Dsjoo faithful, it is done.

No, not this blog. I’m talking about college. I finished penning my last test just twenty minutes ago. Leave it to the test gods for me to have a 4:30 pm Friday exam. I spent the morning at work, lunch with co-workers and friends, and the afternoon reviewing a thousand years of Roman history and literature. The grades are starting to come in and it looks like I can leave Iowa without fear of getting screwed out a grade. I’m confident that a diploma will arrive in the mailbox in the coming months, an Oregon PO Box at that.

For those who didn’t know, I am moving out of Iowa City this Saturday and flying to Oregon on Monday. Hopefully the gale-force winds will have quieted by then and my plane will be able to land. As soon as I touch down, I’ll have to get to work at my job and help the company move its network infrastructure to a new building. It will be a trying task, but it can and must be done quickly and correctly so that the business can get up and running and back to making money.

I will post more as my brain leaks miscellaneous knowledge between inane Roman historical facts.

-D-rock

The last week at FSI went at break neck speed. Coordinating between the UK and Eugene branches, we finally started down the road of implementing the new version of Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (2005) to run over HTTP.

The current system has the UK branch employees VPN into the Eugene network and then transfer files over the LAN. This is definitely a secure method of transferring data, but hardly the most efficient. HTTP would allow users to connect anywhere without the hassle of VPN and its slower connection speed. Also, HTTP access with VSS 2005 allows employees to utilize the Internet plug-in built into Visual Studio 2005. That means that the software developers don’t have to use the separate VSS application to upload data to the server. While VSS 2005 works well enough, we will see how much the use of HTTP is preferred over VPN since I was unable to test the upload rate with a network connection external to the network. If the rate aren’t noticable then the company may require a dedicated cable internet connection for the server running VSS 2005.

All of this remains to be seen, but the documentation goes on. Since this project went right to the wire, I still have documents to write that update the managers on the status of all of the projects that I started this summer. I’d say two main projects were completed and two more are almost finished. All in all, productivity was high and I learned a great deal about managing servers in a small business environment.

All of last week, I was researching solutions for our software developers’ source code and working with legacy DB software. At FSI, we run an internal CRM program called Onyx, as I mentioned earlier. This software has been running on a SQL Server 6.5 and a pretty clunky box. For fear that the software won’t work with a newer version of MS SQL, we have made a new box and installed SQL 6.5 with Windows NT 4.0. Since the server is on an NT platform, I have to be at the server to do any work, no Remote Desktoping. So, I placed the backup .DAT file on the new server and attempted to restore it using SQL 6.5’s internal restore option. This is where the work started.

Since NT is terrible with partitioning drives, the C Drive only had 2 GB of partitioned space and rest was unpartitioned and unformattable using any sort of internal OS utility. Unlike Windows Server 2000 and higher, there is no Computer Management utility in NT. This meant having to get Server Magic, an old program originally made by Power Quest and now owned by Symantec. Server Magic is just like Partion Magic (R) for the server. So, after freeing up the 18GB and formatting it as another drive, I could finally begin working with the database backup in SQL Enterprise Manager without any space issues. While waiting for Server Magic, I entered all of the logins to the database that needed to moved from the old database and server.

Along with research and Windows NT work, we received a big shipment of 19′ Dell LCD monitors. This meant that I became generic IT guy again and had to setup monitors and move old CRTs to anywhere that would fit them. Every department (Sales, Support & Development) got a few new monitors and some people even kept their old CRTs to do a dual-monitor setup. In the mean time, there are boxes and CRTs sitting around waiting for a truck to take them to the computer recycle shop.

I was lucky enough to have two vacation days this week since the Fourth of July fell on a Tuesday. Surprisingly though, it was a productive three-day week. I set up an internal web server for an ER (enhancement request) tracking program. The FogBugz software was quite inexpensive, especially compared to other ER tracking applications. Also, FogBugz’s system requirements matched up very well with FSI’s existing hardware and software. FogBugz requires Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 and IIS, for the Windows like the folks at FSI.  If you prefer open-source, FogBugz works with Apache, PHP and MySQL. So far, no complaints, but time will only tell.

On the client-side, two desktops were formatted and setup as user workstations. Next week will feature a new server hosting Onyx Customer Center, our internal CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. The old server doesn’t allow for indexing of the database storing Onyx data, so searching on description/note field is nearly impossible. We’ll use a backup of the database to test the indexing component of the Onyx software, as per J.C. (see the periods) Wilson’s recommendation.

