1:00 PM Long weekend. Didn't get half the stuff I'd planned done, but what the heck, I'm used to that by now. Got all the DNS records changed - although I forgot to notify Tom of exactly what I was doing, which is a bad thing since he's hosting the new primary site for RearViewMirror.org. Ah well. This is why SysAdmins make terrible hosting customers... they forget that they ever need to consult someone else on what they're doing. <G> At any rate, this version of the page is the one on Hydras, so your DNS has updated, the changes have reached you, and you're done. Wasn't that easy, Tom? <snicker>

And, last evening, we were treated to a dose of humility. You see, the ever-wonderful Salt River Project, our power/water/whatever company, decided that stability and certainty of things like electrical power and air conditioning are overrated. So they turned off our neighborhood for a while. Then they turned it back on; then they turned it off again. Lovely. Such fun, on the hottest day so far of the year. 115 degrees was the high, and it was still well into the triple digits when the power went out. Don't let anyone kid you, this may be a dry heat, but the main thing I notice about it is that it's hot. But, we got to sit around outside, meet some of our neighbors, and have fun by flashlight. It wasn't as good as getting that work done... and I'm learning what Tom goes through with Hydras going down, since my email server is now on my own machine... but we had fun anyway. Sort of.

So now it's back to work, and the office is warm (it lost power too, and the air conditioning hasn't caught up yet) and there're visitors from the home office here, and isn't that just peachy...

Which means I better get back to it. Later, all.

1:30 PM Well, I got very, very few emails from people telling me they got the old server, and a lot of emails from people telling me they got the new one. And most of the "I'm on the old server still" emails came in through the NEW mail server, I suspect that most if not all of them were simply caching issues. I'll continue to put the updated pages on the old server until the end of the week, but after that - poof. The old site will be no more. (Yay!)

Not really doing much different at work, aside from lecturing San Mateo's IT people on the importance of actually HAVING hardware to do the tasks that are required. Specifically, we were going over the plans for the new office we're building. Naturally, there were several problems and so on (2+2 does NOT equal 5, people!) but that's what these meetings are for. To catch small errors like that.

Then we got to the IT section. Yes, very nice, server rooms on each floor, my office right next to the main one, OK... um... electrical power, plenty of racks, good, good... what about servers?

"Servers?"

"Yes, you know, funny little boxes about so big, they do things?"

"Oh, well, all the development servers go through so-and-so, not through IT."

Sigh. "Yes, I understand that. What about the infrastructure servers?"

"uhhh... what about them?"

Sigh.

So now I have to find a way to budget for several unplanned servers. Why were they unplanned? Well, it never occured to anyone we'd need them. Ooops. So that's my day, trying to find money (preferably from other people's budgets) to get those servers. How's yours?

10:00 AM I love it when I get my way. Of course, everyone's life would be a lot simpler if they would just start with the hypothesis that I'm correct and go from there. But do they ever do that? No...

My proposal for the infrastructure servers is complete, and we're going with my favorite option, the most expensive. <G> Basically, we're going to be running a single NT 4 domain, local backups, local DNS, WINS, and File servers, a local Exchange server, and print servers and backups. We'll do that with four servers (five, including one I already have) and a fairly large Network Appliance/EMC/whoever drive array. Getting that up and running will be interesting, and probably keep me busy for a while, since I'll need to start before the server room and network are ready. Fun!

Incidently, for those who asked, infrastructure servers are "overhead" servers. NT domain controllers, email servers, file and print servers, firewalls, etc. Servers that don't produce money or product in a development organization, but simply support the organization - provide the development infrastructure. Get it?

This weekend is going to be a catch-up weekend; things to do, no real schedule to do it, so I'll just be making it up as I go along. It looks like everybody now sees the new server, so I'll be taking down the Zanova copy of the site on Monday. On Sunday, we're going to a preview showing of "Space Cowboys"; I'm told fans of NASA won't like the movie, so I'm looking forward to it. (For those without a program, I dislike NASA and most of what they've done to the US Space Program for the last 20 years or more.)

And finally, I've had a series of discussions with people over the last week about Systems Administration/Security, Linux vs. Windows vs. Other OS's, Open Source, and other fun things. I need to get some of those posted; possibly even later today. But for now, time to earn some salary.