Month: September 2008

Clean Up

Random link dump time…

Telescopic text.
The dude was just hungry…
The simple but strict rules to the Road Runner cartoon.
Your tax dollars at work.
White Rat Orchestra.
Yahoo Answers tackles the tough questions.
221 B Baker Street.
The weirdest soccer match ever.
Bacon Flow chart.
These snowglobes are going on my Christmas list.
DIY Enter Key Doorbell (I have an old keyboard that I really should do this with).
A few tools to replace the free tools from dnsstuff.com.
Car getting towed gets a speeding ticket.
Man decorates basement with a Sharpie.
Talk ain’t cheap, but it sure is profitable.
Cooking by numbers.
Amazon filler item finder.
The Dipsea, for my bookmarks, for if my back every cooperates long enough for me to train again and kiss somebody’s butt to get into that legendary race.
Reverse shoplifting in 6 easy steps.
What food looks like in ads compared to real life.

September 30, 2008

Time Killing Game For The Day

It’s easy at first, but gets pretty tough as the levels get higher.

September 30, 2008

Anybody Want an iPod Nano?

Find my buddy Burton a job, and he’ll give you one.

September 29, 2008

Who Was The Idiot at HP Who Made This Decision?

I have to deal with a bunch of HP and Compaq products at the office from their LaserJets and Deskjet printers to their Proliant servers as well as a few of their laptops and desktops. One of the ways I’ve found information was generally via Google, which has HPs IT Resource Forums and Business Support Forums indexed very well. The forums have always had a solution for the various problems I’ve had, usually there’s been a forum post with a follow up that linked to an appropriate HP/Compaq support article or download page that will give me what I need.

The problem is that HP, in all their infinite wisdom, decided to restructure their support site, effectively killing all those pages that people in the forums linked to. So pages like this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this (among many others, these are just the ones I could find right now) no longer work. The reality is that Google is much better at finding answers in normal language than HP’s own search engine, and clicking through the tons of various options that HP had to find information is a tedious process. There are just tons of dead links all over HP’s site. Whoever the moron was at HP who decided it was a good idea to kill a ton of should-be-permanent links should lose their job.

But for my future reference, since I’ve been dealing with these a lot lately:

Proliant SmartStart 5.50 ISO. That’s the version you want if you’re planning on doing any work on older PII/PIII Proliant servers (like the ML370, DL360 or DL380 first generations, or any of the 800 or 1600 line). Newer versions don’t support those older machines. If you’re lucky enough to have a newer machine, newer versions can be found here, with 7.80 direct download here.
Firmware Maintence CDs. 8.2 is here with 7.40b here (the 7.40b is the latest one that will work with most first-generation servers).
Using HP System Management Software on a CentOS machine (installing diag utilities).
My question/response re: what the Smart Array Controller can/can’t do.

I’ll add more bookmarks to this as I find them or remember them.

(Update: Fixed link for 7.80 ISO.)

September 28, 2008

I Can’t Believe It: I Agree With George W.

I never though I’d say this, but I agree with the Bush administration’s opinion on something.

The Bush administration has announced its strong opposition to a bill backed by the recording industry that would let federal prosecutors file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer pirates.
In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that amounts to a veto threat, the administration said it was “deeply concerned” that the proposal would divert resources from criminal prosecution to civil enforcement, and create “unnecessary bureaucracy.” Currently prosecutors have authority to file criminal charges.

September 25, 2008

Amen, Brother

I’m glad I’m not the only one that hates musical ringtones — what the heck is wrong with an actual ringing sound?

September 25, 2008

Why Will The Android Phone Be A Success?

The new T-Mobile/Google phone is pretty cool, and despite its flaws there is one real reason it’ll be a huge success over the iPhone.

September 24, 2008

Technology Is Going To Drive Me To Drink

If anybody locally is a HP/Compaq server wizard, please call me at my office, as I’m to the point where I’m going to pay somebody else to fix this if I can’t get ‘er working (emailing me is fine as well).

I have a server that is having trouble getting going. I migrated this DL380G1 server from a Proliant 800 (PIII model). I took the RAID card and SCSI drive out of the 800, installed it in the DL380, booted off the 800 drive, and it installed all the new drivers from the DL380, including the array, and everything appeared fine.

Naturally, I’d rather have the system running on the DL380s RAID controller (as the SCSI card and most of the hardware from the 800 was giving me fits, hence the migration), so I cloned the drive from the 800 (after it’d been running in the system for a while) to a RAID1 array. Upon boot, I get the Inaccessible Boot Device BSOD (after it shows the WIndows 2000 server splash screen).

I’ve verified the data copied over properly, as I booted an ERD Commander disk and saw all the data fine. I just need to know how to get this thing to boot using the right drivers w/out reinstalling everything (as the old 800 is hosed, and this has an IIS install that I need to have intact because of some old archaic code — didn’t write it, just inherited it).

I’ve done this fine with three other Proliant migrations, had no issue at all, but for some reason this one is giving me fits.

I’ve ran a Windows 2000 Recovery Console repair, and ran “chkdsk /r” three times and still get the error. I’m sure it’s the device driver, just don’t know how to get Windows to use the right one.

Thoughts? Ideas? Email or call, as I’ve been at this for hours now and am going crazy.

Update about 30 minutes later: After beating around this a bit more, I thought about HAL issues. I copied the hal.dll file from another like configured system, and it appears to boot up (unlike before). I thought a repair process checked the hal.dll, but apparently not — or at least it just makes sure it’s not corrupt, but it doesn’t make sure it’s the proper one for your system. We’ll see how it goes if this is a permanent fix or not. If it is, I’m going home.

Update later: It was, and I’m going home.

September 23, 2008

Worthless Chumps Of The Week

I’d like to think that when you’re being evacuated from your home because a forest fire is coming your way, the last thing on your mind would be if your place is going to get ransacked or not while you’re gone. Sadly, I would be wrong.

September 21, 2008

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