Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

220mph wifi

Who's your pick for the Indy 500 today?  Since the IRL does mostly (all?) oval tracks I've never been a big fan of the IRL ... road racing is where it's at.  As such, I haven't followed the big players in IRL so I have no clear favorites.  So I think I'll route for the Rahal/Letterman Team (yes, that's David Letterman of late night fame).  Their driver this year is 23 year old ... woman?  Yep, Danica Patrick is their driver and she's been tearing up the track so far. She's starting 4th today, the highest ever for a female and the experts say she has a real chance at taking the checkered flag. 

Off course there is some controversy surrounding her as well ... at 5' 2" she's only 100lbs ... putting her 100lbs lighter than anyone else.  That may not sound like a big deal, but in racing every pound counts and the lighter you are the faster you'll go.  100lbs is huge and several drivers are petitioning to have the rules changed on how cars are weighed in ... presently the minimum weight required is measured sans driver.  I'm sure if she does win the petition will become much louder.

Here's an interesting article about the new .11g network along the race track that provides real-time data between cars and crew ... that's pretty killer considering the cars are running over 200mph!  Here's a link to a prior post detailing the 900MHz wireless they use for Nascar data telemetry.  Kewl stuff.

Hmm, wonder how fast I can drive by my house and pick up my wifi network :-)

A few of my favorite things...

My youngest son seems to have a bit of his dad's racing genes.  He enjoys it when we go and watch local autocross races ... and even more so if dad's racing :-)

Today we went over to watch the Windy City Corvette Club race at the Tire Rack.  One gentleman saw us walking hand in hand looking at the cars and he said, "These are the best days."  That's all the dialogue he said as he continued walking along...but, he didn't have to say more...I totally got the message. 

Life is short...cherish each moment for soon they'll be grown up and you'll wonder where the time went.

Aaron wanted his picture with a couple race cars ... especially the yellow one's as yellow is his favorite.

As I was taking the pictures I kept thinking about what that guy had said ... and that's when I though of the perfect caption for these images:

A few of my favorite things...

Dual SSID's and VLANning

Man, I was tired yesterday...didn't get home from work Tuesday until ~4am.  Tuesday's Ed and I come in at 2pm and work 'til 10, 11, sometimes midnight.  This affords us time to work on network when the fewest people are impacted.  After 5pm the network is ours and users know systems may go offline without notice be stay offline possibly all night ... of course we still try to keep things online as much as possible.

Working Tuesday nights also affords us a great time to invite IT pros to volunteer their skills towards various projects we have.  Presently we have 4 Tuesday night "regulars" and about 3-4 waiting in the wings.  Tom heads up our wifi strategy, Dustin is a MOM2005 guru and has begun implementing MOM and Dell OpenManage for us, John has just begun working on a Linux project for us, and Mark is our SonicWall guru. 

So yesterday while John and Dustin continued their projects, Tom and Mark continued working towards the goal of running multiple SSID's off one access point .  This is only possible by setting up VLANning so that each SSID has a unique tag (we use Proxim AP4000's which allow up to 16 VLANs per radio).  Why do this?  We have both a private and public wifi at Granger and presently to keep the public traffic off the private network (for security reasons) that traffic is on it's own network physically separated via patch panels and separate IDF ties.  Though it works well and is uber secure, it's not efficient and is a pain to manage.  Secondly we need more wifi coverage without creating more channel problems than we already have.  Currently we have 4 private access points (AP's) and 3 public.  By running both SSID's on each AP we can effectively double our wifi coverage and eliminate channel b bleedover.

We started experimenting with VLANning several weeks ago ... none of us have hands-on VLANning experience so it's been quite a learning curve.  Lots of discussions, googling, whiteboard drawings ... it's been a hoot trying to figure out.  Tuesday night some actual progress was being made though not without a number of problems to work around.  By midnight Tom, Mark, Ed and I were still cranking away ... around midnight Tom had a major breakthrough and wanting to push forward ... talk about your uber geek :-)
Mark had split around 1am so our band was down to 3...but Tom was still pushing forward...and yes he has a day job.  Around 3:30am most of the AP's had been reprogrammed and were broadcasting both private and public SSID's and the VLANning was working keeping the public traffic separate from the private.  After some testing we walked out the door at 3:40am...whew! ...and yes, we could already hear birds singing!!

