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| [Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday] Sunday, October 31, 1999 I suppose I should have used the Jack-O-Lantern that appeared in my notes yesterday today. However, as has been the custom around here for the last decade or so (since we had kids), if Halloween falls on a Sunday, then we celebrate Halloween with the tricks and treating on Saturday. Such was the case yesterday. Andrew was Scream, which turned out to be very popular among the young goblins in 1999 and Katie chose to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. It was a beautiful night and as usual, I accompanied the kids on their rounds. It took just a little over an hour to traverse the neighborhood for a bag full of candy and goodies. Tummy aches to follow, I am sure. BOB AND BARBARA THOMPSON CAME over last night, partly to visit, get a jump on celebrating Suzy's Birthday and partly to see the kids excitement on Halloween. Celebrating birthdays around here can sometimes turn into a week long festivity and this time Suzy is the victim. Her birthday is Monday and I will be polite here and not mention which one, but I will tell you it's not the big 40. The kids' excitement meter was pegged as they got ready to go out and terrorize the neighborhood. Katie was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Andrew had decided to be Scream. When I returned, Bob and I retreated to my computer room. Pretty normal for us. However, this room now has five computers and monitors running in it, plus a couple of printers, so it is not lacking for heat. In fact, it was quite warm there. The weather here right now is so pleasant that we have our HVAC turned off, so this room in not getting much (any) ventilation. One good thing is that if I keep this many machines running I shouldn't need any supplemental heat this winter. However, next spring I may need some supplemental air conditioning. Here are the machines currently running in this room:
Our conversation began around when was the last time Fred, my main Windows NT file server and primary domain controller, had been defragmented. I couldn't remember if it ever had, so naturally, we set out to defrag Fred. We loaded DiskKeeper and were presented with a color screen displayed the files on Fred. Barbara, who wandered downstairs at this point, said her first impression of the screen was it was an artist's rendering of a library shelf loaded with books. Barbara was a librarian in the Forsyth County system until about a year ago, so her comments were natural. As we were staring at the screen in amazement, our conversation led me to grab my Sony Mavica digital camera and take a photo of the monitor with DiskKeeper's report active. In fact, when DiskKeeper first loaded and began its analysis, I thought the program was locked because it appeared to do nothing for the longest time.
When DiskKeeper started, it reported that I had almost five thousand (4924) excess files fragments. The first pass through reduced this number by better than 50 percent to 1963. I ran the program twice more and am now down to some 45 excess file fragments. I think I can live with that. I suppose it is only natural that Fred should become fragmented. This file server gets the toughest workout on the network...and it's one if the weaker machines. This is the machine that receives all mail, which in itself is a lot of saving to disk and subsequent deleting. It is also where all data files are stored, including downloads and word processing, spreadsheet files, etc. Another project on our agenda was to install the second Pentium 400 MHz processor in Rubble. The processor had arrived Friday. I originally set out to try to find a match for the one that came installed in the machine, but later decided I would just order another OEM processor, hoping I may get lucky and end up with the same S-SPEC. An OEM should give me the best opportuniyt to fulfill this wish. As luck would have it I didn't get the same S-SPEC, but the two processor's stepping are the same, so we felt safe. My original processor was manufactured in Malaysia and the new one in Costa Rica. That itself is enough to change the S-SPEC I am told. The first struggle was the get the shipping circuit board out of the slot. This didn't board didn't appear to have any plastic tabs holding it in place, but it didn't want to come out easily. I messed with it and Bob did as well, then I turned my head and presto Bob was holding it in his hand. Just the encouragement this board needed I suppose. I had jokingly threatened to get a pair of pliers. The processor and fan slipped right into the second socket one after I got my bifocals adjusted and could see what I was doing. The next task was not quite as easy thought. This computer comes with an air baffle seated directly over the processors to tunnel heat through a fan and out of the machine. When we went to put the baffle back in place it was being hard to get along with, so we assumed the heat sink on processor No. 2 was getting in the way a little. We decided that maybe the plastic baffle needed a little pruning, but would get to that later. I took another look at the baffle today and was able to get it reinstalled without any trimming. Once again I guess we just needed to walk away from the operation. Since I do not have anything installed on this machine yet we decided to install Windows 2000 Professional, which is the newest version of NT Workstation. More issues. The first issue arose when we I fired up the CD from the running installation of Windows NT 4.0. When I got to the point in the install where I could rearrange my disks, I told NT to delete the partition on the drive that was holding the current installation of Windows NT. It would not allow me to delete the partition. Hmmmm. Shutdown time. I then went looking for my copy of Partition Magic. Found the CD and started making a set of rescue disks so we could delete the pesky NT partition. While I was making the Partition magic diskettes I noticed Bob was installing Windows 2000 Professional. He said he thought he told the install to delete the partition that had given us trouble in the previous install, however when we fired the new version of NT up, the old partition and installation were still there. We just deleted the old Win NT version. This was really weird. The next hiccup came when the display came up in plain vanilla VGA. The IBM IntelliStation has video built in on the motherboard and when we went to reinstall the video driver we of course got the message that this driver was for an earlier version of Windows NT. I then set off for IBM's web site to see if I could find the driver. I have to tell that I think IBM has one of the most difficult web sites to navigate when you are looking for a simple driver. Maybe it's because they have their files groups by the products they sell, and they do sell quite a few different computing products, or maybe it's because this stuff we are dealing with is not mainstream release yet. You would think with IBM's announced migration to Windows 2000 Professional, there wouldn't be any issue with finding a simple video driver. I tried Microsoft with no luck. Cirrus Logic tells you that you need to check with the manufacturer of the video board. They make only chipsets and not video cards their web site blatantly says. Therefore, I have this fancy new high-powered computer running in your basic 16 color vanilla VGA mode. The search is on for the video driver and I will take all suggestions. I am going to see if I can find a spot on the IBM site to request this driver. I WENT SEARCHING FOR A SITE TO HOST a free mailbox for the kids and Suzy once again yesterday. I want them to be able to use the address suzy@wakeolda.com as an example. pair Networks will do this for you, but they currently charge extra for each mailbox. Supposedly they are changing this soemtime next year and will give you several mailboxes with each account. For now I wanted to find a way to do this for no additional charge. There are lots of sites that provide free email, but you can only access these through a web browser. My ISP, bellsouth.net is one fo these. The other important thing to me is the ability to pop the email with a program like Microsfot Outlook. I had used Net@ddress at one time, but then they took away the pop feature. So, Saturday I did a search for free email and was able to come up with a couple that gave you a free email address and allowed you to pop your mail. I chose SoftHome.net and now have mailboxes set up for Suzy, Katie and Andrew at Wakeolda. When their mail is received at pair it is automatically forwarded to their mailbox at softhome and is available the next time we fire up Outlokk and download mail.
