And sometimes I only THINK I blog. Like the last few days for instance, I thought I had blogged about things but that wasn't the case.

So this entry is going to be a little technical, so if that kind of thing offends you then you had best turn away now... ready? Ok, lets do this.

Last week Larry and I spent a good couple of days trying to figure out an issue with our RAID controller and why it wasn't seeing our new hard drives. (173gb 15k SAS drives, 4 of them in RAID 5, these suckers are fast!) We probably spent a good 6 to 8 hours on it between the two of us. We took a break for the weekend and came back on Monday when Larry called the people we bought it from on eBay, and, lo and behold the server we bought from eBay, for 50% off the retail price has a 1 year warranty on it! They are going to replace the RAID card (which is a Perc 5/i) an replace it with a Perc 6, which honestly with the 8 controller Perc 6 card is like an 800 dollar replacement. And they over-nighted the new controller to us. Amazing service for an eBay company.

As some of you are aware I have been working (some might say casually working, or attempting to squeeze it in between communications stuff) on getting the mail transport to work between Lotus Domino and Exchange. Well, this afternoon I had a couple seconds between other things so I sat down and worked on it and actually made a good 50% of it work. I didn't have time to tackle the other 50% but I am confident now that I can get the system working! (Unlike before where I was a little dubious as to the helpfulness of the transport.)

I've also been looking into a side project today that became a bit of a reality. I don't want to spoil the secret until I can post video.

~B.

Labels: technical

About a month ago a company contacted me about this "great" product they were selling on a subscription basis that let you compile all sorts of information from servers and users computers that allowed you to see if the computers were up to date, space on the HD, and other little tidbits like that.

I said, cool, but it sounds just like a free product that I have used in the past.

They said, Oh, we've never heard of this product, let me get back to you on that. (They wanted 2 to 5 dollars a month per computer/server.)

They got back to me after checking it out and said, oh, well yeah, that is a lot like what we have, but here are some differences. And proceeded to layout some differences, all of which I thought weren't really selling points over the free product I had used in the past. (Spiceworks)

They showed me a demo and then left me alone. This morning I got an email from the CEO of the company (ClearBlueSecurity) telling me that they were now offering their product for free. (@epiktetus FREE?!)

I thought that was rather funny considering Spiceworks is free, and a month after I told them about it ClearBlueSecurity went free as well. Huh... sorry to destroy your business model guys.

P.s. I whole-heartedly endorse Spiceworks. It is a great tool for any IT department. (Which is why I keep linking to it.) ClearBlueSecurity... errr not so much. They have a ways to go before they get close to Spiceworks.

~B.

Labels: technical

Until Linux can get rid of errors like this (although Microsoft's errors are very little better sometimes) it won't be as assessable as Windows.

I had to share this picture though... I thought it was funny.


~B.

Labels: technical

I can see where someone might look at my work (and hobby) of IT and say, "Where does cooking fit into that, skill wise?" It's kind of funny I guess to think about cooking and IT in related fields, but it's true really. Software and hardware can be combined in a lot of different fashions, just like food. And in some cases it doesn't work out. Then you've got to trouble shoot the problem and see how you can make it better. (Both in food and software) When creating something new or thinking about combining things you have to know how they react together, or at least have a guess how they will react together. Also, at times, it's about following instructions. Put the board here, install this, now add the eggs and bake for 30 minutes on 450. (No idea what I just made there, but actually MIXING IT and cooking is probably a fairly bad idea... at least in the hardware field.)

Just a few thoughts before bed. Found a potentially great blueberry muffin recipe tonight... will have to try it. It's touted as the "best" and several reviewers agree. We'll have to try it out.

~B.

Labels: food, technical

I gave a talk today at Lisa's company ("Lunch and Learn") about what Web 2.0 is and how to use the technology behind it.

While I could refine this more I thought I would be "transparent" and share with you all what I created.



If you can't see the embedded slide show you can see the presentation here.

I don't know how my audience took it but I personally felt like it was the best public speaking I have ever done. I didn't get nervous before hand and I felt like I knew my content forwards and backwards. I think I might of even had fun!

~B.

Labels: technical

One of the things I don't like about myself is the guilt I feel when I don't blog. I generally don't blog because I get really busy. (In this instance I was facing a mail server migration (my that word looks so much like migraine...))

There are lots of things I would love to write about but when I come home putting together a cohesive, much less funny, sentence can be a chore when my mind is already pulled in several directions.

