Not much has been going on this week - Patty has had several interviews, and is enjoying her time at home. She is working on a book and would like to become an author - fiction or perhaps magazine/newspaper articles.

I am making progress in our ongoing difficulties in backing up a W2K server - I am still working on getting BrightStor's w2k agent working, but in the meantime I have set up a tar for the three drives to tar.gzip all of the files to another server where there is lots of room. The target server gets backed up nightly, so that will partially resolve the backup problem with the W2K server. Kudos for Brian for figuring out how to bypass the 2gb limit on samba!

Just got back from ComDex. What a waste of time. Last year ComDex was both floors of the convention center, this year it was not quite half of the top floor only. We finished a complete walk-through in under an hour, and that includes talking with 3-4 vendors about applications for their product.
posted by MikeM at 2:49 PM    

 
Yesterday was a relaxing day, we drove around a bit just to give Patty an idea of where her prospective employers were, then stayed home a bit and read/napped, then went out to dinner with three other couples. The food was good and the company was great.

Today was spent taking the christmas tree down and re-boxing all of its branches and such - it was, after all, MY idea to get a 9' tree, so I get to bear the brunt of carrying the 120 lb monster back upstairs and then to the garage for storage. While I was at it, I took all of the multitude of boxes full of assorted christmas decor back to the attic (in the garage, of course). It's nice having all that attic storage, its just a pain having to back one of the cars out to get to it!

It began snowing around 4pm here, maybe a bit earlier. It's not sticking badly, only a dusting has stuck, and its the large wet flakes. Of course, it is supposed to reach 20 tonight, so we could have an interesting morning commute!
posted by MikeM at 6:20 PM    

 
Still cold (15f), wind higher than yesterday, and about 1/4" of snow fell. The ice crystal form, light and powdery, stuck immediately to everything, and made a nice icy surface out of all the roads. After scraping and salting last night, most roads are OK, but stick to the worn tracks - everything else has refrozen.

I'm burning CDs of the Mandrake 9.0 distribution - not because I ever intend on using them, but rather because this is very likely to be the last distribution from them. I don't believe that they will emerge from bankruptcy, and I don't believe the beta version of the next distribution will be released as a full version. I'm a collector, I suppose. :)
posted by MikeM at 8:26 AM    

 
Inspiron - now throwing parity, NMI, and other memory errors... Not the docking station. Unplug power - HUMMM. Unplug each cable, no effect until unplug printer. Hum stops. Plug everything back in - no hum. Printer power supply shot? Touch printer cable shroud to lpt port shielding - HUM! Ah-HAH! Disconnect printer. It was old anyway (HP 840). Now the computer still gives memory errors. Swap chassis with a spare (exchange HD) - new chassis with old HD boots wonderfully, five times in a row, in the docking station.

Call Dell - swap memory? MB? They will fix it, then I will get my spare back.

Move printer to back room - need a new power supply, methinks.

Client happy - except now they have to print to the main printer, 15' away.
posted by MikeM at 2:21 PM    

 
Well, as much as I would like to switch to non-microsoft applications, the simple fact is that the alternatives are not stable, not reliable, and not compatible.

Mozilla 1.2.1 - the latest 'stable' release, still crashes regularly, and cannot display some of the most common websites correctly.

OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 - the latest patch release - is stable but opening a word or excel document and then saving it in MS format so others can read it risks wrecking the document! It cannot even handle a simple outline format without munging it all up when saving to the MS format. It completely broke my spreadsheet because it cannot handle the { } formulas used in the more complex spreadsheets.

Until these applications can work well with MS apps, I cannot use them. Back to Office and MSIE.
posted by MikeM at 10:38 AM    

 
Colder than yesterday - 10F and 15mph winds. Keep in mind that I have a 2.5 block walk across open parking lots to get to my building!

Patty is diligently working on finding a job, already contacted several top picks and sent her newly revised resume along. She is also still working on her book, and has expressed an interest in keeping a journal - I'm gently hinting at perhaps keeping an online journal. :)
posted by MikeM at 7:52 AM    

 
Inspiron update : I found that the speakers attached to the docking station give a moderate hum when the main laptop power is disconnected from the docking station. The speakers are separately powered, and plugged into the headphone jack on the dock.

