Work Journal:
For Week of June 28, 1999
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
This is my first try at a workable format for my Work Journal. I want to have a format that is easy to read which I can use on an ongoing basis. I believe I have a good start on my format. I have looked at a few other journals I have found on the web. If you look at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ and http://www.ttgnet.com/ you will find a form of journal or day notes. I read these pages daily myself and they contain useful information for those of us who enjoy computers as a hobby or at work.
One thing I am not sure of is how to schedule publishing content. Should I be like a newspaper and collect content and then publish on Monday night the info I have and date it Tuesday so that readers can come to this page on Tuesday and find new material. This would create a single daily edition of my Work Journal. The other way is to publish on Monday what I do on Monday. This may even mean that updates may come several times a day as I make entries to the Journal. I am going to have to think about this a bit, and maybe experiment to see what I find works best for me.
I formatted a CD-RW to use for backing up data. The format took about an hour to complete. I am using the Adaptec software that came with my HP 8100. My first attempt to copy data bombed out on me as a file name was too long. I located the file and found that I didn't need any of the contents of the directory it was in so I deleted the whole directory. Tried copying files to the CD again and this time everything copied with no troubles.
Afternoon: I picked up a phone and cabling so that I can setup a phone in my new work area. It was quite simple to just copy the existing wiring to hook every thing up. Now to setup a modem on my Exchange server so I can get my LAN setup with e-mail and internet access.
Since I setup a CD-RW for data back-up the yesterday day I thought I would try writing directly to it from an application. I use Outlook 2000 for email, contacts list and to track my where I have sent resumes while job hunting. I have been trying to do a daily backup my data for Outlook to my server. I have had a few bad experiences with loosing Outlook data, usually when I am helping my mother by trying to duplicate her problems. Outlook had no trouble seeing the CD-RW and writing to it, but on the down side it slowed down my PC quite a bit more than just dragging and dropping files to the CD-RW does.
I just tried publishing my changes to the site while Outlook writes data to the CD-RW and things went well. The publishing process didn't seen to take any longer. Windows NT Workstation 4.0 continues to impress me with its ability to multitask and not crash. With Windows 95 or 98 I would never even think of trying to do more than one major job at the same time. I have had too many bad experiences when I have tried multitasking on anything but Windows NT. NT has never crashed on me while multitasking so far. Once I thought it had crashed when I had multiple processes running at once, but I waited a few minutes and the processes one by one completed and I was able to start more work.
One small problem I have run into with CD-RW. Explorer crashes after I use it to check the properties of the CD drive with a CD-RW disk in it. Explorer will show me the properties but as soon as I click on the OK or Cancel button Dr.Watson pops up with a message about explore.exe. As soon as I close Dr.Watson explorer and the Task bar disappear. After a few seconds and some hard drive thrashing the Task bar reappears. I can then reopen and use explorer with no problems. When I first noticed this problem I thought it may be just be a one time only problem. This does not seem to be the case as I can consistently recreate the problem. I tried using two different CD-R disks with the same results.
Afternoon: Doing more work to clean-up the site. I took all the short daily notes off the home page where I need to write an introduction to the site.
I have written an Introduction to this site an put it up on the home page. Next I want to have a unique name for this site which I have been thinking about since I decided to start the endeavor. No good ideas yet but in time one will come to me or be suggested to me.
Evening: The computer I have setup as my Exchange server has been suspect for sometime. When I moved it to my new work area it would not boot. In the past it has worked fine if left alone, physically not moved or even touched, and left with the case open. If the case was closed it would reboot itself every few hours. After moving the server it would not boot. I checked all the connections and everything was fine, and it still would not boot. I then picked it a few inches off the desk and dropped it. It then booted up properly.
Now that I want to setup a modem to my Exchange server I though it was about time it became more reliable. So I have pulled the hard drive and CD-ROM out of it and put them in another PC.
The first time booting up the transplanted hard drive in the recipient case I went into the CMOS and manually set the CMOS settings for the hard drive. The PC failed to boot with these settings so I rebooted again, went into the CMOS and let the hard drive be auto detected. This time the PC started up correctly and I selected to start NT in VGA mode as a different video card is in the recipient PC than was in the donor PC. I could not log onto the network as the patch cable was not seated properly. I then went into properties and changed the display type to match the video card. NT server then required a reboot after which I was able to log onto the network as I had reseated the patch cord. Then I got a message that the default video setting has been used and I can change them. I then shut down the server to do one more boot test and also fired up a workstation which is configured with Outlook to communicate with Exchange.
The Exchange server started up with out a hitch. When using Outlook on the workstation I had started, I was able to successfully send and receive a test message to myself. Now I need to shut down the server again, make sure I have everything buttoned down properly, close the case and connect an external modem to it. After sitting for a while the server gives me an error message so I check the Event Viewer. The S3 driver for the video card in the old PC has not started as the S3 video card does not exist in donor PC. I Disable the S3 driver and reboot the server. I think I'll let it run awhile before I do any more work on it.
The computer which is becoming my new Exchange server did not have all the serial ports setup so that was the first order for the day so I can connect an external modem. I checked the CMOS during first boot after hooking up serial ports to the mother board and enabled serial port 1 which had been disabled. NT server did not detect the modem so and when I try to manually add the modem no ports show to install it to. Select ports in control panel and again no ports show. This is strange as my mouse works and it is connected to a serial port. I add a port and NT requires a reboot. After rebooting the modem is still not detected and manually installing still does not list any ports while applet for ports lists COM1 which I had installed earlier.
Not making any head way and am considering reinstalling NT server to see if that will solve the problem.
No more updates for a few days as other business has come up.
No more updates for a few days as other business has come up. See week of July 5, 1999
No more updates for a few days as other business has come up. See week of July 5, 1999
No more updates for a few days as other business has come up. See week of July 5, 1999
No more updates for a few days as other business has come up. See week of July 5, 1999