Kristina is not too happy I am capturing her picture AGAIN....I can not help myself, I be a proud papa
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Technology Corner April 23, 2005
The week in the life of an A+ Certified Computer Professional. Oh my, that sounds nice huh? Well, trust me when I tell you this, it may sound nice but it does not pay as much as I would like or have been used to. So much for that thought lest I digress.
Monday morning comes along and I am greeted in e-mail by a distress call by a customer who tells me their Dell Poweredge server had been rebooted on Saturday but never came back online properly. So, off to the races I went. I already had several service calls scheduled but this bumped this customer to the top of the list. No file, print or e-mail services means critical business down priority. That means drop your sausage egg and cheese biscuit back in the bag, grab your orange juice, laptop bag and tools, hop in the car and drive to the customer site as fast as you can get there.
So, I arrive at the customer site around 8 am on Monday morning and luckily for me one call to Dell Server Support and two hours later we managed to remount the two drives that had dismounted and the server was back online rebuilding its RAID 5 configuration. Here is a picture of the sick server for those of you that would like a visual reference.
This particular customer bought the server but never really gave much thought as to where they would put it so it wound up in a break room near a sink with running water (gasp). LOL.. Well the server is about 4 feet away from the sink and the server is sitting on the counter with the monitor sitting very close to the edge of the counter. Anyway, its very obvious that the server was an after thought when they bought it. LOL...
Oh yeah, back to the service call on Monday. The admin person that was on site Saturday afternoon was eye balling the backup log for Veritas BackupExec when they noticed that Windows Update had downloaded and installed an update and wanted to reboot the server. Being as no one else was there the admin person rebooted the server and very shortly regretted doing it. They wound up having to email me about the problem from their home email address and because I rarely check my work email during the weekend I did not get it until the following Monday morning.
What happened is when the server rebooted there were a couple of dos based selections that the user needed to respond to AND one of the network cards was set in the BIOS to boot to LAN therefore was sitting at a DHCP dos screen looking for a network boot device and the user needed to just hit esc to blast past that screen. Drives 4 and 8 were dismounted therefore causing the RAID 5 Array to not mount.
In a RAID (Random Array of Independent Disks) you have five hard drives. One drive is used for parity (error checking) therefore its drive space is used up for that and then you have four drives that are used to stripe the information to. In a RAID 5 configuration you can lose one drive completely and the virtual disk will stay in tact but if you lose two of the drives your ship is sunk. Well, anyway I was able to remount both drives, force them back online and let the RAID Array manager within the OS rebuild them. So, around 10:30 am I verified users were back online, logged on to the network, surfing the NET and getting their data and email. Once that was done I was out of there.
The rest of my Monday was spent driving all over the Low Country taking care of this and that printer calls. Monday was one of those hurry up and rush around until your hair catches on fire days.
Tuesday was a relatively easy day that allowed me to putter around in the shop fixing a couple of pc's that I had been waiting on parts for. Tuesday evening even allowed me the time to sit down and study in my MCSE Windows Server 2003 Environment book. I guess I spent from around 5pm until around 8:30 pm studying before I finally went home.
Wednesday arrived with a bang and I found myself running around all over the lowcountry again doing this and that. I started my day out on Sullivan's island at a customers house installing a Linksys wireless print server.
I could not get this thing to talk on the existing wireless network to save my life. I was smart though and instead of spending countless hours beating my head on the coffee table I called Linksys tech support sooner vs later. The problem I was having turned out to be that the user was using XP Professional on their IBM Stinkpad (snicker) and had their Network Connection firewall protected via the Service Pack 2 built in Internet firewall. I had already deduced earlier that this was a problem because I had turned off the Norton Anti Virus Internet Security Firewall on the laptop to no avail. I just forgot to check the Internet Connection to see if it TOO had a firewall turned on. Sigh.... Protection is great to keep the goolies away but if you have too much protection you might as well use the device for a boat anchor. LOL...
I left Sullivans Island around 11 pm, headed out to a customer in the Cainhoy/Huger area , got down diagnosing a pc there and then headed over to the next customer in Summerville SC. This call was for an ancient HP Color Laser Jet printer 5m.
