Jimbo's Journal

I didn't sleep very well last night.  I don't think it had anything to do with the beer I had at dinner.  It may have had more to do with the fact that I had come home and my cat, who didn't like that I had cleaned the crap out of her litter box, and decided to pee on the couch, a fact that I didn't realize until it was too late.  (Nice run-on sentence, huh?)  So I was kind worried that she'd do it again, etc.  

Anyway, I woke up about 3am-ish (?) and my mind immediately reminded me that I had a software "meeting" today.  These things just stress me out WAY too much lately; I feel such a weight on my shoulders, responsibility and extra word ( wasn't this supposed to help me make things simpler and easier?).  So I basically lay around restlessly until the stress (and nature) made me repeated get up to use the bathroom.  Repeat until 5:30am, when I finally got up.  Needless to say I felt pretty crappy from stomach-upset and lack of sleep.  I really felt like calling in sick, but .... duty calls.

The "meeting" actually went fairly well.  Better than usual, maybe?  I went out to lunch with Scott, the software guy, and we went to Panera.  We met a friend of his, who is apparently also in purchasing.  He works at a MUCH larger company, which is part of a HUGE corporation, similar to one I used to work for.  It was somewhat gratifying (no offense to him) to hear that others have had similar bad experiences in the corporate world.  He seems to think he is about to be laid off, and much of the workforce is being outsourced to Mexico.  At least I never had to deal with that specifically.  We compared experiences a bit about the obligatory 3% annual increase demands, being treated like a number, etc.  I kinda wondered if this was someone I should try to plug for more information and contacts, but I didn't.  I am still largely intimidated in these situations by someone who is older and more experienced.

Before the lunch conversation, I place my order and the total for the bowl of Forest Mushroom soup and a drink came to $6.66.  The soup was positively divine.

Wednesday was bad.  Thursday we discovered that the old purchasing software wasn't working.  It was unable to access the database.  The only real thing that HAS to work.  Granted we are in process of phasing it out, but that is still down the road.  I got so stressed out that I had fits of having trouble breathing.  I was in a meeting most of the day, totally stressing out and unable to focus, but when I got out, IT guy told me he had fixed it.  He uninstalled and reinstalled the Network drivers/protocols.  So that was a HUGE load off of my mind.  I spent most of today trying to somewhat restore my system to the way it had been.  My computer hadn't been synchronizing with the server.  I had to rearrange a bunch of things, reinstall several programs, etc.   I'm glad I didn't have to go through the weekend with that hanging over me.

I went to see Terminator Salvation after work.  I liked it.  I'm still not sure what I think of Christian Bale.  He seems to always talk in a soft, gravelly voice which is often hard to understand.  It was interesting to see the "cameo" in the movie even though it was (I think) CGI.  I thought the movie fit pretty well into the series.  The first is still by far my favorite.

There were only maybe a half dozen people in the theater.  I missed a bit near the end due to the "small" soda which is about 32oz.  So I went into another theater in which it had started 30min later.  There wasn't a single person in that showing.  This is strangely nostalgic to me, since I went with my dad to see the first Terminator and we were the only ones in the theater.

I'm sitting at the computer at the Toyota dealership posting this.  Nothing wrong with my car (knock wood), just an oil change.  My computer at work finally got to be too much of a problem.  I (we) basically started from scratch, reinstalled windows, etc.  It is still being cranky for some reason.  It won't access the network user profile.  I think I backed up most of my stuff onto a USB Drive, but .... haven't gotten as far as putting any of that back on.  Anyway, with the network profile, the network should have saved my desktop, settings, etc. but we can't seem to access them.  I'm no mastermind at this stuff, so if you give me ideas I may or may not understand or know what the hell you're talking about.  I will have to spend X amount of time (where X = too much of my time + WAY too much of IT/Engineer guy's time) adding all the other programs, etc, and pretty much bringing my computer up to speed. 

I think when I do that means I will have to make a concerted effort to spend MUCH LESS time on the internet during work.  I have no idea how realistic that will be or if/how long I can maintain it.  I know I have let myself get out of hand with this in the past.  I cut back before, and never got back to that level, but I think I did let it go much more than I should have.

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Oh, and as I was leaving work, I noticed that my throat was a bit scratchy and I was ... phlegmy.  I think I'm getting a cold.   Maybe due to the stress.......

