No, you shouldn't be thinking that: I mean a server rack. I finally got the new machine up and running properly this morning, after much pain and heartache.
Having never dealt with server architecture before, I was somewhat taken aback by the complexity of previously simple things, such as upgrading the OS. The machine (a Compaq ProLiant 5000 which is some 7 years old) originally had Windows NT 4 on it, up to service pack 4. I wanted to switch that to Windows 2000 Server, but was having no luck at all. As it turns out, there's a BIOS option to upgrade the OS (a fact that freaked me out a little).
NT was BSoDding on me yesterday morning, without even getting to a login screen: this is probably due to my tinkering with the drive arrays. The machine is pretty huge, weighing in at (roughly) 30 kilos or so including the secondary drive array. While the four processors don't add weight, the six drives do (all small, I'm afraid - total of about 20Gb storage between them. Bah!). I had moved some of them into the main box, leaving just one in the secondary array, but NT didn't like me doing this - hindsight suggests it was because the drives were mirroring automatically and I moved several at once, which is never a good thing.
However, Scary Ross thankfully came to the rescue. With internet searching talents far beyond the comprehension of small reptiles, he found me some excellent documentation to help out and effectively saved my skinny butt. My favourite part of the "How to upgrade" document has to be this warning (apologies for the 250k+ image, I don't have a graphics app on this machine), which is undoubtedly destined for such klutzes as me. I never mentioned it here, but the first thing I did on proper arrival in France was fry the power supply on my PC. D'oh.
This morning, I finished the upgrade by wiping disks, removing the mirroring and setting everything up fresh and new. I now have a working server which, despite being very noisy, will be very useful!
Tekwar has been sitting here for a while. So long, in fact, that I forgot I had it. I must admit it's almost scary to watch a film directed by Fat Bill (William Shatner, of course) and based upon his own book. I must admit to beginning viewing with too many preconceptions: it must be rubbish, after all, since Captain Kirk isn't exactly a literary genius as far as I am aware. However, having seen that it didn't get completely awful reviews, I thought I'd give it a go.
Basically, it's a cop story much like many others: the usual (small) twists and turns enhanced by inventive use of technology, the expected chance occurences that ensure the bad guys lose and the good guys win, and of course the romantic influence tacked on for good measure.
All in all, it was reasonable viewing. The characters are terribly thin, so I found myself watching mostly for the story, which was viewable if not entrancing. None of the bad guys, or even the good guys, really appealed to me, which is a shame in a cop story - it means I really didn't care that much who won, who died or why anyone was really doing anything. On the other hand, the setting was well-created and stands up to some scrutiny, the effects were appropriate and not horribly over-emphasised as in most lower-budget science fiction.
Fat Bill, however, still insists on bad eye makeup in most things: either that or he has very strange eyes. Gotta love the old toad, haven't you?
Yes, I'm back! Actually, I've been back since Monday night, but I'm a tad lazy this week and so didn't bother writing anything yesterday.
The holiday went well: it was great to see my mum again, of course, and Psycho had a whale of a time getting completely smashed on Hoegaarden and strawberry beer (yes, I know... very odd. Apparently it's Belgian.). We didn't really do very much except relax - or she did, and I just put up with the drunkenness - but we did find an excellent fish restaurant and eat fish & chips. Living by the sea has its advantages sometimes: eating something that was dragged out of the water that very morning is great (depending on what comes out of the water, of course, but in this case it was fish...!!).
So now I have the rest of the week to myself, relatively speaking. I've already done my accounts up to the middle of last month, installed the new computer that work threw out and I acquired (and it's an old racked server, so it's monstrously big and heavy!), burnt some CDs... ah, it's good to be back in front of the PC. Of course, I've also spent about 4 hours on the phone to Psycho and been called over once because she was just soooooo depressed, but hey - it's relatively relaxing!
Wooooo! I found out today that I have been included in this quarter's global "IT Awards & Recognition", for my part as a member of a virtual team on next-generation networking. Gosh, golly and gee!
Edit: Go and see Flowerhead's wonderful news! Right now! Do it, I say!
Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. I think I have found the lining on the current heatwave: a lot of telephones are not working properly.
Of course, the cloud is the fact that it's still unbearably hot (even more so today) and that, this week alone, over fifty people have died in this region alone from heat-related problems. This is quite astoundingly high: a good example was a hospital in Toulouse (OK, so it's a long way from here...), where last week one year ago they had one death - from a car accident. This year they had ten: all from the heat.
Electricity will also soon become a problem, since France relies on nuclear plants quite heavily. These, in turn, rely on water as coolant. The water is hotter, therefore they can use it less often and for shorter durations. Nightmare.
The silver lining, however, is the phones. I dislike phones: I always have and I always will. They're annoying things at the best of times and especially at work. Ringing all the time, with silly people on the other end asking for things that they should be doing themselves. Add to this a mobile phone that I have to carry and leave on 24/7 and you can understand my distaste for the technology. Gah. Twice today, however, people have tried to call me and have failed: the phone system is naffed. This suits me: we do our meetings via instant messenger instead, and I'm much more comfortable with that.
The wonders of modern technology, eh?
I have two weeks off work, starting next Monday. It's been a fairly long time since I took a holiday that was actually a holiday and more than a few days long. Unfortunately, I shall be heading to the UK for the first week, to see my mum, with Psycho in tow: this will, therefore, be a non-holiday. Again.