The error message on the screen was 11.4 Load paper in tray 1. The first thing I did was to remove the paper tray, turn on the flashlight bend over and look into the paper path where the tray is. There to my wandering eyes was a piece of mangled paper sitting there in the paper path at the end of the printer. I removed this piece of paper and replaced the paper tray and the printer was happy again. The office manager was not too happy that her staff was not observant enough to catch this problem. I bet they check this out the next time BEFORE they call us out. LOL.....
I was finished with my service calls on Wed around 2:30 pm and I was close to my customer that had server problems on Monday so I figured I would get a burger from McDonalds and then go over there to their break room, eat lunch, check email and check on their backups. When I got there I was greeted by drive four which had dropped offline again and was blinking an orange light. The orange light means a caution condition on the server vs a blue light on the display or a green light on the drive. Orange lights on the server makes network admins like me see RED which causes us to jump into action. So, as you can imagine my leisurely lunch turned into another support call to Dell Tech Support (they rock by the way) and I spent from 3 pm until 8:30 pm with them on the phone diagnosing this and that. We came to the conclusion that the backplane, SCSI drive ID 4, daughter card and scsi adapter cable were faulty. Dell set up the service call for Friday and shipped the parts to a Dell service tech who met me at the client site on Friday.
Thursday was pretty quiet at the office so it allowed me some downtime to study and take care of some office chores that normally dont get done when I am running around with my hair on fire.
Friday morning consisted of one service call to a customer who had moved and the movers (never let a furniture mover move your server or printers folks) had dropped the HP 4550 color laser jet and broke off the plastic back cover.
This printer new costs almost 2500.00 so you can imagine the horror of finding out that the movers (clutz) had damaged the printer. Luckily for the customer the damage was very superficial and they are only going to be out 177 bucks to replace the back cover which of course will be forwarded on to the moving compay for reimbursement.
Well, that pretty much concludes my Monday through Friday I.T. job and what I encountered day to day.
Monday morning comes along and I am greeted in e-mail by a distress call by a customer who tells me their Dell Poweredge server had been rebooted on Saturday but never came back online properly. So, off to the races I went. I already had several service calls scheduled but this bumped this customer to the top of the list. No file, print or e-mail services means critical business down priority. That means drop your sausage egg and cheese biscuit back in the bag, grab your orange juice, laptop bag and tools, hop in the car and drive to the customer site as fast as you can get there.
So, I arrive at the customer site around 8 am on Monday morning and luckily for me one call to Dell Server Support and two hours later we managed to remount the two drives that had dismounted and the server was back online rebuilding its RAID 5 configuration. Here is a picture of the sick server for those of you that would like a visual reference.
This particular customer bought the server but never really gave much thought as to where they would put it so it wound up in a break room near a sink with running water (gasp). LOL.. Well the server is about 4 feet away from the sink and the server is sitting on the counter with the monitor sitting very close to the edge of the counter. Anyway, its very obvious that the server was an after thought when they bought it. LOL...
Oh yeah, back to the service call on Monday. The admin person that was on site Saturday afternoon was eye balling the backup log for Veritas BackupExec when they noticed that Windows Update had downloaded and installed an update and wanted to reboot the server. Being as no one else was there the admin person rebooted the server and very shortly regretted doing it. They wound up having to email me about the problem from their home email address and because I rarely check my work email during the weekend I did not get it until the following Monday morning.
What happened is when the server rebooted there were a couple of dos based selections that the user needed to respond to AND one of the network cards was set in the BIOS to boot to LAN therefore was sitting at a DHCP dos screen looking for a network boot device and the user needed to just hit esc to blast past that screen. Drives 4 and 8 were dismounted therefore causing the RAID 5 Array to not mount.
In a RAID (Random Array of Independent Disks) you have five hard drives. One drive is used for parity (error checking) therefore its drive space is used up for that and then you have four drives that are used to stripe the information to. In a RAID 5 configuration you can lose one drive completely and the virtual disk will stay in tact but if you lose two of the drives your ship is sunk. Well, anyway I was able to remount both drives, force them back online and let the RAID Array manager within the OS rebuild them. So, around 10:30 am I verified users were back online, logged on to the network, surfing the NET and getting their data and email. Once that was done I was out of there.
