Undrblog

Call me a bitter unix user if you must, but after today, I need to vent some of my Windows related frustration.

Today, we found that the scheduled tasks we have setup on one of our, rather important, servers, just decided to stop working.  When they run, as scheudled, as a user, they return a result code of "0x80", and do nothing.  If you run them as a logged in user, they work perfectly. What’s up with that?!  Turns out that this is a bug!  Yes, microsoft managed to screw up the TASK SCHEDULER, of all things.  The problem is, that this bug was supposedly fixed in SP2 for Windows 2003.  Guess what?  The server in question already has SP2 on it!  You know what they say to do to fix this now?  Delete all of the tasks, reinstall SP2, reboot, re-add your tasks.

What?  You want me to uninstall a core OS update, on a production machine?!  Why in the hell would iw ant to do that?! All to fix the task scheduler?  Mind you, this scheduler worked perfectly until just a few days ago.  No updates were installed, no permissions changed, nothing, the issue arose on its own, as far as we can tell. 

This is so frustrating.  You have no idea.  It’s no secret that i’m a Unix/Linux fan.  This very site runs on Linux.  When was the last time i had a cron job spontaneously stop running?  Let me think….. NEVER!  unless there was a problem with the target of the job, which isnt cron’s fault!  In this case, the program which is to run works perfectly, its the scheduler itself that’s busted.

How can microsoft get away with charging so much money, for such crap?  Yea, i know Unix  isnt bug free.  There are plenty of very nasty bugs and exploits which will ruin any unix admin’s day, but at least theyre not with core OS utilities, like the task scheduler! 

I cant remember the last time i rebooted my server.  I bet if i were to go check uptime right now, it’d be 100+ days.

[war@www ~]$ uptime
 18:02:26 up 264 days, 22:51,  1 user,  load average: 0.06, 0.08, 0.03

There you have it, 264 days. That’s what, 9 months?  Sure, i’ve seen windows servers up that long too, but not if you plan to actually keep the system up to date.  You;ll be rebooting once a week if you run updates as often as you probably should.  90% of the updates i run on my server wont reboot the server.  And if a reboot is requred, i’m not forced into it like on windows.  Most things can be reloaded without a reboot.  Why cant Microsoft grasp that idea? 

I think i;m going to try to convince my boss to move his sql database and his parsing scripts to MySQL and linux.  I’ll let you know how _that_ goes over.

…

For the past week Jess and I have been on vacation.  We’ve had a nice long week of doing whatever we please, staying up late, sleeping in, going out and doing things we usually dont have the time for.

It all started on Saturday, with our anniversary.  That’s right! Another anniversary! That makes 5 years! We’re hoping for many more.  We slept in a little, and then went to the Texas RoadHouse down by Allentown.  Took us about an hour longer than it should have to find the place, because of some bad directions, but it was a nice drive to Kutztown none the less!   After lunch we shot over to allentown, and spent some money.  Picked up an anime we’ve been waiting to buy, some tools at Sears, and some essential gear for our halloween costumes!

Then on Monday we took a ride up to the Crossings.  Got some great deals on a few things for around the house, a new tea kettle, a crock for holding our kitchen utensils in, a nice blanket for in the living room, a christmas gift or two. Stopped at Friendly’s just to get ignored by the host.  So we got back on the highway to go home.  Jess fell asleep, so i surprised her by not actually getting off at our exit, and driving all the way to Hazleton so we could eat at Applebee’s. They didnt ignore us.  In fact, we had a nice meal there.

