Archive for the ‘ Computers ’ Category

recent events

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I have been busy with work and with busy designing my new look web site. So far all has gone reasonably well. I had a few issues uploading my images of the House Build last night, it seems that my hosting company had a few issues, as tonight the images have gone up without issue.

I will start with the new look site. I have been toying with a number of ideas, but none of them really appealed to me, they also caused me a few dramas with the design. Dreamweaver CS4 has some strange quirks with templates. I have had these problems before on previous versions. Thankfully I have powered on and worked through them, although, I have to say that I am still not 100% happy. Lets say it is down to the end user more than the program. My new site will be based on Photography, Video, Music and design. It will also feature the Mac and a little mention here and there on the PC. The site is still being worked on and toyed with, so don’t hold your breath, as I have yet to finish a web site of my own.

The House build. So far it is going well. There are a few hiccups, as to be expected with builders, plumbers and sparkies. They will always find an excuse to not be there when they are supposed to. It seems that the plumbing has taken a bit of a hammering from the major cleanup today. They have completed the task of putting storm water drains in and in this task have managed to damage 4 of the pipes used for water and sewer. I could understand this if they were just white, but they were sprayed yellow so they would stand out from the grey/white slab. The slab has now been cleared off and all the dirt moved off to fill in the drainage channels dug out to accommodate the pipes. Now residing on the slab is a selection of wooden frames, RSJ’s and other items. Hopefully this week the building will actually look like a house, or at least the makings of a house.

Work. I had to replace the switches in the small rack as one had given up the ghost and the other was old and only 100Mb connection. So off to the shop and 2 x 16 port switches and some new cat6 patch leads. So a complete rewire of the rack and finally get everyone and everything on the network connecting at 1Gb. Some would argue that there is no difference. At this point I would agree as the main link from the small rack is only cat5 cable and is double backing from outlet to rack then back to the main rack. Hopefully soon to be rewired correctly – Don’t ask, my predecessor had no idea.

The Mac…It works and works well. Need I say more?

Posted in Computers, Foto Gallery, General, House Build, Mac Project, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Web Sites, Work, photography | No Comments »

stuff

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It has been a funny start to the year so far. The house build is starting to take shape. I drove by this afternoon after work and took a few snap shots. So far the footings have been laid out and prepared for the concrete, so hopefully sometime in the next few days, it should be poured and left to dry.

Work has been full on with changes and major repairs. I mentioned that the main domain controller died on its ass the other week and left us high and dry. The so called ability to recover data from backups proved extremely hard work and non eventful. You would think that you would be able to recover the data using Windows own version of backing up and restoring, but oh no. Nothing was corrupted, Windows just decided on being an arse hole. So $200.00 or so later and a small but really useful download, I retrieved what data I could. The previous nights backup failed when the server crashed and yes, it was the only time you would wish this had never happened, everyone who needed their latest data…sadly didn’t get it! So off to a Data recovery expert, who worked remotely from the UK of all places to here in Sydney, resolved the problem with our three Raid Drives. Thankfully the amount of money we paid (lets just say it was rather a lot of money), actually worked.

So with that out of the way, a new server was ordered and delivered last Friday. The Server will go into the rack tomorrow and be worked on until such time I have to kick people off the system so that it can become the Main DC. I am also in the process of revamping one of our older servers. Citrix 2 box has been revamped and 2 more Gig or RAM has been added. This quite nicely runs Server 2008. I am just in the final throws of doing updates and organising for Citrix to be put on.

The Mac that has become my new best friend is still charming me into what it can offer. Thus far I am in the first stages of rebuilding my main web site, although for the past 5 years or so, this has been my only creative and active. Hopefully I can rekindle my creative juices in Music and Photography.

The new thing in my life which takes me away from computers and internet is Golf. The two rounds of golf I had this long weekend proved that it isn’t as easy as it looks. No matter how good youget in WII golf, you will never hit 300 metres in real life if you have never played a real game of golf.

