LVTC (Living Vicariously Through Corey)

Life as a Pet owner

2010-06-16T05:08:56Z

This past weekend Pam and I got a golden retriever puppy named Lucy. She is 8 weeks old and adorable. It has been a long time since I’ve had a dog and there are a lot of things that are coming back to me as we train her. There have been some frustrating moments like when she woke us up at 5am to poop all over her crate, but when you look at the following face it all goes away:

Tags: dog, lucy, LVTC

Installing Ubuntu Remix on EEEpc 900

2010-04-19T03:27:10Z

I just got an EEEpc 900 off of eBay that had XP loaded on it. It was pretty cheap ($179 with shipping and tax) and overall have pretty good specs including 1GB of RAM, 16GB SSD Hard Drive, built in Mic and 1.3MP camera. The goal was to get this for when I’m traveling to decrease the weight and easier to pack. Once I got it I got things ready to install Ubuntu Remix on it. Here are the steps I took:

Setup a USB installer as the netbook doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive on it. I tried using the usb creator built in with the Ubuntu remix ISO but that didn’t work out so I used UNetBootin
I got the Flash Drive setup and ran the installer and it worked out well, the touchpad didn’t work during the installation but I had a usb mouse and that allowed me to control and finish the installation
Once I got it installed the wireless worked right away, the touchpad worked, when I closed the lid it went into standby properly

I need to get a new battery for it as it only came with a 4 cell and it seems to already be losing charge. Otherwise the installation was easy and I’m really happy with it.

Tags: eeepc, netbook, remix, Ubuntu

Support Plan Management Application

2010-04-03T01:08:24Z

The support plan structure that we subscribe to at MindTouch includes 2 tiers of tickets. The first tier is a System Maintenance ticket which are basic questions about how to use/install/configure MindTouch. Then we have advanced tickets called METs (MindTouch Expert Tickets). These allow for support for advanced functionality within MindTouch.

METs are a cornerstone to the support plans as far as one of the main differentiators. With this in mind we needed an effective way to track and communicate to the customer their usage of these tickets. This motivated me to create a PHP/AJAX application that surfaces the number of tickets used and how many are left.

The key functionality of this application relies on effectively categorizing tickets in a way that can be surfaced and counted. We use ZenDesk for our helpdesk which has a pretty robust RESTful API. I setup a workflow in ZenDesk that would automatically tag the ticket with an MET tag based upon the categorization of the ticket itself. Once this is done then the ticket will go through its normal cycle of resolution. In the background nightly I have a PHP script that hits the ZenDesk API and queries based upon values from our database and the categorization in ZenDesk. It then loops through all of the organizations and parses the total number of METs have been used during their support plan timeframe.

Once it receives this information it updates the database. The information is then surfaced through a javascript widget that receives information from ZenDesk as to the user’s organization.

This helps the agents have a better idea of the customer’s support level along with providing useful information to the customer as to the status of their account.

Tags: LVTC, Mindtouch, ZenDesk

How to increase virtual RAM on a VMware image when launching with VMware Player

2010-03-14T07:31:01Z

I thought I’d do a quick blog post on this as a lot of people evaluate VMware Virtual Machines on VMware Player, but a lot of times it is hard to change the Memory allocation. Here is a quick and easy way to do it when the Virtual Machine is off.

Open the folder that the Virtual Machine is housed in and find the .vmx file
Right click on the file and select to open it with notepad (or other similar text editor)
Find the following line: memsize = “256″ (Note the value may differ in your configuration)
256 means that the max amount of RAM allocated to the virtual machine, change this to the amount you want (measurement is in MB)
Save the file and start up your virtual machine with the new RAM allocation

Hope this helps

Tags: LVTC, virtual machine, vmware

Rant of the month

2010-02-18T03:47:46Z

So I’m sitting in front of the tv the other day having a relaxing night when a commercial comes on and shows a guy ordering a Grilled Cheese off the kids menu at a restaurant. First off let me say that the commercial was trying to portray the guy as being embarrassed for ordering off the kids menu in order to get a grilled cheese when he clearly wasn’t. Being a man who has ordered Grilled Cheese off of the kids menu, I can attest that I’m not embarrassed either, just stoked to get a good grilled cheese. Anyhoo back to the commercial, so it is a Carl’s JR and they are like: “Do you like Grilled Cheeses but are afraid to order off the kids Menu?”. Here is where they were getting me excited because I was like, “Oh man, if they have an awesome large grilled cheese sandwich at Carl’s Jr, then I’ll definitely go there”. NO…they don’t have a Grilled Cheese but instead suggest that if you are embarrassed ordering off the kids meal to go to Carl’s Jr. and get a cheeseburger. Uhh….Hello!!! A Cheeseburger is not a Grilled Cheese. While both of them have cheese and bread they are not the same. It is like saying, you like beef stew? Then you’d love the new tacos we have. Both have beef…so they are the same, right?

