Two years ago, my office embarked on the road towards reducing the amount of paper we keep on-site and in storage. We have thousands of boxes in storage and easily hundreds just stacked around various places in the office. For a while, it was hard to convince people that it was a good idea to have some kind of backup solution in place for all these hard copies.

We went looking for a solution that was similar to how paper was already organized naturally. We reviewed a few different options, but most were trying to force paper files to be managed in the same way people use Windows Explorer, which isn’t how people organize papers in their file cabinets. ImageRight was designed to line up with the way people use paper – documents in folders or files and then organized in drawers.

While it makes sense when you are touching paper, it’s hard to get your head around the terminology when it directly conflicts with the way Windows uses the same terms. In ImageRight, much like with real paper, a DRAWER stores hanging FILES that hold manila FOLDERS in which the DOCUMENTS are organized, some with multiple PAGES. In Windows Explorer, the FOLDERS hold the FILES (ImageRight is opposite), some of which have multiple PAGES.

So while everyone in my office is working to best utilize ImagRight, there is still a lot of struggle with the terminology.

My company has had a policy for checking all server event logs at least weekly for as long as I can remember. Honestly I’m happy to review server logs on a regular basis, as I’ve caught a variety of small problems before they’ve become big problems by doing it. The bigger issue is creating a trail of some sort that proved that it was done to make our auditors happy.

Last fall I went looking for some software that would help with the whole process. We’d settled on NetPro’s LogAdmin because we were purchasing some of their other products and LogAdmin seemed like it would do the trick. A combination of factors led to us not getting it installed properly or in a timely manner – my time being pulled by a variety of “more pressing” projects, the purchase of NetPro by Quest Software, my lack of experience with SQL installations, misinformation about what IIS requirements were needed to support the software, and then the subsequent “end of life” announcement for LogAdmin by Quest.

I feel like a spent a lifetime on the phone and sending emails, but we got our LogAdmin licenses converted to the equivialent Quest product, InTrust. So finally after 2 days of scheduled phone support, some growing pains of installing SQL 2005 on Server 2008 and the software requirement of disabling UAC, the InTrust product is installed and I’ve had some basic training on configuration.

Since we didn’t originally look at this product, I feel like I’ve been flying blind. The support tech I was working with was great but concentrated his demos on the security logs, where I need reports and alerts for ALL the logs in Windows. I’m hoping I’ll have some time next week to RTFM and concentrate on setting up the agent, filters and reports on a server or two to get more comfortable.

Do you remember life before the Internet? I barely do.

It’s hard to imagine that there are some people I know best (or only) via the WWW. I was chatting with a friend the other evening and he commented on how he’s got a better handle on my personality via IM than he ever had from dealing with me in person.

Maybe that’s because when we see each other in person it’s always related to our jobs and there really isn’t much time to talk about anything other than technology. Not that we don’t spend most of our online time talking about technology and work too, but the other night we got onto other topics that probably would never come up when we happen to be in the same room.

It all got me thinking about how I interact with people via some kind of online chat – I’m in the age range where it’s not the most used medium for our generation, but I spent so many years developing relationships with remote co-workers that were exclusively via IM maybe I’m just more comfortable expressing myself that way.

There are a lot of people on my chat client list that I don’t regularly chat with anymore, but it’s nice to see them there throughout the day. I remember when one of my old colleagues switched jobs and wasn’t able to connect to IM from his office. I went through weeks of being really unnerved by the fact that he wasn’t showing up on my list. It was like some put up a wall between us that I couldn’t figure a way around.

Then there is another tech friend of mine who I know is pretty much accessible anytime. He’s not always on IM, but if he’s got a phone signal he’ll usually get back to an email or a text. I sent him tech question yesterday knowing full well that was skiing in Canada. I wouldn’t have minded if he waited until he returned to get back to me – but sure enough he replied within 10 minutes. Is it better for him that he’s that totally connected or is it a pain in the ass?

Maybe because we both are in an industry where we are available to be paged or alerted by our office servers when they are in need, we don’t mind being available to real people, too.