Work Journal For Week of November 1, 1999
Last Update: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 07:18 PM
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I am going to be making some changes to the format of this site over the next little while. The first change has been implemented starting today, which is to name the current weeks page current.htm so people can bookmark it so they will not longer have to go to my home page first, then to the index, and then to the current weeks entry (Hey Tom, now you can remove one requirement from your list of formal daynotes gang entrance requirements).
Well I believe I have made a good start at creating a new look for this page. If you notice that it looks a bit like one or more of the other daynoters pages, well imitation is the greatest form of flattery. My home page is still frames based, and I am not sure yet if I will change it to a tables based page like this one. I really like the way frames allows banners, links etc. to stay in position while you scroll through content in another frame.
I'm finding that FrontPage has some quirks ( yes, big surprise ) when working with tables. I want the page to be viewable at any resolution without the end user having to scroll side to side. Just when I thought I had this done, I made a small column width change. FrontPage then changed the properties for width for other columns, which I never told it to do, thus the page would not fit all resolutions as FrontPage had changed the column width to a fixed size on me.
Having to reboot my PC every time I return to use it after I leave it running unattended for an extended period of time is getting tiresome. I am not quite ready to break down and scrub the hard drive clean of NT, so I have uninstalled all the applications I have installed in the past few days to see if this is the cause of my troubles. I also went so far as to apply the video driver again to see if this will help.
I see my web page usage statistics are at there highest since I started tracking them on a regular basis back in August. It will be interesting to see how the redesign of the site affects the statistics, as people can now bookmark the current week, which should reduce the number of page requests.
My mother brought up the topic of meta tags in web pages which has sent me scouring the web for information on what meta tags are all about. I found a nice short clear explanation @ of meta tags. I have never thought much about how search engines go about updating their content, or how a site gets listed in the first place, well now I know a little about this process.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Knock on wood, NT seems to be stable again after uninstalling a few applications and reapplying the video driver.
I got into the swing of things yesterday and made changes to the format of my home page and others. If nothing else this exercise has allowed me to learn more about FrontPage. I still have a few links to fix and a few pages to update.
Things on the job front are looking up. One position I interviewed for 2 months ago is being offered to me. The person who originally got the position has not worked out so now the employer is apparently working their way down the list of second choices and have come to me. The agency which sent me for the interview is checking to make sure that the position being offered is indeed the one I interviewed for, and that the details like pay rate have not changed.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I had to run downtown to get a security check run on myself. Seems odd that the client that wants to hire me, wants me to run a security check on myself, but maybe this is just one of the joys of being a contractor. It takes a week to get a security report so this may put things on hold for a few days. The agency is checking to see what the client wants to do.
Well it turns out I get to start work sans security report, but I will not get a security pass for the building etc. till the report is made available to the client. So for a start I will be going through orientation and meeting the people I will be working with, but most likely doing no work.
New job and no idea what kind of tools they will have for me to work with so I have gone through my kit to make sure I have everything I think I will want or need. I have a variety of boot, setup and start disks for different flavors of Windows and DOS. I made up labels for all of the disks using Word 2000 with good results. The labels are not fancy, just black and white with the silicon Patch logo on the top, a description of type of disk, and the date the disk was made. The date is of no real value, but with my logo on each disk it should be easier to identify them if someone borrows a disk and forgets to return it. Some of my hand tools really need to be replaced, the Phillips screw driver in my kit is of very poor quality and while I only use it on computers, the head is wearing out. I need to go to the hardware store and buy a few high quality screw drivers.
I tried to publish my site with this page set to not publish and it did not work. Too bad as there are times when it would be nice to be working on several pages but not all of them maybe ready for prime time, thus being able to not publish some pages would be nice. I have worked around this in the past by having some pages in another sub-web and having no links to them. The pages are still published but they are not viewable to Joe user who does not know to, or would even want to dig around a site for hidden pages.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Brian Bilbrey sent me an email about how when he checks my site, that it often seems that I am a day ahead of schedule. When I replied to him my initial thought was that time zones were the major factor in this, plus my habit of normally publishing my entries between 11 and 12 PM mountain time. Well I looked up his time zone, and if I got things right California is one hour behind my local time. So if Brian likes to check up on us daynoters later in the evening it is quite likely that he can read tomorrows post today on my site. I am actually writing this Wednesday evening so I could possibly really screw with Brian by publish this now.
