I was out of town for the last two days on a business trip. The trip was very successful as we accomplished most if not all of our objectives during our trip. It did take somewhat longer than we had anticipated as the plan had been that we would be back in town by the end of the business day. We did not get home until 9pm. And the computer room where we did most of the work is basically just a concrete room; no carpeting, no chairs, no internet connectivity, no cell connectivity. So I now have very sore feet and back. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. The bed at the hotel was comfortable, but nothing is as good as your own bed.
The first night my co-worker suggested that we go for a couple of beers at a "jiggly" bar. Well it turned out to be more than a couple of beers and we were there for over 4 hours! It was a very effective reminder as to why I don't drink anymore. It will be a long time before I drink more than one beer at one sitting again. I just don't see what enjoyment you get out of it and also how you feel the next day just does not make it worth it for me. Live and learn (again)....
Good night!
This will be a collection of my musings - when I have some. Although ramblings might be a better description. Whatever happened during my day will most likely be logged here.
From: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
About me: I am a baby-boomer who is now in his second career after spending 10 years in the military. I now work in the computer field, which also happens to be one of my hobbies. I also like to sing, play the guitar to accompany my singing, and play the piano when I practice (which is pretty much never these days)
Monday, August 29, 2005
Back from vacation
Well my co-worker came back from 3 week's vacation today. You know, I thought I had done a lot while she was away, but after she asked all of her questions it turns out that there was still a lot of stuff that did not get done. I started beating myself up over it until I realized that I was pretty busy while she was gone and I think I did a pretty good job of prioritizing what needed to be done.
Turns out I have to go to Vancouver tomorrow to install some servers in one of our computer rooms there. This is not by idea of a good time, but since I seem to be the only one that has all the skills needed to get the servers up and running I got to be the one chosen to do it. Fortunately I am not going by myself so it will not be too bad. I still think I should have tried harder to find another sucker, ummm, I mean volunteer for the job. This means I am going to be away from home tomorrow night since it is a 2 day job.
The choir director of the choir every female member of this family belongs to was here today to put the parts of the songs they will be singing in the computer. We have a MIDI keyboard so she played the parts on the piano while I recorded them in Powertracks Pro. I then created MIDI files for each part of each song. Those files will be placed on the choir website for the members to download and listen to. Sure beats having to make parts tapes.
Good night!
Turns out I have to go to Vancouver tomorrow to install some servers in one of our computer rooms there. This is not by idea of a good time, but since I seem to be the only one that has all the skills needed to get the servers up and running I got to be the one chosen to do it. Fortunately I am not going by myself so it will not be too bad. I still think I should have tried harder to find another sucker, ummm, I mean volunteer for the job. This means I am going to be away from home tomorrow night since it is a 2 day job.
The choir director of the choir every female member of this family belongs to was here today to put the parts of the songs they will be singing in the computer. We have a MIDI keyboard so she played the parts on the piano while I recorded them in Powertracks Pro. I then created MIDI files for each part of each song. Those files will be placed on the choir website for the members to download and listen to. Sure beats having to make parts tapes.
Good night!
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Sunday, Sunday
Another Sunday, another quiet day. I did very little today, which is something I enjoy doing. Most of the day was spent watching 3 movies: "Bride and Prejudice", "Sin City", and "Raise your voice". Two musicals and one very violent movie. They were all very enjoyable in their own way. If you have seen or read Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and enjoyed it you will enjoy "Bride and Prejudice".
On another subject, I bought myself a MP3 player. It is not a fancy one, a 256Mb one, but my daughter got herself one yesterday and I really enjoyed the way it sounded so I got myself one as well. I think it will work very well for me since I will be using it pretty much exclusively on the way to and from work.
Good night!
On another subject, I bought myself a MP3 player. It is not a fancy one, a 256Mb one, but my daughter got herself one yesterday and I really enjoyed the way it sounded so I got myself one as well. I think it will work very well for me since I will be using it pretty much exclusively on the way to and from work.
Good night!
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Worn down
I was just too tired last night to spend the time to make an entry in this blog. I had been going to bed late every night this last week and it finally caught up with me last night. So I went to bed, earlier than usual for a Friday, and pretty much fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I had some comment spam on my blog, so I decided to add "word verification" to my blog. I am not too happy about it, since it adds to the things people have to do to leave comments, but if it prevent those unwanted comments I am all for it.
I have been spending a good part of today getting the PowerPoint slides ready for tomorrow's church service. As a matter of fact, I am making this entry in between working on the service slides (which are now done) and the pre-service singsong slides. I have just figured out which songs I will sing so now I can prepare the slides.
Turns out my son will not be coming this weekend after all (I cannot remember if I mentioned it in my blog before). The person he was going to be coming with has had to cancel the trip because of some health concerns. Hopefully everything will turn out all right for him. On the good side, it would appear that they will try again sometime in September. I am looking forward to that as much as I am disappointed that he doesn't get to come now.
Good night!
