What a very crazy weekend it has been. I was getting ready to head into the city on Friday when my wife walks back into the door about 20 minutes after leaving for work. It winds up we had a good rain that night that froze into a sheet of ice. Needless to say she took a pretty big spill when she slipped on the sidewalk. I wound out canceling my city appointments and drove my wife to the hospital to be checked out. She didn’t break anything, thank god. However, she did need to have her arm put in a sling and have collar put around her neck to brace it.
Saturday I went into the city to update the firmware on the firewalls at one of my clients as well as install a couple of rack mount UPS. My wife joined me to keep me company even though she was in pain and not feeling too well. The firmware updates went smoothly. By the way Sonicwall is my new choice when it comes to firewalls, they have a terrific complete product offering. I then moved on the UPS. All was well until I unboxed both UPS to find my supplier forgot to supply me the network interface cards for them. That didn’t make me happy and does not bode well for my supplier. He will get an earful on Monday morning. Word of warning folks, do not attempt to rack mount UPS alone. I forgot how heavy these beasts are. I was able to get them in alone but I am paying for it the now, my back is killing me the day after. Continue reading “What A Weekend”
Japanese RV?
I was on my way back from a vendor meeting in New Jersey when I saw this on the turnpike. Not sure what it was but I would guess it’s a Civic RV. I had to share this picture with everyone.
Enjoy!
You Call This An Enterprise Firewall?
I have implemented various firewalls through out the years, but I can say with confidence that the Symantec lines of firewalls are the worst I have ever used. Well at least the 1620, but the entire line utilizes the same software which seems to be the underlying problem. I was installing two units in a failover configuration for an insurance company I service as well as a media buying firm. Both were being setup using content filtering with user authentication against their Active Directory. That’s when I came across a bug that dumb founded the Symantec support desk. Evidently there is an issue with having different levels of content filtering depending on which Active Directory group a user belongs to. I couldn’t believe that no one else has come across this bug before. They bumped this up to their global support group and to the developers. Three days later they still couldn’t give me a fix even though they were able to replicate the problem in their own labs. The real fun part was when I was informed by the support tech that Symantec was ceasing selling their hardware firewalls. That was enough for me to pack up the units and move to a Sonicwall solution for both clients. We have been extremely happy with the Sonicwall solution thus far.
The Day After
Wow, I never thought I would have received the attention I did for the PS3 rant that I wrote. I basically wrote it to vent my frustration I was having with my new PS3. Kotaku picked up my rant because they were having similar problems. From there it was picked up by a couple of other sites and then someone submitted it to Digg. It went front page on Digg in about an hour and then all hell broke loose. I was getting about 100 unique visitors every minute or so. After all was said and done I had over 50,000 hits to my site. I have heard a lot about the Digg effect taking down sites. I have to thank 1and1.com, which is my hosting company. My site never buckled under the strain of the quick increased traffic.
For those that commented on Digg about the story. I am in no means a Microsoft fan-boy. I just call it like I see it. I own all three systems the Xbox360, PS3 and the Wii. The 360 thus far is my favorite and the Wii is a blast to play. Rayman: Raving Rabbids is by far my favorite thus far on the Wii console.
The one thing that looked odd with some of the comments were as if they were made by people on the Sony payroll, trying to do some damage control. Then there were those that were definite PS3 fan-boys. No matter what was written in the press or how bad a personal experience they had with the PS3, they were able to come up with some illogical reason why it was great. For example:
Exactly .. that stuff is enough to warrant it’s first year of existence without any good games.
Everyone has their own loyalties to certain manufacturers and that is fine. I was just voicing my opinions on my personal experience wit the PS3. To quote Dennis Miller “That’s just my opinion, I could be wrong!”
Vista + Zune = NOT!
