:::: MENU ::::
Jan 6, 2008    |      0 comments

A WARM Sunday

So I was complaining about the cold… well at-least the frost on the inside of the car, so i guess I need to note it was almost 70 deg here today… never thought i would wash my cars and take down Christmas lights in shorts and a Shirt.

christmaslights21.gif

chistmaslights.gif

SharePoint Server Training less than 12 hours away….. Well we met at the church tonight at 5:30 and got everything setup.  Bill brought two Huge screens so it will be great even for the likes of Ed Buford who i found out tonight is about as blind as a bat.

I was either too busy setting up, doing introductions, or something….(Insert Jim or Jeremie sarcastic remark here I suppose) I didn’t get a single photo taken… But I am quite sure JP, Jeremie and Justin documented the night well…

For those in the ChurchIT biggest loser contest, Jason and Ed did eat celery at BW3′s so they are still on track.

Now the task for tonight is Buckeye making…  for the BIG game tomorrow night.  OH-IO

Melting the Chocolate

buckeye1.gif

Dipping the Peanut-butter

buckeye2.gif

The finished product

buckeye3.gif

GO BUCKS!

Jan 5, 2008    |       9 comments

SharePoint Training Less than 36 hours away!

Our SharePoint Training starts this Monday at 8:30 am; the registration desk will open at 8:00 am.  If you enter any of the entrances on campus, there will be signs helping you find your way to the registration desk and our training room.

Most attendees are arriving into Peoria Sunday night, so we are planning an optional dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings in Peoria at 7pm.  (Note: this meal isn’t included in your registration)

The Northwoods IT staff will head over to BW’s after we setup at the church.  If you plan to join us leave a comment and we’ll hold you a seat.

Directions from AmericInn Lodge and Suites to Buffalo Wild Wings:
Travel North on N. Knoxville Ave to Rt. 6
Take Route 6 West towards I-74/I-474 (back towards Peoria Airport)
Exit Route 6 at Rt. 150/War Memorial Drive
Turn Right on Rt. 91 (You will see the Grand Prairie Mall)
Turn Left on West American Prairie Drive BW’s is on the Right.

Jan 5, 2008    |       4 comments

DataCenter Relocation = DONE!

Well, the relocation went very smoothly with only two very minor snags….  I can say, yes we had done over 5 months of preparation for this evening… but I could tell that multiple people prayed for our night to run smoothly..and I must say thanks for the prayers.

Our minor snags:

1. One of the old server rack mounts had to be slightly modified since the chassis wouldn’t slide into the rack cabinet without wedging the rails.

2. When your new Core switch is set to DHCP and you relocate your PDC things get a little crazy.  So with Jeremie setting the IP to static on the core switch and we were able to rock and roll.

I do have to mention that having your boss bring Dove Ice cream chocolate bars halfway thru the night is pretty awesome…. not to mention a great snack! Thanks Linda

Dinner at Taco Bell: $13.50
Velcro Cable Wraps (two stores later): $20.00
Getting home after the server relocation is done and finding your home Wifi router set back to factory default: Priceless

 Well my home wifi is backup and running (secure again) and the Mountain Dew that Ed recommended is wearing off, so off to take a shower and sleep for many hours… That is if one of our very talented users doesn’t find a glitch in our migration that we didn’t see….

Jeremie documented our night quite well, so I am sure he will upload some photos for your viewing pleasure… and then i’ll bootleg them off his site for you to see here :)

Jan 3, 2008    |      0 comments

SharePoint Training: Virtual Server, Syllabus, Schedule

Some more SharePoint Training Informatin:

  • Bill will be providing two Virtual PC images for the the training.  It is very important that you download and install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on your laptop before you arrive Monday morning.
    • You DO NOT need to install SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 on your physical base OS install on your laptop.  Your enviorment for the training will be in the virtual servers provided.
  • Our training is a combining two courses into one class, so while we won’t be able to cover 10 days of classes into 5 days we will be covering SharePoint Admin and SharePoint Desinger.  Here are Syllabi for the two full courses that Bill will be pulling our hybrid content from:
  • Our Monday Schedule:
    • 8:00am - 8:30am Registration
    • 8:30am Session 1 Begins
    • Noon Lunch
    • 4:30pm End
Jan 3, 2008    |      0 comments

Midwest Winter

Well I didn’t get the ‘Tony Award’ for the first winter weather post but you know its cold when there is frost on the inside of your car window after you have started the car, turned on the defrost and scraped the outside of the windows.

insidefrost.gif

4deg.gif

The Handy Compass/Thermometer showed 4 deg this morning when I got in my car… If only we could take all that cold and store it in our DataCenter…  Hmm… could you make a snow powered DataCenter cooling system?

Jan 2, 2008    |      1 comment

SharePoint Training Need a ride?

Several have emailed needs for transportation or have transportation to share.. so where else is a better place to put this stuff than on my blog… duh. 

