Well, it is New Year's Eve, and tomorrow will be spent in relaxation and possibly playing a little Mechwarrior 4 : Mercenaries. I now have the bug that was roaming around, so I feel like my eyes are hot and my throat has been flayed but numbed - very wierd sensation. Hopefully I'm on the road to recovery because Friday we go on the road to VA to visit with relatives down there.

Christmas after New Years - ah well, ya takes it where ya can gets it, I suppose.
posted by MikeM at 12:03 PM    

 
The last half of Saturday and all day Sunday were spent watching the myriad DVDs that we got each other for Xmas. Lots of Muppets. Muppet Family Christmas was fun - they had a big combo xmas party - with all the muppets, the sesame street gang, even the Fraggles got into it. We also saw : Scrooge (Christmas Carol from 1953), The Otter Christmas, and a few others. Sunday we saw Aftershock:Earthquake in New York, and Collision Course (Crocodile Hunter Movie) - both were good, but the Croc Hunter was better. The last part of Sunday was spent playing Christmas Monopoly... So far the lead has changed hands several times, but right now I am winning, having gone from $17 to over $3500, and the only properties I have are the cheapest on the board and the most expensive, all with hotels. Patty has ALL of the other property, with from 1-3 houses and a few hotels, and I am still winning! WOO! Game is on hold until after work Monday (had to pause the game because it ran from 7 thru 11:30, and we HAD to get some sleep!).
posted by MikeM at 10:57 AM    

 
**Whew!**

Just got back from good ol' jersey. It's good to be home. We arrived at around 6pm Tuesday night, and left at about 1pm today - that makes for a looooong duration trip. You never know how much you miss your own home until you aren't there. We got to see everyone, eat much stuff that wasn't good for us, play cards 'til we were exhausted, exchange gifts with everyone - and I think everyone was pleased with their gifts, including us!

Patty's sister's son got an Epson all-in-one printer/scanner/copier, which was nice, except that it required 128-256mb of memory, and the computer had only 64mb. So they bought one stick of ram after I figured out which one to get, then I installed it and the software still wouldn't run. So I whacked everything in memory (Win98) such as AOL, etc. Then it ran fine. Even with the software installed and the printer part working fine, the scanner was registering an error - and nothing I did could fix it, until I tried a Class B repair - BOUNCE. Yup, pick it up and bounce it gently on one side in an effort to free the scan head. Worked like a charm.

So now this young fellow has a printer/scanner/copier that most offices would envy. Life just isn't fair sometimes, ya know?

He also got an X-Box, which I got to play with a bit. I think I may have become slightly addicted, except that most of the games require incredibly silly levels of problem-solving, and I'm a 1st person shooter kinda guy. Unreal, Half-Life, and Mechwarrior 4 are my passions, and Mortal Kombat, Harry Potter, and Jet Set Radio Future just don't hack it. Even if they are moderately entertaining.

The only call I got from work was a wrong number! I hope everything went well, but I have faith that Brian could handle most anything that could happen. I'll read his online log soon and find out. (Brian's Graffiti, on the menu to the left)
posted by MikeM at 5:41 PM    

 
Got an early wake up call this morning - about 6am - the server was down again. This is the main server that is the heart of the system, and is also the oldest box in the office. Data General. When I came in, a netstat showed NO connections, which is a bad thing. I restarted it, then killed and restarted the connectivity processes on the main Sun box, and verified that the connections were in place, then the workstations connected correctly and everything flowed as it should. I count that as a win. Hopefully that DG box will stay running through the holidays! If not, my good friend Brian will be on site Thursday. I'll leave a cheat-sheet for ya, pal.
posted by MikeM at 7:48 AM    

 
Today at work we were forced into retiring a server early, and after re-establishing the shares on other servers, correcting DNS and YP, and making certain other modifications to the network, we took the machine down and waited for the screams to begin...

Only a few minor problems, easily corrected. Hopefully everything was done correctly and there will be no nasty surprises. Only two years ago this was THE server, now all of its functions have been parceled out to other, newer boxes. C'est la vie.