Posted in Computers, General, Life Down Under, Mac Project, Music, Personal Blog, Site Updates, Work | No Comments »

Mac Update

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

A few days on and have now installed a full legit version of Adobe Creative suite 4 – Design Premium. So far I have used Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Photoshop was interesting. Having predominantly used photoshop in its many guises on PC, I was having a little fun getting round the Mac version.

There are some subtle differences apart from the quality of the screen resolution, the option and command keys have some good uses. The image you create or open remains on your desktop, then any other images you open are opened in the same window, just look at the tabs and you will find the other images you have open. That took me about 5 minutes to figure out, with some puzzled looks.

Dreamweaver however is better on the Mac I feel. It loads quicker and no real change to its function. The way in which it opens is better. I recall the first time I opened Dreamweaver on my works laptop I had to fight with it to give me the layout I needed. I do much prefer earlier versions of Dreamweaver on PC. For those that code purely in Notepad, you aint missing much.

Posted in Computers, Mac Project | No Comments »

My New Toys

Friday, June 5th, 2009

IBM X3650

 

 

 

 

 

I have 4 new toys to play with this Long Weekend. Featured above is one of the 3 terminal servers and one large SQL server. Its going to be a long weekend!

Posted in Computers, Weekend, Work | No Comments »

Server Upgrades

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

After a long time of planning and quote gathering, the task of implementing the new servers is almost here. Next weekend I will be long overdue the task of upgrading the system. Four brand new IBM X series servers, fully loaded with Server 2008 and boasting some nice hardware, we will be up and running. SQL server with its 8 Hard drives flashing away complete with a 3.0GHz Quad core processor and 4 Gig of RAM to start off with. SQL Server 2005, purely because our Business software version won’t run with SQL 2008. I briefly tested the server by setting up a quick Database load. What normally takes me 7 hours to load our Company database only took a mere 2 hours. No doubt that once the system is fully integrated this will reduce. The three other servers, two terminal servers and one for licensing boast quad core processors 3.0GHz and the biggest TS has two quad core processors and 10Gig of RAM.

The old servers are unstable, or more-so the OS has become corrupt, years of tinkering with, power failures, incorrect setups has caused much chaos. It was only in the early stages of my new role that the Servers actually got an Antivirus program on there! we have been very lucky. The two Citrix Servers are my nemesis. Citrix 1 runs, well crawls along and does manage to stay upright more often than not. Citrix 2, oh god Citrix two requires daily restarts, power resets, power cable ripped from its arse end and occasionally I get to actually request that it restarts. It is hard to believe that both these servers are exactly the same machine, spec, OS and updates.

The Business software Sage Accpac 5.4 and Technisoft Service Manager are our weapons of choice. We have invested a lot of time and money with these. I am hoping that we get to move upto 5.5, which features some nice little gadgets and gizmos we could really use. The whole company should run more smoothly once all this has been done.

I am currently working on these new boxes. First task is get them onto the Domain, a relatively easy task, once you have given them a static IP address, subnet and gateway to use, plus pointing the DNS to our Active Directory/Domain Controller servers and adding one more DNS for good measure, so these buggers can resolve anything not on our network. The First TS to be placed onto the domain was the biggest of the two. Powered him up and carried out the usual updates, Service Pack two already. Next task was to see how it connected over RDP. Wow! This thing loaded up and was running on my desktop before the other older citrix had completely loaded and was able to be used. Next step, Printing. As these are all 64 bit machines, I had to ensure the print drivers would run. duly downloaded printer driver package, auto searched for printers and away it went. One printer installed and running without any issues. Next test Adobe Reader. Downloaded and installed in minutes. Opened up a document and fully loaded as if it had been cached. No more waiting for adobe to open up and then load the document.

It will be so nice to run and work with a system that actually does it’s job. It will be nice to ask people to logout, purely because 1, I can or 2, I need to run an update or a patch to the business software.

The servers are being setup for Sydney local and all other states. We can have as many as 20 to 30 people on here in Sydney, whilst Bris, WA and Vic would probably just equal the amount of users on the system here in Sydney. My next task is to install Office. Which one? Well it may look like 2003 is to be the option available to us, however, I am having a meeting with a guy from MickeySoft tomorrow so I hop I can squeeze an option to run 2007. Yes I know Outlook 2007 is slow and can be an arse sometimes, but it has more functionality to it than its predecessor.

