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This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.
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| Friday, July 26, 2002
What a day! It's System Admin Appreciation Day and in honor of the day, I'm staying home. No, not really, I'm staying home to administer to my own digestive system, which seems to have some corrupt data that needs to be purged, if ya' know what I mean. *L* It's also Chris Pirillo's 29th birthday. Happy birthday you young whippersnapper you! I suppose I should just be glad that it's not salmonella from eating at Denny's. Hope you feel better Mary! Hmm, Denny's is usually an every day stop when I'm on a long road trip, I might have to re-think that for August, eh? I'd hate to miss Gnomedex, and if I go out on a solo road trip and wind up in the hospital, I think Angela would stop being so understanding of my solo travel plans. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:22 AM | 0 comments | 
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Thursday, July 25, 2002
Crash course So today's been just as busy as yesterday, had to swap and re-image a hard drive, yet again, put out some fires with the network printer, put together a preliminary expense report for Gnomedex and now I get to spend some time on my latest project. We're looking into some different options for our T1 line carrier. The line will still connect to the same ISP, but we're now in a month-to-month situation with the phone company for the line and looking at entering another contract. There's a sales guy who claims he can get us a Full T1 cheaper than what we're paying now for a Fractional because of some phone company special discount plan that he has access to. I think my boss is suspicious about that, so I get to check all of the technical specs behind the contracts and see what exactly we'd be agreeing to. Yeah, I need a crash course in T1 line technology and all of the various terms that are in the contracts. Hopefully it won't take me too long to decipher the telephone company double-talk. :) Wish me luck! (Later..) Always keep a steady supply of caffeine available for reading telephone company contracts. Good thing there's Dr. Pepper in the pop machine! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 2:45 PM | 0 comments |
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In the news Got an email yesterday about a shareware news aggregator called InfoSnorkel. It looks fairly interesting, seems that it will allow you to make our own feed of just about any page, and put your feeds into categories, ala an Outlook Express-type interface. I guess it's got some potential, but I won't be doing a full review of it. The reviews were limited to freeware only. I might try it out for the 20 day trial period but I doubt it has enough extra features to make it worth the $39.95 price tag for me. (I have a few more important pending expenses!) Mozilla 1.1 Beta has been released. I haven't even had enough time to try out the full version 1.0 release and they have a Beta out already, sheesh! (link lifted from Josh) Seems that Kevin has his own way of dealing with new employees. That would work, but generally in my case, it's not their fault that no one told me they were coming, so I try not to take it out on them. Their supervisor on the other hand... From Cam: Nando Times: "According to the Direct Marketing Association's guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to opting-in - a marketing strategy known as opting out." Sigh, that is just plain wrong... -yes it is, wrong and stupid! John Hiler sums up what I've been thinking about those who take their blogging tools a little too seriously. If I was smart and articulate, that's what I might have said about it. :) (link lifted from Corante) Speaking of articulate, how's this for a better metaphor than I gave before? If the RIAA and MPAA can hack computers to protect their copyrighted works, and someone steals my website design, do I have the right to hack their website or do a denial-of-service on it until they take down my design? You want to try that defense in court as an individual and see how far it gets you? Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:11 AM | 0 comments |
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Busy day Haven't had much time to look over the tech or blog news today. Have a hard drive being flaky on me again. I got it running long enough to make a backup of the email and favorites for this person, but still have a replacement coming in overnight. There's no sense waiting for this thing to die, I know it's about to. Getting it going long enough to make backups lets me play the hero part, and since it's one of our VP's PC's, looking the hero to her is a plus! Especially two days before System Admin Appreciation Day, as if anyone here is going to recognize that! I've also been working diligently constructing an email about informing the IT Dept. (me!) about staff changes. There's nothing like having people coming and going without making sure the IT stuff is taken care of. Generally I try to have all the details here and with our ISP taken care of before someone starts, but we've had instances where no one tells me someone is starting and they just show up at my office door one day. That's a hassle! I also have a telephone extension that won't make outside calls right now! So I'm keeping quite busy. How's your day going? Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 2:56 PM | 0 comments |
