I should update more
I really should update this more. I'm so used to not keeping a journal for fear of sister or parental meddling that I've overlooked who exactly reads my journal. Namely: myself, a bunch of my friends, and my wife. Not people I'll have any luck convincing I'm humble anyways.
Summary-My life has been subsumed by SQL and WOW. I've recently finished the SQL hell, and am actually enjoying WOW. For a more detailed discussion I invite you to choose a door. Be warned, if you work with me, you should probably read no further.
Today was an interesting day at work. I'll set the stage gently for those of you with a tendency towards migraines.
I'm working on transferring approximately 40 domains from various hosting companies, internet providers, and children living above their parent's garage to our client's local dual server setup that their web designer (not me) provided. I've been informed, by those who inform, that he believes he understands the net. I would strongly disagree. Note this next bit may be technical, caution advised.
He informed me that he had installed and configured slack ware (a Linux distribution) on the servers and we were "ready to go". Apparently, slack ware means the same thing as dos if configured by a blind, starving, hyena.
Yes, dos 6.0. I have no idea how he made it function.
I have since built a raid, repartitioned, and installed SUSE and apache. Only to be told we needed slack ware to get his poorly conceived, “a replacement for SUSE available for 18.99” software to work. But I digress.
He's provided several exciting indicators of his net-know-how. For example: he can malform DNS, delete static routes, and not find basic tools like nslookup. The man has genius, and epitomizes an all-in-one disaster.
So that is the background. I have been on the phone with genius all day today, fixing dns errors and giving over the phone instructions on the use of basic TCP/IP troubleshooting tools that he should, know when I am unexpectedly interrupted. Who could it be?
It's my boss on the phone! "One of our clients has lost a file!" says he, “Where did we back it up to?" **At this point I tried to interject-but no luck** “I'm looking on the backup tapes and I don't see the document." he continues, "Are we backing anything up?"
I respond politely "I'm sure we're backing up something, that client's backup job spans to 2 400 gb tapes. If there was nothing being backed up, why would we need 2 tapes?"
His reply "I don't see the document!"
*Noises of 40 year old climbing the wall**
I then tell him that I will log into that client remotely, how I love thee RDC, and look at the backup. My boss passes me to a coworker and continues his ascent.
Here's a quick summary of the ensuing conversation as I neatly describe to an MCSE and CA Backup Expert where everything is. Sarcasm added for effect.
Yes, we do have backups. See? Here's the first backup, to the Hard Drive, then here's a copy job to the backup server, then finally the backup server runs a full backup (including the other server's backup jobs) to the automated library.
Now, if you look on the tapes for the autoloader, you'll see several directories, labeled *wait for it* SERVERNAME__Backup.
If you look in those folders, there's a bunch of CTF files, some of them quite large, with helpful names like EXCHANGEAGENT.CTF
Remembering that the makers of the backup software are _C_omputer associates, you might even infer that these files are Computer associates Tape Files
Basic synergy suggests that the presence of so many tape files, all dated suspiciously the night before and all quite large, and all with the give away names of the servers in our organization, might indicate the presence of a backup job
*Collective GASP*
Class dismissed
That's work.
The lovely wife has started working the phrase sheeples into everything. If something annoys us, she will sheeple it. It's beginning to worry me. I like having a gnomish protector, and the baahing rarely irritates now that I'm accustomed to it, but I do worry that the conversion of a Houston driver to a sheep will not improve performance.
If you haven't guess, World of Warcraft has eaten us.
It's a nice thing really, I can play with assorted multitudes, and most of the people I've met have been nice. It has however, in the same way that katamari damaci did, enacted a paradigm shift upon my daily life. I cannot look at the laundry without thinking of the pimp pants I could make, and the dreams of pig death are disturbing.
Putting my over addictive personality aside, I highly recommend it. There have been some vistas which were just so gorgeously put together that I have literally sat and watched the sun go down. Not quite to the matrix stage, but clearly getting closer.
That's WOW
We're currently in the run up to moving out and into a new apartment. The cleaning, or purging, is going well, and the cat has almost calmed down about it.
There remains quite a bit to do still, but I have hope. Note, if you want the tall brown cabinet piece in our kitchen, the bunk beds, or several white bookshelves, talk to me. There's also an, antique, armoire that I may let go, presuming that will not cause Armageddon. I will have to check.
I think we will also have a fully modular set of Ikea stuff, but I haven't run that past the wif and this offer may be null and void when I do.
I think that's suitably prize like.
January was the month of SQL hell. I was contracted to install a windows 2000 domain for a client. They had no domain, just peer to peer, and they had only some simple files shared. Or so they said. *Cue ominous music* After spending the better part of a month there, I can assure you, they had 3 server driven databases that cared about FQDN, several workstation SQL instances, and best of all, a database-that-is-not-a-database which relied upon seperate tables in different shares for each client. If that sounds bad, it is.
In addition, halfway through the project they merged with another company and the scope went directly to hell.
As a result, the simple, relaxing, welcome back to the new year job, wasn't very simple, or relaxing. Regardless however, I have emerged and they've paid their bill, and I am getting a raise. So it worked out in the end, even if it meant on average 10 hour days and a very high stress level. Thank you wif, you put up with way more than you signed up for this last month.
