No, I’m not 30 years old … I was just trying to solicit your attention.

Most of you know that I’m in the Church IT Biggest Loser contest that Jason has put together.  What a lot of folks don’t know is that I already started a weight loss project back in mid-November.

When I started this, I weighed in at 278.  After much diet tweaking (and by that I mean "lowering my intake") and a steady amount of exercise, I got a nice reward today when I stepped on the scale…

For those who find that LCD hard to read … it’s showing ‘247.6′  Yep.  I’m down 30-plus pounds as of today.  While I can’t register that loss in CITBL, it feels good to have reached this mark.

The next goal?  Yep, it would be 40.  You’ll know when it happens, too.

About 2 weeks ago, I put the wraps on the task of moving from one Windows domain to another here at NewPointe.  Overall, I would say that the operation went pretty well, and I’m satisfied with the way things progressed.  However, I would make some tweaks to the procedure if I ever had to do it again.

Planning

This is one area that I think, for as much as I knew about domain migrations at the time, we did pretty well with.  Our staff was notified of the changes that they would experience during the migration, account passwords were pre-created and form-mailed to each user (on paper), and the migration itself took place between Christmas and New Years, when the office is least populated.

Now that I know a little more about what’s going on during a domain rebuild, I would definitely communicate with the end-users more about what they would be experiencing.  We didn’t have a LOT of surprised users, but I would still like to keep the "gotchas" down to a minimum next time.

User Account Migration

For this project, because of my almost non-existant timeline, I decided to hand-create all the accounts, groups, and OUs on the new domain.  I didn’t mess with the AD Migration Tool for a couple reasons:  1.)  I had plenty of time to get my accounts created on the new domain, and 2.) I had no idea how reliable ADMT would be.  I definitely want to give it a try in a lab though.  If it works, fantastic … it will cut down drastically on the time it takes to create user accounts during a migration.

ExMerge

ExMerge, without a doubt, was the biggest stumbling block through the process.  I spent a total of 8 hours JUST on ExMerge, moving data from one Exchange server to another.  Since ExMerge can be run as an incremental operation, I should have run ExMerge a week before, and maybe a day before as well, to get data moved over ahead of time.  I would have cut some MAJOR time off of the operation.

Scripting

There’s a LOT of scripting I could have done to make this job easier, from file permissions to moving profiles around.  One thing I’ve realized is that I need to at LEAST learn VBscript so I can write some time-saving scripts.

In conclusion, I would say that a domain rebuild is definitely not something you want to jump into if you’re not sure you’ll need it.  There was much lost sleep over the event, and I’m definitely glad it’s over.  As I said before though, I’m generally pleased with how it went.  I’d be happy to answer any questions that anybody may have regarding the project, as well.

-My brain still hurts a little from SharePoint training.  I had a chance to talk about the possibilities with my leaders, and we agree that SP can definitely help us out in some areas.

-I traded my Lenovo 3000 series laptop in for a T61.  So far I love it.  The screen is BRIGHT!

-This week I paid down my LAST credit card … hopefully ever.  The only debt I have now is the loan on my car.  I’m very psyched over this.

-I’ve been making an effort to keep my inbox as clean as possible.  As of right now, my Outlook inbox has 0 messages in it.  My next goal in this area is to set a definite time, probably twice a day, to check emails.  I’ve got a terrible habit of treating Outlook like an instant messaging client sometimes.

-Between holidays, being sick, and being in Peoria, I had about 3 weeks off from my workout routine until this Monday.  It felt GOOD to get back on the equipment and sweat again.

-We (NPCC) are getting ready to sell a remote HD camera (a BRC-H700 to be exact).  If you’re looking for an HD camera and this interests you, you should contact me before I post it on eBay.

That’s all for now … I’m headed to Columbus tomorrow…going to spend a day in Easton.  It should be a nice getaway.

Hard Disk ICU

Originally uploaded by npccdave

This is what you call a “last ditch effort…”

I got a call from our Music Director late Friday night. He said that he had big problems booting his computer, and everything he described pointed to file corruption, which in this case, was a sure sign of disk failure.

So I’ve got the offending member hooked up to my desktop PC right now, pulling everything I can off of it with Stellar Phoenix, and hoping for the best.

…to any of you who got RSS-spammed by me over the past 24 hours.

The new theme that I switched to was not as great as I thought it was.  A fault in the code somewhere was forcing all my text to wrap around any pictures instead of putting the picture on the same line, but this ONLY was happening on the web site.  As a result, my RSS feeds looked horrible.  Since most people that I know are feed-readers, this was unacceptable, and I’ve decided to switch back to my old theme until I can get the problem resolved.

Update:  After searching through the theme author’s site, I was able to locate the offending code and make the proper adjustments.  Things SHOULD be looking better.  Here’s hoping…

I was expecting to get back to my apartment and have a normal unpacking procedure.  Well, “normal” wasn’t in the plans for me.

Now please understand… I’m no slob, but my apartment has not won any awards for cleanliness.  Ever.  It’s not ever been “beautiful” or even “nice,” but it’s been functional. 

You can imagine my surprise then, when I walked into my apartment this afternoon and saw this…

Now believe me when I tell you that my apartment did NOT look this good when I left.  As it turns out, my girlfriend and mom both collaborated on this project and cleaned, vacuumed and painted the apartment while I was gone.

I am unbelievably blessed…

I don’t have anything against Red Roof Inn; they’ve been good to me. However, this is a little idea of how comfortably I slept last night.

It wasn’t that bad though, I had enough sleep to get back to Ohio. As it turns out, the Ohio Turnpike is pretty empty on the weekend, so the drive back was pretty nice.

It’s good to be home.

I’m in Granger again tonight. SharePoint training is done, and my brain is sufficiently fried, so tonight I’m just spending the evening relaxing (sort of) in the Red Roof Inn across the street from GCC.

On Thursday evening, Jason P. put together an impromptu Round Table session at Northwoods. Everyone that was at SharePoint training was invited to sit in. For some, this was their first RT experience. On Friday, we wrapped up training with some SharePoint Designer wisdom before packing things up and heading back East. Much thanks to Bill English for giving his time and his company’s materials to train us this week (and I do mean "giving" in the literal sense). Also, major props to Northwoods staff … this week’s training event was planned and executed very well, and it was evident.

I’m way tired, but I feel good. The training was excellent, and I definitely feel more equipped and ready to take on some new challenges. However, nothing compares to being able to talk to your peers in the ministry and benefit from the knowledge and experience that’s in the group. It’s truly a blessing to be a part of a team that, although we’re in different "organizations" per se, we have a very common goal tying us together.

If you’re someone doing IT in a church setting and you’re NOT connected with anyone … seriously, you need to be. It will stretch you, grow you, and make you better at what you do, and if nothing else, you will gain good relationships with people that are in the same ministry as you. If you’re looking a way to connect to the Church IT Roundtable, Justin Moore has put together a nice list of CITRT resources, which you can find here.

Time to get some sleep…

I had forgotten that I posted a ridiculous 7 times the day after Christmas, so I was a little surprised when I saw this spike in my Google Analytics graph this morning…

No, I don’t look at my Analytics report that much…

I’ve been looking for a new theme to ring in the new year with, and although it’s a little late (I wanted to get it tweaked a little), here it is. I’m usually not a fan of yellow, but for some reason this stood out to me and I really like it.

Some of the formatting is going to need fixed on a few posts, which I’m not opposed to dealing with…just don’t expect it to happen this week.