CHOOSE LIFE.
CHOOSE COFFEE.
CHOOSE BIG FUCKING ROUTERS.
CHOOSE CROSS CONNECTS. CHOOSE PEERING SESSIONS.
CHOOSE NO SLEEP NO TIME OFF AND NO FRIENDS.
CHOOSE FIBER CUTS AND DDOS MITIGATION.
CHOOSE REVERSE DNS. CHOOSE BGPMON.
CHOOSE OSPF. CHOOSE ISIS. CHOOSE HOT POCKETS AT 4AM.
CHOOSE NANOG. CHOOSE CACTI. CHOOSE SNMP.
CHOOSE THE INTERNET.
CHOOSE LIFE.
CHOOSE NOC.
Serra Boten (@serraboten)
-Christmas dinner at the @PEER1 Vancouver NOC We have an annual tradition at my work where the guys stuck on shift, and some of us without local families get together on Christmas Day and have a turkey dinner with some fantastic company. It’s always really tasty and a lot of fun. I’ve been glad to participate the last couple years.
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-Christmas dinner at the @PEER1 Vancouver NOC

We have an annual tradition at my work where the guys stuck on shift, and some of us without local families get together on Christmas Day and have a turkey dinner with some fantastic company. It’s always really tasty and a lot of fun. I’ve been glad to participate the last couple years.

By any other name..

Ready for another chestnut in the “how big of a geek am I” fire?

So this week was momentus for the NOC.. we finally got brand new workstations for the whole thing, after waiting on them for quite some time. Quite an upgrade from the Frankenstein’d boxes we were working on prior. So in this new set up, I moved to a external hard drive with my own operating system, which allows me to move my workspace around between systems. However, I had to pick a unique name for my workstation.

Naming your computers is always a big thing for a geek. It has to fit the system. Many times, you have a naming convention to stick to, while others, it’s just picking something that fits.

The result of my search?

cblecker@alexander:~$

Alexander fits this system. You wanna know in how many ways? Check this out:

  • My desktop systems usually have a male name, and mobile systems a female name.
  • Alexander is the male version of my personal laptop’s name — “Alexis”
  • It fits with the sort-of naming convention of a lot of Vancouver servers — after alcoholic beverages (such as sleeman, budwiser, shiraz, etcc), in this case, after “Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale”.
  • It also has a fear-striking quality, in that it was also a name shared by a great king and feared army commander, “Alexander the Great”.

So you see, a lot of thought goes into a good name. And yes, I really am a big frickin geek.

Relocation

Well it’s been quite some time since I last updated this thing, but things have been just crazy busy. I’m back on night shifts at work, which I’ve been using to get back into coding and such. I’m learning the new version of the NEO framework employed by PHXX in the development of some of their client sites, including SpawnPoint. It’s a very extensible framework, and the guy who created it (Lucas W.) is genius quality. From what I hear, he’s being scoped out by a number of companies, while still in school.

Other than that, the other big piece of news is that I’m moving! I’ve leased a basement suite in the Kitsilano area for the next year. It’s a two bedroom suite in an older heritage home. It’s small, but it will do the trick. Laurel (my best friend of nearly a decade) and I are sharing the place. It’s closer to her work, and it’s MUCH closer for me. I’m soo glad I won’t have to commute from Maple Ridge into downtown at least 4-5 times a week. After a while, it eats your soul. So within the next week, I’ll officially be a Vancouverite. The other dangerous part about this, is that I have a Starbucks less than 100m from my front door (at MacDonald and 16th). This is not going to do well for my pocket book, or my caffeine intake.

At work, things are going decently. We recently lost some NOC team members to other departments in the company, so we have a couple new hires that are being trained on day shift. The two that have already started seem like bright guys, and we have one more starting next week. So we’ll shortly be back up to full staffing, and raring to go! I still learn a lot daily at this job, which keeps it fresh and interesting. It’s not just the technical side of things, but also getting better at the “team player” and even a “mentor”.

Introduction

Okay, so a brief little bit about myself…
In my day job (or, well at the moment night job) I’m the newest member of the Vancouver NOC team. I’ve been with PEER1 for almost a month and a half. It’s a very interesting company to work for, and a really great challenge for me. It’s a very different type of work than I’ve done in the past. I’m not going to get all in depth about the past right now — the past formed me but it isn’t who I am.

Besides, I’m sure I’ll get into it later as I tend to be a chatty blogger.

So I’ve decided to use this blog as a forum for my thoughts on business, technology, and of course, work. I’ll be trying to cross-post this to my Wordpress blog, and to my company blog on staff.peer1.com.

First topic: Night shifts. I’ve just completed my second week of night shifts in the NOC. As far as issues, you get quite a grab bag. Everything from backbone issues, to my personal favourite, remote hands requests for overseas clients (not naming names — but the NOC guys know who I’m talking about). It’s also been nice to work along side the very talented Mark (Senior Analyst). He’s quite a good mentor to work with, and I’ve been learning lots.

However, the only thing that bugs me are the slow times. Those times when there is no alerts coming in, no e-mails, no calls. Trying to go over old tickets, or read up on network information to still feel like you’re doing something USEFUL while getting paid. Aaand did I mention trying to stay awake?

Oh well, it’s something I’m sure I’ll get better at.

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