It’s been a few years now that I’ve pondered how to share faxes with our office overseas. Before anyone criticizes the problem and offer a solution of CIF or Exchange routing, the problem is not as simple as that. Here’s the best simplification I can offer of the problem:
- Given 2 sites. Let HQ be the headquarter & XO be the offsite location.
- Given incoming faxes only.
- Faxes must be sorted according to its content. The sorting is manually done (drag & drop) into folders. Let’s say we have to sort into 3 folders, A, B, and C. These folders must be sorted by Day, Month, Year. That gives us 4-levels of heirarchy.
- HQ and XO may sort the faxes interchangeably.
- HQ must always have all files, thus it makes sense that files are hosted by HQ. XO does not need to have all files; only the files they need.
- Hierarchy must always be preserved.
- Both sites should be able to print faxes anytime they want.
- Low cost solution.
To satisfy my readers who are itching to recommend Goldmine or Exchange routing, how are you going to sort 300-500 faxes daily and easily access them when needed?
My solution was the use of Terminal Services. The disadvantages are:
- Expensive because of licensing, so I had to resort in limited users.
- Since the setup is minimal (click me), the resources are lacking which causes sluggish performance. That means, access is very slow. TS is already slow itself.
- Maintenance is too much of a hassle.
- It’s annoying to access RD in order to check faxes.
Experimental Solution
The latest solution I thought of is using
Dropbox. The first 2GB is free and subscription is only $10/month @ 50GB. Therefore, I have 2GB of test space before implementing the logistics. Faxes will still be archived and hosted by
HQ then
XO will sync from it.
XO must be restricted from deletion. Although Dropbox has the recovery feature that is a failsafe in case someone in
XO’s end is trigger-happy (my instantaneous backup in
HQ’s end will still remain of course; I’m paranoid).
With DP, the heirarchy is preserved, faxes can be easily accessed by both parties because the files will be locally (network scope) available to them. Since XO does not need the files, HQ will do deletion (folders have to be moved to reduce clutter in the workspace — imagine 30 folders when you only need the last 7 days.)
October 15th, 2008
The main reason why I entered the computer science field is CREATION. Given a computer and programming environment, one can create something from his imagination from an empty notepad. Though I’m far from becoming a successful one, I still persist in learning. Learning is double edged. It’s fun and it’s demanding. Since my topic is cluster computing, there’s no reason for me to delve on the negative side of learning. Instead, let’s jump on the fun side.
I enjoy learning new things in computing. It’s a pity because I didn’t learn much when I was in college and now I’m trying to teach myself without the help of professors and classmates. I believe that learning hands-on is way better. If I was to do it again [college], I still wouldn’t learn as much as I’ve learned on the field. My current employer does not have sophisticated computing. All we have are file server, mail server, and a phone server. I may have splurged for a better setup if I had thought it out properly or was well informed. You see, i stayed away from RAID mechanism because (1) it was over the budget, (2) I don’t approve of it (if cost was a factor). To make a long story short, I’m suffering now because I miscalculated the setup (or rather experimentally failed).
My biggest woe at work is storage. Second is processing. Third is system. Fourth is portability. I wish I have partitioned the drives properly. I would like to do a re-install, but I have no time to do so. I will have to spend a week or two to do this — alone! We will be migrating into a system which is very user unfriendly, but the maintenance is out of my hands. Still, I’m not happy with the system. Because I had limited knowledge in computing (I still am) and with very minimal budget, my portability solutions have been deduced to freeware.
At work, one server takes care of everything including terminal services. No wonder the damn thing shuts down by itself without absence in every week. Windows is user friendly, but not admin-friendly. I hate the damn Windows Updates that forces the damn box to restart even though it’s setup to not do anything unless I say so. If I ignore it enough number of times, it’ll do the updates by itself. (Done digressing.) A TS session (for us) requires plenty of processing resources and sometimes if Windows haven’t slept for a few hours, it’ll just stick the process on the memory even though the session has ended. It adds to the causes of rapid shutdowns.
These shortcomings can be solved, but the timing and management budget won’t allow me. In our other office, they are really hooked up pretty well. Though the technology is minimally used, I liek the setup there. They have a farm of tower servers, but they are not exactly clusters. They’re just a farm of different processes.
Since I’ve seen my setup which doesn’t work as I thought it out, I do my own research at home. I have a small network in the house which I could contest against the office setup. However, my goal since the beginning when I first started tweaking my computer hardware was to build a cheap, but powerful personal computer. Cheap on the standards that I can afford it while it can compete against expensive powerful processing environments. I have ideas on how to go about it, but nothing concrete. The projection is still afar. I’m not perfectly stable financially to undertake such project. The good thing is that I have a model to follow. I saw from hackaday’s website an article on cluster computing using an IKEA cabinet as the case. Though I may not follow the IKEA way, it’s a confirmation that such project can be achieved. My goal is the same as his, but the purpose would be different.