The end of last week and the beginning of this week have been about waiting and research.

The waiting began with the completion of a Windows Server with MS SQL setup. All of the updates and addition to the domain were completed and now the transfer of files begins from the dilapidated Windows NT file/sql server. About half way through the network transfer of about 200 gb of files, the old server decided to crash. Not only that, but it would reboot. Eek! So, we had to MacGyver the old harddrive, put in my workstation and start the transfer process again.

Hint: Using a workstation to transfer tens of gigs of files from a FAT drive to NTFS takes a long time.

Anywho, the transfer continues into day 3 and will be finished by tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, research continues on installing a source code sharing and protecting program, as well as an enhancement-requests tracking program. Both require a server that must be IIS-enabled. This is a constant source of concern for small businesses as security is always at stake with an IIS box. So, the decision must be made to place the software on local servers or farm it out to an ISP. Since there is no official, full-time Webmaster/Network Admin/IT technician, an ISP is the likely solution. This may change in the future, but since I am only a summer employee with one month to go, it’s not best to assume that tons of things will be done in four weeks that require the coordination of multiple managers.

In other news, France just advanced in the World Cup Finals. Vive le France, Vive le Quebecois!

I was still traveling back to Oregon on Monday, so work didn’t start back up until Tuesday. Needless to say, there was a lot of catch-up work to do. This was compounded by the fact that our other IT worker was traveling to Utah in order to train new customers to use FSI software. This left lots of little IT issues, such as switching SMTP addresses on the Exchange server.

In more exciting news, I finished formatting and installing Windows Server 2003 on the new Dell Xeon box. This led to the larger task of mapping out the network architecture. My Computer & Network Security class is definitely being used, as I have to use MS Visio to diagram our local network. There are quite a few servers, hubs and switches, so its definitely a necessary task. The diagram will be even more helpful should the company move locations, a likely event in the near future.

Until Friday, when our main IT guy gets back, I’ll be doing miscellaneous IT tasks. I was reminded of my paper route when I had to package up CDs and upgrade documents to ship out to customers. FSI just came out with a new software release and customers have to get the upgrade, along with instructions for installation depending on their current release version. For internal uses, a little database is going to be set up with all of this information, replacing the MS Excel spreadsheet that holds data about customer’s current version and ship date.

Its back to the grind for now.

Week 3:

I finished setting-up a new user’s workstation and domain accounts. The process started yesterday with discovering that the machine for an incoming employee had an unknown administrator password. This meant that a windows repair was needed. After that was sorted out, the Microsoft updates began and took the rest of the afternoon, no sp2 installed. Thanks to Slashdot, this morning found that more windows updates were on the way and will eventually need to be installed on other users’ machines.

The fun project began this afternoon where I was able to start installing Windows Server 2k3 on a brand new Dell server. This 600GB, dual-processor machine took a little while to finish the initial setup, but now that is finished and all that’s left is the updating and hardening of the server. Once that is done, I can begin copying over files from the soon-to-be-defunked, current windows file server. The new server will also house an MSSQL database server for software testing and development. Hopefully, most of these steps will be completed before I leave for a long weekend.

I shall be departing on Thursday morning from Portland for Nashville, TN. From there, it’s a short ride with some friends from high school to Manchester, TN. This will be our first time at the Bonnaroo music festival featuring Radiohead and many more. That means four days of music, comedy and camping before I’m back to the grind. This will be a much larger festival than last year’s Sasquatch Festival. There’s a few trade-offs. There will be no Arcade Fire or Wilco. Instead, we’ll get Radiohead, Beck, Tom Petty, Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, Ben Folds, The Streets, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, plus Comedians Lewis Black, Patton Oswalt and more.

-Derrick

Hello all,

This is my first blog post to the dsjoo blog. I had another blog, almost two years ago, but abandoned it a while back. I had no reason to blog then and wasn’t even terribly interested in web design. In the past year though, that’s all changed. I began working in a new position at the University last fall. Since then the web world has opened up and renewed creative juices have been flowing. I now have multiple jobs, all dealing with web and database design. One at the University, where I, and coworkers, design websites for departments and then train content managers on maintaing the site. I also work at Scruple.net with a small group of friends,designing websites for local businesses. Right now, I’m interning at FSI, a steel fabrication software company.

All that and the year’s just half over. Hopefully more exciting things are come.

Au revoir

-Derrick

P.S. At this very moment, I’m typing this blog entry using the Performancing Firefox extension, very slick.