being me...

I recently read on LifeChurch.tv's blog "But if you stop trying to be just like others, you can be as great as God created you to be!". It really got me thinking in what I deal with on the IT level. We can go out and get the latest and greatest tool that Willow Creek or maybe even LifeChurch has. But is that the same tool intended for our church?

Too often I've tried to use the latest and greatest because "it just worked" or because it was the "trendy" thing to do. "After all it worked great for them!" Being in IT that's the way we stay up with the competition and the 'know how' in the corporate world. In the ministry world it's important in this day and age to be just as good as the marketing that the world around us throws at us in our day to day life. Shouldn't we direct LIFE to all people in a lost world and have a 'product' that's just as good and honestly... better?

One thing differs though when you enter the ministry realm. God's plan. Just because Church A and B does it this way doesn't mean that God's plan for your church's IT is the same... Or any other ministry for that matter... In fact I hope it isn't. Whenever I stick to what was laid on my heart, nine out of ten times it ends up exceeding my expectation and working out great. Whenever I lean a different way it usually back fires in my face. Think God's trying to tell me something in those times?

What a great reminder that God has called us all individually! What God called the Jason Powell's to do and the Steve Ollis's and others to do may not necessarily be what He has called me to do. Sometimes we forget that HE is God and He's the one that does it all through us anyways! If we get so wrapped up in what the church next door is doing chances are we're probably going to miss out on what God's wanting to do right now in our own church home.

Long story short Thanks Craig for the encouraging and up lifting words through your blog.

Time Warner Fiber

We've switched from ATT's T1 to a 5/5 Fiber link and I couldn't be happier. We've been up on the new pipe for about three months and and we've already had an upgrade to the line. I recently received an email that services would be down for "router and line upgrades". No wonder the day before the actual down time the latency kept spiking. I came in the next day and we had 10 up and 10 down. I wonder if that was an accident?... i'm not telling :)

With the ISP rollover between the providers I had the chance to put the new Sonicwall appliance up. I can't say it was a smooth one. With some help from our buddy Justin Moore we came to a couple of conclusions. Thanks Justin!

1) Don't ever setup a sonicwall appliance using the wizard and expect reliability and things to work right. Do it the "right way" - manually.

2) Don't always trust that the IP notation your ISP gives you is correct :)

Blog worthy story there so i'll write a separate post in regards to the sonicwall fun.

Blogging... Again

I already know what the first thing is going to be when most of you see this post...
"I didn't even know he still had a blog"

Exactly: That's what I had thought too!

But seriously blogging is a great tool, and if for no one else's benefit it helps me take a look at my adventurous journey in the IT world as well as my daily spiritual one.

I've decided to break down all of the projects that I've been working on in to separate postings that I hope to get out in the very near future...

1) SFLC Network
a. TW Fiber
b. SonicWall
c. HP Pro Curves



2) Video Security
a. Axis Servers and Cameras.

stay tuned :)

The windows installer service cannot update one or more protected windows files.

A quick tidbit for those that have come across this issue or may run in to this in the near future. I did a re-image today on a system and was boggled for a few minutes when I received the following error while trying to install Office 2007 Enterprise:

"The windows installer service cannot update one or more protected windows files."

hmm... ok let's try that again... Nope.. same error...

Ok time to take a look at the Event Viewer:

"Product: Microsoft Software Update for Web Folders (English) 12 -- Error 193 The Windows Installer service cannot update one or more protected Windows files. SFP Error: -536870654.
List of protected files: C:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\40\bin\fp4autl.dll"

Weird... After checking this directory there happened to be no such dll file.
Ok then... here's the Quick Fix:
download fp4autl.dll here

Then place it into the c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\40\bin\ folder and then re-run the installation of office and you should be in business.

This has been a known issue since Office 2000 - you can check out the MS documentation here.

Part 2 : Office 2007 Plunge - Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007

I couldn't be more pleased with how Wednesday nights upgrades went. The Office suite seemed to run nicely on the pcs that I mentioned in my previous blog.

I didn't go in to the office until around 5pm preparing for what I thought might be a lengthy evening. But all was said and done by around 10:30pm including all the patches and upgrades for the Office 2007 suite.