Backups - seem to be working, except for the w2k box. oh joy. Back to the grindstone on that problem. Anyone else having a problem backing up a remote W2K server with BrightStorEB for Unix? E9011 errors? Failure to receive packet? **sigh**

EDIT: 04/02/2008 - The eventual solution to this issue is in an entry posted April 11, 2003. Further analysis on June 4, 2003 and the eventual ditching of Brightstor completely in Feb of 2004. The licensing and hardware requirements were FAR more than two cheap servers with hard drives. My advice: If you are using Brightstor or any other tape solution, switch to rsync to HD, then rsync that server to an offsite one nightly.
posted by MikeM at 12:45 PM    

 
Sunday was good - Doug came over and we talked a while, then Matt and James came over and we all piled into Matt's car for the short drive to Mike's place - where a rousing good game was had by all - details and journals will be on the web site soon, for all you role-players out there.

When I got home, Patty had been shopping again and we decided that since Xmas was to be celebrated out of town this year, we would open all of our gifts! She loved her gifts, and I loved mine - all is right with the world, and everyone is happy. Even the dogs liked their gifts! Yes, we got them xmas presents... They even opened them all by themselves.

One of my gifts was Mechwarrior 4 : Mercenaries, which I will be playing far too much in the near future, and another was a remote-control shark that I can take in the pool! It is designed for in-water use, and submerges, surfaces, turns, etc - very nice! Even the remote is designed for in-pool use, so I can chase Patty around the pool with the shark while relaxing in it myself. Summer promises to be good!

We also bought each other many many DVDs - we will be watching movies forever in an effort to catch up! Books were also a popular choice, as was my selection of items from Gordon's Jewelers. She said I chose well, and had excellent taste!

posted by MikeM at 12:41 PM    

 
I finally figured out how to program the new remote! It turns out that there is precious little information on the comcast website about it - you have to search and search, and then wade through many side-tracked websites before you find the right one - and even it isn't the perfect solution! The 'new' comcast controls are old, discontinued models that are no longer archived on the maker's website - Comcast apparently snapped them up on the cheap. They are good enough remotes, though - no complaints other than there is STILL no eject button for the VCR/DVD. Oh well...

I now have it programmed to control (minimally, in some cases) the Cable box, TV, VCR/DVD combo unit, and Dolby Receiver Unit. I can at the very least turn them on and off, and control volumes. Having to balance the TV volume with the VCR/DVD unit volume with the Dolby unit volume can be nerve wracking - at least now its all on one remote. Even though I still have to have the DVD/VCR remote handy for unloading DVD/VHS tapes, another for the Receiver - to switch between DVD/VCD/TV/CD/Cassette play, and another for the CD unit, which has no remote on/off capability. The Cassette player is not remote-enabled either, which is fine, as I rarely use it.
posted by MikeM at 8:18 PM    

 
Today was dog grooming day! We had a 1:30 appt at PetSmart to have both dogs groomed, and just got home a short while ago. It apparently takes nearly six hours to bathe and trim two dogs. We had both dogs given a 'puppy cut' instead of the normal cocker spaniel cut because it is so difficult to properly brush them out preventing matting. Perhaps we will go back to the normal cut next time, but I'm just as happy to have this shorter cut!



They are both exhausted from their ordeal - I'm sure they are thinking up ways to get revenge on us for putting them through that.

Tomorrow, Doug is supposed to drive up to meet Patty, see the place & talk of old times, then we and the other gamers pile into a car and drive to the GM's place for the second game of the new campaign. So far it is shaping up nicely! You can find character bios and journals, if you are interested, at www.mikem.net/rp. I'll likely have to make some redesigns, as I need a better way to separate the journal sessions. I was going to just run them all together, but that can make it hard navigate once you get several in. Maybe a blog format or something? I dunno.
posted by MikeM at 8:08 PM    

 
A couple of hours ago, the cable guys were here - they swapped out the old analog cable box and gave us a new digital cable box - we decided to upgrade! Now I have about 800 channels! WOO! Of course, the 400 range is all music channels, but that is fine by me. Above 400 are the PPV and many many premium channels, 300 range are more premiums, and from 100-300 are a mix of music video, premium, and other channels. Overall, I would say we have about 300 watchable channels now, plus 50 or so music channels. NICE!

