I was awakened this morning to Oreo barking as a crew arrived to power wash the neighbour’s deck. Oreo, being blind, tends to panic pretty easily now wanted me to get up and investigate any sound going on outside of the house as he has no way to check for himself.
My desktop has hardware issues and I am finally giving up on it. It has been running for two weeks now, I think, but it blue screens whenever the AVG AV is running. I could turn that off but that is not a solution. I know what the problem is, bad memory sticks, but cannot go through the downtime necessary to do hardware tests and get the warranty to cover them. I need to be working. So I ordered a new PC and will do the memory test after I have switched over to the new, completely warrantied by HP, PC.
I ordered an HP dc5850 with Vista Business. It is running a triple-core AMD Phenom II processor – the latest in AMD desktop technology. I would have preferred the quad core but finances dictate otherwise. I did get 6GB of RAM, however, which will be very nice. That is double what I have been using for a long time. Pretty nice for a desktop. This new machine probably has roughly four time the horsepower of my current dx5150 desktop with its aging Athlon64 3200+ processor. The new machine comes with both XP and Vista but I will, almost certainly, run Windows 7 RC on it instead.
I started using Mozy Home online backup today. I have been very interested in it for a while but just today had the chance to get it installed and to see how it would perform. I am thinking that I am going to get the pro account. It is very cheap for home use and looks like it will really do a great job. Very simple to use and having an online backup is rather important. It handles multiple computers too which is great. P.S. If you sign up for Mozy through SGL I get free additional backup space so please, give them a try!
I also started playing with DimDim today too. DimDim is a service that competes with WebEx and LiveMeeting. So far it is looking pretty interesting. I will provide feedback when I get a feel for how it is working.
The HP Proliant DL185 G5 arrived today. I am extremely relieved to learn that the drive tray that I am testing actually works which we were unable to confirm until the machine was physically in the house. Both I and, I expect, HP are very happy to learn that this solution is going to work. The one bad thing of the day is that the rear facing drive carrier does appear to have arrived. I am waiting for HP to get back to me and see what needs to be done. Currently the server holds a dozen large format hard drives and the read facing drive carrier will hold two additional drives.
My article on Datamation (Being An IT Manager) got moved from the second headliner yesterday to the top headline today! I guess that I did okay. My editor emailed me to let me know that I was getting an average of 5.5 minutes per page which is pretty exciting. Now I am going to be nervous writing a second article as I need to live up to the first one. I am hoping to get started writing my next article this week.
Today was busy but I feel as though I am mostly on top of things. I continue to not feel completely overwhelmed which is really important. I don’t mind the workload as long as it is not burrying me.
I’ve gotten into the routine of coming upstairs around seven thirty and having dinner and hanging out with Dominica and Liesl until Liesl goes to bed. Then I go back down to the basement and work until bedtime. Tonight I ended up on the phone until half past midnight!
Tomorrow is SpiceCorp NY’s first Manhattan meeting and second overall meeting. Should be fun. We are expecting about eight to nine people so not nearly as many as the thirteen who showed at the New Jersey branch meeting but a respectable number and a good amount for a start on a single branch. Katie and I will be attending at six thirty tomorrow. Should be fun.