Wednesday, February 03, 2010

These Days

Here is what passes as my life these days: I wake up at 6:30A to try to help Cindy with the kids. (She usually has them fed, then I have to stay on them to get dressed, fix their hair, brush their teeth, make their beds, and get their gear ready for school.) If I slept the night before, I go to the gym. If I didn't, I crash on the sofa for an hour. Then off to the shop.

We're super short staffed at work. The days seem to last 16hrs. And we work 10 days a week. Today, it seemed non-stop from the moment I arrived (working on SQL requirements) to the moment I left (Citrix issues.) If I slept the night before, I'll go home to give Cindy a break from the kids. (She usually goes to see her Mom.) If I didn't, I work out.

When I get home, I'll usually have a shake for dinner and then spend time with the kids. Recently I've been encouraging them to tell me POSITIVE things about school and their day. Then I say POSITIVE things about them. After we talk about our day, We try to watch something informative, like MythBusters or something we've DVRed. Though American Idol pops up, too. No cartoons. No drama.

By 8P, Cindy and Meg are usually asleep. By 8:30P, Liam's in bed, though not always asleep.

I spend a couple of hours writing, catching up on email, and trying to work on projects. Sometimes I'll watch a movie I missed at the theaters. Sometimes I'll watch Hulu or the DVR.  By midnight, I'm usually numb.

I have to read myself to sleep. On a good night, it takes 15 minutes. On a bad night, two hours. Or more. I average about 6 hours per night. Though it isn't uncommon to only get 3 or 4.

Then we start all over at 6:30A.

That's how I roll these days.

4 comments:

Christopher said...

Hope you don't mind that I checked out your blog, it's excellent by the way. I was interested in your take on Citrix, do you guys have a lot of problems with it? It was the bane of my existence when I got to Okinawa but it's not so bad anymore. How many servers do you maintain, how many applications do you host on them?

Chris

Unknown said...

I don't mind, though I don't do my blog as much justice as I should, considering I do it so I'll remember these things years from now.

We're running Citrix Prsentation Server 4.0, not the latest version (Xen.) However, I don't have many problems. I have (including the Zone Data Controller) about 10 servers dedicated to Citrix. There are maybe two dozen published apps, including Desktops.

My biggest trick is that I make sure ALL the servers are the same and I have N+2 servers. So I can lose two of them and still have enough density to maintain all functionality for the users.

Second, no actual data reside on the servers. Just services/applications. If the servers crash, the data is still safe on my SAN.

-Jon

Christopher said...

We have six in our farm, but only four presentation servers. We've running version 4.5 since July. Our biggest issue is that we're hosted on the base's domain, which is unacceptably unstable. We're in constant conflict with the communications squadron, who I think exist for the sole purpose of disrupting patient care in my clinic. Today they took us offline by pushing a GPO to our servers in spite of the fact that we operate within a distinct OU that they shouldn't be accessing. We use citrix here in the Pacific, but most bases aren't using it worldwide. I thought it was interesting when I saw your comment as I don't know anyone else familiar with the platform.

Unknown said...

We have thousands of folks using it. I usually average about 250 concurrent connections during the day. It is good solid stuff, once you get it setup correctly. My current installation is approaching its fifth year with few (if any) severe outages to speak of.