Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Move Over Parallels ... Fusion is Here

The folks over at Parallels must be thinking "Oh crap!"  Why?  VMware has just released it's first public beta virtualization product called Fusion for Mac OSX.

Fusion will let you run Windows and Linux 32 and 64bit guest operating systems on top of OSX without needing to reboot ala bootcamp.

One nice thing about using Fusion over Parallels is that with Fusion you can easily install and run the hundreds of pre-made Virtual Machines in the VMware application library.  There may be other advantages for Fusion, but I've not looked into it ... mostly cause I don't have a Mac.  I'm sure comparisons will start popping up all over the web once mac users start playing.

Now we just need a way to run a virtual OSX guest ... I mean we can do everything else now ... run guest Windows and Linux on a Windows host, Linux host, or OSX host box.  Since OSX is based off FreeBSD, I'd think making it run in a virtual environment would be easier than Windows?? 

I think many of us Windows IT dudes would more likely play with OSX if we had an OSX VM on our windows boxes ... not the other way around thank you.  Why?  (1) Cause I don't want to buy Mac hardware and (2) 'cause I need Windows as my main OS.  I'm sure there's some project out there working on this ... maybe???

Next question is will Fusion be a free virtualization product like VMware Server?  VMware "forced" Microsoft to make it's virtualization product free ... it will be interesting to what happens with Fusion and Parallels.

Who's On XBOX Live?

OK ... some of you out there must have an XBOX Live account ... sound off! 

I got a free XBOX Live account last January as part of my switch from DSL to cable, but never really used it.  Now my buddy Rob just got a live account so I'm interesting in online gaming again.  And I've just learned that a couple other GCC staff now have accounts as well ... of course they all have the newer XBOX360 ... lucky dawgs.  So I can't play the "only for 360 games", but there are some great cross generation games like Halo2 that are geared for online gaming ... and now cheap to purchase.

SOOOO ... I'm on vacation and would certainly enjoy battling it out with some friends online late at night :-)

My gamertag = fiZZx (hint: think about what I used to teach)
Leave me a comment with your gamertag and let's do some fraggin' :-)

Some online enabled games I've got (going from memory here)
Halo 2
Call of Duty (the first one)
Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2
Splinter Cell
Ghost Recon
Crimson Skies
Project Gotham Racing 2
Brute Force
Burnout 3 and 4/Revenge
Mech Assault

WiredChurches.com revamp

You probably didn't know, but a ton of work has gone into revamping our WiredChurches.com website recently.  Now it matches our GCCwired.com site and has some slick new ecommerce functionality from NetSuite the old site did not.

Kudos to John D and his team ... there were a number of staff and volunteers working many many days to get the data from the old ecommerce solution into the new.  I stopped by the "meeting room" every so often just to do some much needed harassing :-)

This is a good time to look over all the Wired Churches workshops/conferences coming in 2007 and mark your calendar.  Check out these 2 new workshops for techie types: Web, Technical Arts Forum ... good stuff!

Church IT TalkCast - show #2 notes

I very rarely get sick ... but I got a whopper Sunday that put me down until Weds afternoon.  Now I'm playing massive catch-up on work and home and Christmas stuff (mega props to my bro Rob W. who saved my butt tonight on a particular hard to find gift item).  So here's a post I started over the weekend that I'm just now able to finish up ...

---------------
Thanks to all who participated in last Friday's live Church IT TalkCast ... we had almost double the attendance from last time!  If you missed it you can grab the audio here
We're also now listed on iTunes ... point your iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=209275146

The "album art" I quickly threw together for the podcast is soo lame ... I'm starting a contest soon to have something worthy of displaying.  300x300 px for you eager beavers :-)

Here are some initial notes a few have sent in ... thanks guys.  I'll update this post as I get more info.  If you have anything to add/edit let me know. 

