Needed: Progress

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So we’re pulling out the stops this week. What with meetings, exam and more meetings progress has been sparse. Carl and I will work Wednesday night during the children’s programme, rebuilding the Sanctuary Console and documentation. We’ll also work Thursday night in preference to attending the Spring Business Meeting. Items on the schedule in addition to what’s already listed include:

  • The KidzTown iPod wireless connection
  • ldap backup
  • more documentation :-)
  • cabling and mounting for Sanctuary Projectors

The Closing Quarter

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As time rushes headlong towards 24 June, my last day as the self-appointed IT Director, we need to review our work list and prioritize items for the month of April. We’ve made slow but steady progress on it since January and we need to celebrate that, but we (I?) also need to ensure that we’re doing the right things next.

ToDo items for Thursday?

  • Review the work list status
  • Plan for April
  • Get the GHLC boxes out the door (likely into my van for delivery)
  • Work on the new Library machine
  • Try the data load into ACSPeople (Lisa had some data editing to do)
  • Eat donuts :-)

Maundy NerdNight!

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The Sanctuary is back together, and according to all reports is functioning correctly. Good thing since there’s a service this Thursday evening! We’ll start work after service with two priority items:

  1. Desktop Updates. This was delayed last week in order to put the Sanctuary back together.
  2. Data load for the ChMS. The visit last Thursday evening with Chris was fun but went until late enough that I didn’t want to try ciphering out data with the compute power I had left.

What else can we worry about? 

  • Finish building the last machine for Green Hill Lake Camp
  • Deploy new Nursery Machine
  • Begin building the second machine for the library
  • part out and dispose of the donated computers that are broken beyond repair (3 of them)
  • The work plan for April, including installation of the new projector in the gym and moving the current gym machine to its new home at the north pole in the Sanctuary.

Towards Normal

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There’s been significant progress over the last weeks. We’ve restored the data server, corrected an issue with the web server, installed and configured the virtualized WindowsServer (thanks Kevin!) as well as installed the ACS Technologies ACSPeople Network edition, and finished most if not all the machines to be donated to Green Hill Lake Camp. Next up on the plate is to load the data into the ACS system and start training staff. So things are looking up and we may well get back to our original intent of spending our time documenting and standardizing our systems (our goal for this winter).

In addition, the sprinkler system (for fires, not Anglican baptisms!) will be installed and the scaffolding torn down by Thursday eve, so we can make sure that the space is ready for Holy Week from an AV perspective. And we can get back to that kind of normal too.

Other items on the agenda? Carl has desktop updates to do this week, so if Alex turns up he can assist there. We have the replacement system for nursery checkin to complete and install as well as a base install for the second library computer to do. No rocket science in that, but time well spent in supporting ministries none the less.

The last item is that Joel has asked a colleague from his infrastructure group at work to review our system and share any thoughts about what we could do better or differently, so I’m looking forward to a tour and lots of conversation. And donuts!

Keep On Keepin’ On

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We haven’t made much headway it seems, or at least its been slow. The Contemporary Server has been pushed to this week. The MS Server install has gone well and we’ll have Kevin by this week to configure it and then hopefully load the ACS Technologies People Network package on it. We have three of the Green Hill Lake Camp machines setup and need to make decisions about how many more we can do with our dwindling (several bad machines) supply before we ship them out.

So that’s this week. Other things have been going on behind the scenes and san is up and running to it’s previous level, with additional cron jobs for backing up the database. And while I was at it the identity management system now backs itself up as well.

Tear It Down and Build It Bigger

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There’s nothing like a failure to test your system’s design. The failure in this case happened when we were hacked several weeks ago and our system was used to collect email addresses. Last Friday night the system was taken down to bare metal and reinstalled from the OS up. The rebuild was successful and while there are bits and pieces to complete, end-user functionality is “all there” and (understandably) our security is tighter.

This week we have several builds on the go. Carl will be finishing a rebuild of the Contemporary Console machine, to be completed for Sunday morning. I’ll have completed a rebuild of our 64-bit vm host in time for Kevin to assist with our MS Server install, and Alex can work on the Green Hill Lake Camp machine builds. Other bits and pieces from the list can be fit in as needed.

A New Window on the World!

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Much was accomplished last week, but not much that was on the list. The Annual Business Meeting was smooooth and we were out by 8:30pm (What? Baptists having a 90 minute meeting??) After that we had a “quick” 2 1/2 hr meeting with our new Board of Management Representative (150 min? That’s more like it!) Having spent all that time gabbing left us with a hefty plate for this week. To itemize, we need to:

  • Get the Contemporary Worship Coordinator’s accounts configured
  • Install a USB2.0 card in the newduplicator and make a disk backup of it before moving on (last week’s try failed) :-(
  • Drill holes in the server rack for cable management
  • Test that the network works in the Barnabas Centre so that the Tax Programme can startup with fewer hitches.
  • Do whatever needs to be done as a result of four days of scaffolding install in the Sanctuary (priority)
  • Feed our resident Windows Server expert Kevin donuts and coffee while he holds our hand through our first Server install in preparation for our ACS Technologies People install – likely next week.

As a side note to Canadian churches ever needing Microsoft Volume Licensing, consider using Microsoft Charity Software. Thanks for all your help Todd!

More Than Enough

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As Fearless Leader noted in the comments to last week’s entry, the Annual Business Meeting is this week, not last week – oops. I seem to be working a week ahead these days.

Our plan is still (somewhat) the same: do little things while the meeting is in progress, such as:

  1. Ensure that EW2009 is installed correctly on Pastor Greg’s laptop
  2. Install the voucher printer on both the pastoral support machines
  3. Get the Contemporary Worship Coordinator’s accounts configured
  4. Install the redundant power supply on vh3.

After the meeting, we can:

  1. Talk with Board of Management about the Sprinkler System install and what it means for our equipment
  2. Install a USB2.0 card in the newduplicator and make a disk backup of it before moving on
  3. Drill holes in the server rack for cable management
  4. Test that the network works in the Barnabas Centre so that the Tax Programme can startup with fewer hitches.

There are of course things I’m forgetting :-) that we’ll remember come Thursday.

A guest appearance by the AGM

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We’re gracious enough to share our Thursday nights occasionally with the rest of the church so they ca hold things like this week’s Annual General Meeting – we’re good like that.

With that in mind he first part of the evening will be spent doing mundane IT things that don’t require much attention so that we can focus on the meeting. Pastor Greg’s laptop maintenance is one of these items. Once the meeting is completed we can get onto dealing with the duplicator rebuild, the installs for the machines donated by UNB Computer Science for Green Hill Lake Camp configuring the voucher printer for the church office and printing he Banner to the website.

Winding up the ‘New’ Machines

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So the big ticket item this week will be kitting out six replacement machines for Green Hill Lake Camp. Other excitement includes:

  • finishing the replacement machine for the nursery checkin
  • drilling holes in the server rack for cable management
  • staring a hardware version of duplicator
  • installing the voucher printer through samba on san
  • automagicing the publication of the Banner

And I’ll have a word with the donut rustlers to see if we can contain our snack losses!