Now I have to figure out how to program the darn remote to work with our TV... :)
posted by MikeM at 10:20 PM    

 
Last night, Patty and I opened another present each - Patty got a DVD of Scrooged and a book (Wicked - the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, from her point of view), and I got a set of blocks. Yes, I am weird, but I like them - every time I saw a set I wanted them, and now I have a set of my very own. If you wish to come over, you can play with them too. I don't know why a set of simple wooden cubes with letters/numbers/pictures on them so fascinate me.

On TV - we watched 'The Preacher's Wife' - featuring a nearly drug-free Whitney Houston when she actually had some talent left in her.

In more recent news, today the backups worked except for the w2k box. I think I see a pattern. If I do a full backup, it works. The differential fails. Maybe a problem seeing the file dates or the like? I'll have to research that further.
posted by MikeM at 3:25 PM    

 
Watched 'Life, or Something Like It' last night - strange movie, but not a bad movie. A dark romantic comedy, to be sure. Angelina Jolie as a 'Marilyn Monroe' style blonde was interesting, and she did a fairly good job at portraying the character.

Patty and I opened one gift each last night - and were both happy with them! I got a book on memory improvement (greatly needed!) and Patty got a sweeper - a very light, wet/dry, highly effective sweeper. She swept most of the carpets in the family room and kitchen just walking around pushing this thing - an ultralite Oreck. We may continue the trend of one gift each per night, and finish up Xmas morning!
posted by MikeM at 2:53 PM    

 
Well, things are looking up. All the backup jobs worked last night... And I can restore data to the same server it came from, but not any other. Strange? Maybe. I am assuming it might be a 'feature' of brightstor - for security. Since all the backups worked, and all the merges went flawlessly, and I can restore, I won't worry quite so much about the backups. Hopefully the trend will continue, with the system purging correctly on schedule and staying stable instead of getting corrupted after only a few days.
posted by MikeM at 2:48 PM    

 
After losing a battle to correct the database in BrightStor, I deleted it with extreme prejudice. Then we added an external drive stack with dual 4gb drives, and I am now reinstalling the database - putting the database on one of the new drives, the indexes on the other, and the transaction log and backup system on the original drive. This is the configuration recommended by BrightStor, so we have high hopes. If need be, I can extend the database once on the original drive, leaving 3.5gb (or so). I will still be restricted to using differential backups due to the high number of files per backup (800k per full backup), but with proper prune/purge settings, we should be OK. Of course, I have thought that before.
posted by MikeM at 11:14 AM    

 
Yesterday I tweaked the backup routine a bit, this morning I see that not everything went as planned. The dreaded E9011 error popped up again, but only on one volume out of three on the W2K server. Hmmm.

Last night after dinner we watched Buffy - seems that the apocalypse is here, and the gloves are coming off.
posted by MikeM at 7:43 AM    

 
Home : We just watched "Scooby-Doo" - and I laughed my A** off! That is one of the best and funniest movies I have seen in a long time. Full of inside jokes from the cartoon series, great acting - they nailed the characters. Fred is dumb as a post sometimes, Daphne is too cute to be taken seriously, Velma is the brain that everyone takes for granted (but is a hottie, by the way), and Shaggy is the one they discount as the cowardly bag-handler, but he sometimes saves the day!

Scooby? Well he is well-done and has a lot of personality. I wish I had a dog like that - that could talk, and was as smart as Scoob. Overall - I give the movie a 9 of 10. That means I liked it a lot. And yes, I am fairly easy to please, make me laugh, have a great soundtrack, and throw in Sarah Michelle-Gellar.
posted by MikeM at 11:02 PM    

 
Work: May have resolved the problem backing up the w2k server - seems that if you log in as administrator, the backup fails, but if you log in with the special account that the agent creates during install, it works... Why the 2nd level tech never thought to ask who I was logging into the w2k box as, I don't know. I never thought it was a factor because logging into all the other boxes works fine as admin/root. Just a w2k thing, I suppose.

