The J-Mo Zone

Blogging has been pretty low on my priorities of late, but I assure you I haven’t fallen off the map. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire now, but I think I can work blogging back into my routine despite that.

My last week was quite challenging. That’s really what spurred me on to make a post as I had something I wanted to journal. It all started off on Monday with my first few minutes at the office. I checked on our server like I do every weekday morning to make sure things were running as they should. My backup application was reporting an error during the last backup process. While I was looking into the source of the error, the system was running extremely sluggish. I checked the RAID configuration and it showed that one of the three hard drives had failed. That’s not actually a big deal as usually, I can reboot the system and the RAID controller will come to its senses (it had been failing) and recognize all the drives and rebuild the one it “thought” had failed. I asked everyone to log off while I rebooted but also to grab any files off the server they needed for projects they were working on. I had the server reboot… but it didn’t. It got hung on the restart then did the folder/question mark thingy which is the servers way of letting me know it can’t find anything to boot off of. That’s never good. Anyway, I was eventually able to check on my RAID configuration and it showed TWO drives as failed. This presents a significant problem. Also, the indicator lights on the drives that should have shown me they had failed were all green – not the red that they should be. GAH!

If all that wasn’t enough, that evening we had some of the worst storms in years blow through the area toppling trees and cutting power all over the place. My car got hammered by the hail and has several dents in it as a result.

Tuesday started off with the outgoing mail server we use flaking out. It eventually started working but it’s frustrating all the same. I needed to move our server rack into my office so I could work on a temporary solution to my dead server issue. Before I could do that, I had to get the network switch out of the rack and relocate two dozen wires. I waited till the close of business and got everything moved successfully – or so I thought.

Wednesday started off with a phone call that let me know no one could get to any resources on the network. Grrrrrr. I zipped on in to see what was amiss NOW. Thankfully it was an easy fix. There were 2 network cables going from the switch to our router which shouldn’t be the case… only one. I unplugged the extra cable and everything suddenly started working. I was glad it was an easy fix.

Ordered a new server too BTW. Bad news is that its coming in from overseas and will be a week or so.

Thursday… the server our accounting folks use was inaccessible. I looked in the server room and saw a tape sticking out of the tape drive – all it needed was a new tape to finish its backup and all was good to go – thank goodness. Then it was off into the heat for a few hours of photography.

Friday… our incoming mail server was flaky for a few hours. I got a trouble ticket opened up for that and it got healed a few hours later.

I could have sworn I didn’t work in I.T. anymore.

It’s been a long time since I dusted off the old blog and posted but here I am! Honestly though, between Twitter and Facebook (and declining interest in MySpace) I’ve been pretty connected to my closest circle of friends. That and the fact that I’ve been crazily busy lately with life in general. Since my last post I’ve… celebrated my niece’s 2nd birthday, passed 1 year of dating the same girl (that’s a record somewhere), been to Chicago, saw my parents back off to the mission field… those are some of the highlights.

Other highlights are coming from the new friends I’ve made at church. We’ve been growing like nuts lately and the influx of new people, talent and skills has been incredible. If you’re local, I invite you to come visit us at Regal Cinemas behind the mall on the Beltline at 9:00am or 10:15am every Sunday. You can catch the 10:15 live online at http://www.mogulus.com/moviechurch

Now that 2009 is here, I plan to re-evaluate all my social networking connections to see what I want to keep and what needs to go. I’ve been blogging now for several years, so I’m pretty sure this is going to stick around. Lately, I’ve been using Twitter a lot. It’s quickly become the primary way I stay in touch with my closest friends. But… there’s not a “history” like you have with a blog. From time to time I go back and see what I was doing in years past.

My interest in MySpace is waning, although I’m reluctant to drop it as it has been the most common network to find folks on. Facebook is sorta like the new MySpace although it isn’t that much more appealing than the former.

Anyway, if you’ve gotten rid of your blog or other social network connections, I’d love to hear your story as to why in the comments. Thanks!

Oh… happy new year too.

Good grief, went out to get a few last minute gifts and let me tell you – the shoppers are out in force. Store racks and shelves are in a mess from people rummaging thru the merchandise. I was looking for a coat for my sister, so I joined all the guys wandering around the ladies departments trying to figure out how the sizes for women worked. If I could remember back to my retail days where I had managed some womens departments I would be fine, BUT… I’ve slept since then. I pulled the “phone a friend” thing and got the technical support I was needing and walked out with a gift in hand. Mission accomplished.

I also have a good experience to report from TomTom, the GPS people. My parents are here from overseas and are having to do a lot of traveling around. I loaned them my TomTom to use on their journeys. Thing is, the maps on there are 2 years old. I went to the TomTom site to buy updated maps and found what I needed. The map update was $79. I downloaded it then put it on my device. The next day I was on their website and saw they had put the map update on sale for $59. Craptacular. I made one call in to their tech support line and they hooked me up with a $20 credit back to my card. Great service from them.

