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February 27, 2005

Life goes on

I completed my second full week as the Director of Information Technology for SkyWay USA on Friday. I've gotten an amazing amount of things accomplished during this time.

1. Setup new Web, E-mail, FTP, SQL server.
cPanel is a great utility, and I'm digging it far more than I thought I initially would. Configuration is a snap. You load a Linux server with the basics: kernel, wget, sh, and a few other command line applications. You use wget to pull down an install script from the cPanel Web site, and use SH to execute it. cPanel does the rest.

Once it's installed, it's only a matter of a few configurations here and there, and BOOM, instant server that runs like a dream. My gawd, I love the simplicity of Linux.

2. Setup a new file server.
I've been wondering what the people that came before me were thinking when they setup some of the equipment that SkyWay was using. Their main file server wasn't even theirs. It belonged to a friend, who was really wanting it back.

No problem.

I took an existing machine that was doing nothing, wiped it out completely and installed RHEL on it. Within a matter of 30 minutes, I had a complete file and WINS server up and running. The thing that took the longest was moving all of the damn data from the old server to the new one. We're talking around 100GB of data.

3. Create a backend for the new modem we're going to be offering.
We have this sweet ass modem that we're going to be offering customers in the very near future. It's part of the rollout of the new system that I've been building. It's going to make life extremely easy for both SkyWay (on the tech support side) and for the customer (on the installation side).

Well, this new modem needed a custom backend. I finished creating the layout for it this weekend. I gave it something that we're dubbing the "Fisher Price" look, which is very clean and easy on the eyes. It's also something that people are kind of used to seeing already, so when they use this modem they'll feel right at home.

I hope to be able to reveal some of this stuff soon ... I'm very proud of the work that all of us at SkyWay have put into this thing thus far.

4. Revamping the phone system.
Thank goodness for WHAS and the things that I learned while I was there. Had I came here without having my experience at WHAS, I would be completely green on this phone system and how in the hell to operate it. But since I've been a telephony admin for a little over 2 years, this phone system has been cake.

I got the company that SkyWay purchased the system from to send down the software for the PBX, and once I had it, I was able to navigate through the system with minimal effort. There were a few things that I wasn't familiar with, but that's due to the way that the vendor calls certain functions/services contained in the PBX.

In roughly 30 minutes, I was able to go through most of the menus and edit extentions and start creating new call groups. While this system as a much easier interface than the S8700 I was used to using at WHAS, it still lacks the raw administrating power that I'm used to. In many ways, I still feel somewhat limited on what I can and can't do on this system.

I'm sure that'll pass though.

So, there you have it. That's what I've been doing for my first two weeks at SkyWay. There's still more that happened, but these are the 4 major things that were accomplished. I'm also hoping the laptop that was ordered for me middle of last week will be in early next week so that I can really get some more things done.

~out...

Posted by ed at February 27, 2005 12:07 AM

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