I’m at work today. Yes, that’s right – on a Saturday. We have some big project with impossible timelines [aren’t they all, though?] and we have a deadline for implementation by Monday. So, at work I sit. I’m not even the one doing the real work – I’m just here for support… I guess that means that I get to blog and edit my pictures while the “real” work is done by the developer…
And, of course, then there’s all the snow and ice we had to drive through to get here this morning… 😐
Makes Jeff a very tired boy.
These last couple of days, I’ve been early to work, late to home and doing home chores/work when I get there. I haven’t gotten to sleep earlier than 1AM or so, but have beeen up before 6AM – 4:40AM on Monday for my first workout of the week [quite an achievement, I feel].
There have been things going on at work – both customer related and internal – that have both increased my level of stress and involvement and my level of hope. I can’t really talk about it here yet, but I feel that big changes are afoot. I’ll let you know what I can when I can.
I have been waiting for some time now for the manufacturer of my RAID card to reply to my request for help. I got an initial response, to which I replied, but have gotten nothing since. I’m begining to think that I may have to just buy a different vendor’s card. I’m thinking of the Promise SuperTrak EX8350. I know Mike likes his and it has certified drivers for Windows, unlike my current card.
So: my dilema is how long I should wait until I give up on tech support while my server continues to crash. At least the server crashes won’t affect the web sites anymore.
We’re spending the day in Richmond with our freinds Rob & Mel who followed us from Texas to Virginia. We’re only here for a day or so, but while we’re here, we’re going to check out a professional photo lab to see how they do business and maybe give them some negatives/slides to scan for us.
I’m thinkin’ about it. Actually, what I’m thinking of doing is getting training to be a Certified Ethical Hacker so that I will know how best to secure my and my customers’ systems. Has anyone had any experience with this training or certification? I’d be interested in your take on it.
I spoke too soon. It looks like Winter is back for a bit. 19 degrees when I went out to run today. I cut the run short, but I did run a good 20 minutes… until my hands and eyes froze. It looks like it will even snow tomorrow. I guess this horrible, gusty wind that we’ve been having is blowing us some frigid Canadian air.
Ah, well, out I now go to brave the elements in our nation’s capitol.
Some of you may have noticed the server and my other hosted sites were down all day yesterday. I apologize, but now at least I know what the problem was. My RAID card is flaky. There’s no other way around it. I need to replace it. We’ll have to see how it goes, and I’ll have to figure out how I want to do things.
In other news, the snow that has been piled up for so long has now mostly melted away. Except for the brisk temperature today, we look like we’re slowly on our way to Spring. The flowers are even blooming now… well, the early ones are anyway. It may freeze again, but that will be on the way to a more long-lasting warmth.
It’s now 61 degrees outside and the last of the ice and snow are finally melting. Are we headed into Spring? Maybe so. If so, some good motorcycle road trips might start to happen. I’ve been riding to work for most of the week – enjoying the nice mild weather. [By “mild”, I mean warmer than freezing which could entail the upper 30s or lower 40s]
In fact, I’m really tempted to leave the office early to go home by way of a two-hour side trip… even though my total commute time from the office is really less than 10 minutes. I don’t think I will though. I’d rather go home and hang out with Laura. 🙂
2012-01-08 23:29:58
For some time now, I have been attempting to explain the seemingly random reboots of my email server [this doesn’t include or affect the web server]. I’ve narrowed it down to a few remaining hardware devices and their related drivers. It’s not the CPU, nor RAM, and maybe not the Motherboard, although I’m not quite sold on that one. What is left after you remove all of those [and HDDs and power supplies don’t cause these kinds of crashes] is the video adapter and the RAID card, not the on-board RAID.
So: in order to eliminate another factor, I moved the system drive from the on-board SATA controller to the RAID card last night. I had one glitch – it rebooted 30 minutes after I set it up, but that may be other factors. I flashed the motherboard BIOS, and updated the RAID drivers to the most current version. After that last reboot, I’ve seen no change or reboot so far. I was concerned that I’d come down this morning to a blue screen, but that didn’t happen. If it did, I would know that the RAID card has been the problem the whole time. However, all is sill up in the air.
Again, I wait. I wait and see if the server crashes. I wait and see if I have to either replace the motherboard or RAID card. If it works like it did before, rebooting on occasion, moving the drives tells me nothing. If it stops rebooting all together, moving the drives tells me the motheboard is bad. Perhaps if nothing changes, the problem is the RAID card. I don’t know.
I’m going to check the warranty and see what the time limit is. Maybe I can send it back for replacement…
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