Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

My wife and I have had our S3 Watches for over 2 years at the time of this writing. I know that everyone has talked a bit about the Apple Watch and there are a million reviews out there already, but there are 3 specific things I love about it. I've watched and read a lot about this device and I think I can offer a different perspective.

At the time of this writing, I live in a condo and have exactly 1 company who's authorized to provide TV service and exactly 2 options for internet access (one of which I've already had and dumped for poor reliability). We had a TV & Internet bundle through a company called Broadstar Communications, which exclusively services apartment- and condo-complexes. For my area, their internet is through leased fiber lines from Cox Communications and they're a re-seller for Dish satellite TV service (the cable box, remote and software all say "Dish", but I'm not directly a Dish customer.) For the purpose of this post, I'll be examining the pros/cons and cost difference of leaving a "traditional" TV package for Hulu Live TV, including factoring in the power consumption on the equipment.

Bias lighting: It sounds really complicated but it's actually quite simple. Plenty of people much more knowledgeable than myself can explain how bias lightning works. I bought one for my TV and it didn't work out. Let me explain why.

Within the last few months, my local grocery chain (Publix), announced that they're offering a Publix Delivery service, powered by Instacart. I've been looking for a second job with a flexible schedule so I signed up thinking I could just do it on the weekends. I signed up, got accepted, and immediately realized it wasn't going to work for me. More after the jump.

"Life puts the best things on the other side of fear." - Will Smith I know this might sound dumb but when I lost my job this past Spring, a YouTube video of Will Smith talking about going skydiving is what kept me going. I mean, technically it only lessened my spiral into depression but the lesson he talks about after the experience genuinely brought me to tears. I don't know why it popped up in my "suggested videos" but I heard what he said when I needed it most. In the interview, Mr Smith explains his experience of going skydiving for the first time. He describes drunkenly agreeing to go with his friends the next morning, despite being deathly afraid of heights. He describes the anxiety of laying awake that night over the thought of jumping out of an airplane, hoping others from his group would chicken out too. He describes the fear he felt when getting in the van at the airport. He details the plane ride and standing at the doorway of the open plane 14,0...

You, my one reader, may have noticed that my Quick Look posts come in bursts. The reason behind that is actually a simple one. I tend to get job interviews in bursts. I'll go months without hearing anything from any of the gigs I apply to and then suddenly, I have 6 interviews in 2 weeks. Often in nearly all of my interviews, there's one thing that I get asked about and I bomb hard. I remember an interview a while back where I was grilled about SysPrep, a tool that I haven't had to use in my experience (except for once some months ago). During that same interview, I mentioned DFS without being an expert in it, which was a mistake. The interviewer promptly asked me to explain DFS and what I could do with it. It was bad. Also in that interview, I found out that I didn't understand the difference between replication and backups. That interview was the worst one, but even my best interviews will have one tech question that I'm not sure about.

I started a new job so I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to. They also block anything with a google sign-in so I can't write while at work anymore. My new job is working for a state healthcare organization. Since I'm new, I'm spending a lot of my time with observing and trying to understand why things are done the way that they are. Without going into specifics on the environment here, some parts are really well thought out and others are like stepping into a time machine. There's lots to do (I easily found years worth of work my first week), so I'll have a lot to write about in the coming months. From implementing a DR solution with VMware Site Recovery Manager to setting up PRTG Network Monitor from scratch (because somehow there's virtually no monitoring going on), I'll write as much as I can about it when the time comes. 

IKEA has discontinued the Galant. I know, by now, nearly a year after the new first broke, it's hardly news. I only learned of it's demise recently. My wife has added quilting to her crafting repitoire so to keep her from taking over our living room, I had to relinquish control of my office (which we call the Manitorium) and actually share. Our original idea was to get one huge Galant L-shaped desk and share the big desk but after seeing that it's been discontinued with no successor as configurable, we've made the plans to just get separate desks. I already have a nice Galant desk, which I get to keep, and she wants to get the Kallax shelf unit with the Linnmon desk add-on. The point of this post isn't to talk about how I'm sharing my office with my crafty wife. I wanted to provide some explanation for anybody just coming across the Galant-is-dead news for themselves. IKEA discontinued the Galant desks but not the other office storage add-ons. In case you just...

I've had a cell phone for nearly 8 years and a smartphone 5 years now. For all this time, I've never had a case on any of my phones. After years of working in a grocery store (usually night-stock) and working with a lot of glass jars, I've developed quick reflexes to stop most of the fall before a dropped object hits the ground. In fact, I even do the same thing when I drop food (which is not recommended to stop with your foot, BTW). Back to the point though, I decided to get a case for my iPhone 5 and I chose the Otterbox Commuter case. I've been living with the case for over a year now and it's seen it's fair share of drops. I've dropped it at least 4 times, once trying to catch it only to swat it down to the ground like a football player swatting down a pass. It hit the ground hard but the case took all of it, leaving my phone still looking brand new. When small talk turns to phone cases (which actually happens sometimes), I always talk up the Otte...

I've had a cell phone for nearly 8 years and a smartphone 5 years now. For all this time, I've never had a case on any of my phones. After years of working in a grocery store (usually night-stock) and working with a lot of glass jars, I've developed quick reflexes to stop most of the fall before a dropped object hits the ground. In fact, I even do the same thing when I drop food (which is not recommended to stop with your foot, BTW). Back to the point though, I decided to get a case for my iPhone 5 and I chose the Otterbox Commuter case. I've been living with the case for over a year now and it's seen it's fair share of drops. I've dropped it at least 4 times, once trying to catch it only to swat it down to the ground like a football player swatting down a pass. It hit the ground hard but the case took all of it, leaving my phone still looking brand new. When small talk turns to phone cases (which actually happens sometimes), I always talk up the Otte...

