By any other name..

Published by Toph on May 7, 2009 in Geekery and Work. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Ready for another chestnut in the “how big of a geek am I” fire?

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.

Out Of Office

Published by Toph on April 23, 2009 in Social Commentary and Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The below was cross-posted to the Peer1 Internal Staff site, as part of my participation in the Peer1 Employee Exchange Program.

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!

Blecker, Texas Ranger

Published by Toph on March 26, 2009 in Work. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I ended up having a lunch meeting with my boss, Jason, last week. It appears that I was selected to participate in a pilot of the Peer1 Employee Exchange program. This program is designed to bring staff that normally wouldn’t get a chance to see each other in person together, and from those experiences gain and bring back perspective about how the other departments, lines of business, and offices operate. It is the hope of Peer1 management that if this program is successful in strengthening relations between the offices, that they will launch it into a full program.

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 :P ), 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!

California here we come, right back where we started from..

Published by Toph on March 21, 2009 in Networking and Technology. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Cisco’s (NASDAQ:CSCO) new Unified Computing System (also known as Project California) is a very interesting piece of technology. In a nutshell, what they’re trying to do is reduce and unify all the equipment needed to run a server infrastructure into one box. Server hardware itself, server-attached storage (also known as a SAN or Storage Area Network), and network backbone (routing/switching devices) would all integrate into “blades” that lock into a high-speed backplane. Through this single unified system, they are able to employ virtualization of the actual “server” instances across the smaller and more efficient blades.

They have taken their knowledge in and expertise in networking and used it to create a high-speed switching/routing backplane that is 10 Gigabit-per-second Ethernet capable. Through it, administrators can consolidate the both the local-area network (LAN) connections, SAN, and high-speed clustering connections all into one. Cisco is hoping that by integrating all these devices into one, that it will simply administration and provisioning due to the virtualized nature of the product, reduce costs by consolidating duplicated hardware, increase energy efficiency and lower cooling costs with a unified chassis, among other things. They have also partnered with VMWare (NYSE:VMW), who is already and industry leader in virtualization technologies, for both their press announcement and to help them develop the underlying tech.

So far, I’ve seen mixed reactions from the industry. Traditionally, Cisco has partnered with the major computer manufactures as they had largely complimentary markets and very little overlap. However, this move is a clear indication that Cisco is dropping the gloves and wants to take on the big manufactueres directly. IBM (NASDAQ:IBM), HP (NAQDAQ:HPQ), Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) are the four major incumbents in this sector, and they might just have something to be worried about. Cisco has a lot of financial resources to invest into this project, and with the economy in it’s current state, companies are always looking for tech that is going to lower their Total Cost of Ownership (or TCO).

Cisco isn’t the only player to get into this market though. Their primary rival in the network room is Juniper Networks (NASDAQ:JNPR), and they announced last month a similar project to integrate the various devices in the data centre together. However, it appears Cisco has a lead on them as far as bringing the product to market. Juniper is taking a slightly different approach, though.. they are actually in talks to partner with the major server manufacturers to bring this technology to market. Juniper has also indicated that it is looking to re-invent a best-of-breed technology in their product, and not necessarily be forced to stick with current tech and standards.

Same technology, but two different approaches. It will be also interesting to see if Cisco’s repositioning and determination to take on the entire project themselves will increase their share of the larger tech market, or if it could weaken their incumbent position on top of the networking sector.

PEER1 Networks employs both best-of-breed Cisco and Juniper networks equipment throughout their network infrastructure.

Tweeting the day away

Published by Toph on March 8, 2009 in Social Commentary and Web Culture. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’ve noticed a recent explosion in the media talk about Twitter. There are about a million explainations of what Twitter does, but put very simply, it’s a service that centres around the concept of “micro-blogging”. Micro-blogging is where a person posts short, frequent messages out to the web. These can be anything from an aggregation on information (pictures, cool links, news, etc) to status messages, to just random thoughts going through a person’s mind.

What really makes this concept different from other communication methods, is it allows celebrities, public figures, even companies, to connect directly with their users. With a regular website or blog, in many cases posts and information is distributed one direction (from the person or company, to us, the audience). We can’t really respond, and start up the conversation. Additionally, in many cases, the audience feels further disconnected, as many if not most celebrities and public figures, have their public website and blog content screened by PR. In some cases, it may not even be written by the figure at all.

However, with 140 character messages, that the celebrity or public figure can send from their phone or computer.. it’s coming directly from them. And it’s interesting to see what these people are thinking or doing. For example, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, Comedian Rainn Wilson, US President Barack Obama, and Actress Felicia Day are just a few of the public figures I keep track of on Twitter.

In the political scene, Twitter is creating a bit of a stirr. Politicians in both the US and Canada can connect directly to the public to get their message out. No news media, PR reps, or anything in between. Down south, Tweet Congress is a website dedicated to locating your local congress men and women on Twitter. Many of them talk about bills they’re working on, or events they are attending. In Canada, Mayor Robertson, NDP Leader Jack Layton, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper use Twitter to let people know their personal thoughts on recent policies and events.

This can be both a good and a bad thing for these politicians. During the recent address by President Obama to a joint session of the US Congress, Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) made a comment about the seating arrangements. Some people criticized him for being rude and sending these messages during the speech, but the one thing you can say is that it brings you closer to the people who are representing you in government. In the case of celebrities and other public figures, you quickly find out that these are normal people, who have random thoughts that they want to share with the world too.

It’s also interesting to watch trending on Twitter and see what people around the world are actively talking about, in real time. Sites like Summize (which was bought by Twitter itself a while back), and Twitscoop all you to search and see visual trends about what people are talking about. A regular person with a quick hand, a cell phone, and Twitter, was able to snap a picture of the February 25, 2009 crash of a Turkish Airlines plane at the Amsterdam airport. This picture was all over the internet, before CNN and other major news networks were able to break the story. Even this morning, I just learned that there was an unfortunate shooting in Maryville, IL at a church.

Twitter is even changing the ways that companies interact with their customers. Companies like Dell Computers, Zappos Shoes, Virgin America Airlines, and Comcast use Twitter to not only monitor what people are saying and thinking about their company and products, but use Twitter to interact directly with those clients and improve their customer service experience. We do this too at Peer1 and ServerBeach.

Twitter is just one service out there. The interactivity of social networks (everything from Twitter, to Facebook, MySpace, and the myriad of others) is allowing the faster, more direct, and wider dispersal of information than we have ever seen before. The concept isn’t revolutionary, per-ce.. but it’s changing once again how we get and give that information.

It will be interesting to see what comes next. And of course, you can follow me on Twitter here. ;)

Last.fm

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