I learned yesterday that our Engineer/IT guy is using Firefox here at work instead of IE, so I switched.   YAY!!!

OK, I know everybody hates MS, but that's what we use at work ......

I currently have Outlook Express 6 with all my contacts and filters, etc.  I want to convert to MS Outlook, because I'd like to make use of the calendar/scheduling and other stuff.  But I am worried.  Once I tried to save my emails and they somehow got all deleted (quite probably my fault).  I can't really afford for that to happen.  Also, the latest version I have is from Office 2000.

Is this a feasible thing to do, or is it even possible since Outlook is so much older?  Any recommendations or pitfalls to be aware of?

I lost power for about half an hour.  While I wasn't looking forward to the drop in temperature (electric baseboard heating) it was actually kinda peaceful.  I lit a couple candles, had my laptop playing music and read a bit of The Invisible Man.  I don't spend enough time in quietude (no tv, especially).

Kitty was a bit perplexed at first, but she soon went about her business as usual.

My work computer seems to be running exceptionally slow lately.  As I type there is a delay in which I am typing faster than the words are appearing on the screen.  I am running IExplorer, mainly because it's a work machine and I'm loathe to change to a new browser (I have at home changed to Firefox).  We recently upgraded several machines including my own from 512K RAM to 2GB RAM, and also recently got a new server (though I am unable to give an details on that).  I don't know the specific dates, but it seems that the bog-down somewhat coincides with the server upgrade and the RAM upgrade has had little to no effect at all.

When I run task manager, it says that iexplorer is taking up anywhere from 75-95% of the CPU memory, which leads me to believe (non-expert that I am) that there is possibly some addon feature or program running in one of my IExplorer tabs (I often have 4-10 tabs going at once in one window), like java or flash or something, which is bogging it down. 

Is there any way to tell what, specifically, is causing the memory usage?  What type of addon program, which tab, etc?  My yahoo mail?  Embedded youtube videos on my LJ Friends page?

Any thoughts?

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Doing a bit more monitoring, it seems that sometimes when I have a tab open to my yahoo mail the CPU usage goes up to the 75-95% range and hangs there.  If I click to a different website it drops down dramatically.  But then if I go back to yahoo mail, it spikes upward and drops back down to a reasonable level.  In other words, sometimes yahoo mail holds it at the high range and sometimes it doesn't.  WTF???

Last week I went out and bought a hard drive enclosure.  I had an OLD computer that had been infected with a virus and a newer one which ...... I don't know what happened.  It was about five years old and I started getting some kind of buffer error, and it finally wouldn't even boot up.  So I wanted to be able to salvage stuff off the HDs.  It was pretty simple.  The one OLD HD had 318 virus threats on it, which AVG seemed to clean fine.  The bad news was that it didn't have all the mp3s on it that I thought it had.  It had a few that I had never transferred but many apparently are just gone.  (I don't think any of the mp3s were removed due to infection.)

Now I'm left with what to do with the old computer cases, drives, etc.  Anyone need anything?

Or I could piece some of the stuff together after getting a new MB, chip, RAM, etc......... hmm.  I would like to have a desktop of some sort.  Maybe I'll just set it aside for a future project.  

So they installed the new software yesterday at work.  It currently has a "dummy company" loaded in so people can basically look around.  The problem with that is that at this first stage it is hard to know what to look at, and when you do look there's no context so you don't know what you're looking at.  I still don't know what the schedule is.  I know that we are going to run a few past jobs through the process to try to adapt procedures and such.

I am confident that this software will prove to be much better*, but I am also certain that it won't miraculously solve all the company's problems (something that I am not sure that 'management' is aware of). 


........ I've been looking at it and I can't even figure out how to enter a Purchase Order.  hehehe.  This is going to take time.  I guess we aren't even scheduled to begin things in earnest until October ... maybe.



*Though at the same time I also worry that it won't do what I want or expected and/or be a complete disaster.  ;-)

Went downtown Friday night. luminousx and I went across the street to the German-American Fest and grabbed a bratwurst (mmm) and beer. Good, though not unexpectedly overpriced. We hung around in one of the tents for a while where the band was surprisingly good. Saturday morning we headed over to North Avenue Beach for Red Bull Flugtag!!!! What a blast that was. I only wish we could have been a bit closer, so I could get better video. I think it would be a total blast to participate in one of these. Some day maybe .... Afterward we caught up with lifepart3 and gr82live, hung out for a while and then went to Hopleaf for dinner.  Mussels and sandwiches and stuff.  Really good, but again, I don't know about the price.  Maybe I'm just not finicky enough to tell the difference between really good mussels and mediocre mussels.