We had 25 people in attendance (14 via phone/chat and 11 via chat only)

Thanks to Trace Pupke for this attendance list
Jason Powell - Granger Community Church - jpowell.blogs.com

Andrew Mitry from St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church - Fairfax, VA - anchorite.org

B. Humphreys

brownales

caish5

Chris257 - Chris McGuffin - Sugar Creek Baptist Church

Dave Webber - 242 Community Church in Brighton, MI

digitalpastor - David Russell - National Community Church (Washington, DC)  www.theaterchurch.com www.davidrussell.org

DTSTONE - Bethel Church (Richland, WA) www.bethel-church.org www.churchitadmin.com

JC Jennings

Jeffrey Thompson - 1st Baptist? in Atlanta, GA

jkergosi - Jason Kergosin

Jsimons

mattwilson247 - Matt Wilson

nairdo - Nick Airdo from Central Christian Church of the East Valley (www.cccev.com) blog: http://codersforchrist.com/cs/blogs/nick

nancyjo - Nancy Smith, Blackhawk Church, Madison, WI

newsaddikt

ryancl - Ryan Clevenger North Point Community Church

ScottW

Stuart Cowen

Tony Dye - Perimeter Church

Trace Pupke (www.tracepupke.com/blog) @ Seacoast Church (www.seacoast.org)

Visor2040

wbcderek - Woodland Baptist Church, Bradenton, FL

William Phelps

Some initial notes courtesy of Andrew Mitry

Church IT Discussion - Talkshoe.com - 12-15-06

Need the lastest Java Client Release for Talkshoe
NorthPoint has cool AV mini server room setup
no one on Skype this week


blogs:
anchorite.org
churchitadmin.com
codersforchrist.com/cs/blogs/nick
tracepupke.com/blog

wbcderek - woodland baptist church, bradenton, FL

cool or new tools / discoveries:
Jason Powell - groupbar

William - Calvary Chapel - Newport News
Opera Browser - Restore Session with all tabs, no memory leaks like Firefox
doesn't work well with F1

nairdo - Wink is a good tool creakting screencasts/tutorials

dtstone - portableapps.com/apps

Side discussion on USB Drive use on site

jkergosi - esword  e-sword.net
wbcderek - ebible.com, xpound.org

Spam - TonyDye - tonydye.net
tonydye - barracuda - hardware device
jason powell - postini.com - hosted service
ryancl - ciphertrust ironmail
alias vendor spam email in exchange to forward
jeffrey - spamassassin linux box
chris257 - katharion $.42 per box 1/4 cost of Postini for non-profits
jason mentions mxlogic
block traffic on port 25 - only postini
digitalpastor also on postini
ndr on spam
wphelps - spamstopshere

houston - roundtable
tonydye.net

Roundtable Notes
it-r.org

jeffrey - itdiscuss.org - rss feeds

next meeting - Jan 5th 2pm

after call - highlights from Northpoint
40 Terabytes

xsan
emc

UPDATE:  Andrew has a revised set of notes here

Farewell Andy

Monday is going to be a bit different as Friday was Andy Hosier's last day at GCC.  Andy's been on staff 2 some years and was the lead dawg in moving us from trying to write our own ChMS (church management system) to where we are today with Fellowship One.

While I'm excited that he's pursuing God's next steps I'm gonna miss him ... both as a co-worker and a friend.

During this transitional phase Andy said he'll be doing some consulting ... believe me when I say that you should absolutely contact Andy if your church is looking into a ChMS like Fellowship One, ACS, Shelby, etc.  Andy's already helped many dozens of churches think through their ChMS strategies ... I've had the privilege of being in some of those discussions ... Andy knows his stuff!

Farewell Andy ... I can't wait to hear about the next chapter

reminder: live Church IT Discussion this Friday at 2pm

Come participate in our second live online church IT discussion Friday, Dec 15th at 2pm Eastern.

If you missed the prior talkcast you can get the audio here ... interestingly enough it has been downloaded over 60 times in the past 2 weeks ... nifty.  I've also updated the prior post with highlight notes from the podcast ... see them here

We'll again be using TalkShoe ... the CEO sent a recent email to all hosts talking about how they've been really beefing up the system ... but I'd still recommend signing into the talkcast a good 10 minutes early in case we again experience the monster site delays like last time.

For the first timers...

If you want to just listen in you don't need to download nothin' ... just click the TalkShoe icon at the bottom of this post a little before 2pm Friday and click the listen icon.

If you want to participate in the discussion you'll need to create a TalkShoe account and then download the TalkShoe application (both mac and windows).

The TalkShoe app has a nice built in chat engine where you can interact with both the host and other participants.  Threads are color coded for easier tracking.

With TalkShoe you have to dial in if you want to voice chat.  There is no extra charge aside from what it will cost you to make a call to the (724) area code.  If you're too tight to make a call, you can still call using skype (which is free) ... but, for better audio quality I'd recommend using your phone.

