but there are some things I don’t like… Such as the fact that I haven’t seen the sky for a week; nor the sun. It’s been overcast and rainy all week long and I have been inside a convention center during most of the daylight hours, anyway.

It’s not all bad, though. I’m learning a few cool things about newer Microsoft technologies and passing a few exams to update my certifications.

I just know that I’ve been here too long and want to go home to be with Laura. I miss her!