I had some comment spam on my blog, so I decided to add "word verification" to my blog. I am not too happy about it, since it adds to the things people have to do to leave comments, but if it prevent those unwanted comments I am all for it.
I have been spending a good part of today getting the PowerPoint slides ready for tomorrow's church service. As a matter of fact, I am making this entry in between working on the service slides (which are now done) and the pre-service singsong slides. I have just figured out which songs I will sing so now I can prepare the slides.
Turns out my son will not be coming this weekend after all (I cannot remember if I mentioned it in my blog before). The person he was going to be coming with has had to cancel the trip because of some health concerns. Hopefully everything will turn out all right for him. On the good side, it would appear that they will try again sometime in September. I am looking forward to that as much as I am disappointed that he doesn't get to come now.
Good night!
Thursday, August 25, 2005
News free day?
I've been sitting here in front of the monitor for the last 15 minutes trying to think of something to say - and I must confess that nothing has come to me. Today was a pretty uneventful day at work, got the memory replaced on the SE3310 so now I can ship that disk array to its final destination. And at home, all I have done so far is read my mail and surfed the web.
All in all, a pretty uneventful day. See? I even have to repeat myself to fill up my blog! :D
Good night!
All in all, a pretty uneventful day. See? I even have to repeat myself to fill up my blog! :D
Good night!
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Unproductive evening
I have spent the evening trying out different Linux live CDs to see if some of them were not having the problem that is plaguing my installed version of Linux: namely that the secondary IDE controller does not seem to be working with DMA turned on. I have found a couple that did not seem to be exhibiting the problem, but I have yet to decide on whether or not I will be changing the distribution I am running yet again. First things first though, I need to backup the data before doing anything to the hard drive. That should be interesting as the CD writer is one of the drives that is having the no DMA trouble.
Work was uneventful; the only thing worthy of note I guess is that the Sun engineer that was supposed to come replace the battery on the storage array (SE3310) could not make it today and instead will come early tomorrow morning.
Good night!
Work was uneventful; the only thing worthy of note I guess is that the Sun engineer that was supposed to come replace the battery on the storage array (SE3310) could not make it today and instead will come early tomorrow morning.
Good night!
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Bathroom leaky tiles
I mentioned yesterday that my wife and I (well mostly my wife) spent most of the evening trying to fix the shower tiles. This is a picture of the tiles after they were glued in place; the masking tape is just there to make sure they do not fall of before the glue dries. I should say to our defense that the tiles looked a lot lighter in the store. We looked at other tiles that probably would have looked better, but we thought at the time that they were too light. Guess we should have brought one of the brown tiles (we brought one of the white decorated ones to check the size).
Monday, August 22, 2005
Back in the grind
Monday, time to go back to work and take care of business. We survived the disk space scare - only a temporary reprieve though as it looks like a weekly cycle: it builds from Sunday morning to Thursday evening and then tapers off until a dramatic drop by Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the cycle is getting higher and higher in the percentage used. I would not be surprised that we would run out of disk space altogether by Thursday next week if nothing was done.
You will remember the rant I had on Friday about our bathroom and the lack work done then to fix it. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise: when I took my shower this morning, we had water leaking down in the kitchen. This indicated that there was something else leaking besides the potty. They were working on the floor today; they put a "leveler" compound on the floor and had to let is dry before they could lay the linoleum down. We spent the evening trying to fix the shower problem. It looks like some of the wall tiles had come loose and the water was running behind the tiles and then leaking down to the kitchen. I think we finally got the tiles glued in place. We are just waiting now for the glue to dry before grouting the tiles. Do I not sound knowledgeable? It is all a facade as I do not know half of this stuff. But it sounds good...
Not much else to report so I will bid all "Good night!"
You will remember the rant I had on Friday about our bathroom and the lack work done then to fix it. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise: when I took my shower this morning, we had water leaking down in the kitchen. This indicated that there was something else leaking besides the potty. They were working on the floor today; they put a "leveler" compound on the floor and had to let is dry before they could lay the linoleum down. We spent the evening trying to fix the shower problem. It looks like some of the wall tiles had come loose and the water was running behind the tiles and then leaking down to the kitchen. I think we finally got the tiles glued in place. We are just waiting now for the glue to dry before grouting the tiles. Do I not sound knowledgeable? It is all a facade as I do not know half of this stuff. But it sounds good...
Not much else to report so I will bid all "Good night!"
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Another lazy Sunday
Besides going to church, I have done very little today. If I were to make of list of things accomplished today, it would be very short:
That's about it for now. Good evening!
- went to church
- checked backups
That's about it for now. Good evening!
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Ahhh, the weekend
I am not now nor have I ever been an morning person. I therefore enjoy Saturdays a lot as it is probably the one day where I do not have to get up at any particular time. Today for example, I did not get up until 11am. It was great. Considering that I usually get up around 6:30 the extra 4.5 hours of sleep were just heavenly.
I really had nothing particular planned today - besides getting the PowerPoint slides ready for church. So today was a day with very little stress. I (we would be more correct as we all got in the car - including the dogs) drove my older daughter to work at 2pm and then went out again at 10:30pm to pick her up from work. That's it.
