Whistle tips? And Frank thought the straight pipes on my Silverado were bad. Stupidest. thing. evar.
Dell migrates from Sun to Dell servers running Linux (link from Critch by way of Rick). Speaking of Critch, he’s got a 5-head setup on his office workstation, which I somewhat envy. Windows XP refused to boot on macduff today. It would blue screen during boot with all sorts of arcane errors. Mandrake booted fine, as always. I’ve never had a Windows install on that box that worked respectfully, so I’m in the process now of switching hardware. After verifying the integrity of the RAM, I replaced the SoundBlaster Live! card with an Audigy MP3+, replaced the ATI Rage128 Pro (32MB) video card with an ATI Radeon 7000 (64MB), and rearranged the order of the drives in the hard disk array. I’m moving all my media from the 3-40GB IBM drives to the 120GB WD, and letting one of the IBMs take over from the WD as system disk. I may put XP and Linux on separate disks, but either way, this afternoon has been spent switching hardware around, and tonight looks like it will be spent installing operating systems and software. Fun times ahoy, but I’m resigned to cromwell as my primary PC until I restore some functionality to the big box.
Bad news bears
No good news from the Phoenix front. First, there was this Slashdot post (make what you will of it), but then followed up by this discussion on the Phoenix forums at MozillaZine.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
227 days uptime. Gone. Down the drain. I managed to keep my two servers up and running for 227 days without a single second of downtime, and then we blew a circuit breaker at 00:15 Wednesday at the office which went undiscovered until after 06:00, by which time the battery backup units had long since drained. I guess now would be a good time to do upgrades like adding drive space or something… Time to add an automated generator at the office, eh? At least we’ve put off-site monitoring in place as of last night that will alert us via cell phone (SMS text messaging) should we lose network connectivity again. Yes, we should have done that a long time ago…
It snowed some this morning, but seems to have slacked off by the late afternoon. It better either come a foot of snow, or go ahead and turn into spring. I hate bleak winter weather unless it includes enough snow to sled in or make snow balls.
Update: I just got a free large Coca-Cola from Long John Silver’s. That may be the bright point of my week.
Airport delays and travel conditions
I’ve decided that the “new” logo up there is utterly despicable, and I’m tired of this blue background too. Problem is, I don’t have time right now to change it. Yes, its 02:12, and I’m at the office (as I have been since 08:15 Monday, and most of the weekend). Two Cisco 26xx routers are newly configured, and I’m working on a Lucent/Ascend MAX TNT. That isn’t going so well, so if you care to volunteer support, drop me an email.
Which reminds me, Steve called me earlier tonight to inform me of some improvements to Sublimemail that he wants me to test on my mail domain. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works, since my SPAM levels have been steady increasing of late.
Speaking of improvements, I got fed up with Trillian on Friday as it kept munging my Buddy Lists on AIM. I prefer Gaim in Linux for a messaging client anyway, and was elated to find a much-improved 0.60-alpha4 release for Win32 available. I’ve been using it for three days or so now, and its still got several annoying bugs that need stomping, but its much better than -alpha3 and I’ll take it and its bugs over Trillian for now.
Update: I couldn’t stand it anymore. Layout changed again.
Back up and running — until we stop again.
Yesterday saw FedEx delivering my new Clie and UPS dropping off the 40GB laptop HDD and a much-needed book [IP Addressing and Subnetting, Including IPv6] from B&N.
The Clie works great; I guess I no longer have an excuse to remain unorganized. Furthermore, the laptop drive install went without a hitch, and by 19:00 I had Windows XP and all my software reinstalled and configured to my liking. Now back to configuring all this new network hardware for the office — we should be running in Lawrenceburg on Tuesday, but its going to require a long working weekend to make it happen.
The new battery in the 4Runner is working flawlessly. That seemed to be the source of most of my electrical problems. Common sense would tell you to start troubleshooting with the most obvious point of failure, so maybe my lesson was learned there. I should have things all wired up so I can easily hook the laptop in (thanks to S-Video out on the Dell) and play audio/video through the 4Runner. Now that I’ve got a big 40GB drive to fill with media, I’ll have to test it out in the near future.
