Tag Archives: JJ

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: , , , , , , , , ,

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: , , , ,