Sheep Guarding Llama – Page 818 – Scott Alan Miller

August 28, 2008: The DNC Comes to Newark

85 Days to Baby Day! (27 Weeks and Six Days Pregnant)

I was awoken this morning by the phone. It was an renewal operator from Ziff Davis Enterprise trying to renew my Baseline subscription. This same guy called me at work yesterday and on the train ride home even though I told him that I would be on the train and unable to take his call. This whole process makes me really upset because I can renew online but they never let you. In general I don’t do business with anyone who contacts me by phone, especially my mobile phone.

So this morning he convinced me to waste several minutes going through the same information that they already have about me and taking forever to do so because he wouldn’t listen to me at all. Then, when we got to the end, he tried to renew my eWeek as well. I explained, over and over, that just like the Baseline subscription, I was already getting eWeek and did not need to renew and that, in fact, I received more than one copy of eWeek each week because someone had called me, screwed up and didn’t listen to me, and that I most definitely would not like to receive a third copy each week.

Instead of paying attention and not renewing my eWeek he went into a diatribe extolling the virtues of eWeek as if having a third copy would magically make its real benefits shine through. At this point I couldn’t take it anymore. I informed him that I was not authorizing my Baseline renewal and that I wanted my eWeek canceled. I’ve had it with these guys. They aren’t polite, they aren’t informed. They must get commission because they will do anything to get a subscription out to you. They are very, very rude.

I tried to contact Ziff Davis’ customer service but their “Contact Us” page goes to nothing but an advertising submittal form. I did some more searching until I found a general contact link for them. I am sure that it will go no where but at least I will inform them as to why they lost a customer (or, as they sell me to their advertisers, three customers.)

After being a customer of ten years and always renewing my subscription online they felt that it was worth paying someone to call me and offend me. Well, that was the last of my paper based IT publications. I had long ago dropped publications from other companies and was only really enjoying InfoWorld but they switched to all electronic a year or so ago – so I read them online. I only read eWeek, which was pretty weak in general, because it was handy to have something laying around in print. No more though. At least I will have that much less mail to deal with on a weekly basis. And I was beginning to feel like spending time reading that stuff wasn’t very valuable. The quality has gone down a lot in recent years as the competition has mostly gone away.

A woman in Sweden, misunderstanding baggage checkin instructions (and not being one to simply “follow the crowd”, placed herself onto the automated luggage handling system and was whisked away with everyone elses’, but not her own, luggage.

I went out to walk Oreo around noon and discovered that our street, Commerce, had been blocked off by the police and that the center of the street was being set up with a large stage. Not something that you see every day in Newark. It is really weird the amount of stuff that they do here for which they do not inform the local residents at all. In fact, living right here on the block where this is going on, I find it hard to find out what event is underway even when it has already begun. Even the concierge in our building have no idea.

On my next trip out, to get lunch at Airlie, someone handed me a flyer in the street for the “event” – their only announcement of their event was to hand out flyers in the street like the people pushing the girlie shows in Manhattan? The flyers claimed that it was an extension of the DNC from a group called “Black by Popular Demand”.

I found out from sources here and there that there was some announcement made last evening that parking on our street would not be available today but apparently those signs were taken down during the night and did not exist this morning. Then, this morning, the police came in and had cars towed away and then put up the “no parking” signs to act as if the people parking there were informed!

I also found out that the businesses on the street, but not the residents, were given a petition to request this event. But the businesses, who lost a lot of money today since the street was closed during business hours, were told that the event was a block party. This was strange as the only residents of the entire block are all in one building, Eleven80. So a block party would normally be inside the building since that is the entire block. They were also told that it was an afternoon block party with the implication that that would bring in crowds and business in the afternoon. So the petition passed.

It was not until the street was closed off and a stage was being erected in the middle of the street, and after peoples’ cars were being towed, that flyers started to be handed out and the businesses discovered that instead of an afternoon block party it was an at-night political rally with some seriously immoral overtones. So instead of making extra money they were losing quite a bit – all for a rally happening after almost all of them would have left town to go home.