Good night!
I really had nothing particular planned today - besides getting the PowerPoint slides ready for church. So today was a day with very little stress. I (we would be more correct as we all got in the car - including the dogs) drove my older daughter to work at 2pm and then went out again at 10:30pm to pick her up from work. That's it.
Good night!
Friday, August 19, 2005
Space, the final frontier
Today turned out to be a better day than I thought it would. Not that the disk space problem went away - but the level of urgency has gone down slightly to where we should be okay over the weekend. That should give me a chance to the get the battery fixed on the unit. That is a good thing because the battery is used for the disk cache which means that the unit works faster since data in cache is considered written to disk. That gives an application the impression that the data was written to disk much faster - which is a really good thing. When the battery does not work you cannot do that as the possibility of losing data if the unit loses power before the data is written to disk is very real (albeit remote).
Our townhouse complex management has managed to completely foul up their handling of our leak problem in the upstairs bathroom. We appraised them of the problem on Wednesday, they came on Thursday and tore everything apart as apparently the underlying wood was wet and something had to be done about it. They were supposed to come back today (Friday) to finish the job but no one showed up. When my wife called to find out what was going on she was told that it was a big job and that they did not have either the funds or the personnel to fix the problem! Our rent keeps going up but the level of service provided by the maintenance staff keeps going down; that is more a reflection on the management company rather than the people working here - as they are very nice people. It is just that it used to be if there was a problem they could not handle (this was years ago) they would call a professional immediately; now it seems like the complex manager has to get an okay for head office before he can do anything. Empower your employees, Nacel!
There is more to write about work - but I think I will save some for tomorrow.
Good night!
Our townhouse complex management has managed to completely foul up their handling of our leak problem in the upstairs bathroom. We appraised them of the problem on Wednesday, they came on Thursday and tore everything apart as apparently the underlying wood was wet and something had to be done about it. They were supposed to come back today (Friday) to finish the job but no one showed up. When my wife called to find out what was going on she was told that it was a big job and that they did not have either the funds or the personnel to fix the problem! Our rent keeps going up but the level of service provided by the maintenance staff keeps going down; that is more a reflection on the management company rather than the people working here - as they are very nice people. It is just that it used to be if there was a problem they could not handle (this was years ago) they would call a professional immediately; now it seems like the complex manager has to get an okay for head office before he can do anything. Empower your employees, Nacel!
There is more to write about work - but I think I will save some for tomorrow.
Good night!
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Virus havoc
Things at work are a little hectic as one of the viruses that has been let loose is creating havoc with all (well it certainly seems like all) the Windows 2000 servers we have. All of the Win2K media servers have been showing signs of being infected and behaving erratically. Backups on some of them just failed right in the midst of the backup taking place and we have not been able to communicate with those servers since. I know our Windows group has been working feverishly to get a handle on the virus and I really feel for them.
On a more worrisome note: one of our master servers is running out of disk space for the image catalog. I have been told that running out of space on the disk housing the image catalog is a very bad idea so I have been working to get a replacement disk array set up for that master server. I took all afternoon to get the array set up, but now it looks like the battery in that particular unit is bad. But since it would appear that I do not have the luxury of waiting until next week to replace the disk array, the new array will have to be installed with the bad battery which will need to be replaced at a later date. To make matters worse some of the gear I need to make the installation has yet to arrive - so I will have to beg and borrow it from someone else. I sure hope I can find that someone else tomorrow.
Well I better go to bed as I have a big day in front of me tomorrow.
Good night!
On a more worrisome note: one of our master servers is running out of disk space for the image catalog. I have been told that running out of space on the disk housing the image catalog is a very bad idea so I have been working to get a replacement disk array set up for that master server. I took all afternoon to get the array set up, but now it looks like the battery in that particular unit is bad. But since it would appear that I do not have the luxury of waiting until next week to replace the disk array, the new array will have to be installed with the bad battery which will need to be replaced at a later date. To make matters worse some of the gear I need to make the installation has yet to arrive - so I will have to beg and borrow it from someone else. I sure hope I can find that someone else tomorrow.
Well I better go to bed as I have a big day in front of me tomorrow.
Good night!
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Tight schedule
As I mentioned yesterday, for next week I am the only backup team member left as the other two members are on vacation. I had originally planned to go out of town for one day to install new backup servers. Then I decided that maybe that would not be the best idea to not have anybody around to deal with backup issues.
However, in the week after that, Veritas is coming back to town to merge (more like move in this case) the catalog of the current master server onto the newly installed Solaris master server (current master is a Windows server). Yes, that server that will have the catalog merged onto is one of the servers I have to go out of town to install. So the early part of that week is definitely not the best time to be installing a new server - particularly since that only leaves a day's leeway if things go wrong on the Monday.
Did I also mention that the very Monday I am talking about above is when my co-worker comes back? So even though we will have coverage that day - she will have been out of the loop for three weeks and will not have a clue about what is going on - not the best way to be. Maybe I can get someone else to go and install those 2 servers. I will have to think about that.
