Ramblings

I’m officially done with Apt13C … finally. Got checked-out about two hours early. Apparently TC was happy to do it early since it seems that all of his other evening check-outs were already done and he liked the idea of being rid of it all.

It was kind of amusing that my staying in 13C completed my tour of Apt13. That finished up all four parts of the building that I’ve lived in. The Quad is still very empty, although the lounge is full of everyone else’s stuff … stuff that I drug over against my better judgement. I just hope none of the neighborhood kids get the bright idea of stopping by. We have only had one problem like that in the history of the building that we know about. We did, however, stop that kid. I’m only concerned because there are so few people around and the building is permanently unlocked right now since no one knows the door combo. I’ve also rigged many of the interior doors to remain open … just so things aren’t all closed up around me.

I can’t wait to get Frodo up here with me and serving sites again. It’s hard to comprehend just how much I have come to rely upon him. I have always had chase.quad4.org point to the IP for my computer on campus so that I didn’t have to remember an IP address, and with the DNS server down … it sucks.

Once I move off campus things are going to change a bit. I normally use my computer here in the room extensively from work. I store everything here and run several programs remotely. Once the computer is off the network I don’t know what I will do. Maybe I can set up some sort of tunnel to John’s computer or something so I can still access my stuff like it was on the network. IT may not like that though, and working for them would only complicate things if they did discover it and didn’t like it.

I keep forgetting to stop by Physical Plant to pick up another key for work. Supposedly it is for the Data Center … probably so they can stick me in the rotation for server backups. :) The Data Center is interesting, but not for the reasons you probably think. I like to consider myself a bit of a networking guy in addition to a programmer. I actually thought in high school that it might be that direction that my career would go. Alas, it wasn’t … but I don’t regret the direction it has taken me. So the Data Center is what most people would expect; where the servers and hub (meaning “center”, not a reference to switch vs. hub) of a star topology network resides. The interesting part is the mix of equipment present. There are very high end servers, ones that the university obviously paid good money for. Then there are boxes that were home-built and can’t run any faster than about 400MHz.

Obviously the mission-critical servers are the high end ones, but even a few of the home-built boxes provide important services to the campus. Now, to be fair, many of those important services do not need anything special to run on. Some times having a fancy-dancy server can be a hindrance. Now, in addition to the server differences, there is an aditional layer of fun. The campus is slowly transitioning to IP phones. These things are really cool and can help keep costs down. However, we still have analog service to the dorms and many offices … although there are plans in both areas. The funny thing, at least to me, is all the mess of cables in the data center for the analog service … and the neat, clean, efficient server for the IP phones. The disparity can be amusing at times.

Well, I’ve got laundry going and I’m tired. So I’m out of here for now.