Last Week On Placement
Its my last week on my placement and well I’ve mixed feelings about leaving. I’m excited as well I quite like the idea of going back to University but then I’m a little nervous about leaving as well doing a 9 till 5 job had its up sides.
In terms of university I heard my option module has been cancelled, lack of a student interest apparently, I would not be surprised if I was the only one that signed up. I have now decided after not much thought as well a lot of modules did 1) Not appeal to me, 2) I am already doing and finally 3) I could not do as I did not do the required level 2 modules, chosen to do Information Systems Engineering in Industry. This however has just put a dent in my timetable and I no longer appear to get Fridays off in the first semester, shame I know but then I’ll be at university and be able to study during the gaps between lectures.. I say that but if it is anything like last year the Library staff seem to enjoy baking and working in the Library with the heating on not only in the winter but the summer to is really off putting, its not even warm, its just hot in there but anyway.
I’ve not had much final thoughts on my final year project but I think now that I have the forthcoming weeks off I’ll start to press on with that, I can imagine doing something with IPV6 but I’m getting put off by that idea if every other person is doing it to..
Placement has been fun although in the last month my role has been to step aside and be more of a supervisor to ensure my replacement is up to speed and knows what he is doing so I have not been as hands on as I like to be.
Lately I have been brushing up on my C# skills ready for September and have created a few applications, I may release one or two so stay tuned for that if your using XBMC…
June
I don’t like to say I’ve not posted for a while but I haven’t really updated the site on my ongoings lately just my new gadgets and tech which actually reminds me I’ve not reviewed or posted about my new quite awesome laptop.
We’ve had some new tech at work too. I’ve had my hands on a HTC Desire this week, I’ve been quite impressed with Android and the HTC phone but its not something I’ve got used too but then I’ve not had my sim in and my iPhone as always been in reach. I could though see myself hopping over to Android in the future. Looking at the iPhone 4 details nothing really shouts awesome which is good as it won’t make my iPhone 3gs to obsolete. I can however see future Android phones having some quite epic features and being able to root it and unlock more sounds pretty cool add-ons like tethering for free just seals the deal!
Last week marked a slight milestone for me on placement last week as well, firstly I kicked off my report for University but also I started the hand over period with my replacement. Although its 3 months of hand over it marks the time where I start taking a step back and sharing my knowledge.
I’ve also started preparing for going back to Staffs. I’ve got my moving date in the bag which is quite soon so I’ll be commuting for the final part of placement but I’d also been brushing up on my programming skills as I’ve had a tip off with regards to next years assignments and reading up on IPV6 as its likly that’ll be the subject of my final year project. I’m getting quite excited really it’ll be great to get back to work and
181 Days Until I’m Back At Staffs
Just checked Uni email to find I was suppose to have filled in my option module form for next year by Friday 26th. Well that has been and gone. I must get a few emails a month to my uni email address while on placement so I pretty much check it every couple of weeks. I dislike going on there as the uni still uses Exchange2003 with its ever so featureless weboutlook in anything other than IE.
Anyway I had a look at the booklet for my course and it gave a start date. 27th September, seems ages away but honestly I bet that won’t take too long to come around.
The modules are not very good this year. In the list they include options like 3D Computer Graphics. Although it sounds awesome being on a network course it is no use to me. Even if I wanted to go on that module I would have had to have done related modules the during the past too years, which I haven’t.. because I’m on a networking course.
A cisco module caught my eye, Advanced Wireless but I’ve decided not to go for that as I’d rather not do too many cisco modules. I feel like it would restrict my horizons too much plus I didn’t do the second year wireless module as I took Network and Grid Computing instead. That was a good choice I think I bagged a 1st in that module and really enjoyed the work, would recommend it to anyone. Anyway another module, the only one that seems justifiable to be honest caught my other eye, Ubiquitous Computing. The description sounds interesting…
This subject looks at the current and future of anytime, anyplace, anywhere computing. It includes areas such as pervasise computing, mobile devices, located based services, and allows the student to look at the future of computing.
I did wonder the other day as the weather was warming up that I could actually take my iPhone get a few apps, SSH, RDP, etc and sit on a nice park bench or even the beach working remotely from the office…
Seems I’ll be back to Stafford this weekend to get some books for some backgrounding reading and also maybe a house party or two what with it being a 4 day weekend for the 9-5 type.
Placement – Going Great!
Well I am currently sat next to the rack at Bluesquare. I’ve finished my list of jobs in which I have had a couple of setbacks. Mainly that one of the server’s hard drives pretended to die while I was here. Just waiting to make sure the raid array sorts its self out and I don’t have to replace the drive, so I thought I’d do something constructive and write a post on my placement so far.
I’m at Bluesquare today installing a server that died over xmas. It was a weird one. The server’s motherboard had died, it lost its network ports a while back but it has finally given up. It took a memory stick and two hard drives with it. The memory stick was a new one for me, I had never seen a duff memory stick before but the hard drives where a common model to fail so they are no surprise. Also xmas a dual (supposedly redundant) power supply also failed in another server. That was a quick fix and I replaced it when I was here last. Although two other servers were complaining about losing power supplies, I’ve had to replace 3 PSU modules now.
Today has been a long day, I arrived at about 10am (Note to self: Destroy the satnav) it’s about 6.30pm now. I installed the server this morning which took about 2 hours as I had picked up the wrong rack rails. They are not compatible with the server case. The holes on the rail are too small for the screw holes on the case. I thought this was all standardised but obviously not.
We’ve had quite a lot of hardware failures lately including a cisco switch. I’m taking it back to HQ to investigate it more but it is sending scrambled text over the console connection.
Update: I didn’t post this on the day so it’s a little delayed. Also back at HQ the cisco switch weirdly fixed it’s self :/ *Scratches head*
Happy Christmas One and All!
Although technically over now until next year but I thought I’d say it anyway! The holidays and have quite enjoyable back in Newark. Although I’ve been working up until new years for Placement and for my parents getting ready for the rest of the family as well as for the business, which continues next week as I expand their network infrastructure aka move their servers to a new location in their new unit.
Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone hope Santa has spoilt you all!!!
New Server
Over the past couple of days you may have notice the blog and various other sites I manage have been down over the weekend. This was mainly due to some downtime on the DNS servers, the primary, located in Newark was turned off as some building work was going on close to the server and I didn’t want tiny rocks getting in though the fans but also because I was moving the DNS server to a new host.
I thought I might as well get some experience on various systems in some of my spare time while on my placement year so I got myself a server. It’s a HP ML115 and it is now hosted in a datacentre just outside of Birmingham. I’ve beefed up the standard spec of it with some large hard drives and quite a lot of ram! It’s currently hosting 3 servers. One of which is a Windows server which is now hosting this blog. I’ve come across a few errors since as wordpress doesn’t really support IIS but I think I’ve finally cracked it. I’ve also noticed a huge decrease in page load time; it was starting to get annoying on the old host.
My next challenge is to install Exchange server. I’m struck between trying out Exchange 2010 or properly configuring Exchange 2007 but before this I need to finish configuring Active Directory.
