Can you say,  “Back Up?”

Posted Jan 31, 2008 by Herbie — Comments (4) — Filed under: Camp, Cross-ing's, Geeky things

FYI: Above the picture is Geeky things - below the picture is more what God is doing in me.

Today was a day off for me but I get a call from camp saying that no one is able to get to any of the camper records.  No registrations, no gifting, no payroll,... no nothing.  So, I came in to see what was going on to find that the computer (i.e. the SQL Server) that holds all that data couldn’t find it’s hard drives (RAID 1).  After doing all the diagnostics that I know how to do I called another local computer guy, Jerry Clark, for some help.  After talking it through, I concluded that I need to borrow some of his expertise and tools of data recovery because something was just not acting normal.  We found out that one of the hard drives had failed.  Fortunately, the other drive was intact and we could copy it to protect it just in case we would loose it again in the rebuild of the RAID 1 (i.e. mirroring or the same information on two hard drives always).

When working with data it takes a long time to copy/rebuild/format/re-RAID.  So, I got to camp around 9:45 am Wednesday, figured out it was a hard drive failure about 1:30 PM Wednesday, and it looks like when this is all said and done it will be about 2:00 AM Thursday.  But, I don’t mind.  I look back to when I first accepted the position as computer systems manager and how uptight I would get with every little computer problem that would come my way.  My stress level was always so high.  Time, Wisdom, and trust in the Lord has taught me so much over these last 6 years.

Now, this isn’t an actual picture of me tonight.  If it was I would be crazy because the temp out side is 40 degrees below with wind chill. Even I am not that crazy . However, I thought I would include what it looks like down in the Server Room at camp.

To paint the picture of how serious this could have been to camp - there would have been no payroll tomorrow,  no paper record of the communication with groups coming this weekend or others, no records of anyone who has ever come to camp and/or their financial giving, no records for our mailings (the largest mailing being around 14,000-15,000).  AND Yet, the Lord allowed me to be calm through all of this.  His mercy’s ARE new every morning.  He proves himself faithful over and over again. I call Him the “Divine Clicker” because I certainly don’t understand many of the solutions that have come our way.  I have hundreds of stories of how God just allowed me to know something at just the right time to solve whatever was going wrong and yet I’ve never known how to solve it before then.  I love my Lord.  He truly does care for even the little things in life like computer problems. Better yet, He loves to delight in showing His love for us in the things we care about and giving good gifts (like solutions).

I’m glad He is our ultimate Back-up - He Saves us and never leaves us. 

We click and we’re there? :)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 by Herbie — Comments (0) — Filed under: Camp, Geeky things

DSL is up and running!

It has taken about three weeks to get everything just right, but it is well worth it. What a blessing it is to be able to have the high speed. Now we are able open other opportunities to staff when it come to research, communication, development, and productivity. Through this DSL we have also added a 2nd layer of virus protection and SPAM filtering which had reduce the amount of my troubleshooting and management. This in turn has opened up the doors for development of the database mentioned in the Summer newsletter.

DSL - There are things faster than Dial-up?

Posted Sep 10, 2005 by Herbie — Comments (0) — Filed under: Camp, Geeky things

DSL (i.e. broadband) is coming to Camp Forest Springs!

This is a monumental event in the lives of our staff and work environment. Camp has shared up to now a dial-up connection with on average 38 computers. Plus we have 4 servers that each have there own bandwidth use for anti virus updates, Windows Updates, and retrieving and sending e-mail. It is amazing what you can get used to.

We hope to be updating and implementing this during the next 3 weeks (September 12 – 30, 2005). Couple of things have to be put in place before we can have full use of this faster connection. We have decided to go with a company called AIM (Advance Internet Management) to be our protection from the outside world and integrity with in. So this means configuring our network behind a firewall, configuring multiple levels of Active Directory, and rerouting/reconnecting our Exchange Server (AKA e-mail). I don’t know much in these areas but I’m sure I will be learning very quickly.