I also need to write some documentation for the Maximus DRP test in September. They will be testing their Disaster Recovery Plan at the end of September but they would like to have the documentation at the end of August so they can review it. Of course, it is a little hard to write decent documentation when the environment that will be used for the DRP test is not even installed yet! Yes, it is those very same servers I have been talking about throughout this entry. And we are waiting for new tape drives for the robot - so we can read the tapes for the DRP test. A lot of things have to happen pretty much all at the same time.....
On the home side, I helped fixed dinner by fixing instant mashed potatoes and making a very big mess - let's just say pieces of the stove are soaking overnight to see if they can be cleaned. I definitely outdid myself this time.
Good night!
However, in the week after that, Veritas is coming back to town to merge (more like move in this case) the catalog of the current master server onto the newly installed Solaris master server (current master is a Windows server). Yes, that server that will have the catalog merged onto is one of the servers I have to go out of town to install. So the early part of that week is definitely not the best time to be installing a new server - particularly since that only leaves a day's leeway if things go wrong on the Monday.
Did I also mention that the very Monday I am talking about above is when my co-worker comes back? So even though we will have coverage that day - she will have been out of the loop for three weeks and will not have a clue about what is going on - not the best way to be. Maybe I can get someone else to go and install those 2 servers. I will have to think about that.
I also need to write some documentation for the Maximus DRP test in September. They will be testing their Disaster Recovery Plan at the end of September but they would like to have the documentation at the end of August so they can review it. Of course, it is a little hard to write decent documentation when the environment that will be used for the DRP test is not even installed yet! Yes, it is those very same servers I have been talking about throughout this entry. And we are waiting for new tape drives for the robot - so we can read the tapes for the DRP test. A lot of things have to happen pretty much all at the same time.....
On the home side, I helped fixed dinner by fixing instant mashed potatoes and making a very big mess - let's just say pieces of the stove are soaking overnight to see if they can be cleaned. I definitely outdid myself this time.
Good night!
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Pile on the work
I just realized that next week I am by myself as far as backup work is concerned. My co-worker is still on vacation and the third member of our group is also starting a three week vacation. So my earlier plan to go to Vancouver next week to install a couple of servers is not gonna work out. Which is kind of a good thing since those servers have yet to be set up with an operating system. That was supposed to happen late last week and early this week but it never got started. So it would appear that this task will fall on my plate as well. I obviously needed more to do.... Right.
Another quiet evening at home - what's not to like about those! There is therefore not much to say about the home front. I should mention that my younger daughter has bought herself a very nice digital camera and she is very happy with her purchase. She has been picture happy in the last few days.
Good night!
Another quiet evening at home - what's not to like about those! There is therefore not much to say about the home front. I should mention that my younger daughter has bought herself a very nice digital camera and she is very happy with her purchase. She has been picture happy in the last few days.
Good night!
Monday, August 15, 2005
So far so good?
Well it looks like the change I made to the backup server configuration has solved the problem (so far) as the backups are being run when they are supposed to be. Hopefully this will continue overnight.
I normally take the bus to and from work but today I was able to take the car home. It worked out that way as my older daughter was starting her shift shortly before I ended my day. So she took the car to her work and I just walked there and picked it up and drove home. That certainly was great for me. And since I went to pick up my daughter at the end of her shift she was not stuck having to bus home.
I took the easy way out of figuring what to have for dinner: we went to Wendy's and we all had salad. This is probably an expensive way to solve the problem, but at least for tonight it was the best solution as it did not look like any of us were going to come up with an idea.
Good night!
I normally take the bus to and from work but today I was able to take the car home. It worked out that way as my older daughter was starting her shift shortly before I ended my day. So she took the car to her work and I just walked there and picked it up and drove home. That certainly was great for me. And since I went to pick up my daughter at the end of her shift she was not stuck having to bus home.
I took the easy way out of figuring what to have for dinner: we went to Wendy's and we all had salad. This is probably an expensive way to solve the problem, but at least for tonight it was the best solution as it did not look like any of us were going to come up with an idea.
Good night!
Shooting ourselves in the foot?
It would appear that the problem with the backups for the last couple of days stems from two things: size of the environment and configuration settings. A scheduler gets started every 20 minutes to run scheduled backups. When it starts, it goes out and verifies that it can talk to all the backup clients before running the jobs. Normally that is not a problem. Add to the mix the fact that if it cannot talk to a backup client it waits until the connect timeout before proceeding to the next client and now you can have problems.
We currently have just over 800 clients in this particular backup environment. Looking at the logs, it would appear to take about 5 seconds to communicate with each client. So if everything works perfectly, it takes about 66 minutes to go through the complete list of clients. Add in those clients that we cannot reach, and take into account that the connect timeout is 20 minutes, then it does not take many unreachable clients before you have a real problem. In our case last night, we had 9 clients that were unreachable: that's 180 minutes! Therefore, if the scheduler received the list of jobs to start at 7pm, it would be well after 11pm before those jobswould start.