Did I mention I love my job? This is great. I could do this for the rest of my life.

Some of you that happened upon the blog or my twitter feed kept a semi watchful eye on my weekend. I had planned to start the Lotus to Google migration Friday night at 5pm. That failed when I got a migraine at 2pm and went home. Larry and I tried again at 7am on Saturday getting a decent start before 10:15am when I lost my ability to see (Migraine) and went home for 4 hours. Then (Gift from the Lord people!) Round about 4 hours later I had no migraine symptoms and went back to work where I worked from 2 to 10pm.

Sunday I repeated the process showing up before church at 8:50am, then going to church, and coming back at 11am and working until I finished at 7pm. (It was Larry's wife's birthday so he didn't join me on Sunday. Not that I blame him.)

Now everything is migrated and we're moving on with our Microsoft conversion!

~B.

Labels: technical

Sunday I took the time to regale you all with the technical ins and outs of the issues I was having with moving mail servers. The pieces started to come together today and it's kind of exciting.

This morning I was searching high and low for some sort of Lotus Notes expert who could give me some help. Even if it was paid help. (Unlike MS products Lotus experts like to hide or not exist, so it's not so easy to find Lotus help.) After I found an expert and posted my question I went poking around the system and knowing full well that I could mess it up just as much as I could fix it I went carefully to places where Lotus likes to hide settings. After about ten minutes poking around in some new places and reconfiguring information around it suddenly worked.

I celebrated with a poke to twitter... as no one else was around at the time.

Then I discovered that the Google IMAP mail downloader built into the Google Mail app didn't recognize Lotus 6.5. (Big surprise... I wish I didn't recognize Lotus) So I figured out another way involving Outlook and 2 IMAP connections to get the mail to transfer. I think wrote out the process for doing this (3 pages per user) and calculated the time (30 minutes minimum) and added it all together and figured I would be looking at more than 40 hours of time for the migration. Even cutting that in half with another worker we'd be looking at 20 hours of work each. Which considering we'd be starting on Friday evening we were looking at an ALL day Saturday migration. Not how I envisioned spending my weekend.

The idea was tossed around that we hired someone to program the Google Mail API and Lotus Notes together. However that proved to be fairly expensive. (Who knew?!)

So after a bit of poking around I found a NSF (Lotus database file) to PST (Outlook mail file) converter that works REALLY well. From there I added an Outlook to Google apps uploader that takes PST files and uploads them and the whole process takes on average about 15 minutes. It's a fairly simple solution for something that could take a long time. As with anything technical there is always a more simple solution, in this case it would require programming and an almost unlimited budget, but there is a solution that would take almost no time.

This weekend is looking like it might actually only take about the span of a normal work day! And I'll treat myself to the new Star Trek movie when I'm done. Thanks for the prayers on this subject I asked for on Sunday. I know sometimes I ask for things that are maybe technically weird that aren't so easy to understand, but I think the results for our missionaries because of this are going to be pretty great!

Please continue to keep this process in your prayers. Technology is a somewhat unrecognized spiritual battle ground, and God can conquer here just as much as He can anywhere else!

~B.

Labels: prayer request, technical

Next weekend I am moving a mail server we have at OC as a secondary mail server over to Google's suite of online applications. This is for security purposes, as well as management purposes. It'll be easier for my IT team to manage a Google server than it will be to manage a server that if it breaks now, we will have no idea how to fix.

My goal this next week is to try and get IMAP working on the old mail server so I can convert all the mail to the new mail server. If I can't do this the easy way (IMAP) I am going to have to do it the hard way (POP and IMAP) which could take three times as much time as the other way. I know some of you don't understand the techy talk, but if you could pray for me this week I really need prayer for this conversion. It could end up taking me (and possibly Larry) all weekend if things go poorly. (Thank you!)

Speaking of things that break, we got a new backup system planned out at work and we are hoping it works better than the one we have currently. The plan is to run a Network Attached Storage device into our network (with about 1.5tb of space in a raid 5 configuration) and then run software that backs up our mail server and file server on a "version" basis. It'll back up up to X number of versions of the file (like the past 5 versions would be stored) and then those would be stored on the extra storage. Then once a week we would back that up onto a tape drive and take that off site. Right now we backup to the tape a couple times a week and odds are good that something will hang, crash, or corrupt when or while that tape is backing up. We've been praying we never don't have to test the quality of that backup. And now with the guy who was in my position before me actually gone to the other side of the world, if the system was to break (Lotus) I wouldn't be restoring the Lotus Domino system. I would be scrambling to get Exchange installed.

