It’s no secret that we have some Sonicwall gear…. and we have been extremely happy with their performance. I have found recently that there is an interesting symptom on the E-Class units.

We utilize most all features on our firewall, from intrusion detection and anti-virus to content filtering. When using the content filtering you can utilize active directory(or another LDAP Server) for single sign-on authentication.  This works pretty well but in making some configuration changes we have noticed an unexpected result.

When changes are made to the user account or server used for LDAP authentication, the firewall will start rebooting. This could be an instance when you shutdown a domain controller, or maybe change the password on the account the firewall uses to authenticate users.

I have not heard of any fix from Sonicwall on this issue, but it is definitely something I hope is addressed quickly.

Leave me a comment if you have seen anything like this…your experience may be different.

Every now and then I like to take some of those online tests. I’m not sure where this was from but the results were interesting.
Does this sound like me?

The Inspirer

You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends.
You are also unconventional, irreverent, and unimpressed by authority and rules.
Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives.
You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You’re quite the storyteller!

In love, you are quite the charmer. And you are definitely willing to risk your heart.
You often don’t follow through with your flirting or professed feelings. And you do break a lot of hearts.

At work, you are driven but not a workaholic. You just always seem to enjoy what you do.
You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

How you see yourself: compassionate, unselfish, and understanding

When other people don’t get you, they see you as: gushy, emotional, and unfocused

To start off I am excited to take part in Blog Action Day. I have been thinking about this post most of the day, and I’m excited for any part I can play in raising awareness.

While I’ve definitely had a blessed life, I was part of the ‘lower’ class. We used food stamps and I was one of the ‘free lunchers’ in school. I didn’t have name brand things(clothes, food, or otherwise) unless they were on clearance(not sale…clearance), and was never ‘in style’ (usually a few behind). Sure I was made fun of sometimes, but in actuality it wasn’t bad(I had a pretty good time).
Now to take my experience and juxtapose it against the experience of those living in poverty shows how great I have it.

Every morning I can take a shower, when there are those who don’t even have clean drinking water.
I drive to work when there are people who must walk for miles for anything.
If I miss breakfast, I’m “starving” by the time lunch comes around, when some haven’t eaten for days.
I could go on, but reflecting today has shown me how easy it should be for me to thank God in every part of my life.

So where does one go from there? Well there is always some small step one can take to make an impact. A while ago I was shown a website (FreeRice.com) that by playing a game you help the hungry. And there are also organizations like Compassion or World Hope that is making a specific impact in the lives of children(My wife started sponsering a little girl in Uganda a while ago). Whatever you have (money, time, word association skills) you can use them to help the less fortunate.

So take some time today to think about the state of our world. There is plenty for everyone, its just not everywhere it needs to be yet.

Here’s an overview of our recently finished registration kiosk project.

What are you doing for your kiosks?

I had an interesting string of thoughts today during some of the talks here at MinistryTech. It was a little seed that was planted during Tony Morgan’s presentation.

Tony’s presentation went over the “10 Reasons Why Techies Scare” him. His number 6 reason was that techies don’t document processes. His example involved the concept of ‘the techie before’ and how we aren’t going to be where we are forever, for whatever reason. And we all have stories of knowledge/processes/documentation that left with the techie before us. So what exactly are we leaving behind?

I think that in order to do the best for the ministries we support, the churches we work in, and the God we live for, we must strive to leave a legacy.

While going through my RSS today I happened upon THIS story.

 How cool would it be to have a speed cabling competition at the next roundtable?

As you may have read on vaious other blogs, Northwoods was the place to be the week of Jan 7. Bill English, the man who wrote the book on Microsoft’s Sharepoint led 35 or so Church IT workers through the ins and outs of Sharepoint.

Fady got the ball started rolling on this one, and things progressed quickly after that. A location was chosen and registration opened. Once we had the time, the place, and the people it was time to get ready.

The big players on the back-end:

Linda Cleveland - Instrumental in the registration/preparation process for the attendees.
Melanie Gray - Made sure there was room for everyone, and that everyone had what they needed.
Linda McMillen - Kept us fed like noone else could.

The training was a great success in my opinion. My mind was filled to capacity and then some. I went into it thinking that sharepoint was just a simple collaboration/portal. But I have seen its true colors. Photo dump to follow.

Thanks again to everyone who came out, and a special thanks to Bill. Its not often you find someone in the private sector leading a Christian business.

Since Jason just posted a photo dump of pics, hopefully I can expand on the events of recent, with some new pics as well.

January 4th: Around 5pm
We begin the relocation by shutting all systems to be moved…and as a show of power, every desktop on the network.(We had a real reason, just some sensationalism)

After everything had been powered down as needed, naturally it was time for a break.

 Now on to the work. There were several reasons for our move. We were growing to big for our current space, our servers were just stacked on top of one another, our backup situation needed help, and it was in a remote part of the building.

After the taco bell settled we started disconnecting the servers and sorting the cables. I documented the process while Jason handed heavy things to Jim.

  As I mentioned before once we got the servers moved we had to sort out some cabling.

The move was on. When I said that our servers were stacked on top of each other there was a system of separating the physical boxes. Here is a shot of our previous rack system.

On to the Datacenter! We prepared for our move by putting the rails in the rack so we could get the servers in quickly. Here we are putting in the first server.

One server down, now its time for a break! We just happened to get a special visit from our favorite CFO Linda. She knew we would be working hard so she brought us some treats.

After that short interlude it was back to the servers. We happened to look at the server we just loaded and realized it wasn’t correct, so we did it again.

The rest of the move went pretty well. No large hurdles, a snag or two maybe. We were able to get everything up and running. We had a little pool between us as to what time we would finish. Jim had 10pm I had 12am and Jason had 2am. While there was some controversy involving certain parties ‘padding’ the time, our finish up time happened to be somewhere between 4 and 4:30 am making us all losers. Here are a few final pics of the move.

After some cleanup were were ready for the week. It’s been a long process, starting back in October, but it feels good to have it completed. Particularly because two days after our move, 35 Church IT guys from all over the country converged on Northwoods for Sharepoint Training.

It’s Here!

We happen to have in our racks the hottest piece of server equipment released this year!

Check out a few pics, more info later!

This is my first post from my phone! I somehow was able to login and access the backend of my site.
I have wanted to try and better utilize my phone this may be how it happens.
More to come.