Network Solutions is giving me fits of fury trying to get a domain name with out-dated registration information transferred to new DNS servers and updated with proper contact information. Click “more” for all the boring details…
Maybe that’ll do it.
This morning I drug my of-late cantankerous 4Runner to see Craig at Pulaski Pawn & Audio. Their business is located right beside my father’s, but they only recently started doing audio installs and I had never been over there.
Anyway, I seemed to have caught Craig at a good time, and he graciously took the time to look at my system. We started unhooking all the components one at a time trying to find the power draw that’s killing my battery, and he finally decided it was one of the Memphis amplifiers that’s not cutting off properly. He also installed a new battery, which I was much in need of. The Bosch I had previously has been drained and recharged so many times that it won’t hold a charge. He installed a Stinger SPV44 dry cell deep cycle battery and referred me to a shop in Lawrenceburg to have the rogue amp checked out.
A rolling cluster-bomb.
Can anything else break today? So far I’ve had the following devices fail:
I’m just wondering what else is going to malfunction by the end of the day. I’ve lost access to every semblance of portable computing that I owned today. At least my cell phone (Motorola v60c) still works. Oh, you know what makes the laptop drive failure even worse? I just did a format and clean install about a week ago. Well, maybe that’s a good thing — I had nothing on there to lose to the data gremlins.
I ordered a new Hitachi 40GB 2.5″ UATA100 5400RPM hard drive for the laptop, and I just bought a Sony Clie PEG-SJ30 PDA to replace the Palm.
Anyway, maybe my 4Runner won’t break before the end of the day. I’m fully expecting to leave the office to find a dead battery, flat tire, or something… It’s just one of those days.
On a lighter note, this morning (before everything started breaking) I ordered Super Troopers, Ronin, and The James Bond Story on DVD.
Blargh. It’s another week.
It seems there are 22 days remaining during which people shall spend endless sums of money in the hope of getting an equivalent gift in return. Kind of seems pointless, eh? I’m such a scrooge this year. This is the last full week of classes, then finals the week following.
I’m moving back to Pulaski after this semester finishes. Alex is transferring up to Freed-Hardeman, and I think I’ll go to Martin for the spring term. In other news…
EFF Analysis of the USA Patriot Act.
Time-wasting Flash trinket of the week: Horse Harmony
Personality Disorder Test
My results:
Paranoid: Moderate
Schizoid: High
Schizotypal: Moderate
Antisocial: High
Borderline: Moderate
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: High
Avoidant: High
Dependent: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
Price Shopping for Tin Foil
I don’t know whether to categorize this under “Commentary” or “News”. At any rate…
Like Mr. Balko, author of the Fox News article above, I voted for Bush in 2000. I happened to view that article this morning, and it, to some extent, describes just what I’ve been thinking about the past few days. I’m not about to vote for a Democrat, and I’m still largely Republican and certainly right-wing, but I’m saddened that the party line and especially the President seems to be abandoning the “smaller government” credo and throwing personal freedoms out the window in the interest of “national security”. Let me get this straight: President Bush is going to ensure that we stay “free” by taking away our freedoms? Right…
I’m not quite to the point of supporting Harry Browne and wearing tin foil, but I’m not too happy with the way things are going right now. I’m offended by the USA Patriot Act and the new Homeland Security bills. They’re anti-liberty in the interest of some nebulous, unattainable “security” that people seem to want. As I posted here on 13 September 2001:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
I think that quote is ringing true more and more the longer this “terror” scare plays out.
Today is my birthday.
That’s right; I turn 21 today. This is mostly insignificant except for the fact that I can now legally purchase a handgun.
In other news, Van Hilleary lost the election for TN governor to Phil Bredesen. -frown
I finally created a [Links] page. Let me know if you’ve got additions.
Here’s an interesting political quiz. You might be a Libertarian.
Courtesy of slain, here’s a link to an article at The Register comparing Microsoft to the former IBM monopoly.