Posted: Sun 9 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
So, today is mostly being spent being a techie. There’s a large amount of moving files from Old PC to New PC, and finishing off installing all the crap that I regularly use, while managing to not move over all the stuff I no longer use (for instance, DreamWeaver).
Of course, the basics were already sorted, and probably were within 24 hours of getting New PC up and running. But now it’s all the other stuff. Oh, and installing another Gb of RAM, and the new PCI wireless card.
Alongside that, there’s a whole shitload of music to move from old to new, as well as something like 15Gb of photos. It’s not going to be a quick process.
Oh, and finalising the stuff for a nother website that’s starting to go live during the next week.
And FTPing to the new PC all the website files for the other cough websites that I’ve worked on, created, and/or continue to work on. Which as well as everything else is an exercise in remembering passwords. Fun fun fun, although SnadBoy‘s “Revelation” is fucking fantastic on that score.
Posted: Fri 7 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Work-related |
Ah, fantastic.
Arsehole Boss has organised a change of mail servers for the company, moving it all to a new server with a new hosting company. (well, with the hosting company we picked a while back, but hadn’t moved things like mail servers to yet)
No warnings, no information, just a call to say “It’s been moved”. At 4pm on a Friday.
However, as most people use IMAP instead of POP3, (Yours Truly being an exception to the rule) it means that most people’s mail records were held on the server. Which has moved. And not been backed up.
90% of the office has now lost all their mail records for up to the last eighteen months. All the mailing lists, auto-responders, mail groups, and forwarding etc has been deleted, with no real records of what points where, or why. In short, everything’s gone (unless you kept regular local backups, which of course 90% of people didn’t)
Arsehole Boss was warned repeatedly by ex-SysAdmin that this would be an issue, but of course AB knew better… And the chances of recovering any of that mail archive? Pretty much minimal, as only ex-SysAdmin has access to any of the backup data. Do we have passwords to get to it? Do we fuck-as-like.
All together now…
Oh, what a beautiful morning
Oh what a wonderful day…
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness |
When Flash™ goes bad…
This really has to be seen to be believed…
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Work-related |
Sometimes you really have to wonder about this company.
Two weeks ago, Arsehole Boss sacked the system administrator, basically because the SysAdmin kept on disagreeing with Arsehole Boss. Yes, there was other stuff too, but that’s the basic thrust of it.
So this morning I get a call.
Arsehole Boss : Lyle, we need to find out all the root passwords to the servers.
Me : I’ve no idea what they are – [SysAdmin] never told me. He was the only one who knew them.
Arsehole Boss : But we’ve got to find them out, so he can’t get in to the system.
Me : Well surely we did that before you sacked him?
Arsehole Boss : Well, no.
Me : …
Arsehole Boss : Oh, and we need to find out where all the domain names are registered, and who to, and what the admin passwords are.
Me : [Sysadmin] was in charge of all that. I’ve never had to use the domain admin stuff. But surely we got that before you sacked him, as it’s all company assets, and, if he were being a cunt, he could set all our domains to point to porn sites, for example? And we then couldn’t reset them without the admin passwords which, um, we haven’t got?
Arsehole Boss : Yes. We need to get them before he does anything like that.
Me : Would’ve been easier when he worked for us, really, wouldn’t it?
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised |
Well, yesterday was fun. The wireless networking got set up with the new BT Wireless Broadband account, and so far all has run smoothly. With the exception of the old PCI card I had in the old PC, which seems to have given up completely. At the moment I’m using the laptop’s USB stick wireless adaptor, and even that is running fine. I’m suitably impressed.
And once I’ve got a new PCI card for the PC, and installed that, all will be rosy. ’til we move, of course.But even then, well, I’ve now got the hardware and necessary gubbins, it’ll just be a case of setting up the BT line again. Fun.
In the meantime, though, we’ve got the PC connected, and the PSP and my mobile phone have also been able to connect just fine. This is going to be pretty helpful all round in the long-term, I’m pleased to say.
Posted: Sun 2 July, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky |
You know, sometimes a company actually exceeds the requirements and expectations you’ve given them. OK, so you don’t really expect much from BT, and so expanding those expectations isn’t too difficult- but all the same.
In this case, they’ve actually connected up the Wireless Broadband ahead of schedule. Its just unreal. The router etc arrived yesterday morning instad of the expected Monday, and when I connected it up, it worked straight away. In fact, I’m using it now, sat in the garden, writing on my XDA. I *SO* need to get out more…
Posted: Fri 30 June, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |
After the farce of the Shuttle box – which never worked, and cost me far too much with fuck-all effect – I finally gave up a while back, having concluded (with the help of friends) that it was epically fucked. I’ve since written to Shuttle, and heard fuck all, and written to Micro-Direct (who I bought it from) who have responded with “Not our problem.”
Anyway, on Tuesday I ordered a new PC from Dell, of all places. Not a world-shaking bit of kit, but not bad either – 3.0Ghz dual core processor, 2Gb RAM, blah, blah, blah – and of course I can then also shove in the RAM I got for the shuttle box, plus the DVD writer, and up the score with it even more.
So I ordered it on Tuesday. And it arrived today.
Not bad service at all – of course, we still have to check it’s all a) there, and b) working. But that’s the work for tonight, and then migrating stuff over the weekend. Oh goody…