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Archive for March, 2008
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Yesterday and Today I was tasked with building seven servers. No issue really, just installing the OS (2203 Std and 2003 SBS).
As of right now, one has been completed. And that one needs to have a load of software installed onsite. This is not good.
Why did this happen? Was I unable to complete these installs? Was there something unexpected?
No
The parts and software were either not ordered, ordered seperately or were not delivered to the correct address.
in the words of a great man: What The Fuck?
One particular example. A server with a single 160GB HD. The client ordered server with 2x250GB RAID 0. We ordered the 2 x 250GB seperately. Why? I actually dont know if it is cheaper like this, but even if it is, the man hours alone have made this saving redundant.
Ingredients:
- Festive Occasion
- Bunch of Mates and Better Halves
- Mixing Agent (Beer, Bacardi Breezer, various Spirits)
- Eclectic mix of drinking establishments
- Lead Singer (Beano)
- Backing band (Scubadice or Pete Fagan)
- After Party Venue (B’s and Mine)
- After Party (Wii Boxing and Blazing Saddles)
- Happiness on Earth cos its Paddy’s Day!
Instructions:
Wash and prepare all Other Halves for between 30 and 120 minutes at varying degrees of heat. Sprinkle with Pop Music
Meanwhile, wash and roughly dry Bunch of Mates.
Marinade Other Halves and Bunch of Mates in seperate containers of Bacardi Breezer/Spirits and Beer respectively
When prepared, move to the entire collection of ingredients to the any of the Drinking Venues. Try to ensure it is the furthest away from home, so as to make the journey from thelast pub to the after party as quick as possible. Its all in the preparation!
Stop off in almost every pub on the way, soaking the ingredients with various mixers!
For entertainment value, have on of the Bunch of Mates invade the stage of the pub band, and let rip with various U2 tunes! 
When the pub’s are closed, call sister that has been working so not drinking for a lift home. Tell her she’s feckin deadly
Get home, turn on the Wii, get stuck into some boxing!
get up next day. Be delighted you are with other half for 2 years!
Lately Ive been listening to CD’s again in my car. As a result I have now adopted the following time keeping method
It took me “Metallica – Ride the Lightning.1″ to get to work the first morning I adopted this.
The basic rule of this is “Artist – Album (*n) .x”, where “n” is the amount of times you played the full album, and x is the last track that started on the album
What this means is that i listened to all of Ride the Lightning, then the first track again.
Im mightily chuffed with this. Im calling it Phelan Time, and soon there will be a Jimmy’s Calendar, much more accurate and air-grabbing than the feckin Roman Calendar or even the shake-your-hips-to Mayan Calendar.
Today it took me “Serj Tankian – Elect the Dead.3″ to get into work.
I had a job yesterday to install 7 6200 PCI cards (PCI, not PCI-E, that wasnt a typo).
All machines were Fujitsu Siemens x102 Desktops. All had onboard SIS graphics.
All but 2 went without issue. I was having serious frustrations with the drivers between the SIS and the Nvidia.
On all others I installed the nvidia drivers without issue. But on two machines, when i went to the display settings, i would get a “this driver is not for this version of windows, using Default VGA Driver” (the actual error was longer than that, but thats the drift of it).
So i first updated the SIS drivers. No go
After some head scratching the solution presented itself, rather round-aboutly!
I removed all of the drivers for all VGA cards
I set the PCI card as the Primary Video Card in the Phoenix BIOS.
Start windows. Install Nvidia drivers first. Restart. install SIS drivers. All working lovely.
A BIOS flash was required on one of the machines to show the option to disable the onboard graphics.
This post should serve as a warning to most of America and people who fail to engage their brain before entrusting their vehicles and lives to some power several kilometers above their heads! (read: not God or any other $deity)
A certain amount of Common Sense is required when using any technology. Here is a pic from my car while driving on the Mitchelstown Bypass.
Have a look at the following:
- …A Jedi craves not these things – Yoda
Anyone who wants a little bit of excitement in their lives should take up a job that involves driving in Ireland. Specifically something small and nippy, along backroads, in wet, nah, apocolyptic conditions, with the odd farmer in a jeep or tractor that comes out of no where, floods that block all the main roads, and a complete disregard for the wheels of your chosen chariot (you have to in Ireland, cant see the road for the pot holes on the back roads!)
This morning I arrived into work about an hour and a half late. The reason, Global feckin Warming causing the mental storms we are having and the flooding that resulted in New Ross being unpassable
Here is my route this morning ala Google Maps
Please bear in mind that i first went to New Ross, only to turn back and make for Inistioge!
Now, with the knowledge that it would be easier for Kilkenny Senior Hurling team get through to the final of the world figure skating championship than go home through New Ross, I decided that some wandering was required.
Here is the route i took home! (i took a few wrong turns, but it all worked out in the end!)
And here are some pics:
- Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Outstanding, Private Pyle. I think we finally found something that you do well.
Sorry for the repeat quote, but it was the only one suitable!
Finished my Fujitsu/Siemens “training”. Wasnt bad, their software is a bit clunky. The HP equivilent is much more streamlined and easier to use. However I liked the theory behind their remote agents and the SNMP reporting. Good for something like a corporate environment but i dont think it will be of huge advantage for me in here, with one or two servers scattered out around the place
Cant help feeling it was more a sales push though than training. Every second sentence was “this is not a sales push”. No where better to hide something that right in front of people eh!
Things are coming together nicely in here and in my home (real) life. New Job, new car (well company car, but still), new dog (Chewie), new games console (WIIIII!!!), possibly a new house. Now if my better half can get the first of my list sorted, then we’d be feckin delighted altogether! And thats enough new stuff for us for the moment!
In work things are going along nicely. I have Fujitsu training tomorrow that should be, eh, well its a day out in Dublin! Its also an auld certification to not so be sniffed at.
Logmein is a lovely piece of software: www.logmein.com
I setup VPN’s this morning on an SBS 2003 server.
Was quite simple to be honest. Enable the Routing and Remote Access service in SBS2003, open up port 1723 on the router (Zyxel Prestige 660RU-T1) am using NAT so had to port forward, then setup specific users for VPN access. I elected to use a seperate user for the VPN access to add an extra layer of protection.
All looking good so far!
Setting up the “Routing and…” was the trickiest, cos i had to find it first.
On SBS 2003 i was looking for the PPTP protocol to install in the Network Properties, but it wasnt present. I was all “bugger, this will have to wait” but after some poking around, i found the “Routing and Remote Access” option in the Administrative Tools area.
That then had to be enabled.
Once it was it was a case of allowing a user through. To do this in SBS 2003 I needed to create the new user.
For an added layer of security I am using a seperate user to authenticate for the VPN than the user used to login to the server.
I elected to go through the Active Directory area to do this as opposed to the Server Management console, no reason, i just happened to have AD open at the time. I didnt give them an exchange mailbox. When they were added, i went in the Users area in the Server Management console, right clicked the user i created, then went to the Dial In area. I selected the “Allow” option in this.
It is of course possible to use a group policy to do all this for a specific user group, but i dont know how to do this yet!