I am guessing that they did anything that they could to avoid alerting the residents of Eleven80 to the time and place of the rally because their plan is to have a late night party in the street violating what we believe are the local noise ordinances and causing real disruption to those of us who actually live on this street. In many ways this is, once again, the residents of the larger Newark area and city haul flexing their collective muscles and sending a strong signal to the tax payers in Eleven80 to remind us that we are not considered to be residents and our presence is not appreciated here. It is pretty obvious since they selected the street directly in front of our building. What a ridiculous location if not to make a statement. With The Spot being a busy late night location in Newark, having the rally where they did had the potential to disrupt one of Newark few, legitimate late night venues as well.

My afternoon was not too busy which was good as I had to do some cleaning around the apartment, This place has gotten completely out of control. We have just been so busy recently plus with the number of computers and other equipment flowing through here in the last few weeks it has made things much worse. There is an extra “work bench” style table set up in the living room by the bookshelf that is not helping things in the least.

Dominica picked up fish tacos on her way home from Totowa today as she normally does on Thursdays. She got home and we ate our dinner and watched a littel bit of Frasier. It didn’t take long before the television became difficult to understand because of the noise level coming from the rally outside. We eventually switched over to air conditioning just to help block out some of the noise but it did very little in that regard.

Luckily Oreo did not need to go for a walk this evening. Oreo is in a certain amount of danger in Newark at the best of times – Newark natives tend to be deathly afraid of dogs and refer to all dogs, even tiny little snuggle dogs like Oreo as pit bulls and will literally jump from the sidewalk in terror – so having a crowd of Newarkers on the street and trying to take Oreo through could easily lead to someone attacking him or using the opportunity to claim that they were attacked.

I was a bit afraid to go out there myself but wouldn’t have really worried if I didn’t have to have Oreo with me. Dominica wanted me to take Oreo into the dark of Military Park at night rather than go down Commerce but that didn’t seem like a very good idea either. But it didn’t become something that we had to decide upon anyway.

Dominica went to bed, or tried to at least, as early as she could. She cooked Oreo’s stew this evening and that took until around nine. Then she tried to go to bed but she was not able to fall asleep for a very long time because of the incredible noise levels. That was pretty crappy.

The convention finally wrapped up at eleven which was better than we had thought having been warned that they were planning to go until midnight. That would have been really awful.

I spent most of my evening working on a number of minor projects including SparkWeb from Ignite RealTime which I now have running in a preliminary form. I don’t like it nearly as much as I like regular “old” Spark, the Java IM client, but SparkWeb is a very neat and interesting addition to my application portfolio and will definitely come in handy from time to time. I also did some desktop management and then, when everything else was wrapped up, I started the setup process of the DL145 G3 server which is being installed with CentOS 5.2 this evening.

Getting the DL145 G3 built was a bit of a chore as there was all kinds of LO100i stuff that I needed to before I could get it started. It turned out that the version that I had was not functional so I had to flash it to the latest edition which is often a pain. I did eventually get it working and was able to kick off a CentOS install before heading off to bed.

I took a few pictures of the rally going on down on Commerce. It was hard to get pictures as it was night time and just as I figured out how to position the camera to get good results the street lights shut off leaving the crowd very much in the dark.

Tomorrow will be my first time going into the city with my new bag. I am actually looking forward to trying it out. Carrying everything in my pockets has just been so annoying that having a solution to that problem just makes me feel better about walking into Manhattan.

August 27, 2008: Quest for Glory II Released

86 Days to Baby Day! (27 Weeks and Five Days Pregnant)

Anonymous Game Developers (AGDInteractive) have finally, after several years, released their remake of Sierra’s classic Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. AGDI has, in the past, created remakes of King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II. However, these two titles have mysteriously vanished from their website along with any information or mention of them along with the links that used to allow you to download the games. I no longer know how to get copies of these classics which is extremely sad.

Quest for Glory II can be downloaded, for free, from AGDI’s web site. I downloaded a copy, since you never know when they are going to abandon their work and forget about it, but do not anticipate having an opportunity to play it for quite some time. I really hope to have a chance to play it though. AGDI’s version of the games are generally far superior to Sierra’s ancient originals.

Both KQ1 and KQ2 I played through several times from Sierra back in the day along with other Sierra titles like KQ3 and The Black Cauldron. But I have never actually played any of the Quest for Glory series so having an opportunity to play one remade by AGDI should prove to be a real treat. I am confused, though, that they chose to begin with the second title in the series and not to begin with the first.

