Christmas eve...

Today is X'mas eve, but I'm still in office, working. Why am I working? It's not because I don't like holiday, but I got to finish up with some outstanding work, so that I can go on leave till 28Dec.

Although, I don't really celebrate X'mas as a religious day, is a holiday to me actually, but, I do buy a gift for my little niece, as she is such as loveable girl. I always make a point to get her a present or gift on her birthday and X'mas.

I have also send e-greeting cards to my colleagues, wishing them a happy and joyful X'mas and new year.

Leaves approved! But...

Although, my boss had already approved of my two days leaves for Thursday and Friday, but, I still got some unfinished work to settle tomorrow. I got a meeting minutes to do, some documents to review, I reckon this should take me at least half a day, so, meaning I can still go on leaves in the afternoon. Also, I intend to take two or three days next week, after Christmas day, that would be good. Yeh.....

Take a break

I have applied for two days leaves for this coming Thursday and Friday, my boss has not approve it yet, anyway, as usual, I will still go ahead and clear my leaves. So finally, I'm going to have a long weekend till Christmas. I may even clear the rest of my outstanding leaves days next week, till the end of the year! How nice, huh ?!?!

Before going on leaves, I still have work to clear, got a meeting tomorrow, and I will be taking the minutes, supposed to be today, oh gosh! Then, there's some document reviews to do, not sure whether can finish them, but will do my best.

Any advice?

Some people has said that I'm too much into work. It seems like my life revolves around work, and nothing else, if you look at most my entries here, they always talk about work. Reading the posts, you will roughly know what I do for a living, right? I don't make alot of money, even though sometimes I have to work on weekends or overtime.

I think I need advice, perhaps plenty, if you do have any, do put in the Comments.

What's on Sunday

I'm thinking whether I should go back to work on Sunday. Just three week's ago, also a Sunday, I had tried to test swing over of SAN disk connectivity from one Windows server to another, but, this was not succcessful. So, i intend to do it again, this time, I had made some changes to the SAN's configuration.

Let's see whether I will be able to wake up early tomorrow.

I would like also, to share with you a very interesting blog at http://aaroninafrica.blogspot.com/. Aaron, a peace corp volunteer who is in Africa. Lots of video to watch.

Today

Today is Friday!

Today is the day, the day! The day you will return back home!

I am working today, so, not sure whether can make it to the airport to meet you, the time is pretty tight. I have got a couple of problems to solve today, application stuff, let's hope that they can be resolved today, or at least find something of what may have caused the issue.

Anyway, I will always do my best I can....

Questions from the team

I have finally completed the mount points setup for the second HP-UX server which is connected to a SAN system for another customer. The external SAN storage requirement was for at least 1TB to be configured solely for this server. This was done yesterday.

On the same day, I got questions from the team, asking me whether we should have a KnowledgeBase or 1st level troubleshooting guide for helpdesk. In order to address this, I spent about 3hrs last night creating the guide, will send to the team for comments or inputs.

There was also the question of data migration/batch support, one colleague claimed that he played multiple roles doing both in some weeks, which I presumed that he meant this is unfair. Ok, I will think about this, in fact, I'm more willing to scrap this batch support thing, let's see whether they are in favour.

Two more days..

Hey, how time flies, two more days and you will be back! Have you started packing?

I maybe busy for the next 2 weeks or so, have got another task to do in the afternoon, and this is due on Friday. Next week, I may need to provide support for another customer's disaster recovery exercise, mainly to assist if there's any server related issue. The other team who handles the Data recovery portion encountered some issues this week, so might need to help take a look at the server's configuration.

I still have about a week's annual leaves left, hopeful around the mid of next week, I will be able to clear them.

Hey, it's me!

Ya, it's me (not the man in the photo), way past midnight, and haven't sleep yet. I guess I got too much nap this afternoon, so I'm still pretty awake now.

Been troubled by an application issue for the past one week, did a search of the web just now, looking for solution or fix, but no luck, couldn't find much useful stuff, other than those I already know. It's just one of those times where you will spending time after office hours to solve work related problem, so used to it already. No worries, the storm comes and goes, will definitely get over it....

Coup in Fiji

Just heard from news today that there was a coup in Fiji, and the military has taken over the functions the government. Wondering what's going on there.

I remember that time you told me that you wanted to visit Fiji, hopefully, that it is not part of your travel plan.

How's everything? Have you been enjoying yourself?

I'm actually counting down on the day of your return. I have been keeping myself busy here, very tired sometimes, but I know I'm doing something very worthwhile.

Busy work week ahead

Mostly likely, next week is going to be a busy work week for me. I have planned work for some OS installation work at two different Disaster Recovery sites, software installation for two servers at my office's data centre, hmmm, maybe I will get our Windows Administrator to do that.

There's also my progress report to write, prepare learning plan for our team members and also preparation for take-over the duties of our DBA who is confirmed will be secondment to an overseas assignment next month. Let see how I can manage....

I read an article today, this guy said something interesting, it goes:

"If you are technically competent, but lacks communication skills, you will be struggling."

I think it's true, expecially in the IT line, most of the people I know are very technically capable, but when it comes to communication, it's just not there.

