not my blog

Technology sucks. My dad has the primary HDD on his Desktop die Friday morning… and a bunch of stuff that wasn’t on the server along with it. *sigh* 2 Days of hard work later, his network is better than ever and he finally has his new PC that has been done for 3 months now in place. Mad improvements have been made all around though. The short list:

• Upgraded server from a P3-500 SBS 2K box to a Athlon XP2100+ with SBS 2K3
• Installed new temp router (till new box comes in) running pfSense
• Setup OWA and taught my Dad how to use it
• Found a nice utility to copy floppies (even copy protected ones) and then mount them to a virtual floppy. All Image.
• Order a YellowMachine for router/switch and NAS backup for the network (including Workstations, since it seems we have to keep critical data there). We’ll see how this thing works, it looks really nice for the price.
• Setup the new SBS box to email my dad with the status logs/etc every day.
• Purchased and install ARX POP3 Connector to replace the POS in SBS 2K3
• Drink a lot

So it’s been a long weekend and my Dad’s old primary drive is on it’s way to Action Front in Georgia to see what can be resurrected from the drive.

Just surfing the internet today and came across a nice bunch of articles and white-papers on some various computer related items:

• SQL Server 2000 Backup and Restore
• SQL Server Backup/Restore Optimization Tips
• Complete Online Microsoft SQL Protection
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Failover Clustering
• SQL Server Central’s Backup Article List

Some interesting reading for anyone that has a couple of hours to kill and wants to bone up on their SQL knowledge (esp. backup and restoring said program). For those that don’t get the point of this post, don’t ask… I won’t tell you.

I have five television shows that I watch during the course of the week. Those shows being:

• Monday – Fox – 8PM – Prison Break
• Monday – Fox – 9PM -24
• Tuesday – NBC – 9PM – Scrubs
• Tuesday – CBS – 9PM – The Unit
• Thursday – WB – 9PM – Supernatural

So obviously I can’t watch them all at simply due to time constraints. So what are my good options? If you really look at the big picture, Bittorrent is the only way to watch all five shows, not miss anything and not have to pay out the nose for the privilige of watching all the shows you find of interest (especially if two occur at the same time/date).

I guess this rant may have something to do with my local WB station decided baseball was more important than showing the most recent Supernatural.

I came across this article through Digg regarding the ability to judge ones character by the way he treats the waiter at your table. My initial response to this article was, I have always been a very generous tipper, I worked for tips at one point in my life and understand the pain it can be when people don’t appreciate your work. But at the same time, I can understand the stereotyping that the wait staff can put on it’s customers as well.

I’m a younger adult at 25, and on more than one occassion have been treated like a second rate customer if I got out with the wife and kids to any sort of average chain restaraunt. It seems that the wait staff constantly thinks that just because we are a young couple with two kids we aren’t worth their time to service like any other table. Best example, during a visit to Bertucci’s a couple of months ago for lunch on a Saturday the waitress visited/check on the table right next to us with 4 forty-something adults at it 3x more than she checked on our table. I’m sorry, but come on, there is something seriously wrong with that picture, just because we show up with a 2 and 4 year old, we are no longer worthy of quality service?

If anyone doubts me as to the sincerity of my claims of being a very gracious customer called the Steak & Main in Elkton, MD during the weekdays and ask for DJ or Bill Bateman’s Parkville, MD and ask for Sharyn. Both of which I have a purely customer/bartendar relationship with, and both of them will tell you of the customer type that I am.

The ball rolls in both directions, but this article obvious forgets that.

From Digg.com:

The lawsuit by Austin-based Winternals alleges employees of Best Buy’s computer-repair subsidiary, Geek Squad Inc., have been using pirated versions of the software since talks on a commercial licensing agreement broke off.

Lucky for Best Buy they have really deep pockets, but boy doesn’t this put a damper on their parade. Will kind of make you wonder if anyone would ever want to partner with them again since they will now be labeled as pirates.

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