Work Journal For Week of February 21, 2000
Last Update: Monday, February 28, 2000 08:32 PM
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Six weeks remain in my contract. Some days six weeks seems like forever, and others it seems like milli seconds. Right now as I write this, six weeks feels like an eternity cause the only light at the end of the tunnel is the fact that the job will end soon. There is no further employment opportunity at the moment. The one great opportunity I thought I had I think is gone as I saw in an new advertisement for the position in the Saturday paper. On the other hand, I am sure that I will be asked to extend my contract, but I don't want to be where I am. The job offers great things for the full timers like job security, good pay and benefits, but lacks any stimulation. Most of the full timers like the stability, but that does little for me. Unlike those people I have no family to support, I only have to take care of myself, so stability is lower on my priority list.
The workday started off very rough. I absolutely did not want to get out of bed, but in the end managed to drag myself into the shower and get my day started. Then with today being Family Day here in Alberta, half the province is shut down. So there was no bus service leaving me to drive to work, then no parking attendant on duty and me with no change for the ticket dispenser. As I started to look for a parking lot with an actual person working the ticket booth, the good people on the radio inform me that parking meters are free today, which sent me rushing to find a free meter before other people got the same idea. The same good people on the radio had a contest in which they randomly call out a day and month, if that date is your birthday you call in and win cash. They called my birthday, but by the time I got the cell phone out the switch board was tied up with callers.
Tried to assist in getting an access database used for bank reconciliation going today. The users haven't a clue what they use the database for so they are little help. The developer is no longer with the company and left no documentation for his work. I am no programmer but after combing through the VBA code for the Access forms I was able to find that part of the data import process was done via a call to Word which would open a file, convert it to comma delimited format and save it as a text file using the current date as the file name. The macro had been stored in the default Word normal.dot template which had been lost when the PC was upgraded to Win2k. One of the Senior people spent the remainder of the day combing through servers and local hard drives looking for a copy of the macro.
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Nice day weather wise today, went for a lunch time walk through downtown Calgary. It was a little wet in places from the melting snow, but otherwise very enjoyable. The hustle and bustle to people and traffic was quite a contrast from yesterday when downtown was very quite due to it being a holiday.
A definite sign that I am in a lazy mood today was when I almost took the elevator to go up one floor.
I may have a few hours work on the weekend doing some work on computer hardware. A friend has been asked to submit a quotation to do some hardware maintenance and has asked me if I would give him a hand. Seeing as I don't get much chance to work with hardware anymore, I figure this will be a good opportunity to have some fun.
My buddy who is working on the quotation mentioned above has encouraged me to send a resume to his employer. So tonight I put together a short cover letter along with a copy of my resume and emailed them to the HR department.
There is on going talk in Calgary about installing software on library computers which are in place for public use which will block access to pornography web sites etc.. There is a good article at slashdot ( I have been having difficulty verifying that this link works, I will test again later and fix it if need be )which suggests for a variety of reasons why this is not a good idea.
The cost of fuel both gasoline and diesel has gone up again. Here in Alberta we are used to low fuel prices as we are major oil and gas producer. The low price is not so true anymore as Regular gas is now just under 63 cents per liter. In the eastern provinces where prices are even higher the trucker have been protesting fuel prices. There were also protests in Washington DC by truckers. Truckers for the most part have always had a hard time making a good living, especially the independent truckers who own and operate their own rig. When fuel cost are half of their costs, and on top of that you must add loan payments, maintenance, permits, etc. there is not a lot of money left at the end of a week to pay rent and feed the family. The Ontario provincial government has already stated that they will not adjust fuel taxes to lower prices. Looks like the only way to make up the difference is for transport companies to increase what they charge their customers. This will affect the entire economy from groceries to automobiles, which could bring the strong economy we have been enjoying in North America down a few notches.
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I thought that a short write-up on the procedure we used at Telus to rollout Windows 2000 rollout might be interesting, so here it is:
The vast majority of the upgrades to Windows 2000 have been done by using Norton Ghost to make an image of Windows 2000 installed on a specific hardware set, for a business unit. Telus is large enough that different business units have vastly different software requirements. In a few exceptions an actual in place upgrade of Windows 2000 on top of Windows NT 4 has been done. These few exceptions have been done mostly due to users having lots of data on their hard drive and not knowing where it is all located, thus it would be hard to back-up the data.
So to get the Windows 2000 disk image onto a PC a group of 8 - 10 consultants were brought in to do the hands on work. A Telus Senior Analysis would get an upgrade schedule from management which would list PCs, there model, and what additional software is required. The analysis would setup one or more laptops with a static IP address, Ghost multicast server, and copies of the required disk images. The consultants would go desktop to desktop, filling out upgrade information sheets and backing up the my documents folder, any Outlook PST files and assorted program configuration files. This backup was automated by an application which was created in house. Once the backup was done and the multicast server was up and running the desktops were booted with a boot disk which would connect the desktops to the multicast server. The Ghost multicast software shows you which PCs are connected to it. Once all the PCs are connected, the multicast of the disk image is sent to the desktops.
