The Interview

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So bright and early at 8:30 this morning I had an Interview with a Healthcare Provider for a position as Senior LAN Manager. They had just let the previous guy go a couple of weeks ago and things were starting to go to hell in a hand basket. That right there tells me something about there network. Anyway I knew I had the qualifications they were looking for. I read the add and it was pretty much exactly what was on my resume. I just had to nail the interview. I got in there and he was pretty nice. He really only asked me one question. I answered that, and then just basically talked to him for the next almost two hours. So it was a very informal interview. Unfortunately I wasn't dressed for a informal interview. I had the full monkey suit on... suit, tie, and Dilbert boxers... everything! I talked to there 60 year old PC tech. He's quite the character. Anyway they said they were interviewing 5 people and I was number 3. He said as of now I had the job unless someone knocked me off the top of the heap. That's good news. And on top of that it's for more money that DDi. Speaking of DDi, I got home and had two messages on my answering machine. The first was from Greyhound wanting to set up an interview. The second was from DDi's former VP of finance. He said that himself and the former President of Value Added where in the process of buying the sheet metal division of DDi. He said I was the best IT guy that he knew and wanted me to come do some contract stuff for them. DDi is keeping all there IT guys so the sheet metal is with out any network support. Right now they have a lot of work to be done. They have no FTP, Web, or email. So I get all the fun things... Anyway, so on the job front it was a pretty good day. More to come tomorrow when I'm not nearly as tired..... Yawwwnn...

Update: Here's the pics...

DCP01174.JPG

DCP01176.JPG

Code Red Virus

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Do you remember the code red virus? It’s a very simple virus to kill and almost as easy to prevent. Or so I thought, but then again maybe I’m just seeing people laziness, lack of knowledge, caring or both. I reset the apache logs on the first of April. Since that reset I’ve log 71 different IP’s attempting to infect my server. Now of course this virus doesn’t know or care if you’re an IIS server or apache it just knows it wanted to try and infect everything that responds to port 80. Anyway that’s just an observation.

We can rebuild him….

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We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic PVR. Tivo will be that PVR. Better than he was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster. It Lives..... Resurrected from the dead, the Tivo Lives!!! From it's humble beginnings as a 35 hour Tivo, it now lives as a 185 hour monster of a PVR. I'm going to document the details on the message board for those interested.

Another crisis as usual……

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Well bad things happened again yesterday. My Tivo died. I called Tivo, they wanted nothing to do with it. I called Hughes Networking, they too washed there hands of it. I finally called DirecTV and they said it was theirs to take care of but it was out of warranty by all of two weeks. So basically I'm on my own. There was a little good news. Since I'd hacked it and upgraded to a larger second hard drive I had a backup of the OS. The smaller original hard drive was what died by the way. So I brought it all into to work this morning and I'm going to upgrade the smaller primary drive. I started with a 40GB Tivo and I'll finally in the end have a 220GB Tivo. Hopefully It'll all work out. In any case, wish me luck.

I’m Back…..

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So I wanted Monday off, ya know seeing how it is a holiday and everything. I talked to my boss last week and told him I wanted Monday off but didn't want to take any Vacation, Sick time or Paid Time Off. He asked why and I just told him I wanted a long weekend. I mean, what were they going to do, fire me. He said as long as I kept my phone near by he didn't have a problem with that. BTW he didn't say I had to answer it. So I headed off to Rachel's for the weekend. I had alot of little projects I needed to take care of for her. Of course on this particular weekend everything I touched pretty much went to shit. It was extremely frustrating. I gave her a new PC and it took WAY to long to switch that out. I set her up with some satellite TV and that took 4 trips to wal-mart and a day too long to get up and it's still not completely right. She had a sink that was slow to drain. Well after trying to fix that I managed to get it where it wouldn't drain at all. Another day later I finally got it draining. So most things ended up mostly working in the end, but it wasn't easy. Then on top of that I'm sure I was wearing on my welcome being there an extra day but when it's all said and done I did have a pretty good time. Even with all the pulling out my hair. I also have to thank Rachel for really trying to make it easy for me to have good things to eat. Ya know with my diabetes and everything. So I'm back at work today and my boss wants to talk to me. I guess we'll see what he wants. Maybe they will fire me. :)

P.S. Good Luck today Rachel. We are all with you.

Coolness……

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So I ordered these parts for my computer last night at about 8:30PM or so.... It's just after 10:00AM or so and I've already received the case. It shipped from Ohio last night at midnight and now it's here. Thank god I live in modern times and not the early 1900's or something. Shipping in 10 hours from ohio vs. not having any way to keep ice frozen. I think I'll take the now-a-daze rather than the good-ole-daze. It's a VERY cool case by the way. Definately worth the extra $20. It's all aluminumn so It's very light and still pretty strong and it's WAY blue.