Tuesday was a bit lazy, we didnt make any plans, so we did a few things around the house, and relaxed.  During the week i’d been flopping between World of Warcraft, and Lort of the Rings Online.  It’s a long story, but I’d been working with Blizzard to get my WoW account re-activated.  They’d turned it off due to some sort of account dispute.  See, i’d stopped playing back in… 2005 or so, maybe even earlier than that.  Apparently sometime between then, and now, someone got into my account, built a level 60 hunter, and then Sold (or tried to?) my account.  Blizzard found out, and of course suspended the account.  After 2 weeks of getting a run around from them, I’d bought LotRO.  Hey, i wanted to play, not bicker over account terms.  Then a few days later, they saw it my way, and re-activated the account.  Well i didn’t want to pay for two games, so I set out to decide which to keep.  Tuesday i spent a lot of the day playing WoW.

Wednesday we took a trip up to the Hometown Farmers Market.  We were dissappointed…  Not many decent shops, and too many rude people.  We got our french fries (one of the biggest reasons we go there!) and left.  We stopped at Wal Mart to visit Jess’s mom, spent longer at Wal Mart than we did at the Farmers Market. We looked at MP3 players, looked to see if they had a Wii Fit (yea right!) looked for Shoes for Jess’s costume (yea right again), looked for goggles and gloves for my costume (are you getting the picture yet?).  Jess really wants an MP3 player, to replace her old Dell Pocket DJ.  I cant blame her.  We got them years ago, and theyre just not holding up.  The batteries dont hold the charge they once did, and they have firmware issues.  They sometimes just lock up.  And Dell doesn’t support them anymore.

Wednesday night we had plans with a friend we used to work with.  So we went up to her place for dinner, and a nice evening.  We had fun talking about old time’s and new opportunities.  She’s started up her own home-based business, and she may have work for Jess.  So that may work out nicely.

Thursday was another lazy day.  Hey, it’s vacation!  I spent most of the day playing WoW, and Jess spent most of the day working on one of her afgan’s, and watching movies.  We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas together over lunch.  Then she watched another movie, which i cant remember the name of right now, and then The Two Towers.  I played WoW most of the day, after spending two hours looking for a group that would like to play with a 28 rogue, and subsequently looking for a guild to join after i found that looking for a group was impossible, and coming up empty…. I logged out, and started playing lotro. I’d started a Human Burglar in lotro.  He was level 9 and i was having trouble getting to 10.  Today when i logged back in, i started looking for quests, and not only got to 10, but right on to 11 in a few hours. I’m really starting to like this game. I ordered some MP3 players from NewEgg.

Friday we were planning on driving alllllll the way to lancaster to go to the Green Dragon Farmers Market.  We’ve been doing this for a few years, going down there over our anniversary vacation.  Well we decided against it.  We didnt have a lot of money to spend, and with how dissappointed we were with the Hometown market, we were afraid of driving all that way, just to get disssappointed again.  So we stayed home.  We relaxed a bit in the morning, and then went out for a nice bike ride.  I finally got to try out the new mountain bike that Jess’s Parents had so kindly bought me.  We had a good afternoon.  Jess also found out today that the ovulation treatment’s she’s been taking are working!  She called for her blood test, and it came back showing that she’d ovulating.  So that was a nice piece of news! Then Jess’s mom joined us for dinner.  Then after dinner, my Dad and I worked on getting ready to paint the slats from the awning that we’d taken off the house months ago when we started painting.  We cleaned up the basement a little, and wiped down and primed the bare spots on the aliminum slats.  The primer stunk up the house.  Man did that stuff have an odor.

Saturday morning my Dad and I were going to head out hunting.  Spend the morning taking the muzzle-loader’s for a walk in the woods, but we decided it was more important to get some more work on the awning done.  So instead we painted the slats up.  Only took us a few hours in the morning.  Now my entire garage is coated in a dusting of paint.  The floor has a pretty thick coat of overspray on it, and the slats are all painted.  Unfortunately during cleanup, one slat got bumped, and it fell off of the nail we had it hanging on to dry.  As it fell, it took about 6 others with it…..  So now i need to touch up a few slats before we can actually put them up.  Not that big a deal really, since we’re not actually putting them up intil next weekend anyway. We worked until about 11.  My Dad had to get home and get cleaned up.  His church had a pig roast that afternoon, so he had to be down there by noon.  Jess and I went down there at around 1:00, fought our way though the sea’s of tourists and picked up a nice meal of roast pig, mashed potato’s, saurkraut, apple sauce, and a nice crumb cake dessert.  MMMMM!  Then we spent a little time relaxing while we waited for Jess’s Brother, and his wife to get off of work and come over.  Tonight is Randy and Dave’s scavenger hunt!  We’d been looking forward to this for weeks!  So i played a little lotro, Jess did some cleaning, and watched some tv.  I cancelled my WoW account.