The hum gets louder when I unplug the network cable.

Hmmmm...

Getting a carrier hum thru speakers attached to the headphone jack ONLY when the power was not connected to the dock - plug in the power cable and the speakers go silent. Unplug the network cable (with the power not plugged in) and the hum gets louder. Grounding loop?

Replacing the Docking Station - see if that helps. Boots now, will revisit tomorrow.
posted by MikeM at 12:42 PM    

 
That same Inspiron 8000 unit is back again - this time when it boots it gets to about 2/3 of the loading bar on the W2K screen, then blue screens with the 'if this is the first time you have seen this, reboot' message.

Booted fine out of the docking station after I flipped it over and checked all the connections again.

The events logs show interesting errors like 'unable to create thread' and the like when booting.

I got it booted, so now I am ghosting all partitions to images, which I will store on the server. I think perhaps we may have a CPU or memory problem. I'm leaning towards memory being the culprit. There were several event log entries regarding various .cpp files not being able to run due to insufficient memory space on a 128mb machine which shows only 123mb...
posted by MikeM at 10:22 AM    

 
By the way, it is 12 degrees F here right now. And the wind is blowing at 3-5 mph or so. Darn chilly.
posted by MikeM at 8:06 AM    

 
Yesterday was interesting - we got a surge in Klez infected emails (all detected by a simple mcafee scan of the openmail folder (/var/mail) every 3 min...). It appears that several of them had the From field spoofed, but there is a second From field that the servers use, and that appears to be accurate - I'll try to contect some of the people just in case they were actually infected.

We also had a client infected with a porn-dialer - nasty bit o' work that. Cleaned up nicely, but what bothers me is that this variant can only be contracted by either surfing porn sites or clicking on the attachment of a porn spam. I edumacated those in the area as to the dangers and horrors of such activities, including the fact that we log all internet access. :)

One of our Inspiron 8000 units was being obstinate, throwing memory errors and resetting just after logging in. Once I popped some of the bottom panels off, checked connections, and charged it for an hour or so, all the symptoms went away. Working fine now. The healing touch, I suppose.

All of the backups worked fine. This will, I hope, be the norm from now on. The only fly in the ointment is that we still cannot backup the W2K boxes. I believe the fault lies with the BEB 10 W2K agent, but the tech guy insists that it couldn't be at fault. *sigh*

I even tested restoring to other units, and that works fine as well, as long as I don't try to restore to the new RH8.0 box. I think we have permisisons issues there, so no biggie at the moment. I'll work on that with Brian if he has time later this week. I noticed that I cannot even create folders or copy files into my home folder on that box from my windows unit. Samba looks fine, so there must be a permissions wierdness.
posted by MikeM at 8:04 AM    

 
Relaxing weekend so far, and tomorrow is a holiday! Yesterday we went to a friend's surprise birthday party - Patty asked her out to shop, go to the movies, and have lunch, which basically kept her busy until the party was ready... :) It was a great party and fun was had by all!

Today was game day for me, we played AD&D some more over at the DM's place. 2-weeks ago I missed a game due to illness and snow - and nobody sent me any content for the website. Hopefully I'll have it all up to date soon! So far we have played 4 game sessions, and nearly everyone is expecting to make 3rd level at some point in the next session.
posted by MikeM at 7:49 PM    

 
22f this morning, about an inch of dry icy snow fell last night, the kind that blows around and drifts well, if there were any wind to speak of. They claim that the wind will begin today, which might move part of the snow around, but as of now it is calm.

Last night we cleaned out Patty's desk and office - three trips. Eight years is a long time for personal items to accumulate. We still can't believe that the boss would be so arbitrary as to give her job to an eminently unqualified person who was formerly a 1-day per week contractor. This person must be a very good friend indeed to have convinced the boss to give Patty's job to her, pushing Patty down the hard-won ladder. All that would have been required was to leave Patty's position as it was, and create an equal position for the contractor, but no compromise was forthcoming, and now they have lost the most loyal and hard-working worker they had.

