Welcome to my new blog. My hope is to publish, from time to time, items and observations related to system administration and java.

Presently, I am the Special Projects manager for a small telecommunications labor contractor. Included in my list of responsibilities is the care and feeding of our IT infrastructure. This includes but is not limited to maintenance of our Windows and Linux servers as well as the services these systems provide (i.e. email, web, print, firewall, reporting, etc. ) I also do quite a bit of in house development using Java.

Often I find that I can utilize open source software in conjunction with off the shelf commercial software to the benefit of my organization. However, being a one man IT department, I find that the learning curve in utilizing some of these technologies can be a little steep. This can be particularly challenging when trying to synthesize an understanding from various sources of (sometimes incomplete) documentation and mailing list postings. I expect that there are others out there in the same situation facing the same challenges.

As I encounter new tools and utilities or perhaps determine my own composite solution for situations that encounter I will post these experiences here.

In any event, I’m glad your visiting my blog and I encourage you to post your own comments as I populate these pages in the future.