Insufficient system resources
by Colin on Jan.06, 2010, under Geek, Ramblings
Shush! 
So anyhow I haven’t really been “updating” the site since mid 2008, and its now January 2010 so that’s about a year and a half of inactivity on the website.. but I haven’t been sitting on my ass doing nothing!
I am going to blame most of the silence on the workload in the office, we have been doing tonnes of work and 4 or 5 major projects since mid 2008. That and when I get home I normally find myself either watching TV Shows or trying to play Left 4 Dead 2 with friends on the PC. (if you think I’m going to sit and type out stuff on a computer at home after doing that said task for up to 8hrs per day, your sadly mistaken!)
A quick summary of sorts, on the sort of projects and big jobs that have limited me from spending time in the office writing blog posts.
- We continued the roll out of PCs across the whole organisation, Changing from the Optiplex 755′s to the newer Optiplex 760s (which have now been superseded by the Optiplex 780s!) This totalled approx. 44 sites across the whole of Northern Ireland.
In excess of 400 computers installed, and We used a PGS to do it all. (PGS is short in our office for the Portable Ghost System which was based around a laptop with a huge HDD, running Ghostcast, DHCP, and anti-virus deployment software) - “We” (read: the consultants as we have jack all Oracle knowledge in our office) completed the upgrade of the company’s Case Management system to Oracle 10g, which has never really fixed the problems we have with locked tables. But truth be told we didn’t expect it to, it was all done because Oracle 8i isn’t “officially” supported on Server 2003 (hell, its not officially supported full stop now!)
- The requirements changed for access to the Case Management system. We used to take it offline at 8pm at night (3 hrs after business closes) to allow us to get a clean 100% backup of all data nightly. Since the disaster many years ago (read: Mayday Mayday on the 14th April for more info) we were very paranoid about data integrity. The Company needed to access the system later in the night when emergencies happen. This meant an upgrade to the SAN ( New Toys!
) to provide Snapshots of the data. It mans now we have an effective 5minute downtime compared to the previous 12hr downtime. I like new kit! For any Technical nerds (TDC, I’m looking at you!) its an EMC Clariion AX-4 storage array with about 5tb of theoretical storage - Installed a multitude of new servers, including a Xenserver Host for testing (more will be revealed below) to provide more stuff to the staff in the Company
- The Company finally upgraded the old Option 11 Meridian downstairs in “the basement” (Otherwise known as the cubby-hole under the back stairwell) to the new spangly option 11. This meant we got to bin Meridian Mail (anyone actually remember the old CLI interface you had to bastardise about with to get the damn thing working?) and had a CallPilot system put in its place. We have IP phones on our desks in here in the office as well as throughout other parts of Headquarters, and an “outer office” which is situated on the end of a 10mb Les circuit using Citrix AND ip phones! best of all there’s no complaints from any of the 9 members of staff (yes, that calculates out at a 1.1mb connection for each of them)
And there is loads more that’s been done, some of which I wont cover because its insignificant
So anyhow, onwards to the future! We have a few big projects coming up soon as well, the big one happens to be the big V word in IT lately, “Virtualization”
(Now you see why I have installed a Xenserver host on the network!)
The only bad part is that it seems to have opened a can of worms! possible upgrades to Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Windows 7 in the office have been bandied about a lot. Of course the added benefit of moving your infrastructure to a virtualized environment means you can do these sorts of upgrades during the move to reduce downtime, the effect and any underlying issues.
(Of course, this is overlooked and I’ve heard remarks of going P2V first, then looking at upgrading OS’s and software at a later date… 
)
There is also talk of us finally getting what we asked for many years ago, an actual workshop! There’s pictures in my random gallery showing the office which is also our workspace and IT Storeroom. So for example when a server needs built, its normally stuck on the edge of my desk and wired up to a KVM hidden behind my screen. So this tiny office where theres 4 people based (we’ve had 5 members of staff since about 2006) will become the workshop, and we get a bigger office to expand into which in this case is so that there’s a desk for the 6th member of staff who starts next week.
