Category: work

Well, I finally received enough scripting knowledge to automate the music list creation. It took me way to long to actually sit down and do, but now my music list is updated nightly. One less thing for me to think about is always a plus. I’ve really gone to town with scripts at work. It makes it WAY easier for us (mostly myself), as we don’t have to be constantly checking certain things daily, hourly, etc. The one I’m most proud of is the inventory script I wrote. Now I just need to learn how to dump the results into a SQL database and it’s all set. Currently it just writes it to a html file. It has come in handy so far, but I think the true potential will be seen when I can query fields in a database. Also, that way, I can keep a record of all the machines better, since now if the machine is off, it is just skipped. With the database, I should be able to simply overwrite fields with newer info, instead of just overwriting everytime I run the script. Also, the one that checks server harddrive space and then email’s us when it gets too low is a time saver too.

Tonight I went climbing at the local gym, Vertical Plains, and there was a guy there that looked absolutely amazing on the wall. The way he flowed up, down, and around the wall was stunning. I think I’m making my new goal to try look as fluent on the wall as he was within a year. I think it’s possible, but I doubt he’s only been climbing for 2 years (as I would be come Nov. ‘04). It’s amazing how much I’ve progressed within the last year though. You don’t really notice it until you start thinking about it, and realize how hard the basic basic basic stuff was when you started. And now, I’m getting routes before some of the way more experienced climbers are. This year will definitely be the year I climb outdoors a lot, and learn how to do it myself. That way Colleen and I can head out, and not have to go with anyone else to setup the routes. Just need some more equipment, and I should be set.

For those of you that have never gone climbing, do it. It’s so much fun. Yes, it’s difficult at first because you’re not used to it, but if you go a second time, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is. It’s great exercise, and the best part is, it doesn’t feel like exercise because it’s fun (unlike going to a gym). You should try it at least once.

**Currently Listening To: Dave Matthews – Some Devil (Limited Edition). Ummm…it’s more of Dave Matthews stuff. Sound almost the same as when he’s with the band, only there’s no good fiddle playing, etc, that accompanies the band. How can people pay > $50 to see him in concert for this? I just fail to understand it.

Well, I’m bored at work. I really shouldn’t be updating my website from here, but I’m about ready to fall asleep anyways. Thankfully work has been slowing down somewhat. I’d like to think that it has something to do with me being here :), but I think it has more to do with it not being the beginning of the school year.

Today I started spending some of my tech budget. Bought 4 MCSE books to start my MS certification, along with a general Windows 2003 book. The people here at DS are all about furthering my education. The way I see it, the faster I get my basic certs, the faster I can do more fun things. Also work related, we’re supposed to join a Tech Team for whatever reason. I’ve joined the exchange team. Unfortunately right now, nobody else is in the group, but hopefully it will start rolling with exchange 2003.

In other news, I purchased a pair of Klipsch KLF-30’s for the stereo. It’s nice actually having speakers that compliment the receiver. I’m currently looking for a KLF C7, preferrably in Medium Oak for my center channel. If anybody stumbles across one, I’d be much abliged if you’d pass it onto me.

Ok, lets get the important things out of the way first. Infamous pr0n stars is experiencing technical difficulties, so I’ll post a few goodies that should be there. Welcome Nick (aka BDR), Bud (aka Shifty), and Jason (aka SapSparky) to ips. We’re very delighted to have you aboard. Now, one of the main reasons we have these 3 newcomers aboard is because both Michael (aka lastwurm) and I have decided Halo is the new ips game of choice. Yes, it’s that good. Would I lie to you? Oh, and we have a server running. Currently it’s called ips_Halo. Its IP is 199.218.8.72 (I believe). It’s full 90% of the time, so keep it that way 🙂

In other news, the exchange migration went, well…umm, well, it’s done. Needless to say it didn’t go as smoothly as I had anticipated, but that was sort of expected since it IS exchange. It took a little (read, a LOT) of finessing, but it’s up and running. It’s one of those things that takes a lot of time to get working right, but once it’s up and running you won’t have to touch it. I suppose I can live with that.