Saturday Night, SCAVENGER HUNT! We all met at Randy and Dave’s place.  We’d missed the first half of the hunt because of our time constraints.  But that’s ok, they weren’t linked, the first and second half that is.  They were different events. The hunt started at about 5:40.  Our first stop was alll the way out in Hickory Run, we had to meet at the old cemetary, where we got our first clue.  From there we were sent down to Lehighton’s bear memorial, then to flagstaff road, then to to ball field by our place, then down to Kemmer park, where I twisted my ankle pretty bad looking for clue’s in the dark.  Then up to the bottom of bugsie’s hill in Summit Hill.  Then down to the board walk in the woods at the lake.  It was a fun time, full of riddles, hunting for clues in the dark, and a few spooks.  We should have Won,  we were way ahead of the second team, but on the last riddle we got tied up and delayed.  Then at the last location, there were no clues, and that was the riddle, we had to tell Randy that there were no clues.  Well we were all scattered about looking for clues (that didnt exist) and Amy, Tara, and Steph’s team were the first to actually say to randy that there were no clues there….. So they won.  I feel cheated.

Sunday at Midnight my first reminder that i have to go back to work this week hit me.  My oncall started… Got worken up twice by pages, one of which i had to crawl out of bed to react to.  Nothing major, but still, something i’d happily been without for the past week.  Today we dont have much planned.  Grocery shopping, and probably another lazy day, to prepare for work.  I need to stay off of my foot anyway, my ankle’s pretty sore.  Nothing major, just enough that i should probably stay off of it and let it heal. It’s back to work tomorrow, I’m almost dreading what i’ll be coming back to.

-War

…

What a crock.

For as long as i can remember, scientists, eco-freaks, and politicians have been moaning about global warming. Greenhouse gasses are eating away at the ozone layer and causing global heat increases… Meanwhile, here we sit, it’s the middle of august, and it’s all of 75 degrees outside. What a bunch of crap.  Where’s this global warming?  It’s certainly not here in PA.  August is usually the hottest month of the summer around here.  All hot, humid, and sticky.  This year, it’s like fall came a few months early. 

I can remember back in the 90’s. i was still a young teen, my Dad used to tell me that he didnt buy into the whole global warming thing either.  He said that this planet was so old, and modern science was so young (comparitively) that it was impossible for these scientists to know what they were looking at.  What if this was just some cycle that the plant goes through?  He didnt know himself either of course, but it made a lot of sense to me.  Seemed like just another issue for people who needed a cause to latch onto.  Sure enough, scientists say we’re now in a state of global cooling.  You know what theyre calling it now?  A cycle that the planet must go through.  Turns out my dad was pretty close to right on his educated guess after all.

Moral of the story?  Don’t rush out looking for a cause that you know nothing about.

-War

…

A sad one today.

When we got married, back in October of 2003, my wife brought with her into the family a little Dachshund, Hannah, which I had bought her for her birthday a few years earlier.  Shortly after we got married, we decided to expand our family a bit.  I’ve always loved labs, having spent most of my teen years with a pair of labs that my parents had. Jess already had her dog, so we decided to look for lab puppies.  We were on a tight budget, so we decided to check the local shelter first.  We thought we could save a few bucks, and save a good dog from the shleter at the same time.

