Nico’s

I’m glad this week is almost over. Yesterday was likely one of the longest days at work, filled with frustration, stress and the urge to throw shit into the walls.
We recently got one of these fancy little Codonics Horizon film printers, and we’ve had a lot of issues with it. To make a story short, I spent about 6 hours yesterday with one of them, because it was not responding to pings from subnets different from where the printer is. The gateway and subnet were configured correctly, and it made no sense.
The best part came when I gave up, and Josh gave it some shots to see what was up. Apparently, a broadcast ping made the thing start responding, and that was the end of the 6 hours of troubleshooting.
CODONICS support never even came close to addressing the issue, either. Instead, they kept sending printers.

I could go on ranting, telling you all about how this printer is a bitch to configure, but I’ll spare you the details about AE titles, DICOM headers, modality priorities and other bullshit. Instead, I’ll just get to the moral of the story: CODONICS/Horizon Printers are not fun to manage, and you should be a fucking shaman to troubleshoot them.

Yesterday was Earth Day. Yes, it was yesterday, not Sunday! Sunday just happened to be more practical for a celebration/event, while also coinciding with 4-20
At any rate, I’m trying to go all week long without driving my car, in some sort of celebration of Earth Day. So far, I’ve been successful, but yesterday was really a trying day.
I begun by riding to work.
I wore tights, and some really short shorts. You see, work had this contest for Earth Day: win $100 by using an alternative method of transportation! And since I’ve been riding my bike to work for the last couple of weeks, I figured I’d spice it up by looking just a little bit more weird. I didn’t win, but oh well.

Like every Tuesday, I have a Cisco class at TMCC. I was determined to ride up to TMCC by the end of the semester, but the dates lined up well enough for me to have a good excuse to do it, so I did it!
The final stretch, on Dandini Boulevard, was a killer. To add to the long steep climb -without a bike lane- was the wind. The fucking wind, again!
It took me a whole 33 minutes to go from Work to School (590 Eureka to 7000 Dandini), which ended up being a whole 10 minutes faster than I expected. Of course, I got there sweaty, out of breath and thirsty… but above all, accomplished.
In class, I struggled to stay awake. My body wanted to shut off to recover, but somehow I managed to stay awake. Now, don’t ask me too much about VLANs, because I can’t remember anything from class.
I looked forward to the ride home from class. Like the famous saying goes, “what goes up, must come down”, I looked forward to gravity enforcing its 9.8m/s² acceleration on my unit of mass, as I gracefully handled the curves that the road provided, whether it be by its design or its many many fucking potholes.
But alas. None of that. The wind kept blowing face-on, and the acceleration was brought to a near zero, providing a very neutral coasting speed down the hill. Damn it, Earth, this is how you pay me back for celebrating you?

At any rate, I made it down the hill, rather uneventfully. I crashed at my girlfriend Dani’s place, and caught up on the Spurs-Suns #2 game of the playoffs. I knew we’d win, but it’s always fun to see Manu kicking some ass.
I was going to finish riding home after dinner, but I took a shower and hit the sack, so it was the end of the day.
My route ended up looking something like this:

You can just click here to view the larger map

Not too shabby. It usually takes me less than 15 minutes to get to work from home, and it took me 33 minutes to get to TMCC from work. Throw 15 minutes for the “descent” ( ), and it took me a whole hour to commute. I saved some money, I burned some calories. I strengthened the bond between my ass and my saddle.
I’ll be doing this again.

Today is April 1st, and as you all know, it’s also known as April Fools’ Day.
I won’t bore you with a personal back-history on April Fools’ Day, or a recollection of all the pranks on the internet, because that’s been done.

I will instead tell you a personal story, about today, at work.
Basically, I changed everyone’s wallpaper at work. I changed it to something obnoxious, mildly annoying and confusing. It’s something I figured would be noticeable, but would not affect anyone’s work, so it’d go by as a little joke, and that’d be all.
See for yourself, and then read on (click to see the image in full size):

So this morning, people logged into their computers to find this. The first email came at 4am, asking what had happened to the desktop. The next one was at 7am.
By 9am, a few people had figured out what was going on, and everything was alright… except for one person, who shall remain nameless.
This person said, and I quote, ” I consider it a vicious act of aggression.”
Give me a break. Vicious? Aggressive? Ok!

At any rate, I’m cutting the story short here: I am packing my stuff and clearing my desk right now, so like they say in the streets, fuck them if they can’t take a joke. I will go get me a job at Taco Bell or something, while I look for a more serious one. Wish me luck!

I’m getting a MacBook Pro!
George, my boss, approved it, and I should be getting it sometime next week. Of course, he’s involved because this will be a computer for work. But no doubt I will also be using it outside of work, for photography shenanigans and just looking cool while I don’t drink coffee at Starbucks.

I’m excited. I’ve gotten to play a little bit with Macs, so I’m not too scared. As for the windows applications that I must run to get my work done, I’ll probably end up using either Parallels or Boot-camp. And I know for sure I’ll be installing Adium for my instant-messaging needs, because it’s just awesome (although Digsby has really been rocking my world in the last week, on the Windows world).

I’ll have to reformat my current brick laptop, which has served me well, and re-install Windows and all the apps it needs to be passed on, so I won’t be in full Mac mode until probably late next week. But still, I’m getting a Mac!

Turns out that in a month, I’ll be spending almost a week in Providence, Rhode Island. I was notified yesterday that I’d be assisting the SIIM 2007 Annual Meeting, and it happens to be on the other end of the map.
No worries though, I won’t have to pay anything extra, and it should be a lot of fun. I will be accompanied by Josh, the Network administrator here at RDC (that’s where I work, to keep you all in the loop), and we’ll be gone for 6 days.

