The Daily Diversion Archive For March, 2002

Saturday March 2, 2002

It's been a rough week. It was long, it was busy and a lot happened.

A guy offered to sell me his convertible. We bought two new chairs for the living room. We found a decent car on the internet. I did our taxes.

At work, things could be easier, too. It's becoming readily apparent that they really did need me to come back. I have 40 PCs to do installs on. I put our first Windows 2000 Workstation into use for a Power User and answered all the questions that arose as a result of that. I built a PC to be used as a file server, but had a really bad experience. I'm pretty good at putting machines together. Actually, I'm really good. Yet this week I had a problem that saw me pulling out my hair.

This file server is just that. A file server. It has two cavernous 160Gb drives and a frickin' boss Antec case. The Abit VP6 board is also a nice bit of lustable gear. It is a dual processor, Via chipsetted board that can handle 512Mb DIMMs and does RAID. And RAID was where my problem began.

We weren't going to run RAID because we really didn't need it. We are running a couple of 5400rpm drives because heat was an issue and lightning fast access times aren't. We just wanted RAID on the board for the extra IDE channels. We all figure that, as always, the data will expand to the size of the available space. Anyone in IT administration knows what I'm talking about. Anyhow, to be able to put 8 devices in the case instead of the usual 4 was a plus. However, the fine print bit us in the ass.

The fine print to which I refer didn't turn up in any of the literature about this fine board on the sites we did our research. It was only after reading the manual carefully that I found the bit of information that was making my life miserable.

The problem was that the machine wouldn't boot. It booted once in a while and I even installed NT on it, but when it came to making the volume of the rest of the drive space, it would crash out. Odd thing about this board is that it makes a little tune noise when the BIOS is having some kind of error. Beep codes would have been nice, but that's progress, I guess. This happened time and again and it didn't matter which IDE channel I put the drives on, what sequence I hooked them up in, which power channel of the power supply I attached them to, which drive was master or slave, which jumper setting was set, nor even if I put them on the bus with the CDROM drive. Nothing worked. The BIOS was detecting the right drive, but on closer inspection it was only recognizing the first 138Gb. Hmmm...

I did some more configuration jostling and, coming up empty, I hit the manual. There, buried in the page that dealt with the RAID settings was this "feature" bulleted in a long list: "Recognizes drives up to 128Gb."

Shit.

So, what we had here was a physical limitation of the board. That was unexpected. It seems, the more things change, the more things stay the same. I remember this happening to me a long time ago when I tried to put a 10Gb drive in an older PC. It would only recognize the first 8Gb. It's the same deal.

I decided to find out what component was responsible, since I didn't want to buy another motherboard just to find that the same limitation applied there as well. I scoured Abit's buggy, slow and broken site for info.

Special Note to Abit

So, it turns out that the culprit here is the HighPoint ATA RAID controller. I hit their site and it says in the description of that particular chip that it can recognize drives up to 128Gb.

Well, that's that. Time for a new motherboard. We looked and it looks that we'll be spending half the money for a single processor board without RAID. If we do decide to go with the RAID option, then we'll just have to find either a different HighPoint RAID chip or use one with a Promise chip or some other solution.

It's going to be a busy week.

Monday March 4, 2002

I had a list of things as long as my arm to do this weekend. Surprisingly, I made a pretty good dent in it. I got a lot of back-end stuff done on the web server. The only really obvious thing is the new statistics page. For coin-o.com they're here and for consolidateddiversions.com and tholt.com they're here.

I guess I should take the time and introduce the person who's been helping me out getting this server up and running. His name is Nick Ryberg and his site, mendota-bridge.com is also being hosted on this server. Since this isn't a money gig, we trade our services and it's all good. I've been pals with Nick since high school and he's turned into a darn fine admin. Stop by his site and give him a shout.

By the way, the stats for his site are located here.

Tuesday March 5, 2002

I had a rough day yesterday. I had set up an appointment to look at a car in the late afternoon. It looked promising, but when we got there, the car, apparently unbeknownst to even the wholesaler who owned it, was full of hail dents. Other than that, it was OK, but here's the deal: I don't want a car with hail damage. We've done without for quite some time and we're kind of looking at this car thing as some kind of reward. We want a big, fancy car, and the idea of a big, fancy car that's full of hail pocks, just doesn't do it for me. I annoyed the guy who had the car, but that's that. I'm not going to buy a car that needs two grand worth of body work. 'Nuff said.

After we looked at the car, which was on the other side of the metro area from us, we returned to our cars to find that I'd locked the keys in my truck. That was just the kind of kick in the slats I needed just after being hugely disappointed. I fiddled around trying to get in, but my heart wasn't in it. I had been defeated. We drove home, let the dog out and then drove all the way back with the extra set of keys.

But wait, it gets better.

So I was looking at my checking account balance on-line this morning to see if our state or federal refund checks had been deposited and I found, typically, that I had overdrawn my checking account. A check I wrote before I left for Chicago and one that I thought had cleared weeks ago, had been presented. It was a big check and since I thought it had already cleared, I didn't think I needed the money in the account to cover it. Well, I was wrong, as usual. It didn't put me deep in the hole, and I had some dough laying around in reserve to cover me until payday, but I will no doubt be paying the 30-odd bucks for the overdraft fee. To find you have less money than you thought and then have the bank take 30 more bucks away from you because you're a dumbshit, is really just another kick in the nads that I didn't need. No wonder my nuts hurt.

In case anybody out there thinks I'm whining, I'm not. I fully accept responsibility for overdrawing my checking account and locking my keys in the truck. It's when the fuckup fairy visits in conjunction with other things not going right, then is when life gets really unpleasant. I've ranted before about the complete idiocy of 30 dollar overdraft charges before, so I'll spare everyone this time. I'm just too sick of it all to even complain.