I have reduced the connect timeout to 5 minutes, which is the default for Netbackup. At least now it will be less than 2 hours from submission to running if the same problem occurs again.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Late night
Okay. I really should not still be up at this time of night on a Sunday, but I had to return the office laptops so I would not have to take them on the bus with me in the morning. I thought about having my older daughter bring them over when she went to work, but they really needed to be at the office for their intended use - however unlikely that might be.
There will have to be some research done tomorrow with regards to backup failures during the night of Saturday to Sunday. If I remember correctly, my co-worker reported the same thing in the email she sent me before leaving for her vacation. If that is the case, then we have a real problem as a lot of backups did not even try to run during the night. My job tomorrow will have to be to try and figure out what it was that prevented them from running. Should be interesting.
Otherwise a pretty uneventful day - church in the morning, spent most of the day on the computer and then watched "Constantine". Interesting enough, I enjoyed the movie - probably because it is very easy for me to get into the "suspension of disbelief". I just watch and not try to analyze.
Enough for tonight. Good night!
There will have to be some research done tomorrow with regards to backup failures during the night of Saturday to Sunday. If I remember correctly, my co-worker reported the same thing in the email she sent me before leaving for her vacation. If that is the case, then we have a real problem as a lot of backups did not even try to run during the night. My job tomorrow will have to be to try and figure out what it was that prevented them from running. Should be interesting.
Otherwise a pretty uneventful day - church in the morning, spent most of the day on the computer and then watched "Constantine". Interesting enough, I enjoyed the movie - probably because it is very easy for me to get into the "suspension of disbelief". I just watch and not try to analyze.
Enough for tonight. Good night!
Saturday, August 13, 2005
And we're back
Well at least the computer is back. It turned out to be the motherboard after all. According to the technician, the motherboard would not "Post". So about $85 later, the computer is back home and almost as good as new. There is a little problem with DMA not working on the secondary IDE controller which I have not figured out yet. But I will give Gizmos a call tomorrow (or Monday) to see if they have heard of that and if they know how to fix it.
Otherwise a pretty quiet day. Got up late, then checked the backups at work which for a change worked for the most part. Then had leftover pizza for lunch (thanks Nikki!). Went and picked up the computer after that. My cell phone has been giving me grief for the last couple of days (cannot hear people calling me and they cannot hear me - making the phone pretty much useless) so went to the dealer to (try to) get a new phone. The lady at the store could not promise anything, but she said she would put on the work order that we were very unhappy with the phone and wanted another one as the other three that the family use work just fine even though they are used more heavily than mine. So I have a loaner phone while they decide what to do with my old phone. Here's hoping.
Dinner was courtesy of my older daughter - we went to Cafe Mexico our favourite Mexican restaurant (thanks Renee!). The food was just as good as usual (well except for the Con Queso dip which was not up to their usual standard) and I am sitting here 3 hours after the meal still stuffed.
Spent the rest of the evening getting PowerPoint presentations ready for church so that's pretty much it as far as news are concerned.
Good night!
Otherwise a pretty quiet day. Got up late, then checked the backups at work which for a change worked for the most part. Then had leftover pizza for lunch (thanks Nikki!). Went and picked up the computer after that. My cell phone has been giving me grief for the last couple of days (cannot hear people calling me and they cannot hear me - making the phone pretty much useless) so went to the dealer to (try to) get a new phone. The lady at the store could not promise anything, but she said she would put on the work order that we were very unhappy with the phone and wanted another one as the other three that the family use work just fine even though they are used more heavily than mine. So I have a loaner phone while they decide what to do with my old phone. Here's hoping.
Dinner was courtesy of my older daughter - we went to Cafe Mexico our favourite Mexican restaurant (thanks Renee!). The food was just as good as usual (well except for the Con Queso dip which was not up to their usual standard) and I am sitting here 3 hours after the meal still stuffed.
Spent the rest of the evening getting PowerPoint presentations ready for church so that's pretty much it as far as news are concerned.
Good night!
Elation! Maybe not so much
While I was spending the day at the office, except for an enjoyable breakfast and lunch with my wife, my wife volunteered to go talk to Gizmos, the store where I had the broken computer upgraded. They looked up my name on the computer and said that we had 3 days left on the warranty and that we would get the computer repaired for free! My wife went home and brought the computer back. When the guy at Gizmos (downtown) prepared the work order my wife checked to see that they had my phone number right - they had the wrong person altogether! Turns out the computer is not under warranty and we would have to go to the other Gizmos (Landford) where the computer was actually upgraded.
So my wife (and younger daughter as well by that time) drove across town to the Langford Gizmos. So it turns out that my warranty expired June 3rd which is about two weeks before the computer began exhibiting weird behaviour. However, since I also had other work done there since, they will try their best to see if they can minimize the cost of whatever repairs have to be done. We should be hearing on Saturday about that they found and how much it will cost.
I was not totally computer less at home though. As I mentioned yesterday I was able to bring an office laptop home for the weekend while the computer is being repaired. So I did not have to go through withdrawal as I did in the latter part of last night.