Random other stuff now!
In the space of writing this post (It’s taken over 2hrs to compose this so far) I have been interrupted numerous times to fix equipment or servers, or to answer questions from my boss and his boss regarding “stuff”. but this is like a mega-post so its somewhat expected to take me forever to write 
I went and bought myself a small Toshiba NB200 netbook recently, should be easier to carry than my aging Lenovo laptop. going from a 15.4″ screen down to a 10.1″ screen is a bit awkward but when your reading web pages and typing up stuff its perfectly fine. just no hope of playing l4d2 on either of those devices! That job stays with my gaming rig at home (Q6600 w/4GB DDr2 ram & HD4870 gfx)
yes I know its getting a bit long in the tooth, but the i7 prices are still bloody ridiculous and it plays the current crop of games fine… just don’t show it a copy of crysis.
I hate how slow transferring images from Bluetooth really is, I’m still waiting for the picture I took of the office to copy across so I can upload it. It should appear in the gallery sometime today (Wednesday)
Anyway, its now Lunchtime in the office and its stopped snowing \o/ time to pop out and grab something nice to eat.
and before anyone asks, no I wont fucking blog what I’m eating later! that’s what twitter is for 
Access Denied
by Colin on Jun.16, 2008, under Geek, Ramblings
Talk about a leave of absence! Have not been near this site since early February bar the occasional upgrade to WordPress itself.
So its re-cap time, Apologies to anyone who landed on the site when they googled the 554 error. I encountered it during December a few days before I created the rant post so that is why its there, I can presume it only occurs when your bandwidth is being sucked away by some random web-surfer!
We replaced all the computers in our Headquarters no problem, then have spent the last few months troubleshooting problems with them! Bit of simple advice if you have Dell Optiplex 755′s where the Network card drops constantly (a Yo-Yo effect)…
It does not matter if you have A09 Bios installed, or disabled the Management Engine, or upgraded the drivers, the cards effectively b0rked and you have to call Dell Business Support to get the board replaced!
I don’t know if the new 755′s have the same problem but I feel we may discover this once we buy more of them for some of our other offices!
We also have more upcoming projects, including an upgrade of our Oracle system which is occurring shortly… something I am not looking forward to as we are upgrading from a really old Oracle 8i Database to last years Oracle 10g version (and to add insult to injury, since the project started in December last year, Oracle 11g has now been released for Microsoft Windows!)
A lot of the work will be done by Consultants who have more of a clue when it comes to Oracle, but since it involves "breaking" a cluster there is a bit of a risk involved.. that and our recovery server is tied up with initial testing means our safety net is really really small!
On an aside regarding my rant in December, It seems that some people do not have any common sense when it comes to using the Internet at work. When you get a webpage saying Access Denied: This page has been blocked by Surfcontrol they might stop and think for a second that they really shouldn’t be looking at those types of sites.
I need to sit down and do the "About Me" page on this site 
Oh, and if this looks a bit screwy, I decided to give Windows Live Writer another try with this blog, who knows how bad this will look!
Disinfectant plzthx
by Colin on Feb.07, 2008, under Ramblings
Two months without updates? thats about the norm now 
So, Christmas 2007 is over (and I still have not gotten round to buying my new walking boots from the xmas money) and its now ’08.
And for the 3rd year in a trot, my NYE has been cut short because I fell ill with something. This time I have had the displeasure of suffering from a chest infection / sinus problem since just after xmas through the whole of January. The worst is that I still have not shifted it after 2x courses of antibiotics and a course of steroids!
Of course Work rears its ugly head once more, effectively 2 months worth of Overtime to replace every computer in our Headquarters, that totals around 80 computers. Of course we have to sacrifice our weekends to do them all and they have the cheek to complain that we are doing 3x weekends in a row… how the heck do you think we feel about it!
After this is done, I think we would be able to audition for the next zombie movie no problem!
Senior management are idiots as well, how many companies do you know would willingly investigate moving their IT Department outside of the main office to an off-site location around 23 miles away, while leaving the server room and network infrastructure intact in the main office…
Well that’s what our senior management are thinking of doing… and its looking like they have already decided to do it as well.