Have Transportation to share:

  • Cisco Ospina, Nancy Gram and Justin Moore are sharing a car and will have an extra seat or possiby two if someone needs a ride to and from the hotel Monday – Friday.
  • Bob Schwarz and Mark Johnson will fly into Chicago O’hare Airport and are willing/able to share travel costs to Peoria.  Bob and Mark will  fly into O’hare Sunday afternoon (return Friday evening) and will have a rental car with room for 1 or 2 additional passengers to and from the AmericInn.
  • Mark Moreno is staying at the SprinHill Suites Hotel and will have 3 seats to and from the training.
  • Tim Larson will be flying in to Bloomington/Normal (about 45 minutes away from Peoria) at 5:30 Sunday night and if anyone is flying into BMI about the same time needs a ride, he will have two seats open in his car.  He will fly out on Friday night at 6 pm.

Need Transportation:

  • Matthew Vanandel would like a ride to and from the Hotel.
  • J.Mac Brown needs a ride from Chicago O’Hare (arrives into O’hare at 1pm sunday)

If you have travel needs or rides to share, comment below and I’ll update this post.

Jan 2, 2008    |      0 comments

T-minus 5 Days to SharePoint 2007 Training

Just 5 days until SharePoint 2007 Server Training… Here are directions to the Hotel and directions to the church from the Hotel.

Additionally, if you are traveling by air, you might want to pack an extra bag. Bill has indicated that AWESOME FREE courseware you will be given at the training is two very large and heavy notebooks.  In an email to me Bill Comments “It will be two rather thick binders – heavy too.  People should bring extra luggage to take home the binders.  I’m not kidding.” So I am passing this information along to you.

You might also want to check the weather this weekend, right now its single digit temperatures, but we should be around 50 by the weekend… but i won’t guarantee those temps will last during the second week of January in Peoria!

Jan 1, 2008    |       3 comments

Its Offical..Change is a brew’n

Well its January 1 and there are changes a brew’n here in central Illinois…. and here are some random items…

- The wind is blowing and its 9 deg outside… but its suppose to be 50 by Sunday… I guess the heatwave is for all those from the south coming to the training that can’t handle the cold.

-Less than 6 days until the start of SharePoint Server 2007 training that we are hosting at Northwoods.  I am getting excited about the week of training.

-Just as few days until the National Championship Game…. another Buckeye football season is soon to come to a close…. Hopefully this year’s will include a Championship Ring for our boys in Scarlet and Gray.

-We came home Sunday night after being at our Parents houses, while its not dial-up their DSL and Cable modem service isn’t great.. Neither my parents or nat’s parents ISPs clocked more than 2.5 mb down.
bandwidth.gif
I came home and just had to compare what our bandwidth is, and its higher than before… we are consistently getting over 10mb down… its good to be home.

-Our local cable company is no longer Insight Communications…. its Now Comcast.  As of Midnight last night the sale of rights to to be the cable TV provider in Central IL is now owned by Comcast.  I don’t know much, or anything about Comcast so it will be interesting to see how it goes.  I hope Comcast’s website isn’t any indication…  When I visited the Insightcom.com website it told me to go to Comcast.com since they are now our provider. 
Ok.. that makes sense, except to look up anything on Comcast’s site you have to enter your address where they identify our address as Not-Serviceable.  Hmm.. I hope that isn’t an indication of the future.  I guess I have really high expectations that when you purchase the rights to serve a region over 6 months ago, your website would be up to snuff on the go live date…

-The other big change in Central, IL is the smoking ban in public areas… No smoking within 15 feet of a door of any public building.  As a non-smoker I think its great, but I am sure some don’t care for the new legislation to take affect.

Dec 24, 2007    |      0 comments

Fun Giving Gifts

I had one of those moments last week where got to enjoy the fact that it is really alot more fun to give than receive…

A couple weeks ago I saw woot.com was selling the remote micro helicopters. Since I hadn’t yet bought christmas gifts for my staff I couldn’t pass the opourtunity to buy them… not to mention the cool factor of the gift was clearly increased by purchasing it from Woot.com.

I have not recently anticipated a box arriving as much as this one.  I had heard of the joy woot’s $5 shipping brought but I had not yet experinced it.  The hardest part… I couldn’t share the Woot.com joy with my coworkers or it would ruin the suprise.

Well long story short, I gave the remote control helicopters to Jim and Jeremie and they were a hit.  And yes you’ll notice in the photo, I couldn’t pass up giving one of these awesome gifts to myself…  So it is great to give and recieve i suppose…

So now if you come by Northwoods you might find the Activity center graced with the buzz of micro helicoper blades spinning the next time the IT staff is needing to let off some steam.

Merry Christmas Blog Readers… While I didn’t purchase a micro helicopter for each of you this season, I hope you too experince the true Gift of Christ this Christmas.

Pages:‹1...2122232425262728›
UA-2932131-1