The other problem is the restore problem, which happens when the merge job fails after the backup is complete. I reconfigured all the backups to do a full once a week and then differential daily backups intead of the old system of full every day - that means FAR fewer files to index every time, which should reduce the load on the merge routine to the point where it can keep up. I hate having to dumb down the backup routine because the SOFTWARE can't handle the load.

posted by MikeM at 10:59 PM    

 
Sunday: I got Patty a few great items and several nice ones - a lot of things she had been asking for, and I hope some items that will surprise her. I still need to find one or two things, but I'm basically done. :) Then while she was out on her shopping trip, I wrapped all of hers and labeled them.

Sunday evening we went to a pre-holiday party at Brad & Michelle's house - great company, great food. Brad & Michelle's young one was excited about the gifts we brought him, and busily ran the truck over everyone in the house, even trying to run it across little Tyler (Kenny and Heather's baby). Two great lil ones.

Since we got to spend so much time with two small children, Patty and I are considering having one of our own someday. We will see...
posted by MikeM at 9:23 AM    

 
Saturday: Patty and I went shopping and got most of the remaining gifts we had on our list! There are only a few items left, and we are each going out on separate shopping expeditions tomorrow to get the last few items for each other and a few other people. Now comes the fun part - sorting out all the stuff in the guest room (unofficially labeled "treasure room", cause its where all the gifts are), and make sure the list and the various piles of gifts line up. Then wrap everything, get it all labeled correctly, and sorted into 'trip piles'. Trip piles are the piles of stuff that go on each trip to each relative's house.
posted by MikeM at 9:19 AM    

 
Just got back from the show - it was excellent! There was a great lunch including fig-stuffed chicken breast and cinnamon ice cream with caramel-maple syrup and a dark chocolate top hat and cane! Everything was great, and the show was fantastic.

Tonight we are taking our good friends David and Sara out for his birthday! His birthday isn't officially until Monday, but we decided that this would be a good evening as we were all fairly busy for the next several days. Happy Birthday David!
posted by MikeM at 5:14 PM    

 
We both have tomorrow off, as we have tickets to go see Charles Dicken's great-great grandson do a one-man production of 'A Chrismas Carol' in DC! Should be a good show! After that, we have the rest of the day to explore DC and maybe get into a museum or something.
posted by MikeM at 11:23 PM    

 
Catching up on my Christmas shopping, already have a few things for most of the people on my list, but need to get a few more things for most of them. Still not sure what to get Patty. I'll likely stop into Gordon's Jewelers saturday if I can manage to get separated from Patty and do some shopping by myself. As it's a secret, I shouldn't put this in here, but she never reads this site anyway, so I feel fairly safe!
posted by MikeM at 11:09 PM    

 
Work went well today, spent a lot of time on the phone with tech support - oh joy - trying to get BrightStor to back up a recalcitrant Windows 2000 Server. We got to the dreaded 'NMP' support code. 'Not My Problem'

Basically, they claim it must be the hardware or windows drivers for the network card, because 'thousands of our customers have W2K and none of them have reported this problem'.

On the good side, the OTHER critical error was that we couldn't restore. anything. oops.

Turned out that if it was never merged into the database, BrightStor won't restore it. The merge was taking over 24 hrs and failing because the next backup began before it finished. It would usually catch up over the weekend, but some sessions were hosed, and thus no restores.

So we extended the database by 2 more chunks. Ingres, by the way, has a 2gb database limit. Thus we now have effectively a 6gb database. Did I mention that it took only 3 days to put that first database to 80% of capacity? Thus this 6gb database will last another 4-5 days before it too begins warning me that I am out of room. Oh yes, if it runs out of room, it won't merge the backup sessions.

Now, extending the database made the merge take a little over 10 hours instead of 24, but only because there was so much room to spare. It will quickly slow down. The solution is to either buy a 120gb drive and extend it WAYYYY out there, (which is impossible because it is installed on a sparc20, and it requires scsi drives, and can only hold two) OR stop detail logging (which means you have to merge the tape inventory into the database before you can restore anything) OR stop doing full backups of all 9 servers nightly, and move to a differential scheme. This latter is what we will do, most likely.

posted by MikeM at 11:05 PM    

 
I made it to work - the traffic was light, the ice was mainly gone - only a few slick spots, and those mainly on side streets. The major problem with this morning's commute was WATER. With the snow and ice blocking the gutters and drains, there is standing water on almost every street. The streets on hills had running water in sheets, fairly deep. I had more hydroplaning at 30mph than icing! I was able to maintain an avg of 30-40mph with little trouble, and there were still mavericks that decided that their 4wd pickup could do 70 if only I would get out of the way!