The rest of my Monday was spent driving all over the Low Country taking care of this and that printer calls. Monday was one of those hurry up and rush around until your hair catches on fire days.
Tuesday was a relatively easy day that allowed me to putter around in the shop fixing a couple of pc's that I had been waiting on parts for. Tuesday evening even allowed me the time to sit down and study in my MCSE Windows Server 2003 Environment book. I guess I spent from around 5pm until around 8:30 pm studying before I finally went home.
Wednesday arrived with a bang and I found myself running around all over the lowcountry again doing this and that. I started my day out on Sullivan's island at a customers house installing a Linksys wireless print server.
I could not get this thing to talk on the existing wireless network to save my life. I was smart though and instead of spending countless hours beating my head on the coffee table I called Linksys tech support sooner vs later. The problem I was having turned out to be that the user was using XP Professional on their IBM Stinkpad (snicker) and had their Network Connection firewall protected via the Service Pack 2 built in Internet firewall. I had already deduced earlier that this was a problem because I had turned off the Norton Anti Virus Internet Security Firewall on the laptop to no avail. I just forgot to check the Internet Connection to see if it TOO had a firewall turned on. Sigh.... Protection is great to keep the goolies away but if you have too much protection you might as well use the device for a boat anchor. LOL...
I left Sullivans Island around 11 pm, headed out to a customer in the Cainhoy/Huger area , got down diagnosing a pc there and then headed over to the next customer in Summerville SC. This call was for an ancient HP Color Laser Jet printer 5m.
The error message on the screen was 11.4 Load paper in tray 1. The first thing I did was to remove the paper tray, turn on the flashlight bend over and look into the paper path where the tray is. There to my wandering eyes was a piece of mangled paper sitting there in the paper path at the end of the printer. I removed this piece of paper and replaced the paper tray and the printer was happy again. The office manager was not too happy that her staff was not observant enough to catch this problem. I bet they check this out the next time BEFORE they call us out. LOL.....
I was finished with my service calls on Wed around 2:30 pm and I was close to my customer that had server problems on Monday so I figured I would get a burger from McDonalds and then go over there to their break room, eat lunch, check email and check on their backups. When I got there I was greeted by drive four which had dropped offline again and was blinking an orange light. The orange light means a caution condition on the server vs a blue light on the display or a green light on the drive. Orange lights on the server makes network admins like me see RED which causes us to jump into action. So, as you can imagine my leisurely lunch turned into another support call to Dell Tech Support (they rock by the way) and I spent from 3 pm until 8:30 pm with them on the phone diagnosing this and that. We came to the conclusion that the backplane, SCSI drive ID 4, daughter card and scsi adapter cable were faulty. Dell set up the service call for Friday and shipped the parts to a Dell service tech who met me at the client site on Friday.
Thursday was pretty quiet at the office so it allowed me some downtime to study and take care of some office chores that normally dont get done when I am running around with my hair on fire.
Friday morning consisted of one service call to a customer who had moved and the movers (never let a furniture mover move your server or printers folks) had dropped the HP 4550 color laser jet and broke off the plastic back cover.
This printer new costs almost 2500.00 so you can imagine the horror of finding out that the movers (clutz) had damaged the printer. Luckily for the customer the damage was very superficial and they are only going to be out 177 bucks to replace the back cover which of course will be forwarded on to the moving compay for reimbursement.
Well, that pretty much concludes my Monday through Friday I.T. job and what I encountered day to day.
