IE 7 beta woes

I've been using the Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 release for 10 minutes now. Unfortunately 5 of those minutes have been spent watching a frozen screen. Everytime I try to access my Google Reader page, it freezes up and refuses to cooperate. Every other site has appeared okay.

Ok I take that back - I cannot upload a picture to this blog. Let's see - problems in Google Reader and Blogger. Could it be that Microsoft has something against Google? No, impossible.

I certainly like the tabbed browsing and RSS feeds. Of course I've liked those features in Firefox for a while now. The condensed top bar is better - it takes up less real estate. I cannot figure out how to move the address and search bars around though. Can I change their location?

I'm on my over to the IE 7 newsgroups and feedback area to see what I can find.

UPDATE: Turns out I'm not the only one with these issues. I'm going to be patient and stick with the IE7 release, although I was tempted to go back to 6. Firefox can step in for when IE7 is broken right now. Makes me wonder why I don't default to Firefox anyway. Oh yeah, our CMS is IE only. Kinda sucks.

vpn at last

It's been a long time coming, but we were finally able to implement a site-to-site VPN with our satellite office at Fairfield. I worked with a great guy who volunteered hours of his time to help get this up and running (you're the man Steve!). The site pastor & his staff can now access our Exchange server, file server and printers as if he were on our main campus. This project has been a goal of mine for a long time now and it's great to be able to check it off my list.

Once that was completed, it was an easy next step to get a remote vpn policy setup. I'm sitting in my living room, on my wireless network, connected directly to CLC. This is one of those double-edged swords, of course, because even when I'm home I can be at work. A blessing and a curse, but the benefits of it are tremendous. CLC's emphasis on technology, and IT specifically, is growing so dramatically that I need more access and control. I could easily see myself in a situation like Jason Powell at Granger encountered. Remote access is crucial.

My plan is to test this out for a while and then gradually roll it out to our mobile staff. If this takes off and we begin to have staff working from home, what policies and procedures need to be in place? How big of a can of worms does this open?

$10,000 desktop?

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a big geek. So when I saw Dell's new XPS Renegade desktop I was pretty impressed. I mean, 4.26GHz from the factory is insane - do they even say how they cool this thing? The dual core processor, quad graphics, the paint job - pretty cool. But $10k for a desktop? I guess I'm in the wrong business.

It's also kind of interesting that they introduce this right on the heals of their acquisition of Alienware. And they say there's going to be no competition between the two companies. Right.

wired

This is one of those projects where I looked for any excuse not to do it.


Ever since I started as the IT Director at Christian Life Center, the network "wire closet" was a disaster. This "closet" was actually a nook in the worship band's green room. It was completely exposed, unsecured, and horribly unorganized, and I inherited it in this condition.

Maybe half of those CAT5 cables were labeled, and there were a dozen or more that weren't connected to anything. A third of the lines went to the patch panel, and the rest went straight to the switches. I knew something had to be done, but the thought of pulling all new cable in our building was a nightmare. I really believe our original building was specifically designed to punish anyone wanting to retrofit it with new cable.


I was able to partner with our local community college, Sinclair, as part of their CIS senior capstone class. It was a great scenario, because the students got hands-on experience, and I got free labor!

Over the course of 2 weeks, we ran almost 2 miles of brand new Belkin CAT6 cable, along with Leviton CAT6 keystone jacks. I was able to relocate the patch panels and Cisco switches into the existing server room, which is secured and climate controlled. Everything is clearly labeled, both at the client drop and on the patch panels, and those 1' patch cables keep everything clean and easy to troubleshoot. There's still some cosmetic work to be done, but the hard part is over.


The next phase of this project will be to upgrade one or more of the switches to gigabit.

the bandwagon

I know, I know. This blogging bandwagon is really full. I'm not sure that there's room for more, but I'm going to try to find a seat. Actually I'm doing this for me - regardless if anyone stops for 2 seconds to read it. This is an experiment. Maybe this will force me to be more intentional and focused at work. This is, after all, going to be about what I do for a living. There may be a personal reference here or there, but my goal is to summarize my many projects and maybe get a little feedback. More to come . . .