8:00 AM What a day. And it's only 8:00 AM...

Today properly started Friday at 5. You see, by my rules, last week ended at Friday, 5 PM. As is only right and proper. Well, since I had to immediately get back to work, that means that this week started last Friday. Logical, no? So I spent my weekend curled up in my recliner, watching movies on our new DVD player with my wife, drinking beer and eating popcorn - and the whole time with a laptop in my lap, placing orders and re-writing schedules and budgets. I hate technology. <g>

Speaking of technology, I've made a few changes around here. Most of you, I'm sure, get here through bookmarks to "current.html", or a link to it, or something like that. In fact, I know so, because my stats server tells me you do. Well, my solution to the deep-linking problem, in that this page always changes, is different from the "redirect page" solution employed by many of the others. (I hate that, BTW. Not rational, no reason I can point to - it just annoys me. Color me wierd. <g>) 

Instead, I've elected to use duplicate current pages. This page is current.html, but it is also 121399.html. The index.htm page of this directory is an index of the weeks I've written so far; this is week 13. So if you prefer the convenience of "one-click shopping" - er, browsing - then use current.html. But if you prefer to be able to link to content, then use the index page and go to the uniquely numbered week. That's right, dear reader; you get to choose. <g>

Tuesday

9:00 AM Bit of a late start this morning; I was bored when I arrived this morning, so I upgraded my main workstation to W2K Professional's last beta release. I like it; I can't see many differences from RC2, which is what this machine was running before, except for one difference I doubt any of my fellow Daynoters had a chance to see.

Unlike the rest of them, I'm running on a corporate LAN. Our NT profiles are ROAMING profiles, which means all of their information is stored on the PDC. When I upgraded to Windows 2000, I took my profile with me; enough has stayed the same that the upgrade was mostly seamless.

But only mostly. There were some odd things; I got an odd error every time I opened Outlook. The error claimed that it couldn't find some component it needed, which was a crock, because behind the error you could see Outlook up and running exactly as I wished. Little things, relating to the differences between an NT profile and a Windows 2000 profile. NT stores its user profiles - and all user data - in Winnt\profiles\%USERNAME%. Windows 2000, on the other hand, stores all user data in C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%. Consequently, some programs protest that they can't find documents because they're looking in WINNT when they should be looking in Documents and Settings. It's no more than an annoyance, however, because the program DOES actually load the file; somehow Windows 2000 knows what it's looking for and redirects the request, almost like a link in Linux.

Well, it's still not perfect - Outlook still shows that error, and I doubt it will be fixed short of some registry spelunking, which I'm not annoyed enough to do - but it is better. Smoother. It's taking less time to load my profile on reboot, as well; before the upgrade, a reboot took a measured 23 minutes, simply because it was copying my profile to the server and back down again. After the upgrade, the reboot took only 10 minutes, most likely because the adaptation of the profile is faster and smoother. (Yes, that's right; it changes the profile on every download. How do I know? Because the profile still works in NT.)

So, that's why I'm late this morning. See? Told you I had a reason. <g>

---

1:30 PM Bob took exception to this morning's post, saying that he and most of the other Daynoters are running LANs of some sort at home, and that he, at least, is using NT4 Servers with roaming profiles. Mea culpa, Bob, I stand corrected. Well, sit, actually, but you get the idea.

I can't even say mine's bigger than yours is, because Dan Seto would just start bragging about his 500-user LAN that stretches across three islands.

Piffle, I say. <insert image of insufferable young snot waving hand in the air, somehow Monty-Python-ish. Refer to top left of page.>

Well, then, MY network may not be the biggest or the only - but mine's better. <seg> In fact, mine would be perfect if it weren't for all these damn users...

Wednesday

8:00 AM Morning, all. I think. Let me check.

Yup. It's morning.

Before you do anything else, go see Bo Leuf's post for today. The link is to Thursday, so scroll up a bit; the last two paragraphs are hilarious. They need to go in the Daynotes Gang Humor Archives.

To work. Work, unfortunately, has lately involved more and more "paperwork." I spend more time looking through security logs to determine who set off the alarm system last night, approving timesheets for my minions (other sysadmins have techs. I have minions.) and in general just doing crap that needs to be done, but at the same time makes me wish for a really good chipper-shredder.

