Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Gmail Invites, Anyone? Just as soon as I get rid of some of them, the good folks at Gmail give me more invites.  So, in the interest of spreading this cheer, anyone need a Gmail invite?  I got six to spread around.  4:46:04 PM    comment []  trackback []

Thinking of Work As my three week sabbatical from work comes to a close, I have been thinking about my job for the last couple of days.  Here are some thoughts, in no particular order.  Email Migration As I write this, my workplace is moving our mail system from Novell's NetMail to Mirapoint's appliance product.  On one level, I am somewhat crestfallen about this.  In a sense, you could say I was one of the lead technical staff on getting NetMail running.  The problem, though, was that certain decisions were made which doomed the system from the start.  I warned that these problems would hurt us down the road, but no one heeded my warnings.  We were ultimately never given the chance to fix them, and the new CIO came in and negotiated a deal with Mirapoint.  Now, Mirapoint is nice as there is very little management.  It feeds off of our current directory, and all is well.  One of the problems I have observed, though, seems to be with its proxy--so-called Message Directors.  These directors have caused problems.  For example, in my geekiness, I like using Pine--both from a PC using PC-Pine and from a Linux laptop.  I store my configuration file on the IMAP server, and Pine is set to read this configuration.  Well, the message directors do not allow this, as their proxy service does not allow the IMAP AUTHENTICATE LOGIN command to work.  Another problem that was observed after migration is the response that Netscape/Mozilla clients expect when retrieving messages.  Essentially, the response was not getting sent, and the client would barf.  So much for standards-based, huh?  At some point, I should write up a whole diagnosis of what went wrong, what we should have fixed, and why we did not make any attempt at fixes.  The nice part about the migration is that I will no longer be tethered to my desk, constantly monitoring NetMail and the servers for any problems--performance or otherwise.  Without that to work on, I can now devote time to more scholarly pursuits: Perl, Linux, and more Novell beta testing.  One of my colleagues has been performing some upgrades today.  I have not heard from him as far as whether or not this was good or bad, but it sounds as though things are going well.  He IM'd me this morning before I hit the gym, so I knew what was going on.  When I return to work, the first part of our reorganization will be put into place.  Things will not change greatly for me, but a layer above me will be removed.  It will be different in one respect, as my current manager will manage a different group.  I think that is a good thing, though.  He is a good person, but I think that many in our group--including me--thinks that his best managerial days are behind him.  I still need to spend some other time being geeky on this blog.  Of course, I can still procrastinate, just as I am about to do now.  4:44:10 PM    comment []  trackback []

Thoughts from the Shallow End I had a long day today, and I really did not do anything.  I helped my friend assemble his Christmas gift--a nice large gas grill.  After that, he invited some folks over for the inaugural use of the grill--steaks, asparagus, skewers, and romaine lettuce (yes, lettuce!).  All of this was grilled, and was quite good.  I just checked my postal mail today, and I was met with a deluge of Christmas cards.  A large part of this is my fault, as I did send my cards out later than I had expected.  The other problem, though, is that I was remiss in informing some folks of my new address.  It is still good to see the Christmas cards from friends and family that I have come to expect over the years.  Tomorrow I need to stop by the UPS Center here in Baltimore to redirect a package.  A Christmas gift for my uncle arrived later than expected from Amazon, and I was hoping to have it in time for my trip to the Eastern Shore.  Of course, the delivery man stopped by last Wednesday when I had stepped out to run some errands.  Dumb luck, I suppose.  An old friend is in town this week, and I look forward to seeing him.  I will also be catching up with another friend on Wednesday, and a Happy Hour with my cousin will occur later this week.  Oy.  I need to get back to my friend who called yesterday to invite me somewhere.  I am also getting back to the gym tomorrow after a few days respite.  12:11:38 AM    comment []  trackback []