Tag Archives: College

Issues with new server… School, Health, etc

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Third times a charm…. So the first part below was written a couple weeks ago and I’ve kind of been lazy with resubmitting it. Mainly I just didn’t give a damn. So, I’m tweaking the original post and adding some more since a lot has changed since then.

{Originally written on April 5th I think}
Ok, so not that long ago we had really shit weather here in New York and it half fried my old media server (running WHS) and I figured instead of redoing that system I’d just rip all the hard drives out of it and put them into my new server. It took a couple tries getting Active Directory and DNS working correctly in my LAN (partly because of my ISP) but once I had that working properly I migrated over 4TB’s of data to the new server. After moving the data over I had access to the rest of my Microsoft Partner, TechNet, and DreamSpark software so I started adding a few more roles to the server that I was going to need in the long run and that’s when the shit hit the fan. For whatever reason after adding either IIS7 or HyperV (pretty sure it was HyperV) the server got so bogged that it took like 10 minutes to make simple changes via RDC. Since I’ll need IIS more than HyperV I kept that and removed HyperV again. The system is still kind of bogged, but responding a little quicker. Now, while trying to install Exchange 2010 it couldn’t find IIS (I think because I didn’t leave the IIS6 compatibility) and it recommended doing a reinstall of IIS7 (which fucked up my PHP and other stuff I added).
Now, every time the server reboots, DNS and part of Active Directory refuse to start correctly although they are set to automatic. I can manually turn them back on if I RDC back into the server, which is the least of the problems. Viewing the localhost via the standard means (http://localhost; http://SYSTEMName; http://ExternalIPAddress) all work to show the default IIS7 welcome, but refuses to allow PHP, ASPx, etc. from working; so pretty much I have access to standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, that’s about it.
The reason behind writing this post is to state the current (messed up) configuration of the server and the configuration of what I want to achieve. If there’s anybody out there reading this that can help, feel free to email me. Even if it’s just to point out more reading material I should check out so I can get this done. I normally don’t have these kind of problems, but the person I always went to in the past for Server related issues was JJ (the VP that passed away last July).

{Sometime in the middle}
I fixed the server issues awhile back and have even created some new test/temp sites for beta and demo purposes which worked out well. Essentially I got annoyed and ripped out all the spare drives, leaving just the system drive and formatted it to start from scratch. In the end, I have setup the below and have everything configured properly (about time)…

I left out HyperV this time around to save the hassle with the extreme system lag, although the hardware is supposed to fully support it. After setting everything up and configuring it I added the other drives back and began moving/organizing the 4+ Terabytes of data (again). Enough of that crap… 🙂

{Present Day}
I decided to post this “now” useless draft from my new iPad… Yes I’m laying in bed bored and my laptop is resting on its private chair instead of on my legs. I got the iPad in the mail last week but was busy busting my ass off with college and wanted some real time to play with it before I wrote anything about it. Since there are reviews and sites dedicated for and against the iPad all over the place I’m not going to bother. I will say this though, it works great for my needs and to quote/paraphrase Alex Albrecht of Revision3 (originally stated on Diggnation and repeated on The Totally Rad Show; both on Revision3) “The iPad is the best pooping device… EVER!” (I also highly recommend checking out Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, AppJudgment, Scam School, and the rest of the shows on Revision3, but be warned, pending on the show you’re watching, they swear more than I do 🙂 )

Now most people I know had Spring Break last week while I was busy trying to pass two pain in the ass classes. I’ve had this week off instead and promised myself that I would do nothing but play video games and relax but that idea went out the window. I haven’t even turned my Playstation 3 on yet. I hoped to have finished Final Fantasy XIII before classes start back up, but that won’t happen at this rate. Oh well, I still managed to get about 7GB of photos and over 40GB of music organized and properly tagged as well as create a special website for a very special young lady’s birthday. I’m going to be setting up a form of contest on one the sites sometime soon, just not sure on which or with what details yet. Stay tuned, either way there will be special first place prize.
So long story short, I still haven’t put Exchange Server on the system yet and will look into that later. I passed the two ‘pain in the ass’ classes mentioned above, so I only have 6 classes left until I graduate with my Associates Degree in Computer Science (Web Design) in early/mid October of this year. I start 3D Modeling & Animation on Monday (with Open House Access starting Saturday) and get to play around with some of the newest Autodesk software like 3D Studio Max and Maya among others. Should be fun.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

How I feel?

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How my life feels...It’s after midnight and I wanted to get another quick post in before I get back to my school work. (Yes, I’m just taking a short break.) I have to finish watching the last Live Chat that I missed last week due to the transfer so that I can get working on writing the rest of an IP.