So we hopped in the Jeep, and headed to the shelter.  It was all of 5 minutes from home.  We walked in, and they showed us back to the kennels.  Every dog in the place was jumping about wildly and barking at these two new people that walked into the room.  All save one.  One black dog. A deep shiney black coat, with a spotted chest, and enough white on her paws that she looked like she was wearing a pair of socks. The tag on her pen said that someone left her there, tied to the fence during off-hours.  She sat there, silent, with perfect posture, and a wagging tail. Looking at us as if to say, "Get me out of here… I want to go home".  That about did it.   We went out to the girl that was running the place for the day, and told her we’d like to see her.  After a failed attempt to clip her nails, the girl got us the paperwork, er paid her the $35 adoption fee, and out the door we went.

She hopped up into the jeep, and off we went.  When we got home, hannah had a fit.  She’s been the only dog in the house since we first brought her home.  Now we expect her to share her territory with this big oaf.  Lady’s her name.  And she’s a mix between a lab and a pointer.  She’s a little taller than a lab, has some of the body characteristics of a pointer, and the color of a lab.  Her hair’s shiney like a pointer, and her spots are most certainly not from her lab heritage.  Hannah soon got used to her, she didn’t have any choice.

We had boxes of canned and boxed goods in the house because we had just moved in, she got into those on more than one occasion.  We built a pantry, and put the food in there, she got into that more than once until we got the door put on it.  She ate half a tub of butter the first thanksgiving we had her, we spent the whole night cleaning up dog puke.  She ate numerous napkins, tissues, and various other paper products.  One time she actually ate a box of herbal medicine that we’d received in the mail.  But all in all, a terriffic dog. Someone had taken the time to train her.  She had terrible leash manners, but otherwise, well behaved.  She knew how to sit, lay down, and give you her paw.  You could walk her without a leash if you were in a wooded area.  So she could run about.  She’d never get too far from us, it seemed like she had this fear that she was going to get left somewhere. 

Nightmares… When we first got her, she would wake us up at night with her nightmares.  I dont know what she was dreaming about, but it was enough to make her wimper and cry in her sleep.  After a few months with us, they seemed to subside.  Something happened to her before we got her, we cant say what, but something was giving her nghtmares.  We aimed to make her life with us as pleasant as possible, no more reason to be afraid. And that we did, she had a nice bed, with her own comforter, we even gave her old bed pillows whenever we replaced ours.  Two good meals a day, lots of love, and walks. She even went running with us. Hannah, being a short little sausage, couldnt keep up, and with her spine problems, shouldn’t really be walked that much anyway, but lady was eager to go out with us.

She did some of the silliest, and clumbsiest things.  She’d walk into walls, and trip over little things.  Even walk off of low porches.  She’d sometimes trample poor Hannah, and ever trip us.  But that was all ok, we loved her.  She was such a good dog, and welcome member of the family.

Last year it took her along to JAOCMJ, a jeep trip that i go on annually.  She loved every minute, camping, meeting all sorts of people, sneaking food from the campfire.  She didn’t really enjoy the jeeping itself, getting tossed around the back of a jeep probably isn’t as fun as it sounds.

Well one day, about a year ago, we noticed a lump on her belly.  We took her to the vet, and found out that it was a breast tumor.  Apparently, Lady had at one point had a litter of puppies.  She was only spayed when she went to the shelter, which is something they do to any dog they get that hasnt already been spayed. I guess when a dog goes through their first heat, whether they have puppies or not, it sets some hormones in motion that makes them more succeptible to breast cancer.  So poor lady had what a Woman would call a lump in her breast.  The vet recommended that we have it removed, but money was short, and we couldn’t afford the surgery.  So we had to let it go, and hope for the best.  She was still an active vibrant dog. 

