Where's all of the traffic?

I was doing my weekly breeze through of my google analytics and when I came across the blog listing I noticed it had completely flatlined which reminded me that I hadn't posted anything in a while. The truth is, we've been busy. Mostly because we are looking for a network administrator to manage our IT infrastructure, we are replacing the brains in our PBX Thursday, and I'm getting ready to go to camp with the 5th and 6th graders from the church. Sad to say but the blog has been a little neglected and I apologize for that. So, please accept my apology.

Farewell to a Great Table Waiter

A couple of months ago Wayne Bollenbacher (my immediate supervisor) announced that he was was being called to a different job at a different organization. He spent 12 years at Crossings Community Church leading the church by serving. He always had wise, kind, and encouraging words to say but what impacted me the most was the spirit with which he served. Numerous times in the announcement of Wayne leaving I'd hear him say "I'd be most happy if my epitaph read: 'he was a great table waiter.'" His humility and character really reflected what a great table waiter is. Most people think that the role of a table waiter is second class and something to be looked down on. Wayne blew those perceptions out of the water for me and established the table waiter as an honorable job that's a very important part of ministry. Whatever needed to be done he would do it. He wore many different hats here which included treasurer, human relations, operations manager, finance, and the man with all of the answers. I witnessed him walk down the halls time after time and although no one could see and he wasn't a janitor, he'd pick up trash or wipe up the floors. In my absence he would act as tier 1 tech support. The list could go on and on of how he would see some kind of support service that needed to be done and he would do it.

Wayne lead by example with Love and great effort and effort for the Kingdom. He taught me to be proud of the support staff position and for that I couldn't thank him enough. This goes without saying, Wayne will be greatly missed.

UPS's don't like small generators

In our effort to keep our datacenter running we rented a relatively small generator to run our IT services during our multi-day power outage. We found out the hard way that small generators and our battery backups don't work well together. The electricians were explaining to us how the power is sometimes too dirty for a UPS to function. The units would switch contently between line power and the battery. Unfortunately  the batteries weren't off long enough to charge and they were eventually drained. Now we are on a quest to find out how to run our datacenter on emergency power. We don't actually pull that much juice but we don't want to run on dirty power. If you have some experience with small generators and computer equipment, I'd love to get your take (read: solution) on this problem.

Extended Power Outage

Over the next couple of days we will experience an extended power outage in our administrative office area which includes our Datacenter. This is due to constructions and the need to move some of the lines that power this part of the building. We are doing quite a bit to prepare for the outage. A large generator will be tied into our current infrastructure to power the entire wing during working hours. This wouldn't have been a problem until we realized that the servers and phones work even after hours. To accommodate this we will be running our phone system, network equipment, and 5 servers off a smaller generator that will run until the power is back on.

The cool part about this (other than the gas powered noise) is we will be able to simulate a large power outage disaster. This has instigated the installation of a power outlet in our datacenter which will connect to a generator if a true, unexpected disaster actually happens.

YouVersion

My brother-in-law (a children's pastor in Owasso, OK) was asking me the other day about any great places that I use on the web. It is funny that even though I feel like I spend my life on the internet I didn't have any great nuggets to share with him. He then asked me if I used YouVersion. I couldn't be too cool and act like I already knew about it because I was very intrigued. When I got home to check it out I immediately fell in love with it. Basically it is a web-application that allows you to read the scriptures and make notes and comments on specific what you are reading. I was trying to do this with my personal bible study and a blogger account. It was a little difficult. YouVersion gives you the ability to do what I was looking for and quite a bit more. It also allows you to share your thoughts and ideas with others and they can in turn share theirs with you. This would be great for small groups who want to connect with each other int their reading of the scripture.

As I was browsing around on the site I noticed that the copyright was LifeChurch.tv. The have been doing some really interesting stuff recently. I've been really impressed with their effort and drive to share their resources. This app could have been built only for their church members and they could have packaged it and sold it to others that were interested. Instead, they made it functional and available to all believers. This could be a huge blessing to many people and get more people digging into God's Word. Many people and their churches are receiving blessings from the openness of LC and their willingness to share and equip.

Their leadership and example encourages me to share our resources and knowledge for the Church not just our church.

Computer Clutter

If you ever walked by my office you would notice the piles of stuff that I have to step over and work around to get the job done. Anywhere I have worked I can honestly say that I've never been able to keep a tidy office. I'll admit that about half of the blame lives in my hat but the other half is attributed to the amount of stuff that passes through my office. I have papers, boxes, cables, computers, ram, etc... well you get the point.

My computer isn't much different. It gets loaded with trial programs, web servers, SQL servers, OS files, CD images, drivers, diagnostics, etc... Again I'm sure that you get the point and if you work in Information Technology I'm sure that you share similar battles. I have a good policy for myself and that it is to wipe my computer every year and start over. As in the case of may other policies, I don't adhere to this one like glue. It takes a while to get a computer loaded back up the way I like them. This configuration also mutates month by month so an image of my ideal OS isn't very practical. So instead of the theoretical "every year" I usually depend on my pain threshold. Yesterday I hit the pain threshold yesterday when my desktop crashed 3 times rendering me useless for about 20 minutes each time.

This time I'm going to try and be a little smarter. I've loaded VMware on my computer and anytime I would like to test drive some software I'm going to try it on a VM before I load it to my wonderful desktop. In the process of reloading my computer I went ahead and snagged one of computers that we purchased for our desktop replacement program (don't judge me, they are awesome).

What are some good policies or tips/tricks to avoid your computers getting cluttered and sluggish?

Disaster Recovery Development - Simplified

Tony Dye posted some great information defining some really important disaster recovery terms.

RTO & RPO - Recovery Time Objective & Recovery Point Objective

These two definitions should be the building blocks for developing your DR plan and its strategies. If you know how much time that you can live without your data and how much you are willing to lose then you are well on your DR way.

The other major factor in development of a DR strategy is obviously cost. The bigger the number for your RTO and RPO the less you are going to have to spend. As your RTP and RPO approach zero you costs increase dramatically. It is like adding 9's in your uptime or reaching absolute zero. The trickiest part is meeting your expectations to your budget.

Welcome to the PARADOX.