The real reason I’m writing another post this soon from the last one is as the title says: “How I feel?” Well, as I briefly mentioned in the last post about chest pains, it was stress induced so I agreed to talk to a psychiatrist and figured this is way freakin’ cheaper! 🙂 I’m not looking for comments, just venting. The image on the right kind of describes how I feel, but I’ll let you figure out if I’m talking about the window or the frame.

Nathan has been a great friend, letting me vent whenever I need it and he’s around, while it’s a pain in the ass to get a hold of anyone else. Even the people that were on vacation and didn’t do any traveling, they still managed to be too busy when we talked more than once about hanging out. I’m not mad, just a little disappointed.

So, let’s start off by describing what feelings a ‘normal’ person should have and compare that to what I think I may have:

Financial Security Disability doesn’t pay shit; College is expensive as hell; not allowed to work, you do the math
Loved by others Not that I know of…
In love with someone else Yes, but I could never tell her
Socially Accepted At a red light, heading home from my treatment, someone heard the music (in Yiddish) in my car and yelled “Terrorist”
Pressure to succeed College is stressful, the little I can do for my company is suffering
Love Life What’s a love life? I don’t remember…

I might add some more to that later, cause it’s depressing. Well, Robin Williams was just on TV and I actually laughed a bit, so I lost my train of thought.

Category: Misc. | Tags: , ,

A lot of shit…

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I've got my eye on you

So, 15 days ago on the 15th I wrote a post that got interrupted by taking my roommate to work and forgot what I was going to write about. A lot has happened since so I figured it’s after 4am and I can’t sleep, which is very typical, I’d write a mass pile of shit into one post. In the last two weeks, whenever I remembered what I wanted to write, I didn’t have the time and whenever I had the time I couldn’t remember anything. Man, I really hate my memory problems. I’ve collected a bunch of random crap I’ve wanted to toss into a post for awhile now, some to test new features, others just cause I’m THAT bored.

Um, let’s see… where to start. Earlier this month I finished the latest set of “pre-qual’s” for Microsoft and upgraded my Partnership status for myself and helped one of my technicians do the same. I’m loving some of the new benefits. I ended my last class for college on the 20th with an A and started two new classes on the 22nd and typical me; I’m fucking up left and right in one class and doing ok in the other. I think this is going to be the first class I’m in where I’ll actually be requesting the tutoring as opposed to tutoring everyone else.

On the 23rd I went to my normal back treatments and was having severe chest pains the entire drive down there. They were a little worried about hooking me up to all the equipment and I don’t blame them. Other than the pain in my chest I felt fine, but that shit just wouldn’t go away. Later that night I went to the hospital to get it checked out and they said it was stressed induced and gave me a shot of something to calm my ass down or relieve the stress, whatever… shit just made me loopy for like an hour but the pain went away shortly after, so that’s good.

I’ve finished installing and configuring the 2 new servers for my house and upgraded the rest of my computers to Windows 7 Professional (Win7 Ultimate on my main laptop). I still have some other ‘roles’ I want to add to the main server (like WDS and WSUS to name a few) but I’m going to wait until I can get my grades up in my one class without the other suffering so that it will help me overall with the stress.

Near the end of next month I’ll most likely be heading to New York City for a day or two for a couple conferences, I hope my college schedule works out so I don’t miss much there. It’ll be kind of nice and act like a mini vacation as well, so that’s good.

I have to attempt to take a power nap now since I have back treatments later today and have 2 classes tonight, so I’m going to start taking notes on one of the multiple devices I normally have with me so that I can keep my head straight since I’m stressed/preoccupied with thoughts of class and don’t remember the rest of the things I was going to put (yet again). There were a few things I do remember, but I don’t have the time to deal with writing those now, so I already took notes of those.

Wave Hello Later

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Man……….. WTF?

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So, it’s been a long ass week and I’ve been bashing my head against the wall due to homework among other things… I figured I’d write a new post since I added a few new features to this site and have been toying around with some ideas for the wiki.

Sadly since I started this post I had to run my room mate to work so he’s not late and I forgot what the hell I was going to write about. 🙁

Guess I’m just gonna take a nap… screw it. I’ll write more later.

Category: Misc. | Tags: ,

Life… or whatever you wanna call it!!!

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Barely halfway into the second month of the year and it already sucks. I managed to prep some of the data for migration and one of the former external drives started throwing SMART status errors although the drive passes all diagnostics 100% so now I have to replace a 1TB internal SATA for pretty much no reason. Guess I’ll try to stick it back in it’s original enclosure and hope. (About a week after I originally tested the drive, it’s started tossing a bunch of bad sectors, that equal about 7% of the drive, so it’s a good thing I decided to replace it anyway. I have a new drive on order).