After a few months the tumor started to get a little bigger, and it started to bother here, but still, she was alert and not mopey or anything.  We took her back to the vet.  She took an X-ray of her chest, and took a good look at the tumor.  She thought it was getting infected.  Why x-ray her chest?  Because she thought it was cancer, and if it’s spread into her chest, then there isnt much that can be done.  So that tells the vet how to proceed.  The x-ray showed spots in her lungs, so now the surgery was out of the question.  The vet gave her 6 months at best.  We cried for our baby girl…  The vet perscribed some medicine that should at least help.  So we took the medicine, and went home…  After about a week of the medicine, lady was herself again!  The lump shrank back to close to its original size, and she was an active dog again.  We took it as a good sign, and took her back for checkups regularly.

After a few months, the lump started to bother her again.  The vet was hopeful though.  She thought maybe it wasnt cancerous after all, and that maybe they were calcuim deposits in her lungs.  She ordered another x-ray.  The spots weren’t progressing like she thought they would, so she suggests the surgery again.  This time we didnt feel like we had a choice.  If we left the lump go, Lady would suffer, and it would eventually force us to put her to sleep.  There was a chance that if the surgery was done, and went well, she might be able to enjoy a longer life.  The vet offered to let us pay her weekly to pay off the surgery.  She didn’t want to see us give up on poor lady just because of finances.  So we scheduled the surgery.  It wasnt as expensive as we expected anyway.  She was back in a few days for her surgery.  It went well, and she was eager to get out of there!  She was back to acting like lady again!  The vet sent her home with some more med’s, A row of staples in her belly, and a cone around her head.

After a few days, her incision was healing well, and she was starting to get more active.  Everythign was looking good, except one thing.  Just before the surgery we noticed that one of her hind legs was swollen.  The vet didnt seem to be concerned about it.  We figured it must have been from the tumor, and that it would be better after the surgery. Well it wasnt, it was still swollen.  We took her back to have her staples removed and pointed the leg out to the vet…  More bad news.  She was worried that the cancer had spread, and it wasn’t all removed with the surgery.  We gave it a little time, and at her next checkup, the vet tells us that she thinks the cancer had spread into her lymph nodes… That’s it, end of story.  There’s not much you can do at that point, except make her comfortable, and lover he for the rest of the time she has left.

So that’s what we did.  For the past 2 weeks we’ve been giving her all the love we can spare.  As of last weeked, she’s stopped eating, and she’s having terrible trouble just standing up.  She cant use her swollen leg, and she’s basically walking on 3 legs.  She cant get up and down stairs, even going outside to go to the bathroom is difficult for her. 

Tonight she’s being put to sleep. 

She’s been a good friend, and great companion, and even a pretty good jeep dog.

She’ll be missed.

…

A few weeks ago we had another visit with our doctor.  Yea, I’ve been a bit lax in posting this.  The appointment was about 2 and a half weeks ago.

The good news first.

He had us go for bloodwork, the middle of last month, the results were to be sent off to him, and then we were to see him again at the end of the month.  So we went had bled into a tube (again) two vials each. The goal was to find out of the medication he’d put us on was doing it’s job.  And if it was, he wanted to test my wife to see if she’s ovulating, and re-test me, to see if my sperm count was normal again (last time i was tested, i was completely sterile).

Well of course they lost my results, but they already had a sample from me anyway, so they went ahead and tested my count.  I’m normal! (well, as normal as i can be.. heh).  So half of our problem is solved.  So, he wants me to stay on my medicine for a year, and after that, i "should" be able to stop taking it, and keep my levels where theyre supposed to be.  Which is great!

Now, on to my wife’s tests.  Her bloodwork came back normal this time, so her medicine’s doing it’s job too.  So now that she’s got the right balances going on, she should be ovulating.  She stays on her medicine for 6 months, and then, the same as me, she should be fixed.  She’s still got this high dose vitamin that she’s going to have to take for the rest of her life, because of her thrombophelia, but that’s really pretty minor.  So the doctor orders one more test, to see if she’s actually ovulating, she bleeds in a tube, and we head home.

Now for the bad news (you saw it coming, admit it!)

My wife’s blood test says she’s still not ovulating.  

