Questions You Should Answer in a Project Proposal

Over the past year I have had to create more and more project proposals instead of just going crazy and buying things as I want to (Probably a good idea). As I have become hopefully better with each passing proposal I wanted to share a list of questions I try to answer in a project proposal helping me to better sell the project to management. I don't use them all, and each project results in the use of different questions and answers but this is a good place to start, maybe you will find your own questions as well when you create your own proposal.

1. Who will benefit from the project
2. Why are we doing this
3. What is our end goal
4. When could it be done
5. What are the steps of the project
6. What is the cost
7. What is the potential savings
8. What is wrong with the current system
9. Who will we purchase from
10. Why will we purchase from said vendors/people
11. Who will install this
12. Who is the project leader
13. What will it look like when its finished
14. What are the tasks of the project, and the timeline they will be finished in
15. What is the long term cost of the project
16. What is the goal of the project (Much like the question Why are we doing this)
17. How long will the end result last
18. Does it scale up easily

Office 365 Lync 2013 - Unable to Upload a Profile Image

I encountered this issue few weeks back and found it to be very perplexing, especially since the upgrade to O365 2013. Users who tried to change their profile picture in Lync 2013 or Exchange Online were greeted with a message that told them they did not have permissions to do so, even global admins got the error. After joining a community forum as well as starting a service request through the support portal I was able to get a resolution to the issue.

Turns out the upgrade has a few bugs (who knew) and that Microsoft has a hotfix they can apply if your service is showing a permission issue like mine. Ill include the link to the forum below so you can add to it and get your issue resolved as well.

Microsoft did get this resolved and fairly quick too. Good luck!



Community Link

UPS Shorts Out and Kills Nortel Phone System PSU

I had the strangest bit of luck a week ago regarding our 4 APC units (Smart UPS 1500 for reference) that supply backup power to our server closet. I walked in that morning for an unrelated event and see a bright red light shining at me telling me that a one of the UPS's (#4 in particular) needed a battery change. I figured sure, I will replace it tonight at 9pm and move on with my simple life.

That evening a simple battery change resulted in the same issue again when I fired back up the UPS unit, a glowing red change battery light. At this point our telephone and internet had been down for long enough that I decided to replace the UPS entirely so I could get those items back up again. Not thinking about anything else I replace the UPS, plug in the power cables for a 2nd time and let everything take it time to come back up. The good news was that due to redundancy in our ISCSI network backbone and dual PSU's in our servers and SAN storage no data was lost, damaged or stopped working internally during this time.

30 minutes later however, the telephone system had still failed to come up and multiple telephones gave off a creepy Silent Hill like static warning me of coming danger. I decided then something had happened and gave our phone vendor a call, he was not optimistic and prepared for a long night with me at work. In the end (1am at this point) we were able to keep our programming by replacing the 300$ power supply and get her back up and running, but we were still perplexed as to how 1 system behind a UPS, attached to a surge protector went bad out of 12 items plugged into the unit.

Here it is a week later and the "Bad" UPS has functioned fine during tests with both its original battery and the one I tried to replace it with. I surely won't place this into production, but I would love to know what happened last week and any way I could prevent it from happening again.

1. Make sure the UPS is unplugged and all items are also unplugged before removing the battery

2. Replace the battery and power on the unit before plugging in any items to the back

3. After 15 minute run time plug in items one at a time so as to not create a large power draw if items are booting up.


Hopefully changing my steps a bit will help me, and you if this happens in your IT world.

Adding Facebook Like Button to Blogger Blog

Ill try to make this a quick and helpful write-up. By default Blogger will let you easily add in a Google+ widget to your site, but no easy way to add in one for Facebook. There are a few add-ons out there but this covers just adding a Facebook "Like" button, skipping the extra flair (I've never used Digg anyway).

1. First head over to Facebook HERE

2. Configure the Like button to your personal preference

3. Click Grab Code

4. Copy the Javascript SDK and head over to your Blogger Admin portal

5. Find Templates and click on it
























6. Click on EDIT HTML

Right after the line that says

  <body expr:class='&quot;loading&quot; + data:blog.mobileClass'>

Enter in the SDK code

7. Now go grab the DIV code from the Facebook page

8. In the HTML find the spot you want it to appear at (mine is just under the Google + button on the side)

(The google plus one widget should be available to jump to if you have it implemented)

9. Add your code right before the end the widgets code

End of widget code : </b:includable>

  </b:widget>

10. Click Save

Should you have a dream job?

I have pondered this a lot lately and have decided that yes, you should.

Making progress toward something is human nature, accomplishments as just as important as your goals for without them you would never have an accomplishment. I believe having a Dream Job set, no matter how unrealistic it is, it helps your state of mind on a day to day basis.

Don't get me wrong though, I do love my job. This place is amazing to work at, and tough as nails to really push me to do my best. A dream job though is always something to hope for, to keep on your mind. For me, I pick working as a Network Systems Admin for Ducati in Italy. Will it ever happen? Probably not, but just like being a kid and saying "when I grow up" it lets me dream and focus more on the work it would take to get there. Maybe it's about time I learned some Italian?