In some ways it's a good thing; the paperwork comes from promotions and advancement. Still, I find myself looking at my linux box with longing; do you know how many days it's been since I even logged in? I don't have time to play with it, but that's what I really want to do. Oh, piffle. Snot. Spit. Hassenpfeffer. ( <-- How DO you spell hassenpfeffer? Anybody know?)Yes, and even Bother. I became a systems administrator because Engineering turned into paperwork, rather than getting my hands dirty and "blowing stuff up," which was, in fact, part of my job at Marshall Space Flight Center. Now systems administration is turning into paperwork. Sigh. At least it's well-paid paperwork. But don't let my boss hear that; as far as he's concerned, I'm grossly underpaid, got it? <g>

Speaking of the Daynotes Gang Humor Archives, I need to update the Daynotes Saga. Lots of fresh meat to add to the stew. Of course, that's just one more thing to do today...

Thursday

9:30 AM Tom's explaining Parkas to Dan Seto and I, but it really isn't necessary. Not only did I grow up in Minnesota, where parkas were an everyday part of my attire for the better part of 8 months, but here in Arizona, everyone's wearing them as well. It's rediculous. I come in to work in my jeans and shirt, enjoying the brisk 60 degree (that's Farenheit, Tom) weather, and see my "native" coworkers arrive bundled up in heavy coats, gloves, and hats. Yes, even parkas. Amazing.

Today's getting rather short shrift; we're having some more network problems, so the bulk of the day is going to be taken up with appeasing customers and burning our bandwidth provider in effigy. If any of you are looking for a high-bandwidth connection for your home or business, DO NOT USE IDT. They have not only caused more problems for us than an earthquake, they also have the worst fault-resolution staff I've ever seen.

Friday

8:00 AM Despite the time stamp, I've actually been here since well before dawn, by the Muslim definition. What's that? Oh, the Muslim tradition defines dawn as being that point where you can tell the difference between a black cord and a white one. Not a bad definition, actually, and anyway, the stars were still out when I arrived. So it was definitely pre-dawn.

I got into a discussion with an old friend by email, and he reminded me of my old dorm room. See, I had one of those dorm room doors that was covered with clippings, doodles, and sayings. In place of the name placard was a full-color, exquisitly detailed drawing of Calving and Hobbes, thanks to an artist friend. A large, prominent faux-metal plaque proclaimed that "On this site, June 4th, 1883, absolutely nothing happened." Tucked in the corner was one Bob would have liked; "When dealing with Bureaucracy, it is best to have patience, willpower, and a 10mm handgun." My personal favorite that semester I took the 6:00 AM Chemistry class, "The Early Worm Has A Death Wish." And, last but not least, the Star Trek poster entitled "Everything I needed to know about life I learned from Star Trek," with such pithy sayings as "Never put all your officers in one shuttlecraft," "Never be the lone Security guy in an away team," and, of course "Keep Kirk away from the women." Well, that one wasn't on there, but it should have been.

What has this got to do with computers? I don't know, what are you asking me for? Oh, right, I'm writing it. Sorry. Hmm. Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, RedHat. Installed it on another machine yesterday - I'm interested in the possibilities of SSH. Too bad nobody's come up with a version that works with Windows 2000 Terminal Server. Now THAT would be useful on a couple of upcoming projects. At any rate, the 6.1 installer annoys me. I started with RedHat 5.2 over a year ago, and I like it well enough; not easy, by any stretch, but it made sense. 6.0's installer was pretty good; you could select anything from "Just install it and let me get to it" to "I want to pick the precise packages that are installed," and it worked just as well for either extreme or for just about anything in between. But 6.1, as Tom would no doubt say, sucks dead Bennys - sorry, Freudian slip - dead bunnies through a knothole. It crashed on me twice - a Linux installer crashed! Mon dieu! - and I just couldn't get it to do what I wanted as opposed to what it wanted to do. If I wanted that, I'd buy it from Microsoft.

Well, that's enough ranting about it. I'm going to rip it out by the roots and install Windows 98! HAHAHAHAHAHA! We'll teach that silly computer to misbehave!!!

DISCLAIMER - NO COMPUTERS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS WEBSITE. ANY REFERENCES TO ACTUALLY USING WINDOWS 98 WERE FICTIONAL.

Saturday

Sunday