I enjoyed watching one black truck in particular skidding sideways in 3" water because he had to swerve around me and then punched it. :) He almost lost it not more than 100' down the road - I was watching carefully and making avoidance plans.
posted by MikeM at 11:44 AM    

 
Well, even with the warnings, its always a bit of a shock to wake up and watch the dogs go skating across the concrete in the backyard. Kinda funny, actually. They took off out the back door and skidded across the ice! Dogs usually manage to recover gracefully, though, and made it over to their gravel patch just fine, and had very little problem on the way back, even if their feet occasionally went in strange directions.

Yes, folks, it is ICY here. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about work, most likely wait and see what the roads are like in a few hours. I don't have that much vacation left, and I would like to get to work if possible.

Well, the lights are flickering and dimming, so we will likely lose power at some point. Oh bother. Perhaps I should go shower NOW and not have to wait for the power to come back on...
posted by MikeM at 6:41 AM    

 
Today I have been researching Intrusion Detection Systems, such as TripWire, Osiris, and Samhain. So far, I am leaning towards Samhain as the most complete and easiest to use application - as well as fairly cheap! Does anyone reading have any experience with these sorts of applications?

I'm also still dealing with the never-ending story of tech support from BrightStor. Hopefully we will get some closure and finally get a backup system that works. If we cannot resolve this situation in only a few weeks, I have instructions to cut my losses and switch to another backup product. Does anyone know of a good product that supports library backups with multiple drives and also allows installation on a Solaris box with agents for Linux, Unix, Windows 2000 server and Informix clients? We also need Open File Clients and the like.
posted by MikeM at 5:28 PM    

 
Saturday was a good day - Patty and I got the Christmas Tree up and the lights on it, and I got all the xmas boxes out of the attic as well so she could begin the decorating the next day!

Sunday : Patty decorated the tree with all of the ornaments and such that we have collected over time, and then got the house completely redecorated from Thanksgiving/Fall to Xmas/Winter - lots of work! Since she was coming down with a cold, she didn't feel that well for most of it, but enjoys redecorating so much that she persevered!

While she was doing all that, I was off with some friends playing 3rd Ed AD&D once again! We just started a new game, which should hopefully have its own page on here at some time in the near future. I might end up losing the old RPG link and replacing it with a sparkling new page dedicated to this new game. We hope to have character journals and descriptions, and maybe other items as well.
posted by MikeM at 5:21 PM    

 
Well, we got a total of about 6" - 7" here, forcing me to shovel a walkway for the dogs and take the top snow off of the gravels where they normally do their business. Even so, Maggie doesn't like the cold wet stuff, and needs encouragement to go outside. Toby just tears off around the yard enjoying himself thoroughly. He even once forgot that the pool was there, and while it is covered, the cover is now touching the water level, making an oval pond in the snow... Now there are tracks down the slope almost to the water level, sliding, then signs of an escape just before hitting the water. :) Getting to work this morning was slow going, it really wasn't so bad, as even the worst parts were less than solid ice, so I could at least coast in a straight line. The bad part is that there are so many impatient idiots that have decided that they can go 50 in a 30mph zone that is covered with packed snow and icy slush. Morons. Hopefully they won't hurt anyone in their rush to be first in these dangerous conditions.
posted by MikeM at 8:51 AM    

 
Wow! Nasty road conditions...


This one is I270 at Falls Road, as taken at 9:35 am

Click to go to the website of the Montgomery County Public Works - they have dozens of cameras all over! This link goes directly to the camera page, but www.dpwt.com is the main address.