I did some digging around on the AGDI website and in the forums someone asks what has happened to the original KQ1 and KQ2 downloads and the answer was that they have temporarily been suspended from downloading until an update of some sort can be made available. If you have never played them, keep an eye open on the web site as the games are truly classics in the strictest sense. In the mean time, join me in trying out Quest for Glory II. I know that my old college roomate, Jamie Quaderer, will be excited. He was playing Quest for Glory IV on his Intel 80486 based PC when we first started college in Flint, Michigan in 1994.

I was completely exhausted this morning and forgot to set my alarm. Dominica woke me up and asked if I was going to Warren today. I jumped out of bed and got ready with blinding speed. I actually did alright this morning, as far as getting ready for work goes, and it probably worked out for the best that I got an extra fourty minutes of sleep. It was necessary.

Nothing special to report about work today. Very much “the usual”. For lunch three of us went out to Baja Fresh on NJ22 near the office. As we were leaving we discovered a new Georgian restaurant that had just opened next door. We stopped in and checked out the menu. The place looks really nice and I am very curious to try out the cuisine. The plan is for us to go there for lunch next Wednesday.

I left work at five and just barely made it to the shuttle that takes me from the office to the Summit Train Station. I actually had to run a little bit to catch the shuttle. Then, when the shuttle got us to the train station, there were huge lines for the ticket machines as well as the human-manned window. So I gave up and ran for the train which was on the platform. I just made it!

It is nearly impossible for me to catch the express train to Broad Street Station but on rare occassions it actually works out. The timing has to be perfect and there is no way for me to buy a ticket. The really annoying bit is that there is no way for me to buy a round trip ticket in the morning so that this wouldn’t be a problem! Argh.

The express gets me to Newark very quickly as there are no stops whatsoever between Summit and Newark. The timing of the train was perfect so that I stepped off of the platform and saw Dominica pulling up in front of the train station. I had to run to catch her as well, it was just that kind of day, but I did catch her and got a lift home to Eleven80. It was a very convenient day from that respect. Almost no walking at all.

On the ride home I completed reading John Man’s 2006 title “Attila“. Before starting another book I will be catching myself up on podcasts from IT Conversations.

We ordered in some dinner quite early from Golden City and watched a little bit of the sixth season of Frasier. Dominica has been watching Frasier without me so I have actually missed about half of the episodes thus far.

My PacSafe Metro 200 bag arrived today from Amazon even though Dominica had only ordered it yesterday. I will not have any call to use it tomorrow but on Friday I will be stuffing everything into it that I need for a day in the city and trying it out. I look forward to being able to bring everything with me that I might want or need while out in the city without having to pick and choose based on weight, plans and weather. Because I will be able to carry my digicam into the city on a regular basis hopefully I will be producing many more pictures of life in the New York Metro area.

I am hoping that when I get a NetBook that that will fit into this bag as well although there is every chance that it will not. This is not a particularly large bag and the books that I often carry only barely fit into it. A NetBook is very small but it would have to be quite small to have any hope of fitting in. It sure would be great if it did. That would do wonders for my soon-to-be very long commute from Peekskill to Manhattan.

The Acer Aspire One, which I am interested in, is 9.8″ x 6.7″ which just might fit. The book that I tried putting into the bag this evening, “Presentation Zen”, is 9.1″ tall and does fit well, but there is not very much room to spare.

While we are on the topic of Peekskill I should also mention that yesterday we received confirmation that the sellers had signed the paperwork for the house and that it was on its way back over to our lawyer so that the house buying process could continue. By late this afternoon the paperwork had been received by our attorney’s office and was on its way to our bank in Rochester who should have received it before the end of the day. So hopefully we will have more status information very soon. The next major step is the bank’s assesment of the house.

After Dominica went to bed, I had some work that needed to be done this evening so I stayed up late working on that. No rest for the weary, I guess.

August 26, 2008: Party in Tribeca

87 Days to Baby Day! (27 Weeks and Four Days Pregnant)

Today was, by necessity, my recovery day. The weekend was so long and arduous that I will be recovering for the next few days at least.

This morning I was able to sleep in until around seven which mean that I slept for a good ten hours. I feel so much better.

I worked from home for quite a bit this morning. There was much to be done and this was my chance to catch up with much of it.