Click this icon to go directly to the Church IT TalkCast Friday afternoon.  You can sign-in up to 15 minutes before the event starts.

Topics to discuss this Friday?

Here's a potential starting list of some stuff to talk about... please leave a comment if you have suggestions

* new cool tools you've discovered recently or you haven't mentioned before (this will be a reoccurring topic)
* help desk solutions
     * what software are you using?
     * how do you measure your help desk "health"?
* spam is on a rampage lately - hopefully our pal Tony Dye will drive some discussion based off his thoughts from this recent itdiscuss.org email thread
* maybe Tony will also give us some updates on the Spring Church IT Roundtable?
* itdiscuss.org email list
* Office 2007 experiences
* Vista experiences
     * I'm really diggin' the Reliability and Performance Monitor
* Whiteboxes - build your own PC/Server
* highlights from talking to North Point's tech dudes

Another Blog Milestone - passing 400

Stuart left a comment this morning saying congrats on my blog passing the 400 subscribers mark ... thanks for the heads up Stuart! 1000 bonus point to you my friend :-)

I jumped on the blog and the little feedburner icon said 401 ... woohoo!

So being in a stats mood I logged into feedburner and grabbed some historical data.  Here's a graph of subscribers from day 1 to current...

Except for some strangeness from June to August it's been a pretty linear progression.

Looking back a few weeks I've been close to the 400 mark a couple times...

I know feedburner doesn't track all subscribers to this blog, but it's a good enough general gauge.

This is probably a good time to revamp the blog design ... I think it was Kem the other day who was doggin' the layout ... and I agree.  I just don't have time to dork with it.

Thanks to all of you who've found this worth your time to read periodically ... I trust there's been something you've gained from it.  I'll have figure out something special to do when we hit the 500 mark ... get your suggestions in now ;-)

Help Desk Stats

Well, it's been exactly a year since we implemented Track-It as our help desk solution ... so I did a quick stats analysis.  (FYI: we should have Track-It fully replaced with ServiceDesk Plus by weeks end)

Here's a simple month-by-month graph over the past year of opened tickets (green line), closed tickets (black line), and # of active open tickets (dotted red line). [click image to enlarge]

It's interesting that our volume of requests has for the most part decreased as the year has progressed ... the huge volume early in the year "should" be from our phone system install, but I haven't taken the time to actually dig into specific request categories.

The red dotted line is of most interest and concern to me ... it represents the total number of active requests sitting in the help desk queue.  I would expect it to climb slightly due to certain requests that take a long time to resolve ... the problem is that it's shot up since August ... not good!

Obviously this is not a healthy place to be ... and backs up my prior "what if" post on what changes we need to make to turn this trend around.  I knew we were not keeping pace well, but I was a little shocked when I actually dug into the stats.  More to follow...   

Anyone else got help desk stats to share?  Post 'em on your blog and leave me a trackback.  How do you measure your help desk health?

Apple XSAN experience requested

Ok all you mac diehards ... I need your help.

I need to chat with people that have first hand experience in setting up and using apple's XSAN technology with several Final Cut Pro editing stations ... let me again emphasize first hand experience.

We're evaluating SAN solutions for our media dudes and an obvious product is the Apple XSAN.  So far it appears IS a LOT more complicated than I was anticipating having recently implemented our iSCSI EqualLogic SAN ... good grief fibre channel is not only very expensive but very complicated compared to iSCSI.  Not only do you need a fibre channel network but the XSAN also requires it's own private ethernet network as well.  All the juicy details can be found in the XSAN admin guide

... but that's why I want to chat with some folks who have "been there, done that" with XSAN ... to get the real world scoop :-)

Please have anyone willing to field our questions shoot an email to jpowell(at)gccwired(dot)com

Thanks!

Sharepoint - we're on the right track

Several of us met today with Pinnacle, a local IT consulting firm that does lots of sharepoint implementations, to talk about ... sharepoint.  It helps that one of the firms head honcho's is a member of GCC so we're not just getting some sales pitch :-)

I/we asked every question we could think of ... and after 2 hours it was great to hear that what we've already implemented and are planning is what they would recommend ... sweet!

We may work with Pinnacle down the road to help with some custom Great Plains and Fellowship One integration into sharepoint ... but that's way down the road ... one step at a time baby