La Paisa Grill

This week I’ve been attending a short SharePoint training class in West Valley.  It’s been pretty informative, even though I’ve missed half of the labs.  On Wednesday several of our facilities couldn’t connect to our Internet apps.  So between e-mails, phone calls, and texts, I missed quite a bit.  We didn’t actually figure out the root of the problem until this morning, when more clinics wouldn’t connect.  It turns out our anti-virus program did an update that blocked all secure Internet sites.  We made a few calls, did a bunch of uninstalls and everyone is up and running again.

Yesterday for lunch I drove down Redwood Road looking for someplace to eat when I saw the Latino Mall.  It was awesome!  It felt like I was somewhere in the middle of Mexico.  I bought some Mexican vanilla, dulce de leche, and dulce de membrillo from Ranchos Market.  Then I got a carnitas burrito from La Paisa Grill.  The meat was cooked just right, it had freshly prepared beans, and was wrapped in a fresh homemade tortilla.  ¡Qué rico!  ¡Muy auténtico!  It was so good that today I went there and had tacos and a cold glass of agua jamaica.  I can’t believe we sometimes settle for such low-quality, mass-produced food at places like Taco Bell.  This is place is definitely one of those “best kept secrets.”

Tomorrow is my last day of training.  Hopefully things will be quiet at work so I can concentrate a little better on SharePoint instead of putting out fires.  I think I might just have to make another visit my new favorite little taco shop, too.

Alaskan ocean stroll

Sunday there was a short break in the rain so we went for a walk by the ocean. Orca Bay has this stunning rock mountain that juts out of the ocean and is covered by trees, bushes and moss growing in the cracks and crevices.

When it rains there are impromptu waterfalls that stream down the rocky wall.

We saw more sea otters and other sea life. We actually more otters and stellars sea lions up close yesterday, but alas, I didn't have my camera with me. Here's an otter peaking out of the water to survey the scene.


Here's a sea lion raising his head in the air.

Our vacation is nearing it's end. It's been great being here with family and getting a way from work and our everyday routine. Still, it will be nice to get back to our home, rejuvenated and ready to to get back to work and school.

Baby it's cold outside

It has been so cold this week. My office at work is cold, my bedroom is cold; it seems I just can't get away from the cold. This is about the time last year when we went to Disneyland and enjoyed the warm weather of southern California. Too bad we can't go this year.

We've been having high drama at work. My employee has been in a relationship with someone in another department at work and it has gone sour. Unfortunately they haven't been very mature about it and their problems have been bleeding into work life way too much.

We've been planning to take a "vacation at home" to get away from the stress of work life, but I think we may have to modify those plans. Maybe we can break it up by taking some time off and having a couple of long weekends at least.

James was visiting today from BYU Idaho. He has to get a couple of crowns on his teeth on Monday. Clair, Carrie, Bobby, and Joy came to visit. We made fish tacos and then played Bananagrams and Settlers of Catan afterwards.

We originally had planned to go night skiing, but it was just way too cold. Here's hoping that next week is warmer than this one.

Nightschool

The kids spent most of their day having a Christmas party with some of their homeschool friends. So tonight I did the dishes while they did homework. Lisette wrote some poems, Miles did his online math, Ian practiced typing, and Saffron watched Winnie the Pooh to sharpen her hearing skills and color recognition.

Work has been pretty busy lately. We have been upgrading a lot of our systems, which is very good, but it keeps you hopping. This is what we have upgraded in the last 6 weeks:

1. Accounting software (Microsoft Dynamics GP)
2. Time keeping system (Stromberg Enterprise)
   
3. E-mail (Microsoft Exchange 2007)
4. Web server (Dell Server with MS IIS 6.0)
   
5. Internet service (an additional T1 line from First Digital)
6. Backup hardware and software (Symantec BackupExec and Quantum LTO2's)
   

And next month we will be finalizing the e-mail and getting a new phone system and fax server. I've had to do a lot of updates and reboots at night from home, so I'm very glad my work provides DSL for me. Now if only they could give me a couple of extra hours in the day...

