the way i see it

I've moved

2006-06-27T21:15:00.000-05:00

I have abandoned Blogger and can now be found at my new Wordpress blog.

I Feel . . .

2006-06-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

This site is amazing. It's capturing people's feelings from blogs and displaying them in amazing ways. Everytime someone writes "I feel" or "I'm feeling" etc. it sees that and adds it to the site.

New website progress

2006-06-22T19:48:00.000-05:00

Ever since DREAM3 announced they will no longer exist, I have been in the process of rebuilding our website from scratch with Elexio. Our current website will continue to exist as it is, but we have halted any further development in order to build our new site.

The prospect of building an entirely new site from scratch is incredibly daunting, especially since the website is just one of my responsibilities. As massive of a project as it is, I'm really excited about it because I know this new site will be great. We've designed it to be much more user friendly and it's got a fresh new look. It's still in development, but you can follow the site's progress by following this temp link.

I think Elexio, along with Intellisite, will allow us to have an excellent site without requiring a full-time web person. My role will be to oversee the sites and maintain the big stuff. However, I will rely heavily on other departments and volunteers to maintain their area's pages.

Intellisite, like DREAM3, is a WYSIWYG content management system that allows us to create and maintain the content of the site. In other words, if you know how to use MS Word, you can probably volunteer on the web team.

Unlike DREAM3, though, we get a very professional looking site - because it's designed by a professional. Not having a web person on staff, this is a huge plus and I think you'll agree the new design is coming along very well (although slowly - see below).

So far, Elexio has proven to be miles ahead of DREAM3 in several ways:

Intellisite's content editor really works. D3 was incredibly frustrating for many reasons. What you saw was usually not what you got. It did some stuff well, but overall it was clumsy and cumbersome. Don't get me wrong - the Intellisite editor has its share of frustrations, but if you worked in D3 you will want to kiss your monitor after working in Intellisite.
Intellisite is incredibly user friendly. The file manager is similar to Windows Explorer, and supports drag-and-drop (although I often cannot make things drop - I think it's a bug).
The form creator is excellent
I can set user permissions on a per page basis. If I don't grant you publisher rights to a specific area, you cannot change or create a page and post it live to the site w/o first having your changes approved by a publisher. With D3, it was all or nothing.
I can see who changed what page when. Also, I can see past versions of pages and revert back to a previous version at any time.
I have access to incredibly detailed site stats, i.e. how many hits & visitors, how long do visitors stay, referrers, browser information, search engine stats, etc.

Right now I'm in the process of collecting information from all the departments. I'm also waiting on the design of the main site to be completed so we can move on to our 3 youth sites and the Fairfield site.

To be honest, I'm a little frustrated because this design process has been really slow. It's been almost 2 1/2 months since our initial design meeting and I have yet to be able to revise draft number one. I know this is a really busy time at Elexio, and my designer was recently married and on his honeymoon. On top of that they are moving their offices to a new location. So, I'm being patient, but I'm beginning to get frustrated. If it's taken this long for one site, how long will 4 more take? I've emailed and called several times with no response. I signed up with Elexio long before DREAM3 officially chose them to take over their customer base. I hoped that would keep me from being just 1 of hundreds, but maybe not. I hope this is not an indication of things to come.

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, and I'm excited to move forward with everything.

Power Management

2006-06-21T20:33:00.000-05:00

About a year and a half ago I installed an APC Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL to replace a much smaller and very old UPS. This thing is a beast, and it's done a great job of protecting the currently 5 servers, tape autoloader and some networking hardware (all that at only 39% load). CLC is notorious for bad power, and we've recently had as many as 4 outages in 3 weeks. I feel very lucky that nothing major has happened to any of our equipment.

My biggest concern lately is that if our power is out for longer than 15-20 minutes, the APC UPS dies and all that connected equipment shuts down hard (ouch!). I've been looking for a solution that, in the event of an extended outage, would:

page my cell phone to alert me of the problem
gracefully shut down all the servers before the battery dies, and
reboot all servers when the power is restored

It's kind of funny because I talked to several high-end IT consulting types and they didn't have a clue how to do all that. After some research, I settled on PowerChute Business Edition (PCBE). As it turns out, a copy came with the UPS and it's been sitting in a filing cabinet for a year and a half - doh!