So we don’t yet know what the next step is, she’s going back to see the doctor at the end of august. If i can make it, i’ll be right there by her side.  Whether i’m fixed or not, it’s still just as much my problem as it is hers, at least, in my opinion anyway.

So that’s where we sit for now. With any luck, i’ll have some good news at the end of the month…     Sigh.

This is supposed to be easy…. Remember?

…

Well, we had our visit with the specialist last week.  He gave us a little more information about the med’s he’s put us on, and what his tests found is, and isnt wrong with us.  First, the good news! 

My wife does not have a brain tumor.  I guess a cyst or tumor near the pituitary gland can cause hormonal imbalnaces, which is what the MRI was for.  THey wanted to be sure they werent dealing with a physical problem before treating it.  Her testosterone level is just slightly high, so the medicine they put her on is supposed to correct that.  After 6 months of this stuff called cabergolene its supposed to fix the imbalance, permenently.  Theyll of course re-test her after 6 months, and see if they were right.  Another test they did (i forget which one…) told them that her ovaries are not failing, which was good news too!  So it seems that her boat follows: She’s got thrombophelia, which is hereditary, and is corrected through medication.  She’s on a pill called folgard, which contains a number of vitimins that her body is lacking because of the thrombophelia.  So she’ll be on that for the rest of her life.  Acceptable if you ask me, after all, it’s just vitimins.  Then theres the testosterone thing, which they’re pretty confident they can correct through this medicine.

As for me, well they did a number of tests on me too, no MRI’s though.  But through their tests they were able to find that my testicles are also NOT failing, which is also good news.  And other than this elevated DHEAS issue that i talked about in my last entry, i check out ok.  They think that the elevated DHEAS is dropping my sperm count way down.  To the point where without treament, i’m pretty much sterile.  Which is a scarey thought.  The doctor seems to be pretty confident that the medicine he’s put me on will fix the DHEAS problem permenently after a year.  And while i’m on it, if that was indeed the cause of my terrible sperm count (ive always been bad at tests) my sperm count should start to return to normal. 

We’re both to be tested 1 month after we started out medication, to check on the hormone levels, and my sperm count will be re-tested.  That’s coming on July 12, less than 2 weeks away.

So, for anyone following along, here are the changes we’ve made to our lives as a result of this: We’ve both started eating healthier, i’ve been doing my best to start cutting out caffine.  Apparently caffine (among many many other things) is bad for you sperm count.  So i’ve cut myself back, i drink less coffee, and i try to limit my soda intake.  I used to drink Mt. Dew like water (a side-effect of working in IT for as long as i have) and by the way, that old "Mountain Dew will make you sterile" myth, it’s just that, a myth!  My wife’s been eating more food with the vitimins that she’s lacking to try to help things along.  It so happens that these are also foods that are generally good for you, and since she’s been trying to lose weight anyway, trading that lebnon sandwich for a spinach and pumpkin seed salad at lunch time wasnt that unwelcome of a change.  We’ve also started working out on a regular basis.  We try to get 2-3 distance runs in a week, and we’ve been weight training on a bow-flex, again, this all helps with overall fitness anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

We’re both on our perscription medications that i mentioned earlier, and I’ve started taking 60mg a day of zinc (2 30mg tablets, one in the morning, one before bed), and i’ve always taken a Centrum (or off-brand similar) multi-vitimin.

So, that’s it for now, i’ll be posting again once we get our next round of tests!

…

When i was young, I thought starting a family was easy.  Find the right girl, settle down, have kids, lfe is good. When i was in high school i had the same torment that all of the other guys my age had.  One half of you wants to find any girl you can, and get into her pants, while the other half doesnt want to start getting girls pregnant so you’re almost afraid of sex.  I had one friend who had 3 pregnancy scares over 2 of his girlfriends.  And another friend who got his girlfriend pregnant while i was a Freshman in high school.  He was probably all of 16 when it happened.  I;m pretty sure they actually broke up before the kid was even born.