I guess the last time Lotus crashed it took 30 hours to get running again. I would be working on a solution (Exchange) that would get people mail back and then work on how to recover their old mail. Anyway, that is a little glimpse into the life of an IT guy living on the edge of backups. (And Lord willing we'll never have to test those backups, but I would rather have a system I knew worked well...)

Thank you for your prayers. Though it seems crazy I think Satan can sometimes attack technology to greater effect at getting to us then attacking us directly.

~B.

Labels: technical

Foxit Software has created an Amazon Kindle type device based on the eInk technology. The device is called the eSlick Reader and I got my hands on one 24 hours ago.

I've wanted a digital document reader ever since I saw one of the first ones called a Rocketbook. (Leading to a family joke about getting a book about Rockets for Christmas instead of the aforementioned piece of technology) The tech has come a long way in the past 8 or 9 years and instead of basing the technology on a "screen", which is back lit and continually draining battery life someone came up with the idea of eInk. The technology is explained in the above link from Wikipedia and I will leave it to the editors there to say it better than I will here. Suffice to say that it is easier on the eyes and can be read outside and draws very little power.

The first thing I noticed upon unboxing my eSlick was the fact that it was very light and the "screen" was almost as bright as a white piece of paper. (A touch more dull gray than your typical printer paper) I hadn't even turned it on and it was reflecting a very natural amount of light. I had the option to compare weights with the Kindle yesterday and the Kindle feels like a tank compared to the eSlick's Geo Metro. Of course there are advantages and disadvantages to this. The eSlick feels like something I could own hundreds of and be able to hand it off to co-workers and have them passed around the office effortlessly. It's thin, it's light, it's generic enough that I could have a stack of these on my desk to hand out to people to "read over" things. However with the current technology that is almost pointless as we can toss PDFs around and load them up ourselves. I'm just trying to convey the feeling that the eSlick gives. It's easy, it's small, light, etc.

The eSlick doesn't have a keyboard on it but I don't find that an issue as I don't intent to type on it. I don't write in my books so I don't need to write in this. (I would assume that down the road the technology would allow for simple note taking, but the Kindle and the eSlick do not offer this functionality right now.)

There are a few things I have an issue with with the eSlick: The first being there seems to be a bug where some people (myself included) can't get the device to transfer data any faster than 1mb per minute on some computers. (My Mac transfers this slowly, but Vista downloads files normally) The buttons on the side are a bit much honestly. I don't need a "delete button", that could be a menu option, and the fact that it plays MP3s seems kind of silly to me. This is why we have iPods and the scores of iPod knock offs. On the other side of the device there are zoom buttons, which are very nice. The simple 4 way controller on the front (up, down, left and right) makes for easy navigation. Something that would be kind of nice would be a docking cradle for it so when I sat down at my desk I could just pop it down and sync files with it. Maybe later.

I'll be taking the eSlick with me to France this upcoming week, so we'll see how it reads and how long it'll take to burn the battery out. Granted the eSlick doesn't have some of the same features as the Kindle, but it's also about 100 dollars less and it doesn't cost anything to upload your own PDF files to it.

I look forward to spending more time with this device and seeing how it performs in the long-run!

~B.

Labels: technical

The following exchange happened between myself and my tech (Larry):

Larry: i am looking in the avg virus vault on wm and it found a virus on 06/22/2014
Ben: Wow... good to know!
Larry: in 2014? what is this, back to the future?
Ben: Well, it must be really bad if AVG traveled back from the future to warn us about it.

I think we'll keep AVG, they come back from the future to warn us about bad viruses. Take THAT crackers hackers! (Which now that I write that I understand why people say "hackers" to mean "bad computer people". When I say "crackers" it makes me sound like I am making some sort of slur.)

~B.

Labels: technical

I've reached what I think is a fairly calm state. As I said earlier: I'm not any different this week than I was last week. If the tumors are back, then they were there last week the same as they will be there this week, and the next. If they aren't there then freaking out and worrying about them being there or not isn't going to change anything. So I let it go.