Thankfully, that waste of fucking time (a.k.a. Interface Design class) is over and I wont have to deal with that useless “Professor” anymore. She’ll never be in a spot to read this blog either, not that I’d care, but her ‘teaching’ methods are beyond fucking stupid. How can you ‘teach’ people to write/use a certain type of programming language by clicking around fucking context menus and not comprehend that the way the students view what’s going on is via the internet so that NO MATTER what kind of web conference software is used, there WILL be lag. It’s mainly because of this, that I tutored more students than any past classes.  I talked to one of the “Academics Advisers” since mine left for Medical School (Congrats Chivonne), and they’re having the “Chair of the Department” review all my work and correcting the grades that the useless bitch seemed so full of.

I love tutoring the students, it gives me some pride in the fact I have the knowledge that they look up to, but some of the students tend to just be like “Hey AJ, I don’t get this project, can you show me?” and have me do their work for them practically. I have talked with those people and told them I will no longer do their work (since one had the gall to brag they got a higher grade on the work I did for them than what I earned on my own project).

Another part about tutoring, and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy tutoring most of the students, but one of them (not the ‘cheater’) has to have the same shit explained 50 times and after they finally ‘get it’ it has to be explained again the next fucking night. Thankfully, they’re starting to understand I do this because I like doing it, I’m not paid, so if I get frustrated, piss off… I’m not going to deprive the rest of the students altogether cause they can’t fucking figure it out. I mean, I understand that people have different levels of learning, different mental capabilities, etc. but this is College, so I’m not going to treat students like little kids, we’re all adults here.

And speaking of all being adults, I do apologize to one of the students that I tutor with the fact I was having a very bad night (due to my depression, etc.) and while trying to explain a few things to her, I did tend to swear a lot that night, and although I didn’t say anything derogatory about religion, race, etc. I understand and acknowledge some people of religious beliefs do not like to hear vulgarity, even when it’s just typed.

On a different note, I picked up some new hardware last week after one of my back treatments. It’ll help out in the long run, but still need to get the replacement drive. With the prices at the store I was at, a 2TB is a shit load better deal and the obvious extra space is a plus, but those guys were out of stock. Since I don’t start my new classes until next Monday (the 15th) I should be able to finish re-arranging my setup (where my servers, desktops, etc. are setup with the TV and Home Theater) tomorrow after I get home from my next back treatment. (Speaking of which, Hi Chad)

Some good news for February is I got my College Stipend earlier this month and should have both my State and Federal taxes back by Friday so I’m not as broke as normal. Things are kind of looking up since I can afford to take care of some crap I’ve been putting off for months.

Last note (from stuff I remember), I’m going to create a special post/topic about the Student Wiki where people can post comments there for topics and ideas of what we should do or add to the Wiki since I have that locked to our contributors (to help stop vandalism). I’ll post more about that later when I figure out exactly how I want to go ahead with this idea.

I got side tracked and forgot the rest of the shit I was going to write… so fuck it. I’ll write another post after I get back from my trip to Verona on Friday with some of the guys…

Category: Misc. | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Long week….

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I pretty much finished my college work early which is a surprise, so I’ll upload when I get home. I also have a general write up at home of how I plan on redoing / changing the main network, but won’t have time to implement it for a few days. Granted it will probably take a couple days of writing new code and moving shit around to finish.

I have my normal back treatments on Tues. and Thurs. and will be traveling to Philadelphia for a day sometime soon.

I’ll be heading home sometime soon… back to another long week.

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Stress…

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I’ve been busting my ass off with college trying to play catch up and earlier last night I managed to get fully caught up so I have time to relax. Too bad that will only last a day or two. I decided to make a new post and write about a bunch of things that have happened recently and my damn memory problems made me forget most of it. (Damn Chemo Fog)

I guess the main part of this update is that I have current intentions of changing around some of the domains and sub-domains I run and migrating some more of the sites / info over to this site so that everything is more centralized. I hope by the end of the month I’ll figure out what I’m doing exactly with the Blog Hosting that I was running since those Chinese Spammers ruined it for everyone else.

Personal Side:

  • Started second ‘set’ of back treatments last week and will continue to do them twice a week for the next 10+ weeks (94 mile round trip each time).
  • As I’ve mentioned in the past with my medical problems, I went through Chemotherapy and lost all the hair on my body. Prior to Chemo I was a blond and afterward the hair on my head grew back dark. The point, I dyed my hair on Thursday and I’m blond again.

College Related:

  • Classes are a pain (like normal)
  • I should have my degree around Oct. of this year (unless I have to move classes around or take medical leave again).
  • We have a new contributor to our Student Wiki.