When the multicast is done, the desktops are rebooted and sysprep is run. The consultant types in the computer name and administrator password, sysprep then adds the PC to the domain and changes the SID. When sysprep is done, another reboot is done and a generic admin ID is used to logon to the domain and the backed-up data is restored. Then if any additional software is required it is then installed.
All in all not a difficult project, but something's existed which made the project much easier. There existed an agreement with Microsoft to supply resources, a good inventory of hardware and software, and knowledgeable people to do the planning and development.
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There is a good list of Windows NT tweaks on Arstechnica. For every tweak I know about, there was another one I didn't. Worth a look even if you think you know all the tricks, as you just might learn something new.
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I must truly be brain dead this week. I can't keep track of what day of the week it is, I don't recall reading some of the unusual weekly columns on the web ( which I have ). Thankfully my watch tells me what day it is ( when I remember to wear it ).
Finished off setting up a laptop for a user today. It is an IBM 390e which has no setting in the BIOS to control the status of the numlock function when the laptop starts. By default on some of the builds we have numlock is on, which makes logging on to the network a pain if you forget to turn numlock off manually first. On Technet I found that if under registry key Hkey_users\.default\contol panel\keyboard, if initialkeyboardindicators is set to 2, numlocks is on, and 0 is off. Changing this setting fixed the logon problem, but then the users profile would not save the change to numlock off when she logged off as is suppose to happen. Then I had to go into the registry again under Hkey_current_user\.default\control panel\keyboard and change initialkeyboardindicators to a value of 0.
Keeping archived data accessible for years to come is a subject that arises time to time. A good article on this issue on slashdot. Some interesting points in the article, but make sure you check out the comments at the end for some additional insights. One person as a test, left a variety of CD-R media in the Nevada sun with interesting results.
I think I just got my initiation to working downtown. While walking back to the office from the bank, a car blitzed through a puddle and splashed me big time.
March 6 Telus is sending me to a one day Windows 2000 Server training course.
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Good news today, a job I saw in the paper after I had already had an interview for the position is still open. The client needs a short list of at least two people to finish off the hiring process. As of today they only have a short list of one name, and it's my name on that list. All the other candidates to date have not been suitable. Apparently a new batch of candidates found through the ad in the paper will be interviewed next week. Then there will be a round of additional interviews with upper management.
I see that Novell reports that they are now supporting Linux. Along with porting NDS to Linux, they are going to port GroupWise to Linux.
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Spent a few hours helping a friend fix some computers for one of his clients. The client had 9 PCs in storage which needed cleaning and put in working order again. The two of us setup an assembly line where he used a can of air to clean the PCs and gave them a once over then handed them off to me to test if they ran or not. Some PCs needed new CPU fans, and/or additional RAM which we cannibalized other PCs for. In the end we had 7 of the 9 units operational. Could have done more but we ran out of spare parts. One of the PCs had OS2 installed, and I like to make a fuss about OS2 around my buddy, he is is the only person I know who has ever worked with OS2. Some of the banks here in Calgary still use OS2 and he used to work for one of them. When ever I see a job posting for an OS2 certified tech I let him know about it so that I can tease him.
Out for a bike ride this afternoon for about an hour and a half. Head wind on the way out which made for slow going but made the trip home quick and easy. The following image describes my ride quite well. The sun in the west over the Rocky Mountains, with me on my bike enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.
Ever since I moved into my house I have been thinking about running some permanent Category 5 cabling. As of late I have been thinking more seriously about at least running cable from my server in the basement to my living room on the main floor. The best place I can think of to terminate the cable is where the coaxial cable for the TV terminates. Only thing is that this would be the hardest possible place to run cable to. It will not be easy but I found out that it is all that difficult either. I pulled a spot light out of storage and went looking around the space under the landing to the basement. Turns out that there is a cavity that I can run the cable through. All I need now is to borrow or rent one of those long flexible drill bits the cable installation guys use. With this type of tool I can take the face plate off the wall for the TV cable, then use the flexible bit to go down inside the wall and drill down into the basement. I can then use a snake to run the Category 5 cable into the basement. I can pick up a new face plate which has outlets for RJ45 and cable TV. No new holes will need to be made in the wall which is something I have wanted to avoid if I could. I wish I had thought of this back when the security system installer was in my house as he could have drilled the hole for me and just left a piece of string in the wall that I could use later to pull wire with.
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My plans for the day went up in smoke as soon as I started watching the intro for today's NASCAR race, and proceeded to fall a sleep in front of the TV. Sleep is good but getting groceries so I can eat for the next week is also very useful. I did though manage to get in a bike ride just before the sun set.
Copyright © 1999, 2000 John Doucette. All Rights Reserved