Work Journal

For Week of October 18, 1999

Page Updated Tuesday, March 21, 2000 07:18 PM

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

I had difficulties publishing my changes to the site last night. Everything looked fine in FrontPage but then the changes were not showing up when I checked the site. I must admit that I have not been checking that my postings are in fact being made much lately as I started to get quite confident that things were going well. I installed Leechftp so I could take a look at the files on my site and found that my last posting did not update the site structure properly. A little clean-up and publish again from FrontPage and all is well again.

My Windows 2000 setup from yesterday did not work out as I had planned as Win2000 could see the hidden WinNT partition and thus messed things up. I scrubbed the hard drive down, setup a small DOS partition and then reinstalled WinNT. I think I set some kind of a record, I had WinNT installed with Service Pack 5, and Office 2000 complete with internet access in just a hair over one hour.

I could not get Motocross Madness to install on the latest Win2000 release, when I tried to install it always said that the drive did not have enough free space even though there was over 1 Gig of free space. I then installed the game on my server, but then ran into a problem with the video driver for my 740 Intel video card, so the the game would still not run. I also ran into a problem with the sound cutting out after only a few minutes. I guess I just will not be using Windows 2000 and Motocross Madness for a while yet. 

I have a copy FrontPage 2000 upgrade and accidentally used the Product Key for it when I installed Office 2000 yesterday, and Office accepted the key and then acted like it was an upgrade by looking for and not finding a valid upgrade product. This makes me wonder if you have a Product Key for a full version of an Office 2000 product if you used it on an upgrade product would the install act like a full product and not look for an upgrade product?

Once in a while I am hit with a great idea. Today I had one of those ideas. Every once in while it would be nice to have a test bench where I can just set a mother board down, plug all the necessary things into it and see if it works. The same goes for hard drives etc.. Well instead of spending a bunch of money on some fancy rig I figured why not build one using one of my old cases. So I pulled an old case out of storage, pulled the cover off it, and gave the cover a toss as I will never need it again. I removed the mounting plate for the mother board, flipped it over and fastened it back to the case. Now I can lay the case on its side, mount a motherboard to it, connect the power etc and have a working test bench. When I don't need it I can just throw it in a corner. The current power supply only has connectors for AT boards, but the case can be modified easily to accept an ATX power supply or I could swap the current power supply for one that has dual power hookups for AT and ATX boards. This is one of those times I wished I had a digital camera so I could take a picture of this rig and post it for others to see.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

I don't know when I will get to post today's entry as I have been experiencing lots of trouble with my internet connection with Shaw. It has been very spotty as to when I get access, and to where. I have tried sitting facing Silicon Valley, checking for sun spots, praying to the IP gods and cursing at whom ever is causing this piss poor internet service to no avail, maybe tomorrow will be a better day. After a little investigation I find that I can ping the Gateway, but not the DNS server, so it maybe awhile before I get to do anymore surfing or email.

Just for fun today I wanted to see what would happen if I checkout my reserved domain name SiliconPatch. Well it seems that Network Solutions has put up an under construction page using my domain name.

For those of you who are MCSE certified and are curious as to what the new Windows 2000 MCSE track does to your current certification, may be interested in the following:

Q. I am an MCSE and have passed the Windows NT 3.51 exams. Is my certification still valid?
A. The Windows NT 3.51 exams will retire June 30, 2000. MCSEs who have passed the Windows NT 3.51 core exams are required to upgrade their certifications by June 30, 2001, to remain certified.

Q. I am an MCSE and have passed the Windows NT 4.0 exams. Is my certification still valid?
A. The Windows NT 4.0 exams will retire December 31, 2000. MCSEs who have passed the Windows NT 4.0 core exams are required to upgrade their certifications to the new Windows 2000 track by December 31, 2001, to remain certified.

Q. I am an MCSE but I have not passed the Windows NT 4.0 exams. May I take the accelerated exam instead of the Windows 2000 core exams?
A. Passing all three Windows NT 4.0 exams is a prerequisite to taking Exam 70-240: Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Accelerated Exam for MCPs Certified on Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0. If you have not passed the three Windows NT 4.0 exams, you will not receive credit for exam 70-240 toward the Windows 2000 MCSE track. The accelerated exam is intended as an incentive to help individuals who have passed the Windows NT 4.0 exams transition more quickly to the Windows 2000 track.

Q. I have passed the three Windows NT 4.0 exams. What is the advantage of taking the accelerated exam instead of the four core Windows 2000 exams?
A. Exam 70-240: Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Accelerated Exam for MCPs Certified on Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 is intended to help you transition more quickly to the Windows 2000 track. It will be available for a limited time only - until December 31, 2001. You will save time with the accelerated exam, which is expected to be shorter than the total time for the four core exams.

Q. When will the Windows 2000 MCSE exams be available?
A. Some exams will be available in their beta version during first and second quarter 2000. Others will be available later in 2000.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

12:17 AM and I finally have internet access again, and can now can publish Tuesday's entry and move on. I had to break down and setup my laptop to use my backup dial-up account so I could at least check my email. Working with a 14.4 modem after using a cable modem for the past year is very painful.

The gremlins are still at it. No sooner had I verified that my 12 AM posting worked, that my cable line went completely dead. The cable modem was getting no signal at all. So I shut everything down and called it a night. Fresh start many hours later and it it has taken a few reboots to get all things internet related going again, though web pages do seem to be coming up rather slowly.

Today is my birthday so I am off to be a lazy bum for the day. For those who are curious I turned 35.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

I saw a program on the U.S. introduction of Shift Magazine on TV. Shift is a Canadian Technology Culture magazine. I have not read the magazine nor even heard of it before. What was interesting and in a weird way funny was that just as they were putting the final touches to the first U.S. edition, prior to sending it to the printers, they lost power to all their computers, right there on TV. A weeks worth of cover art etc. all gone. They never stated what caused the power outage, but I am willing to be that the TV crew plugged in a few spot lights which overloaded the circuit breaker.

It is strange how one report says that the earth quake in Taiwan had minimal effect on supplies of different types of computer chips while another report says that only certain types of chips are effected. Then some say that production is now back to normal while others say it is not. It is getting hard to know which is the factual story, or they both may to some extent be true. I also heard some economist say that RAM prices will never return to the low prices we enjoyed in the summer of 99, because the economics of supply and demand are what have pushed prices up not any shortage of RAM. It will be interesting to see what happens to RAM prices in 2000 and how the Christmas 1999 PC sales are effected by RAM supplies and prices.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

I have no idea where my head was this morning, I awoke sure that it was Saturday and was all prepared to go make some pancakes when the phone rang. My mother was having problems with her email which turned out she was just being a bit forgetful in how to use ZDnetmail. Then the conversation some how got around to the fact that today is Friday, not Saturday and I had better change gears.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

When to see Fight Club last night. This is one of the most interesting movies I have seen in a very long time. If from the commercials you think it is just another movie full of senseless violence, you could not get further from the truth. The violence is just the medium used to set the scene for a very philosophical, psychological, smart movie. At times the movie is a very graphic and gross, but it is well acted, written and directed. Highly recommended. 

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

I had heard that there are live results of the Ironman Triathlon Championships in Kona Hawaii on the web but have had no luck in finding any such thing. I have though managed to find some postings of irregular results done by a webzine. My interest is mostly due to there being a few Canadian athletes with good chances of winning the event. I finely find the live results site but cannot connect to it.

I am getting pissed at Shaw and the performance of the internet service they are providing. More DNS server problems which means I can make a high speed connection to the internet, but do nothing with it. I have also been noticing performance problems with the cable internet service during non prime use times of the day.

Next Week