Ack well, back to work and lets rebuild this oracle server for the ninnies who broke it!
SMTP Error 554: Transaction failed
by Colin on Dec.03, 2007, under Ramblings
How stupid can some people be?
Particularly when it comes to work email accounts? 
Here at work, we utilise Surfcontrol for filtering web and email for certain items. Its biggest benefit is that it blocks loads of spam, as well as the occasional false-positive (because of certain keywords being caught) as well as Adult Material.
Of course, recently the spammers got intelligent and started sending .MP3 files in with advertisements. Queue the File Formats folder getting inundated with messages and promptly deleted.
(Where am I going with this? just hold on one more second 
)
So, sitting here clearing down the spam list today so any false-positives caught gets passed on and the spam nuked from orbit. I get down to the File Formats folder and find 1 message in the queue.
Someone had decided to forward on a message with a video attached, a nice little video with a comment in the email. So in the course of doing our work we “verify” the video is work related and/or suitable for viewing within work.
Okay, so the first minute was effectively Page 3* material.. , but it went rapidly downhill from there to effective pornographic material. Needless to say the email was deleted immediately from the system, I should of sent a “this message has been blocked due to inappropriate content” to both sender and receiver but I was amazed at the stupidity of the sender in the first place!
The point of this? someone at another company had received this into their work email account, then decided to forward porn onto someone else’s works account! 
It seems to be a point where people forget that sending material like that in most places of work is deemed a serious breach of employee guidelines and worst case scenario you get immediately dismissed from your job with no warning.
*for anybody not from England reading this, Page 3 is from the common “red-top” newspapers like News of the World or The Sun published in England. Where a nicely endowed 18+ female shows off her body wearing very little except for a pair of shorts or bikini bottoms.
Fresh lick of paint…
by Colin on Nov.16, 2007, under News, Ramblings
Another painless upgrade to WordPress, and a new theme to give a bit more “space” to the page.
There seems to be a growing style of “squashed” themes where its all clumped down the middle of the page with huge white bars either side of it, so I went for one which fills most of the page. All I need to do now is to do some quick modification and it’ll be sorted.
Also went to stick WordPress Gallery Embedded (WPG2) onto this blog again, only to discover its a bit of a disgruntled employee… doesn’t want to work and if it can get away with it, wont So it’s been stripped off for the time being until I can figure out how to get it working.
Im also back to my old K750i which I had to fix, the SPV M3100 just has been bugging me with in-car bluetooth issues lately in the Qashqai. Good news is the K750i does work, but I dont know for how long!
Connection Interrupted
by Colin on Oct.25, 2007, under Ramblings
Ever had one of those days where everything seems to be off by 1 
Everything seems to be out of whack? your typing a key off so what comes out as ejsy instead, and anything you do seems to not work out right?
I hate days like that Its not worth the effort doing anything as you know the next day your having to do remedial work to fix everything which is wonky.
still to get used to this new laptop keyboard as well, fingers are all over the place as well so have to keep re-typing stuff
Trapped
by Colin on Oct.24, 2007, under Ramblings
Well, awkward situations seems to be the norm these days so far in life.
Around 2 months ago I discovered that my left shoulder was numb to touch, similar to the feeling you get after going to the dentists.. that one where you can chew your cheek for 5 minutes and not feel anything except blood
Ended up I didn’t think much of it, until the thumb and forefinger on my left hand went numb as well. This is where it went awkward, since I am what you could call a “southpaw”
(Left-handed just in case that reference went orbital)
No sense of touch in your thumb and forefinger means its bloody hard trying to pick anything up, or even grasp a pen properly.
So, down to the doctors to explain the symptoms after spending the night before reading up on the internet. (*note to self, do not believe anything from so-called “health” sites) I was promptly diagnosed with a trapped nerve in my neck and the information was passed across to Physiotherapy section to organise an appointment.
I hate Physios
It should be classed as an unorthodox form of torture, particularly that “traction” machine itself.