Patty, on the other hand, is alternately hopeful for the future, hurt and betrayed by her former friend and employer, and tearful because she misses all her longtime friends at work. She is beginning to explore other avenues, such as writing and substitute teaching, and has actually already begun a novel/short story! From what I have read, it promises to be quite good! I offered to set up a blog for her so that she could share it with a larger audience, but she is somewhat resistant to the concept. *grin*
posted by MikeM at 6:46 AM    

 
Cold - 18 deg F here, supposed to snow at some point, hopefully after 5pm, with 4+ inches possible by morning, continued snow thru tomorrow. Sometimes I wish I lived in Florida.

Yesterday while running tests with the BrightStor backup agent for W2K, Brian and I worked on getting the Sun patch for Solaris 8 to install /dev/random - such fun! The official patch refused to work - consistently claiming that one or more of the patches required were missing. Even though the documentation and even the OEM docs claimed that NO prior patches were required. Hmmm. Brian got it working by installing a completely separate 3-rd party patch that was intended for something else, but served the same purpose. Success at last!
posted by MikeM at 7:54 AM    

 
Well, Buffy was pre-empted by some silly 'bloopers' show. *sigh* We ended up watching 'Get Shorty' - I liked it. :)

At work, I experimented some more with the failing BrightStor Windows 2000 agent. So far I have seen nearly identical failures on three machines, one of them on the same switch as the unix server the main backup application is installed on. All of the other units backup fine, it seems that only w2k machines suffer this failure. The tech still insists that the agent is not at fault, because nobody else has called this problem in. We changed registry settings for the agent three times, with failures all three times. I'm interested to see what he comes up with next. So far I have noticed that when he runs out of answers he tends to dismiss the problem as hardware or networking issues that he can't fix, thus not his problem. (Instead of escalating the issue to someone that may be able to help, as I believe he should have done already.) My fear is that HE is the one people escalate to, thus meaning there is no higher authority.
posted by MikeM at 7:43 AM    

 
Tartuffe was excellent - the fellow that played TouchStone the jester in 'As you Like It' also played Tartuffe the hypocrite - he is truly gifted.

Yesterday I bought Scooby Doo! Watched it with actor's commentary last night - I just can't get enough of it. Soon, I hope to watch it through again, this time with the producter/directors' commentary.
posted by MikeM at 5:53 PM    

 
The show was great - there were a few mis-spoke lines, but they recovered quickly and gracefully. Overall a very good adaptation of the Bard's words for a more modern audience. Today we see Tartuffe - should be equally as good!
posted by MikeM at 11:46 AM    

 
Update to yesterday's post: Resignation was submitted, negotiations in progress. Maybe they can work this out, but it looks like a job hunt is in order for Patty. I was a little inaccurate in my submission - there are 9 engineers, and that includes the 4 managers, the VP and Pres. That leaves three engineers for five boss-types. Incredible.

Today Patty and I are going to Olney Theatre to see Shakespeare's 'As You Like It', by the National Players.
Tomorrow we see Moliere's 'Tartuffe' by the same group. Should be good! We get to attend both of these for FREE as we just got season tickets for the Olney Theatre - quite reasonable and they do a very good job at whatever they attempt!
posted by MikeM at 11:51 AM    

 
Hypothetical case: Company promotes person to mgmt position in business development, she does well, gets kudos, resolves several problems, gets new customers in and is working hard to keep the old customers happy.
On the other side of the company, there are 7 engineers and of those, 4 are managers. These managers fight over the remaining engineers' time, so the work suffers. The work is done late, inaccurately, and occasionally not at all. Customers leave. Prices stay the same, other competitors do the same work - but correctly - for less.

Since customers are leaving, the owner of the company blames the Bus Dev mgr.

There is also a consultant, friend of the owner, working part time in Bus Dev but not under the Bus Dev Mgr, rather answering directly to the owner. Owner learns that consultant has been laid off her other job and is now entirely reliant on his company, so he decides to make HER the Bus Dev Mgr, demoting the previous Bus Dev Mgr (who has done nothing wrong, and who has done an excellent job) to a position under the consultant (now a FT employee). He insists that this is not a demotion, and cannot see why the original Bus Dev mgr is upset. He will not reconsider.

