Server shit, youtube, whatever else
Well this past weekend I upgraded 3 servers at work from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003 R2. After the upgrade I did some quick testing and all of the applications came up and apparently worked. Well it turned out that one component of one of our major applications broke. I spent a day and a half trying to resolve the problem but yesterday we decided to revert back. There is no uninstall for Windows 2003. I tried restoring my Windows 2000 backup on top of Windows 2003. When I rebooted it hung immediately saying it was missing files. Great…. So I installed Windows 2000 to another directory and then did another tape restore. The system booted this time but after entering my login credentials I was presented with a blank desktop. After some searching on various knowledge bases I found a way to bring up the system properties and rejoin the domain, however I still had a blank desktop on reboot. So I did one more restore, just restoring the Windows directory, the Documents and Setting directory and the registry. That did the trick. After 6 hours of installs, endless reboots and watching tape restore progress bars, the day was saved. This server will be staying Windows 2000 until it is retired. I didn’t get home last night until 8:45.
Youtube.com is an addictive site. You could spend 24 hours a day pouring through the content. My videos have been up there for a month or so. So far the most popular video is this one of the battery releasing from my rc plane in flight. It has been viewed 1,048 times so far. The least popular is the paranoid video I made of Keener with only 8 views. I guess it isn’t funny unless you know him.
We had another nice downpour last night, I think it was from the outer bands of Alberto, we got over 1.25 inches of rain. I really dig having my outdoor weather station in operation.
My return to Powerhouse Gym hasn’t been all that bad. Yea it’s dark, it’s warm, it isn’t clean and it’s unorganized but I knew that coming back. I bring my own water and go to the bathroom at work before heading there so that makes it bearable. It’s a shame, if the owner spent half an hour a day cleaning it up and maybe a couple grand in some basic repairs it would be 100% better. He runs that gym on a shoestring budget yet he drives a new H2 Hummer….
In my electric bill this month I saw a pamphlet for this thing. It is a modification that fits under your electric meter that allows you to plug your generator right into your homes electrical system. Then you control electricity throughout the house by just flipping breakers on and off. It is a GREAT thing. If money wan’t so tight right now I would drop the 650 for it in a snap. No more running extension cords everywhere and things like hot water, well pump, lights, the microwave all become realities through careful manipulation of the breaker box. We will get it sometime before hurricane season is over hopefully. It can’t hurt home resale either.
Last night Ali picked up yet another stray dog at our house. This one was a cute female beagle that we had seen wandering the neighborhood for 3 or 4 days. It had a collar but no tags whatsoever. I’m pretty sure it was from a mexican family. So as Ali came to pick me up from work she took the beagle to domestic animals so it could either be reclaimed by it’s owners or adopted back out. I think it will be better served by the latter. Ali asked if I wanted to see the dog before she dropped it off and I declined, knowing that Ali was subtley working the “maybe we have room for two dogs” angle. Of course if I saw it, I would feel pity for it and get attached making it painful to drop her off. I went through that once and it sucked. Ali took some pics of the dog which I will try to post at some time. There are so many loose dogs in our area, it’s a shame people don’t care enough to make sure they are restrained or at least tagged so they can be returned if found.