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Morning News Items Could Hollywood hack your PC? - this law, yet again, gives the RIAA and MPAA the ability to use whatever means necessary to block file trading, regardless of whatever potential damage is done to consumers, and makes it next to impossible for consumers to be compensated if they go too far and cause actual damage. This quote in particular bothers me: "It's a good bill," Gene Smith, a spokeswoman for Berman, said on Monday. "It's always hard to defend theft and piracy--this bill just puts into the hands of the copyright owners technologies that are already being used by the pirates." Let that sink in for a little while. They want to give copyright owners the same tools that pirates are using. Is this not the same thing as saying "If you get robbed, you have the legal right to break into someone's house and look for the things that got stolen, if you happen to suspect that they are the one who took it, and if you're wrong, and you damage the person's house, oh well!"? It's the same logic, is it not? Of course they wouldn't pass a law that let average citizens defend their rights however they deem appropriate, but corporations? Sure! Remember these people come election time. Blogger is looking for a customer support rep. If you live in San Fran. this would actually be a pretty cool job to have! (link lifted from Christine) A note about the blogroll lists. I have a bunch more links to add, people I either visit or read in my news aggregator everyday, but in some cases I haven't quite decided yet which category they fall into. Obviously, the categories are mostly just for my benefit, but I like to have some consistency in what I'm doing over there. Also, I've decided not to add any links until I get the Current Affairs list to grow a little bit. Unfortunately, it seems like most current affair/news blogs either suck, or are written with such a "I'm always right and you're always wrong" attitude that I can't stand reading them. One last thing, if I ever become a really popular blogger and have a huge enough audience that people come here just to suck up to me in my comments or in my email, in hopes that maybe, just maybe I'll link to them, or wave to them in my webcam (OK, I'm not female so that's unlikely, but still you get the idea), so they can pretend for a minute that I actually spend any amount of time thinking about them when I really don't, I'll stop doing this. No wait, on second thought, I won't stop doing this, but I will use my pulpit to tell these people to get a life! (Insert your own examples here, I'm sure you've seen plenty of it!) Hmm I seem to be rather irritable today, don't I? :) Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 10:36 AM | 0 comments |
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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Coffee notes Here's the cool thing about Angela getting a Mac. She's paying for the machine, and I'm getting the opportunity to add to my own tech knowledge by having access to a Mac for next to nothing. I've added the Apple Core to my list of Lockergnome subscriptions and added a copy of Troubleshooting, Maintaining, and Repairing Macs to my bookshelf at home for the low, low price of $6. (Big clearance sale at Microcenter, and Angela was nice enough to buy it for me, since it'll be for her machine!) So I'm getting a Mac education right along with her, not too shabby! Want to see A-list bloggers act like six-year olds? Yeah, I guess arguing about the technology and who came up with what idea first and who's not getting enough credit is going to make people take the medium seriously, isn't it? Because we all know it's not the writing that makes a good weblog, it's the technology, right? There certainly can't be people who just write good, informative pages regardless of the tools they use, because the tools are the thing, aren't they? Bleech! (link found through Corante) Later.. I'm still awaiting word from the person who made a purchase at the Life of a One-Man IT Department Store. I'm curious as to his/her opinion of the product quality. I hope it was ok! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:32 AM | 0 comments |
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Monday, July 22, 2002