So not a bad day overall.
Good night!
So my wife (and younger daughter as well by that time) drove across town to the Langford Gizmos. So it turns out that my warranty expired June 3rd which is about two weeks before the computer began exhibiting weird behaviour. However, since I also had other work done there since, they will try their best to see if they can minimize the cost of whatever repairs have to be done. We should be hearing on Saturday about that they found and how much it will cost.
I was not totally computer less at home though. As I mentioned yesterday I was able to bring an office laptop home for the weekend while the computer is being repaired. So I did not have to go through withdrawal as I did in the latter part of last night.
So not a bad day overall.
Good night!
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Computer problems
Well if something went well today, it was at work. I do not recall anything really newsworthy from my day at work, which must mean that nothing bad happened.
I wish I could say the same about the evening at home. Everything was going fine, until the point where I was reading my mail on the computer. I was trying to access one of the emails and the browser said that it could not access the web page. First I thought that maybe the router had frozen - which does happen sometimes. But my wife, on the other computer, was having no problems and it seemed that only my computer was affected. I power cycled the router anyway but it had no effect.
I have been having trouble rebooting that computer (the one I was using) so it has been running without interruption for 49 days. When I saw that nothing I did would change the fact I could not access the internet I decided to reboot the computer. That was 90 minutes ago, and the computer is still trying to boot. I had been putting off having the computer looked at until I had some spare cash - but it would appear that I can no longer wait. Although since my disposable income went to replace the starter on the car, it probably will have to wait anyway.
And to make matters worse, the laptop I am currently using to write this entry decided to become finicky and not boot up. It took me about 10 minutes to the thing to boot. I guess tonight is the night the computers have decided to get on my nerves. Unfortunately they're doing way too good a job of it.
It's now past my bedtime, but I do not think I am in the mood to rest at the moment. Particularly considering that all I want to do is drop kick the computer that is acting up. Oh well.....
Good night!
I wish I could say the same about the evening at home. Everything was going fine, until the point where I was reading my mail on the computer. I was trying to access one of the emails and the browser said that it could not access the web page. First I thought that maybe the router had frozen - which does happen sometimes. But my wife, on the other computer, was having no problems and it seemed that only my computer was affected. I power cycled the router anyway but it had no effect.
I have been having trouble rebooting that computer (the one I was using) so it has been running without interruption for 49 days. When I saw that nothing I did would change the fact I could not access the internet I decided to reboot the computer. That was 90 minutes ago, and the computer is still trying to boot. I had been putting off having the computer looked at until I had some spare cash - but it would appear that I can no longer wait. Although since my disposable income went to replace the starter on the car, it probably will have to wait anyway.
And to make matters worse, the laptop I am currently using to write this entry decided to become finicky and not boot up. It took me about 10 minutes to the thing to boot. I guess tonight is the night the computers have decided to get on my nerves. Unfortunately they're doing way too good a job of it.
It's now past my bedtime, but I do not think I am in the mood to rest at the moment. Particularly considering that all I want to do is drop kick the computer that is acting up. Oh well.....
Good night!
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Buggy HBA driver strikes again
I guess it had to come back and bite us at least once. We are running an older version of the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) driver on one of our backup servers; that version has a bug that causes it to start throwing errors in the log after a while. We had not yet updated because, according to the vendor, the logging of errors does not cause any issues with the actual running of the HBA.
Well today we found out that it is not quite true. If you are logging those errors and one of the fibre drives goes away - it will not come back! Even worse, if you reset the HBA to try and bring that drive back, all the drives will go away! Which of course meant that an emergency reboot of that server had to be scheduled immediately.
I guess a driver update will be on the list of things to do during the next change window.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The second day back
I could not help but wonder yesterday that I did not get as many messages as I should have gotten, particularly with all the "this server is no longer monitored, what do you want me to do with all the logs" messages I was getting every two hours while I was off. Anyway, it turns out that, because my computer was powered off for part of last week (Wednesday night to Monday morning), a lot of the messages I get every day got queued on the mail server with an ever increasing timeout value. So when my computer was turned back on Monday morning I got a lot of the messages - those with the shorter timeout value. The ones with the longer timeout value (about 3000 of them) showed up overnight and were waiting for me this morning. Needless to say, most of those got deleted unread (old reports that were no longer relevant).
I am still having to deal with daily issues (for example, we ran out of tapes in one of the robots in the middle of the afternoon even though there were 25 scratch tapes in the robot this morning) so I have not had much time to get to the project stuff. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for that. It better be, because the meetings about project stuff are about to start in earnest and I guess it would be good if I at least had an idea as to what the project was about.
Since I spent most of my day at work, there is not much to say on the home front. So I guess I will close now.
Good night!
I am still having to deal with daily issues (for example, we ran out of tapes in one of the robots in the middle of the afternoon even though there were 25 scratch tapes in the robot this morning) so I have not had much time to get to the project stuff. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for that. It better be, because the meetings about project stuff are about to start in earnest and I guess it would be good if I at least had an idea as to what the project was about.