That's the last month.
The updates will hopefully arrive on a timelier basis from now on.
Oh!
For those who know who they are, we have more anime.......
Summary-My life has been subsumed by SQL and WOW. I've recently finished the SQL hell, and am actually enjoying WOW. For a more detailed discussion I invite you to choose a door. Be warned, if you work with me, you should probably read no further.
Today was an interesting day at work. I'll set the stage gently for those of you with a tendency towards migraines.
I'm working on transferring approximately 40 domains from various hosting companies, internet providers, and children living above their parent's garage to our client's local dual server setup that their web designer (not me) provided. I've been informed, by those who inform, that he believes he understands the net. I would strongly disagree. Note this next bit may be technical, caution advised.
He informed me that he had installed and configured slack ware (a Linux distribution) on the servers and we were "ready to go". Apparently, slack ware means the same thing as dos if configured by a blind, starving, hyena.
Yes, dos 6.0. I have no idea how he made it function.
I have since built a raid, repartitioned, and installed SUSE and apache. Only to be told we needed slack ware to get his poorly conceived, “a replacement for SUSE available for 18.99” software to work. But I digress.
He's provided several exciting indicators of his net-know-how. For example: he can malform DNS, delete static routes, and not find basic tools like nslookup. The man has genius, and epitomizes an all-in-one disaster.
So that is the background. I have been on the phone with genius all day today, fixing dns errors and giving over the phone instructions on the use of basic TCP/IP troubleshooting tools that he should, know when I am unexpectedly interrupted. Who could it be?
It's my boss on the phone! "One of our clients has lost a file!" says he, “Where did we back it up to?" **At this point I tried to interject-but no luck** “I'm looking on the backup tapes and I don't see the document." he continues, "Are we backing anything up?"
I respond politely "I'm sure we're backing up something, that client's backup job spans to 2 400 gb tapes. If there was nothing being backed up, why would we need 2 tapes?"
His reply "I don't see the document!"
*Noises of 40 year old climbing the wall**
I then tell him that I will log into that client remotely, how I love thee RDC, and look at the backup. My boss passes me to a coworker and continues his ascent.
Here's a quick summary of the ensuing conversation as I neatly describe to an MCSE and CA Backup Expert where everything is. Sarcasm added for effect.
Yes, we do have backups. See? Here's the first backup, to the Hard Drive, then here's a copy job to the backup server, then finally the backup server runs a full backup (including the other server's backup jobs) to the automated library.
Now, if you look on the tapes for the autoloader, you'll see several directories, labeled *wait for it* SERVERNAME__Backup.
If you look in those folders, there's a bunch of CTF files, some of them quite large, with helpful names like EXCHANGEAGENT.CTF
Remembering that the makers of the backup software are _C_omputer associates, you might even infer that these files are Computer associates Tape Files
Basic synergy suggests that the presence of so many tape files, all dated suspiciously the night before and all quite large, and all with the give away names of the servers in our organization, might indicate the presence of a backup job
*Collective GASP*
Class dismissed
That's work.
The lovely wife has started working the phrase sheeples into everything. If something annoys us, she will sheeple it. It's beginning to worry me. I like having a gnomish protector, and the baahing rarely irritates now that I'm accustomed to it, but I do worry that the conversion of a Houston driver to a sheep will not improve performance.
If you haven't guess, World of Warcraft has eaten us.
It's a nice thing really, I can play with assorted multitudes, and most of the people I've met have been nice. It has however, in the same way that katamari damaci did, enacted a paradigm shift upon my daily life. I cannot look at the laundry without thinking of the pimp pants I could make, and the dreams of pig death are disturbing.
Putting my over addictive personality aside, I highly recommend it. There have been some vistas which were just so gorgeously put together that I have literally sat and watched the sun go down. Not quite to the matrix stage, but clearly getting closer.
That's WOW
We're currently in the run up to moving out and into a new apartment. The cleaning, or purging, is going well, and the cat has almost calmed down about it.
There remains quite a bit to do still, but I have hope. Note, if you want the tall brown cabinet piece in our kitchen, the bunk beds, or several white bookshelves, talk to me. There's also an, antique, armoire that I may let go, presuming that will not cause Armageddon. I will have to check.
I think we will also have a fully modular set of Ikea stuff, but I haven't run that past the wif and this offer may be null and void when I do.
I think that's suitably prize like.
January was the month of SQL hell. I was contracted to install a windows 2000 domain for a client. They had no domain, just peer to peer, and they had only some simple files shared. Or so they said. *Cue ominous music* After spending the better part of a month there, I can assure you, they had 3 server driven databases that cared about FQDN, several workstation SQL instances, and best of all, a database-that-is-not-a-database which relied upon seperate tables in different shares for each client. If that sounds bad, it is.
In addition, halfway through the project they merged with another company and the scope went directly to hell.
As a result, the simple, relaxing, welcome back to the new year job, wasn't very simple, or relaxing. Regardless however, I have emerged and they've paid their bill, and I am getting a raise. So it worked out in the end, even if it meant on average 10 hour days and a very high stress level. Thank you wif, you put up with way more than you signed up for this last month.
That's the last month.
The updates will hopefully arrive on a timelier basis from now on.
Oh!
For those who know who they are, we have more anime.......