Misc. Updates Yes, Angela did put in her two weeks notice this morning. All I can say about that is that someone is going to be in for a rude surprise on Aug. 2 when they realize how many things don't get done anymore and how many people here have no idea how to do them. Oh well, not my problem. The stuff that concerns me, and will fall to me until they hire a replacement, is going to get done, I'll be sure of that. But the other stuff, sorry can't help ya'! You'd think that if both of the people who worked under you were leaving around the same time, (they both got new jobs) you'd spend some time making sure that your actual work is going to get covered, and making sure the knowledge gets passed along wouldn't you? Whatever! Yes, those of you paying careful attention will note that she is taking a week off between jobs for herself. I'm a little jealous, but then I'm taking the last week of August for myself, so I can't complain. She'll be attending an extended-family gathering, sans husband (who will be at the Irish Festival), that weekend, and staying through Monday to spend some "alone with her parents" time, then tripping back to Columbus in time for the Dave Matthews concert on Tuesday. I suppose she can rest for the remainder of the week, eh? She deserves it! It's only a month away now. This time next month, I'll be packing up the car and heading to Des Moines for Gnomedex. I'm getting pretty jazzed about it, although I am probably going to have to pass on The Ohana Steakhouse gathering that evening. Being in Des Moines by 5:30 is iffy, and since they are going to require a deposit on the meal, I'm not going to risk being out the $10 if I don't make it in time. I was hoping to meet some of the folks before the convention actually started but I guess I can wait until Friday morning, or I can maybe hook up with them later that evening. Look me up when ya'll get back from dinner! :) On a top-secret note, Geek, I haven't forgotten the stuff I promised you. It's nearly done, I just need to document some stuff I added to it that I didn't bother with in the original because I didn't need it, but it might be useful to others. I was slightly distracted from working on it this weekend, sorry! :) Meanwhile, I spent most of my morning running reports for our outsourced sales people. Unfortunately, since no one bothered to consult me on the tech issues surrounding outsourcing our sales last year, the only way for us to get them our membership data is to print it out for them every once in a while. Yeah, I know, by the time the 80 or so pages print twice, sorted by zip and sorted alphabetically, it's already outdated. Again, not really my problem. But, it's a rather time-consuming process, exporting the info, sorting it, printing it, resorting it, printing it again. Boring! I had more fun working on Angela's computer at home, even without getting it fixed! Oh well, life in IT right? Most of the time you work on boring junk. Lastly, this just sucks! Here's hoping things work out ok for Camille and Josh. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 4:33 PM | 0 comments |
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TCP/IP stack update I spent a late night over the weekend trying to fix the problem with Angela's current PC. Basically what happened is that back when we had the cable modem installed and there was a problem with it, the Roadrunner tech support folks, rather than believing that the problem was with their modem, had me uninstall and reinstall the adapters and TCP/IP stacks. Well after I did that on her PC, the PPP Adapter never showed up again. When I use "winipcfg" in Windows 98, it only shows the Ethernet Adapter, the PPP one for dialup connections was gone. Since we are using the Ethernet to connect to the network, I hadn't really spent much time messing with it, but with the prospect of giving up the PC to her parents when she moves to the Mac, I thought I'd give it a good shot. I uninstalled and reinstalled the Dial-Up Adapter, the TCP/IP stacks, DUN, the modem, and even went so far as to take out all of the networking components and start over. Again, the Ethernet adapter shows up, the PPP is nowhere to be found. The modem works, in fact, it will dial out and connect to an ISP, but then you get the "unable to negotiate a compatible set of protocols" error, presumably because the PC won't accept an IP address from the server when you connect. (Without an adapter to take the IP address, it wouldn't work very well, would it? *L*) So that's where it stands. The only available option seems to be reinstalling the OS, but I'd have to use the HP System Recovery CD and start all over again with a fresh install then spend hours installing all of the graphics software that she has, which was one of the bigger reasons for giving them the PC to begin with. If I'm going to have to do that, we'd do just as well to retire the software from this PC that she won't be using anymore and shipping the CD's down to her parents to install on the machines they already have. Also, they all told me not to bother with all of that anyway, so I'm not going to. They can figure out the rest, if anything needs to even be done. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 12:04 PM | 0 comments |
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