New PC………

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So I've been having some problems with my ole beater of a PC. Well it's not that much a beater but it is a year old so it's pretty much over the hill now. I've troubleshot the problem down to most likely the motherboard. Well I figured if I have to buy a new MB I should go ahead and get a chip as well. Last night I ordered my stuff. I got a Gigabyte MB with a AMD XP 2400 cpu. Not a great MB but a good one. The CPU was just at the top end of the price break. I could have gotten the 2200 for a bit less but it wasn't near as much as the 2600. With the video card I have and adding a lot more processor I figured I needed a little more power than I currently have. I found the power supply I wanted and it was $119. That's pretty steep since I can buy a really nice case with that exact power supply in it for $140. Well I decided I needed a change of scenery so I went for the whole case. I'll be using most of the rest of my old PC in the new PC. I will be changing out my burner for a different one that's a bit faster. So as an overview I will be moving from the 1.3GHz/512MB RAM/170GB HDD to the new 2.4GHz/512MB Ram/170GB HDD machine. Not quite double the speed but still a nice upgrade. Unreal Tournament will thank me.......

ACkkkkk…….

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This morning I had to delete three post. For some reason they wouldn't publish. I think it was the third one that was causing the problems. They weren't very good post anyway so I just deleted them. Anyway that's not really what I wanted to talk about anyway. This weekend I had to be at work all day Saturday, so I figured I would hack my Tivo. My Tivo has a 35 Hour (40GB) hard drive in it. Now you'd think 35 hours is more than anybody can use, but you'd be wrong. I need way more than the 35 hours. I wanted to buy the bigest one possible when I bough it but they were way to expen$ive. I think it was like $600 for a 70 hour Tivo at the time. So I took my Tivo to work and busted it open. I left my 40GB hard drive in there and added a 120GB drive to it. That took my piddly little 35 hour system to 146 hours. That's more like it. Now I can fucntion in my little Tivo world the way god meant me to. Now as far as cost.... well as far as I can tell I made out great. The Tivo was $130 and the hard drive was another $160, so that brings me to $290. That's alot of money but I looked online and the bigest Direct Tivo (directtv version) I found was a 60 hour system for $450. Image what they would charge for a 146 hour system. I think I made out pretty good... I also made a backup of my Tivo software. So if the hard drive ever dies I can replace it myself and not have to send it into the shop. So I feel I did OK for myself and had some fun with it at the same time.....

:)

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Geezzz.... I've been slackin a bit on the ole blog. You'd think with all the "free" time I have been having at work I'd write a little more. But no.... I guess I just haven't feel much like writing. I have worked on the site alot. Nuthin you can really see but just the fact that you can't tell means I did something right. I re-coded alot of it. It didn't change the look but it did make it easier to maintain. Something alot of people don't know is that there are actually two blogs. Kind of like the mobster having two sets of books. One you let everone see and the real ones. Blogs are kind of the same way. The censored version, so your 10 year old son can read it, and the "other one". Well this week the "other one" went down. So I spent alot of time this week putting it back the way it was. It doesn't have to be pretty cuz it's only for my own mental well being anyway. So it's Friday night and I have the taste of lime on my lips, and a little corna to go with it, so what do you think I'm doing..... Yup... You guessed it. After taking a little nap, I'm walking around the apartment complete doing a little war driving... ummmmm... urrrrrrr Walking, yeah war walking. That's basicly walking around looking for wireless networks with a laptop and a wireless card. I found 4 here within about 100 yards of the apartment. Of those 2 are secure but the other 2 are wide open. Last week between home and work I found 19 of which 15 were open. And that was at 40 Mph. I can just imagin what I could find if I really looked. Scarry just to think of it. Anyway, I gotta cut some more limes and catch some TV. See ya........

………..

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So I'm still fighting the ole T1 issue. I personally think it's a problem with our ISP. But my boss has a special place in his heart for these guys. Of course these are the same guys that installed a wireless system and then when it didn't perform they came to the conclusion that the antenna's were too close. That's like saying your race car is too fast. What in the hell were they thinking. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's there problem but I'm taking a lot of the heat for it. Not for much longer though. So, it was a pretty easy day at work today. I was there until almost 8pm but that cuz I just forgot what time it was. It's hard when you work in a building with very few people. You don't really notice when they go home. So you have to keep track of that kind of thing yourself. I actually got some things done around the house today. I got the bills paid, the living room cleaned up, and the kitchen looking a lot better. I still need to work on the floors a bit...

Request timed out……..

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So yesterday was the IT day from hell..... We lost internet about five times yesterday and once already today. We have between 95% and 105% usage on that T1. We where dropping ALOT of packets which makes it look like a denial of service attack. It's not, but it looks like it. After troubleshooting I found a bad router. I don't know what's up with it but I'm sure it's got bad things going on inside it. So today my entire job consist of watching a ping waiting for it to drop off and then when it does rebooting that damn router. Sounds fun, huh.......

I’m Hungry…..

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Today I put up pics of my TV that I've been rambling on about for the last week. They are on the main page at www.williamhughes.net. I'm really like it alot. I watched Top Gun on it this afternoon. It's an OLD movie that still looks really good on a NEW tv. Let the healing begin. Soooooooo...... I'm sittin here doing laundry tonight. Sounds like the normal wild Saturday night around here. I'm going to pack tomorrow for my Boston trip on Monday.