Today was my first day working at the TLR site in Eagan, and I think it went pretty well. It turns out that every morning I will have a conference call with the rest of the people involved in this process, that call is at 8:30am central time, so that is how my day will start from here on out. After that Rick showed me around some and explained what was going on, and then it was right to work. Mine and Rick’s main purpose for being out here is to rebuild the TSH infrastructure. Basically this means that as equipment is shipped to Eagan from other sites or new equipment is brought in, we are responsible for setting it up. This includes receiving the shipment, making sure all components are there, making sure racks are in place, that all cable has been run to the designated location (fiber, network, power), getting the system racked, powered, and up and running. The shipment could be anything from a Sun box to Cisco networking equipment. We are also responsible for receiving port assignments and making certain that the boxes are patched both on the server side and the port side within the structured cabling runs so the machines can have access to the network. In a addition we are also responsible for initial configuration of iLo and anything else they throw at us. We are also running cable traces and other stop-gap trouble shooting that arises. I expect to learn a lot on this new position and am really looking forward to having hands on access and experience to things that I have never done or seen before.
Category Archives: Minnesota
A cemetary or two
Today on my drive to figure out where work is located I passed by Trinity Lone Oak Lutheran Church and School, which had a small cemetery behind it, so on my way back to the hotel I decided to stop and take a look. This church and cemetery is located in Eagan Minnesota at Dodd Road and Highway 55. The cemetery was established in 1880 and while some of the headstones and markers certainly show this age, many of them are fairly newer. Considering the age I was happy to see that the plots were all kept in very good condition, I think this has a lot to do with the adjoining church.
The second cemetery I cam across today is actually located basically across the highway from my hotel, and I first noticed it yesterday while looking out my window. This cemetery was the Fort Snelling National Cemetery located at 7601 34th Avenue, South in Minneapolis. This is by far the largest cemetery I have ever seen, let alone been in. I picked up a pamphlet at the visitor center to learn more, here is some of the information that was in it:
- established July 14, 1939
- situated on 436 acres
- over 4,280 burials each year
- one of the largest and most active national cemeteries in the system
- seven Medal of Honor recipients are interred here
I took a number of pictures here as well, even though the headstones all look the same I went to the very back and up on a hill and took some pictures over looking it all. I also took a number of pictures of some monuments that I found that were dedicated to different battalions and regiments and such. I also took some pictures from out my hotel window on the seventh floor so you can see what my original view of it was.
All of the pictures of the above two places will eventually be added to the gallery under the cemeteries section, once they are up I will post a note and a link.
Learning my way
Today I decided that it would be a good idea to make sure that I can find my way from the hotel to work, and it’s a good thing that I did. As it turns out there is a major detour in my driving route as 494 is closed. Even with that though the drive should only take about 15 minutes, of course that might change with traffic conditions in the morning, I will have to see. I know work at the Thomson West building, which is the main location for what we refer to as TLR. I took some pictures of the outside of the building from the parking lot (they will be up later) to show how large this place is, and it should be considering we employ 7000 people.
I also finally got around to taking some pictures of my truck in the parking lot, seeing as there was basically no one else around, I thought it would be a good time to do it. I will have all of those pictures up later as well.
A long drive
Well after a long drive that ended up being about 12 hours long I have finally made it out to Minnesota. The trip itself was just about 660 miles, but with an hour stop for lunch and a few stops for gas and a few more to stretch it became a 12 hour trip. It wasn’t bad, the weather was nice and clear and I didn’t hit to much traffic or construction along the way either. Traveling through four states gave the opportunity to enjoy the satellite radio my new truck has as well. I drove below Chicago so I was able to bypass all the traffic and construction going on there, and I think it also saved me some money on tolls, as i only paid $1.60 in tolls for the entire trip. I owe that to AAA as I went and got a trip-tik from them and they suggested bypassing Chicago. The hotel is nice, but I am already looking forward to going to my apartment on Wednesday as I am not very found of living out of a suitcase. I will have pictures of my suite and the hotel up shortly so you can see how the company is treating me. I have to admit that the Embassy Suites are nice, but then again for the price they should be, the room costs $127 per night.