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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Another long time coming update!  I’ve been a pretty busy guy lately between work and the holidays but things are starting to slow down for me again thankfully and that’s giving me the opportunity to get around to some things I’ve wanted to do for a while.  One of them was to transition away from my basic Dovecot/Sendmail with Squirrelmail for web access and implement something a bit more feature filled.  I tackled that one and setup an installation of Zimbra and have been pretty happy with it thus far.  Nice having the extra features and their client is distributed for Windows, Linux and Mac so it covers all of my devices with the same client and of course supports the tasks/calendaring features without additional packages or workarounds – bonus!

Other big preps in order are getting myself organized and prepared for an upcoming VMware course at a local technical college.  I’ve had an interest in earning the VCP certification for some time but the cost to obtain it as a result of the required training was always too prohibitive for me to go out and swing it on my own.  The cost was also out of my employers budget and as of yet would offer only a slight value in their eyes as we are just now somewhat really gearing up our virtualization infrastructure after running a single ESXi host for about a year with a half dozen VM’s on it.  I had hear about VMware’s Academic Alliance program a while back and casually kept an open ear in hopes a school nearby would hop on board and sure enough, the Madison Area Technical College is going to start offering the course in January 2011.  After some discussion with the bossman at work, he and I are cleared to sit the course on the companies dime.  Cost comes in at under $500 each with the required course books as well, not too shabby compared to the offer direct through VMware.  Potential disadvantage some might see in it is the class runs 16 weeks vs a few days.  So it’s clearly not for someone who just wants to get through it quick to sit the exam.  Potential advantage is more time to learn the technologies for those who are not very experienced.  I’m pretty comfortable with a lot of features having used it in a single host at the office and several hosts at my home lab, so I might prefer to go through it quicker than this but I can’t complain given the cost savings!

Seems that will be the big focus for me going into the future at least for the upcoming year.  Big plans are to roll out more hosts and implement shared storage to utilize some of the enterprise features of vSphere.  I’ve already been working on the storage features somewhat, so that’s coming along pretty good.  Other plans for the year will incorporate a migration over to Linux servers for file and print services in branch offices with LDAP for directory services.  This is going to be a huge welcomed change for me, considering right now we really don’t employ a centrally managed directory for our 40+ offices – instead each site relies on local accounts which gets to be a pain to manage.  Finally is beginning to feel like we’re really getting ahead in the right direction for a change!

I’ll be trying to share some things along the way with my VMware experience as well as the Linux/LDAP experience in addition.  I have some ideas written down for content to publish here with some brief write-ups and how-to’s for some Juniper, specifically SRX, related material since I’ve largely finished that project and have them out in the field now.  So keep checking back and looking for that material to pop up, also feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed to get new content as I publish it.  Till next time!

I’ve had a twitter account for some time now, though I admittedly have rarely used it.  In fact, I think it was one of those things I signed up for and never used for half of eternity then pickup a new smartphone and download a twitter app for it so you’ll login once then and never touch it again for the remainder of eternity.  I’ve dusted it off and may try and give it a shot and try and use it now and again.  I became interested in it again after casually checking the twitter profiles for a couple people I know in the industry and ended up finding links to a couple of interesting reads I would have otherwise missed.  I don’t care so much for the whole social networking thing from the angle of sharing what you ate, how awful your morning is going, or how one’s freshly stubbed toe hurts – but I certainly can appreciate sharing knowledge with one another.  So we’ll see what happens, maybe I’ll stick with it for a while or maybe it will fall into the abyss once more.  If anybody cares to follow me as I hopefully begin to share some interesting articles, you may do so here (be wary of the loud crickets you’ll hear in the background):  http://twitter.com/mjsteinhilber

Also while I’m at it, since I’m on the topic which is somewhat related, I thought I would include LinkedIn.  This is a tool I have been using a bit more serious, though still not as often as I could.  I’ve been spending some extra time in it lately to seek out lost connections from over the years and see what happens.  I came to the realization the other day that I have nearly just a handful of months away from having 4 years in at my present job.  It hasn’t seemed like that long, and while I’ve picked up a wealth of knowledge I thought for sure I would have moved onward to something else by now.  That’s not to say I dislike my job or the opportunities it has given me, but it’s just not the type of position with the type of company that is really going to facilitate the growth down the path I desire for my career.  So it’s time to start working on finding something better suited to my chosen.  For anybody out there who maintains a LinkedIn profile and wishes to connect, here is my profile:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikesteinhilber

I feel like the ultimate slacker, I’ve started and finished some projects in the past several weeks and I have a list of numerous posts I would like to make here… but the problems continue.