Sunday I sat around the house and watched football stuff while trying to familiarize myself with my new cable.  My Cowboys won!!!!  That automatically rates a good weekend.  So in addition to Friday and Saturday, it was a VERY good weekend.

I did get video of most of the entrants in the Flugtag competition.  I'm going to attempt to splice them together somewhat cohesively and then post the video, but I don't know when I'll actually get to that.

The "bad" part of the weekend is that my desktop computer seems to have finally died.  It sometimes boots up and sometimes doesn't, either way then going to a "blue screeen of death,"  But not the normal one that I'm used to, instead one which refers to an (overloaded??) buffer.  I knew this was coming but still .......

I just got new cable & internet service.......   more later  

So I decided to give Firefox another chance and installed it over the weekend.  I'm running into the same problems that I had before: ability to play media files.

I check out www.crooksandliars.com quite a bit.  It has links to .wmv (and .mov, which I don't generally use) files as well as embedded youtube videos.  The .wmv files seem to work, though I can't get the acknowledgement window to stop popping up even when I check the box to do this automatically without asking.  This is an inconvenience.  However, I can't get youtube videos to play at all.  I downloaded an addon and it worked, but then it stopped working again.

Any ideas on how to configure the settings so as to fix these problems?


Also, what's the significance of making a default web browser?


Any recommended addons ... other than StumbleUpon?

I'm entering this on my brand-spanking-new laptop computer.  It's going to take some getting used to the smaller keyboard, and this touchpad has got to go - need a mouse.  LOVE it so far.

Haven't figured out yet how to find my home desktop on the wireless network........ anyone?

So I have been planning on getting a laptop with my tax refund this year.  After a couple days of looking around, I finally picked one.  A very short decision-making time for me, of which I am very proud.  I went to pick it up since they didn't have it at the store I was at.  Brought it home, turned it on, set up the Vista log-on password, etc., picked a background, noticed a flaw in the monitor (black speck that doesn't move or deviate no matter what), unplugged it put it back in the box, put it by the door in order to return tomorrow.


FUCK!!!! 

Turned on my computer this morning and was disappointed to see that the time was wrong: 1 hour ahead.  Opened up the clock window, and there were only two tabs Date & Time and Time Zone.  I clicked on Time Zone tab to verify: (GMT -06:00 Central) and DST box was checked.

Then the third tab appeared again.  I clicked on Update Now and after a moment the time changed to being CORRECT.  Now when I open the clock window, I can't get the third tab to appear again, but the clock remains correct ...... for now........ 

**Twilight Zone music**

I did check to see if there were any Windows Updates, but I DIDN'T install any.  I again dbl-clicked into my clock settings and (un)checked (I forget which) the DST box on and off..... I looked and there was now a tab for synching the clock to an internet time server.  I clicked UPDATE and APPLY (too rapidly) and went and told Toby ("IT guy").  He came to my computer to look.  I reopened the clock window - NO sync tab.  WTF?!?!   So I laughed, you know how nothing ever works when you want to show it to someone else.  Then I (un)checked the DST box (once/twice) and the sync tab appeared.  I could get it to appear and disappear by (un)checking and hitting apply.  I opted on time.windows.com - didn't seem to take.  time.nist.gov gave me a server error.  time.a-nist.gov ...... worked.  Clock was accurate, DST box was checked, etc.

I am at a complete loss.  Very strange.

But it is correct now, so ....... 

Hopefully it still will be tomorrow.

Ahhhh, Daylight Savings Time......

At work my computer doesn't read the correct time.  It's 1 hour ahead.  I have the clock set to the correct time, the correct time zone, and the DST box checked.  Yet it persists on adjusting the clock to 1 hour ahead.  I've even gone into setup (upon bootup) and changed the clock to 1 hour early.  Doesn't work.  Technically shouldn't the time be set by the company server?  In which case all clocks in the office should be the same (and correct).  Yet two of them are wrong - the two running Windows XP Professional.  Two additional people who also have XP Pro are not in today, so we can't check on theirs.

