Time to do an update here

Been a while since I posted anything. Nothing much new, but been working on serverweave. Decided to make it so everything is an "object" and treated the same, making saving and other processes easier and use less code. Next step is to implement user input validation as well as ACLs to objects.

Soon I will start back up on AoV, there are quite a few plans to make the shard better. The SQL storage engine has been put on hold for now until all the issues can be resolved, but it's getting there.

Yet another cold

I normally never get colds but latetly I'm getting every single cold that hits me it seems. I'm on my 3rd... or is it 4th? since September. I lost count.

My cat is a hacker

I have no clue WTF she did, but I turned around, she was on the laptop keyboard, and a command line window was up during the windows setup! I typed ipconfig out of curiosity to see if the system actually has an IP during setup, and apparently it does. I can't ping it though, so I'm guessing the TCP protocol is not running at this point.



I'm stumped, Must be some kind of secret key combination that can bring that up for windows developers to debug or something.

Crappy night

So yesterday I'm working on that computer again, and find out that the media card reader took proceedance over drive C! So windows ended up being drive H! WTF? Reinstall.... but first I unplugged that thing for good. Meanwhile, I was doing laundry and the first load was done and I went downstairs to do the next load, and find this:



Yeah, sewer backup. That stinks. I blame those super cheap face clothes that produce a ridiculous amount of lint which ended up blocking the main sewer line.

After a couple hours I managed to unblock it and also sprayed benefect to kill the smell. My next goal I think is to bring my servers at least a couple feet above the ground to avoid damage if ever something like this happens and I am not around.

Oh and back to that computer. I finally managed to get it working today and the user is happy, and it's out of here! Now I can resume my normal life.

The computer from HELL

I often get people wanting me to fix their computers. For a while I was refusing as I find it just takes up too much time for nothing and is not worth it. I decided that since I need the money and now have a better setup in my own house, that I'd start again.

So a week ago I get this computer with Vista on it (ewww) and it's just acting strange and their net cuts off all the time etc.. so I decide to plug it in my external network and boot it up. After puking in my mouth a little while vista loads, I decide to try the internet. No go. In fact, I was not even getting an IP from the DHCP server. Since my cable installation is rather new I figured perhaps it's a cabling issue, so I start troubleshooting to make sure it's not my network. After about an hour of messing on the patch panel and routers I find out it's not since my main machine can talk fine to both routers. I also could not even see that PC's DHCP packets at all.

So I decide to try in an Ubuntu live CD for kicks. I get an IP no problem and can browse the net. After a few more hours have gone by I don't know what to do but figured what the hell, vista is on there, it has to be formatted anyway. So I image the drive (still unable to get an IP) to an external hard drive. For whatever reason this took like a while day.

I then mount the image on my PC to make sure I see all the files. WTF, can't even read "documents and settings". Bah, stupid vista and weird NTFS permissions. I try to take ownership of everything, but no go. Turns out Vista encrypts that folder on the fly. So if you have Vista and you can't boot your PC, say goodbye to your files!

So I decide to boot with Linux and do a full disk copy (at this point I did not figure the files were encrypted, thought it was just an NTFS thing). This took another day to do.

I did the mistake of starting the XP install before verifying the file copy. Then I realize, crap, still can't see "documents and settings". So I restore the image so I can just do the copy from the OS (this took a whole day to restore).

Guess what? Image wont boot!!! CRAP! After about an hour or so of troubleshooting turns out it was something silly. The bootable flag was not set and it was trying to boot off the HP recovery partition.

Finally I get it to boot - I have to admit I was actually kinda happy to see vista, ok, maybe not. Then I try to do the copy from within vista. (Eww). Each minute of using this OS makes me puke a little inside. So finally I got the files, and I'm ready to format.

I then load up my trusty Windows XP pro CD and start the install. I decide to leave the HP recovery partition just in case. So I install XP, load it up, start installing basics like Firefox, flash plugin, and restore the files and all that stuff. So far it's getting better. Then I start having network issues again! I figure it might be the nic, though it's weird that if I set a static IP it goes online right away, how can a layer 1 issue only be restricted to a certain protocol? But w/e, I try a USB nic anyway, it goes flawlessly. Then I say screw it and go buy another Nic for 50 bucks. Ironicly when I put it that nic then the old one works again. wtf? W/E it's not my PC, I just can't wait to get it done. Now everything is back up and running.

Then, I figure I may as well make an Acronis image of this and put it on the recovery partition. There's not enough space on it so I resize it with gparted. This is where things go to crap again.

Windows now would not boot. Somehow in this process Windows ended up INSIDE the extended partition. WTF? Why is there even an extended partition, there's only 2 partitions. No need for an extended partition. I then try to take an image anyway (thankfully must faster now that it's a XP install) and then wipe the whole partition table. I zero out a huge section of the drive (maybe I should have done the whole thing, but takes too long...) and then restore the XP image. STILL wont boot. I get the dreaded "NTLDR Missing" error this time.

So now I decide "Screw it" and reinstall Windows again from scratch, and that I will use a DBAN to totally wipe the drive first. So I load up DBAN and it "finishes" in like 1 second. Yeah, ok, impossible. There's some "non fatal error" about bad sectors.

So here I am running a full disk diagnostic utility... 1 week minus 1 hour later...

This 60 bucks is not worth the trouble I am going through!

Weird bug I found in my basement

Mmmm, looks crunchy.







Appears to be an earwig. Would not want that thing in my ear... :o

Snow!

Not our first, but this one may possibly be permanent. Got about an inch maybe a bit more. A sure sign Christmas is around the corner!

I can has cheeseburger?

Yes you can, I can't eat all of this alone!



So me and a coworker decided it would be fun to order 16 cheeseburgers to see how many we can eat. 16 was a bit over the top but none went to waste, lets just say we had help!

Servers deployed!

I have deployed all my servers and they are now operational in my new house.

There are still a few things to test such as VPN connectivity but it should be ok.

Servers moved to new house!

Today I setup my parent's to be able to work "off the grid" as in, without needing the server. I have started to format them a new raid 1 NAS for pictures/backups, and installed a new router. Then I brought home all the rest of my equipment such as my two remaining servers - my main server, Borg, and my external dev server, extsrv (yeah very original name :P)


Cat sleeping while I work away on finalizing jacks etc. She is not liking the fact that I'm trying to save on heating costs!


Powered up borg on my PC support desk to ensure it is still operational (wont be able to see once I move it downstairs - no monitor keyboard or mouse!)


extsrv, my other server. Need to test that one as well.



UPS and networking equipment setup. I put a vapor barrier so I don't get too much moisture on the equipment.