jeffRASH

I’m not a big VW guy, but for some reason everytime I watch these videos I laugh. Share and enjoy.

VW GTi Commercial (Crate)

VW GTi Commercial (Wrecking Ball)

VW GTi Commercial (Catapult)

Jeffery S. Rash
Infrastructure and Technologies Manager EquiFirst Corporation

“EquiFirst Corporation is one of the premier wholesale mortgage lenders in the United States. We offer a wide range of mortgage products to independent mortgage brokers throughout the country. Our innovative products help brokers close loans faster by making the assessment process more straightforward and reliable.

“Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have more than 180 account executives working with more than 4,000 approved mortgage brokers around the country. The Charlotte headquarters is also home to our 120,000-square foot, state-of-the-art underwriting and processing center.

“My job is to keep everything running in our fast-paced environment: the networking, computers, voice and IT-related infrastructure. The unprecedented demand in the real estate market has spurred a significant amount of growth for the company, adding pressure to our technology infrastructure and presenting a challenge for my department.

New Business Growth Spurs Data Center Upgrade
“We recently had to update our IT systems and network. We needed to process much larger quantities of business and our ability to quickly adapt to the new growth determined how much our department could contribute to the bottom line. Any downtime is devastating, and could cost us thousands of dollars per hour in lost revenues.

“As we implemented the newest, fastest information systems technology, we had to find a redundant power protection solution that could scale along with our systems and one that was easy to maintain.

More Functionality For the Money
“Initially, we thought we only needed a bigger UPS with more kW. Then, our APC rep introduced us to the new InfraStruXure™. We quickly recognized the business value of its modular architecture. InfraStruXure offered us so much more than a standalone UPS. The fact that the UPS, PDU, remote monitoring, and cable management are all incorporated into self contained high quality racks is priceless to us. Each of the InfraStruXure’s key components have been field tested over the years and are proven winners. The genius of the InfraStruXure is that these components are now available to us as an integrated, easily scalable architecture.

“In the case of our old UPS, whenever we needed an upgrade, it would take an electrician eight hours to hard-wire the conduits in the floor. With InfraStruXure, the same task takes less than an hour.

High Manageability and Increased Reliability
“Our old system could not communicate to us when the power went out. With InfraStruXure, APC is automatically contacted. By the time we find out a problem has occurred, APC is already working on it. Our account executives and brokers are completely unaware that anything has happened and their work is not impacted. It all stays behind the scenes.

“InfraStruXure’s modularity also sets it apart from the competition, enabling us to easily hot swap battery or power modules without having to take the system down. We like InfraStruXure’s scalability as well. It fits right into our long term strategy of shifting to more compact and dense processing in our racks. Over time, we will realize a huge savings.

“Traditional three-phase competitors still subscribe to the old way of doing things: complex installations and high-cost maintenance because the power distribution is hard-wired. No one else can offer anything close to InfraStruXure in terms of easy scalability and manageability.

The Benefit of a Sharp Image
“InfraStruXure’s good looks have also turned our data center into a showcase. Employees and clients walking by our data center look in through the glass walls and are impressed with the clean, shiny rows of black racks. It reflects well on our department’s professionalism and imparts a sense of confidence to fellow employees, partners and clients.”

03/28/2003

Here’s a link to the original article on APC’s website

Recently we visited the “Lazy 5 Ranch” in NC with our son’s cub scout pack. We took a fun ride on a large wagon with 30 scouts and parents pulled by three horses. We road though several acres of animals, such as cows, pigs, zebras, deer, goats, buffalo, and giraffe.

More Lazy 5 photos

I recently pickup a “Motorola Q” at my local Verizon Wireless store. The “Q” is one of the first smart phones running Windows Mobile 5. The device is very light weight at 4.05 oz and thin at 4.56 inches tall x 2.48 inches wide x 0.45 inches thick. The first thing I look for in a mobile device is its balance. By that I mean does its weight and size match up and fit in my hand. The “Q” meets both of my requirements.

I am syncing my desktops outlook 2003 (email, contacts, and tasks) to the mobile outlook on the device with Verizon’s wireless sync service. The sync is sometimes slow, taking up to 30 minutes during pick hours to notify me of new updates. Despite the sometimes slow updates, I think it’s still a good service. Browsing the web on its mobile IE is as good as any mobile device I have tested.

The only issue I have had so far is with battery life. Even with the extended battery, I have to plug it in for a quick charge in the evenings.

Here are a few links to other sites about the “Q”:

Verizon’s “Q” Site
Motorola’s “Q” Site

Here’s the Vista grass wallpaper reduced for the “Q”: