Diary of a Network Geek

I got a lot of reading done while I was out of town.
In fact, I read two books last week while I was on the road. I reviewed them over at my other blog, the Fantasist’s Scroll. You can go there to read my reviews of Coyote Blue and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. Both fiction by Christopher Moore.
Currently, I’m reading a self-help book of sorts, but it’s sort of strange, so I’m keeping that one to myself.

Well, I’m trying to keep busy, anyway.
I went to a Lodge meeting tonight with a friend of mine. In fact, I sat in the South for his Third Degree, until I had to excuse myself because I was passing a kidney stone. That’s always a good excuse, by the way. I got there in time for dinner, which meant some good, heavy Texas BBQ. Masons sure know how to eat! Of course, now, I need to cut way back and try to lose the five pounds I gained while eating greasy food on the road last week. Curse you and your delicious food Applebee’s! And Olive Garden!
Okay, I probably could have eaten healthier than that, but the Messiah is a bit of a picky eater. I’m a bit more adventurous than straight “meat and potatoes”, but I made due. So, now it’s back to rice and chicken and tuna and other lighter fare. Hmm, maybe it’s time I started trying out those sushi and bento cookbooks….
Oh, I’ve also been in touch with H.O.P.E.. Apparently, they have to review your volunteer application before you can actually volunteer. It surprised me a bit, but I was glad they did. Of course, they were quite thorough when we adopted Hilda, too. I’m a bit of a shoe-in, though, because I’m a “big, strong man”, who are short supply amongst volunteers. Who knew? So, that’ll get me out of the house more often, too.
And, there’s always church. It’s nice to get out again and do these things I never felt I could do before. It’s really nice not being responsible to anyone for a change. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel like I had to “check in” with someone to let them know what I was up to, or where I was going. If I feel like it, these days, I just go. Like I said, it’s nice. And, I hope keeping active will help me keep the weight off, too!

Well, I’m home again.
I got in last night around 10:00pm, which, after a stop at the store for milk, got me home around 11:15pm. I was supposed to get in three hours earlier, but, well, getting back to Houston from Panama City was rather like Orpheus returning from Hades. In fact, the entire trip became Hell when we ended up staying up until 3:30am Wednesday night to get the server changed over. That was about 6-8 hours later than planned due to a wierd problem with DNS on the Netware 6.5 server and a couple of gigabytes of new data that had to be copied to the new server. Apparently, someone felt the need to backup a bunch of MPEGs, many of a dubious nature. I believe that many of the movies in question got deleted, but it still messed up our plans.
The rest of the trip was okay, but colored by the lack of sleep that Wednesday night. I feel like my soul is only now catching up to the rest of my body. Someone once described jet lag as the time it takes for your soul to catch up to your body. That, of course, is based on the idea that air-travel moves your body faster than your soul can keep up and the gap while the two resync is why you feel all wonky after air travel. I’ll buy it.
Anyway, much to my relief, nothing was wrong with the house when I returned. Everything was in its little place and all was well with my little world. Though, I would have been happier if my dog had been there to greet me. Ah, well, perhaps there’ll be another dog one day.
Oh, speaking of “one day” I have pictures, but I’ll post them next week sometime. Right now, I’m still readjusting to my soul having arrived sometime after my bags.

