Mud Island

Today we went to Mud Island to the Mississippi River walk. The river is in flood stage which made the presentation seem even more powerful.

Here is a picture of Sarah and her brother taken at the River Walk:

Today, I Was the Idiot in Church

Every Sunday in church, someone's phone rings. Everyone looks offended, gives the half look of disapproval, and thinks "What an inconsiderate idiot!"

I was that guy today in church. Ironically my parents were visiting our church today. We met them before service and I tried to get my dad to allow me to put his phone in airplane mode. He Would not, but put his phone in vibrate mode.

I use my phone as my bible in church and also to take notes. As the pastor opened the 9:15 service, the 9:20 alarm I put on my phone for one day but meant to take off sounded. Because alarms bypass vibrate mode on iPhones.

Yeah, I was the idiot today. :/

I Am GLAD I Don't Have Comcast Phones!

I use Comcast for my primary business internet connection. In addition to Comcast, I have an AT&T DSL backup connection. I run my phones on a PRI; the T1 for this is provided by AT&T. Of all my local services, telephone is the most critical (I of course host my web sites off site at a data center).

Comcast regularly calls my business trying to sell phone service. They have great rates on phone service, but they do not offer guaranteed up time according to the reps.

Memphis had a serious wind storm the evening of April 19, 2011 (Tuesday). You can see what it did in my area in one of my earlier posts.

I'm glad I don't use Comcast for phones because I would not have phones right now with Comcast. It's that simple! Several businesses in my building use Comcast's phone service, and they have effectively been out of business since yesterday morning. I pay more with my current method of phone service, but I am ALWAYS up. In the event of an outage, AT&T guarantees a work crew will start fixing my system within 4 hours.

That is NOT My Car... Thankfully.

As I went to my vehicle today, I could not help but be glad that I has parked my car a few car lengths behind it's normal position. That was almost me! Yikes.

Upgrading to Watchguard 11.4

I've been planning the upgrade of my XTM505 to Watchguard's 11.4 release for some time now. This version of came out in March and I have been waiting to see if any major issues were noted. It appears stable, so I'm making the upgrade.

This was my first Watchguard upgrade, and as such there were a few things I didn't understand.

My questions were:

1. What is the preferred order of upgrade?
2. How does the software get to the actual XTM 505?

The preferred order of upgrade is Watchguard System Manager (This will also upgrade the Server Center) on all systems running System Manager. Yes, The 11.4 System Manager can control your device while it is waiting for the upgrade and still running an earlier version (11.3 is the only version I can confirm 11.4 will run from personal experience).

The software "gets" to the XTM 505 by you downloading the update and "installing" it one the box running Server Center. You don't install to the Firebox, you install to Server Center, in other words. Then, you connect System Manager to the Server and schedule the upgrade. Pretty nice!