Eve of New Years Eve::::::::::::::

This is a picture of my daughter Fran and I.

I have been prompted to write more... seems I have readers... :-D
This has been an extremely busy week for a short one .;.... I am
responsible for a set of servers that provided both logon and file
storage for this crazy array of systems that are in use here. On my
way home last Friday I got a phone call telling me that they wanted me
to give up two of the four servers I manage and bring them and the
steel case they are located in back to the JFO for use by another
group.....So my job is document retention as a primary role, I have to
ensure that none of the data that I am taking over there gets lost. I
put some up on a network server at the JFO, and then had to find
inventive ways to get TONS of other data over to a different
system\domain that is in my building that I also manage. I always find
I am learning a ton about upper level operations of servers and
networks when I do this, what can talk to what, what can write to what,
what can backup to where.. it is all very confusing till you get up to
your elbows in electrons and just do it. So...... one of the things I
discovered is that one should NEVER let doctors, dentists, coronors or
morturary officers set up file systems. Your middle of the road
administrative assistant could do a much better job of organizing
files...... Imagine if you will.. groups rotating out every couple
weeks, each group bringing in its own set of geniuses with attached
egos to "get this place going right" and setting out all these
changes.. and let that run for the duration of a disaster this big. I
got the task of unwinding all those attempts at reorginazation and
backup and try to put together a single record copy of the relevant
data for each body that went through this place. So.. Dental records
include personal effects but not the other way around, X-ray does not
talk to anyone elses data.. and they name all files associated with a
single individual by the same number which is etched on a metal dog tag
attached to each body bag.....so if you search for a folder name like
01-00001 you get back 25 files... one for personal effects (maybe) one
for Dental (more likely) one for Xray and.. every backup o fthem ever
created. How to tell which folder is the most recent is an excercise
in raw will..... and there are around 1400 individuals with these
types of file complexities. So this week, I have been cornering leads
and giving them the deep grilling about data handling and best
practices...... came up with a solution last night on the way home and
am currently making it work.. going to turn a data base of 400 plus
Gigabytes of data into about 100 and back it up every night.. easy
money.. :-D
Here is a fun factoid... I mentioned that the powers that be are going
to MOVE the JFO... the back story is, when it was leased, there was a
sale in progress.... since that time real estate in this town has
skyrocketed in value.. so the original owner has tried to back out of
the deal.... The new owner came in with full price no negotiations
needed and bought the property for August of 05's sales price (much
below current value)... the new owner wants to quadruple the rent or
something like that and FEMA is tryi8ng to find another place to move
to... 2,000 people, cross town.. miles and miles of blue cable and
fiber optics and telephone lines (which is scrapped by the way and all
new goes into the new building).. what took months to build will be
rebuilt in a week in a new location and group by group they are going
to move.... for me I get 16 hour days (wow look at that over time) and
it is going to probabliy fall RIGHT at Mardi Gras... I was hoping to
get a handfull of beads and get women to flash me to get the beads...

In summing up my year, this has been a great year. One of my happiest
times ever. I made some decisions last spring early that kicked off a
great time for me. Those of you that know me well know there were some
dark days the last few years (not all.... and there were some great
days in there too!!) but I am not sure I have ever been happier.
Happy New Year to you all and my best wishes into the new one.