Midnight at the NOC

Saturday night. Quiet time in the quest for forty-two. I'm thinking of calling it a relatively early night and getting a little extra sleep in tonight. Hey- it can't hurt!

I've been in search of a software package for the past few days, and as a result the Secret Underground Lair  has started gain some floorspace as things are rearranged and kludge is eliminated. I took this opportunity to move the shredder next to my #2 PC. Our shredder is pretty nice- the throat capacity is something like 9+ sheets. I generally don't get anywhere near that, but extra capacity is nice for those times when one underestimates the thickness of the paper. What I found most distressing was that our cat is more fascinated by the shredder than terrified of it. So, the machine is off and unplugged unless it is in use.

Another byproduct of the software search is floorspace. I suddenly have ~9sq ft more of bare floor behind me. Now, in the scope of things, this isn't a great amount, but when it suddenly opens up, its a big deal. I can now get at all of the PC's easily, as well as what passes for our NOC (*Network Operations Center).

NOC

It's fairly difficult to see what is in that photo, but what is depicted is the "wiring closet" of the network. We're pretty much wired everywhere, excepting the wireless access point upstairs and the cable modem downstairs (which also has a WAP). Otherwise, the premise wiring is all gigabit ethernet. What I thought was pretty neat was my "rack" solution: I wanted something that would allow airflow around the router and switch(es), but did not want to spend a great deal of money. My solution came from our local dollar store- each tier of the rack was 1USD. They are the perfect width for my existing Linksys/Cisco eight port switch and four port switching router. I secured the four wire shelving units together with a pair of flat bungee cords, and a few screws on the bottom anchor everything to a 12 inch by 12 inch piece of scrap plywood. The whole thing is very stable. The ethernet cabling follows a piece of electrical conduit where possible, and hangs from repurposed paper clips- very inexpensive, but very effective. I'm thinking of replacing the paperclips with something more similar to a traditional tray: I've collected several (~12) 36- and 48-inch cardboard cores from a plotter's paper rolls. Depending on the difficulty, I'll either butt-splice them or duct tape them together for a nice, solid, neater-looking channel. That is definitely a "sometime later" project. After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Database update: I'm slowly updating the main table with the new title table. This probably won't be done for another few weeks. The Lego spreadsheet is also coming along nicely- more than a quarter of the rows have new part numbers- less than 18K to go! The bad news is that it will need further modification before I import it into Access.

And, on a totally unrelated note, I installed Visio. I have not used Visio in some time- it was a lot of fun to use. I'm not sure what practical application I have for it just yet; at this point, its more for my personal edification than anything else.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.