Homework and cookies

Today Lisette spent the day with me at work. She needed a change of scenery to help get her groove back. I'm not sure which one of us had more fun, but the day sure went by fast for me.

She sat by me at my desk while I was on the phone and did her grammar workbook. She even came in with me to a meeting with my boss, who, was glad to have her there; she beautified the room appreciably.

After some typing instruction and some word games it was time for lunch. We went out to Paradise Bakery and Cafe and got a couple of sandwiches and cookies. I had a curry chicken salad with walnuts and cranberries on molasses bread. The sandwich was very good, but not spectacular. The cookies, however, were something to write home about. They tasted like courses of angels rejoicing hallelujah! Such charming chocolate chips and such snappy snickerdoodles! Those are truly cookies of excellence.

After lunch Lisette did lots on online math, and more word games while I made more phone calls and did various server tasks. Five o'clock rolled around and home we went. We should do this more often.

All nighter

Monday night after our bonfire in the canyon, I connected to some servers at work to do some security updates. It went pretty well, but our Citrix remote gateway server didn't come back up after a reboot. Since it was already after midnight, I debated just going to bed and dealing with it in the morning, but I thought I better go in and check it out. It's good I did, because that server's fan died and it was running really hot and wouldn't boot.

I had to take the hard drive out and put it in a another machine. It still wouldn't boot, so I had to run the chkdsk utility. It still wouldn't boot. I ran the Windows 2000 repair and it still wouldn't boot. Finally I got the second drive which was mirrored to boot. Then I just had to rerun all the updates. I finally left at 6:30 AM.

I debated just staying there, but since I was wearing shorts, Crocs, and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, I thought I'd better go home and at least change. I slept for an hour and half and came back to work. Thankfully everything was working. Nobody even noticed that anything had been down. Thats how you want it to be, even if nobody knows you sacrificed your sleep for them.

Tuesday I came home at about 2 and crashed. Melinda took the kids to their book club, but Ian stayed home and snuggled up in bed and napped with me. Ian is very loyal, he likes to be with me even when I'm boring, which is very flattering.

Working all day and night makes for a long day. I kept thinking it was Wednesday. I can't imagine having to be in a job that requires 60 or 80 hours weeks.

Crisis mode

Computer Network Administrator is usually a pretty good gig. You get to play with new technology, and the work is usually varied enough. Sometimes you spend more time than you want fixing little user problems that pop up instead of your own project initiatives, but overall it's not a bad deal.

However, when a server goes down and everyone can't do their job you have to go into crisis mode. Crisis mode really stinks. It can get pretty stressful when you are try to figure out what the problem is and everyone is calling you at the same time. Luckily, I have a technician who I can transfer my phone to, then I close my door and barricade myself and buckle down to fix the problem.

Yesterday our Microsoft Exchange 2000 e-mail server went down. I thought we had it up again, but this morning it was down again. I had to take the server offline and do a defrag and repair on the e-mail database. I was supposed to be off to go up to Park City for our company retreat, but it was not to be. It took about 6 hours today to get everything back up and running again.

I had budgeted for a new e-mail server this year, and we should have rolled it out in spring, but every time they look at the price tag (40 grand over 4 years) they keep putting it off. So I have to keep nursing this one along until they finally break down and let me buy it.

You learn a lot during crisis mode, but the stress and excess adrenaline can really wear you out.

Friday!

It's Friday and we've made it through another week. I had a big project at work that I had to do after hours. We had to move our Internet router, firewall, and core switch from the networking closet into the server room. I had estimated it would take 4-6 hours, but we actually did in under 2 hours. It's always nice to come in under your estimate, especially when you have to work after hours.

It went remarkably well. I think having it all mapped out and planned well helped a ton. I usually assume that some things will come up and take longer; but remarkable everything went just as planned. Of course, if anyone has any problem at all on Monday, they will of course blame it on this project (they always do).

Anyway, we've had a busy week and are looking forward to this weekend.