Battle Plan Ministries Anniversary Banquet May 19th and 20th
I am excited to announce that Battle Plan Ministries will be hosting its 5 year reunion at a banquet at the fellowship hall at Central Church in Collierville Tenn. The Director, Dr. Bill Berry has been heading up this ministry both online and in his church for the last 9 years. BPM is celebrating its 5 years of being an official ministry outreach at Central Church. I am planning on attending and am hopeful to meet some dear friends and aquaintances from online over the years. I have been blessed to have met Bill and Elly Berry when we were called to go to Bonnyville Alberta Canada back in 1995 when we went to speak to 6 different church groups about sexual purity and the impacts of pornography on the church today. If you are not aware of this pornography is a billion dollar industry and it has a very devestating impact on the lives of people who get hooked and it impacts marriages and families and communities in a very negative way. The goal of Battle Plan Ministries is to bring healing and restoration to the men and women and family members that get caught up in this addiction. You can read more about the "Battle Plan" at http://www.battleplanministries.org where you can read and print out the step by step battle plan that Dr. Bill Berry formulated and used in his own battle against pornography. If you know of anyone who is helplessly addicted to pornography or has some sort of sexual addiction of any type this is a very good resource for them to have. Not only is there a battle plan that can be printed out but you will also find online warriors who are involved in online accountablity through the BPM message bases and one on one e-mail for those who need it and ask for it. As you take the time to view the many web pages you will see personal testimonies of men and women who have experienced a touch from the masters hand as their lives have been changed as they have learned how to walk out of the darkness of habitual sin and into God's glorious redemptive light of healing and restoration. You will see my testimony that I wrote all most 8 years ago as I was working with Dr. Bill Berry when his online ministry first began and took on life of its own.
The following excerpt comes from the e-mail announcement I received from Dr. Bill Berry
Men, ... as you know, here in the USA it is very rare for any church to have a declared, open warfare ministry to combat the evils of our hypersexual world and the damage the enemy does to spiritual warriors, especially Christians. But Battle Plan Ministry is one of those ministries; and on May 19th, Central Church will celebrate 5 years of God using BPM to reach out to help Christian soldiers on the battle fields of this world.
On that date, my church family will have a VICTORY BANQUET where we will hear some of the testimonies from those whom God has helped through BPM. Oh, how wed love to have some of you online soldiers to be there. Two of our number, Pastor Dave Morgret and Brother Rahsaan Brayboy, currently two of our BPM forum Moderators, will be here to give testimony/witness to the power of God through our online ministry. There will also be testimonies from our local men who have been, or are being, helped by BPM here in the live world. And there will be exciting expositions of our newest outreach programs: #1, for women, the silent victims of the sexual sin in the lives of the beloved men in their lives [called Faithful Warriors]... and #2 an informational and resource program for parents of adolescents and teens to help them arm their homes for battle against the enemy trying to get in and tear families apart with the bombardment from their TVs and PCs. And finally, as you can read below, we will have an appearance by Clay Crosse, a well-armed supporter of BPM. Clay is a triple, Dove-award Christian singer, who has a powerful testimony of deliverance from habitual sexual sin. He will be there to lead our worship, sing, and give his testimony.
So, as you can read, this is going to be an EXCITING EVENT to shine a light on BPM at Central Church. Other church leaders from here in Memphis will invited to attend and see what a ministry like BPM could mean for their churches. So, you can see why wed like for any of you to be here to share in this event. If you are so led and can make it to Collierville, TN, on May 19-20, we will also have a more intimate dinner on May 20th at the Condo clubhouse where I live for our BPM warriors. As I said, wed love to see any or all of you come; but I know the limitations of schedule, family, career, and other priority conflicts. So, no guilt or pressure is being applied here.
If you can come, please let me know. Ill need to help you either find a hotel accommodation; of, if $$$ is a factor, Id be glad to help you find a bed with one of our church family. But Ill need to know by MAY 1st to be able to do that. And also please let me know whether youd be able to be here for both nights. You dont have to reply with regrets; but if you cant make it, Id appreciate any prayer warfare that you could commit to on a daily basis; and let me know if youll do that! Also anyone who has the resources and feels so led, a donation for BPM to support this effort would be appreciated. Events like this do cost money! Duh !!! Go to THIS LINK for a reminder of how to give to BPM.
Well, ... Heres our flyer for your edification ... And blessings from Willie B. Warrior .... Bill
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Tuesday April 11, 2005
There is nothing more awesome than family. Do you know what I mean? It feels good to be at home surrounded with my family and watching them go about their daily lives. It is good to be at home this evening sitting here at the computer listening to praise and worship music on the computer and writing in one of my blogs.
