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Man alive, i never actually thought that I would be such an advocate for all the process, policies and procedures at my previous company. It is truly amazing what an awareness course and ITIL V3 Foundations course can do for a person’s perspective. After going through the training and understanding the methodology, it makes a lot more sense. However, do not get me wrong, I still believe that ITIL is based on UTOPIA and free and void of REAL WORLD business constraints. A lot of the information learned in ITIL can be implemented and the practices should serve as a FRAMEWORK.

So, on that note, enter System Centre Service Manager. What a phenomenal tool. There is a LOT of config and even more reading to do, we are however making some good progress and automating a LOT of our IT responses, if you are willing to invest the time and effort. I am VERY certain that this tool WILL change your company’s perception of IT.

A great resource site : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff461010.aspx 

Will let you know more.

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”

I just recently became due (no jokes, LOL) for a new phone with my service provider. At the moment there are no real phones that blow me away for looks and “WOW” factor. Since I have been eyeing a blackberry for a little while, I decided to go for a phone with great functionality. Enter the Blackberry curve 8520 with BIS, of course. Any blackberry without BIS is useless. So far my only complaint (if you can it that), is the speed of the BIS connection (EDGE/GPRS), I did however know that before i bought the phone. Other than that, what a great phone. It is actually an adjustment getting used to being so connected. The BlackBerry App store is quite amazing, I have been able to able to find many great apps. The BlackBerry contact is great, allowing multiple linking. For example to one BlackBerry contact, I have linked Live Messenger, GoogleTalk, LinkedIn, Facebook, numerous email address and mobile numbers.

So let the journey with BlackBerry commence.

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”

So, now it is finally down and I am back in Jozi.

What an interesting weekend, basically you name it, it went wrong. However, like any battle, we were highly fluid and got through it.

There is still more to come and I will face the journey head-on 🙂

More so on,

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”

So after a thankfully uneventful flight to Cape Town. The fun and games really began.

Mission: Deploy machines and get them ready for the kiosk.

This may sound simple and in theory is quite simple, add in the headache of static IP address and no real database to maintain these (thankfully I found Solar Winds IP Tracker, what a great FREE program) and it becomes a little challenging. Once we had deployed our first image we discovered that our image was joined to the domain already and with an IP address already. NOT useful. Anyways, we added a few steps to our rollout plan and 4 hours later, we had 31 machines imaged and ready to go.

So after a long’s day work, leaving the depot after 7, we decided it was CHOW time, just down the road from us is a Cantina Tequila. Seem like a good bet, had a few drinks and some Mexican food, I like SPICY food not HOT food, the chow was great and the beers were even better. You know how beers taste so much better after a hard day’s work.

More to follow soon.

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”

I know it has been a while since I last blogged.

Just been a little busy.

For those of you who do not know as yet, you can call me “CARLOS”. LOL. Just one of those really odd things, where yet again Mother Nature was able to prove that she is stronger than technology. Take one car, drive through a puddle of water and by some “Freak accident”, suck water into the air intake and what do you get? A “wonderful” thing known as “Hydro-lock” occurs. Now, in laymen’s terms, the car sucks in water, water does not compress like air (SCIENCE 101), and stresses the conrod until it breaks and shoots the conrod through the block. So I got the dreaded call from Insurance, they wrote it off. So, the score so far, Mother Nature : 1, Me : 0. However, this has now allowed me to look into the world of a new car. I was quite fond of my Jazz and have since decided to replace it with the newer GE8 model, EX-S with some extras. This however leads me into another story, trying to find one of these in this country in the colour I want, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. I have been waiting now for 4 weeks and still waiting. Hopefully the waiting will be over soon, the ship should have docked by the latest, 7th March 2010. I have done a lot of reading up and the write-ups on this car are awesome. I am looking forward to getting it. I have also decided to get some extras, such as Bluetooth, PDC and armrest to name a few. Pictures will follow once I have them.

It has indeed been a very busy time here in the office. We are in the process of going from an un-managed environment to a managed environment and like most new things, there are hiccups and snags. These “snags” and “hiccups” are what make something like this roll-out worth while. The learning curve is amazing. I have learnt more about this environment in the last few days than I have in the last few weeks. There is indeed an end in sight. That is what I keep telling myself and so far I seemed to have fooled myself into believing that. LOL!!!! So now, the snag on this rollout is NOW quite annoying and has to do with CERTS and encryption. This just happens to lead me into the technology section of my Blog. I always try to add some technological value to anyone who has preserved and continue to read my Blog. I have been able to crack open a cert and get a private key from it. Please keep in mind, that the machine I got the cert from, I was an administrator and had the required permission. OpenSSL is a great tool for approaching this, there is a lot of information out there regarding this. I have listed some of these below to make your life a little easier.

http://www.networking4all.com/en/support/ssl+certificates/manuals/microsoft/all+windows+servers/export+private+key+or+certificate/

http://www.digitalindigo.net/support/redhat/pfxp12.html

Anyways, we eventually came right after MUCH reading, we discovered that there is actually no solution to our problem as there was a SLIGHT hiccup with the one process.

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”

Been a couple interesting few days for me.

I have been offline for a while, in other words, I have not updated the blog in a little while.

I been searching for a new place, YES, the time has come to move again. Found a nice place and have started all the paperwork. The process is slow and long. However, the agents that I have been using are VERY efficient and the process is been quite pleasant and the agency seems to quite understanding. This is truly a breath of fresh air. Below are some pics of the place I am taking. This has other people stuff in it. None of the stuff in the place is mine, so please keep the comments to a minimum.

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Now for the reason for the post and the true value of D.I.Y.

I am quite sure that a lot of you know, having a little bit of DIY sense pays HUGE dividends. With just the sort of luck I have been having as of late. On Saturday, someone decided to re-model my bike and cause some damage to my bike :(.

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Ok, so you can see the damage is not too terrible. I have a little bit of damage to myself. So, being who I am, decided to get the bike fixed as quickly as possible. I managed to get a hold of Honda and get some prices. YIKES!!!! Fortunately enough I was expecting a little bit of a shock. That little piece of plastic lying on the floor = R6000.00. So after all said and done, I was in for R8000.00. Yes, the bike is fixed and I am dying (no one is to take that literally please) to get back onto the bike. Tomorrow, I am in the car, to replace the windscreen. Like I said, having some funky luck as of late. The finished product compliments of DIY and not getting HUGE labour costs. See below.

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Until the next update,

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK AND ROCK ON”