Here at home, we have about 3" or maybe a little more now. Here is a picture of the backyard and a thermometer we have back there as well. (Ignore the time on the clock, its been off for a while and I'm tooo lazy to go fix it.)

posted by MikeM at 9:38 AM    

 
Tweaked the 'comments' feature again - I think it will stay this way. It should also now email me if someone leaves a comment. :)
posted by MikeM at 6:50 AM    

 
I finally finished 'Half-Life' - it was well worth playing again, I had forgotten the huge storyline, seems like several hundred 'levels' and separate sections. Truly one of the all time classic games.
posted by MikeM at 6:36 AM    

 
In the last 3 days or so I have started playing a new game from Microsoft called "Impossible Creatures" - the demo is huge - over 100mb - and incredibly fun. I am currently getting whupped by the enemy, even though I have grizzly/porcipine and grizzly/wolverine mutants. I think I need to consolidate my forces early and attack en masse instead of advancing slowly and posting critters to watch the new lands. Since the demo is this good, I definitely plan on getting the full game, much to Patty's lament! (I tend to get trapped in games, forgetting to eat, to sleep, or to reply when called...)
posted by MikeM at 6:34 AM    

 
Well, at around 1am it started snowing - fine ice particles almost like sugar, no light floaty stuff this - this looks more like ice bits than flakes. At this point we have 2 or 3" on the ground, and all the roads are horrible! Local Comcast ch 6 has video of all the major roads in the county. I could risk my life to get to work and then risk it even more by trying to go home tonight after 6" more has fallen, or I can stay home. I'm leaning rather heavily towards the latter.
posted by MikeM at 6:25 AM    

 
The backup issues were partially resolved by re-installing the ingres database, but we are still having problems. For instance, now the backups of a Windows 2000 server work correctly, which is good, but I cannot restore them, which is bad. I re-ordered all of the backup jobs to better use the drives and time available, and staggered the start times to avoid hardware locking problems. I even made a very nice Excel sheet showing which jobs happen at what time and on what tape drive - thus we can see where the conflicts were (now resolved!).
posted by MikeM at 3:45 PM    

 
Well, it is COLD this morning! 20 degrees or so right now. The weather service is calling for 3-7 inches of snow, depending on where you are - in the District they will actually get more snow than I should up here in Gaithersburg. I'm figuring on 4" or so. This is all supposed to start around 7pm, so I should be safely home in front of the fireplace by then.
posted by MikeM at 8:48 AM    

 
Ahhh, the simplicity and ease of gently correcting an errant ingres database under BrightStor from CA. The best method that I have found (and had to use OFTEN) is simply the 'rm -rf *' command. Yes, delete the entire database folder structure, from the /ingresii folder upward. Then re-install! Takes about an hour, and gives BrightStor a shiny new database with no nasty data to corrupt. Of course, given a few weeks, that changes, but then we just cleanse it again!

No, CA BrightStor is not my favorite program. :)
posted by MikeM at 8:46 AM    

 
I just heard from an old friend from my days in Roanoke. We used to game together at another friend's house most Saturdays - AD&D or whatever derivative of the day was in force. Currently, my local group of gaming friends are trying to pull together a semi-regular gaming schedule in Gaithersburg - inaugural date : Dec 8! The old game group 'went away' when the DM stopped gaming pretty much altogether, citing schedule and work difficulties. We hated to see him go, he was a decent guy and a good DM! We got most of the gang in on this new game, and added a few new members as well! I might keep a log or something and perhaps even start a group blog for the game, if anyone else in the group is interested. I'll post a link to the left if I do something like that, of course.
posted by MikeM at 2:56 PM    

 
Ahhh, the Compaq 17xl265 presario 1700 laptop - nice unit! Just had a co-worker bring one in that was misbehaving badly - locking up & other such misdeeds. I noticed that Norton and McAfee were both installed and both non-functional, but both had loaded services and VXDs and were busily fighting for control of the box... I uninstalled both of them, having to manually hunt down and destroy the Norton AV registry entries, as it was a bad install, thus the uninstall didn't work completely. Also, the sound drivers were scragged - reinstalled from the Compaq download site.

After that, I installed AOL 8.0 per the users request, deleted AOL 5 and 7, and configured it for him, then reinstalled McAfee AV and updated the signatures as well. Norton is not supported on this laptop, from what the website said. Everything was working fine when it went home with the happy owner. I like that laptop - it was easy to use, keys large enough to be useful, screen crisp and clear, DVD/CD player worked fine, to the point of self-installing UDF drivers when I put in a CD-RW disk with data I wanted to put on the unit. I would consider getting one of these for myself in the future, if the price were right.
posted by MikeM at 2:50 PM