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of pets. My parents told me we had a cat but I was too young to remember. The earliest pet I remember having was a rabbit named Oliver (and we didn't have him long thanks to his passion for both electrical cords and chewing things). I never liked dogs. Truth be told, I was scared of them as a kid. They were usually bigger dogs and who were trained to play a bit rougher than I was ready for. To top it off, most of the little dogs I met were simply assholes. Hell, I still haven't met a yorkie that isn't a giant dick for such a small creature. Because of all this, I've always considered myself a cat person. Yes, Cats are assholes too but they're easy to take care of, independent and can be fun to play with (when THEY want to play that is). Well, that has all changed since my fiancee and I recently adopted a Pug. He's been amazing. He's the first small dog I met that didn't love only one person. He loves everyone he meet...

By the time this is posted, she'll have said yes. I proposed to my girlfriend and the proposal has required a bit of planning. I wanted it to be something thoughtful and have a story worth telling later on. I know too many couples who's story of "How'd he propose?" go something like "I dunno; I just asked her one day and she said yes. The rest is history." Fair enough but I wanted to do something a bit more.

Laying it out on the table, I've been looking for another job. I really like my current job but like any other job, it has pros and cons, things I love about it and things I hate about it. Just a recap for anyone who doesn't know, I work in the Network Operations center (aka, NOC) for a large Housing Department of a major university. We support the full IT needs of the staff (mostly administrative, custodial and maintenance staff) and limited scopes of support for the student-side of things (online check-in for housing, website hosting for various student Student Affairs groups, Internet services for the students in residence halls, etc). We're the first round of support. There's one phone number and one email address that 3 of us work out of. In many cases, we can help. Someone locked out their account, email "isn't working", "How do I do this?" sort of stuff. For things we can't fix, we create a ticket and assign it to the proper group. We...

We have 4 Admins on my department's Network & Systems Administration team. The Security Admin and Network Engineer also manage Linux/Unix stuff while the other 2 admins are our Windows Admins, which is where most of our services run. One Windows Admin oversees the NOC (where I currently work) while the other manages our VMWare infrastructure as well as Mailmeter, our Cisco UCS blade systems, backups, etc. One Windows Admin has the NOC as well as a small team of student assistants that handle support duties to our residents under him. Security Admin, Network Engineer, and Other Windows Admin all have their own Jr Admins as well. Chris is a Jr Admin under our Security Admin and Steven is Jr Admin under our Network Engineer. Chris and Steven were both working in the NOC when I started and were 1 by 1 promoted to Jr Admin positions. Our other Windows Admin had Patrick, an older IT guy who worked here for almost a year. Patrick recently took a job elsewhere so I asked Other Wind...

Ok, so it's not a real server but based on my research, it should be enough to meed my modest needs for a home lab setup. Back in the day, I had my gaming rig dual- and triple-booted with Windows and a flavor or two of Linux but I also had this old Pentium III eMachines PC with Win2k and 256Mb of RAM. My step-brother was getting rid of it so I took it. I added a PCI NIC I had laying around, installed Debian and that was my server. I setup DHCP3 and Apache on that machine and it was running for months. I had a "Hello World" site with DynDNS setup and somehow Comcast found it.It didn't take long to get a C&D letter. I should've learned HTML and did something with it but I never made it that far.

Recently, a co-worker found my blog, read some bits, and gave me feedback on it. Mind you I don't do this for any kind of promotional reasons or because I have to. I have a gift for gab and I'm not the worst writer so I essentially do this for me. He mentioned that he liked the posts I've done but that I don't have a lot of pictures. He likes pictures. To be honest, I don't post a lot of pictures because my cell-phone sucks.

There's a dividing belief in the motorcycle community over the saying "Loud Pipes Save Lives". A lot of riders, primarily on cruisers are all for loud pipes while many, both riders and non-riders, just find it annoying. I'm for loud pipes for reasons of safety and for enjoyment. First, let's talk about hybrids.

Despite the faults I can find with my VLX 600 (the runt of Honda Shadow line-up), I still love it. It's great for around-town riding, comfortable, and doesn't look terrible from the factory either. However, my two primary complaints about it are the lack of overall power (I can't say at what RPM power starts dropping since it doesn't have a tach), and the sound. I could even live with the power it has stock but it's way too quiet. With stock pipes, the VLX sounds like a really awesome sewing machine. To top it off, the bike sat for the better part of 2 years before I bought it. The previous owner said that he started it up every now and again and it seems to run alright, but low-end throttle response is choppy at best. It also took longer than average to warm up and seemed to show symptoms of running bit lean. With that, my goal is to make the shadow run better, get a bit more power and overall, just give it some balls.

I'm not saying I'm old by any stretch. With modern medical technology, I'm at least only at the 33% mark. A couple weeks ago, I celebrated my 25th birthday. I can't be the only one that looks back on a younger Andrew and wonder "What was I thinking?" I feel older and I've outlined just a few reasons why I've noticed a step-up in my maturity game.

We're moving this weekend. Not far; Just across town actually. But, lo, we're still moving. That means packing, cleaning, sorting, laboring, carrying, fixing, painting, aching, etc. That has pretty much my past couple weekends. Weekend before last, Sunday night, I was a bit nervous about my first day at my new job. What if nobody liked me? What if I sucked? What if I trip or throw up or do something embarrassing? What If I'm completely amazing and they make me the manager and Lord of all things electronic on campus? Yes, these were the thoughts stirring in my mind as I went to sleep. I got about 90 minutes of sleep before my brain was wide awake with questions and wonderment of the day to come.