I've really wanted to solve this for a while now, but trying to find the time . . .
Well, four outages in three weeks is enough to drive something up the priority scale. Today I dove in head first and here's what I learned:

PowerChute Business Edition comes in 2 flavors: Basic and Deluxe.
I have Basic and that's fine. You can see the major differences here.

There's 3 elements to PCBE: the PowerChute Agent, the Server, and the Console.

The Agent provides UPS status monitoring and, in the event of an extended power outage, system
shutdown capabilities for UPS-protected computers. This software must be installed on each computer that is directly attached (via a serial cable) to one of the UPS systems.
The Server is used to configure and monitor the PCBE Agents. The PowerChute Server gathers information from the Agents and provides centralized event tracking, event notification and a single point of contact for the PowerChute Console. This software must be installed on a networked computer, and preferably one with an Agent installed as well.
The Console connects to the PowerChute Business Edition Server to provide the user interface for
managing and configuring UPS-protected systems. Install the Console on any workstation, desktop, or laptop (running a supported operating system). I've got it installed on my laptop.

The installation was really straight forward. The only issues were because of my ignorance. I assumed I needed one server directly connected to the UPS via a serial cable and it would be responsible for alerting the other servers to shut down in an outage. Wrong!

Shutting down multiple servers from a single Smart-UPS requires some additional hardware.
Oh well - I'm headed in the right direction. For a couple hundred more bucks I can complete the setup and gracefully shut down all the servers when we lose power. For now I can control one server, as well as monitor the health of the UPS.

Most importantly, though, I now have a notification system in place when we lose power. After some research and testing, I was able to configure PCBE to email my cell phone when there's a problem. That's miles ahead of the "I hope our Maintenance guy remembers to call me" solution I was using before.

I think I'm on the right track. What's everybody else doing?

Google Notebook

2006-06-20T23:00:00.000-05:00

How many times have you read something online that you wanted to remember, but bookmarking it doesn't cut it? I've been using Google Notebook for a few weeks now, and I really like it. After you install the tiny app, you can add pages & content to your notebook either by selecting and right-clicking, or clicking the notebook icon added to your browser. Then you can organize your content under headings and/or separate notebooks. And, of course the notebook is accessible from your Google account so you can access it from anywhere. You can also make your notebook public, so others can search and view your notes.
This is great for me because I do so much reading and research all over the net. Now I can have a central repository of the really cool stuff I run across.

Dell PowerEdge Updates

2006-06-13T11:56:00.000-05:00

Dell is now announcing their latest PowerEdge Server updates. They include Xeon 5000 series dual-core processors, PCI-Express I/O, Serial-Attached-SCSI (SAS) Hard Drives, and TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) NICs.

I was looking at a 2850 for our file & print services next year, so I'll definitely be taking a look at the 2950.

We had company

2006-06-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

You know when you were a kid and your parents were having company over, everyone spent hours making the house clean and shiny and you had to be on your best behavior? That's the way it felt at CLC over the last couple days. In fact, if I had seen the secret service I'd have sworn the president was visiting.

Well, I didn't see the men in black, but he did have an entourage. Bill Hybels of Willowcreek Community Church flew in to CLC for a brief gathering with local pastors. CLC is a host site for the 2006 Leadership Summit, which will feature Hybels, Andy Stanley, Bono (yes, the Bono) and others.

Hybels visit was to promote the summit and encourage other churches to attend. Of course I wasn't privy to be in the little gathering, but I heard it was pretty good.

T-Mobile rebate rip off

2006-06-09T21:04:00.000-05:00

I received my notification in the mail today about my $50 mail in rebate from my T-Mobile phone. I was expecting a $50 check, but instead I just got a letter saying they couldn't process my request because I didn't include the original UPC from the phone box. Of course that's crap and I'm 100% sure I submitted everything correctly.

Google "T-mobile rebate ripoff" and you'll find plenty of others with the same experience. They know I have no way of proving anything, so they've got the upper hand and they're using it. I called their rebate "customer service" number, and the operator said that unless I have a copy of the UPC, he couldn't do a thing. I should have known better, but of course I didn't make a copy of that. I have the original box with a big hole in it, but that's it.