There's still some more testing and tweaking to occur, but it's working!  It's strange to see both public and private SSID's on the same radio channel, but it's certainly increased our wifi coverage big time.  Next week we'll probably start to redeploy the AP's to new locations to gain even better coverage and start the move towards WPA instead of WEP for staff.  The kewl thing is we can Create a new private SSID on each AP and have it use WPA-TSK...yep, 3 SSID's on the same AP :-)
This will allow us to slowly move all the wifi devices over to the new WPA SSID while leaving the current WEP SSID in place until the migration is complete...that just so rocks!!

The other just soooo kewl thing is the determination of our volunteers.  I drove home Tuesday night...err, Weds morning thanking God for bringing us some high caliber folks who love our church and it's mission so much that they'd give their time and skills ...even until the weeee hours of the morning ... thanks guys, I'm honored to be serving along side you.  Geeks for Jesus!!!

Livewire Workshop - IT highlights

Great day ... 38 folks from churches as far away as Kansas, Florida, and Virginia came to learn about our Communications, Technology, and Web strategies in today's Livewire workshop ... our biggest attendance to date and many came in teams.

Here are the main points I landed on today in my 1 hour Technology "spiel"

* Treat and budget computers just like any other consumable...replace them every 3-4 years.  Develop a technology replacement plan...start now!
Consider leasing as way to create a consistent IT budget and replace more equipment/yr than you could via out right purchase.

* Plan for growth...don't skimp when purchasing technology...you'll end up paying more in the long.  Get lots of ram and big hard drives.
Get 3 year year warranty.
Get on-site warranty ... ROI and this is huge!
Get "complete coverage" for laptops...screens are not covered under standard warranties.
Software - does it have an established migration path?  Can it scale with your growth?

* STANDARDIZE !!!!!!!!!!!!
Without a clear set of standards, the implementation, training, support and future planning of technology is almost impossible.
Granger's policy: ALL computer hardware, software and network related purchases must be approved by the Tech Director regardless of what budget they come from. Non-approved hardware and/or software will not be allowed on GCC computers and/or the GCC network. Standardize now...don't wait...even if you've only got 5 computers.
Chad Dickerson's great post about standardization.

* Say NO to donations
Defeats standardization, convey's a "we have low expectations" message ... it's not good enough for them at home, but it's good enough for the church? GRRRR

* Never pay full price
Don't buy software for your church off the shelf from Best Buy ... take advantage of the awesome charity pricing available through Microsoft, Macromedia, etc (note: Adobe is not charity friendly)
Build vendor partnerships and find a rep who will share the love.

* Use Hired Help
You hire architects to build a building and then you maintain it.  Same can transferred to IT.  Hire experts to do heavy stuff, like server installs, then you maintain it.

* Pick Two
There are three variables involved in any project ... size, cost, quality.  You can only pick two which in turn determines the third.  At Granger I choose the cost (my budget is limited) and quality (I need high quality)...which in turn determines the amount of technology I can purchase.

* Lock your doors
Take IT security very seriously.  No weak passwords!!!  Tight firewalls!
Keep things up to date: virus defs, critical patches.
Anti-spyware solution is a must.
What's your disaster plan?  If your church gets leveled...do you have backups?  Where's your membership data?  Financial records?  How will you rebuild?
Don't think churches are safe from disaster!

Kem will be posting the entire presentation in the near future for your viewing pleasure.  I had a great time and hope everyone had fun and learned lots of good stuff.

Livewire workshop Monday

Just finished up watching the American Leman's Series race at Mid-Ohio...and now I'm sitting outside with the laptop updating my speaking notes for tomorrow's Livewire workshop at Granger.  Our Communications Director, Kem Meyer, handles most of the workshop while I've got a 45min session on Technology right after lunch.  Kem is a communications guru and if you're involved with communication aspects for your church you really owe it to yourself to come to this workshop.

I'm really hoping our group tomorrow (~40 registered) is as interactive as our last workshop.  And I'm equally hoping there will be a number of IT folks to chat with during breaks.  We've done this workshop 5 or 6 times now and it's been a real toss up...sometimes there's a heavy interest in technology best practices/strategies...other times it seems the crowd has no direct involvement with technology at their church and thus seem to disengage during my part.  So I try to keep everything as high level as possible and leave the juicy geeky details out :-)

No matter who comes, our prayer is that folks will leave with many new tools and ideas to help thier ministries soar!

The weather this evening is awesome...which will make it difficult to focus on...hey look!  A bird! ...

