The Wall

HUB Alumni Association

John — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:21:47 +0000

In less than a week we wil hold our first meeting of the HUB Alumni Association. I am so excited about the possibilities of this group. So far we only have 6 RSVPs, which is a little below what I was expecting, but it will be a snowball. If your a HUB alum and want to join us, RSVP to thehubalumni at gmail dot com. I look forward to seeing you there!

Japan Tsunami Projection

John — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:03:49 +0000

Absolutely incredible how far this this thing may reach. Truly incredible.

Video Tutorials for Work

John — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:53:52 +0000

Next week we will be responsible for supporting a new two factor authentication system for our campus portal. If you are familiar with how Bank of America's online banking works, you already know what this concept is. This is a pretty major change for our facuty, staff and students, so I have had the priviledge of making video tutorials for the new process. I have to say that it was a lot of fun making the videos. I really wanted to copy the look and feel of the best lynda.com tutorials, but in my opinion fell much closer to some of the worst. I learned a great deal about what I was doing and hopefully can do more in the future. If you want to check out the videos below I would love any comments.

For students not signed up for password reset:

For students signed up for password reset:

T Minus 12

John — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:33:59 +0000

Another weekend of decorating and preparing for Christmas has ended and one of my favorite seasons of the Christian calendar is here. During this advent season I have been doing a Bible study about rediscovering Christmas. It has been an incredibly fun read, and I have learned a great deal. For the first Christmas in several years I am truly excited about this holiday and hope that everyone I know has a great time this December as we gather with friends and family.

Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! - Psalm 150

Now I want to watch the original!

John — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:11:42 +0000

It’s virtually LANDesk

John — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:00:42 +0000

Friday marked a major turning point in our LANDesk project. It is phase 1 of a three phase project to secure our LANDesk environment. Phase One was to move our LANDesk core off of a single physical box and place it on an ESX cluster as a virtual machine. In what has the be the single largest stresser of the last few months, it ended up taking about 10 minutes for the switch over. Seven of the 10 minutes was figuring out how to deactivate the old core, calling LANDesk, and activating the new core. Overall it was a great end to a very stressful week.

After the switch over we did about thirty minutes of testing and it looks like the VM core is actually going to be a great solution for us. We are just shy of 3000 nodes and expect towards the end of spring semester to be closer to 5000, and the VM did great over the weekend. As the work week gets ramped up we'll be keeping a close eye on the system and begin work on the next two phases. Phase 2 is getting service pack 2 for LDMS 9 installed. This is a major upgrade and hopefully a major step forward. Phase 3 is a more realtime backup/failsafe solution for the LDMS database. Over the next few weeks LANDesk should become one of our most stable and dependable systems.

This is also a somewhat sad project for me as it is the last major LANDesk project on my radar. Once all three phases of this are complete, the handing of the reigns to Sundiata should be as well. I am so ready to start another project but I really have put a lot of time and effort into this one. It is hard to get my mind off of it and onto the next thing. I am excited about the next project though and hope to have some more information in the next couple months.

A week of frustrations

John — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:01:08 +0000

This has been a pretty crazy week at work. From a complete collapse of a major project, a phishing scam targeting our portal, and my UPS freaking out, to Telecom saving our project, office painted, and getting my new iPhone skin, I am pretty much beat. I still have to actually complete the project, converting our LANDesk core server from physical to VM, at 6pm this evening, and today is my day off. Add to it that I am told I am the liaison for the HUB when dealing with Admin Systems and/or Telecom, yet was left out of the loop this week resulting in a major duplication effort, and I am really feeling burned out. Here's hoping for something fun this weekend to get my mind off all this.

Instagram

John — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:00:05 +0000

I have been waiting for an app that really makes the camera on my iPhone fun and it has finally arrived. Instagram (Get it on iTunes) is a fun app that really makes sharing on social networks a breeze. You just shoot, add a title and select which sites you want to upload to, all in a very polished and simple interface. On top of it's ease of use, it also has several really cool vintage camera filters.

I am a little dissapointed there isn't a WordPress connector, but no reality wordpress isn't really designed to be used for small photo uploads. It does however connect directly to:

Flickr
Twitter
Facebook
Tumbler
Foursquare

I am not really a huge fan of all of these social networks and one of the big reason is time. I don't have time to upload my information to twitter, facebook, flicker, etc. With Instagram I just shoot, and upload directly to all three, just one, or a combination of them instantly.

As an added bonus, Instagram is itself a social network that links all the Instagram users. You can set it up to follow who you want and get a feed of your friends' photos when you load it up. If you do end up getting it, feel free to add me, jwallom, to your friends list. And the beautiful thing about this app is that it is free!

Morals and Politics

John — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:00:43 +0000

As I have gotten older I have become more convinced that everyone is wrong when it comes to politics, including myself. This does very little to keep us from talking like we know what is best, and how party of candidate X is just plain wrong. This weekend however there a was a large movement in Washington that really gave me some hope. An estimated quarter of a million people gathered to basically say "calm down, we are going to be ok." Tomorrow is election day and no matter who you vote for, and please tell me you are voting, we are still one nation and we will survive.

And now to the heated topic. Anyone can weigh in on this topic, but I am really looking for folks who have a strong belief in a religious morality. Throughout my lifetime I have been taught about the separation of church and state. I have also done a lot of historical research into human history, especially after the rise of Christianity. Combine this with current governments in the world and for me it paints a very clear picture of why there should be and is a separation of church and state, but what is far less clear is where the separation should be. Every time I hear the political conversation fo toward the topic of abortion for instance, I feel a barrier has been crossed. On a personal level, a religious level, I am against abortion, but I also feel that that is a moral choice and not something I am comfortable letting government control.

Government should never force morality through law because morality is different for every person, religious or not. Government should be a collection of people who work for the common good of the people, but not the religious, or morality of some of the people. It is my opinion that we should vote for people with similar moralities to govern and not people to govern with similar moralities. I feel the church and government can both reach more people and grow stronger apart than together.

I wanted so bad to have this discussion with my soon to be cousin April yesterday, but it was not the time or place. Since I wasn't able to last night, I am going to open it up here for anyone who would like to weigh in. Again, I hope everyone who can will get out tomorrow and vote. It is our right, our obligation. You cannot be free will without making choices.

The Land of the Brave(s)

John — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 16:00:12 +0000

Many of you know I am not a huge baseball fan these days, but growing up baseball was the only sport I followed. The Atlanta Braves were the team above all other teams, even though they could barely scrape up a winning season on the best years. My family would swing by KFC on the way to the game, get the cheapest tickets in Fulton County Stadium's nosebleed section, and watch Dale Murphy, Raphael Belliard, Chipper Jones, Charlie Lebrant, and all of the other great players that have come through the organization. While the players, mascot and stadium may have changed, one thing that has been a constant is Bobby Cox.

This afternoon Cox will lead the Braves for his final regular season game, against what has become one of best teams in baseball. Under his management the Braves went from one of the worst teams in baseball, to one of the all time greatest teams. For over a decade he led the Braves to the post season almost every year, and at 1:35pm today he will do everything he can to take the Braves back for one final run at the World Series. Even for this former baseball fan, I will be watching the greatest manager in the game in his final regular season game. Go Braves!