ThoughtCoffee - Mark Burleson » citrt

Sincere Apologies

mburleson — Mon, 19 May 2008 05:11:27 +0000

For it has been to long since I have blogged, I bid your forgiveness, oh blogging world.Â Alas, the toils of life and work have sorely separated me from my abilty to write in leisure.

Â Soon shall there be writings again, however, poor (which normally is so) they are!

Until that time, click thy mouse o’erÂ and on these links.

My Friend Seth has a question he needs answered about the church and world hunger
Non-Friend Seth Godin has a great postÂ about talking to Apple Support
Church IT King, Jason Powell, has an IT staff position open..(chance of a lifetime if you ask me)
SAN’s are pretty!Â Though they lack blue LED’s…Â (Take Note Dell Equallogic.. blue leds in the future..)
Lastly for tonight, go check out, join up, find someway to join up.Â http://www.ONEPrayer.com

MinistryTECH and Spring Roundtable

mburleson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:15:41 +0000

Be sure and check out the upcoming MinistryTECH Conference in Oklahoma City, April 3-4.Â Going to be a lot of amazing sessions and great people to meet. Registration is almost sold out!

I unfortunately will probably not make it… but…

The Church IT Spring Roundtable is the following Saturday April 5th.Â Jason Powell has all the information you need.Â I’ll be at this one.Â Registration is$15..Â It’s gonna be worth it and I’ll be there!Â Not that I come anywhere near THE Jason.

Talk About Controlling!

mburleson — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:59:24 +0000

I started my Domain Controller server change-overs today.Â I have two old servers running as DC’s that I am replacing..Â I didn’t get started ’til 3p.m. and just now calling it quits for the day.

Will work more on tomorrow.

My plan is to be able to just have to do any troubleshooting on Monday, besides switching over to the new Cisco 3560 I have in to replace an old Dell 12-port gig switch and a Cisco CE 500 12-port gig.Â This will give me more control and features..

Thanks to Dave Mast and all the other citrt guys on the idea of how to deploy the DC’s among the other help..Â VM here I come!

Happy New Year

mburleson — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:54:50 +0000

So it’s been a few days since I last posted..ok more than a few.

Happy New Year to all.

I was hoping that this new year would start out alright, but the Buckeyes didn’t feel it was a good year for that.Â Granted, they weren’t supposed to have gone anywhere this year, so I still have to give them some credit there.

I am currently in Peoria, IL at the Sharepoint training that Mindsharp is doing for the Church IT Roundtable.Â Jason Lee and the Northwoods Community Church staff, as well as Fady from Willowcreek, Â have done an amazing job on getting this set up and hosting.Â More on this later.

Here are some pics:Â Justin Moore’s Set

Anyone know of a like widget to post directly into WordPress?Â Â

Distractions and Prayer

mburleson — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:31:24 +0000

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to write a post but there has been a lot going on so I haven’t been able to concentrate on it.

For those reading, if you could keep me in prayers for wisdom on some situations it would be much appreciated.

On another note, check out Jason Powel’s post on FREE Sharepoint training from a Microsoft MVP!

I have to say that the Church IT Roundtable guys are absolutely amazing on their willingness to help each other out. I think there is a lot to learn from this group!

Help Me Rhonda? on help desks…?

mburleson — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:36:35 +0000

Goooooooddddd evening blogging land… (in best Robin Williams impersonation)

Well today I started the dwindling down of the Help Desk Software. I had installed OTRS and Spiceworks, but wasn’t completely satisfied.

Step in Church IT Roundtable and Jim Edwards’ recap of Help Desk mentions during the conference.

I have started demos for both ServiceDesk and Kayako. I have to say I like both! The ServiceDesk was easy to install and setup and configure(granted very limited configuration for now). They both seem to handle tickets and email capturing very well. There are a few things I wish were combined from the two..

ServiceDesk Plus Pro

Easy Active Directory Integration
Asset Management + User Attachment of Assets
Purchase Ordering Managment

Kayako

Web Portal – Don’t have to authenticate to view KB or Troubleshooting
Predefined Templates for replies
Live Chat ability

My thoughts are that Kayako would be great for external facing sites and users while ServiceDesk would be good for internal use, though I wish it had the predefined replies and easy-linkable KB articles.

More testing tomorrow.

IT Roundtable

mburleson — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:47:21 +0000

This past week, I had the privelege of attending the Church IT Roundtable in Kansas City at Church of the Resurrection. Clif Guy, Amy Facemire, and crew all did an amazing job of preperation and hosting. I took away a lot just from how everything was handled. Thank you all very much!

Some of the highlights include being able to meet many of the people whose blogs I’ve been reading, Jason Powell, Tony Dye, and of course Clif and the crew; the topic bizzare provided a great area to find exactly the topic/vendor I wanted to talk with and ask questions; and just the fellowship was worth the entire trip. One of the amazing things to me is that we all, from all the different backgrounds, can come together in unity for the Lord. I do thank the Lord for that! I look forward to the next RoundTable

I wasn’t up to par on Thursday, so I talked far less than I normally would. Getting up at 4am to drive to KC on 3 hours of sleep really took my energy away. I got home about midnight, which included a nice visit from Kansas Highway Patrol around Iola.

I was very sad that I couldn’t make Wed’s sessions. From what I can tell off of David Szpunar’s blog there were many great topics brought up. I think I will go through a few this week and make my own comment additions to them.

On a whole other note, I watched the first two episodes of Chuck.. It was alright.. I’ll probably watch more, but I don’t know how good it will do.