Subaru 2.5L SOHC Engine

This is what has been taking up all of my free time (and a sizable chunk of my tax return) over the past several weeks.  To make a long story short, the engine in my car had a blown head gasket and was leaking coolant internally into the oil.  Sure, I smelled the coolant smell, but an inspection of the oil was both normal in appearance (not milky as would typically indicate coolant in the oil) and odor  as I checked a couple different times over several days.  There had also been a slow leak I was aware of when I would park (a drip here and there), so I just assumed all was fairly ok and it was just leaking a bit more while at speed.  End result was very well spun bearings, and a thoroughly toasted engine.

Rather than rebuild the existing engine since that is a bit beyond my comfort level, I opted for a low miles (51k) engine.  Also decided since the model year the engine came from was prone to head gasket issues that I would replace the head gaskets prior to installing the engine.  Also opted to change out the timing belt and related components that it rides on since it was easily done at that time as well.  The good news is, I’ve been fortunate to be able to arrange my work schedule accordingly to accommodate my wife and I sharing one vehicle while I fix mine up.  Between the lower miles engine and the replacement of the head gaskets and timing belt set as a precaution, I should hopefully have things up and operational mid to late this week and be back at things here once again.

Till next time…

Wow, things have been crazy the past couple of weeks to say the least.  I know there aren’t many (are there any of you out there??) regular readers since this blog is still new, but for anybody coming in from an outside link or web search, my apologies for the lack of content the past couple of weeks.

Work has been crazy, I am part of a team of three IT staff that support a mid sized organization with all of it’s users over approximately 40 offices throughout the state.  Needless to say, we are quite understaffed when compared to many other IT departments and to top things off one of us has been enjoying (hopefully!) a vacation through several countries around Asia.  To make matters worse I’ve been finishing up studying and assignments for college as well as final exams are this week.

I will be posting some new material next week after final exams are over with and I have less to deal with.  I’ve been working on re-designing the home network setup and have also been building several machines to use as lab servers to stick a bunch of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 virtual machines on as I begin to study for the MCITP: SA & MCITP: EA tracks as well as studying for the MCTS: Windows Server Virtualization Configuration exam.  Lots to knock out this year, but with the economy as it is now, times certainly justify trying to do all you can to become both more valuable in your current position and more marketable for other positions if needed.

Check back soon for more content next week!

One of the projects that I eventually intend to perform at a larger and more detailed scale is an info tech job analysis.  That is still a work for the future as there is more research and coding to accurately gather data and present it in a manner that makes sense.  In the mean time, I decided to do a quicker analysis using a fairly broad scope to gain a bit of insight as to where various Cisco related jobs are at a state by state basis.  What I did was perform a query on Monster.com for various Cisco certifications for each state as well as Washington D.C.  In the following table are the results of my search.

Nationwide Cisco Certification Job Analysis

Please keep in mind, this is a very simplistic analysis.  This is simply a process of searching Monster.com for various keywords (CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, etc) for each of the 50 states as well as Washington D.C.  for a total of 459 searches.  Do bear in mind that these results are not indicative of the total number of Cisco related jobs in each state, as some of the listings may have included two or more certifications.  In addition, this search does not take into account any of the CCNA specializations nor CCIE specializations.  This is just a general overview of what was listed on Monster.com on February 4, 2009.  If you prefer graphical results, click on the State name for the corresponding bar graph.  I did leave out the CCDE certification from the table below as it was causing troubles with the format of this page, however there was only one (1) result in Maryland for the CCDE certification.  I appreciate any comments or tips, as well as what you would like to see on future more details analysis of job listings.

I’ve given a lot of thought to starting a blog where I can ramble on about anything IT related, and hopefully pickup a few readers in the process.  I’ve finally decided to follow through, so here we are with the new 3dub blog.  I hope to be able to keep the content here relatively fresh, this was one of my main concerns when tossing the idea of a blog around initially since my time is already stretched fairly thin.  One of the things that occupies a great deal of my time outside of work is studying, particularily studying for various industry certifications.  I’ve found through participation in in various message forums that not only can this discussion be an enjoyable break from study, but it can also be an excellent learning tool as well.  That’s the ultimate goal behind this blog, to provide an escape from the rigors of study many of us in the IT industry face.  In addition to the mental break from studying, if some of my readers can learn a bit from my blog and if I can learn a bit from my readers then all the better!