Thoughts? Recommendations? My recommendation is that this person update their resume immediately and seek employment and appreciation elsewhere.
posted by MikeM at 9:51 AM    

 
TGIF.

I'm so tired right now - I'm not sure why, I think I got enough sleep - even turned off ER instead of watching it! Cable went out last night anyway, then came back, then went out. With slanted lines fading in, then overwhelming the picture, which then went to static audio with the distorted video. If you went to any of the menu or guide screens, the audio cleared right up - so we could listen if we constantly kept hitting the guide button, but we couldn't watch. It eventually went back to normal, then would do it again for 30-60 min. Frustrating. We called for service and the earliest they can get to us is the 16th. For that level of service, we pay $60/mo? I'm taking the cable box in tonoght after work and exchanging it for another, per the tech's recommendation. If that doesn't work, we may have to miss Buffy tues night, which would be horrible.

And this with me considering getting a cable modem and getting cable internet from these jokers. Ach! $100/mo for cable TV/Internet, and this is what I am to expect? Of course, if the cable is screwy, so will the internet connection! I hope that if the cable box goes south it doesn't affect my internet connection, but I wouldn't doubt it.

I'm considering a Motorola SB4200 cable modem, over the LinkSys BEFCMU10 ver 2.
I also want to get a LinkSys BEFSX41 Firewall/Router/Switch

I was considering wireless 802.11b, but maybe I'll just bite the bullet and have the cable run to my office, even if it is $50 extra.
Maybe I can run it myself - we'll have to see.
posted by MikeM at 7:23 AM    

 
The Secret Diaries are a series of fan-fiction diary entries posted as if from the characters in The Lord of the Rings. Read them from the BOTTOM - the newest ones, near the top, are from the most recent movie. The author posts infrequently, but they are all hilarious. By the way, if you don't appreciate 'alternative-lifestyle' humor and innuendo, don't read these...

She also has written several fan fiction stories for Harry Potter and friends. Same warning as above, as these contain 'alternative lifestyle' references and some violence.
posted by MikeM at 8:12 AM    

 
Just got a nice email from some friends of ours in NJ - Bob and Frannie! Hi guys! They run an excellent chocolate shop up there!
posted by MikeM at 8:19 AM    

 
Yesterday I got a follow up call from the Brightstor tech - at 4:30pm. Did I mention I usually get off work at 4:30pm? But I stayed, dedicated worker bee that I am, and listened to him accuse the hardware, operating system, and our other applications, then our network and other servers for the noted and spectacular failure of Brightstor to backup our Windows 2000 server across the network via the W2K client. *sigh*

I may put in an email to the sales-drone in charge of our account, requesting that our case be escalated to a higher-level tech, as this one is up against the wall of his knowledge. I have noticed that once a tech from any firm reaches the limit of their skill, they resort to the old 'not our software' gambit, in the hope that I will sigh, shed a tear, and simply accept that it was not meant to be.

Now then - the hardware is identical to the previously-working configuration. The only thing that changed was that we installed W2K server on the unit instead of the previous Win NT 4.0 sp6a. We applied sp2 for w2k server to the unit - no change, other than it broke PcAnywhere (ALERT! SP2 for W2K will break PcAnywhere - be warned!). The strange thing is that sometimes it works. Not predictably or reliably, but occasionally out of the blue, the backup succeeds. If there were a fault in the hardware/OS, wouldn't that impossible? Time to escalate the issue.
posted by MikeM at 8:15 AM    

 
Scary stuff... Closest objects to pass earth. Strange what doesn't make the news, isn't it.
posted by MikeM at 4:15 PM    

 
Roads were actually clear and dry, for the most part. Kudos to the road crews!