Anyway, Megan and I have been getting our eat on this week. Tuesday night we had dinner at Bonefish Grill with our friends Brandon and Jaime. Thursday night was dinner with Beth and Jimmie at The Jazz Factory. Food all around was excellent. Friday night we ate at Red Robin before catching a movie at Monaco Pictures over at Bridgestreet. Whew! Party tonight with Megan’s church group. The fun just keeps on rolling!

I’m sorry my blog has fallen a bit by the wayside as of late, but I’ve had less time lately to spend on it. If you’re following me on Twitter though then you’re up to date on the day to day stuff. Several of my close friends are on Twitter and that’s how we’ve been keeping up with one another for the most part. To that end, I’m still digging my iPhone. So far, it’s the coolest little piece of technology I’ve got. The Blackberry 8700G I had before it served me well, but it’s time had past and it was time for a technology upgrade.

I briefly played around with another “look” for my blog, but it turned out to need a whole lot more time to keep it looking good so I dumped it and went back to this one for now. Wordpress (my blog software back-end) is about to upgrade to a new version any day now and I think this current them I have going will transition well once the upgrade is released. That’s not something I could say for the one I was trying out.

Church was great today! We started a new series titled “Inked : Leaving your Mark” complete with a real tattoo artist and a live tattoo session on stage. You can check out the service HERE. You can also check out the intro video HERE. In that last video, you’ll see Stacey (Kevin’s wife) then Megan (my chica) and then Rodney (Jenny-Fur’s Hubby). Incidentally, Rodney was the one getting the tattoo work done on stage. He’s no stranger to tattoo’s. Check out the intro video and you’ll see.

Kevin was a trooper today. He was actually less fussy despite him fighting pneumonia (or so he says… heh). The band made it just fine with a limited number of “brown” notes. Thanks to Chris for holding down the low end and to Tony for showing us that those guitar effect pedals have more than just a “clean” and “distorted” setting. I’m just saying – if you’ve got technology, it’s amazing what you can do if you learn how to really use it.

Had a great afternoon hanging out with friends for lunch at Rodney’s place. KILLER potato soup over there. WOW. Alexis (their daughter) had an incident with her bike though. She was riding it down her driveway then suddenly forgot how to ride. That’s never good. Funny, but not good. Back home for some laundry and nappage then met up with a crew at Cracker Barrel to get abused by a Dutch waitress. Good times.

Back to work tomorrow which means it’s past my bedtime.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve made a few changes around here as I try and spruce things up a little to keep it interesting. I really like this theme I’m using now, but there’s a bit of a learning curve to making everything work as it should. When I first got it online, all kinds of things were broken. I had to do some heavy tinkering and tweak some of the code to get things pointed in the right direction. So, if you notice something that doesn’t appear to be working or looking right, you’re probably correct. I’ll be fixing things as I go. One thing with this theme is that every post can have an image associated with it. I don’t plan on going back in time and adding images to older posts other than the few most recent ones I used to test with.

Is there such a thing? If you can be too connected, the iPhone definitely is an enabler – that’s for sure. At the end of the day, the iPhone is a touchscreen computer that happens to work as a phone too. The variety of applications you can add to it is what personalizes the phone and give you the functionality you want. Twitterrific is an app I use lot. It lets you connect to the Twitter network. Till I got my iPhone, I was a light “twitterer” at best. Now, it’s one of the main avenues I stay in touch with friends. I’ve even gotten to know some new friends a lot better now with it. Anyway, there are so many different ways to connect with others that just picking out the medium to use is a daunting task. For now, it’s Twitter and Loopt. I still have my Facebook and MySpace of course, but I’m not using them as much as I have in the past. What do you find yourself using most? (if you don’t use anything – obviously this question isn’t directed at you)

I had the opportunity to zip up to the Smokey Mountains this past weekend to spend time relaxing with friends. I grew up in Knoxville – south Knoxville to be exact. From my house there, it was only about a 45 minute run till you were in Pigeon Forge and a few more minutes to Gatlinburg. From there you were another few minutes to the Sugarland Visitors Center – the first spot most folks go when arriving at the park. Back in the day, my friends and I would take my Trans-Am and go all over the place. Nothing like having the t-tops out and driving around those curvy mountain roads to make for a fun time.

I did make it over to Cades Cove to drive around the loop. Nothing has changed from what I could tell. My last time in the park was at least 20 years ago. I did get to see some wildlife this go around. First was a small black bear. Of course all I had on my camera was my wide-angle lens so that did me no good. All you see in the image is a dark spot in the grass. I did have better luck with some deer though…

What a pleasant surprise! Our agency won some awards for work we did for the City of Decatur. One was even “Best of Show”. This is one of those things we’ll be placing on our website, but one of the steps was to get a photo of the awards themselves. The problem is that they are made from a clear material with some faceted accents which can make photos a little challenging. I had an idea of how I was going to light it and nailed it on the first try. Checkit yo.