I submitted a complaint on ripoffreport.com, but I'm not sure it will do any good. What else can I do?

It could only mean one thing . . .

2006-06-09T20:16:00.000-05:00

Around this time every year at CLC, it's not uncommon for staff to disappear for days at a time to work off site. Others barricade themselves in their office and post signs warning others to enter at their own risk. Still others deny there's anything wrong and secretly hope it will go away. And of course, some blog.

That's right - it's budget time at Christian Life Center!

I personally chose to shut the office door, put on the headphones and crank the iPod. And if that doesn't work, I head out to Panera.

After 2 solid days of internet research, crunching numbers, following up on quotes, and lots of coffee and bagels, my budget is done.

Almost.

A little more rationale and I'll be ready to turn in everything by the Monday 9am deadline.

It's always a bit of a challenge for me because I have to project everything the whole church may need for an entire year. This includes everything related to computers, software, servers, printers, internet service, email, networking, the website, the phone system, campus security, and a lot of other things.

In the IT world, this is quite a challenge because everything's constantly changing and upgrading and breaking. I've done well over the past few years, but I always worry about forgetting something really important.

I don't take this lightly at all - it's a huge responsibility. I'm personally responsible for spending tens of thousands of tithe dollars, so I need to be sure I'm planning for the future and making wise decisions. Every line in my budget includes rationale. It's a time consuming process, but a necessary one.

I wonder what the process is like at other churches.

Freudian slip?

2006-05-26T07:42:00.000-05:00

Talk about a slip of the tongue . . .

Fun with the Pres

2006-05-26T07:07:00.000-05:00

I saw excerpts of this video last month, but the entire segment is now available on Google Video (thanks to Jason & David). It's Bush at a Correspondents dinner giving a speech, and he's got an impersonator "interpreting" his remarks. It's hilarious, and I love that the President can laugh at himself like this.

Now What?

2006-05-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

Is there anyone out there that didn't see the finale of American Idol? The outcome was pretty predictable (I still think Katharine will be bigger) but the show was definitely huge. I do think they milked it for all it was worth though. Thank God for Tivo. I couldn't have lasted 2 full hours - especially because half of it was commercials.

Actually, the entire thing was one big commercial. Besides the shameless plugs for Coke and Ford, almost every guest artist on the finale, and every other Idol episode for that matter, was there to promote something. Half of last night's artists are plastered all over the iTunes store today selling their latest album. Coincidence?

Idol was the last big TV show that we've been keeping up with in our house. Our favorites this season were Grey's Anatomy, Lost, House & Scrubs. Close behind were The Office and My Name is Earl. We've never kept up with TV before like we have this season. I'm glad it's all over now though, because the weather's getting nice and all I want to do is go outside and play.

Gigabit - for now

2006-05-23T22:37:00.000-05:00

Less than 4 years ago, we upgraded the CLC network from 10 Mbps hubs to 100Mbps Cisco switches. It was a significant upgrade. We were pretty happy with ourselves and thought we'd be set for a long time.

This week I installed 2 new Linksys gigabit switches and plan to upgrade the rest by year's end. Now our core switch, which connects our servers and DSL, is talking at 1000 Mbps. Also, the Ministry Center is now connected to the network over a fiber gig link. The fiber has been in place for several years, but it was terminated with a 100 Mb fiber/copper media converter on each side. Now it's connected to a 1000 Mbps fiber GBIC on each end, which gives us a lot more speed to work with.

Now we'll be set for a long time - right?

wireless bridging

2006-05-09T19:51:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about my job is that I am constantly forced to learn new things and be challenged. My latest opportunity involves networking a couple buildings on our campus that have never been connected. The Student Life Center is less than 300 feet away with a clear line of sight, and "The House" is 1700 feet away and on the other side of a forest.

I've been considering connecting the SLC wirelessly, but I don't think it will be an option with the house. I met with a guy today from a local company who specializes in fiber optic installation. I'm curious to see what the cost will be to trench from the main building to the house and lay fiber between the two. If we go that route, we will connect the SLC at the same time since it's on the way.

