Category Archives: Computers

Linux Upgrade!

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Well, I did it … and, so far (knock wood), it’s working ok.

What I did was: Upgrade my Redhat Linux 8.0 system to Fedora Core 4.

Last time I tried this it went horribly wrong … there was some kind of problem with the system that caused all available memory to be eaten up like it was going out of style … and then it started chewing on the swap space … to the extent that there was no memory and no swap space available.

To add insult to the injury … my backup procedure wasn’t as solid as I had hoped.

The end result was that my system was down for about 2 days while I recovered manually.

This time, however, I had a absolutely fool proof backup plan.

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Dell Discount

I have some Dell discount codes that I’m not going to use.

One is $20 off electronics and accessories purchases of $200 or more.

The other is 20% off select desktop and notebook purchases of $999 or more.

If you would like one of the codes, leave feedback explaining why you deserve the code. I’ll give the code to the person with the best explaination.

They Expire 1/31/06.

Dell, Coupon, Discount

Note to self …

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… don’t rest foot ontop of the UPS when working on the linux servers.

This evening, while I was checking something on the console of my linux servers, I was resting my foot ontop of the UPS.

I had just started a reboot on one of the servers when, all of a sudden, the other two systems lost power.

Obviously I had a bit of a panic for a minute … then I realized that both systems were plugged into the same UPS… the UPS I had my foot resting on.

Obviously I had my foot near the UPS’s power switch … and bumped it.

See how exciting my life is? 🙂

If Aragorn had been a project leader…

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… his speech at the black gate of Mordor might have gone something like this …

Hold your code! Hold your code.

Sons of iSeries, of AS400, my brothers, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.

A day may come when the logic of programmers fails,
when we forsake our debuggers
and break all links of procedures,
but it is not this day.

A nano-second of microsoft and shattered firewalls,
when the age of midrange comes crashing down,
but it is not this day.

This day we program!

For all that you hold dear on this good system,
I bid you stand, programmers of the net!!

Yeah, I’m weird like that.

Heaven can be frustrating

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My brother Mitch’s version of heaven can be a very frustrating place. Especially during the holidays.

I went to Frys today to pick up a new phone … the cordless phone in the family room is beginning to give up it’s ghost and I figured it was time to get a new one.

I decided to get a 5.8ghz expandable phone system. Unfortunately the two line versions of this kind of phone tend to have all the extra bells & whistles, including answering machine, so I ended up spending a bit more than I wanted … but I think I got a good system.

I wander around Frys a bit more … just browsing … and then go to the checkout. Talk about a madhouse.

They have about 20 registers open … and a person directing you to the next register that is open (signified by a flashing green light). I was directed to register #7 … but there were 3 people in line there. Turns out the guy running that register didn’t know that, when you were helping a customer, you shut off the green flashing light.

Luckily a nearby register opened up within a minute … otherwise I would have called for their floor manager and lodge a complaint.

New Server

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I got a new server … it’s a Dell PowerEdge 420SC … I’ve named it Gondor.

I originally tried to install Fedora Core 3 on it via NFS mount, booting from a compact flash disk, but it didn’t take. Not sure why.

So I burned the CD’s and installed from there. Worked like a champ.

I think I screwed up the Dell diagnostic partition though … or the master boot record. I’ll have to play around with that.

I’m going to slowly migrate stuff over to the new server … it’s not going to be an easy pick-up and drop-off like it was with the last server migration.

Dash or underscore

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I just spent 2 hours helping a co-worker resolve a database connectivity problem. The software we were trying to install (our own product, as it happens) kept telling us it was having a problem connecting to the SQL server database.

We tried to install the software three times … each time it failed with same error.

Finally I looked at the database name we were trying to use … the my co-worker was telling me to use was ‘qa-db3278’ … but the database he created was ‘qa_db3278’.

Well of course it couldn’t create the tables … the database we were telling it to create them in didn’t exist.

Oh well 🙂

Google to unveil desktop search

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Google to unveil desktop search | CNET News.com

[Google] has created Google Desktop Search, a thin-client application that lets people retrieve e-mail, Microsoft Office documents, AOL chat logs and a history of Web pages previously viewed, all via a Web browser.

This sounds kind of cool. I’ll be interested to see what they do with it.

A while ago Alta-vista (I think) created something similar … but it never took off.

Cannot stop device right now

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Whenever I try to use the “Safely remove hardware” option in windows to remove the hard drive installed in the modular bay of my laptop, I get the following message:

As far as I could tell, nothing was actually using the drive. I’m only using it to backup files on at the present time.

I disabled Windows indexing, thinking that a system process had the device in use, but that didn’t make a difference.

So I downloaded Filemon for Windows from http://www.sysinternals.com hoping I would be able to see what file was open on the device.

Well wadda ya know … turns out Norton Utilities “Protected Recycle Bin” had the doggone thing open.

When I turned OFF the Norton extensions on the recycle bin for drive D:, I was able to stop the device and safely eject it.