I didn’t end up going into the office until lunchtime. And it was a late lunch at that. I met Katie at The Full Shilling, 160 Pearl, for some pub grub for lunch. She had the grilled shrimp salad and I had fish and chips with malt vinegar but no marrowfat peas.

Then into the office for the afternoon. I worked until just after five when I found out that there was an 30th Anniversary party for a friend in Tribeca. So I ran out the door with some friends and we caught a cap to Tribeca.

The party didn’t really get started until almost seven which was a bit later than we had expected. It was scheduled to start at a quarter after six but because of traffic issues a number of people, including the person for whom the party was being thrown, could not make it until a little bit later.

I had a good time hanging out with a huge band of my coworkers for about two and a half hours, until nine thirty, when I decided to forego dinner out with the crew and bring dinner home for Dominica instead. My mobile phone had run out of juice so I was unable to call, text, email or Twitter her to let her know my current status.

I got to Newark around a quarter after ten. Getting to New Jersey late in the evening from Manhattan becomes quite a pain. You can lose a lot of time just waiting for the train.

I picked up dinner from McDonald’s in the train station in Newark and walked home. Dominica had already eaten a light dinner but ate some of what I brought home as well.

We watched the pilot episode of The Love Boat aka The New Love Boat and then it was time for bed. I was pretty tired before going out this evening so by the time that we went to bed I was really exhausted. There has just been no sleep this week! I have to be up early tomorrow morning as I am working in Warren and need to catch the train.

Today I finally gave in to the constant pressure that says that I need to have a bag (i.e. a murse) with which to carry all of my stuff to and from the office. I carry a lot of stuff every day and every day I have to compromise on what I will bring with me. I would really like it if I could always have a camera (my little Kodak 12MP) and a book along with my other usual items but everything that I carry either has to be in my hand or in my pockets. As it is I have to carry house keys, my own BlackBerry, my work BlackBerry, my SafeWord card (security device that allows me to log into my office computers) and my iPod Nano. Those are some pretty full pockets. And, of course, there is my wallet. It gets to be a might uncomfortable to have all of those things in my pockets – especially considering the amount of walking that I do.

August 25, 2008: The Long Day Continues

88 Days to Baby Day! (27 Weeks and Three Days Pregnant)

The long day continues. The in-place Windows Server 2003 Web Edition installation on the Compaq Proliant DL360 G2 continued until one forty in the morning.

It was just a little after one thirty when it occurred to me that a lot of the work that I was doing here in the apartment in Newark could be done remotely. I have become accustomed to the equipment in Scranton not having the benefit of remote optical media but this server does (it has a full ILO rather than the older RILOE card that we had to add to the earlier generation servers.) And since the installation media that I am using was generated from an ISO image already – we could have just used that remotely to do everything that we are doing right now. It is not like I am doing anything with a local keyboard, mouse or monitor – even sitting right next to the server I am doing everything through the ILO! Argh.

I hate it when I get so tired and so close to a problem that I can no longer think of the obvious. Like yesterday at the data center – I had Andy do a ton of “remote hands” work on a server that I was standing directly in front of because I had no means to access it. But I had forgotten about the laptop that was right out in the car! Argh, again.

This was my first even in-place Windows Server 2003 installation. I never did that on Windows 2000 Server either. I have not done it, unless I am forgetting something, since my Windows NT 4 days!

It was truly amazing to see the Windows 2003 splash screen come up finally on the remote console of the server. What a day, what a day. Still a lot more work left to be done. But at least that bit is done. The first huddle has been cleared.

Around two in the morning I had the “new” machine online. I ran in to tell Dominica (who was very fast asleep as was Oreo) that it was working and that I would shortly be out the door for Scranton. The valets, knowing that I might need to run out at any minute, had the BMW ready for me on the side of the building. So I emailed the datacenter to let them know about when I would arrive and I was out the door with my server (DL360 G2), rails, two cans of Monster Juiced energy drinks, my BlackBerry, GPS and my iPod.

Dominica woke up when I was leaving so she helped me get ready to head out the door. We discussed the issue of me making it back in time for her to leave for work. It was going to be close. It is roughly two hours, each direction, to and from Scranton from Newark. Since it was already a quarter after two, that meant that best case scenario was that I would be back at roughly a quarter after six. She has to leave for work at seven. That is a pretty tight window considering that I had to cover two hundred and twenty miles, a good portion of which would be done during early rush hour, as well as get gas and stop at the datacenter, rack and test the server!

