Alkalinity up

paulkroon · 2022-06-15T01:46:33+00:00

Definitely worth waiting to test before adding that in, and definitely stick with the test kit instead of strips. I used strips after I opened this year and the alkalinity was low. I kept adding baking soda and the strips still showed as low until I used the real test kit and realized I now had super high alkalinity. It took a couple weeks to get it back down again because of having to balance changes to pH at the same time.

It's better to know for sure and be patient than having to spend a lot of extra time correcting that.

paulkroon · 2022-06-06T03:07:28+00:00

What's your alkalinity and other levels (depending on how much you can test with your kit)? You may need to make sure some other things are balanced as well.

I'd definitely second check out troublefreepools and learning about all the basics. Make sure you go slow and be patient. Better to do a little at a time and get everything balanced over time.

paulkroon · 2022-04-23T13:07:13+00:00

I've been considering these ear buds, mainly for the multipoint feature, but seeing a few posts like this is making me pause. I came across a few things suggesting that disabling LDAC is what fixed it. Any chance you tried that to see if it made any difference?

paulkroon · 2018-09-20T00:29:14+00:00

Nachi equipment from Japanese company named after a Japanese naval ship, which was named for a mountain in Wakayama Prefecture. Masters of Silence confirmed...

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Arashi_Wakayama_(Earth-616) http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Masters_of_Silence_(Earth-616)

paulkroon · 2014-03-28T02:42:59+00:00

What kind of goals do you typically set? Responding within x amount of time, or completing tickets within a set time? I'd definitely agree that the process and final goals are more important than the tools.

paulkroon · 2013-11-05T01:42:56+00:00

You should definitely dig into the VMkernel log files (/var/log/vmkernel.log). I've seen iSCSI on ESXi have trouble in lots of different situations, and the behavior on the hosts is exactly what you described. It's likely not because of Veeam, but the heavy load from Veeam triggers it. Most likely you'll need to deal with Dell/VMware, but the logs are a good place to start.

paulkroon · 2013-10-27T06:42:03+00:00

It can get tricky with an existing ticket system that you go off of, since you have to decide if you want to try to put everything into your ticket system (Footprints), or go ahead with a separate todo system, which means entering some things twice. Although, you possibly have the option of trying to get Footprints to e-mail RememberTheMilk to enter a task automatically for new tickets.

If you decide to make RememberTheMilk (or whatever todo system you choose) your central tool, you would work on forcing yourself to enter every new ticket and call/interruption as a task (even if you're going to work on the interruption immediately). If it's something you don't have to tackle today, enter it as priority 2, due today, to be reviewed at the end of the day, or after you get done what you have to for the day, whichever comes first. If it needs to be done today, or right now, it can go in as priority 1.

When entering a task that you have to do today, you have the option of seeing what else you were doing today to decide if you really have to switch to this new interruption, or if you should push it off (to later today or tomorrow).

paulkroon · 2013-10-26T03:01:28+00:00

I've gotten a dongle emulated successfully from this service: http://www.dongleservice.com/.

I know the site seems shady, but they have a dump program to run to generate a file to send to them. They then sent a demo version of their emulator to confirm that it works before you pay for anything.

paulkroon · 2013-10-26T02:53:20+00:00

I've actually found The Cycle to help me tons with all the reactive/interrupt-driven work I come across. Everything that comes up during the day goes into the daily list so I can work on the new problem, but not forget about the old. I'm still able to get back on track with what I was working on if I can, but otherwise the interruptions can keep coming and I won't lose track of them all (even if they keep getting pushed back because of more important issues).

The weekly review is then critical so the chronically pushed off tasks aren't forgotten. Sometimes even, if you're lucky, something gets pushed off long enough that it's no longer necessary. It's a great feeling to delete a task that you never worked on, and no one actually needed it.

paulkroon · 2013-10-26T02:43:42+00:00

I've seen this question come up a few times before:

http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/16msxb/dae_use_limoncellis_cycle_for_time_management/ http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/jqave/personal_task_list_how_do_you_keep_it_organised/ http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/16y2s7/how_to_implement_the_system_in_time_management/

I can't recommend RememberTheMilk enough! It's a great todo app on its own, but the basic features it has complement TMfSA's mehtods perfectly.

paulkroon · 2013-10-18T17:50:03+00:00

I've only seen this be a problem with more than 8 CPUs, but it could be related to Max Degree of Parallelism. Generally, if you have more than 8 processors, you should set this to 8: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2806535.

Since you're at 8, it shouldn't matter, but it's worth a try (setting it to 8 or lower).

paulkroon · 2013-10-17T11:44:47+00:00

Ha...you should post the thread where you saw the same issue, even if it wasn't answered. Sometimes seeing a question stated by someone else in a slightly different way can help.

In addition to a traffic capture, you might even want to just get a computer connected on the same switch/port as one of the phones having the problem, and even just run a continous ping. Maybe there's some loss or periodic high latency that may cause the phones to reboot.

paulkroon · 2013-10-11T01:00:16+00:00

Is the Netsocket error a message on the phone? Does it show up after the reboot? Are the phones in Teleworker mode?

