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Friday 29 May 2009

Infrastructure Projects

I've just had a look at the ongoing infrastructure projects within the company, and while none are officially marked as projects, they are all needing to be looked at with reasonable priority.

There are basically 3 projects of varying size and complexity, with differing priority and impact;
  • Connectivity and infrastructure set up, including DHCP, DNS and RRAS settings, and getting our fibre link up and running properly
  • Update and document our business continuity process. I need to look long and hard at this, and need to work out a strategy and test plan for this. We then need to test it and update the process as required. We also need to look at our security software. Last year we didn't give ourselves enough time to evaluate alternatives to our current software
  • Virtualisation and consolidation of our existing hardware. We have a handful of physical servers at the moment, and a few more server instances. We need to look at the virtualisation method, software and hardware and work out how to back this up

At the moment I'm primarily working as a software engineer, and am struggling to find time to work on these fairly large projects. The most critical project is the business continuity project, but the highest priority is the connectivity project. (I also need to work out how we can keep ourselves covered in the event that we have to move office in a hurry as part of business continuity.)

The virtualisation project needs an evaluation of various hypervisors and how we can migrate from MS Virtual Server to whatever else we choose to use.

I guess there's a lot to be getting on with, and not a huge amount of time to do it in.

Hopefully I'll be handing over the infrastructure work at some point over the next few months, so would like to keep everything nice and documented, maybe with a strategy document and certainly with specific projects outlined and able to be planned going forward.

Thursday 28 May 2009

All sorts of new things

Yesterday my sister gave birth to a baby boy, 7lbs 14 oz. Both are doing well, and I'll hopefully get a chance to go see them all soon. Maybe over the summer, but we'll need to wait and see.

I also got given some sponsored apparel for the keelboat yesterday. Mark (who owns the Haggis-N-Neeps business) supplied the crew with a set of Henri lloyd TP1 jackets embroidered with the sail number and his website.

Mark, thank you very much!

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Scottish Series

Hi, I'm back. What did I miss?

I've just spent the last 4 days racing a Sonar keel boat around the water off Tarbert Loch Fyne, in conditions ranging from no wind to near gale force conditions (one of the boats in a fleet to the south of us recorded 45knots on their wind instrument, but I'm not sure we got all of that.)

We had rather a lot of water come into the boat, including one wave big enough to set off an automatic lifejacket, and managed to get some good boat speed at times as well.

As it turns out, while I can do foredeck duties, it's not clever for me to put my 110Kg on the bow of a 23ft boat in 25 knots of wind. The skipper tells me it's difficult to steer when I do that!

All in all, however, it was fun. We also enjoyed a 2nd place overall, and won the last race.

Full results for sports boat fleet 2 are available here.

Meanwhile, back at work, very little has happened. Well, I'll soon change that!

Thursday 21 May 2009

Expenses

I just heard on the news that an MP claimed £30000 for gardening, including £1645 for a duck Island. I feel bad about claiming for petrol that I'm entitled to, and most definitely wouldn't get reimbursed for my mortgage.

I'm thinking of standing at the next election (as an independant) purely on the grounds that I will give a reasoned answer to any question assuming it doesn't compromise security, be open and be honest.

2 questions, though;

  • How much is the deposit?
  • Would anyone vote for me?

Anyway, I'm away for the weekend in 2 hours, so I guess I should start packing!

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Dumb Ads

The BNP have recently unveiled their latest poster campaign with a picture of a Spitfire on it, entitled the new Battle of Britain. It's aimed at sending Eastern Europeans back to their own countries.

Problem is the Spitfire is from a Polish squadron.

Tells you a lot.

Build me a Server

I spent about half an hour bilding a Server yesterday. Everything installed nicely. I installed the drivers, installed Virtual Server then checked the disk size.

2GB.

Bugger. This morning I shall be building a server, installing the drivers and Virtual Server. I HAVE checked the disk space this time, and it's much bigger.

The trouble with building the 2nd server (a Windows 2000 box) is that the network drivers are hard to come by. Dell's support software doesn't work properly in IE5, which is what ships with Windows Server 2000. This means I can't get the drivers. "Download them" I hear you say.

I can't... I've no network connections.

Gaarrgghh!

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Hello World

Hello, this is my first post on my new blog. Unusally, I am taking a couple of days off later this week.

This blog will contain some tales of software development, some of sailing, and maybe some personal rants.

If anyone reads this and takes offense at anything I say, then by all means, get in touch. I will not blog anything I wouldn't say to your face. That way, you know where you are!

Cheers.