I made great time driving out to Scranton. It was just after four when I arrived. There was no traffic whatsoever and the construction zones didn’t affect me in the least. The drive was very nice, all things considered.

Once at the datacenter I got straight in and first did a quick memory swap so that the new server would have more memory than the machine that it was replacing rather than less. Then into the rack it went. The racking went very smoothly indeed. No issues at all. Since I was pulling two other servers out of the rack there were plenty of cables available for me to use.

The server fired right up without any problems at all. I plugged in a KVM cable just so that I could verify that the machine had come up on the monitor that they had there in the row. Once I saw the Windows Server 2003 splash screen come up I knew that it was time to go.

I pulled two servers (HP DL360 G1) from the rack and loaded them into the trunk and headed back for home. I ran across the street to the Turkey Hill gas station and topped up the tank so that neither I nor Dominica would have to worry about it today. I text messaged Dominica from the gas station so that she would know that the car would be available for her to go to work and then I was off for the trip home.

The drive back didn’t go quite as quickly as the drive westward but it was not bad. I hit heavy traffic around Tannersville, Pennsylvania and ended up driving all of the way from there to Newark, New Jersey is light, early morning Manhattan rush hour traffic.

I arrived at Eleven80 at six twenty in the morning. Boy was I ever tired. Dominica was not quite up yet when I came in the door. She had been hoping, I think, that I would not make it back in time and that she would be stuck calling in to work, but I was back with plenty of time to spare so she was able to get to work.

I did some wrap up and verification work while she was getting ready. I ran a little late, but only a little, to the office today. The walk to the train and from the WTC to the end of Wall Street were good for me as they helped to keep me awake.

My morning was not too busy. The United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Bahrain both have a holdiay so the people who generally produce the most work for me are all out today.

For lunch, which is my first proper meal since eating dinner at the Franklin Hotel in Rome on Saturday evening, Katie and I decided to hit the Waterstone Grill between Pearl and Stone. We are always on the prowl for new “foodie” places to eat and especially ones with outdoor seating. It is supposed to rain this afternoon and I am looking to sit out in the rain and enjoy some serious seafood.

Lunch was truly amazing. This was the best meal, in my opinion, that Katie and I have discovered yet and I definitely beat her in picking the best menu item today. I went for the pan crispy striped bass which was truly amazing. Glorious, in fact. Just what I needed. Katie had the lemongrass encrusted Chilean sea bass which was also good but not truly comparable to the pan crispy striped bass. I can’t recommend it enough.

I also had a lobster and onion tart as well as a bowl of lobster bisque with a shot of sherry. Keep in mind that this was my first real meal since Saturday night! All of the food was really excellent.

The afternoon was not as busy, which was very good because by the time that I had food I was getting incredily sleepy. I kind of just drifted along through the afternoon until five thirty when I headed for Newark.

I arrived at Eleven80 and Ramona, who was meeting us for dinner, we though, around seven, was already there and waiting for me in the lobby. Dominica had run into traffic because of an accident on NJ21 and was running late.

We just ordered in dinner from Ninos’ since it was Monday and places like 27Mix were likely to be closed. We ate and I had to head off to bed around nine o’clock. I just could stay up and visit any longer. Oreo was very excited to be able to come to bed early with me and was very snuggly. I have no idea how long Dominica and Ramona stayed up visiting.

August 24, 2008: Long Awful Day

89 Days to Baby Day! (27 Weeks and Two Days Pregnant)

Amazingly I actually got some sleep last night. It was approaching two in the morning before I had a chance to actually lay down to get some sleep and it was probably getting close to two thirty before I actually fell asleep. Once I did fall asleep I got some pretty good rest, I think.

I slept in until nine or nine thirty this morning and Dominica slept in a little bit longer than that. Once I was up the long day began. And what a day it would be.

I checked in just in case some miracle happened during the night and the server had come back up on its own, but that was not to be. I sent out some email and did some other light work while waiting for Dominica to get up. We got packed right away, had a quick breakfast with the Toccos and were on the road pretty early. This is possibly the earliest that we have ever left Frankfort after going there for the weekend.

