Neal's Admin.Notes.

MSN Search Engine

Check out the the MSN Search engine as posted by Nino on EHLO

http://beta.search.msn.com/

Game Server anyone ?

So I'm about to unleash a first person shooter game server from my fellow techies and readers. Its a massive, 6GB memory, Quad Xeon 3.2GHz monster with Raided drives hosted over a nice fat throughput. Now here's my predicament, I don't know what game to host ?

Any suggestions ?

I would like to have it up and running by the end of the month...so send it your suggestions ASAP. The majority wins.

Mirror your site

Literally!!!

THE HUB

Last September, our colocation which is also my "downtown office" was the topic of an article at in carrierhotels.com. Here is an intro of the article.

On September 22, 2004 at 10:00 AM, Rudin Management Company, Inc.; one of New York City’s largest privately owned real estate companies, held their first ever Open House and Technology Forum at 32 Avenue of the Americas to promote and introduce the creation of The Hub at 32 Sixth . The Hub at 32 Sixth is a Rudin owned and managed co-location and data facility located on the 24th floor of the Avenue of the Americas building that boasts a growing number of communication providers and users ranging from telecommunications carriers, wireless providers, ISPs and entertainment, broadcasting and financial service firms. Rudin purchased the 1.15 million square foot building from ATT in 1999.

To read more, you can check out carrierhotels.com

More GMAIL invites

Google's GMAIL has granted me 20 more invites. If you would like one, email me or leave a response on this Blog. They are going fast so act soon. Hope everyone has a great holiday season and a prosperous new year and of course , a bigger IT budget :)

20,000 Hits and Counting

I just looked at my stats and logs, and to my surprise I have gotten a little over 20,000 hits since my site's inception in March of 2004 . I personally would like to thank all the people that contribute their knowledge, suggestions as well as their own issues as Administrators. I have been on several consulting gigs as well as handling my full-time job as an Administrator. So, don't fray when I don't respond instantly, please keep the questions , suggestions and emails coming and I will try my best to be more prompt on the responses.

Overtime Laws

For a computer employee to qualify for the Exemption under the Computer-Related Occupations, they must meet the following tests and salary basis requirements. The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per 40 hour week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour. The two amounts are not the same.

The employee must be employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing the duties described below;

The employee’s primary duty must consist of:

1. The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;

2. The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;

3. The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or

4. A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.

Ok...what the hell does this mean ?

GMAIL

I have quite a bit Google GMAIL invites. If you like one, just send me an email

Administering a Windows 2003 network with an Apple G4 / G5

Its been 1 week now since I've gotten my sup'ed up PowerBook G4, will all the bells and whistles.The G5 ( also sup'ed up) , I had at home was a motivating factor on getting me this . Anyways, my goal now it to be able to fully administer all my servers, from this PowerBook. One of the greatest feature I've found was the Remote Desktop Application for mac. Now I can do administrative terminal services on all my servers from anywhere in the world, as long as I'm VPN'd into my work. Some servers , because of security restrictions cannot be remotely administered, I have a Windows XP workstation Virtual PC installed on the G4 that has all the .NET administration tool, and this works flawlessly. My biggest problem so far is accessing MAPI accounts from OS X. I'm not a fan of IMAP4 so I use the Outlook 2003 installed on my Virtual PC.
I choose Apple computers for a few reasons. There are some critical users at work that are heavy apple users and there is no in-house support for them. I also like the stealth of these things...blazing fast, the dual processor G5 blew away the dual XEON processor XP workstation I have at home. Photoshop runs on the G5 as if was a simple text editor, flawless to say the least. The PowerBook is faster than any laptops I've gone though, an it just works...plain and simple. I wouldn't deny I'm going though some Windows Withdrawal, missing the layout of everything, but I'll get thought it. Besides I haven't totally rid myself of XP, I have an XP Workstation at home and at work , and don't forget the VPC and Remote Desktop are great subsititutes when I'm mobile.

Linux Switch Parody

This is some funny stuff !