In the mean time, I need to work on getting a quick solution for the SLC. I've had a couple Linksys WAP54G's laying around for a while and have wanted to test them out as a wireless bridge. Today I finally found the motivation to begin testing from Tony Dye at Perimeter Church. Thanks Tony! I'll be curious to see if they run into any weather-related interference - rain, lightning, snow, etc.

After several hours of configuring, upgrading firmware, testing, and almost cursing - success! (sort of). The problem I ran into is that my APs don't support WPA in wireless bridge mode. I have v.2 of the WAP54G, and it's only supported in version 3 or higher. Of course that fact was nonexistent on Linksys' website and I only discovered it when I broke down and asked an online Linksys tech. So, I'm temporarily running WEP to make it work, but I will be upgrading the APs soon to take advantage of WPA2. I have no faith in WEP, but it's better than nothing. I'm ordering some high-gain outdoor antennas, and I'll post pics when I implement this in the buildings. This should be a good solution until we can get fiber out there.

mozy on over

2006-04-25T06:48:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling for a long time to routinely and successfully back up my home computer. I've got 9 gigs of MP3s and thousands of pictures, as well as videos and documents - the usual. I've tried backing up to DVDs & external hard drives, but that takes way too much time and requires me to be involved - not to mention that I have to lug the DVDs and hard drive to work in case my house burns down. I've tried manually copying the files to an FTP server on my web server, but I worry about encryption, and again I have to be involved. Inevitably I forget to back stuff up for a month and then my hard drive crashes (yes, it happened a couple months ago).

I've been looking for a solution that is web based, so when the house blows up I've still got my data. It also needs to be automatic. It needs to allow me to select exactly what I want to back up in what directories, and then when I change the contents of those directories, it backs up accordingly. Oh, and it needs to be cheap. I'm sure there's options out there, but until this weekend I hadn't seen any.

Enter Mozy.

I ran across this site the other day and I've now been testing their product for a few days. So far it meets all my criteria. You download a little app that runs in your system tray. You tell it what types of files in what directories to backup, and then it backs up those files to its servers using your broadband connection. I have it set so it backs up automatically in the background when my computer is idle for 20 minutes. Currently I'm telling it to backup a specific folder in My Pictures. Whenever I add more pictures in that folder, Mozy backs them up.

Mozy gives you 2 gigs of space for free - you just have to agree to fill out a survey and receive a weekly ad newsletter. This is a great way for me to test the product. I've had bad experiences with other online storage (cough cough, streamload, cough), so I wouldn't pay for their service unless I knew it was going to work.

If you need more space you can get up to 20 gigs for $39.95 a year - their most expensive plan. That's very reasonable.

I've had Mozy working on my 1.9 gigs of pictures for the last few days, and I've admittely run into several issues. First things first - Mozy is still in beta, so bugs are to be expected. I had several connection errors this weekend, and at one point I couldn't log in to my account because it said I didn't exist. However, to Mozy's credit the backup picked up right where it left off each time it encountered a problem. I'm not forced to start from the beginning.

Finally this morning I had a successful backup. Granted, it took a couple days to upload almost 2 gigs of data, but I'm using a tiny DSL connection. Once the initial upload is complete, it's just incremental from there.

I need to make sure that I can successfully restore the files, and Mozy needs to make sure they work the bugs out soon. I'd be willing to pay for their service if they can assure me a stable product.

Head count vs. people count

2006-04-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

Every weekend at CLC we take attendance. In each of our 4 services, you sign your name on a "Connection Pad" to let us know you were here and that information is then manually entered into Shelby. Naturally, not everyone in service actually signs in, either because they come in late, the connection pad is never passed, etc. To get a complete head count, our ushers count everyone each service and, as I recently learned, that data is manually entered into a spreadsheet - yes, a spreadsheet, not Shelby.
Both sets of data are very important to CLC. We need to know who attends when in order to effectively keep up with individuals (people count), and we also need to be able to keep track of how many people total are attending (head count). The problem is, those 2 sets of data are handled very differently. If we want to look at an individual's attendance record, we can easily get that from Shelby. However, when I recently asked how we could view the total weekend attendance patterns for the last year, I learned it was not that simple. As it stands now, a staff member would have to sort through her weekly reports that she prepares in Excel and prints out and stores in a 3 ring binder. Archaic, to say the least.
I was very surprised to learn that we were not using Shelby to keep track of head count, but I thought is was just because no one knew how. It seems like such a basic function, so I was sure Shelby could handle it. I made it a point to look into this when I had the opportunity to speak with a sales rep from Shelby, and I was really surprised to learn that there was no such function. I wonder what other Shelby churches do??
I know what Fellowship One churches do. I had an excellent conversation with Jeff from F1 (thanks for the time Jeff!) and I learned that F1 definitely provides for this situation. Add another item to my list.

