Sunday, March 23, 2008

10 Reasons For Citrix Presentation Server

1: Publish Controlled Documents To Users: We have alot of Excel documents that users share but we don't want them saved locally. Often these are version controlled so the published app in Citrix becomes the trusted version of the document.
2: Publish Web Sites To Users. We have alot of website that employees go to for payroll, benefits, administration, sales tools etc. With so many we get alot of requests for the various URL's. By publishing an instance of IE that goes direct to the url we help users get to the websites they need and can forget what the urls really are. We also have a central place to look up the URL's should we need them.
3: Remote Access Solution. Using Citrix Secure Gateway we created a great remote access solution. Now users who insist on working on home PC's can access their corporate apps using SSL. This also allows those who aren't using Windows to gain access to corporate applications at home or at untrusted locations.
4: Deploy Apps With Poor Architectures. We have a few applications that actually run directly from a UNC share. Because of this users over slow WAN links could never run the applications. Publishing them in Citrix allows us to run applications that have poor architecture to all employees regardless of their location.
5: Control Access To Dangerous Environments. If you have employees with a legitimate need to visit websites that would likley harm the system they operate on or the network they work on publishing Remote Desktop and having the user remote control their system is a great solution for remote access to these risky environments.
6: Publish Admin Tools. Most administrators have various admin tools they use to perform day today IT tasks. Remembering where these are or having to reinstall them is a huge pain. By publishing them in Citrix you can ensure all IT staff are using the correct version of the tool. This also gives them access to the tools from any location.
7: Deploy Commonly Patched Or Customized Applications. We have a few applications that are customized and patched monthly. Because of this we had users with workstations falling out of synch when they forgot to patch their local application. Publishing this application in Citrix allowed us to centrally patch and be sure everyone was on the same version of the application.
8: Provide Users With Isolated Environments. When troubleshooting you can easily isolate a user to a specific server to ensure you can reproduce their problem. Sometimes this takes the randomness out of supporting flaky applications. You can then easily isolate the user on another server to test fixes etc.
9: Provide High Powered Environments To Power Users. I have an executive that uses Excel and wants to have the benefit of dual proccessors. Running Excel on Citrix lets him process queries with a dual core and dual processor server from anywhere. He can disconnect his session and go home and resume his work on the highest powered environment possible.
10: Provide Backup For Business Critical Applications. Sometimes a key application on a workstation will misbehave. When IT is busy we can't always go to the desk and fix the application. Telling the person to run the application in Citrix has been a good way to keep them working until we can get time to get to the desk and find out what went wrong.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Bob Guiney's New Show

On Saturday nights I love watching real estate reality shows on A&E and TLC. Flip This House is one of my favorites but lately we've been watching the new episodes of trading spaces. I saw a commercial for a new show called Date My House on TLC which features host Bob Guiney from the Bachelor. Date My House matches home sellers and singles to get them in the door to look at the house. While singles are meeting each other they are also looking at real estate. Date My House should be an interesting new show. It will be interesting to see if it can keep the 8:30pm timeslot.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

New Term For The 2000's Jingle Mail

Jingle Mail is when you're so fed up with a rising mortgage payment and dropping property value that you say screw it and mail the keys to your mortgage company. It's sad that this is now a known term to most Americans. Walking Away From Your Mortgage will most certainly result in a foreclosure on your credit report and will make it extremely difficult to buy a home in the future. It may also make it hard to rent a decent house or apartment if the landlord views the foreclosure as a serious enough event to deny your application. Jingle Mail sounds nice but in reality it could cause more problems than it solves. With the growing list of programs designed to help those in mortgage trouble restructure walking away from a mortgage should certainly be your last resort.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Flip This House Is Back!

Tonight at 10:00 Central Time Flip This House returns to A&E. This season will feature Than & Paul again and a new crew from Los Angeles as well as the venerable Armando Montelongo and Montelongo House Buyers from San Antonio. Tonight Armando Montelongo runs his own flip without his usual crew of contractors and supervisors. This is due to the profits which are harder to find in the crappy real estate market of today. It will be interesting to see if he can keep his cool and walk the walk vs just bossing around contractors. I still miss the original Flip This House episodes that featured Ginger Alexander and Trademark Properties from South Carolina. Hopefully we'll see some new episodes of the real deal from that crew.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Do You Get Insomnia From Wine?

Once in awhile if i've had more wine than I should have I wake up at 3-4 in the morning wide awake. This wine induced insomnia drives me crazy. Oddly I don't get insomnia from other drinks but with red wine I can almost predict it. I know i'm not alone because i've had my wife complain about this phenomenon as well. In doing some research it looks like it could be the sugar in the wine causing some energy late in the evening or just the brain waking up after the depressive effects of the alcohol wear off. Either way it's something to watch as I get older and value a good night sleep even more. So the next time you find yourself with insomnia it could just be the wine over dinner.