So here’s to next weekend

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New House – Again

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Moving house has become second nature to me of late. Our previous house had issues, none of which the Landlord/Owner could be bothered looking into. result of this is in the title of this post. We have moved back to Georges Hall, which makes my travel time to work a damn sight quicker and less painfull. Henry Lawson Drive at peak time was a pain in the you know what. Add Newbridge Road and Governor Maquarie Drive into the equasion added another 15 to 25 minutes onto my drive for no other reason than Peak Traffic and lots of it.

I now get to work in less than 25 minutes, even with peak children going to school traffic. The move spanned over 3 weeks as per normal, with the amount of crap we keep and lack of planning. With that said, this time was an exception due to the nature of the move. I just wanted out of the house. I had no intention in staying there a minute longer than required. I wanted out of the house the first couple of weeks, moreso after the Air Conditioner Panel fell off in the night and cut my head open. Then the Toilet backed up and when I advised the Agent of the situation, I was greeted by ‘have you got e-mail?’ My reply was less than polite (no surprise there then!). Moving on, it was decided to move asap, so with the help of a decent Agent, whom we know quite well, we got this new place.

The latter stages of moving were starting to tell on us both, I was getting cranky and over the move. We have now finally settled in and are at the stage of do we unpack this box or leave it? So for the next 3 days, I am on annual leave with a view to sorting the garage out and the bags and boxes of stuff? Yes ‘stuff’ being the keyword here. Stuff relates to items that you own but cannot understand why or how. Stuff is the ultimate question in life. Did I buy this or you, Stuff is the item or items that take up valuable space in cupboards, drawers and surfaces for no apparent reason, yet it holds a significant value of ‘f**k’spence’ and you are totally unsure as to its real dollar value. You can imagine the dilemma.

It will be nice to have three days off from work. I have been busy with a planned and much needed server upgrade. My plan for the company was approved plus one extra server. Much to my surprise as the cost was a large amount. 4 brand new IBM servers, SQL Server being replaced with an absolute monster of a machine and 2 new Terminal Servers, plus the additional server replacing our old Mail Server and Profile Server. Don’t ask me why it was setup that way, I had nothing to do with it. All these new beast’s have Windows 2008 server, SQL 2005 with the option to upgrade for free to the latest SQL, as our current business software won’t work with 2008 MYSQL. It will also give me the option to wipe off the old four machines and use them for other things and upgrade memory and Hard drives as required. This will require some long nights and weekend work, until such time I can roll them out to the business, with as little dissruption as possible. This will also give me the option to re-install printers correctly and in one place only. Our system is a mess! No wonder we have so many issues. Previous IT was lacking in planning and knowledge.

Posted in Computers, Estate Agents, Life In Oz, Moving Home, Work | No Comments »

where has the time gone?

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

wow, or maybe WOW!!! Yes another long pause between posts. Sadly neglected this site, although some would say thank god. However, I have been busy in my new role and so far, loving every minute. Apart from those odd moments when I don’t. Yes, me an IT support Officer, who would have thunk it? Not me that’s for sure. So what have I been doing these past few months. Where do I begin? I had to project manage the server relocation from Melbourne to here in Sydney. Started off with building a new server room, then adding the air conditioning, then having dedicated mains supply, arranging a dedicated van and person to pack, load, drive non stop and deliver said servers to Sydney the next day, ooh a nice 11 hour drive or so, over 1100K’s distance. Unload, unpack and slot into nice shiny new rack, complete with Cat6 cabling, new Fibre link from Unit A to Unit F (very expensive 2 Mb link – 250 mtr’s).

The plan was good and the servers were back online by Lunchtime, DNS and IP changes made and mail server up and running. Next step was to setup all the 90 PCs with the new IP addresses for remote access (laptops only) and the new server ip addresses for Citrix servers. Thanks to the help from Jeremy (The Grid Corporation). The only hiccup we encountered was the SQL server didn’t want to fire up. Hmmm, that was fun. Any ways 30 restarts and 400 swear words later, the POS started up – thanks to the Golden touch from the MD, who was also involved. Yes an MD with a very Hands on approach, quite refreshing really.