I have no idea what there is to do out in Providence, but it does look like we have a pretty occupied schedule anyways, so there should be plenty for us to do at the convention center. Still, I’d like to get out and about, since I would have never gone to Rhode Island by myself, and I don’t know when I will again. Any suggestions? So far, my best idea is to verify that Providence has more coffee/doughnut shops per capita than any other city in the country (according to this little article), and to assess their quality . But more seriously, WikiTravel will probably be our best guide.

It’s been over a month since I started working at RDC, and I’m still liking it. Oh yes, I am!

The biggest thing I like about my job is that I’m doing something that I really like. As a systems administrator, I’m in charge of providing support to everyone in the company, so that means that I’m basically responsible for keeping the HelpDesk moving. People have all sorts of “issues”, and they range from silly operator errors ( Something not plugged in… seriously) to things that I’m not even sure what’s going on.

That is basically my primary role, for now. A couple of weeks ago, we upgraded the program that everyone uses to get their work done. It’s called Medinformatix, and it does a lot, but the way things are done sometimes leave much to be desired. The first week after the update, I was working almost 10 hours a day, but the time flew by because we were busy trying to fix things up. It was a lot of work, and a bit of a chaos, but overall it was a good experience - for me at least.
This dance is still going, but we’re slowly finishing patching everything up. Most of the problems are either oversights in the programming, or lack of training.
Once that settles down, I will be learning a bit more about networking and other things that I’ll find out as they come.

Ok, so I like my job. But there’s something else that makes this particular  occupation the best professional experience I’ve ever ha, and that ’s the people I work with. Everyone is very nice, and they make me feel welcome. I’m not going to go into detail about who, what they do or anything else that would help an internet detective find the. But let’s just say that I really like them, and working with them makes a big difference on my attitude and performance.
Something that drives this point home for me is that we do things outside work. Go to lunch, walk to the store across the street to grab a soda… or go after work hours to a bar, to happy hour, and spend a couple of hours hanging out. Stef was pretty surprised about this, and said that the last thing she imagines after a Friday is spending more time with people from work. To that, I said “that’s how I used to feel, until I started working with people who I actually like being with”.

I’m tired. I’ve been sleeping 6 hours a night for the last four nights. And even though that’s a lot for other people, those other people get to sit in their fat ass all day. Myself, have worked 9 hours at Redemtech and then gone around town making calls for Computer Techs for a couple of hours.
Usually by the time I get home I’m ready to sit on my fat ass too, but that just doesn’t work for me. I’ve gone to the gym, done a few (very few) chores and tried to be a nice husband, looking and acting awake.
That’s why I haven’t been able to update the site, upload more pictures, or any other little project that I had.
But there’s a light at the end of this short tunnel: I have found a new job. I will be a Systems Administrator at Reno Imaging (also known as Reno Diagnostics Center).
I interviewed for the position last Friday, and this tuesday I found out that I got the job! That’s when I wrote here that I had some juicy news, and also when I put my two weeks notice at Redemtech.
This new job is just what I was looking for, too, and I’m very excited about this opportunity. I will surely be learning a whole lot, and I hope I can also show some of what I already know.

At any rate, because of that, I don’t care about being tired and working like a dog. In less than two weeks, I’ll be working more normal hours (8am to 5pm), and I’ll be doing something that I’ll probably enjoy a lot more. So yay for me, people, yay for me!

Of course this also means that all those updates are being postponed until whenever the hell. I’ll make sure to at least keep writing here, I’m sure no one really worries about all the magnificent features of this webpage.

Is my new job. Well, my second job, at least for now. Starting today, I’m in the “roster”, waiting for a call from someone who needs:

• Virus/Worm/Trojan/Spyware removal and prevention
• Slowing computer performance
• Annoying program or system errors
• Intrusive pop-up ads
• Unsolicited junk e-mail (Spam)
• High-Speed (Broadband) DSL Internet & Wireless Installation
• New Computer Set-Up and transfer
• Many other services and one-on-one tutoring

So now you know! Check out the website at http://www.ctreno.com, and if you need help, make sure you ask for me ;)

In somewhat related news, I have a new cell phone. It’s a Nokia E62 (picture to be here soon, check back later!). I had to get it so that people can actually call me and request my services, as well as calls being “routed” to me from the central number from Computer Techs of Reno. I can email, text message, browse the web, keep a top-notch address book and a daily planner… oh, and I can also make phone calls!

Also, by recommendation of my new boss, Mark, I’ve subscribed to a couple of podcasts, and I can’t believe I hadn’t gotten into listening to them sooner. So far, I only have This Week In Tech and dl.tv, and I just love it. I can listen to them while I’m at work, while I’m driving, working out… basically anytime, anywhere.

And since I’m feeling saucy, I’ll share that I’ve just learned how to PuTTY into my website. Yeah.

I’ve been getting bored as an oyster. Work seems to be the same thing, everyday, and the management is doing a really shitty job at keeping us motivated to work hard. So what do I do to make it through the day? Well, while I work I read a lot, online. For now it’s mostly forums and news, things that I can alt-tab in and out of quickly, just in case.
For example, today I was reading about some plugins for this website, so I read their documentation, the how-to, and installed them, all while I was doing some work here and there. So, that’s how time goes by… sometimes it’s quite slow, but oh well.

In other news, yesterday I went and played volleyball for the first time in over a year, and it was awesome. My friend Cory and I are trying to find a team that will take us in, but yesterday we just played against a team that was just hanging out, so it was a good way of refreshing the skills.
Today I have one very sore thumb on my right hand, but the rest of me is doing quite well
And since I’m talking about excercise and the like, I would like to announce that I’ve lost almost 10 lbs. since I started playing soccer three times a week and going for runs and bike rides often, so yay! Next step is trying to build some muscle