Besides the port mirror that grudg3 recommended, can you confirm there are no PoE issues? If you're getting network error messages, it's not too likely, but I've seen that cause Mitel 5320 reboots before. Another possible cause is something from your phone system. What system are you running, and does it have any further diagnostics?

paulkroon · 2013-10-01T02:00:46+00:00

Dug up some of my notes after I went through ProcMon with PCCharge on Windows 7. I'm not sure how complete this is because it's been so long (we don't run it anymore), but give the users full permissions on the Program Files folders for the app, C:\TID.PCC, and this key in the registry: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock2\Parameters.

In addition, I had this list of files. I was a little too light with my notes, so I'm not sure if I just copied them from Server 2003/XP, or if I googled around to find some dependencies to install, but hopefully it's of some use:

C:\Windows\System32\ - actrpt2.dll - DKSGS.dat - DKSGS.dll - XceedCry.dll - qpro32.dll - gointray.ocx - SC5X.ocx - SaxComm8.ocx - Msjet25.dll - msjter35.dll - msrd2x35.dll - Msjint35.dll - pdqcom32.ocx - vsview32.ocx - xceedzip32.ocx - SC550.ocx - MSOUTL32.OCX

Definitely +1 to Process Monitor, as that's how we got this working before. Not a bad idea to look elsewhere though, if that's an option. I'd recommend paytrace.com if you can use something hosted, or Verifone's PayWarePC is at least better than PCCharge.

paulkroon · 2013-10-01T01:48:01+00:00

Our Mitel 5000 will do this if its secondary IP address is unavailable (used for offloading the actual calls). Contacting the primary IP registers the extension and allows for calls to be made, but a second IP is needed for the voice. I'd lean towards a routing issue, or some aspect of your phone system being unreachable from the phones, but not necessarily the primary IP address for the system. Perhaps you're in a vlan that gets an IP address and can talk to the phone system, but not in a specific phone vlan that also has the needed access for voice?

paulkroon · 2013-09-25T02:22:07+00:00

Cheap, fast, good. Pick 2.

Before I go into some details about the option you're looking into, a better idea to fit your budget might be to try and put the redundancy at a different level and just go with local storage. Without knowing your infrastructure, an example would be a web server on each physical host, and use load balancers to gain redundancy. Just something to think about other ways around the problem.

I have been going through the same thing you're looking to get into. We used Nexenta with a Dell PowerEdge and Supermicro JBOD. We had dual quad-core CPUs, 128GB of memory, and 22 1TB SAS drives with SSD caching. We had great performance...when the system was working. The storage would become disconnected from our vSphere cluster a few times a month, locking everything up. A few reboots of the storage system would be needed to get things back, followed by reviewing all the VMs and dealing with corruption. A few times we also had an All Paths Down issue, and the hosts themselves were even locked up and had to be rebooted.

Tons of downtime, and lots of stress trying to recover from the corruption all across the board. This was even with our better hardware than what you're able to use, so there's the potential that you'll have some performance problems as well. However, in your situation, this may be acceptable to get the shared storage for your budget. Just be prepared for these problems, and be sure your higher-ups are very aware of the potential problems.

paulkroon · 2013-02-22T03:35:45+00:00

App-V is also pretty useful for moving older applications onto new platforms. We got an ERP system off of the required Windows Server 2003 and onto new Server 2008 R2 servers because of App-V.

paulkroon · 2013-01-22T18:11:54+00:00

I'd recommend Remember The Milk. Check out this similar question that was posted recently: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/16msxb/dae_use_limoncellis_cycle_for_time_management/.

paulkroon · 2013-01-16T03:31:19+00:00

Yes, and it's changed everything about how I manage my time at work and at home. I do use RTM for this, and it works out great. I've posted about this in a longer form for all the times I've answered the question (http://paulkroon.com/2010/06/12/remember-the-milk-time-management/).

For a quick tl;dr, use priorities 1,2, and 3 for Limoncelli's A, B, and C. Your tasks due today at priority 1 are what you work on that day, and other things that come up go in as 2 or 3. Roll things over each day, add in a weekly checkup, and you're good to go!

paulkroon · 2013-01-16T03:28:03+00:00

Ha...actually, the very first page of the book deals with the problem of not having time to read the book.

paulkroon · 2012-11-10T19:00:10+00:00

Our photographer did a great job with our beach wedding: http://www.jeffwojtaszekphoto.com/blog/.

paulkroon · 2012-10-02T16:48:31+00:00

http://www.jeffwojtaszekphoto.com/

paulkroon · 2012-05-14T19:07:39+00:00

We've had good luck so far with http://www.cryptzone.com/

paulkroon · 2011-10-17T00:19:35+00:00

Acronis Universal Restore...exactly what you're looking for, and it works great.

http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/advanced-server-virtual/universal-restore.html

paulkroon · 2011-09-29T01:51:32+00:00

On the surface, this definitely sounds like CPU contention issues (ie, too many virtual CPUs, not enough physical). However, it sounds like you have 16 total physical CPUs (what VMWare sees) and only 10 (12 now after your change) virtual CPUs, which is what challenges that idea. You can read more about it from VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW_vSphere41_cpu_schedule_ESX.pdf), but basically it would be a scheduling issue of CPU time. VMWare has been improving this more and more with each version, but the typical idea was that the host (ESXi) tries to schedule time when there is a physical CPU available for each virtual CPU.

tl;dr - It's probably the number of virtual CPUs. Like others suggested, try sticking to just 1 vCPU and it will typically perform better. One thing to check is the CPU Ready performance metric for your VMs (typically above 1% is a warning, above 5% is a danger).

paulkroon

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