Kendra is the next apprentice

As I so skillfully <grin> predicted in an earlier post ... Kendra is the next apprentice.

Tana - what were you thinking badmouthing your team mates?  Shows a real lack of leadership...go read Maxwell's Developing the Leader Within You

Congrats Kendra!!  Enjoy Florida :-)

Google Desktop Search Enterprise Edition

You may recall my prior post where I lamented that Google's Desktop Search Tool wasn't able to be deployed via an imaging utility for this reason:

"Google Desktop Search can be installed under only one Windows username per computer, and it can be accessed only by someone logged in with that username. If you log in to Windows as an administrator in order to install Desktop Search, you'll only be able to use the program when you're logged in with that same administrator account."

My good buddy Tom just sent me a message indicating Google has a new Enterprise version of their desktop search tool ... saaaaaawheeeeet!!!  Google must have read my blog :-)

Check out a few of the features:

Why the new enterprise features are a big deal for IT administrators:

• Centrally control user features and preferences [via Group Policy adm template!!!]
• Encrypt all user data and search index files
• Easily deploy using the included installation package
• Test new versions before distributing

Boy, talk about timing ... I'm just finishing up our new ghost image at Granger.  Of course I'm also needing to check out Microsoft's new desktop search tool and do a comparo whenever it's released later this year.  Google's tool doesn't capture MS messenger data (which is our standard IM client) so I'm curious if Microsoft's tool will.

More to follow...

Standard Software at GCC

As I'm finishing up the new ghost image for our Dell's I thought I'd share what's standard on all our PC's at Granger.

STANDARD SOFTWARE

(note: users are not given local admin rights to their PC)

Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Symantec Antivirus Corp Ed v9 (Managed)

Microsoft Office 2003 Pro (Word, Excel, Outlook, Publisher, Powerpoint, Infopath, Access)

Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 [free]

Adobe Photoshop Album 2 [free]

Microsoft Media Player 10 [free]

Quicktime Player [free]

SonicRecordNow Plus (GX280)

Power DVD Player

Google Search Bar w/ pop-up blocker [free]

iTunes 4.8 [free]

Messenger 5 [free] ... appears to be the only version that can handle SIP communications

InOutBoard Agent

Webroot Spy Sweeper Enterprise client (managed)

PhotoStory 3 [free]

MovieMaker 2.1 [free]

XP Power Toys [free]

JAVA [free]

GIMP [free]

Paint.net [free]

PDFcreator [free]

Firefox? [free] (installed, but not supported)

Other Supported Software (limited install base due to licensing and/or need)Microsoft Activesync [free]

Microsoft Great Plains, Integration Manager, FRx

Adobe PageMaker

Adobe Photoshop

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Macromedia Contribute

Adobe Acrobat

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Visio

Pumatech Intellisync

Other installed but unsupported software (very limited install base)

AOL AIM [free]

Franklin Covey PlanPlus

Palm Desktop [free]

Real Player [free]

I'm still debating on putting Firefox in the build.  If it does make it in it will be an unsupported option...meaning users can use it, but we won't do any training on it nor troubleshooting should problems arrise.  Now, if someone writes an active directory admin pack for it ... then I'd have fewer reservations deploying it site wide.

Free Rhapsody

Head over to Rhapsody and sign up for their free...yes FREE!...Rhapsody 25 service.  You don't have to provide them with any data other than a username, password, and valid email account.  In return you get access to search all their tunes and play 25 tracks each month. 
You can only listen to 25 total tracks (no free repeats) and you can't legally burn them to CD, but it's still 25 free listens.
Tonight I had to get a quick Dokken fix as something made me think about my cruising days back in high school.  I would CRANK up Dokken and Ratt back in the day and cruise the main drag in Peru, IN...yup, that's what kids in the midwest did for fun. 
George Lynch was such a monster of the fretboard...thank you Rhapsody for the free stroll down memory lane :-)

The Heavens Declare Your Majesty

Did you know I initially looked into majoring in Astronomy?  Gazing up at the heavens has always held such a great intrigue for me.  Of course after learning that there are almost no jobs for astronomers I decided physics would be a good alternative :-)

The Hubble Space Telescope had it's 15th anniversary recently and hubblesite just opened up a new online gallery where you can check out a plethora of amazing images that have been captured.  Many of them are so incredibly beautiful it's hard to believe such things exist.  You can't look at such images and not sense the beauty and majesty of God...I'm simply left in awe.