I wonder who's next on the "we need your money more than you do, shithook" bandwagon?

Saturday March 23, 2002

I wanted to write about something interesting today. Let see....

What's interesting?

Okay, I found something interesting thanks to the ever reliable James Lileks. He linked to a guy called happyfunpundit. He has interesting things to say.

I've been reading about Active Directory Technology. That's pretty interesting (to me, duh...).

Monday March 25, 2002

I got my new business cards today. The only difference is that our parent company's logo and name had changed. The old ones had to go.

I was cruising through my usual list of blog stuff today and stumbled on this gem. I'd hire her. That link was courtesy of an exceptional current events blog called littlegreenfootballs. The content is so good here, I wonder how long this guy can keep it up. I know I've burnt out pretty much completely in the last couple of months.

I read a bunch of stuff on the web today about where we are in our current war. I must say that although we are doing what we can to defeat the Taliturds, I wonder how we're going to fight our future conflicts. Sure, we have to do coalition building, but as Victor Davis Hanson says in his National Review column we would do ourselves a world of good to brace for what's inevitably coming. The Arabs don't want to deal. They're spoiling for a fight that they can't win, and they aren't listening to reason. I can see where he finds the parallels between now and the 1930s. I find it terrifying that we might be dragged into another "world war" but I don't see that there's any way to avoid it. The Arabs aren't listening. They aren't cooperating. They are negotiating in bad faith to stall until they have the weapons of mass destruction to take the fight not only to Israel, but to us as well. They hate us. That's fine with me. They don't deserve our friendship as they aren't really the kind of friends you want. Sure they have oil, and by that they have power, but we don't need their oil. Once again, I would pay $4.00 a gallon to not have to be beholden to these savages. They are the most cynical of the cynics. They use religion as a tool and as a dog and pony show to keep their citizens bound up and harmless. They don't treasure personal freedom. They do not want Democracy. My question is: What are we doing supporting these clowns? I say that if a regime over in the middle east wants to savage the U.S. in their more or less governmentally controlled papers and television, I figure they can do without our business and our aid. Destabilizing these countries will not cause them to go hunting Americans in America. Nor will it cause them to rise up as one and try to blow Israel into the sea. No, a nice destabilization in these countries will cause them to kill each other for a while. When they're done with that, then perhaps they will have the peace-longing that the rest of the world has. Perhaps then they will be ready for Democracy.

They think they are strong and we are weak. They look upon our pull-out in Somalia and the fact that we didn't kill Saddam in 1991 as weakness. They seem to refuse to take into consideration that we were in Somalia to help them feed themselves. They don't seem to get it that a country in this day and age does not go after another head of state personally. If that happened, we'd get several presidents in a term for all the assassinations.

It's time to cut aid to Egypt and the other countries in the Middle-East. By propping up these unelected dictatorships, we are part of the problem. It's time to stop buying oil from the Saudis. When the money stops, perhaps the oligarchy will fall. It's time to start putting stipulations on foreign aid. No free press=no aid. Go choke on it. It's my money. I paid it in taxes. I do NOT want it to go to a country who's press can't criticize the government and pretty much has to criticize the U.S.

It's time to start supporting Israel in whatever they have to do to get the PA to stop killing their citizens.

It's time to stop dealing with Yasser Arafat. I once held Mr. Arafat in great esteem. I found him compelling. I thought it was a great achievement to have stayed alive this long. Now, I find him two-faced, repugnant and impotent. He's no longer a viable leader of the PA, and by this should not be looked upon as a player in further negotiations. The PA has supported him, he has abused his position and it's time to look elsewhere.

Goodbye, Mr. Arafat.

Saturday March 30, 2002

It was indeed a big week.

I was out sick again on Tuesday. I spiked a nice fever Monday night and then felt perfectly dreadful until Tuesday night. I was in a total panic because Wednesday was my Photoshop class I paid $200 for. Was I going to miss that? No, they would have had to drag me out of there on a gurney before I'd miss something that I paid for. That's the way it has to be.

I felt pretty rasty most of the week, and I'm not sure why. The weather's brightened up a bit and so have I. Coincidence?

We're still waiting for a nice day to break in the new grille. We'd been without a gas grill for about a year and we just happened on a nice one deeply discounted in a pre-season sale. One please. We had them put it together because the last thing I need to do is put a grill together.

I ordered the study materials for the next test last week as well. My studying for the A+ test is going well. I'll be calling for an appointment for a test on Monday. Here's hoping I can read that morning. On the practice tests I've taken, it's the ones that are oddly worded that get me. Rare is the time when I don't know the answer to on of the questions. I'd know even more if I paid closer attention and if they'd just let us show what we mean, rather than making us choose a letter. Whatever. Network+ is the next one. My goal is to have it passed by the end of May.

I set a reminder about 2 months ago for today because something cool was happening. It was the Minneapolis/St. Paul Post Card Club's show today. I heard about it from somebody I bought a post card from on Ebay. I put the reminder in my Visor and it went off like great gangbusters this morning. I picked up about 20 or so. Most were views of Minneapolis. About half the Minneapolis shots were of the falls area. The other half were specific building views that will, in all likelihood make the website in the near future. It wasn't as geeky a thing as I suspected it would be. I didn't smell any BO and that was a relief.

We also did some thinking about our car situation and we've decided that although we are still going to look for the station wagon of our dreams, we're far more likely to buy a sedan first to bolster the one we already have. We are thinking Crown Vic, T-Bird, Camry, G20, J30, Cressida and Town Car. I think we've put any hopes of BMW on the back burner for a good, long while.