Damn you Carl’s Jr. Next time talk to people who actually order Grilled Cheese off the kids menu before you blatantly slap them in the face.

And that is my Rant of the month.

Tags: LVTC, rant

How to backup your Google Calendar routinely

2010-02-08T05:48:47Z

About a year ago something happened on Google’s end that caused one of my calendar’s information to be lost. Fortunately I had a backup that had a majority of the information in it, but it got me thinking about backing up my Calendar to ensure that if, worst case scenario, I lost a calendar I wouldn’t be SOL. Here is how I routinely backup my google calendar thanks to an easy to use bash script. Note these instructions assume you are running from linux.

First thing to do is to get the Private iCal link for your Google calendar. I specify private as in most cases the Google Calendar is a private calendar
Once you have that then you can add it to the bashscript below, replacing the bolded calendar url with the private iCal url that you have

!/bin/bash

wget http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/coreygans@gmail.com/private-4bfd506b6d$

mv basic.ics calendar/personal.ics

!/bin/bash

wget http://www.google.com/calendar/sample_ical/calendar

Copy the above script and save it in a file called googlecal.sh. Next configure a cron job to run the script routinely. Here is my sample cron command:

# m h  dom mon dow   command

30 9 * * * sh /root/googlecal.sh

This runs the above bash script at 9:30 am GMT everyday. I take it to the next level and rsync the file to my backup server, but if you run this on any server then you will have a backup stored that isn’t on Google’s Servers.

If you have any questions about this please feel free to leave a comment. Hope this helps.

Tags: backup, calendar, Google, Linux, LVTC

What’s going on

2010-01-28T03:47:13Z

2010 has started off pretty crazy. I got into a car crash early in the month but luckily everyone was ok. The ole nissan was not so fortunate. I needed to get a new car so I settled on the Toyota Matrix. It is a 2005 so it didn’t fall under the recall. It is awesome. At work it has been crazy with getting ready to move to a new office. We are moving at the end of this week and it will be great as it is spacious and the network is going to be fast.

Overall I feel like things are progressing well and am excited to bring on some more help into the support department. We still have a tier 2 position open and am looking forward to more applicants.

Tags: LVTC

Come work with me at MindTouch

2010-01-12T23:50:53Z

I’m looking for an outstanding customer support agent to come work with me at MindTouch. Read the job description and see if you have what it takes.

Tags: customer support, job, Mindtouch

Christmas Post

2009-12-16T05:49:20Z

Keeping with tradition here is the 2009 Christmas Post.

2009 was a very busy year for Pam and I. We bought a condo in the early part of the year and couldn’t be happier. Pam finished her Master’s Degree in Social Work in May. We went on a couple of trips including up to Sequoia national Park and to Seattle. We had a lot of visitors and made it to DisneyLand and LegoLand. Work has been busy for both of us but all good things.

Not much else to say, except if you want more details read earlier posts on my blog Sorry for a the brevity of this post, have a lot of stuff to get done before the new year.

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

Tags: Christmas, LVTC

November recap

2009-11-27T07:26:27Z

I haven’t been blogging a ton lately so I thought I’d recap on the month. I got a new phone, the Samsung Moment, and am still thoroughly excited about it. It has saved me a lot of time and gives me a piece of mind when I’m not in front of my computer. I’m looking forward to Q1 2010 as that is when the upgrade for Android 2.0 will be out. I installed DD-WRT on a buffalo router on Friday and it was a snap. It was the first time I had installed DD-WRT and am really excited about the advanced functionality that it offers.

I’ve been playing catchup on my side projects lately which has felt good, I still have a lot of things to catchup on, but I’m taking my time with them. Work has been super busy. We’ve been bringing on some great customers and tickets have been increasing in number and complexity. I’m working on pulling together specs so that we can launch a documentation site in the months to come. This will help reduce support requests but will be an undertaking upon itself to ensure that we capture all information within the portal.

I have a mound of paperwork I need to go through related to the purchase of our condo this year along with preparing for the 2009 tax returns that are coming up. I like to file early and get it off my plate. I used turbo tax last year and was happy with the simplicity along with the value of the offering. I will be heading back to MN for Christmas which will be cool. It will be good to see family and friends again.

Other than that, this year has been really eventful and I’m working on wrapping up 2009 with a strong finish so that I can accomplish some goals in 2010.

Tags: LVTC