Upgrade Update

Well, I guess I should give an upgrade update. First of all, things have been absolutely crazy, which is why I haven't been updating. From the moment I walk in the door to the moment I leave, I don't have time to do anything but work. I suppose that is the way it should be but I haven't even had time for lunch. I will get to that in a minute...

Anyway, the earliest I have gotten home this week is 9:30 p.m. except for today. We have had integrators on-site all week. They left today at 11:00 a.m. and then I caught up on all my regular work once they left. So far we have placed domain controllers in three of six sites...which is a start. They are up and running and are working with one another. Switches have been upgraded in three of six sites as well. We have imaged all 27 servers and sent them to their destination sites.

On a software side, our Document Management System ("DMS") is being tested on the new SQL server with test libraries. So far it does not work with Office 2007 and Vista...yet. But there is hope we will have a breakthrough next week. We still plan to upgrade our workstations to Vista.

Next week our desktop deployment integrator will be on-site. So, that leads to a quick story. Beginning last week, I had asked our reseller for quotes for our new imaging software. In an effort to help us, he setup a conference call, etc., to discuss our needs and software. I e-mailed him earlier this week and said I appreciated his offers but regardless of my personal opinion of the software we would need to purchase it this week and I would need a quote. Well, today rolled around and still no software. So, at 4:15 this afternoon, I received an e-mail from the project manager of our integrators asking me to confirm the purchase of the imaging software. Oops.

So, I immediately got on the phone with the reseller and he got the imaging company on the phone and in a matter of minutes we hashed our a quote and order. And I was able to confirm to the project manager that indeed the software had been purchased. Whew. I can honestly say I was a bit panicked because I had been persistent about our need to get the software but I wasn't making headway. I was afraid that the failure to procure this software by Monday could delay the entire project. And that would be horrible considering we're currently 4 days ahead of schedule on infrastructure. If applications slowed it down, I would never hear the end of it. Luckily, we made it work...at least for today.

As for lunch, it's been at weird times all week. Today, I finally went to get lunch at 2:30 p.m. with a co-worker. We both got 2 slices of pizza to bring back to the office so the shop put the pizza in a regular pizza box. So, I set the pizza box on a table in my co-workers office while I answered an e-mail. About that time someone from upstairs showed up in my office to relay some information. During the course of his talk, he mentioned the pizza and I told him where we got it. Next thing I know, he was eating a piece.

Well, I let him go...thinking "man, there goes a piece of my pizza...at least I have one left." I didn't mind...but then he proceeded to eat another piece. So, he ate my lunch and I just watched. He offered to pay but I told him we'd square up later. It really wasn't his fault because he assumed we had ordered a whole pizza and ate it around lunch time. But, that wasn't the case. But, that's about par for the course really. No pizza for me...

So, anyway, that's the update on the upgrade. Week 2 of 34 is now complete and no one has been shot yet. But there were a few evenings I was starting to wonder. Should remain interesting...can't wait to see what our desktop deployment guy has up his sleeve. And hopefully the software will arrive. I'll keep everyone up-to-date as much as possible...