Month / June 2008

by dmacias

Have you backed up your computer lately?

So, I was doing my weekly backup of my work laptop and noticed that I have close to 10 gig worth of stuff in My Documents folder. Looking a little closer, the breakdown is as follows.

2.0 gigs worth of email.
3.5 gigs worth of Cisco related documentation/training materials.
2.0 gigs worth of customer related data.
1.5 gigs worth of random personal stuff.
1.0 gig worth of random files which I should probably clean up.

Needless to say, I think it’s time for some spring cleaning.

~david

by dmacias

2008 College World Series

One great thing about having a job which requires 100% travel is having the chance to take in the sights and sounds of the city that you’re in. This time, in Omaha, Ne, it was the 2008 College World Series. Unfortunately, Texas A&M didn’t make it and Rice was kicked out early, but overall it was a lot of fun. Specially when it is free. :-) A very nice lady gave us four tickets and all we had to do was pay for parking.

Some pics:

After the final out:

The Outfieder immediatly pocked the ball in his bag pocket.

The dog pile.

by dmacias

Twitter fix your IM gateway!

So, one thing that really grinds my gears is when a website offers a service which they know doesn’t work, but will not make any reference to that on their website. For example, according to the Twitter website you can send twitts over SMS or IM. So, you sign in and set up your SMS account with no problem, but then comes the option for IM using Jabber. Why would Twitter still have this option available if they know it doesn’t work?

We found an errant API project eating way too much of our Jabber (a flavor of instant messenger) resources. This activity (which we’ve corrected) had an affect of overloading our main database, resulting in the error pages and slowness most people are now encountering.

We’re bringing services back online now. Some will be slower than others for a while, and we’ll be watching IM and IM-based API clients very closely. We’ll also be taking steps to avoid this behavior in the future.
Thanks for your patience!

Update: We’re turning off IM services for the evening (Friday) to allow for the system to recover. We hope to turn things back on Saturday.

This was back in May 23rd, 2008… get with the program guys.

~dmacias

by dmacias

Cisco’s Unified Communication Resources

So, for the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed a small community dedicated to Cisco’s UCCE. For the most part most communities relate to Cisco’s routing, switching, and security while the Unified Communication front is not very well represented.

So, I’ll try and get something started. I’ll try to post at least two features, issues, bugs, tricks I run into while working with this great piece of technology.

~david

by dmacias

A bit of a rant

So, there are a few things which I just need to vent about.

    Airports which charge independently for internet access. Most major airports if not all, have an agreement with T-Mobile or some other major company which provides internet access, but no. There are still some airports, e.g. OMA, which refuses to get on board with this century.
    Hotels which charge for internet access. You’re charging me close to $200/night, but you still have to nickle and dime us on internet access? I’m not asking you for a OC48 speeds, heck I would be happy with just a connection that doesn’t drop every other packet.
    Yes, I have a cast. Yes, I have two broken bones in my wrist. Yes, I know you will have to swap my cast, palms, and fingers for explosive materials. No, it doesn’t matter that we go through this procedure every week twice a week. I understand it’s your job.
    I own about 8 belts, but none can be operated with one hand… actually are there any belts which only require one hand? Why hasn’t Velcro made a killing in this market?
    Expenses. I don’t think I’m alone on this one. Really wish there was an easier way.

I’m done, I’m actually a pretty happy person, but like to mix it up every once in a while.

~david