I am going to make one big news update about what has been happening between now and my last post WAY back on February 18:

1. I underwent an outside network audit/assessment at the office. It was a learning experience for me - especially due to the way my office currently works. I’ll put it this way - we have two individuals (me and an office coworker) who work part-time (~33% of the time) on running and troubleshooting the office network (including AutoCAD and Office client apps for about 50 users), administering an Exchange server, maintaining an Intertel phone system (more on this later), maintaining the office copiers/scanners/plotters, administering our GPS server, running the new Equitrac accounting software (for the copiers/printers), and much much else. From what I know of the findings, I know that staffing is a major problem. I say it is definately a major problem. The two of us who ultimately are responsible for these systems need to do our work on a more full time basis and move from a more reactive to proactive role. There are many things we do well, but there is a lot we definately could do better.

2. I set up a new test environment with two R2 servers, two XP boxes, two XP boxen running under VMWare Server, an Asterisk@Home VM Machine (more on this later), two Vista boxes, and one Longhorn Server box. These are split between home and my office. (Note to Beta Team - driver support is still severely lacking in Vista). Half of this network can be blown out at any time for testing/troubleshooting purposes.

3. I started to tip my toe into the VOIP world by setting up an Asterisk@Home box. If you haven’t played around with this, you ought to take a look. It is CentOS based (not my choice of OS, btw) and works well as a virtual machine. For more information on how to set up AAH, take a look at Mundy’s Nerd Vittles site (you rock!). I only wished we could have considered something more like Asterisk than the current Intertel mess we are dealing with at the office.

4. I was under the weather this past week by a pretty bad case of food poisoning. Food poisoning sucks…

5. Austin Commuters Only - This is a question for any of you out there who might either be living in Austin, or currently commute to Austin. It has been over eleven years since I have lived there and my only travel up there have either been to continuing education events, tech events, pilgrimmages to Fry’s, or to UT Football Games, so I don’t have much “modern” experience of Austin traffic. How bad is northbound traffic to Austin on I-35, to a South Austin destination? I made it to MoPac (via 35/Ben White) from my home in New Braunfels in about 40 minutes on Thursday. Is this normal?. Thanks to anyone who can help me with this one..

6. I’m trying to get to TechEd this year. Hopefully I will get good news next week about that. I have been wanting to go for a few years now, but since this type of work isn’t my primary job, I can’t get the office to pay or give me time off and I don’t happen to be independently wealthy enough to go on my own. This year is my best chance short of finding a new job.

Thanks to everyone for checking in. Y’all rock.

Tags: Austin, Asterisk@Home