If I win the lottery, I will begin the project immediately. Otherwise, I’ll have to wait.
October 6th, 2008
I’m not exactly a music critic, but I’ll mention a few things about Rico Blanco’s album Your Universe and especially the first single, Yugto. I’ll call this album good. Blanco’s poetic abilities is still evident in this solo album. Yugto has an operatic feel to it trying to follow Freddie Mercury and Queen. The intro surprisingly sounds Eastern European which I thought was cool. I can’t imagine the Vikings in the Philippines. Blanco did not try to sound different from Rivermaya and I think it’s a better move because he was after all Rivermaya. It’s good that he did not attempt to escape. I can’t wait to see him perform Yugto live because the song has a tendency to be an awesome live act.
August 15th, 2008
Before leaving the house, I saw on the news that the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will pilot an electronic voting process in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the coming gubernatorial (regional) election in the region. The machines are provided by Avante.
Electronic voting is still a huge issue in the United States and we debated the issue in one of my classes. A few nations have been using this technique for their elections, to some degree. The system is said to be “very” secure according to Smartmatic Sahi’s Vince Dizon because it uses an encryption similar to internet banking.
I’m pessimistic (once again) with this advancement. Firstly, ARMM is a very significant region in the current world affairs. If it was local government we’re talking about, then it would be okay, but this election affects several provinces. My pessimism lies on the technology. Any electronic device that we know of is insecure. Unless the system is using quantum encryption (which is not 100% secure anymore) then my pessimism would go away. If they are using an encryption that internet banking is using, then they are using decades old technology and have been documented to have been broken.
Government is more crucial than banking. If the system in banking catches an anomaly, they can always revert the numbers. In the government, you can’t ask the people to vote again. Election is not stateful, while banking is stateful. There’s a reset in banking, but none in election.
Do I need to mention the possible hackers? I think I’ll leave that to your imagination.
July 21st, 2008
I never thought this would happen. While having breakfast in a cafe near our office’s building, a customer sat in front of me reading the same book I’m reading, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. The same paperback version. I never thought that with the few different people I see in the cafe, I would find someone reading a philosophy novel. I often see people reading Sheldon’s or Brown’s or other contemporaries, but I never thought I’d see someone in front of me reading Ayn Rand, and the same title needless to say.
I guess I’d better say more about the book since I’m only a few leaves away to the end. I’ve alluded so much of We The Living and I believe The Fountainhead is much better than that.
In this novel, I’ve met a perfect hero that I can relate so much to. A villain that brings out most of my anger. I feel anger which means I’m not purely an Objectivist, not an egotist, but I’m working on it. I will loan the novel to Ate Lorie, so I won’t divulge so much of the characters. So far, I’m not too concerned of the plot in Rand’s literature because her characters are interesting enough. She develops her characters wonderfully and I can’t get over imagining these individuals.
The book is difficult to read not because of her diction, but because knowledge and emotions are only emphasized. The style makes the reader hurry up and wait for the characters to verbally confess. It makes the book not suspenseful, but rather plentiful of self discovery. The emphases on these knowledge ask the reader if he thought the same. “Are you thinking what he’s thinking?”
Why do I think that the hero is perfect? Because he doesn’t care about people, about what other people would think of him, of what he’s doing, of what he’s going to do. I guess About A Boy has to move down a notch.
After this, I’ll venture to Rand’s next book, the Atlas Shrugged. Hailed to be better than The Fountainhead so I’m also excited. Only after reading the last novel that I’ll decide what (not which) my favorite book is.
July 11th, 2008
Here is the top-10 list of my favorite songs of all time (not in particular order):
- Imagine (John Lennon)
- Lightning Crashes (Live)
- Losing My Religion (R.E.M.)
- Under The Bridge (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- Creep (Radiohead)
- Everlasting (Manic Street Preachers)
- Don’t Look Back In Anger (Oasis)
- No Good For Me (The Corrs)
- Promises (The Cranberries)
- Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns ‘N Roses)
June 29th, 2008
Taken from We The Living, Chapter 9:
“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do — then, I know they don’t believe in life.”
“Why?”
“Because you see, God — whatever anyone chooses to call God — is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”
“You’re a strange girl.”
“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die — for life. I only want to live it.”
I always believe that satisfying oneself now should be the only task a man should have. Also, the task may be acted upon in any way he sees fit. That is living the life for me.
May 13th, 2008
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