Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I'm Learning... I'm Learning

So for the past couple months I've been taking some Cisco classes at the local community college. I figured since I'm managing this network, I might as well know some stuff about it. That way I don't have to call in a contractor every time there is a network issue. Today I was doing some checking on some of the circuits. Making sure that I some of the updates I requested are actually showing on the lines. Now a year ago at this time, I would have no idea how to do this nor have any idea that some of this stuff needed to be done. The best part was I noticed an issue. Nothing really major, you see each branch has two routes to reach us here at the main office. One of those routes wasn't letting anything come through. From the people at the branch perspective they wouldn't see a difference. The issue is though they were using the backup route and not the main one. So now if there was an issue with that path they wouldn't be able to work. So after about 2 hours of checking and troubleshooting (again a year ago I wouldn't be able to see this issue, much less be able to troubleshoot it), I concluded it had to be an issue with our network provider who we lease these lines from. I called them and explained them what I saw and they checked stuff on there end and they saw the issue was a configuration problem on their end. They updated their end and blamo (yes that's a technical term) the primary path showed working on my end and I had a great big smile on my face. Not so much that the issue was resolved but that all the stuff from those classes was actually sinking in and that I could intelligently speak with the provider and get this issue resolved, all with the people at the branch not noticing a thing.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Return

So the one thing that I hate most about taking a vacation is having to come back. It's not so much the work thing, I really like my job, as it is getting back into the routine. Everything is just a little askew. I'm a fairly organized person, so this little bit bugs me a lot. Things just take a little longer, as you try to find the pace you were at before. It's also hard to buckle down again and get things done. You have the energy now to do it, but the want you need to get started isn't there yet.

While on the Vegas Vacation, the hotel was great and we had a fantastic time. I had the worst luck though. I started to think that the decks were stacked, as the dealers continuously got 21 after 21. Now I don't mean they had Black Jack, that would have been a little too cruel. I mean they were showing a 5 or a 4 and 3 cards later they'd have 21. I counted it on one table and out of 10 hands the dealer was able to pull out 21 7 times. At another table I got Black Jack myself 4 times, of which I had 3 push because the dealer had it too. The race was fun though. My roommate placed a bet on the winner at 7-1 odds. Well done on his part. He was mister lucky for the weekend, so at least I know where some of my luck went. It wasn't very crowded, which was really nice, as the sun was pretty hot. They said the temp was in the low 80s but the sun made it feel much hotter. If you've never been down in the desert the sun burns a little hotter down here. I've lived in the North and the sun feels warm up there, but down here it down right burns. I think it's because it much more direct sunlight, so the sun doesn't have to go through so much atmosphere to hit you. Well that's it for today.