God, I remember this…
I used to do this all the time, before I “settled down”. Oddly enough, I almost miss it. Sure, I miss being home in my comfortable bed, eating lower-fat food and doing my “regular” routine, but it’s a change. I’m out here like some kind of hired gun, out to scare off the rustlers and make the unruly ranch hands shape up. Well, maybe that’s going a bit too far, but I’m sort of out in the corporate wilderness carving out a settlement of IT civilization. I’ve missed that bit.
You know what else I miss? Those damn, “side-car” trackballs for laptops. These stupid touchpad things are just not positioned right for my big hands. (Yes, ladies, I said BIG HANDS. You know what they say about the size a Network Geek’s hands…)
I do have to keep reminding myself that flirting with the cute, young waitresses is not appropriate behavior, though. I’d forgotten about that aspect of being single and travelling, even if I’m not legally single. Yet. And, that copier saleslady had the deepest, darkest pools of night for eyes that I could have just stared into for hours. (“Sure, 20k copies per month. Whatever you say….”) But, I’m sure that was just business, too, even if she did write her cell phone on her card for me. I’m sure she does that for all the IT guys that she’s selling copier leases to. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And, I’m sure it was a sign that my fortune from lunch at the Chinese buffet was “Guard yourself against evil temptations”!
Big meals on the company dime, coffee that someone else made with a smile, and a line of appreciative end users who are oh, so happy to see someone, anyone, from corporate who will fix their computer for them. Yeah, I miss home, but not that much.

Oh, yeah, I have a digital camera from the company so, after I get home and figure out the software, I’ll have pictures to post of our new facility. The manufacturing floor is incredible! We’re doing stuff with deep-sea umbilicals that virtually no one else in the US, possibly the world, can manage. It’s cool working for a kick-ass company again.

Well, I’m off to Panama City, Florida today.
It’ll be a week in sunny Florida, but I’ll be in the server room banging away at a keyboard and a mouse. I’ll be upgrading a Novell server there, along with “The Messiah”. (You know, I really need to get a picture of Mike so you all can see what I mean. He’s an athiest that looks like the classic portrait of Jesus. It’s trippy!)
So, since this is the first time I’ll be travelling with Oceaneering, I’m not sure how often I’llb e able to post, if at all. There’s a Fun Friday link all queued up, but other than that, I’ll have to post when I get back, I suspect.
See you next week!
(And, yes, I have someone watching the house, so don’t get any ideas!)

in Australia.

Well, according to this article on AustraliaIT, you go to the National Public Toilet Map. No, really. Stop laughing.
Okay, the only thing that’s sad about this is: A) that government funds are being used and B) it’s happening in Australia not the US. People we need a national map of public toilets in these United States. Ah, well, I guess I can’t hold it against the Aussies for getting it done before we do. After all, they’ve got those huge highways!

Oh, and as this is posting, we’re on the way to the airport to catch a plane to Chicago. It’s Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary and all the kids are coming in, so that means we’re flying up. We’ll be back on Monday, and I’ll be off work all next week, so postings will be strange indeed.
Enjoy your weekend!

In celebration of my business travel being postponed, we saw a movie yesterday.

Earlier this week, as I was about to buy airline tickets, which I can’t really afford, I was told to “WAIT!” So, this project, or at least my end of it, having been put on indefinate hold, we decided to see a movie to celebrate.
First, I think it’s important that I say Pirates of the Caribbean was NOT my first choice. I was out-voted two-to-one by my wife and daughter.
But, I have to admit, I was very, very pleasantly suprised. This was a GREAT movie! Obviously, it’s about pirates, but it’s more than that. It’s about a curse on pirate gold, stolen from the ancient Aztecs. The story follows Jack Sparrow, er “Captian” Jack Sparrow, in his quest to regain the Black Pearl, his pirate ship lost to a mutiny.
The story also follow Will Turner in his quest to find out who he is and marry the fair Elizabeth who is the daughter of the local British Governer. Will, it turns out, is the son of a very important pirate who has the secret to lifting the curse. Only, he doesn’t know it, of course.

But, before I spoil any more plot, let me say that this movie had something for everyone. There was adventure, of course. After all, how could a movie about pirates not have adventure? There was romance. After all, how could a movie about pirates not have romance? And, there were wonderfully animated corpses. (Really, the special effects were so good they were almost an additional character.) Johnny Depp, who plays “Captain” Jack Sparrow, does a wonderful job of combining comedy, action and drama. And, I have to admit, he’s not too bad with a cutlass.
This movie is really a great one and good for just about the whole family. Anyone who could survive the Disney ride should enjoy this film. Go see it!

