So this week was momentus for the NOC.. we finally got brand new workstations for the whole thing, after waiting on them for quite some time. Quite an upgrade from the Frankenstein’d boxes we were working on prior. So in this new set up, I moved to a external hard drive with my own operating system, which allows me to move my workspace around between systems. However, I had to pick a unique name for my workstation.

Naming your computers is always a big thing for a geek. It has to fit the system. Many times, you have a naming convention to stick to, while others, it’s just picking something that fits.

The result of my search?

cblecker@alexander:~$

Alexander fits this system. You wanna know in how many ways? Check this out:

• My desktop systems usually have a male name, and mobile systems a female name.
• Alexander is the male version of my personal laptop’s name — “Alexis”
• It fits with the sort-of naming convention of a lot of Vancouver servers — after alcoholic beverages (such as sleeman, budwiser, shiraz, etcc), in this case, after “Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale“.
• It also has a fear-striking quality, in that it was also a name shared by a great king and feared army commander, “Alexander the Great“.

So you see, a lot of thought goes into a good name. And yes, I really am a big frickin geek.

Hey Peer1,
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Christoph Blecker, and I’m a Network Analyst working in the Vancouver NOC. I was chosen to be the first participant in the new Peer1 Employee Exchange program, and am spending this whole week in the ServerBeach San Antonio office. I’ll be spending the majority of the time with the SB Support Team, headed up by Mark Melin.

It’s been a fun week so far. By sheer coincidence, I’m not the only person starting in SAT support this week. Jim Park, formerly of Los Angeles DCO roots, picked up and moved down to Texas last weekend. This is his first week working as a Support Specialist on the San Antonio support team. We are both learning the ropes of this office together.

So far I’ve spent time shadowing a few different members of the support team:
- Brenda C. in doing Support Level 1
- Jayson A. doing Support Level 2
- Stephanie D. doing Billing
- Allison H. doing Winback/Cancellations

I’ve also put tons of names and faces together, as well as collected a much deeper insight into the scope of issues that crop up at The Beach. Holy Plesk issues, Batman!

I’ve also been able to sample local cuisine. Breakfast Tacos? Beef and Cheese Enchiladas? Yummm! Much better than Taco Bell (the extent of my previous Mexican experience)! So far so good! I’m getting comfortable down here now, which isn’t that where the fun begins?

The other big thing I’ve noticed is the heat. I’m a Canadian. I’m most comfortable in that 17-20C (62-68F) range. It’s been up to 101F (38C) at the peak this week. I’m not down with that. At all. Thankfully the beach is kept at a nice, cool temperature. Safe to say, I’ve been huddling inside.

More to come!

In the pilot program, they have selected two staff members to travel to another office, learn everything they can about what makes that office tick, and then bring it back with them to their home office. I have been selected to go to ServerBeach‘s head office in San Antonio, TX. It should be a blast. I already have a working relationship with a couple people down there, and I’ve never been to Texas. Well, actually I’ve never been anywhere in the states other than to Seattle, and the few hours I was in LAX on lay-overs during my trip to Australia.

So! I’ll be in San Antonio from April 19th to the 25th. Go raise a little hell there for a week (to a point — had to promise the boss I’d be on my best behaviour ), and come home. I’ll probably be tweeting/blogging like crazy, partially because it’s part of my agreement with the company to be able to go!

In other work news, I’m finished up another night rotation. I’m looking forward to going back onto day shift. I’m looking forward to being able to work on all my little side projects now, while not losing tons of sleep or flipping back and forth nights to days and back, on my days off.

Lots of exciting things coming down the pipe!

Other than that, the other big piece of news is that I’m moving! I’ve leased a basement suite in the Kitsilano area for the next year. It’s a two bedroom suite in an older heritage home. It’s small, but it will do the trick. Laurel (my best friend of nearly a decade) and I are sharing the place. It’s closer to her work, and it’s MUCH closer for me. I’m soo glad I won’t have to commute from Maple Ridge into downtown at least 4-5 times a week. After a while, it eats your soul. So within the next week, I’ll officially be a Vancouverite. The other dangerous part about this, is that I have a Starbucks less than 100m from my front door (at MacDonald and 16th). This is not going to do well for my pocket book, or my caffeine intake.

