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October 27, 2005
Oct 27 Staff Development
I followed my earlier plan to bow out of the Solaris Group. I spent the balance of my time with a noob unix tutorial. I feel that a lot of things clicked right into place. I plan to develop this so that I'm able to assist with permissions across the domain.
Posted by crowej at 7:01 PM | Comments (0)
Insomnia for the masses
Dang....can't sleep even though it's 2:37 in the morning. I'm stinking at my regiment of computer games at the moment. My fingers are all thumbs on the guitar strings tonight...I've already hit the Devilsticks. I am in the middle of Robert Jordan's latest book. This is book eleven in a twelve book series. He produces a book about every two years...so I'm pacing myself (sorta as I'll be done before November).
So I thought I'd fire up iTunes and digitally spill the contents of my gourd. I rarely get comments posted to my blog...here's your chance. What do you folks find you really like to listen to when reflecting. I'm not talking about simply relaxing, but a self-State of the Union (but without the lies and made up words like "misunderesitmate").
I find myself picking a melancholic mix more often than not...
Looks like this may be turning into a playlist blog. So here it goes...my Reflective Playlist:
Freebird - Lynyrd Skynyrd The crescendo of sound and speed combine to ignite one's inner redneck. Plus, for me there's always the overtone of death or loss (given the band's plane crash).
Goodnight Elisabeth - Counting Crows I always liked the organic feel that CC offers. For those that do not know, when they make an album, they search for a perfect-for-that-album house and record all of the songs in different rooms of that house. The reverb of the guitar makes this song.
Crazy Baby - Joan Osborne This song is magnetic. The soulful way that she renders her loved one's angst down to simple acts of reflection....
A Sorta Fairytale - Tori Amos Tori goes down as one my of all-time favorite vocalists. Her voice is hauntingly beautiful. I would likely have more than a few of her songs in any period of reflection. This one would always make the list.
Palomino - Duran Duran This is damn near a capella. The instruments, while crucial to the overall song seem almost an afterthought for the first half of the song. The second half hits, and this effect flips. I always find this aurally interesting.
Bernadette - The Four Tops The coolest Motown band. Period. This song broke out of the formulaic nature of a Motown band. I like things that transcend boundaries.
Now it's time for bed...
Posted by crowej at 2:36 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
First Staff Development
While staff development actually occurred last week, I've not properly reflected until now. First I would like to thank Travis for the idea and Bill for giving his blessing. I don't know the last time that I saw the majority of the staff that charged!
I joined the group led by Shaun Gatherum. We installed Solaris 10. Whilst I think that it was an interesting exercise, I feel that I could have spent my time better. I think that the way I learn is not too well suited to group-learn. This is not to say that I do not appreciate working in a group. Indeed, it is my preferred method. When working with others in a job setting, I can work at whatever pace is needed. I can slow down for low-end users or ramp up for peers. Yet when I'm attempting to learn or retain a slew of new information, I need the flexibility to run at my own pace. When studying on my own (as in the case of the MCSA track) I would speed through reams of information, then stare at two sentences for what seemed like hours. At this point, if the staff development is learning, I'll try to work by myself. If it's goal-oriented project-based, then I likely work in a group. I hope that this doesn't disturb the chi of the enterprise :-)
I think that next (this) week I'll bow out of the Solaris group and focus upon learning Unix. I'll need to speak with Travis or Troy to get a decent goal(s).
Posted by crowej at 12:33 AM | Comments (1)
October 25, 2005
Kelly and the Return of Potter
Every story worth it's salt is told in three's. This third part of the trilogy of Potter has all of the excitement of the first two, plus that little something new that makes it oh-so-good.
On Sunday, I received yet another call from the Helpdesk, passing on the users had very slow login times. I jumped onto my work machine and logged in fine. I did the same for several servers. I could not replicate the issue. Then I tried Potter. Nuh-uh. I knew then that I had simply hit the other domain controller on the prior attempts. I then rebooted a few machines and tried again...no dice. I went back to Blake and removed Potter as a machine that would answer as a DC.
After speaking with Travis, he determined that it would be best if someone went in tonight to bring up a new DC (Sunday) instead of waiting for Monday. Even though it wasn't his responsibility he offered to do so if I could not.
This epic battle of one's and zero's is too long for my ADHD. Suffice it to say that we have a third DC, named Kelly. We have a wiped-clean, installed from scratch Potter. I'm still leery of this box, as I don't have the tools available to test the hardware. Sun has other tools that may be (and likely are) just as good, but that's unix, which is new to me.
Posted by crowej at 5:55 PM | Comments (0)
A Potter-Pooper strikes back
On Saturday, I received a call at home from the Helpdesk that no one could print to the student lab printers. I jumped onto my Mac at home and fired up remote desktop. The student printing solution currently runs on a NT 4.0 box...the last of it's kind. Given the rapid pace this summer, moving this application to another box was one corner that was cut. I was unable to use the archaic PCAnywhere to gain console on Tailspin. Since NT 4.0 does not support remote desktop, I knew my options were limited. I called the helpdesk to see if they could call around to the local Monmouth folks (since I'm 35-40 minutes away). Paul Lambert was kind enough to come in to reboot Tailspin. Even after the reboot, I was still unable to PCanywhere into the box.