I'm looking to upgrade from my current modem dialup ISP to cable ISP. The cost of my current ISP and the second phone line is actually MORE than the cable service! Of course, I need to buy a decent cable modem and router first. Any comments on the LinkSys BEFCMu10 ver2 cable modem and the BEFSR41 router/firewall?
posted by MikeM at 10:49 AM    

 
23 degrees this morning. Roads were wet last night. Any bets on current road conditions?
posted by MikeM at 6:00 AM    

 
Got to work and discovered that while most of the backups went well, the full backup friday of one of the main servers failed just after formatting the second tape. *Sigh* "E1036 Failed to write to media". The tape was in the drive, even though BrightStor claimed it had been ejected and was in the proper library slot. Ejected the tape manually, looks OK - not snapped or wrinkled up like I had expected. I'll reschedule the full backup again for tonight and test the tape later, when I have the time.

Other than that, the drive in was OK - most roads are just wet, although a little caution is always a good thing in snowy weather.

A printer that had been having engine errors (and that we recvd a replacement maintenance tray kit for) is doing it again. New kit was installed Friday, so I'll call the friendly tech support line and arrange an on-site visit ASAP. Xerox really does have the best service and online tech support I have seen in quite a while!

Update: Tech from Xerox called me 30 min after requesting an onsite visit, he was here 60 min after that and took only 30 min to get the printer working perfectly. 2 hr response time is fairly nice, and we have the standard maintenance, not special or high-end. I'm impressed!
posted by MikeM at 8:59 AM    

 
Woke up this morning with another sore throat - hasn't been sore since Friday, so this isn't a good sign. Also headache, sinus drainage, coughing (deep hacks). I've had the other cold symptoms, but the sore throat had gone away and I was feeling better, then yesterday's snow forced me to do some shoveling, which likely caused this backsliding - everything is back with a vengeance today. Oh joy.

Friday after work we drove to Roanoke, saw my family and did the Xmas thing with everyone down there over Friday night and Saturday. Then Saturday we drove home. We left Sat because they were calling for snow and ice all the way from Roanoke home, and I really didn't want to drive for 4 hours in snow. Short trip, but we got to see everyone and I believe everyone was happy with their Xmas!

Sunday it did indeed snow - about 4"-5" - and I played Mechwarrior and watched DVDs all day.

Today they are calling for another inch or so, but the roads are supposedly clear for the most part - main roads anyway, our neighborhood roads are completely covered in packed snow ice. Should be fun. I measured the snow on the top of the patio table at 5" this morning. My digital outdoor thermometer claims it is 31.8 degrees F right now.
posted by MikeM at 6:18 AM    

 
Just found this : Computers by Lego?. Hilarious, and created by someone with WAY too much time on their hands.
posted by MikeM at 9:13 AM    

 
Sucrets = good. Feeling a bit better, but not anywhere near normal. Work today, then off again tomorrow, when I'm supposed to drive to VA. Maybe I'll let Patty drive so I can try to catch a nap on the way. :)

Got to play a good deal of Mechwarrior yesterday! 2-3 hr sessions broken up with playing games or watching movies with Patty. Nice day, overall. I discovered an underhanded way to get some of the more rare and hard-to-find weapons in the single-user campaign portion of Mechwarrior : Mercenaries - when you buy a mech, it comes with the default weapons. If you know which weapon you can't find on the open market (ER PPC) and you know what mech comes with it by default (Puma, has two of them), you can buy that mech, then strip off the weapons and resell it. Then you buy it again. Rinse and repeat. I ended up with about 30 of these big guns, spread over 8 rather large mechs - acquired via money earned by thrashing the opposition with these nice guns. I love it when a plan comes together!

I forgot to mention that the Christmas Monopoly game we were playing on the 30th ended in a complete rout. for me. I ended up with nothing, no money, no property, and no win. :) I was thoroughly trounced!
posted by MikeM at 8:16 AM    

 
Well, my throat is no longer numb. Not as good as you might think, as it now definitely feels flayed. Like, Uber-ouch, Scooby!

Today we are wrapping Christmas presents for our impending trip to Va - there are a lot to wrap, and I have to get downstairs and help Patty.

Hopefully I'll have some time to play Mechwarrior today, so far I am enjoying it, even though some of the game play aspects are not at all changed from the previous version - at least it installed without a hitch and so far plays stably!
posted by MikeM at 10:13 AM