Diary of a Network Geek

Got it licked!

Thanks to a little help from a fresh pair of eyes, that is. I’d been having trouble working with the image of our Dell Precision 670 Workstation series, until one of the other guys pointed out something in the registry for me. Now, I’d manually edited the registry file via a text editor, but, somehow, that didn’t make a difference. So, I changed it in another tool (Console One, actually), and the entire image worked! (To refresh your memory, the surviving Mike aka The Messiah, figured out a way to use SNAPShot to make addon images. So, I’ve been exporting the registry changes from the NAL objects I created in Console One, hence the above statement. Make sense now?)
And, I’ve redone the image for the GX280 the same way. Fortunately, I didn’t have the same problems with that image that I had with the SCSI based ones. Now, I’m working on updating the d400 image. It’s a little tedious, but at least I’m making progress again. Finally!

I’m 36 today.

I share a birthday with Frank “Chairman of the Board” Sinatra, Bob Barker, Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, Edvard Munch, painter of The Scream, and Wells Fargo founder, Henry Wells. Not to mention, Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues, Tim Hauser of Manhattan Transfer, Dickey Betts of the Allman Bros, jazz musician Grover Washington Jr, Karl Edward Wagner who is the author of Bloodstone and Night Winds, and former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch.
Also, it was on this day in 1897 that “The Katzenjammer Kids” made its debut in the New York Journal. The comic strip was created by Rudolph Dirks and featured such novelties as the dialogue balloon, the multi-panel story, and a regular cast of characters. It was on this day, in 1901, that Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean. This is also the day, in 1915, that the first all-metal aircraft (a Junkers J.1) was test flown at Dessau, Germany.
But, that’s not all! My birthday is also when, in 1925, Arthur Heinman coins term “motel”, and opened Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, California. On this day, in 1964, shooting started for the “Star Trek” pilot, The Cage (which was later reused in Menagerie). In 1965, no doubt in anticipation of my birthday, Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears scored 6 touchdowns, which ties the NFL record.
A year before I was born, in 1967, the US launched Pioneer 8 into solar orbit. And, on the actual day of my birth, in 1968, the US performed its first nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site. So, obviously, my birthday was, indeed, earth-shattering.

It’s been a hell of a year. I can’t wait to see what I’m doing next year at this time! I hope you all are right there with me.

And it would have been in time for my anniversary…

Ah, well, perhaps I celebrate some other event. I’m talking about the Macallan Whisky Weekend – Friday 4th & Saturday 5th March 2005, of course. A little tasting event sponsored by the Macallan Distillery. Among other things, the event includes “a Macallan Masterclass with Bob Dalgarno, Whisky Maker at The Macallan and recent winner of “Industry Leader of the Year 2004″ at WhiskyFest in the U.S.”
But, that’s only the start… Of course, the event is in Scotland, but you also get 2 nights accommodation in a Classic bedroom; Full Scottish breakfast each morning; A three course dinner with the group, with wine, in The Terrace on Friday night; An insight into ‘The World of Whisky’ on Friday night including the opportunity to taste six different whiskies; A four course Gala Scottish dinner in a private room with the group, a different whisky will be included to accompany each course (or wine for those who would prefer), on Saturday night; and, most importantly, A bottle of The Macallan 12 years. Of course, it runs about $1300, for two, plus airfare, but it would have been worth it. Hmm, it’s only $900 for a single. Maybe it’s worth the deep, deep debt….

Well, not this time around. Maybe if they’re still doing it in a couple of years. It sure looks like fun, though, eh? (Aw, go on, you know you want to click on the Macallan link. It’s Friday, you deserve it!)

Well, at least according to this aritcle on MSN.

The article is titled “10 Superfoods for Stress Relief” and, as a friend reminded me the other day, I’ve had so much stress this year, I should be dead. First, I change jobs. Then, a friend of mine dies. Well, actually, got killed, I think. Then, my wife leaves me. Right before the holidays. Oh, and I turn 36 on Sunday.
Hmm, maybe I do have stress…. Well, if I follow that article, I just need to eat a Asparagus, Beef, Tuna, Cornflakes and Crispy Rice Cereal caserole with a Cottage Cheese and Fruit salad followed by Almonds and Blueberries for dessert and I should be right as rain again!