A big step . . . finally

2006-04-13T22:27:00.000-05:00

Starting next week, CLC will be able to accept online credit cards or electronic checks for event registration payments through our website. This is a big step in the right direction for us, although it's definitely long overdue.

We've been using ServiceU Corporation's product EventU now for several months for facilities management and our web calendar. More on our experiences in upcoming posts.

If you want to accept registration payments in EventU, you need the add-on TransactU. I finally got approval to add it to our system last week. It took a few days to set up a merchant account to process credit cards and e-checks. Within a week of getting the approval, I'm already prepared to train our staff and launch this on the website. Because we do so many different types of events and payment structures, I was a little worried that we'd run into issues. Now that I've been working in the new system, I know it will be able to handle anything we can throw at it.

I've actually been quite impressed with TransactU. It's a great product - setting it up is simple, it's easy to customize, and most importantly the end user's experience is excellent. In addition, ServiceU provides great support for their products. I've had to call and email them several times this week with questions, and they are always available and helpful. Admittedly, I'm pretty tough to impress, but so far they've done it.

We used EMS for several years in an attempt to get a handle on our event and facilities management, but room and resource requests for events were still done using a paper form. That form had to be processed manually and compared to the EMS database. If the request was rejected, the form would go back to the requestor and they would have to figure out a different meeting time/place. In addition, if the event required AV support or food services, there was a whole other set of forms and procedures. Once the event was finally approved, it was manually entered into EMS. Then, every approved event had to be individually entered into our website calendar so it would be displayed publicly. The entire process was extremely inefficient, required a full-time position to manage it and included lots of room for errors.

The staff at CLC is now effectively using internet-based EventU for every event request. It's taken us a while to get to this point, but it's not because there was anything wrong with EventU. In fact, I can't say enough good things about the product. We had everything set up and working in a few weeks. It's just always difficult to introduce change into a process that's been in place for years. Some people accept change better than others, and I think others fear it.

I can elaborate later, but the product has more than proven itself. Our facilities/room requests, website calendar and event registrations are now online, simplified and easily accessible.

Goodbye PDA - Hello Smartphone

2006-04-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

Slashdot The Future of the PDA
I know people have been talking about the death of the PDA for quite a while. Sony's been out of the market for a while, and there are less and less options out there for a stand alone PDA. I finally dumped the Toshiba e355 Pocket PC this weekend for a T-Mobile SDA. Finally, I've got my phone, PDA & digital camera in one device. I can now say I really love this thing, although it's taken me several days to get there. I owe it only to my ignorance, but figuring out the Bluetooth connection for ActiveSync was a pain in the butt.
Now that everything's syncing and surfing, I'm really impressed - WiFi, Bluetooth, digital camera, etc etc etc, and it's smaller than my old flip phone. It feels rock solid, the battery life is great and the call quality has been excellent. My only complaint is the cramped keyboard layout. I understand they had to pack it all in to a tiny form factor. But I would prefer losing the dedicated Media Player buttons, which I never use, in favor of less dainty navigation & number keys. That being said, it's a tiny negative that I'm already getting used to.

IT could be drafted into Boot Camp

2006-04-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article about adopting Macs in the workplace. We've got half a dozen Macs at CLC, and I support them when I can but I sub out level two support to a Mac consultant who's gone to CLC for years.

PC on a Mac has been around for years in the form of Virtual PC. Of course anyone who's tried to use it everyday at work knows you'd rather have a separate PC. But Boot Camp will allow you to run both Mac & Windows natively on the Intel Mac. However, rebooting every time you want to switch your OS isn't the most practical thing.