I'm extremely excited about the potential that this upgrade has to offer our staff both on an efficient level as well as a 'fun' level. There is nothing wrong with adding a little fun to the everyday mundane office world. Currently our church doesn't have an exchange server but in 2008 that will all change. Like I have mentioned previously I come from the corporate world. That said, this is probably one of the first offices I've been in that doesn't have shared calendar and such available. Bringing shared calendar here to the size staff SFLC now has will be a huge help I'm sure to almost everyone. More to come on our current Email environment in my next blog...

Thursday we had a nice sit down and walk-through session for our administrative staff on the changes of features and looks. Microsoft actually had a great power point presentation that helped me throw a little something together visually. It can be found here. There are actually quite a few tools and resources available there as well that can be very useful to your staff in getting started and adjusted to the changes of this office version as well as it's previous packages. And hey it's free - and who doesn't like free, right?

As I mentioned earlier we currently do not have exchange, sharepoint, or groove environments. But I've been researching a lot of the advantages and features of both sharepoint and groove and I'm excited to start testing away with both. Getting an exchange server is part of our major upgrade for the beginning of 2008 and should be a huge welcome here. So Office and Exchange alongside sharepoint... the possibilities are almost endless. Please share your success and maybe not so successful stories of implementing these tools if you have the time! It would be great to hear how it's had an effect on your environments. Office 2007 + Exchange 2007 + Sharepoint 2007 = A producttivity powerhouse.

Well Phase 1 of the upgrade - Complete
Phase 2 - The Pastors... This will be a longer task in trying to hunt down our mobile users... I wish there was an easier way to manage mobile users in the areas of upgrades and installs... Anyone have any answers?

Part 1 : Office 2007 Plunge - Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007

This week I will be pushing out office 2007 to our administrative support team. I have been using office 2007 for several months now and I think it's going to be a welcome upgrade for our staff. I'll be going in late this Wednesday to make sure that everything goes smoothly. We have software assurance on all of our current XP and Office 2003 licenses. Probably one of the best decisions I’ve made here in our purchases over the last year was getting software assurance.

My plan is to do a system push by just setting up a group policy on my admin support staff OU. I'll probably go around to each workstation to make sure everything works out smoothly. We have about eighteen users that this will affect on this run through. Hopefully after about a month or so I’ll gather all the feedback and then push it out to the remainder of the staff with the pastors last due to the fact that they mostly use notebooks.

For the most part I have been extremely happy with Office 2007. One down side is that like all new MS product lines (it requires a lot more resources). This software suite is HUNGRY for memory! The end of 2006 was a much needed upgrade year for entire admin staff. We're running Dell Precision 380's with the following specs:

Pentium D 3Ghz Processors
1 GB 667 DDR2 RAM
160GB sata II 7200 rpm HDs
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 285 vid cards

Due to the fact that both the video cards and amount of memory - we won't be upgrading to Vista until those resources get upped. Upgrading to Vista is a whole other beast in itself though. I've been dual booting with Vista Enterprise for a while on one of these backup systems with the exact build that the staff has and I’m just totally un-impressed with how it runs. Plus XP Pro in my opinion is great and I see no real reason to upgrade yet just for the sake of upgrading. I would say just in looking at my year’s goals and projects this isn't a necessity right now. Just for the record I’m not un-impressed with Vista – in fact I’m very impressed with a lot of the new features and I can see a great future. I’m feeling much like I did when XP was first released. It’s just not ready for the "big time". But that’s another blog….

Thursday I will be having a short training to show some of the major upgrades and changes to the software suite: ribbon, etc.
Want to give a quick thanks to Jason Lee for posting the Office 2007 overview pdf. I'll probably use some of that as a tool for our staff!
Jason Powell has a link Here for download.
Jason Lee : do you have a Blog? :)

So what are some of Your Thoughts? Are you all using Office 2007 suite yet? If so why/why not? Do you feel Office 2007 is ready for the 'big time'? Feel free to discuss!

I'll be sure to let you all know how my plunge ends up.... Pray... If you don't here back from me... well that probably means one of our staff members killed me haha.

My New Wiki

Well if you would like to keep up with my current projects... And there are a lot of them. I am currently building a wiki that you can check out here.