Working from Home Once Again

In my current adventures, I tend to get directly involved in all tech - Domino, Cisco, Sun, and even phones. I was determined to return to the days of Duffco and build an infrastructure that actually made it as easy to work from home as when I"m in the office. Several projects began about a year ago bringing applications and contect to the far reaches of the internet without having to sit in a cube in PA. The wonders of VPN's, virtual desktops, and Sametime collaboration were now a reality. Go me. (Correction: It wasn't technically easy to work from home at Duffco, it was only easy to "work from home" at Duffco.

Now it was time for the phones... VoIP baby. I spent most of December 06 upgrading and moving out corporate phone system to the new datacenter. During the procurement process, I pushed and pushed for the IPT cards of the Toshiba system...

"But why? Why do we need IP phones? Everyone is in the office." cried the old managers.

Now, the fruit of my arguments (and hidden purchases) are finally showing. About a half dozen managers now have the ability to sit at home and work comfortably with their office extension right next to them. A few sales guys (road warriors) also have the softphones on the laptops... Local extensions with them at all times and no more expensing home phone bills. All is right with the world.

Flashback and Nostalgia

So it's Friday night and I get a text message from the Big Ragu:

"we're picking you up at noon tomorrow"
"who? and where are we going?"
"Me, my brother, and B-Mac... Star Wars Convention at the Franklin Institute"
"Umm.... ok"

Now far be it from me to not enjoy the classics - right now as I blog I am listening to a playlist containing most of Cindella's Long Cold Winter. But a Star Wars convention? Ok... I'll go.

Every stereotypical image you have is true - the teens who dont bathe, the adults who dress up in gear so realistic you would think you were "in the movie", the milfs who are with them, and then there was us... sticking out like sore thumbs... like a bunch of white guys hanging out at an Al Sharpton speech we trecked araound this place checking out the toys, gadgets and "tech" that went into the world of Star Wars. It was interesting to say the least.. and since it was free, I figure why not?

We were there by 1:00, and at the bar by 1:45; home at 4 with a nice buzz and one thing I can check off of my death list - attend a Star Wars convention.

Bring on the.... performance? Part 2....

Ok...

So this second post is about three days late, but never the less, I was surprised. After almost two hours of updating and rebooting, I had a machine that actually performed like I had expected it too when Vi$ta first came out (if I believed the hype. I'm no Micro$oft pusher... far from it. But I must admit I am impressed. Vista's SP1 didnt really add any new functionality that I was looking for, but the performance improvements across the board are noticable and welcome. Now if M$ would have released it's fluffiest of OS's in THIS form, I think the fanfare would have been warranted.

And yes... I took the next step and upgraded two of my "techy" users in GL-Co. They are a bit confused, but everything works - well. Odd.

Bring on the pain.... Part 1

So this morning I decided to download and install SP1 for Vi$ta on my work laptop. Do I have nothing better to do today? No. But Every time some new whizzbang article comes out about Vista, Mr. CEO and company keep hinting that "they should upgrade to Vista one of these days." No, you shouldn't. Don't touch anything. Notes, Office, and your web browser will not benefit from the fluffy resource-hog of an operating system.

So here starts my journey through the presumed hell that is the installation. Lets start with forgetting the fact that it took about 60 days to really get my machine back to the way it was supposed to be running with all of my apps and tools under XP when I initially installed this pig. I've had it for a year now and have been doing ok after the initial beatdown. Apps that run well include Notes 8, putty, HP Data Protector, Firefox (2.x and Beta 3), Office Pro 2003 and 2007, iTunes, McAfee, Xming, Sun Identity Manager, Cisco VPN client 5.0.00.0340, RealVNC, Blackberry Desktop Manager. These are my main items for work. The home beast also runs Vista, but is strictly used for blowing shit up after a hard days work. It's a gaming rig and nothing more.

So the SP1 upgrade has been going for about 20 minutes now... according to the window, "The installation might take an hour or more". Interesting. It should read:

"We are changing so much shit on your PC that it's going be be awhile before you can even think about be productive today. Fixing all of the crap in our bloated OS really takes a long time!"

Let's have a look at my system resources during this "patch" process...



Ok... so theres really nothing wrong with using more than 80% of the cpu and 2GB of memory to perform an update., right? Oh wait... I almost forgot the 847 MB of swap being used. WTF?

I know I know... I'm blogging while this is happening. That must be it.

Here's hoping I have a running machine when this is all over.