I can listen to the praise and worship cd because Katy and I fixed the computer recently. Katy diagnosed it and I fixed it. LOL... How do you like them apples? The sound magically quit working several weeks ago without warning. We are running Windows 2000 Professional on the pc here at home because the BIOS does not fully support XP Professional for some reason. Anyway, one day the sound just quit working and when I went into the device manager I noticed that the audio controller had a red x on it and was not working. So, I tried to uninstall the driver and reinstall it to no avail. So, I figured that the audio controller on the motherboard was toast and just gave up. I NEVER thought to check the sound card and give consideration that it was bad. After all, I have had this computer for 5+ years.
Yesterday Katy told me that she ran the Windows troubleshooting wizzard and it told her that the sound card was bad. So, on a hunch I went to Wallyworld and purchased the new sound card and installed it. Well, since I am listening to music on the PC you can figure out the rest. Sometimes it pays to go back to the basics and not assume that the problem is more complicated than it really is. It sure is good to have sound on the computer again. Thanks Katy!!
Katy went to an interview today at MUSC in hopes that they will hire her which would be just in time for summer break. So, if you would, say a prayer that the interviewer and powers to be at MUSC will find favor in Katy and she will get an offer soon. I too am trolling the waters for a BETTER paying job. I am thankful for the job I have but I am still way under employed with regards to the salary that I am used to making and NEED to make in order to get the finances back on track. So, I suppose that is also a prayer request for me.
Gosh will American Idol ever end? LOL It seems as if this has been going ON and ON and ON. Justin and Kristina (and Katy) just LOVE American Idol..
Well that is it for now. Chow !!
I can listen to the praise and worship cd because Katy and I fixed the computer recently. Katy diagnosed it and I fixed it. LOL... How do you like them apples? The sound magically quit working several weeks ago without warning. We are running Windows 2000 Professional on the pc here at home because the BIOS does not fully support XP Professional for some reason. Anyway, one day the sound just quit working and when I went into the device manager I noticed that the audio controller had a red x on it and was not working. So, I tried to uninstall the driver and reinstall it to no avail. So, I figured that the audio controller on the motherboard was toast and just gave up. I NEVER thought to check the sound card and give consideration that it was bad. After all, I have had this computer for 5+ years.
Yesterday Katy told me that she ran the Windows troubleshooting wizzard and it told her that the sound card was bad. So, on a hunch I went to Wallyworld and purchased the new sound card and installed it. Well, since I am listening to music on the PC you can figure out the rest. Sometimes it pays to go back to the basics and not assume that the problem is more complicated than it really is. It sure is good to have sound on the computer again. Thanks Katy!!
Katy went to an interview today at MUSC in hopes that they will hire her which would be just in time for summer break. So, if you would, say a prayer that the interviewer and powers to be at MUSC will find favor in Katy and she will get an offer soon. I too am trolling the waters for a BETTER paying job. I am thankful for the job I have but I am still way under employed with regards to the salary that I am used to making and NEED to make in order to get the finances back on track. So, I suppose that is also a prayer request for me.
Gosh will American Idol ever end? LOL It seems as if this has been going ON and ON and ON. Justin and Kristina (and Katy) just LOVE American Idol..
Well that is it for now. Chow !!
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Wireless Networking and mobile computing
I am finding that wireless access points are really becoming more common place than they were a year ago. Last year when I first got hooked on wireless networking I had to search pretty hard to find a business that had wireless access and then of course you had to pay for it by signing up with Thinkspot or whomever to get access while you sipped on yoru favorite latte. That is not the case anymore as it seems that you can drive down most busy business park and find FREE wireless access points broadcasting a signal. More often than not the business WAP will be locked down and you will find that most home owners take their Linksys WAP out of the box and plug it in and just use the default settings for their wireless networking setup. In an effort to make Wireless more appealing and accessible to the masses Linksys, Dlink, Motorola and other manufacturers have set their hardware up so that it is pretty idiot proof. No, I am not saying YOU are an idiot when it comes to technology but what I am saying is that most if not all end users WANT and NEED to USE the technology and could really care less about reading the manual or God Forbid get caught up in some sort of Voice Mail Hell or spend hours on the phone with someone from India that can barely speak our language (English) and has a hard time understanding our questions IF it is outside of the script that he or she has been given to follow. Why is it most, if not all , support people assume that everyone is an idiot? LOL...