The next stage was to move over from AAPT to Telstra – I could write a hole war and peace on that, so here is the quick and nasty version. AAPT Bad – Telstra even worse. Could not project manage a root in a brothel with a fist-full of hundreds. Finally got that completed at the same time we moved over onto Exchange Server 2007. Same weekend! Madness, but it worked.

All this done in my first 3 months and dare I say probationary period. So a good test of my character and mad skillz yo to see if I had what it takes. Thankfully with help i managed to pull it off without any further loss of hair on my head. Just my sanity remains in question.

All of the above, with the additional day to day churn of people not being able to use a mouse and keyboard properly, Accpac issues, servers shitting themselves for no apparent reason and printers messing with my mojo. Network printers are the spawn of Satan I swear.

I have further convinced myself that I hate computers, this HP laptop is my crowning glory for pissing me off no end only to find that after a few updates from MS then the ability to not swipe my finger on the reader and log in, then lose Wireless access, then yet more updates and then the ability to get back which that I had lost, only confirms, PCs are pond scum.

I am blessed with a new system, Exchange 2007 integrates nicely into the Active Directory and reduces my work load with having to create a new user and configure Accpac writes and privileges, no more 3 or 4 systems now. Now we are looking at BES for Blackberry’s, one more item on the ever growing list. My First quest is to seriously reduce the amount of printers we have on the system – Bloody Kyocera printers cannot make the same Toner unit fit more than one machine – Bastardo’s!!!! New printer – new toner to add to the increasing stationary order.

I am sure I have missed something off here, but once I have read through this post, no doubt I will probably end up making 3 more post’s – or not.

Tis good to be back!!!!

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Planned Upgrades

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

After moving furniture around and doing a bit of organising of the crap we still posses. It was deemed a good idea to purchase yet another Large drive, to hopefully convert all our DVDs onto something more Scratch Resistant. One more Terabyte drive please. I do believe that would only cover some of the DVDs still yet to be stored.

Lets face it, DVDs are a pain in the ass. They still scratch easy, just like Cd’s. They can become corrupted by heat or Cold including damp or Humid conditions. They can become scratched by use and by the drive they are in. They can be incorrectly handled, as most of the DVDs we receive from Bigpond movies are. Scratches the size of Georges river and finger prints, which I really don’t want to imagine how or by whom and what they were doing.

It amazes me how some people have NO idea on how to handle an ‘Optical’ disc. It also amazes me why people have to touch the bloody screen on your TFT…..WHY?!?!?! Don’t Do IT!! EVER!! Its annoying!!!!

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1 Tb

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Yep, it had to happen sooner or later. The purchase of a very large Hard drive. The cost of which was favourable, if not better than ebay and I got to take it home there and then. The options were Western Digital or Samsung and I believe Seagate. Western Digital was a definite no no, seeing as I have had 3 fail in as many months. My trust in that brand is less than zero. Seagate, good solid drives and as far as I can recall, no issues. Samsung it was to be and for the extra dollars I bought the 1 Terrabyte. Jesus, 1 Terrabyte. I can recall thinking that 1Gb drive was the way to go many years gone by. Ahh, those were the days. How could you function with a 1 Gig drive these days? Hell I couldn’t. My memory quota is more than 1 Gig.

The other purchase was another PSU for the Media PC. The other PSU was ok, except too many cables taking up too much cooling potential. So we opted for a modular style supply, whereby you choose which cables you need, apart from the generic, Mobo and CPU connector, plus the PCIE supply connector. Thus far all is going well…ooops, shouldn’t have said that should I?

The machine now boasts a respectable storage capacity of 1.7 Terrabytes. Crazy I know, but when you are starting to backup your DVD collection, the ‘small’ drives are soon swallowed up. The only thing that remains is the Mobo upgrade to something a little more funky and Dual/Quad core capable with the option to have more than two PCI cards installed, plus HDMI connections and Optical in/out would be superb.

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