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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Geekery

  • The Joys of Managed Services

    I love our managed services platform-of-choice, Kaseya. It allows me to run complex scripts, remote control machines in a number of ways, and generally stay on top of all the fiddly bits involved in keeping disparate groups of machines in peak condition. Because computers take everything literally, however, sometimes you get “critical” alerts like: “The amount of installed RAM on Machine X has changed from 3327MBytes to 3326MBytes.”

    Someone stole one megabyte of RAM! Quick, to the Batmobile! (Or, maybe not.)

    Then again, sometimes the best platform in the world can’t save you from the vagaries of the server vendor. Take HP (please! ha ha) and their instructions for monitoring drive failure. “Watch for Event ID 1214,” they say, and then when the drive fails the actual logged error shows up with Event ID 1202. It’s not even that their instructions are wholly incorrect, as the last time a drive failed it did use the “correct” ID. Unfortunately, last night’s drive failure at one of our biggest clients used the “wrong” ID.

    Guess who looks bad when we “drop the ball” in such a fashion, eh? Oh, I’ve fixed that one. Now I just have to wonder how many other little traps are waiting to spring…

  • A wee bit o’ server maintenance

    It’s always so very nice to see a high-profile notification about a new release of key webserver software, one which purports to fix a myriad of security vulnerabilities, right before I go to bed. There’s no chance of getting to sleep without taking care of the upgrade once I’ve seen such a thing. What makes the task much more entertaining is that the OS version for this server is, let’s say, a bit out of date. Getting installers for current software on this old beast can be a nightmare.

    Luckily there’s a Frenchman who believes in keeping certain key software packages installable for old warhorses like my server so I acquired the updates from his repository, crossed my fingers and ran the installers. A couple of post-upgrade scripts later and… here we are at MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.2.2. Not too shabby, eh? I think the server may even be responding slightly faster now, and that’s the sort of thing which puts a big smile on my face.

    Now to see if I can sleep through the night without feeling the urge to check on the server every twenty minutes. Over the last couple of years I’ve grown cautious of major changes for some reason…

  • Let’s Make Believe

    Tell you what.

    I’ll pretend that I filled the last couple of weeks with post after post about how tired and out-of-sorts I’ve been, and you’ll pretend to have read those posts, with or without the requisite rolling of the eyes or the deep sigh of boredom and/or frustration.

    This past weekend we moved a bunch more of Kyla’s stuff from her old home to her new home. We also picked up a new television for her, mainly so there’s something to watch DVDs and play video games on. The highlight of the previous weekend was taking the kids to see “TMNT,” which was a better movie than I expected. (No, seriously. It’s good. While it’s not grand or epic, it’s still a solidly entertaining little film. If it doesn’t do well in DVD sales I’ll be terribly disappointed.)

    I haven’t been completely idle on the writing front, though. Consider how much time I put in over the last two months to get the new anime forum, A.E.I.O.U., up to speed!

    Now let’s see if I can strike a balance so that I’m not letting this poor journal gather dust so often…

  • Meedio to Yahoo to MeediOS

    Some time back, Yahoo purchased Meedio and turned it into Yahoo Go TV, with some of the better features removed and a few of their own grafted on. Then they mothballed it.

    Meedio as a product is dead, but apparently enough people use it and love it that there’s a community dedicated to plugin and add-on development as well as to recreating the product entirely.

    So, for the sake of remembering where to look the next time I get a chance to build a HTPC unit… MeediOS.

  • Big Block o’ Icons… auf Deutsch!

    The list of available selections is somewhat arbitrary, but the results are still mildly amusing:

    POWERED BY PUBLICONS.DE

    Keep in mind that if you decide to make your own, you’ll be dealing with German-language instructions. Your mileage may vary.

  • Photo Periodic Table Posters

    So. Who wants to pony up and buy a late birthday present for everyone’s favorite little grey duck?

    Okay, I kid. I’ll probably buy one myself at some point in the near future. I just wanted to get the link posted here so I won’t forget that I want one, let alone where I found them.

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