Tuesday, November 2, 1999 As I mentioned on Sunday, we spend quite a bit of time celebrating birthdays around our house, so yesterday, Suzy's actual birthday, was spent at dinner and opening a few presents. After dinner at O'Charley's the kids were anxious to help their mom open a couple of presents offered by two of Suzy's girl pals. Therefore, no time for a post on Monday. This week may also be light. I am leaving this morning for a two day marketing conference and then I'm off to Ft. Lauderdale for an event this weekend. Sounds like my timing may be perfect. The temperature is supposed to take a radical drop here beginning tomorrow. Maybe in the 40's on Wednesday and the lows may drop down to the 20's by Friday. While some areas have already had a little frost, if the temperatures do drop this low, we'll have frost on the pumpkin for sure. My trip to Florida couldn't come at a better time, but I am sure I will have to pay when I return. HAVE YOU HEARD THAT our big brother, Bill Gates is up to some nasty tricks again? I hear that Microsoft may stop shipping copies of the operating system when you buy a new PC from a dealer. If this is true, it will spell disaster for someone like myself who is always changing his system and needing the CD (no longer can you load an operating system with diskettes) to perform a fresh install. Supposedly, Microsoft had already taken into account those of us who are always tweaking and will provide a way to recover the corrupted system by using the emergency recovery disk. Maybe this disk will restore the default systems, but what if you have fdisk'ed your drive and there is nothing there to restore. I don't know if this is a fishing expedition Microsoft is conducting or if they are really going to implement this plan. If they do implement this system are they just begging people to rush to Linux or some other open source code. Hello Microsoft. The rest of the world is heading in the direction of open source code and you are slamming doors. Maybe the Justice Department will slam a few doors in your face. And speaking of Microsoft and the Justice Department, the big M has taken to pleading its case with the DOJ directly with the public. Microsoft is asking its shareholder to speak out about government intervention in the software industry. Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, Robert Herbold, is trying to get other to join a group known as the "Freedom to Innovate Network." Supposedly this group includes many of Microsoft's business partners who have banned together to help MSFT fight big government. Now I would usually be one of the first to jump on a bandwagon to help fight big government, but in Microsoft's case I have to wonder if it is the right thing. I thing that concerns me about Microsoft is how they act like such big bullies. Doesn't make you want to get your nose bloody so fast. Maybe the chips will fall where they should on this one and maybe MSFT really should be broken into some smaller pieces. I SPOKE WITH IBM tech support yesterday, both by voice and email. It seems they have written very few drivers for Windows 2000 Professional beta, or at least they claim they haven't because it's still a beta product. However, I did find out that this machine has an Intergraph Intense 3400 video card, so I plan to scour their web site next week to see if I can find a Windows 2000 Professional video driver.
Wednesday, November 3, 1999 So you've been wanting to try Linux, if for no other reason than you want to see what all this buzz is about. But you've heard the nightmares about wading into the Unix pool, so you have stayed away. I know I have personally loaded Linux a couple of times and have deleted it because I don't have the time to attempt to learn another operating system. Sidebar: If Microsoft keeps its dirty tricks up I may end up taking the Linux plunge afterall. This might be the baby step you have been looking for. Linux One ( a competitor to Red Hat I suppose) announced that it's bringing Linux One Lite to the market. This version if Linux is said to be aimed at PC enthusiasts like us who have longed for an easy to set-up, easy to run version of the open source operating system. And here's the best part. Red Hat Linux sells for $60-70, but you will be able to get Linux One Lite for about $20. I have heard that Corel is also bringing out a version of Linux to be aimed at the PC novice markett. Update: 11:52AM: In my consideration to get rid of Front Page extensions I attempted an experiment with the above update. I FTP'ed the currents notes page and added my comments for Wednesday, saved the file and then FTP'ed the page back to the server. In do so the banner at the top of the page was lost as were the shared borders. I had a few minutes between meetings, so I thought I would go back to the server using FrontPage explorer and try to restore the original banner and borders. We'll see what happens when I save this page. Maybe if I have FP extensions removed and use webpost to put the page back on the server then the borders and graphics locations will be saved correctly. There has to be an easy way for me to be able to update this site while on the road an lose the FP extensions problem at the same time. Brian Bilbrey dropped me an email with an alert that Linux One may not be what I thought it was. I thought Linux One was an easier step for computer enthusiasts to enter the Unix realm without having to learn a new operating system totally. Guess things aren't always what they seem. Brian has a note on this product in his notes from last Saturday, which I did not see before posting the message here. I guess this one deserves a little more time and investigation before jumping. |
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