Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

Oldies

I spent Saturday morning working at my mom’s house getting rid of a ton of stuff that’s been in the garage for at least twenty years. I found a channel on the garage radio which was playing all eighties music; It was sweet.  I was enjoying great music from the Boss, from Mellencamp, from REM. I blasted the toons just like I would have done twenty years ago. I thought about all the people my age and how this radio channel was catering to our listening preferences. It was great, well until I got a flashback of my grandparents and my parents sitting in the living room listening to Lawrence Welk. It was then it swept over me, this was Lawrence Welk for my generation. It was a sad revelation… I turned up “Addicted to Love” and went back to work.

Sweet Crimping tool

Last Tuesday we were working on the pulling some cables for our F1 check in system and Mark (our super SonicWall Guru) asked if I had ever seen the crimping tool that punches down a wall jack all at once…. Needless to say I was very interested in seeing such a marvel and I’m sure you are too so here it is:

It is a very cool tool and works sweetly, and it seems to be plenty strong even though it’s made of plastic. For the price I wish there was more metal on the thing but it’s on my tool wish list none the less

Need a Baseline

We are at a point were we need to get a baseline of our network and monitor it. We are already using MOM to manage Windows errors and alerts, and I we have just begun to use Dell OpenManage to monitor Server and Switch hardware. What I really need now is some way to keep track of the performance of the network itself. We have talked about many of the open source solutions and I am at the point were I want to give MRTG a try. It looks like a good solution and it’ll run on Windows. I plan to get it running on my home network this weekend and see what data I can get. I might be looking at the wrong tool for all I know, but I’ll give this one a try. In the meantime I am open to suggestions for good network monitoring tools… got any?

What a Night!

Last Night was the first night in the new auditorium, and new children’s space. It was phenomenal. The sound techs worked all day yesterday adjusting the sound to near perfection, and the first corporate worship in the full auditorium was just awesome.

The new stage is huge and our pastors will get a real workout as they try to address the audience on each side of the stage. Just a few short days ago it was unconceivable that the auditorium would be ready last night, but it was and it was wonderful! There are still many things visibly left undone throughout the new addition and everyone has been working feverishly to see it to the end. There are children’s rooms which will require much more work to go live Saturday night; but God is in control and those rooms will either be completed or they won’t and there will be little we can do to change that. I vote to just let God be God and sit back and watch it come together. At any rate I want to say that I’m so happy to see what God is doing! What a blessing to see the hand of God in the land of the living!

Dell 5324 Documentation error

The New Dell 5324 switches we bought require initial configuration by a terminal session. This is ok with me so I get out the serial cable, hookup my laptop and connect via HyperTerminal. I use the CLI to set the Username and Password, but when I try to set the IP address which will allow me to connect to the switch via GUI I get an error. In the Dell Documentation the give you the example of: IP address 192.168.0.1/24.

This is standard classless notation, but the switch rejects it, so I try putting spaces between slash. Then I try every combination I can think of and begin to think the switch is defective. I called Jason and he calls an Uber –Geek Volunteer who had the same problem, and keys me into a documentation error. So to make a long story short the correct syntax is 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0.

Notice there is no slash!  Grrr.

The Drive to go Live

For the past year we’ve been expanding our building. We are doubling our auditorium and at the same time doubling our children’s ministry space. It’s been an amazing ride and I’ve watched in amazement as the building has come together. The days of watching are at an end and now I’m getting my hands in on the project. Yesterday I lit up the new IDF over fiber and today I’ll be configuring and installing new computers in the new children’s rooms. What I’m doing is such a small part compared to the work done by scores of tradesmen and staffers, but I am grateful to have a part no matter how small it is in bringing this building to life. When I consider the lives which will be changed because this building was for them and Jesus was there to meet them I’m overwhelmed. I count it a privilege to be involve in this building project.

The Speed of Light

I’ve been around networks and networking for a few years now, but today I got my first taste of fiber. Now I’ve taught classes in Networking and I have the concepts down just fine, but today I got my first hands-on fiber work. Jason (my boss) bought some very sweet Dell PowerConnect 5324 switches and today I connected two of the units. Unfortunately they didn’t spark to life once connected; after some troubleshooting we were able to determine the there was a problem with the way the cablers connected the fiber in the patch panel. The cablers were still onsite so they corrected the problem and we went live. It was a real pleasure to see the link lights glowing. I know this isn’t the bleeding edge but it’s a milestone for me!