09/01/2012:
10:00: I am awake after a good nights rest. I let Buster out.
10:30: I eat some bread pudding for breakfast. I start checking a few emails. My office is still offline because the power is out.
11:00: I go back in my room and lay in bed and start doing some research on a few things I got coming up.
1:15: I am able to start pinging my office, so that means that my power and internet is back up over there.
1:31: I get a call from my client across the hall wanting to know if it is OK if he goes to the office and gets the equipment and bring it back home so that he can work from home since there is no power at the office. I tell him that I am about to head over to the office because the power is back on and so is the internet. When I get there I could turn on the server and his computer and he could work remotely, and he said that was even better!
2:15: I get over to the office and go across the hall first to get them up and running. Someone is already over there on the phone starting to do some work. I power up the server and they power up the machines. So everything is good to go.
2:45: I am in my office. My servers are up and running. The client webserver is not serving web pages for some reason. I log into the linux web server and it corrects a few things automatically, and then the client webserver starts to server pages again. I have an issue with my email server, I see the services are not all starting up. I manually start the services and the email starts flowing with no issues.
5:00: I pack up my van with all the new equipment for the phone system and network that I am putting in at the clients office who got struck by lightning
5:30: I head on over to lowes. Their parking lot is packed, but the inside and the lines aren’t bad at all. I pick up some hardware for the install.
6:00: I am home to pick up my dad who is going to help me with the install tonight.
6:30: We head on out, we stop by McDonalds, pick up 4 McDoubles and 2 Large Sweet Teas for our supper.
6:50: We get to the client’s office and unpack the van and eat our supper. We then go to work.
7:00: I show my dad how to unpack the phones, put the labels on, and how to plug them in between the computer and the wall network jack so that the phone is on the network and the computer uses the network through the phone.
7:15: I begin shutting down the server. While it is shutting down I start cleaning up the area, removing the network switch, cable modem, and other clutter that is in the closet. I unplug all the network cables. Once the server is shut down, I unplug the server and remove it. I then screw the 2 new rack rails in place between 2 shelves that are already there. This will allow the network equipment to be neatly stacked and also allow for cable management rather than the cables being everywhere. After I get the racks in place I untangle all the wires and run them to their new patch panel. I then go through the wires one by one and order them by the layout of the office. The wires that are long enough I pull through the rack, those are terminated directly to jacks. The other wires have jacks in the closet already. I create a cable with an rj45 on the end to plug into the jack, and on the other end I terminate a rj45 to go into the new patch panel. This will resolve the issues of cables going everywhere and not being able to tell where the cable goes. Once everything is done, it will be easy to know where each cable goes especially when trying to resolve an issue. My dad wrote down the numbers on the jacks that had numbers as he put the phones out so I use the numbers on the cables for the most part. The other cables I have my dad tone out while I am punching down the cables. We also test the cables by plugging in the phones as I terminate them.
What do you know we are still working, but the night is over and the new day has begun, check out tomorrow’s entry for the continuation of the work!