The first order of business was to drive to Scranton to the data center. We ended up taking a seriously back roads route, similar to the route suggested by Google Maps, as suggested by our Garmin GPS unit – “Bossy Bettie”. The route went some crazy places that even Dominica has never been having grown up right there. The route was gorgeous and the weather was perfect. The drive itself was awesome. What a beautiful day for exploring central New York. The route actually got us through to Scranton very quickly as well. The route that we took involved using CR 18 on which I have never been before today.

We did so much driving today that my left arm was completely sunburnt by the end of the day!

We arrived in Scranton at the data center at two in the afternoon. We would have been there half an hour earlier but we got trapped in two construction zones with traffic coming to a standstill in both. Interstate 81 is unavoidable going in and out of Scranton, but it is just so awful. The “construction” that they have going on there has traffic completely able to move anytime of the day or night.

I worked at the data center for about an hour and a half. Things did not go nearly as well as I had hoped. I did manage to verify my suspicions from last night that the ethernet cable on one of my servers had been pulled out by the data center tech while he was working on another machine. That was the first thing that I was able to fix.

It took one of the data center guys and I almost half an hour to get the hard drives out of the server that had died. It turned out that the chassis of the server was smashed in on the one corner and the hard drive sled (also known as a caddy) was trapped inside the chassis. It took a lot of work to get it to release and the server will never be rack mountable again after what we did to it.

My hope had been that by placing the drives into another machine of the same type (another HP DL360 G1) that they it would just fire up and everything would be fine. We tried that first. Nothing. The machine would fire up and never do anything after its POST process.

The next step was to take the drives with me and to return to Newark where I had another spare server and the resources to actually work on the system. The drive took another two hours and we arrived at Eleven80 in Newark at approximately six in the evening. By this point I was already pretty tired and feeling quite run down.

I set up the server that we had here and popped in the drives. Nope. This time the reaction was slightly different, though. This time I was able to just barely see the Windows 2003 splash screen on the console before the console would suddenly go dark and the system would restart. After doing some research I am pretty sure that the issue is that the system is missing the RAID array driver for the Compaq Smart Array 5i that this unit has that the old one did not.

Unfortunately, adding a driver for a missing mass storage device, especially one needed for the system to book, is not a simple process. The first thing that I needed was access to the recovery console and that was especially hard as the CD that had that was at dad’s house. So we set about attempting to get a working copy of that disc so that at least some testing could begin.

It took three hours to download the CD ISO image, not including the time that it took to find the initial CD, make an ISO image of it, compress it and then to burn a good copy of it after the transfer was complete. It was a quarter until midnight when I finally had the CD ready for its very first trial to see if we even had a good CD let alone a solution or even were going down the right path.

Dominica went into the bedroom with Oreo around eight to relax and attempt to go to bed. She did manage to relax but did not fall asleep as she was quite hungry. She made herself some dinner at nine thirty and then went to bed and actually fell asleep shortly thereafter. I skipped dinner myself as eating very much food would surely contribute to my drowsiness and that was not really a viable option tonight.

While I was waiting for the CD image to download I took the opportunity to perform a complete shutdown, update and backup of my instant messaging server. I also did a WildFire 3.2 to OpenFire 3.5 migration. (OpenFire is the new name for WildFire from Ignite RealTime, the former makers of Spark, but the name change made the update process more complicated.) I had been putting this update work off for quite a long time and was glad to have it finally done. It went very smoothly. No issues whatsoever. Pheww.

I did some system updates to my email server as well but didn’t do a full blown email system update. I was tempted to do so, but my energies were running low after having updated OpenFire and having done everything else.

It was midnight by the time that I finally got the server to boot to the recovery console. That, in and of itself, was a major achievement today. We are far closer than we have been since the beginning.

After much testing and trying I decided that the only course of action, and Microsoft’s Knowledge Base seemed to agree with me on this, was to perform an in-place upgrade. So I kicked that off at a quarter after one in the morning. What a night.

Since it is now technically Monday morning, I am going to go ahead and post the update for today. I’m still awake and still have no idea what this night is going to bring.

I decided that a full backup of the email system had to be done tonight one way or another so at one thirty I shut that down and kicked off the backup. This seems to be the slowest part of the night and the least likely to really impact anyone.