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Home Theater Upgrades
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I finally upgraded my Home Theater this past week. First, I replaced my Yamaha RX8000 receiver with a best of breed mid-grade receiver: the Denon 3805. You can read about the bazillion features and excellent quality in the Audioholics Review. The main reason for the receiver upgrade was improved sound quality and upconverted video switching. In other words, I can plug all of my electronics (DVD player, XBox, Game Cube, Dish, TiVo, etc) into the receiver and it switches all of it to a single component connection to my TV (Hitachi 57S715). This is a big relief as I no longer have to hit a button on the clunky switch box *and* change the TV input when I want to watch something. Now I just turn on the receiver, hit the button on the remote and presto... instant entertainment without the hassles.
Second, I upgraded my JVC XV-N412S DVD player with a real one; the Denon 2910. The decision on this player came down to three things: DVD-Audio support, SACD support, and improved picture quality. This player was not cheap, but the picture quality improvement alone was worth the price.
Third, I replaced my Bose AM-7 speakers that I was using for the surround sound stage with full range towers that match the camber of my front speakers. I am using Boston Acoustics VR3's for the front, but I went with the model down from those, the VR1, for the rear.
Last, I replaced my JBL SB-10 subwoofer with a Martin Logan Dynamo. This little 10-inch sub in an 11 inch cube package is amazing.
The sound and video difference is staggering. You just don't know what you're missing until you see and hear it. My ears are now spoiled though and everything else I listen to (in the car, at work, etc) just doesn't sound right. The bass is smooth and consistent, bringing the sound of gun shots, explosions, and car crashes vibrating right into your chest. The clarity and increased power of the new receiver brings entirely new sounds to life that just weren't noticeable before. The whole package has really brought new life to our home theater and even Rebecca is happy with the purchases I made. I officially believe that my home theater looks and sounds better than the real thing.
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Still Tired
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We finally finished the Exchange migration project around midnight on Saturday evening. We really expected a lot of fallout on Monday, but everything went really smooth and we received many kudos and compliments from users. This week has had a lot of little requests related to the move, but every single user was back up on e-mail within an hour of arriving to work. You really can't ask for a better end-result.
However, I am still exhausted and have a lot of work that is keeping me at work 10 hours a day or so. I took Friday off and I am looking forward to playing some video games, watching TV, and playing with the kids. I really just need to relax for a full day or two.
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What A Week
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This week has been one of those defining moments in my career where I prove whether or not I am worth my salt as an IT guy. My team has been feverishly preparing to migrate 250 users from an existing 1500 user Exchange 5.5 environment to a new Exchange 2003 environment. As I type this, I am sitting in my cube, bleary-eyed, waiting for a few public folders to replicate. I have put in somewhere around 61 hours of work this week, with 6-8 more hours to go. I am not unique as most of my team has put in similar or greater hours to get this project rolling.
As it stands, we're about 70% done and are on-track to complete the entire project today. I am very excited about how well this project has worked out. I am also impressed with the dedication that my team has put into it. I have had a great time working on this project and other than a few hiccups, this has been one of the smoothest projects I've run considering the scope. I work with a solid group of professionals and it is quite inspiring.
Naturally, the new Exchange 2003 back-end servers are attached to a HP EVA-5000 Storage Array in a clustered configuration. We also setup load balanced front end servers to handle Outlook Web Access and mobile e-mail access.
All of this work has been to support the seperation of WebTrends from NetIQ. I am very excited about WebTrends going private as I think it will enable us to move at a much quicker pace. Part of belonging to a larger public company is the inherent slow-down caused by red tape. Screw the red tape... just let me do my job! It's not often that employees are happy when they're company is sold, but in this case the announcement caused much rejoicing. :)
I really miss my kids. I've spent maybe a combined total of 1 hour with them this week. I will be so tired tomorrow that I will likely just crash in front of the TV... maybe watch a movie or two with the kiddies.
Oh, by the way: check out the cool Easter pics of the kids.
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