zenandjuice.com » Work

Email Complaint

zenandjuice — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:29:24 +0000

It really annoys me when someone replies to an email, and doesn’t quote the original email.

ESPECIALLY when their reply along the lines of “Yes, please”.

I then have to look through all my sent mail and find out the original question.

Maybe I’m the only one that saves sent and received email (at least all my work ones), so that I have a paperless trail of communication.

When it sucks to be a sysadmin

zenandjuice — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:30:38 +0000

I’ve been having hardware problems with one of my Dell Poweredge 4600 servers.

First, two power supplies were dying, so they sent me replacements, plus a Power Distribution Board. I replaced those, and then other things started going wrong. Dell technician came out with another PDB, another power supply, and a system board. And replaced all of those. Then the system wouldn’t detect half of my SCSI array. So they sent out a daughterboard which controlled the secondary backplane, and all of my drives started to appear again.

Unfortunately, that RAID5 array disappeared. And I lost about 400 GIGS of data. Luckily, that’s all existing somewhere on the ethernet on a network tape backup.

So I just recreated this 450GB RAID, scrubbed it, and now I’m reinstalling the operating system. Then I’ll install the Veritas Netbackup software, restore all of my data and then attach my external storage array so I can access the other 500GB RAID array.

Sounds like fun, no ?

Dell support was great, as always. And I have a 4 hour support policy on that system, so I was getting parts within hours of ordering them. The technician (Robert) was very helpful.

Blackboard Patenting Educational Groupware

zenandjuice — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:03:14 +0000

Just read this on Slashdot.

Synopsis:

Blackboard buys WebCT (their major competitor)
Blackboard gets a PATENT for Learning Management Systems
Blackboard sues Desire2Learn (another LMS) for patent infringement

Slashdot | Blackboard Patenting Educational Groupware

Blackboard Patenting Educational Groupware
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 02, @08:36AM

“Online learning provider Blackboard announced the other day that it has patented the Learning Management System (LMS). The very same day it went after Desire2Learn for Patent infringement in a truly Salt Lake City kinda way. A great many educators are a bit shook up by this, and are stockpiling prior art all over the place.

cost recovery

zenandjuice — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:35:11 +0000

while at a workshop, we were discussing charging for services…
however, at public institutions you can’t charge to make money, but you sure can charge additional fees for “cost recovery”.

i thought that was funny.

error number 0x8DDD0004

zenandjuice — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:31:16 +0000

I’ve been unable to run Windows Update on a Windows 2003 Server for awhile now (automatic updates worked though).

It would either never load the page, or would give me a message about error number: 0x8DDD0004, or it would never load the ActiveX script.

I finally tracked down the problem.

Other people had the same problem – http://www.mcse.ms/archive292-2005-11-1995112.html

led me to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896688/ (MS05-052: Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer)

which led me to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909889/ (ActiveX controls may not load as expected in Internet Explorer due to defense in depth changes introduced in cumulative security update 896688).

After re-registering some DLL’s, re-downloading the Windows Update installer, and applying some registry fixes, my system has recovered from glitches caused by Microsoft Patches.

Yesterday, I finally tracked down some issues with SELinux on RedHat Enterprise 4 that stopped up2date from working.

Everything’s running smooth !

10 years

zenandjuice — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 05:40:53 +0000

I realized today that I started working full-time at the University of Arkansas ten years ago, on February 1st.

How time flies.

server failure ! and recovery !

zenandjuice — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:43:49 +0000

i came in this morning to one my servers beeping away. bad hard drive ! the 146 GB drive shows a capacity of 0 GB, with 205 Media Errors. Ruh Roh !

Removing the drive and popping it back in doesn’t work. So I call Dell Technical support, and talk to a tech there, and he creates a ticket so I can get a replacement hard drive. This is at 10:08am. At 11:30am, UPS shows up with my new hard drive. Wow. I had 4 hour support on it, and wasn’t expecting it until 2pm !

Way to go Dell !

it’s hot in herrrreee

zenandjuice — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:16:48 +0000

i’m dying.

they’ve been working on the air system in my office, and it’s currently 86 degrees and rising in here !

And that’s WITH doors and windows open !

absolutely chartwells !

zenandjuice — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:25:42 +0000

I was presenting at a faculty luncheon yesterday in Old Main. It was catered by Chartwells (of course), the campus dining conglomerate.

It was observed (by a coworker) that the carafes of water were filled from the bathroom sinks.

How gross is that?

Iced tea please !

move over sgt slaughter, there’s a new irony in town !

zenandjuice — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:18:24 +0000

there’s an new Air Force ROTC faculty member… last name = Murders.

Not sure what his ranking is, but it made me think of Sgt Slaughter from G.I. Joe.

But just a name like that is beyond irony.