Today’s excitement (or excrement if you prefer) included The Usual Email Crash, a misconnected reconnected print server in the NRK studio, missing desktop icons, the malware known as RealOne, rsync timeout issues and that damned Microsoft web browser. It’s enough to keep a guy hopping. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have some good material for my devoted fans, but today was just plain work.

In an ongoing effort to improve network storage, we ordered a Quantum Snap! Server 4100. It arrived this morning, so today’s task is to install and configure the machine. Over the next couple of days I’ll see about testing a few configuration arrangements with an eye toward switching everyone over by month’s end.

One of the challenges I’m facing is that this is essentially just a Linux box with a giant RAID array. All of the Netware and Windows connectivity is purely emulated, so I must deal with a variety of limitations on how smoothly I can integrate this machine into the rest of the network. For instance, how hard is it going to be to do fine-tuned directory-level security? It may not be possible at all, which means I’ll have to completely re-think how we’re going to use this machine.

Fun, what? Oh, and in keeping with the Tenchi-based naming scheme, the Quantum is now known as Tokimi. (I already have a Washuu and a Tsunami.)

Here’s one I’ve never seen before: A Groupwise server in our Madison cluster is flooding the network with replica change requests to the point where our server’s MTA is effectively disabled. I’ve had to turn off voicemail and fax synchronization for the time being, and attempts to restart the MTA gracefully have been unsuccessful. Right now Entercom Portland isn’t sending or receiving mail outside our local email server.

The Novell consultant at Corporate is working on the problem in Madison, then is supposed to call me to see about getting our machine back online once more. It may be a really, really long day. I won’t be too bored, of course, since I have a computer to rebuild at 4:30. Ah yes, we can’t forget about the fun I’ll have answering questions like “Is email not working?” every ten minutes until closing time.

This morning marked the release of the Winter 2002 Arbitron “book.” I haven’t heard too much from any of the stations besides KNRK, whose programming staff were heard to be whooping it up after seeing some of their numbers. Apparently Jayn, Marconi and Ty are tops in their dayparts or something. How scary is it that Marconi has a top-ranked afternoon radio show?

(You’re a great guy, Marconi, but the fact that thousands of people listen to what you and Tiny do in that studio every day frightens me deeply.)

Viewing the new data, of course, required a new version of software from Arbitron. Guess who got to run from office to office all afternoon? Yep, it was me. Who else would it have been?

Tomorrow I get to attend a department head meeting, work on purchasing some storage hardware and rebuild the KFXX (The Fan) studio PC. I can’t wait for Humpday, can you?

Have you noticed that I ended a lot of statements in this entry with question marks?

Today’s project was to get the new Newsroom 1 Enco workstation online. Piece of cake, right?

(James Burke voice:) Wrong!

(If you don’t get that bit, I insist that you find a copy of The Day The Universe Changed, all of it, and watch the series through. Then you will.)

Thanks to Win2k’s ACPI and the damned Tyan motherboard’s inability to set IRQs by slot, I swapped cards around in that chassis for hours. Oh yes, and until some genius realized that we needed to tell the motherboard that IRQ 10 needed to be reserved for the ISA sound card, we couldn’t get the Digigram drivers to recognize said card. Duh.

As it stands, there’s still two cards with shared interrupts… the PCI Digigram sound card and the NIC. This is not a good thing. Eventually both devices will see simultaneous load, which will probably crash the machine. When it’s a machine running live broadcast programming, this is the kind of thing you try to avoid. The problem, of course, is that no matter where I place either of the two conflicting cards they both come up on IRQ 11. Gah!

And we get to hammer on it some more tomorrow morning. Joy to us all.

In between dealing with the usual assortment of network space issues, printer problems and other nonsense, I get to place the rebuilt West Conference Room computer back into its Smartboard enclosure. I also get to spend an hour or so in a conference call with the rest of Entercom’s erstwhile IT/IS team. Mind you, half these folks are engineers first and computer techs second. I’ll probably compile more stuff on Zero while I have the “mic mute” button toggled. I don’t have anything of value to contribute, as I’m well ahead of the standard Entercom computering curve.

No false modesty, it’s just that Entercom Portland is unusual (Hah!) in having a dedicated IS staffer. That would be me, for those of you following along at home.