Well, it looks like I’ll be a Road Warrior again.

At least, to a lesser degree. I got word this week that I’ll be doing some travelling for Loomis Fargo & Co. It’s nothing real complicated, just a PC upgrade, but they’ve got a deadline of September 15. Frankly, that deadline is somewhat artificial, but, still, it’s good motivation to get everything done.
I’ll be going to the Chicago area first, later this month, then I’ll be back off to New Orleans in September. I have to admit, it will be nice to see Mom and Dad back in Chicago for dinner at least once while I’m there. And, I’ve never actually stayed in New Orleans, just the airport, so I’m looking forward to that, too. Maybe I’ll finally get my “voodoo rattle” that I’ve been joking about since I got into IT!
In any case, I don’t really like business travel, but at least I’m going to major cities. And, of course, I’ll get paid fairly well for my trouble because I’m still a contractor, so I punch a clock. Anyhow, you can bet you’ll see entries about being on, and from, the road.
Stay tuned!

Well, I was all scheduled for the 3:00pm flight back to Houston, but the flight got canceled. *sigh* I just can’t win for losing. Oh, well, at least I managed to score some 256mg DRAM chips for $50 a piece, thanks to a co-worked who was in Baton Rouge, too. She asked me to pick her up a 128mg chip, because that was all she could afford, but I got her a 256mg chip anyway. For the great discount, I’ll eat the difference. Here’s to the servers they’re going to help build! ; }

Hey guess where I’m writing this from? Yep, I’m back in Baton Rouge! Yahoo! Only this time, I flew. No more of that driving across the swamp at night. Blech!
Things were going fairly well Monday. I got to start correcting the NDS (that’s Novell Directory Services, for you neophytes) synchronization issues that we’re still having thanks to Mother, our primary NDS Replica server, going South on me. Of course, just about every change I want to make takes about two hours to replicate out. Now, I *know* that I’ve explained that to the Supreme Commander, but he still doesn’t seem to “get” it. He’s a really Big Picture sort of guy and doesn’t understand *any* of the details of what I do. The joys of working for a former programmer. That’s all they truly understand or think matters. The rest is just magic that should happen instantly. *sigh* Of course, the fact that our building lost power didn’t help much. Thankfully, I’ve got my Palm IIIc! I just whipped that out and started playing Space Trader. Ah, what fun.
Then, on Tuesday, I started on that again. Until the Baton Rouge server dropped off the network. It still was up, but it stopped communicating with the rest of the network. The Cisco router was fine, so I knew it wasn’t the WAN connection, but it just wouldn’t see the network. So we rebooted it. Oh, boy, was that a mistake. It never came up right. Eventually, we got to a point where all we could get was an “Invalid Partition Table” error. So, it’s off to the airport for me. Leaving my poor sick wife to deal with getting our daughter from school and taking care of our leaking pond. Oh, joy.
Well, I got there and started fumbling around with stuff, but didn’t get very far. Then, I noticed that we had been trying to use Windows 95 utilities on a DOS 6.22 formatted partition! Damn, no wonder we weren’t getting anywhere! So, that started us root around for a DOS bootable disk. We finally found one and I was able to FDISK and FORMAT the old Primary drive and copy everything from the DOS partition of the mirror. Then, while eating my oyster po’boy, we rebooted and *shazam*! The server starts to come up. The next thing we know, it’s already started running the backup. So, since all looked well, we called it a night. Now I’m waiting for everyone to get caught up so I can clean up the hardware and get the server back up, hopefully for good. Or at least until they move, when I hope they’ll upgrade to real hardware. You know, something brand-name, like Compaq or Dell or even HP. I hate having to figure out clones. Then, I’ll try to get an earlier flight back to Houston and just enjoy a night at home. Maybe even snuggle with the wife on the couch while we watch Star Trek. Voyager’s still in reruns! ; }