The only thing which "works" is to uncheck the DST box in "Date and Time Properties"

Any ideas?

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Tried .... C:\>w32tm/resync
No effect

OK, no, not at all really.  But I do have internet at home again.  And without spending any money ... Well ultimately.

I called tech support from work today in order to ask about my options for leasing/buying new equipment.  After getting some info, the tech guy tells me that I might be able to repair my existing gateway (which is btw what they call the modem/router combo).  Well, this is potentially good news, but it is also annoying since I specifically asked if the thing could be reset or repaired remotely somehow and was told it couldn't.  The guy told me that not all of the techs new about it.  (This is a great annoyance of mine).  So, I have some new hope.  The only problem is that I am at work and don't have access to my home puter network.  So he walks me through the first few steps which will "reset my homeportal to factory state"  ..... assuming I can get a connection for long enough to get to the necessary site.  Then I'll have to call and get a set of keycodes from a tech to get me through the rest of the way.

So the dilemma:  I just got coupons for 10-12% off at Best Buy again and they are only good for this weekend (until I get more next month, but I don't want to go a month with no home internet connection).  I decide to stop off at Best Buy and pick up a DSL modem and G Router just in case this doesn't work.  I get home and hook my stuff back up and proceed through the steps the tech outlined for me.  I get to the spot to enter the keycodes without any problem and call tech support again.  He gives me the keycodes (which I had incidentally found online at work before I left), and I type them all in, etc.  I wasn't sure on a couple steps so I'm glad I'd called anyway.

Anyhoo, no problems.  I'm good to go again.  I even went back and checked to see about upgrading the firmware (this is what started the problem to begin with), but it said there were no upgrades available.  I wouldn't have done it this time anyway.

So now I get to bring all that cool tech gear back to Best Buy for a full refund!!!!   w00t!!1!1

Addendum: I bought a small case for my camera also while I was there.

The diagnosis on my internet connection at home is that my modem/router is toast.  Yes, I have a combination modem/router (This has caused endless confusion in the past on getting advise from people).  So I am at a crossroads of sorts.  I currently have DSL through AT&T (formerly SBC).  I have a contract which, I think, goes through ..... somewhere between December and February.  I am not fond of the DSL but a) it is cheaper for me to get a phone line and DSL, than it is to get a cable modem connection, b) I don't know what the penalty is for breaking the contract, c) I don't use my phone much, but it is nice to have for incoming calls rather than my cell phone.

So for those of you amongst us who are internet/network savvy ......

What are the positives and negatives of having a combination modem/router as opposed to two individual units?

Is there a superior brand if I should choose to purchase new unit(s)? - Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, Belkin, etc.?  Is there one that I should definitely avoid?

While scouting at Best Buy, I noticed some terminology I don't understand (Best Buy's service being .... lacking sometimes): Wireless-N vs. Wireless-G, etc; 1X, 2X, 4X (when referring to network range and speed???).  



I think this is the current version of the combo router/modem (they were out of stock, so I couldn't see it).

Friday, after work I went to a few stores looking for a couple things for my condo.  I didn't find them, but I wound up buying four DVDs at Target: U-571, Cast Away, Desperado, and The Ninth Gate for $5.50ea.

Saturday I went to see Harry Potter.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It is pretty dark, which is a good thing in my book.  I plan on reading the book again (maybe next, after I finish Slaughterhouse Five), since I don't remember much about it.  I seem to be hearing a good number of people complaining that the movie strays too far from the book.  This is a complaint that I am rapidly getting tired of.  It ISN'T the book.  If you want the EXACT book, then read the book.  I also watched a finished Angel Season 2. One word: FRED!

Sunday, I watched Monser House.  I liked it a lot.  It is very well made, and actually a good solid story and somewhat creepy.  I also watched the original Battlestar Galactica movie.  I found some parts much better than I expected and other parts worse.  It was fun to see characters with the same names as the new show, but COMPLETELY different: Athena, for example.  There were also maybe a couple "subplots" which were brought back and used in the new show, such as the religious zealots voicing objections to the prostitute (amusingly called a "Socialator" in the original series; new episode=2.14 Black Market?).  

Then I tried to update my wireless router and wound up losing my internet connection capability.  I haven't figured out what went wrong or how to fix it yet, if I need to buy new hardware, etc.