Last night a friend of mine and I zoomed down to Myrtle Beach to find the nearest Fudruckers Hamburger joint and during our trip we used the GPS receiver and Microsoft Streets and Trips to see where we were going and we fired up Net Stumbler version 4 so that we could browse all the Wireless Access Points that popped up all around us. All in all we had a very enjoyable trip and had a blast eating good food and playng around and talking about technology in general.
One of the things that I am learning is that I would whole lot rather access WAP's and surf the web and get my e-mail on my laptop vs trying to do this on my Pocket PC. What a major pain in the keister that is. Tap tap tap tap until you have carpal tunnel syndrome if you ask me. LOL... It just takes me longer to do things vs having a full sized keyboard and a mouse to use which makes things oh so much faster in my mind.
Well, lets see, what would be heaven on earth to this propellerhead? Constant supply of all the foods I like, a card game with my friends and wireless access so I can chat with my Internet friends and family. What else could a guy want?
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
God forbid, the ACLU is upset again
A relative of mine who is a long time Marine sent me a picture of many marines with their heads bowed and eyes closed as they prayed during some sort of government led ceremony. Supposedly the ACLU is up in arms about this and hollering about the separation of church and state. Well, let me say this for the record. I do not know IF this is a true story or not. What I do know is that the ACLU certainly is VERY active in doing what they can to destroy faith based ACTIONS of believers in Christ. How long will it be before our government outlaws our basic fundamental rights to own a bible and attend our local churches or hold bible studies in our own homes? Think about it folks... Our faith is not the most popular thing going.... I am talking about christians who believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that he died on the cross for the sins of the world past present and future. Is Jesus Christ the saviour of the world and Lord or not? Everyone has to answer that question for him and herself. Anyway, here is my response to the relative who sent me this e-mail this morning.
Actually I find that the ACLU is the puppet of the devil aka the prince of darkness or god of this world as we know it. The world as we know it is hell bent on destroying itself and it is largely due to the influences of our master deceiver himself. The ACLU wants us to ignore our creator and focus entirely on the things of this world and for us to be our own gods. After all, in their mind, our right wing fundamentalist conservative bible based faith is based on nothing but fairy tales. Do you know why the ACLU has so much influence on the things of faith today? It has this much influence because the church as we know it is fat, lazy , lethargic and sleepy. We are too comfortable in our churches, pews and programs to do what it takes to be heard. We dont want to upset the apple cart and we certainly do not want to sacrifice our creature comforts to stand on what we believe. How important is our faith anyway? How much are we willing to invest? Time, talents, money, faith are all necessary tools that we must be willing to invest. Sin is so rampant in our world and no longer in the closet because the church is no longer affecting the world around it. Our church's have ministers/pastors that spend too much time preaching a watered down feel good theology that tells people that it is ok, God loves you and there is no such thing as a literal hell and we certainly don't want to scare you into heaven or for you to leave because we want and need your tithe money.
Actually I find that the ACLU is the puppet of the devil aka the prince of darkness or god of this world as we know it. The world as we know it is hell bent on destroying itself and it is largely due to the influences of our master deceiver himself. The ACLU wants us to ignore our creator and focus entirely on the things of this world and for us to be our own gods. After all, in their mind, our right wing fundamentalist conservative bible based faith is based on nothing but fairy tales. Do you know why the ACLU has so much influence on the things of faith today? It has this much influence because the church as we know it is fat, lazy , lethargic and sleepy. We are too comfortable in our churches, pews and programs to do what it takes to be heard. We dont want to upset the apple cart and we certainly do not want to sacrifice our creature comforts to stand on what we believe. How important is our faith anyway? How much are we willing to invest? Time, talents, money, faith are all necessary tools that we must be willing to invest. Sin is so rampant in our world and no longer in the closet because the church is no longer affecting the world around it. Our church's have ministers/pastors that spend too much time preaching a watered down feel good theology that tells people that it is ok, God loves you and there is no such thing as a literal hell and we certainly don't want to scare you into heaven or for you to leave because we want and need your tithe money.
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