NWC DAY 2

Well another day under our belt. Not quite as exciting as the first day as many folks spent more time unpacking boxes and settling into their space. Networking wise, cable pulls to the south wing were completed and terminated. Main rooms, the Dean's faculty office, mine, the computer workroom and the classrooms. As the pulls south were completed, pulls for the north wing were started, some even completed. While it great to get the pulls (many rooms need them for more connections to match the number occupants), there was some frustration with the fact the drops were not activated. I mentioned it in my report of my afternoon walk through. More on that later.

Printers were starting to be set up. Brian and I took a look at the personal computer lab and began planning its set up. We also tested the ability for the NWC network to see past ifs firewall to the servers still on the SEC network. Good news there in that we could connect. This means that our plan of using the file server in the SEC is available and so users when logging onto the Apple lab will have access to their files that only before were available on the linux lab machines. The plan is to have much of the computational tasks performed by users on the linux machines and post processing (graphics, text etc) be available on the Macs. Another nice thing of the Macs is the fact that they are unix machines as well. So code development and weather visualization are as much a part of the Apple computer lab as it is the Linux computer lab.

Now back to the walk through. I did not pester much the NOC today regarding networking other than touching base regarding cable pulls and connection problems that were already identified the day before. I felt it was prudent to let them proceed and only bother them if it truly was a critical situation. So the walk through was to confirm that the work slated to be performed was progressing. Also gave me an opportunity to identify new issues. I am hoping that all the pulls that were terminated today are activated tonight. I am slightly annoyed if that is the case. It is the graduate students who I am primarily getting on line now. It frustrates the grads in a room when they see the connections go in and they then have to wait and not see their computer connect up. I made it a point in my report to activate as soon as they possibly can. I may be off base and I am not aware of something that needs to be done, but the users sure would like it.

Anyway, this is getting long. Another decent day. I am loving this building more and more. I just hope the others are/will too.