Projects and Gadget Related:

  • Verizon finally ‘helped’ me with the complaints I’ve had for months, so I’m getting a new Droid tomorrow.
  • Jen bought me a new 3rd Generation iPod Touch (64GB) for Chanukah and I’ve found some sweet apps to go with the 40GB of music on it already.
  • Started talking to Martomo (not sure if he wants me to put his real name in here) about getting the old “Black Market” project back up and running again. Sometime in the near future we may be looking for some extra help. (It’s an Open Source project, so don’t bother asking if you think you’ll get paid, it’s all volunteer). Once we take the new version out of beta it will be listed on the Projects Page.

Server / Domain Side:

  • As stated, will be migrating some of the other sites over to here soon.
  • I just noticed a small ‘typo’ from my last post that I over looked while moving everything over to this site, I’ll change that next.
  • After the sites are merged, I’ll post more info on the Server Status Page here.
  • Adobe Contribute is Awesome for doing these updates, makes everything so much easier.

Since this is kind of long at this point, I’ll hold off on writing more until I can organize my thoughts more or have some updates to anything listed here.

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Happy New Year, Happy Holiday’s, and um… other stuff.

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No idea why, but the date listed above states Jan. 01, 2009, yet this was written on Jan. 01, 2010 and shows the correct date in the control panel, just not on the site.

Well, it’s almost a new decade and yet again, I spent most of the holiday season alone, but it’s not that big of a deal. Below is a list of random shit… different points I want to make, different things that have gone on without a post, etc. (Trust me when I say ‘random’ as some of the topics will just be ‘all over the map’)

As you can see, the URL for my blog has changed and I’m still setting up the new software, so there’s no RSS yet, no multi-user, etc. at this point in time. The main reason for changing everything around is two-fold…

  1. I got BEYOND sick of random Chinese spammers signing up for blogs on my server. I was providing a service FOR FREE to people that wanted to create legitimate blogs without having to pay for a service. I did this as a side project outside of my company so that there were less ‘restrictions’ on what can/cannot be posted, but still included a Terms of Use agreement. These spammers ruined it for everyone as I’ll be locking down the old Blog Hosting and possibly just forward that sub-domain to a nice little page that states the full reasons to this. In the month of December alone I ended up deleting and banning over 300 users from China that were signing up for obvious spam reasons.
  2. I wanted to allow myself and future users (sign up policy is yet to be determined) to utilize 3rd party software (such as Adobe Contribute) to author/post entries to their blog without having to fully sign in, etc.

The posts you see in this blog (prior to this one) were all copied/pasted from the old blog (I loved the software back-end I used for that service, and I’m still getting used to this new stuff, so be patient with layout, etc.) so some of the posts have obvious font issues, where text may be out of scale within it’s own post. Oh well.

(At least until I get more used to this new Blog software) I will probably be merging the “Server Status” blog into this one, but I’m not sure how I’ll be able to fully separate those posts as I don’t really have the time/patience to go and edit all my personal posts to find/remove any ‘adult language’ and I know it’s kind of unprofessional to have official company related news hosted on a site that does use swear words.

On a totally different (sad) note, it pains me to inform the friends and clients of ICT/CSC (if they haven’t read it in the Wiki yet) that my personal friend and ICT/CSC co-founder JJ passed away last July. The text below is the dedication posted on the Wiki in full:

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 our company suffered a terrible loss. It brings sadness to my heart to inform our customers and friends that JJ (our Vice President) passed away from medical complications. I’ve never been good with dedications or putting these types of feelings into words, so I’ll leave this simple.

JJ, born Joshua (Yehoshua) Jaeden in November 1980, lead an interesting life. We knew each other for most of our lives and he was like a brother to me. JJ is survived by his older sister Nava (Hebrew for ‘beautiful’), his mother Adina (Hebrew for ‘gentle’) and his 2 year old son Joseph (Yosef). He spent his final days surrounded by friends and family and although his medical issues ultimately ended his life prematurely, he would want those that care to know he didn’t suffer.

I return to college on Jan. 04, but I hope that throughout Jan. I’ll be able to rearrange the rest of the sub-domains, remove the ones that are no longer relevant or maintained and update the rest so that they have a more merged feeling to them. My goal is to knock the overall count down to something small and try to make kind of a community out of it. Due to my on going medical issues, college, and the lost of JJ, I believe at least for now, it’s time for the company to take a small leave of absence. Technically we’re not closing our doors and will continue to take some contracts as they come in (mainly due to the fact I haven’t talked to our lawyer in regards to the legality of saying “Hey, we’re closing for awhile, but we’re still here” so we’re going to still maintain a presence just in case.

Speaking of college, as long as I don’t manage to fail any classes (or take the summer off again) I should be graduating with my Associates in Computer Science (Web Design) in mid-October 2010. I took last summer off due to medical reasons; I would have got my degree in Aug. 2010 if I went straight through.

It’s 2am so I’ll post more information later today, when I can organize my thoughts a little better.

Category: Please Read | Tags: , , , ,
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