Since I spent most of my day at work, there is not much to say on the home front. So I guess I will close now.
Good night!
Monday, August 08, 2005
Like I never left
First day back at work. Besides having over a thousand messages to read to catch up (I deleted most of them without reading them) it would appear that very little got accomplished while I was away - which of course means that I now have to do it all while my co-worker is on vacation. Thanks to lawyers (ours or theirs - that's not really important) the consultant that was supposed to come over last week could not come as the lawyers had not signed off on the terms of the visit. Never mind that we have been trying to get this visit organized for months. It would also appear that all the hardware that was supposed to show up while I was away didn't - I guess now I will have to track that down. And tapes I sent over to our offsite robot might not have shown up - well they certainly did not get added to the robot while I was away - so it looks like we might run out of tapes tonight since the person I sent the tapes too is on vacation until tomorrow.
I did not get home until after 6pm, mostly because the backups that were supposed to start at 5pm did not start until after 6pm. And since I was the only one left at the office I stayed to make sure the backups did start. I was so miffed at having to stay late that I charged overtime for me staying. If the backups had started on time, I would have just gone home without charging but since I had to stay much later than I normally do I had no qualms in charging for it. If they do not like it I just will not stay late anymore and the backups can do whatever they want.
Good night!
I did not get home until after 6pm, mostly because the backups that were supposed to start at 5pm did not start until after 6pm. And since I was the only one left at the office I stayed to make sure the backups did start. I was so miffed at having to stay late that I charged overtime for me staying. If the backups had started on time, I would have just gone home without charging but since I had to stay much later than I normally do I had no qualms in charging for it. If they do not like it I just will not stay late anymore and the backups can do whatever they want.
Good night!
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Last day before return to work
Sunday is usually a pretty quiet day once church is over. And today was no different - I did very little besides play on the computer all day. I did go and return the laptop to the office so I would not have to take it with me on the bus in the morning.
Interestingly enough, somehow this time I feel like I was off for more than a week. I don't know why that is, but I feel more rested than I normally would after just a week's vacation. Now hopefully work will not be too stressful so I can enjoy this restful state for a while at least.
Since not much happened today, not much to talk about. Oh, I should mention I got taken out for lunch and for dinner - thank you Nikki!
Good night!
Interestingly enough, somehow this time I feel like I was off for more than a week. I don't know why that is, but I feel more rested than I normally would after just a week's vacation. Now hopefully work will not be too stressful so I can enjoy this restful state for a while at least.
Since not much happened today, not much to talk about. Oh, I should mention I got taken out for lunch and for dinner - thank you Nikki!
Good night!
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Is a weekend a vacation?
As I mentioned yesterday, I got up at the crack of dawn to take my older daughter to the bus station. My wife came as well - which was an unexpected bonus. On the way back home, we stopped at the office to pick up the team laptop: we use the laptop for the PowerPoint slides during the church service. We then went through the drive-thru at McDonalds and got some breakfast that we ate when we got back home. Then we went back to sleep (7am) and I slept until 11am.
My younger daughter took us out for lunch at Wendy's, probably our favourite fast food place, (which was very good) and then I have spent most of the day on the computer, getting the slides ready for tomorrow's church service.
My wife made barbecued beef in the crockpot for dinner - another stupendous meal. Not much else to report besides talking on the phone to my older daughter who made it safely to her destination.
Good night!
My younger daughter took us out for lunch at Wendy's, probably our favourite fast food place, (which was very good) and then I have spent most of the day on the computer, getting the slides ready for tomorrow's church service.
My wife made barbecued beef in the crockpot for dinner - another stupendous meal. Not much else to report besides talking on the phone to my older daughter who made it safely to her destination.
Good night!
Friday, August 05, 2005
And still more vacation
Still another day where I did not have to go to work. Our mechanic came just after noon and had the car fixed within the hour. $263.28 was the damage but most of that was for the new starter. I would hate to think what it would have cost at a dealership.
Went with my daughters to see "Sky High". A reviewer said something about it being the funniest thing since "Galaxy Quest"; I beg to disagree. It was a cute movie, but one that has been done a thousand times - teen angst in high school, misfits, etc. The only new twist is that the kids has superpowers.
Well I better keep this short as I should be sleeping; my older daughter is going out of town for a week and I am driving her to the bus depot at 5:15am in the morning! Guess I will be going back to bed after dropping her off...
Good night!
Went with my daughters to see "Sky High". A reviewer said something about it being the funniest thing since "Galaxy Quest"; I beg to disagree. It was a cute movie, but one that has been done a thousand times - teen angst in high school, misfits, etc. The only new twist is that the kids has superpowers.
Well I better keep this short as I should be sleeping; my older daughter is going out of town for a week and I am driving her to the bus depot at 5:15am in the morning! Guess I will be going back to bed after dropping her off...
Good night!