At work, things are going decently. We recently lost some NOC team members to other departments in the company, so we have a couple new hires that are being trained on day shift. The two that have already started seem like bright guys, and we have one more starting next week. So we’ll shortly be back up to full staffing, and raring to go! I still learn a lot daily at this job, which keeps it fresh and interesting. It’s not just the technical side of things, but also getting better at the “team player” and even a “mentor”.

Peer1 is a really wonderful company to work for. Last weekend, we had an epic Christmas party at Steamworks in Gastown. Where lots of companies have been skimping on staff events to cut costs, Peer1 pulled out all the stops to show it’s appriciation for it’s staff. It’s not only made us all feel a greater sense of loyalty to our company, but it’s closened the camaraderie of our Vancouver office as a whole. Moral in the office is really high, and it’s been a very good week since.

Today, we ended up having our annual Secret Santa. We set a nice limit of $20, and most of the people in Vancouver participated. I made.. well rather a unique request, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to be taken:

Beer/Liquor, GC for something geeky (FutureShop, BestBuy, ThinkGeek, etcc), pulling a really good prank on any NOC member (other than me)

I did not expect anything like what I received:

My boss's office as a present

That.. was just epic. The desk belongs to my boss, Jason. The attention to detail was magnificent. Every pen, CD, and magazine was wrapped. Literally, everything in, around or on his desk was wrapped. It brought such a smile to my face, as someone obviously spent hours wrapping it all. It was just.. wow.

Up close desk view

I also got a present today from Charnell and the San Antonio team. It’s a pretty awesome t-shirt with “I’d rather be at the Beach” and the ServerBeach logo on the back.

Thank you to my Secret Santa, Charnell, and thanks to all my colleagues at Peer1 for making my first year with the company memorable. I’m very much looking forward to 2009 at Peer1!

If you haven’t seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, stop reading this right now, and go watch it. I’m serious. Go. Now. I’ll still be here. Honestly, this is one of the best put together and funniest mini-series I’ve seen. It’s by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, etc.) and stars Nathan Fillion (Mal Reynolds) among others. Oh my is it funny. I don’t buy DRM’d stuff, but I bought all the videos on iTunes, as well as the soundtrack (which has no DRM!). If you like satirical and/or slapstick humor, you will like this.

On the work front, I’ve taken on a couple new projects, including building out a new test lab. We had one, but since our last round of upgrade work, it needs to be put back together from scratch. We have example equipment of stuff from all over our network, and I get to play around with it and get it back up and running. It’ll help all of us when working on certs and stuff to be able to test out things with a set up that we can break, rebuild, and then break again.
I’m also starting on some Juniper certifications. I’m working on JNCIA-EX right now as I have a free voucher. Should be a good place to start. JUNOS (the Juniper routing OS — their version of IOS under Cisco) is actually very versatile, and more logically configured than a lot of things in IOS. I’m really hyped and interested in this stuff, so it’s good.

And lastly, I’m going to Australia. I know, holy crap. Tickets booked, visa is had, all those kind of good things. I’m taking 20 days off of work, and flying from Vancouver to Melbourne. So excited. It’s gonna be my first overseas trip, and I’ve got a large chunk of time to explore. I’m just going to backpack it and stay with friends while down there. Solo geek taking on Aus. I can’t wait! I leave mid-November, and am back first week of December. This all from a guy who has taken like.. 4-5 days off total in the last 3 years.

Lots of busy and exciting things happening!

My next project is going to be finishing off my MCSE. I’m not really using this knowledge (especially considering I haven’t used Windows in over 6 months), but I’m only 2 exams (in a 7 exam series) away from getting it, so I might as well finish it off. It’s still a really beneficial piece of paper to have, and a safety net is always good.

You can take a look at the article, here.

I then checked a very handy service called Internet Pulse, and discovered that Savvis was having network issues pretty much all over North America.

Fantastic. However, with the help of the Engineering department, we were quickly able to react, and redirect traffic out the other upstreams, avoiding Savvis where possible. Most providers, no matter how big or small, will have network issues, faults, and generally not nice stuff happen to them.. However what makes the difference between the decent networks, and the great networks (like PEER1) is the ability to react quickly to changes in the structure of the network and minimize latency, packet loss, and downtime.