Grabbing my trusty iPod, I drove 120 MPH to Monmouth. Well...okay, I went the speed limit, but the story is cooler the other way. When I had run the less-than hoped for repair on Potter the day prior, it had enabled a previously disabled network card. Nothing was connected to it, but the naming service WINS still picked up the APIPA address and passed that as a valid IP for POTTER. Fixing this involved a simple seek and destroy through a few WINS servers. That and disabling the offending card. Printing worked just after that.
Posted by crowej at 5:45 PM | Comments (0)
A Potter-Pooper
Well this last week ended oddly, to be sure. Potter is one of my two domain controllers. It also hosts Sophos AV console. At times, the AV console will go nuts and fill up a directory with tens of thousands of files. See this article for more info. When I attempted to Remote Desktop into Potter, I was unable. It was still reporting as up, so I popped over to the server room to determine the issue. What I found was a completely locked machine. I could not log on or off. I didn't have rights to reboot (which I do). After a restart, the system boot halted at "missing or corrupt file" c:\windows\system32\config\system. I booted to cd to replace this file. Long story short, the system booted to just before the login screen then halted with a BSOD. Several reboots proved this to be more than coincendence. Researching the error code left me with two likely possibilities...bad ram or OS reinstall. The OS reinstall did _not_ point out a "why." Which was my primary concern.
Since the box was dead in the water either way, I choose to do an install in place. At the desktop level, this has been very effective in restoring a box with the applications intact. This proved to be less effectual than hoped. I needed to rejoin, repromote the machine. I also needed to reinstall Sophos...the very thing I had hoped to avoid. Once all of this was in place, things seemed good.
Posted by crowej at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
...Viewing Blogs you want in a hurry
Just within the blogs of UCS, there's a plethora of great ideas, cool tips and mind-boggling jargon. How's a person to keep up? Visit 20 some-odd sites?...daily? NO! In the words of Stewie from Family Guy
Victory is Mine!
Using Firefox, you can use the built-in (to the Blog Server)RSS feeds to gather up all of the titles. Just like the pic seen here. When you're on an RSS enabled site, an icon will appear in the lower right of your browser window. Simply click on that and click "Subscribe to RSS 2.0..."
Posted by crowej at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2005
Terminal Server Profiles
Well today two of the three terminal servers ran out of disk space as the profiles ate up gigabyte of space. At this time, I've set folks to use a mandatory profile. I'll use up to the rest of the week to make a determination as to our best route. Our maint window is this friday. This weekedn is my anniversay. If I intend to stay married, I'll need to finish up quickly on Friday...
Posted by crowej at 10:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Installation of WebAdmin for HP
Tonight I've installed (installing) webadmin on the print server. In the past, I've had a copy on my workstation. So far the performance that I've been getting on the v20z is out-freaking-standing. This will be the first step in my long-term plan to move appropriate printers to the facstaff printer server.
Posted by crowej at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 7, 2005
My other job ????
Now that the migration is done I'm turning to duties and upkeep that have set untended since the end of Spring Term. I'm really excited about the spot we're in now. With this move, we have the infrastructure to accomplish some amazing things. Wearing my hat of Desktop Support Team Lead I'll be able to leverage these changes to respond faster than human thought. Well maybe not that fast, but more rapidly than before. I now have in place a number of remote tools. My techs and I have the capabilty to install software remotely. We patch machines unobtrusively, and centrally. For perhaps the first time at WOU we can proactively respond at the desktop level.
I have a few specific goals in mind that I'll list here. These, like all things in UCS, are subject to change :-)
1. Move all printers to a 2003 print server. Ease of setup (our userbase could then do so if they wished), central management, and department/division control of access and priority are the main reasons for this move.
2. Extend my podcasting series to cover the gap between users and their unsupported home machines. If anyone has topic suggestions...please let me know.
3. Increase the technical knowledge base of the Techs under me. Alex Ichinoe, a former tech and current student programmer, has wrriten a tech knowledgebase application. This can hold items specific to WOU. Many departments have software etc that is specific to them. This mitigates the issues of knowledge transfer. I want to formalize some of the stucture of the Desktop Support Team.
4. Move, where appropriate, to the paradigm of a point tech per department. Departments like Disabilty Services have extremely specific applications or processes. Having a designated tech has saved us tons of time. (Kudos to Myron for....ahh ....Volunteering).
Posted by crowej at 9:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft AntiSpyWare
Please see (& Listen!) to my podcast.
Let me know if you have any trouble getting to this.
-Joe
Posted by crowej at 9:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Through the Geek - A blogging paradigm
Hey folks! In my quest to take a fresh approach to things, I thought that I may start a trend of one. I am beginning a new series of Help Sessions/FYI's and Howtos. The format that this will be delivered in is a form of Podcasting known as Vodcasting (or Video Podcast). I call this "Through the Geek."
To apply Occam's Razor podcasting is nothing more than a prerecorded Audio (or Video) that you are subscribing to. Since I'm a huge Apple guy, I'll walk you through installing the latest version of iTunes. This supports podcasting. Also it's a pretty decent application in it's own right.
This comes in two easy steps.
Step One: Download and Install iTunes
Step Two: Subscribe to my Podcast
Details on Step One: Go to Apple to get the latest version of iTunes. If you already have iTunes installed, please make sure that you have at least version 5. Versions prior to this lack the ability to subscribe to podcasts.
Once you have iTunes installed, open it. In the menu, select advanced then "subscribe to podcast..."
In the box that opens copy and paste this into the URL space:
http://www.wou.edu/~crowej/podcast/pod.xml
Posted by crowej at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack