Corner Office and Track Practice

This will soon be MINE!!!! All mine.

Yes, I get to move into the corner office. I will have windows on two sides so all my adoring fans can come look at me.

We also installed new software from Velocity Systems. It has something to do with limiting overdraft fees for clients.
Track practice was outdoors last night and it was beautiful. I had them run 5 sets of 2 minutes fast and then 2 minutes slow. Constant movement. JG was extremely awesome. She is becoming our star. Everyone else is looking up to her.

My Fighting Illini held off a great shooting team in Stoneybrook last night during first round NIT action. Now we get Kent State on Monday. It should be a good game.

-the beginning of the end

Just a few tasks

• Attus tasks
•  Commvault – create a service account for backups to run under
•  CraWiz – waiting for v4 that support W2k8R2 before moving to SQL cluster
•  Blue Lance – LT Auditor – continue monitoring for W2k8 issues
•  Mortgage calendars – look at them, what they do – alternatives (old BB SQL dbs)
•  Citrix03 – remove Citrix User from Admin group
•  Pinging PIX – make it stop – Done   
• Citrix02 – finish building up – w2k3 installed  - need Citrix added and apps
•  Prologue DB  moved to SQL cluster- start with test DB
•  Tony’s PIX issue – MEHS/FOPE new ip addresses – DONE   
•  DRACs updated – MD finished before he left – need to check for updates monthly/quarterly
•  SCCM config – need to finish for building images for desktops
•  SMS – need to retire this into SCCM
•  DecisionPro – ITI interface – JF working on this? Need more info
•  UniPrint – double check logins for this for tech support
•  Vendors – take over from them – get contact info
• Revisit Citrix rebuild issue – use Citrix and upgrade, use TS, make Citrix true load balanced farm
• VMware config – is it good, memory, cpu, hard drive space, monitoring
•  SQL flat file backups – find them and document them
•  Citrix Online – remove MD’s account
•  Network Associates – change password
•  DPro and LPro – we need accounts setup for access – learn the product
•  Craig’s password list – add into PasswordKeeper program
• Move PasswordKeeper to KeyPass – better, more powerful
•  Server checks – for MD’s account

How is your network?

Is it fast?
Is it slow?
Do you users complain about it?
Do they ever tell you they had a great day on your network?

Your network is your network. It is what it is. You probably have no feeling if it is fast or slow except for the complaints you get. if no one is complaining then everything is good. But is it?

I have lots of issues on my network. Issues that most users know nothing about. But that is something I have started to think about. How is my network? Well, frankly, my network sucks. I have almost no documentation, almost no baselines, almost no standard of structure. but I am thankful for the most it runs. And runs fairly well. The real problem is when failures happen. I usually have no warning until the calls come in.

Yes, by then it is far too late.

I can kiss finding excuses not run goodbye. Goodbye excuses. I can kiss any beer drinking goodbye. Goodbye beer. I can kiss boneless wings goodbye. Goodbye boneless wings. You get the point.

So what I am doing about this? I am going to get proactive, after I get reactive. Maybe, I can do both at the same time. Fix things, document things, change things, consolidate things, move things, make new changes. If this can be done (with a lot of help - and I mean a lot) I think my network could go from below average to slightly above to almost great.

So this blog will be to follow the travails (is this the right word for what I am trying to say) of my network up-averaging. I will discuss applications, servers, workstations, pix and asa firewalls, patch management, audits, eating habits, movies, you tube videos, music and a myriad of other things. Because life is not just networking, but all those things are networking.