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Sad Week

Posted at September 19, 2008 8:30 pm | In Random | By: Ben Woodruff

I was informed on Wednesday that one of the businesses that I am doing IT consulting for (through Hurricane Tech.) is closing it’s Rochester office. I very much liked working there and it’s always somewhat depressing when people you know lose their jobs.
Hopefully Hurricane will be able to provide me with new challenging tasks. I’m confident that they won’t let me down.

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Tags: Work

Why I’m Crazy: Part 1

Posted at April 16, 2008 12:50 am | In Personal | By: Ben Woodruff

Right, so my life currently in a nutshell.

I recently accepted an offer by Agile Web Solutions to start helping out with their support email. I’ve been doing that for about a week and a half and I love it. Their product, 1Password, is amazing. I use it all the time, and it saves me a lot of frustration and headache.
Basically the idea is you store all of your passwords in it (mainly website logins, but it also handles whatever other text data you want to secure) and it encrypts them all using OS X’s built-in keychain.
So I’ve been answering support emails for them, and continuing to help out on the support forums. I finally set myself up with a proper avatar, haha. (more…)

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Tags: Personal, Security, Software, Work

Hurricane Call Reporting System

Posted at November 30, 2007 9:52 am | In Programming | By: Ben Woodruff

So Shawn and I have been working on a new call reporting system for Hurricane. Our main goal is to make it easy to track requests from customers, and then the work we do to fill those requests.

Some of the sub-goals include some fairly extensive reporting on technician performance, possibly a way to update your calendar / time card, keeping track of mileage, and improving response times. (more…)

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Tags: PHP, Programming, Work

Sometimes Customers are Totally Unreasonable

Posted at November 10, 2007 1:28 pm | In Personal | By: Ben Woodruff

I had a lady come in today with a gift certificate for a discount on a new computer that expired 12/06.

She wanted to buy a mouse with it. (more…)

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Tags: Customers, Work

Re: Bugzilla

Posted at August 29, 2007 10:03 pm | In Research | By: Ben Woodruff

Update: Had a meeting today with the powers that be and it was decided that I could use our “VM Box” (an XP machine that is running VMWare Server) to setup a Linux virtual machine and install Bugzilla. They seemed unconvinced that it would work for us.
Well… they’re right.

(more…)

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Tags: Annoyances, Research, Technology, Work

VoIP

Posted at March 29, 2007 11:09 pm | In Research | By: Ben Woodruff

I don’t see the point.
Does everything have to be digital?

Anyway, I’ve been trying to setup a softphone on my laptop to login to our allworx VoIP system at work. I tried iSoftPhone, with no luck. I finally found X-lite (free), which has both a Windows and Mac version. That works perfectly. Well, almost. It’s good for a softphone anyway. I may have to buy it’s big brother, eyeBeam though, as X-lite doesn’t allow you to transfer calls…. which is a problem.
I just wish they had an educational discount or something.

I’m also looking into getting a bluetooth headset to use with my MacBook. I have a Logitech USB headset which I love to death, but it is a pain to carry around (even though it’s their “notebook” version). I’m looking at the Plantronics Explorer 320, mainly because it’s cheap and still got pretty good reviews.

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Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Technology, Work

Bugzilla

Posted at January 27, 2007 11:14 pm | In Personal | By: Ben Woodruff

I’m trying to convince work to use Bugzilla for tracking changes and troubleshooting.
So I’m going to load up Server 2003 in Parallels and try to get it installed and setup under Apache.

Wish me luck.

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Tags: Annoyances, Research, Software, Work

Working a lot more

Posted at January 13, 2007 10:37 pm | In Personal | By: Ben Woodruff

I’ve been working a lot more recently. I usually only work on Saturdays, but I’ve been going in after school, and will be working a full day Monday.
I love it, because I love the job, but it’s getting kinda crazy. School full time and work whenever I’m not in school.
It’s not actually that much, it just seems like a lot because I’m not used to it.
Good stuff though, I’d like to think I work well (better?) under stress.

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Tags: School, Work

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