That isn't the only other thing I have been waiting on. At work I am waiting for Microsoft to get back to me about some 800 dollars in matching gifts. (Hopefully for Exchange) But before I get that installed and running I need to get one of the mail servers out of here, which requires Google to recognize our non-profit status and upgrade the mail server from "Standard" to "Educational/Non Profit" (if any Google employees happen to read this and you have any control over that I would appreciate an extra poke to that department for me.) When that is recognized I can move our mail boxes to Google, setup that up, write a big long email to all the user's of that mail domain, then cut it over. (And deal with the fallout)

From there I can install Windows Server 2008 onto the box that used to be the mail server, migrate the Domain Controller (DC) and Active Directory (AD) structure from Windows 2000 Server. Then I can setup/ install Exchange 2007 and cut off a major pain in my IT world, which is Lotus Domino 6.5. (Which will actually JUST be the mail side of things, not the database side of Notes... that will come some day when I get to hire a web developer who will be wonderful and magical and can program in ASP, juggle Sharepoint, and make really cool spiffy websites! < /fantasy >

I guess as long as I don't get the Web Developer I get to talk to my boss (Ray) at least twice a week: Imagination theatre time:

Me: Hey Ray! Any word on when we can hire a web dev?
Ray: I have Greg working on it.
Me: Ok... cool... because it would really help me.
Ray: Yep... so you say... twice a week.
Me: Squeaky wheel!)

This is probably one of the most technical posts I have made in a long time. I try to keep it rated "English" for the rest of you, but sometimes it helps to be able to write out what I am working on, so even though you might not understand it, I can write it. And for those that do understand I can either 1. get support (emotional or otherwise), 2. generate interest in what I am doing, and 3. have the occasional technical blog post.

Either way, pray for the following with my job: 1. Funding comes through for a Web Developer, 2. That God is preparing the perfect Web Dev for OC who will be crazy cool and etc etc (see above) 3. Our migration from IBM Lotus goes smoothly and our transition to Microsoft Products helps the organization out to be more productive, etc.

Thanks all!

~B.

Labels: prayer request, technical, work related

New server is fast, with room to grow. (It has room for 2 more processors and that is only 1/4th the amount of RAM it can have!)

~B.

Labels: technical

For the next week or so I am keeping my eyes open for anyone interested in my job at TTC. Feel free to email me (ben dot morrell at gmail d0t com) if you are interested or know someone that might be interested. (It's for a part-time IT Manager position, pays between 15 and 20 depending on what you bring to the job)

~B.

Labels: technical

It's been said that Mac computers are more expensive because they are generally better designed. Ok, I can agree that the Mac Book Pro that I own is built very well and such. This however is ridiculous: Want to upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM? That'll be 400 dollars please. But wait?! Why would I do that if I can get the exact SAME ram for 70 dollars somewhere else?

Hmmm... I hope I saved someone 330 bucks just now.

~B.

Labels: technical

Today the shingles pain had dialed up another notch so I only put in a few hours at Taproot this morning. I came home and started the process of making "Pasta Salad". (Which as my mother pointed out isn't anything "special" per se, it's more of a "lets put X and X that we have in the fridge into the salad!") I've been craving something like this for a while and honestly I don't think I've eaten as much food as I did tonight in a long time.

The thing I like about Pasta Salad is that it contains all sorts of things, they all taste pretty good together, and it is WONDERFULLY colorful. My version, this time around, contains: Pasta (duh), Italian dressing, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, pepperoni, garlic, olives, and corn. Combined that with some "Italian Seasoning", garlic powder, touch of salt and pepper and a bit more olive oil. The great thing about this salad is the longer it sits the better it tastes. I have no problem having this for lunches (Breakfasts?) for the next couple of days, in fact I am looking forward to it. (And you carb haters out there will probably freak out when I say that I will probably have a nice slice of bread to go with that as well.)

This of course is not the first time I happen to have spent a little extra time making up this delightful salad.

The next couple days my boss at NSB is going to be gone so I will be "minding the fortress" while he is away. NSB people have a strange way of coming up with strange problems that suddenly and miraculously fix themselves. Thus I am not overly worried about having too many things on my plate while he is gone. (Have fun in Oklahoma Erik...)

Picked up a book on Python programming this afternoon as well. Reminds me of the first time I opened up a programming book with the intent of teaching myself a thing or two. QBasic for Beginners. Yep. Good times... gosh that must have been more than 15 years ago now. I've tried QBasic, C++, Visual Basic, Perl, and now Python. I am hoping that Python will stick and my desire to use it will be such that I actually DO use it. I would go back to trying QBasic, but that has no application in anything other than DOS 6.x... and even then probably not THAT much application.

Thank you all for your continued prayers on my behalf. These shingles aren't making life any easier at the moment, but these too shall pass right?

Night...

~B.

Labels: food, medical, technical