I've got to hand it to Apple, though. There are countless PC users who have thought about switching to a Mac, but they were tied to their PC-only apps. Now, with a free download from Apple, they have removed the biggest barrier those PC users faced. Personally I'd love to upgrade my home dual G5 to an Intel Mac.

I wonder how many requests from CLC staff I'm going to get now for the Intel Macs.

Macworld: News: Computerworld: IT could be drafted into Boot Camp

Shelby upgrade

2006-04-10T19:51:00.000-05:00

Since I have been in my position at CLC, we have outgrown the current server environment. Basically what I inherited was a single 900 MHz processor NT4 server. On that server was our Shelby database and MS Exchange 5.5, as well as all file and print services, and it was the domain controller. I've got over 50 client machines, so needless to say we were long overdue for an upgrade.

We recently upgraded the domain to Windows 2003 Server on 2 new dual-processor Dell servers. One box is now dedicated to MS Exchange 2003, which has been running successfully for a couple months. The other has been patiently waiting for me to move Shelby to it. We finally scheduled for the IT Department and the Finance Director to get together last Wednesday night to make it happen. We kicked out all the users at 3pm (they were notified a week in advance). I had already installed SQL 2000 and Shelby with a blank db on the new server, so the process was pretty straight forward. We made a backup of the db from the NT4 box, then transferred and restored that backup to the new installation. After we verified that was successful, we installed Mailrom. The entire server side of the project went very quickly. Of course, I planned and researched this entire process over and over again, so I was very confident. Plus I performed this migration during Shelby's support business hours, so I knew they were there if I needed them.

On a side note, Shelby's support hours are M-F only - kind of odd for a company who is in business for churches. What happens when we start using their Check In program and we run into a problem at 10am Sunday morning?

The only glitch I ran into was during the installation of Shelby on the new server. It turns out that SQL must be installed using the default instance. When I installed SQL, I named the instance "Shelby" in an attempt to keep things neat & organized (a bad habit I have). However, after a couple minutes of troublshooting w/ a Shelby tech, we discovered the problem. A quick reinstall of SQL with the default instance and we were back in business.

Anyway, the server side of things went smoothly, but the client side was another story. I spoke to several Shelby techs over the last couple weeks, and I got several different stories. One said I had to uninstall and reinstall Shelby on every one of my 55 clients. Another said all I had to do was repoint the user's shortcuts to the new server (I liked that tech's answer much better than the first). Finally a third tech (who said she had "been there 6 years longer than any other tech, so trust me.") assured me that a complete reinstall was necessary.

So the process was: run the uninstaller, uninstall Mailroom if present, reboot, run the installer, install Mailroom if necessary, reboot again, then test. That process, times about 55. It took 2 of us about 4 hours to complete the client upgrades. I was a bit worried, even though everything tested out okay, because I had an offsite seminar the next morning and wouldn't be back until after lunch. I was afraid I'd return to our finance department pulling their hair out and the support staff cursing my name.

I left Andrew in charge, and I had my hand on my cell phone during the entire seminar Thursday morning. Fortunately I never got a call, and almost no one at CLC even noticed our hard work. After all that is my goal, although it can be very unrewarding because no one notices a lot of what I do unless something breaks.

All in all it was a good experience - just very time consuming. I am, however, adding this to my list of things that would be better if we were using a hosted Church Management solution (read Fellowship One) - show up one morning, log on to the website, see the upgraded software and know that I didn't have to do a thing.

two steps back

2006-04-10T19:35:00.000-05:00

I gave it a chance, but it was too much for me to deal with right now. IE7 beta was just too problematic for me. It repeatedly froze up, among other things. I gave it a good shot - I contributed to the forums and tried to stick with it. I just cannot afford for IE to be unstable right now, because my web CMS required it (unfortunately) - otherwise I'd stick with Firefox while I tried IE7. The one good thing about IE7 is that it uninstalled great and IE6 was ready and waiting underneath. Anyone having a better experience than me?

IE 7 beta woes

2006-03-23T08:49:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-03-22T23:21:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-12T13:56:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-07T20:58:00.000-05:00

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 . . .