the ramblings of a crazed IT administrator
Blog
Current Status: Melting, but wishing I was playing EVE Online
May 24th
So im sat here in the office melting away thanks to the one nice bit of weather we’re likely to get all summer trying not to sneeze thanks to my hayfever and the gardener outside cutting the grass and all I can think about (apart from whether anyone would notice if I moved my desk into the server room next to the air con units), is how long it will be before I can get home and get back to playing EVE Online.
Yes, im one of those masochistic wierdos who actually enjoys the game and loves its sandbox nature, the ability to do pretty much anything you like, even if all that entails is sitting around in space and shooting rocks (which is what I spend quite a bit of time doing).
Purpose of this post? None, but when space looks this nice how could you not want to play?
My New Best Friend – Introducing Spiceworks
May 17th
So for the last few months I’ve been looking for ways to improve our ability to monitor our network (both the Servers and Desktops), we already have external monitors for the really important, business critical things like our website and email but for the day to day tracking of our desktops and less important servers we dont really have anything apart from me sticking my head in the server room every morning to check for flashing red lights! I’ve also been motivated to find a solution for tracking our desktop PC’s too after seeing one of my colleagues spend (literally), a whole week building a giant Excel spreadsheet to track both hardware and software on all our Desktop PC’s. While I am quite happy with Cacti and its ability to graph pretty much anything, it isn’t really designed for much more than this and so isn’t much use for tracking all the things I want to.
This is where Spiceworks comes in, it is a free (but ad supported), program that is designed for SMB’s to monitor and track their desktop and server infrastructure. Unlike almost every other program I have tried so far it is actually designed to be simple to use, no messing around trying to decipher config files or setup SNMP polling or anything like that, simply download the one .exe and install it on a spare Windows server (or desktop), the installer will install a copy of Apache and Ruby on Rails and make all the needed config changes, all you need to do is make sure that nothing else is running on the port you choose (such as another webserver like IIS or Apache).
Thank you XKCD
Feb 9th
After a horrible morning of not sleeping, then finally getting to sleep just *after* I turned my alarm off, then missing the train and then finally getting stuck in the queue from hell in the shop round the corner from work I finally got a chance to catch up on yesterdays XKCD comic, if your not already a fan give it a read and you soon will be. Anyway, since sharing is caring, heres yesterdays strip:
Third time lucky
Jan 25th
Well, its been a few months since my old blog died when I cancelled the hosting and since I had to renew my domain this month I decided to go crazy and setup some new hosting and give this blogging thing another go.
Since I last posted anything i’ve started a new job, im now the systems administrator for www.interregs.com and www.lsi.edu. I get to play around with and manage all their servers (currently just 2 racks full but a third may arrive later this year when we deploy Exchange 2010 and WSS2010). All this is a great change of pace and a whole lot more fun than my previous job at www.cobweb.com, which, while teaching me a lot was a little too busy for my liking (try talking on the phone for 5-6 hours a day, 5 days a week!). While I do sometimes miss the chaos and banter of a busy office its certainly a lot nicer being my own master and I can finally start on my career path to becoming a BOFH 
So, as I trundle through the next few months/years(!?!), I’l be using this blog to post anything I find thats useful while I rollout our Windows 7 deployment, new Exchange 2010 server and then eventually a Sharepoint 2010 server aswell.
