Van Halen on the brain

"I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass."
- David Lee Roth

Jealously may set in if you read this....

Who: ME
What: Van Halen with David Lee Roth
Where: Charlotte, NC
When: Thursday September 27, 2007
Seat: Sec 211 Row Q

OH YEA! I'm looking forward to this. I never thought I'd actually get to see these guys live! I'm pumped!

Now, the question of the century, Can United get me into Charlotte from Indiana on time Thursday before the concert starts? I sure hope so. According to this, I have about a 75% chance of making this before Van Halen starts.

Taking care of children...

Tonight, I had a wonderful opportunity to support our local school district by being at the annual celebration of The School Foundation. However, tonight was extra special. The School Foundation was honoring Mr. Ed Young. Mr Ed is in our Sunday School class at church. It's actually Ed and Hatsy Young's Sunday School class, I just lead it on Sunday. In a nutshell, a wonderful couple. I can't say enough about them!

Thank you Mr. Ed and Mrs. Hatsy for setting the example!

One Nation under.....God? whew...

I received this from a friend towards the end of August. I thought I'd share.

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Last night at 5K orientation, I sat on pins and needles when the Pledge of Allegiance began. Since this was my first taste of public school, I wondered "did they really take out- "one nation, under God"- what will they say?

We finally got to that part and they recited "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all." I breathed a sigh of relief, and I am thankful that this is still a part of my childs life.

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Beware of the enemy trying to take this out!

How best to respond to a server down

One of the things I've learned over time is when an outage occurs, start a timeline. It's important to document WHEN things happen. Check out this recent issue we had with one of our database servers.

I stand firm behind this timeline:

10:50pm – N2 goes down hard.
11:04 – James and I decide to ride up to ACS to see instead of feel our way through remotely.
11:07 – Notified R&D contact
11:11 - Project Manager notified
11:16 – Dean arrives at ACS
11:19 – James arrives at ACS
11:20 - It appears the N2 physically crashed but did not completely shut down. Maybe the "red" light has something to do with this. Hard booted this maching.
11:35 – wondering if N1 is still in failover mode??? Log in to N1 – SQL won’t start. It crashed 6 times with no explanation.
11:37 – Project Manager arrives at ACS.
11:40 – Paged 2 other network administrators for advice and to lean on their knowledge of the SQL Cluster. James reboots N1.
11:45 – Network Admins respond via phone. N1 is almost restarted.
11:48 – James tells me all drives are reconnected and SQL appears to be working
11:50 – Dean’s Login works. Second Network Admin responds via IM.
11:54 – all databases are “seen” and in recovery mode. We have to wait out the system at this point.
12:00 – Officially declare that we’re ok and have to wait for DBs to come online.
12:30ish – All looks well, we go home.

1 hour to the minute, we're back up and running successfully. Great Job James and Team. Do you keep a timeline? do you post it?

deacons, airplanes, pizza, and hybrids

I find myself in Franklin, TN tonight getting ready for a whirlwind 2 days up here that include MinistryCom and 2 IT events. I'm tired of the airplanes for now but I'm here and safe. Here's my week so far:

1. Sunday night at church, I was given the honor/burden (your call) of Chairman of Deacons. Definitely more on that later. I will say this. I will do my best to serve Christ during the 12 months that I hold this title. It won't be easy since there's so much at EBC that we need to work on.

2. I wake up Monday Morning and get on a plane to Chicago. All is smooth. No biggie. Top Secret project here so I can't talk about it. However, on the way out of Chicago, I see Willow Creek so we stop in to get a glimpse of the new auditorium. Seats 7200... unbelievable. The church we visited was VERY unique also.

3. Almost cut it a little too close for security in getting back to the airport on 9/11. No real anxiety here but I will say I didn't sleep on this flight! The flight to Charlotte had two screaming kids on it the entire way... ugh!

4. Spent a wonderful day on Wednesday with my family. Took both of the kids to school AND picked them up. Took Tripp to CiCi's since he "likes the desserts and the brownies". I truly enjoyed the day.

5. But...get on a plane headed for Nashville. The second leg had a family of 4 that included a 13 year old, what looked like a 10 year old and maybe a 8 year old. Let's just say they didn't get along!

6. I pick up the rental car. It's a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid. I've never driven a Hybrid. I rode around for 30 minutes playing. cool stuff!

Stay tuned for more information.

well... I've made the switch... I am now iDean

you know... iPhone, iPod..... iDean.

I'm crazy, I know it. I am the proud owner of an iPod! Now, for all those that had a heart attack, relax. I was GIVEN a 30GB iPod by my good friend and colleague Steve Cumbia, Executive Director of R&D. He works with me and he already had one.... so... he thought of me.

Actually I know what he's trying to do. He got with Ben Jordan, the Executive Director of Sales who is an apple lover and they are trying to convert me.... Hal Campbell is probably in on it too.

So far, I'm been converting all my music.... I'm all in right now...

Hang on for more details. anyone want to give me a MacBook? :-)

You want me to stand in line for how long?

This photo, while the quality is poor, will show you the line that my wife stood in to buy some pocket books the other day. This line was estimate at a 2 hour wait. She got in line at 2:37pm. I picked her up (that's right.... no waiting for me!) at 6:10pm. That's almost 4 hours. granted, she got several Christmas presents and Breanna got to spend some of her birthday money... but I can't believe these women. The other photo is of the actual shopping. It looks like piranhas on a free lunch. Admittedly, she "saved" over 900 dollars off retail price.