Me? I didnt have much attention from the girls.  There were two girls in the span of my high school years that were a bit closer than friends, but still not serious enough to be a girlfriend.  So i guess i never really had that scare that other guys did. Finally i met the girl that i eventually married.  When we started experementing, that same fear started to come around.  "What if she get’s pregnant?" "Should we really be doing this?".

What’s my point?  My point is that I thought that the baby part was easy.  So easy that it could happen on accident, like it did to so many of my friends.  Like you hear about in the high school guidance class videos.  The ones that try to "prepare" you for real life.  Yea, real life…   I always thought that finding the girl was the hard part.  Getting married, getting a house, getting a steady job to support your family.  Well, i’ve got all of that.  The wife, the house, the job, the stable healthy environment.  What dont i have?  The baby. 

This October, we’ll be married for 5 years.  For about the last 2 of those years, we’ve been trying to start a family.  And for all of the time before that, we havent been trying to avoid it.  We started with the idea that if it happend, it happened.  Then we moved on to, "Ok, now we really want it to happen!".  At first i denied that we might have some sort of fertility issue.  I mean, we were both healthy, how could we not be able to get pregnant? After 5 years of unprotected sex though…. It started to concern both of us.  Finally we decided to see a doctor.

So that’s head us to here.. Where’s here?  Well, after 3 visits to a specialist, we’ve already found out a number of things. My wife’s got something of a genetic defect, which theyre treating with vitimin pills that she’ll have to take for the rest of her life.  Next week she goes to the hospital for an MRI on her brain so they can take a look at her Pituitary gland, and today she picked up her second perscription for a slightly elevated testosterone level.  I’ve got elevated levels of DHEAS, which apparently leads to infertility.  So they have me on this funky pain killer stuff that is somehow supposed to fix that? We havent gotten the full scoop on that yet, we see the specialist again in a few weeks to get a better idea of WTF is wrong with us. 

I dont think it’s supposed to be this difficult.  How is it that our species has gotten so large when it’s apparently so common for humans to have these issues?  Common enough that there’s an entire field of medicine related to it?  Why do 16 year old tramps get pregnant, and a nice responsible couple like my wife and I have to go through months of consultations, bloodwork, and drugs.

…

I’ve upgraded my linux server to CentOS5!  The move was actually pretty easy.  Other than some PHP 4 vs PHP 5 issues, everything just sort of ported right over. It’s amazing how easy it is to migrate a Linux server to a new install.  Working with windows servers all day has me dreading moves like this.  It was refreshing to get back to a stable, flexible operating system for a change.

New features?  Well, there arent many.  Just PHP5, and newer, faster hardware. I;m still not running on state of the art equipment, but i dont expect i ever will be. This server just isnt important enough for that.

-War

…

Slashdot has an article regarding Dell’s entrance into the PDA Phone market.  Experts speculate that Dell and Google will announce a partnership in building an iPhone like product.  Running google’s software, and on dell’s hardware ‘Id assume.  This should be interesting.

I just hope they do a better job on it than they did on my Dell Pocket DJ.  That things a buggy piece of crap.  Sure, it plays music, but half the time it locks up doing simple things like.. ohh.. adding music to the current playlist! 

At any rate, i guess we’ll find out if theyre right at next month’s 3GSM telecoms conference in Barcelona, which is where theyre expected to make their announcement.

-War

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My jeep’s been up on stands for months…  I miss driving my jeep.  I need to get back to working on it.

I”m about 1/4 of the way into an SOA conversion.  I have the rear out, and the new springs in place temporarily.  I need to get some bolts, some busihngs, and some u-bolts.  Not to mention shocks, i’ll need rear shocks when all is said and done.

I havent even started on the front yet.  I really need to get back to working on it.  Things have been so damned hectic lately.  Now that Christmas has passed, i should be able to set aside some time for working on it.  Hopefully.

-War

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