Diary of a Network Geek

Okay, so maybe not “flawless”, but victory nonetheless.
What this is, is a screen shot of me remotely accessing my new, upgraded server, after about 11 hours of work, with a break for dinner.  I migrated the complete Active Directory server, as well as the DNS and DHCP servers.  (Which for you non-geeks means I moved all the network services that let people get to both this server and the internet.)  Trickier still was getting the print services moved to the new server.  For some very strange reason, in my opinion, the import of the exported print configuration wouldn’t work unless I had the Windows Firewall turned on for the new Windows 2012 server.  That’s just crazy to me.  Why does print services care that the firewall is turned off?  It should be able to ignore that and just go!  Damn Microsoft….  (Grumble, grumble.)

In any case, after 10+ hours of work, the upshot is that most people won’t even realize that the server was upgraded on Monday.  (At least, I hope that’s the case.)  I may still have a few issues with printing on Monday morning with some people, but, I hope, those will be few and minor.  We’ll see, I guess.  But, everything else went about as well as I could hope for.
No, it wasn’t quite “flawless”, but I was able to work it all out, so that’s good enough.
Besides, what I really get paid for, in my opinion, is not the fact that I make few mistakes, but that I make virtually no catastrophic mistakes and I can work out pretty much all of the mistakes, catastrophic or not, that I do make.
In shot, I’m very good at what I do for a living.  As a character from an old Western, “The Guns of Will Sonnet”, used to say, “That’s not brag, just fact.”

So, now, it’s off to church to give thanks for not completely fucking this up!

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Guess who’s spending the weekend upgrading the company’s main server?

Finally after dealing with an aging server for too long, we’re upgrading.  And, not a minute too soon, either.  I have the joy of migrating Active Directory from a Windows 2003 server to a Windows 2012 server.  Not to mention, I get to migrate printing services, an iSCSI array connection, DNS and DHCP.  Wee!  What fun!

Well, I suppose that’s why I get the “big bucks”, right?  A system administrator’s work is never done!

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A new screwdriver set, with a complete set of long-shaft bits, and a special set of “tamper resistant” bits for work. Purchased because the original in-house installers of a projector are all claiming ignorance now that we have to replace it.
Luckily, Harbor Freight Tools had a sale and this whole set was less than $20!

The screws in question, incidentally, are the “hex” or “Allen wrench” style with a post in the center.  Kind of deceptive and frustratingly hard to identify when you don’t know their name!

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Well, I’m back.

Blogging, and writing in general, is like having a case of scabies; it’s a persistent itch that just will not go away!
In any case, I’m safely married and my blushing bride is hard at work on her business, so I’m back at the blog and other writing projects.  Right now, I’m working on some personal documentation off-line, in the privacy of my own directory structure, but that may eventually get shared with the larger world.  Until then, though,…
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My new ordering system at work. Based on a blog post I read weeks ago, I bought a bunch if cheap “guest checks” like wait-staff use in restaurants. The post suggested using them to take ALL your notes, but at the office I only use them to write down equipment and supply requests for the day. Then, every day at about 4:00, I can just grab my pad and place my order. So far, it’s worked great! (And, if it continues to work well, I may expand my use of the guest check pads!)

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I like being free and independent.

I like the idea behind Instagram, but not the proprietary nature of it.
I don’t like giving up my rights to work I create.   Even when it’s just a little photo of a little moment captured with my iPhone.  I dislike, as Nicholas Carr called it on his blog, “digital sharecropping”. And, of course, now the ads have finally started on Instagram, solidifying my discomfort with it.  Why should I let them profit from even the smallest amount of my work without compensation?

Well, now, there’s a new program called Pressgram, that’s a free iPhone app, which allows an Instagram-like experience, but uploads the photos to my WordPress blog. You can upload them to your WordPress.com blog, or, as I do, to my self-hosted WordPress blog.  Word has it that there is an Android version in the works, too.  It’s a new app, so there are some on-going refinements, but it really is a great start, I think.

Obviously, I’ve been using it here and at my other site, JKHoffman.com, so I believe in it.  Yes, it took me a little fiddling to get the setting just the way I want and to sort out a couple other things, but, now that I have, I think this is going to work just fine.  I can already see the difference in my site stats!
Anyway, worth checking out if you’re leary of another ad-supported system that lets you share, but not much else.

Finally got the IDE adapter for that super cool external USB drive device.  When it’s so open, it’s hard for me to think of it as an “enclosure”.  So, now I can wipe all those old drives I found while Sharon and I cleaned up my office two weeks ago.

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My favorite new tech toy!
Recently, I cleaned up my office (by hiring my fiancé), and found a lot of older hard drives that needed to be wiped before I could dispose of them. [amazon_link id=”B003WV5DLA” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]This little guy from Startech.com[/amazon_link] has really done the trick! I just pop a drive in, hit the power button for that slot, and I have a fresh, new drive available on my machine to format clean! Just that easy!

(You can find my fiancé’s business at The Organizing Decorator, by the way!)

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