Journal For Week of September 18, 2000
Last Update: Sunday, September 24, 2000 09:24 PM
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Monday September 18, 2000
Morning post: The change of season's sure has become evident as it seems like over night that the leaves on the trees have changed colour. Some types of trees have even started to lose their leaves already.
I'm well rested from the weekend which is a bit of a change from the usual routine. I also took a few days off from running hoping the extra rest would help the soreness in my left leg go away.
Well time to head out on the morning commute. TTFN.
Late evening post: It is almost bed time and I just got in the door from work. The small project which I expected to take about an hour ended up taking 4 hours. With Baan going live at work several PCs on the shop floor needed to be replaced. We underestimated how much work it would be to locate and replace the PCs, many of which were in enclosures we had to remove first.
Lucky for me I have some chicken in the freezer I can nuke for a quick bite to eat. Also have some left over pasta and sauce I made yesterday.
The U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis this coming weekend has some interesting requirements. All the timing equipment and broadcasting equipment comes from Europe so the power requirements are not the same as used in North America. So they are bringing power generating equipment with them. They also bring a full broadcast studio which takes three 747s to transport.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Tuesday September 19, 2000
Morning post: Why is it when I have a long day and want a good nights sleep I end up wide awake in the middle of the night. I feel like I almost would have been better off getting up instead of struggling to get a bit more sleep.
Oh well not much I can do for another 16 - 18 hours so I'll just be a zombie for the day. I am almost tempted to try coffee, as the caffeine would be a good pick me up, but I don't like the taste of coffee at all. I don't like pop either so I can't even grab a Coke for a shot of sugar a caffeine.
Well I'm off to join the circus.
Evening post: Interesting day at work. Had to document some of the configuration information for the NT server for a consultant who is helping to optimize Oracle and Baan. Nothing like having to document something to aid in learning how it is configured.
The data security issue came up today and I am willing to bet a security audit will have to be done ASAP. I don't have the time for a full scale audit so I likely will end up fixing the glaring errors first then as time permits dig in deeper. From day one on the job I have known this issue would arise, I just never expected it this soon.
Now there are some real sick people out there. The local paper had a story of how an elderly lady was waiting for a cab after doing her grocery shopping. A young lady pulls up in a truck and offers the aged one a lift. No sooner are the groceries in the truck than the driver hauls ass with the groceries in hand leaving the old lady at the curb.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Wednesday September 20, 2000
Chilly morning: Woke up this morning to the sound of the furnace, and the weather man saying there is a chance of snow flurries. A quick check of a web cam up in the mountains shows snow on the ground yesterday morning but most of it got burned off by the afternoon sun.
Found some info on using profiles in Windows 95 which I hope to make some time to look at today at work. I have some PCs I need to be able to lockdown, and hope I can use profiles to accomplish the job.
Evening post: Oh when it rains it pours!! I had my day planned before I even got to my desk this morning but the server gods would have none of it. The NT server for which no backup was run last night ( not my idea or doing ) is having problems. Looks like one of the drives may have died and who knows what else. I am now on hold with HPs tech support trying to get answers to what the various flashing red LEDs mean. It looks like the drive is dead and they are going to ship me a replacement drive. For all the bad things I have heard lately about HP support, this experience with HP server support has been good. The rep knew what he was talking about and was able to find info quickly when he was not sure of something.
Managed to make some time to setup user and system policies on a test PC. My boss likes the idea of being able to lock down the shop floor PCs so I am going to spend some more time getting a better handle on configuring policies before implementing them.