There are a lot of mixed reviews out there for the Zune. So I decided to purchase the Zune and give it a try for myself. I walked into a local BestBuy and took a look at the unit and it wasn’t too shabby looking especially the brown version. I had to inform the salesperson that they should remove the Plays For Sure tag since it is not. I get home unpack the software slip it into my workstation and off I go. First couple of screens went fine, then it checked for updates. Then to my amazement I was greeted with Vista is not a supported OS check back later. Check back later? Didn’t Vista go gold last week, didn’t they have a ton of downloads for the Betas. Maybe it’s just me but the people picking this thing up are mainly geeks in the know since there hasn’t been a huge media blitz as of yet. So wouldn’t it be wise to have support for Vista out of the box or at least downloadable by launch. There is no indication if there will be any support soon from their site so looks like I will be returning the unit. My other choice is to wipe my system in order to use the unit. I think not!!!!!
Bad move Microsoft another plus for Apple since iTunes runs under Vista.. get a clue will ya.
http://www.zune.net/en-US/meetzune/software/OS_not_supported.htm
Off To The Show
I’m in the city and done for the day. I am going to venture down to Broadway and 45th and find a Pub to have a couple of drinks before I see a show. My wife will be meeting me to see “A Chorus Line”. I will let you know what I thought of it when I get back home this evening. Today starts my Broadway season, it’s the time of the year I see alot of shows. I pefer the city when the weather is cooler and the air is crisper.
Ciao
Got PlayStation 3?
One thing I learned well last new console role out was that I would never wait in line for 20hrs again. Yeah that’s right I stood in line for 20 cold rainy hours to snag a new Xbox360 when it was released. While it made for an interesting evening and wild story, I swore to myself that I would never go through that again. My brother on the other hand living in Venice Beach, California was smart enough to be chummy with his local GameStop manager and pre-order his when it was first available. So as he laughed via his cell phone at me while he was walking to pickup his unit in leisure during the midnight store opening I was getting drenched. This time around I made my way to my local GameStop to pre-order knowing of the impending shortages this season for the Playstation3 and the Wii. To my amazement both times I got there 2 hours before opening and was number 2 in line for the Playstation3 and number 10 for the Wii. It was my luck that both these days were normal school/business days so the majority of people could not participate in the pre-order mania. God, I love being self employed! I guess after the PS3s started selling on EBay for $2000 and Sony started sidestepping it’s early comments on the number of units available by year’s end that everyone realized that they better do what they could to grab a their guaranteed units before they would have to do the overnight campout or worse yet several day campout. I will be at the great campout marathon if only for a mere couple of minutes so I can snap pictures of the insanity. My heart goes out to those poor souls that think they have a chance come November 17th if they don’t have a pre-order.
Pour It In Honey
Well I just got back from my doctor’s visit and it seems I just can’t win. Deep inside my belly button is a wound that hasn’t closed. So now my wife has to pour Hydrogen Peroxide into my belly button and clean it out with Q-Tips twice a day. This will go on for a couple of weeks until he heals and closes up. Im telling you I just can’t get a head of the game, by the way did I mention I got rear ended yesterday.
LOL
You Got To Be Kidding!
Looks like I will be paying a visit to the surgeon that performed my operation. I had this funky feeling before like I was overly bloated and then a little later I realized that my belly button burst again. It is not as bad as it was before, no blood but there is that smelly crud. Just my luck!
Back From The Hospital
I went in for surgery on Thursday Sept 7th at White Plains Hospital for a Urichal Cyst. It is really rare especially at my age. Basically when you are born the opening between the umbilical cord and the bladder closes, in my case it didn’t close properly. This caused the bladder to leak into my umbilical cord. This discharge built up until it burst through my belly button. They operated on my bladder robotically and removed the upper portion that attaches to the umbilical cord and sealed the bladder. The fun part during the surgery is that they literally had to inflate me with CO2. It doesn’t just disappear when the surgery is over, it lingers around for a while and the body has to expel it naturally. I was hospitalized till Sunday afternoon at which point I sprinted out of there to take care of my Internet fix. My overall experience at the hospital was quite not what I expected. The facilities were top notch, the nurses were very friendly and compassionate and the food was actually not bad. You heard me right the food was pretty decent. You would call the the cafeteria with a menu and order what you wanted to eat and at what time. That’s about it, I am sitting at home right now taking some painkillers and waiting for Friday to come along so the doctor can remove the Foley catheter which is draining into a bag attached to my leg. Yeah it sounds pretty disgusting but its not that bad.