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Still more vacation
Another vacation day - albeit more eventful. The day started normally enough, we got up early to take my older daughter to work. Afterwards we went to breakfast and then went back home. A couple of hours later my wife had a doctor's appointment and after that we went to Wal-Mart to get some stuff we needed. This is when the fun (!) begins. We left Wal-Mart and got about 200 meters down the road and the car died. We moved the car off the road and then gave it a few minutes and tried to restart: the car turned over but did not start. After waiting a couple more minutes we tried again and this time the started whined but did not engage (that is how it was explained to me by our mechanic). After trying a couple more times we came to the realization that the car was not moving from there on its own. That's when we had the car towed home. Our mechanic came and had a look at it later in the day and gave us the bad news about needing a new starter. He will be back on Friday afternoon to replace the starter. And there will go just about $300.
The rest of the day was pretty much anticlimactic. Had dinner, watched some TV and vegetated in front of the computer. So I don't really have anything else to say.
Good night!
The rest of the day was pretty much anticlimactic. Had dinner, watched some TV and vegetated in front of the computer. So I don't really have anything else to say.
Good night!
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
And more vacation
I really took advantage of my vacation day - by not getting up until after noon. Of course part of the reason for that is that my older daughter had said that we probably would not see her before noon: I just made sure of that. I was actually awake earlier but I just stayed upstairs and surfed the web from the spare laptop.
I got up when I was told that we were going grocery shopping. Grocery shopping is kind of fun for me because, since my wife and older daughter do the shopping together, I do not really have to stick around. So I end up meandering through the store - usually in the electronics and book sections. Today I spent most of my time in the book section as I must say the electronics section is kind of lame - to borrow a term from my kids.
Then afterwards we went through the drive-thru at BK as today was Whopper Wednesday. The Whoppers were really good - unfortunately they did not get the special order Whoppers right: they got some of it right but they forgot the mustard and the extra pickles.
Good night!
I got up when I was told that we were going grocery shopping. Grocery shopping is kind of fun for me because, since my wife and older daughter do the shopping together, I do not really have to stick around. So I end up meandering through the store - usually in the electronics and book sections. Today I spent most of my time in the book section as I must say the electronics section is kind of lame - to borrow a term from my kids.
Then afterwards we went through the drive-thru at BK as today was Whopper Wednesday. The Whoppers were really good - unfortunately they did not get the special order Whoppers right: they got some of it right but they forgot the mustard and the extra pickles.
Good night!
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Vacation
Today was the first actual day of vacation this week - yesterday was a day off but I had to monitor backups. I really had nothing to do with work today - well except for filling out my timesheet which had to be done before the end of the week so it could be approved. So I guess I was on the computers at work for 10 minutes - but I did not do any work :)
Gee I guess today will be a short entry so I don't have any work comments to make. I also did almost nothing today - well nothing productive anyway. I did go and pick up my daughters from work but since I like driving it cannot be called an inconvenience. I guess my girls would call that doing something productive. Oh, and I practiced the piano for about 30 minutes - something I had not done for longer than I can remember. There is a song I want to play at church and I figured I better get started practicing.
Good night!
Gee I guess today will be a short entry so I don't have any work comments to make. I also did almost nothing today - well nothing productive anyway. I did go and pick up my daughters from work but since I like driving it cannot be called an inconvenience. I guess my girls would call that doing something productive. Oh, and I practiced the piano for about 30 minutes - something I had not done for longer than I can remember. There is a song I want to play at church and I figured I better get started practicing.
Good night!
Monday, August 01, 2005
BC day
Today was BC day - a statutory holiday at my place of work so I had the day off. I am sort of ashamed to say that it is pretty much all that BC day means to me: a day off. Besides the obvious "It a celebration about British Columbia" I know nothing about what exactly it is we're celebrating. I guess I should make it a point to find out. After all, I have been living in BC for over 30 years now; maybe I should make an effort to find out a little more about its holidays.
We did not use as many tapes last night - a mere 20. Which means that I did not have to go and stock up the tape robot with more tapes. That is a good thing as I am actually supposed to be on vacation this week - I just agreed to do the monitoring this weekend even though it was my coworker's turn so she could go out of town. At least I know what happened last week which I would not have known next weekend (and I get 3 hours of overtime instead of the usual two).
I spent most of the day in front of the computer - long enough that I actually got tired of doing it. I must confess I did not think that I would every get tired of sitting in front of a computer. Oh well, I wonder if tomorrow will be the same.
So really very little happened so I will close.
Good night!
We did not use as many tapes last night - a mere 20. Which means that I did not have to go and stock up the tape robot with more tapes. That is a good thing as I am actually supposed to be on vacation this week - I just agreed to do the monitoring this weekend even though it was my coworker's turn so she could go out of town. At least I know what happened last week which I would not have known next weekend (and I get 3 hours of overtime instead of the usual two).
I spent most of the day in front of the computer - long enough that I actually got tired of doing it. I must confess I did not think that I would every get tired of sitting in front of a computer. Oh well, I wonder if tomorrow will be the same.
So really very little happened so I will close.
Good night!