I have so many bookmarks in my Favorites file for future reference that I never get a round to checking them out or forget all about them. Today I am trying something new, I setup a task in Outlook which includes the link to the site I need to checkout. Since I refer to my task list quite often I hope this will help me check out more of these resources I find from time to time.
Today (Wednesday) is only a half day of work, so I am waiting patiently for the morning to go by. Feel like I am all dressed up with no place to go, sitting here in my work duds. The nice thing about it being a short workday is that it limits the amount of data they can have me try to assimilate about the work environment and the people. I find the first day or two of a new job are usually brain burners as I try to remember as much of what I am told as possible. The worst thing is that I am horrible at remembering peoples names. The only time I found learning names somewhat easy was when I worked at a ski hill and everyone had a name tag. I was able to learn peoples names fairly easily cause every time I saw them at work, I could read their name tag and associate it with their face.
Well work went well, my co workers seem like a good bunch and the computing environment isn't all that different from others I have worked in. They provided me with a nice IBM Pentium III 500 with 128 MB of RAM and a good quality 17 inch monitor, which all seems to be good equipment. The mouse is one of the IBM breed which have a little pointer for scrolling up and down pages. It is no where near as nice as a Logitech wheel mouse.
The majority of the environment is Windows NT4 with service pack 4, Office 97 and Outlook98. There are about 10,000 users to be supported in Alberta and BC. I am working in the companies Office tower in downtown Calgary.
I have had no internet access since getting home from work, so I can't check and see what is happening in the world. I at times feel like an internet junky cause I hate it when I can't check my email or surf the web. I can go for a while without the web but I have a compulsion to check for email on a fairly frequent basis. There seems to be a problem with Shaws DNS servers as of late. What I should do is check to see if Shaw has some alternate DNS servers I can use. Ah fixed the DNS problem. I grabbed my laptop and dialed into another ISP I have a backup account with. Ran ipconfig and wrote down the IP addresses for DNS. Added one of those addresses to the network configuration on my NT machine and presto changeo I am back in business.
My mother was telling me tonight that since I have reformatted my home page that it is much slower to load when she goes to it. I tried going to daynotes.com, my home page and this page while I had my laptop connected to the net. I only have a 14.4 modem in the laptop and all three pages loaded in a few seconds. So I don't thing my reformatting my home page is causing the problem my mother is experiencing. She is likely having bad timing and hitting my page when the server is busy. Even with my cable connection there are times when daynotes.com and my page are slow to load, proving that connection speed does not always equate to quick page load times.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I rode a bus to work today. I can't recall the last time I took a bus anywhere. There is an express bus that runs from my neighborhood to downtown Calgary. This works really well as the bus ride is about the same time wise as when I drive, but then I don't have to look for and pay for parking.
Work is kind of slow for two reasons. One is that things are kind of quiet right now, two is that I won't get a network account till my security check is done so all I can do is shadow other people as they work. I am learning a few things which is always a good thing in my book. Seeing how other people approach problems is always interesting, and the co worker I am currently teamed up with has a high level of NT Workstation expertise so I am picking up some good systems knowledge and recalling things I had learned before but were buried deep in the gray matter between my ears.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
The DOJ has ruled against Microsoft and it will be interesting to see what is passed down as a final verdict. One legal analyst on the news suggested that there would be no break-up of Microsoft, but that Microsoft will be told to play nice with other businesses in the computer industry and not use its position to force companies into licensing agreements. They also suggested that the DOJ may have something to say about Microsofts pricing agreements. I have not been following this very much thus have not real option other than that while Microsoft maybe strong today their day will come as did IBMs.
Did some work with SMS administrators remote control feature today to upgrade some PCs to IE4. Kind of neat to be working on a PC in another city from my desk. I don't know what kind of link we have to the Edmonton office but, remote control feels like I am working on a 486 to give you an feel for the type of performance I am getting.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
The security record search I ordered has arrived and it is not what I expected. The first paragraph reads:
"This is to certify that the record search, based on the above name and birth date, has disclosed that the possibilities of a criminal conviction(s), warrant(s), or charge(s) pending may exist."
Then it goes on to say that that I have to make an appointment for finger print confirmation. This job really better do something for me other than pay the bills to warrant having to be finger printed to prove what have already disclosed openly about my past. I have one conviction for drinking and driving fifteen years ago.
It is a beautiful 10 Celsius outside so I am going to put on my walking shoes and enjoy the outdoors before winter returns.
Copyright © 1999 John Doucette. All Rights Reserved