Here's another, a modified version by me:

"To survive in the IT industry, no matter what position you are in, you should continuously seek to enhance your technical, professional, communication and mangement skills, else you are just wasting your work life."

Go for training

I have also emailed my boss on a specialised skills (e.g. AutoSys, WebLogic App, PeoplelSoft Admin) learning approach for our team members, he supportive of it. My plan is to ensure that we can attend external training so as to supplement the knowledge learned from hand-ons, as well as build up team compentency, confidence and expertise, not only in running of current projects, but also external ones. In future, we do not have to rely on others, esp. vendors and other technical teams.

You know, this idea arose because I have been pretty frustrated at having to beg other external parties for help, alot of time wasted doing that, that's because we do not have that technical speciality skills. If we have them, people will look at us differently.

Overseas posting

It has been confirmed, one of our DBAs will be deployed for an overseas assignment. He will either be in Australia or Malaysia, working on a Sybase Database project for a Telco company. This assignment will last three months, starting early January next year.

I think this is a good exposure and experience gaining opportunity for him, so I'm not opposing to his overseas' posting, but hopefully he will be back with the team here after the end of the posting period.

Meanwhile, have to start preparing the hand-over and take-over process, critical for our only DBA who will be taking over his tasks.

HP-UX OS installation

I completed a HP-UX server installation yesterday for one of the customers. Really, this is probably the first time I did a OS installation of a HP-UX server, previously, I have only seen my Unix administrator do it.

For a start, I made a silly mistake, instead of loading the OS installation disk, I put in the documentation CD in the CD-ROM drive, of course, it couldn't start up the installation process, wasted at least an hour then found out the I got the wrong disc!

Eventually, managed to get the right installation going, plus OS patching, the whole process took about four hours to complete.

My Cousin's Big Day

Today is wedding day of one of my younger cousins, and I will be attending his wedding dinner later tonight, with my family.

How times flies, come to think of it when we were still young, playing as kids, now he's getting married and soon will have his own children.

I think I am probably one of last few remaining male of that generation who is still single and nobody wants, pity me! Haha...

Anyway, hopefully you are enjoying your trip with your mum.

Well, almost time getting ready to go to my cousin dinner.....see ya...

ITIL Course

I have just attended the ITIL foundation course from Monday to Wednesday. This is a very interesting short course, and at the end of the course, there was a multiple choice exam questions where you have to obtain at least 26 out of 40 questions right, hopefully I pass.

The ITIL is made up of best practices, and ITSM or IT Service Management is part of it. Basically, it touches on Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management processess, plus the Service Desk support function, all these part of the Service Support. Service Delivery includes Availablity Management, Capacity Management, Service Level Management, Business Continuity Management and IT Finanace Management. It also covers Security Management which is not part of Service Delivery, but related.

My company is currently practicing this process model, so would be good to have a basic knowledge of what is this all about.

Weekend peace time

I thought I will be spending the weekend in peace today, especially, it rained in the afternoon, cooler for taking naps, but not so.

Our new Windows admin guy "hit the panic button" and called me saying one of the server could not be logout, showed light blue screen on the console for half an hour. I thought he had seen this before, and I did told him what to do, simple, check the HDD light, if no activity, do a hard power off and on it back, resolved.

The second incident, one of the app guys email us saying he could not logon to the application using some of the user IDs due to logon time retriction. This has nothing to do with the servers, I wanted to tell him that application security admin is not under our purview and please check with his application team's colleague. But being helpful, told him what it can be done to enable logon. He didn't email back, hopefully it's already solved.

Our DBA guy will be away for the next one week, I will also on course for he first three days of the week, hopeful, the rest of the team mates can work things together.

Unsecured Wireless Network

Just last week, a guy was charged in court for tapping on someone's wireless network, indirectly access the Internet via the victim's broadband connection. This is probable the first time I'm have heard, and I have never thought this could happen, the court thing, I mean.

Over here, most people live in flats of close proximity, if you just do a wireless network scan, you will sure to find some (networks) which are not secured. I believe there are people out there trying to tap on to other people's wireless network without the other party's knowledge. Mostly, I don't think they did it with ill intention, e.g. hacking, cracking, sniffing, but, rather, to get free access to fast internet connections at someone's expense.

I heard in some countries, such as Canada, if you are caught not securing your wireless network, you will be charged, reverse of what's happening here. Anyway, sometimes it's difficult to draw the lines, it's the almighty Law that determines the guilty party and eventually mete out the desired punishment under the justice system.

System roll out

The Windows systems which I have been working on for the last two weeks have finally rolled out, LIVE! today.

I heard there were some issues, complaints from users this morning, but that's the application concern, shouldn't be serious, though. Usually, it he timeout, connection slowest, error message when navigating, etc.

I'm also in the midst of completing the technical documentation today, do a final edit and then send it to the Project team. I reckon that in future they may want our team to administrator or maintenance the servers for them, if that is so, likely I will get our Windows guy to provide the primary support and then I back him up.

Have a look at this photo

Nothing particular, just want you to take a look at this picture of the roller coaster track.

Looks scary isn't it? That's the new Superman Escape ride.

High speed, velocity, very very exciting, but too bad, I didn't try it, weak heart, don't dare.