Now, on to not so pleasant news. Yesterday when I went into work, I had a few emails from University Security waiting for me in my mailbox. Never a good thing ;). Apparantly a DIA (Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, where I work) sanctioned spam was sent out to LOTS of people. Thankfully it wasn’t being sent off one of our servers, but since it was about sports, DIA was to blame. It was infact sent by a DIA dept, but that’s just the beginning. When I checked the mail-enabled public folder that the email had in its from field, it was 7MB. This is 7MB larger than it was when Nick and I were checking it the day before at around 3PM. The email that was sent was maybe 100KB in size. Needless to say it was ugly. Apparantly security got wind of the spam because some people had complained to them about this unwanted mailing. Namely all of the students on campus. What happened, was we have an outside vendor that takes care of selling tickets online. Well, a different dept contacted this vendor to see if they could help them send out a newsletter. Needless to say the vendor didn’t contact the lady that’s in charge of ticket sales here, so the vendor just took all the email addresses they had on their ticket sales servers. Normally this would be fine. If somebody signs up for something with an email address it’s fair game. However, in order to provide the student discount to season tickets ordered online, the Office of Admissions and Records (OAR) provided the lady in charge of tickets with a dump of all the current students’ UIN number (the number on their ID card). Apparantly with that dump came with netids/email addresses. OAR explicitly forbade the lady at the ticket office from using the email addresses for and sort of emailing. For all we know, she may have signed an agreement with them. I’m sure you see the problem now…the vendor used ALL those email addresses in the newsletter without even contacting the ticket sales lady. Needless to say she’s in a shit-ton of problems right now. Then to top this already huge fiasco, this emailing was a one time only email which asked if you wanted to opt-in. However, all the links for the vast majority of the people DIDN’T EVEN WORK. This occured because some of the email addresses were sent in all caps. Apparantly the vendor’s software solution didn’t recognize the email addresses when they were in all caps. *sigh* Apparantly there’s a meeting with the CIO tomorrow along with Security. I still don’t know if I’m apart of that meeting or not. Either way it should be fun.

Still haven’t been paid. *sigh* Apparantly a check was cut for me on the 24th, but it still hasn’t made it to my office mailbox THROUGH CAMPUS MAIL. I could have sent it via USPS and it would’ve been here (and possibly back). Thankfully Nick (and Lori :)) have fronted me some money for the time being. That way I can go tomorrow and transfer my title to IL and get an IL license plate. I kinda need to do that soon, since my plates expire at the end of the month. Needless to say when my check didn’t come on Wednesday, I wrote an email to the lady (Rhonda) that I’ve been corresponding with about it, and then carbon copied it to my boss, the head of DS, and the two DS HR people. Thankfully I recieved a call from Rhonday promptly after the email, and my boss even expressed some interest. That was about it. Large bureaucracies make me happy, no, really. The new hire page hasn’t even indicated that my check was cut, so it makes it VERY hard to believe it’s somewhere in campus mail. I figure I’ll give them (another) work week to fix it, so come the first I will have had about enough. At that point, I’ll probably schedule a meeting with my boss and the head of DS, voice my thorough disgust and ask how THEY are going to make it right. If you can’t tell, so far my experience with DS has been less than savory. If only I had recieved other job offers…stupid economy…

On other notes, I’m almost done with KoTOR. However, since I decided to go the way of a light jedi, the end boss is about impossible. All the people I know who have beaten it have done it as the dark side, which allows you beat the final boss A LOT more easily. Speaking of the xbox, just ordered a 200GB harddrive for ~$22 today. Gotta love when dell screws up and has 2 $100 rebates on a product. Hopefully dell will uphold their end of the bargain and I’ll be able to have a place for backups (off of my main server).

Last weekend Ann came to town. I hadn’t seen her in awhile since she was in Spain for the last year. We had a good time catching up. Since Colleen worked all weekend, Ann and I went to the football game and did some other stuff. It was good to see her, and she hasn’t changed much at all. She still isn’t sure what she’s going to be doing now that she’s in the “real world.” She’s heading back to TX to stay with her parents and make a little bit of money. After that she wants to head to AZ and just start anew. Who knows with her though.