Hmm, I think I’ll just stick with the stress and holiday depression. I still miss the dog, though.

I had some minor setbacks at work this week.

I say minor because, as far as I’m concerned, anything short of termination or death is minor. So, first the ZENWorks imaging thing that I thought I’d worked out last week didn’t work this week. Or, rather, it didn’t work all the time or even consistently. So, I’m working on that. Again. Oh, joy.

Then, I’ve been doing a lot of Linux server work lately and that had some small snags. Mainly, it was me being tired, a little depressed, and somewhat distracted. I forgot a couple of little, “detail” items, like chaning IP addresses and cleaning out temp files before running a backup. Stuff like that. The only “show-stopper” was something entirely out of my hands. (Hey, that seems like a theme in my life these days!) The server that I’d been working on, and getting prepared to install on a remote SAN, can’t be shipped until we get the additional processor and power supply from Dell. They’ve been on order for almost a month now. *sigh* Oh, well, my end is almost done. Just a little bit of testing left to do and then…. I wait. (Unfortunately, that seems like a theme in my life right now, too. Always waiting…)

All in all, though, it’s not been a bad week. Nice and quiet. So far…

I cannot believe this!

Some time ago, I gained, and subsequently lost, a lot of weight. Something like 45+ pounds, actually. I then gained about 10-12 pounds back and have been fighting to get it back down again ever since. So, now, flash to yesterday when I have this horrible pain in my stomache and a fever and all sorts of nastiness going on inside me.
I did make myself eat, though, because I knew I had to keep my strength up. And, I forced liquids and megadosed on aspirin. I sweated out the fever last night and woke up feeling achey all over and a little shakey, too, but better. Not quite so much pain in my gut. So, then I step on the scale after my shower and I’m back to my lowest weight. It’s a little hard to tell on the analog scale, but it looked like I was under 175.
Pretty damn good. Now, I just have to keep it there and stay healthy. Which reminds me, I should go take my multi-vitiman now. L8er~!

After some long struggles, VICTORY!

In recent weeks I have posted less and less about my job. Why, you ask? Well, aside from a serious bout of depression, things have not been going well on my projects. Oh, the Linux stuff was okay, mostly, except for a nasty little problem with that mkCDrec program and our SAN. Something about the way it makes the boot partition on the ISO just didn’t like the drivers for the QLogic cards we use. It would never recognize more than one partition at a time. Even after we recompiled it with multiple LUN support. But, I digress….

So, I’ve been banging away at this ZENWorks desktop imaging system deal for weeks. Well, it hasn’t been smooth, but we have a way that *seems* to work well. And, get this, we use snapshot! Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but it works. So, here’s the thing, we want to have one base image for XP and then just have addon images for everything else. But, we have at least one SCSI-based workstation. So, what does that mean? Trouble, that’s what. Ultimately, here’s what I did…

I started with a base XP image then added just enough to get it to boot on the SCSI machine (a Dell Precision 670). Next, on a second partition, I loaded all the snapshot files and started that process. Then, I loaded all the Dell drivers and such as appropriate and capped off the snapshot. Finally, I make the app and use filedef.txt to create a BAT file that copies the converted files to their original names and directories. From that, I make the ZENWorks image. And, viola! It works like a charm. Okay, so it’s a bit ’round-about, but it *does* work and a whole lot better than using sysprep, too. At least, for me.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good week! Now, all I need is to get a working car….

Just when you thought I’d never post another fun link…

O’Reilly comes out with Make magazine, the magazine dedicated to geeks who want to make it themselves. Yep, my favorite tech/geek publisher is coming out with a new magazine in early 2005 that is dedicated to the hardware hacker in all of us. They describe their fledgling magazine as “Martha Stewart for geeks”.

Sounds like fun to me!