Damn those sportscasters!!! I have the Olympics on in the background while I check my email and do some reading. If something interesting comes on I stop for a minute and watch. Well the gold medal round for the men's match sprint on the velodrome came on so I stopped to watch. They gave some background then showed the first of the best of three rounds. They then announce that they will be back for the conclusion after a few commercials. Well they never came back but went on to a fluff piece then to swimming. Makes me want to reach through the tube and strangle Bob Costas. Heck you would think that a U.S. station would do a better job covering there own athlete Marty Nothstein, who would go on to easily win the gold.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Thursday September 21, 2000
Snowy morning: Wet snow has been falling all night which should make for an interesting commute into the office this morning. Going to be a busy day. It has started off with a call to a shipping company to get them to drop a package off for me. I also have a dentist appointment to get the last of my wisdom teeth pulled and also have a hot swap hard drive to replace on a server at work. I think an early departure is called for so time to set the alarm system and go scrape the windows on the truck.
Evening post: I think the dentist may have overdone the freezing in my mouth. Took almost 5 hours for the freezing to come out and for me not to feel like I had a mouth full of marbles.
The hard drive from HP has not turned up yet and I had had no luck trying to track it down. Well if I was willing to spend most of my day on hold I might, but I have other things to do. Likely the drive is sitting at Canada customs, and I can only hope it will come tomorrow.
I tried to make a login script change today but all my testing comes up with a big fat zero in the results column. I tried several different ways to get the same result. I double checked the syntax and tried again with no success. I'll have to try again tomorrow with a fresh out look and maybe a sharper eye.
I'll never be an Oracle database administrator, nor do I wish to be, but I continue to learn little bits about Oracle by peering over my bosses shoulder and listening in on the discussions on optimizing the configuration. Like many things in IT, Oracle administration is a big broad topic which requires lots of study and work to master.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Friday September 22, 2000
Morning post: Looks like yesterdays snow has stopped falling, but looks like the last remains of it is frozen to my windshield. Snow and frosty windshields, what a way to end summer and start into fall. The weatherman says we have matched the all time low morning temperature for this day in history, -7C.
I didn't sleep in but I seem to be running behind schedule this morning so I had better shake a leg and get my act in gear. Thankfully it is Friday, and the weekend is just around the corner. TTFN
Evening post: Still no replacement drive today but a rep at HP's Calgary office is air freighting a drive in from Toronto so I will get the drive tomorrow morning. which means I have to go into the office tomorrow. Seems that the the support line I talked to didn't follow procedures so my drive did not get shipped out of the US. The Calgary rep talks like he knows his business which is keeping my business operating. So if he walks the talk I expect things to go well.
I did some product research on Zenworks today and found that the starter pack which is free will allow me to remotely administer user policies. Hopefully I can find time to do some testing at home this weekend and then implement Zenworks at work.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Saturday September 23, 2000
Well the HP service rep showed up with drive in hand and we got the drive installed. Somehow the shortcut to the Raid software had been deleted so I had to go digging to find and run the executable file. In the end after a slow start we got the drive mirror rebuilt, the new drive installed on a different SCSI channel to add some more redundancy and a small performance boost.
Back on the home LAN I installed the latest Zenworks starter pack and given things a cursory once over. How I need to resurrect my Windows 95 PC so I can do some testing.
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
Sunday September 24, 2000
Morning post: Lovely clear sunny morning. I can see the snow from the other day on the near by mountain tops. Great morning for a nice relaxing group run. I brought up the tail end by keeping a 64 year old man company. When he first took up running to manage his high blood pressure he could barely go 1 kilometer. Today two months later he ran 4km and walked most of the final kilometer.
A quick check shows the mountains have had 5 cm of snow over the past 10 days, but only the snow a the highest elevations is staying. The lower elevations where the web cams are, the sun is burning off most of the early season snow. Heck ski season is only 7 weeks away.
I finally gave in and ordered a Casio E115 PDA yesterday. I have hummed and hawed about getting a PDA for almost two years. I have done a fair amount of running around this week trying to find demo units I could play with, which has not been easy. I ended up choosing the Casio because of its good screen, and it's controls just work better for me that other units I looked at. Next on the shopping list will be a carrying case. I have a few ideas in my head of what I would like but will have to shop around to see what is available. Targus.com has some products but nothing I see looks like what I think I want. TTFN
Copyright © 1999, 2000 John Doucette. All Rights Reserved