Yes, yes, of course I know I should leave her here. Everything in life is a trade-off, unfortunately, and everything we do has far-reaching consequences. For a week of holidays in the UK, I will be able to reduce the HAIP (How Annoying Is Psycho) level by a good 60%, arm myself with more defensive weapons (of the I'm Nice To You, So Stop Whining brand) and also relax with some decent meals that I don't have to prepare myself. It's a high price to pay, but it's worth it in the long run.
Thankfully, I have a friend here in Paris who will look after our animals while we're gone: the Kung-Fu Midget is entirely trustworthy and very responsible. And yes, if she knew I'd just called her that, I imagine she'd take no small pleasure in breaking several bones for me. She, incidentally, is also one of those folks who keeps telling me I do too much for Psycho and so on: she is someone who I could give certain 'advice' to, myself... but I won't. Pots calling kettles black are annoying, after all.
After the week in the UK, I will have a slightly more proper holiday here in France: a second week, doing whatever I want. Of course, Psycho will still be annoying as hell and absorbing a far-too-high percentage of my free time, but at least I won't have to deal with work for a while. Lots of pizza, lots of chocolate, lots of films... a nice, relaxing week in perspective.
For now, I should get back to some work: I need to get as much done as I can this week, to leave things as clear as possible.
Have you ever wondered just how inaccurate the weather forecast can be? Earlier this week, a few days of heatwave were predicted and, lo, they arrived. Three days in a row when the temperature reaches at least 39°C are enough to wipe out everyone's energy levels.
However, it was supposed to cool down a little this weekend and be positively pleasant by the end of next week. Instead, all of a sudden, we're now expecting the heatwave to go on until next Friday!
Now, I can understand how prediction must be difficult: the planetary weather systems are undoubtedly complex. What I don't understand is how different meteorological services can come up with different temperatures and weather for the same day, nor how they can be quite so astoundingly innaccurate! I mean, they do have several decades of records at their disposal and some pretty stonking big computer systems to analyse what goes on and draw their conclusions, right?
An example, perhaps? OK. For a start, let's drop in on Yahoo Weather, which predicts four degrees more than Méteo France... and seven degrees difference on Tuesday! Now, maybe they're taking their measurements in different places, but seven degrees' difference in the same city can't be that easy to achieve, particularly when the city isn't an enormous sprawling metropolis.
Of course, none of this actually matters, anyway: we can't really do anything about the weather, after all! It just gets me all riled up, this heat.
In keeping with this ridiculous heatwave we're having (38+ degrees celsius) I installed my new CD burner last night. For some time, the old one had been unreliable and, more recently, had scratched more CDs than it wrote. So I had a hunt around and ended up planting for a Plextor model that burns at 48x. This is rather different to my old one which only ran up to 8x and, given that I always run burners at a speed slightly slower than their maximum, the new one's going to feel supercharged!
Of course, this morning when I tried burning a couple of big files off to a CD, the drive reported an error. It was, in fact, an error in the ASPI layer which was causing my problems, it seems, and not the burner.
D'oh.
This morning, my alarm sounded at 6:30. Yes, I'm back at work. I'm still not 100%, to be honest, as I continue to hack up slimy piles of mucus from my lungs every hour or so. On the other hand, I have holidays coming up in a couple of weeks, so I should really try to get some stuff sorted before I go. Plus, of course, three days of sitting at home, followed by a weekend, is enough to drive me nuts... or at least make me want to never go back to work again!
In addition to the alarm blaring in my ear at the aforementioned unthinkable time, I had the pleasure of being woken by Pie. Not only did he lick my eyelids today, as is his wont, but he also decided that - to wake me up properly - he had to lick my chin, the palm of one hand and brush his tail under my nose while sitting on my chest and purring.
He's such a pain in the arse sometimes, but at least I didn't go back to sleep!
In one of my many conversations with Scary Ross, we momentarily touched on the difference between a 'Nerd' and a 'Geek'. I've had this discussion with other people, too, trying to find how we see the two terms and whether they are different.
Looking up the two words on Dictionary.com, I find that they both have much the same definition:
a. A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
b. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.
The word 'Geek', however, has a third connotation... albeit a rather odd and not-particularly-appropriate one!
c. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.
So what's the difference between the two? From chatting to several people about it (yes, I really am that sad), it seems that it's a measure either of intelligence or of how deep the technical nature runs.
Basically, for me, anyone who is not very intelligent or does not spend inordinate amounts of time studying or working on their subject would be classed as a Nerd. The elite of the Nerds are the Geeks: those who have either reached a level of understanding that demands respect (despite their supposed lack of social graces) or spend so much time immersed in their subject of choice that they have little life outside of it.
I don't honestly know which I am. Scary Ross says I'm a geek, because (quote): "I remember being behind a German truck going in to [work] one morning [...]. I was looking at the back of the truck and you said, 'Are you looking at that bit that says "IDE" and thinking "hard disk"?'
Oh dear.
I just thought I'd drop in momentarily and say "Ha ha, I'm not dead yet!" I am, in fact, suffering from a summer cold that is most unpleasant. Therefore, I am sitting here in front of the PC snuffling and repeatedly dropping off to sleep. Normal service will be resumed once I can dislodge the mass of vile mucus filling my sinuses.
And no, no one is coming over - I just felt like cleaning (scary, huh?). And yes, I left a pair of jeans on the sofa. And the cat slept on them, so now I have a furry butt...