Easiest way to piss off a physiotherapist? slouch
On the move…
by Colin on Oct.18, 2007, under Ramblings
At the bottom of my last post in August I mentioned about upgrading my phone to Windows Mobile 6.. Yes I do happen to run around with one of those annoying PDA Phones and decided since I do work in IT, to have a fiddle with it and see what I can break
HTC produces rebranded items for large service providers (T-Mobile, Orange, O2, etc) but were sly, they only made it available through their HTC website to people who had a legit HTC serial number… thanks to some kind souls they managed to find their way onto the XDA Developers forum for all owners to download and try. So I was running the HTC WM6 version on my Orange SPV M3100 (tip: use the XDA Developers WIKI if you want to DIY )
Discovered that WM6′s bluetooth stack isnt the most “stable” of releases, courtesy of my cars bluetooth stereo having problems keeping connected, or having the wonderful “calling” bug appear when I start the engine. (It thinks the phone is making a call, and only way to solve it is to Soft Reset the phone)
So I tried a few other WM6 versions, only to discover that they all exhibit similar bluetooth problems so I am now back on the original WM5 rom from Orange until someone releases an updated WM6 rom which does not suffer issues with Bluetooth.
Well its either that or buy a new phone, and I’m tempted for one of those new Motorola Razr2 V8 phones.
Hell, I would of went for the new Sony Ericsson K850i but at over £450 for the phone, fuck that !
Out with the Old…
by Colin on Aug.30, 2007, under News, Ramblings
So, almost 2 years ago (circa November ’05) I went and exchanged my old Peugeot Partner, for a new Ford Fiesta 1.25 Style.
This was because the Partners fuel economy was closer to a Hummer than its figures made out, so it was effectively costing me loads to drive to work and back each week. A minor niggle back then was also the fact that I was a temporary employee for who I work full time for now, You never do get “job security” when your a temp. so changed cars to something more affordable in case the SHTF (shit hit the fan)
So, 2 years later and I’ve been Permanent for over a year and a half and still driving the Fiesta has proven one minor flaw in my plan. Boot Space.
The Boot in the Fiesta might be “big” for its class, but its bloody tiny when you work in IT. constantly having to fold down the back seats to get stuff in and out gets annoying after a while, so I decided to start looking for a bigger car over 2 months ago.
Ended up last week picking up a brand new Nissan Qashqai 1.5d Acenta from Charles Hurst Nissan in Newtownabbey, fair enough its not as big as some of the Estate cars I had been looking at (like the Mondeo Titanium estate) but its big enough for me.
I’ve also started kicking myself into gear to getting all my Airsoft stuff sorted out for going again, just shortly before the VCR Act starts to affect us. Picked up a nice M16 SPR (Mk 12 Mod 1) AEG from RSOV in Hong Kong for cheap, its one of these dreaded Chinese clones (aka Cheapsoft) so it might develop a fault but its all simple gearboxes and motors at the end of it all… dead simple to fix. All thats left is some load-carrying equipment and I am ready to go.
Now to go and attempt to upgrade my phone (Orange SPV M3100) to Windows Mobile 6…
3rd time (un)Lucky
by Colin on Jul.24, 2007, under Ramblings
Well back in BT for the 3rd time in this job, to the old BIC Systems building down Airport Road West. This time the course is on Microsoft ISA Server 2004 (One of the vital services in my Remit). There is only 3 people attending it, myself and two guys from Dublin… guess its not a course many people want to do!
2nd day already, the first went past in a blur (mainly because it was very old ground, theres only two ways to setup ISA2004… the correct way, and the half-arsed way.)Â So today, we are picking up on how to configure ISA as a Proxy Server, the likes of Access Control Lists and whatnot (last time I done ACL, it nearly caused my brain to dribble out of my ears courtesy of Cisco)
The only sour point is that everything is done within Virtual PC 2007, but the machine is Windows XP, 2 gig of ram and a 2.8gig P4 single core…. they might need to rethink this course with a couple of C2D with hardware virtualisation
anyhow, back to the course!