Colleen’s looking for other jobs because she can’t stand the little bit that she makes. I totally agree with her, she is definitely getting the shaft working there. She’s had an interview and she’s been keeping an eye out. I’m glad she started listening to me about applying. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, they say no and she still has the same job? At least she has a job…

I’ve been getting back into climbing. I asked Ann to bring me back a pair of climbing shoes from Spain, since that’s where the vast majority are made. Got a nice bargain on a awesome pair of shoes: La’ Sportiva Mythos. Can’t complain when I got them for $90. Till next time…

First week of the new job’s done. Wow, is it so much better not being the one that runs around doing all the remedial tasks. It’s nice not having to run to 3 different buildings 8 times a day. I went to my benefits orientation on Wednesday, and WOW do state employees get the hookup. I get 2 paid vacation days a month (bankable to 48), 11 paid holidays, 5 sick days, Health, Dental, and Vision care, retirement plan that either I or the university can maintain (8% of my salaray and the university matches it with 6.5%), life insurance (the university covers the amount equal to my salaray, and i can increase to 4x that), and free tuition. Now I just have to sign up for all this stuff.

Ohh…Ohh, THE BED CAME!! It was delivered yesterday morning. Wow, is it comfortable. Definitely WAY better than the futon that we were sleeping on (no offense Bree). When I came home from lunch yesterday Colleen had taken one of our flat, full sized sheets from the linen closet and just layed it on the bed so she could sleep. She also took my comforter (also full/queen size) that we had on the futon and used it. Needless to say, when i saw that stuff on the king sized bed it made me chuckle. The bed is huge, and the sheet and comforter just barely cover the top. So, last night we went and got a matress cover and a cheap fitted sheet for it so that we could at least use the bed. When I get a digital camera, I’ll have to take a picture of it. The thing is definitely the main piece of furniture in the room.

It’s so nice not having to worry about school now. I go to work everyday and pass all the students going to class at 8 in the morning and just laugh to myself. Oh man, does it feel good to be done, and have a job that I enjoy. No more nights staying up cramming for a test, or trying to figure out what exactly the teacher was trying to get us to learn from those stupid assignments. Ahhhh…

Wow, these last coupla weeks have been busy/wierd. However, to start off with, I’d like to mention that I just signed my paperwork for DS, so as of Monday, I’m employed fulltime! It’s a great feeling. I’ll also be staying at DIA for (at least) a few months working as the DS consultant. I have more info on this, but I’ll refrain. Last week was HORRIBLE because of the stupid blaster worm. Of course none of our machines were patched on a regular basis, and so we were hit pretty hard. Needless to say I was there till 1am last Tuesday. A lovely 17 hour day…grr. However, now that all the machines have been patched to SP4 and the blaster fix, they can and have all been put behind an SUS server. Thank god for auto-updates.

I’ve finally gotten the cable jack upstairs, but I had to do everything myself. Grr, I hate Insight (cable company). Apparantly they wouldn’t install an extra jack in my apt because it was an “apt,” but they had no problem doing it to the 4 other apt’s in my building. All I can say is that I believe (as does Colleen) that I did a better job than Insight had done on the other jacks. Shit, and I did it for about the same price (and I have about 30 extra of everything ;)).

Oh, and so the bed came last thurday (the 14th). However, the boxspring wouldn’t fix up the friggin steps. BY ABOUT AN INCH. Joy. So I told the delivery guy to just return the matress and boxspring. So, I’m fuming as I drive to the furniture store to find out my options. Luckily, Nick (used to be my boss, now he’s my coworker) just purchased the exact same bed, except king sized, from the same place I did. Low and behold the king sized boxspring comes in *2* sections. Unfortunately, it costs 300$ more, PLUS Colleen and I will have to buy new bedding for it. Joy. So I buy it and now we’re waiting yet again for the stupid bed to come.

It gets better than this, right?!?!

WOOHOOO!!!!!!!!!! I’ve got a job! And I’ve got an apt! See, waiting does pay off 😉