It’s the second weeeked of the new premiership season, but the first time that Arsenal are on Fox Soccer Channel.  I’m pumped and may even wear my new Fabregas jersey, even though he’s still out with injury :(  Go Gunners!

In other news, it’s been a very busy two weeks.  Work has been filled with setting up new computers, going into the ceiling to wire cat5e cables to rooms and moving other employees computers and desks in a massive office shuffle.  It’s all in preparation for 3 new employees starting over the next 2 weeks.

When I get home there’s no shortage of sporting options.  There’s the Olympics, NFL preseason, MLB baseball, EPL soccer, etc.  It’s been particularly disappointing to see the US Track & Field team underperform after watching them at the Trials here in Eugene. Phelps was quite exciting, even though the west coast never gets to watch anything live.  So, I had to avoid all media outlets during Phelps’ 8th gold medal try and then watch the 3 hour tape dealy on NBC.

The fantasy baseball playoffs are approaching fast.  There’s only one more week fo the regular season and I’ve been holding 5th place for quite some time.  The top 6 make the playoffs, but i wouldn’t mind slipping into 6th so that I could avoid the 1st place team, who I’m losing to this week, if I make it to the 2nd round/semifinal.

3 weeks ago was Lollapalooza and it was a great weekend to be in Chicago.  Great weather and great music, what more do you need?  Radiohead were that Friday night’s headliner, playing all the new songs and other classics from In Rainbows and providing a great light show throughout.  Saturday night was Wilco,  who played a very nice set while tricking out their suits with Hello Kitty patches and lots of other stuff.  Sunday night was NiN, who I had never seen before.  They had a great rock show and a very cool stage setup that included a screen that comes down in front of them that Reznor can manipulate with lights.  Their bassist is JMJ, aka Beck’s bassist, and he definitely added a lot to the set.  All in all, great headliners choices so that made it easier to avoid Kanye and Rage Against the Machine. A few other great shows during the days were: Girl Talk, Explosions in the Sky, The National, The Foals, Bloc Party and The Black Keys.

The weekend also gave me the opportunity to see TDK at the Navy Pier IMAX late in the morning on Sunday.  It was fantastic and IMAX really helped the action scenes.  I’ve now seen the movie twice and it is easily the best movie I have seen this year.  I really noticed some of the screenplay subtleties the second time around that gave hints to things that would happen later on.  Ledger’s Joker is truly great with so many memorable scenes: the bank robbery, the pencil trick, the Nurse uniform, the interrogation, it’s goes on.

It’s been almost a year since I upgraded Wordpress’ back-end.  I haven’t modified my custom theme since my blog uses the same theme as the rest of my site.  I’ll probably make a new theme this summer.

In the coming week I’ll do some short reviews of my recently-viewed Netflix movies.  Over the last few months I’ve seen 19 movies on DVD.  Some were repeats, some were inspired by Oscar nominations and some were older movies I found through Netflix’s suggestion service.

The fantasy baseball season began last week with a live draft through Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports site.  I think I ended up with a pretty solid team.  I consciously took some risks with younger players (James Shields, Evan Longoria, Jeff Francoeur) that have well-projected upsides combined with veteran keepers (Magglio Ordonez, Derrek Lee, Carlos Beltran).  I’ve also done a lot more research/fun reading over the past year on baseball statistics.  That includes reading some baseball analysis blogs: FJM, McCovey Chronicles and Sabernomics, reading Baseball Prospectus (subscriber for 1 year) and listening to ESPN podcasts.  I even did some analysis of the fantasy league I’m in with Helpdeskers using Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA statistics.  My pre-season team looks to be middle of the pack and Mahrens is my first week opponent.  My PECOTA analysis projects me to win 9-1, but you know statistics, “throw ‘em out the window” paraphrasing Joe Morgan.

I said that I’d write about backups yesterday, but the backup saga continues into today, so I’ll give you updates on that and fantasy baseball, maybe some movies…

Work, the backup:

Like a good, responsible IT department, we have a backup system in place. Backup the servers and few peoples shared folders. We were using Veritas Backup Exec 9.1. Our old tape drive was an Ultrium LTO-1 , which has a 100GB/200GB, only getting 200GB if the data is completely compressed. Our company has added three new servers since I’ve been here and there will probably be more, in addition to 6 existing servers.

So, to accommodate all of the new data, we got an LTO-2 tape drive 200GB/400GB of storage. Now I had to get this to work with the old software. Background: Symantec bought Veritas in late 2004. I tried the handy dandy steps of turning off the OS and the backup tape enclosure, switching cables and turning things. Voila! (I thought) Windows Server 03 recognizes the new hardware and the Backup Exec software can see it too. Problems arose, as I assumed they would, when I had to write to new tapes in the new drive. It wouldn’t work, and gave no hints in the error message.

So, call support, which is now done by Symantec. I get routed through the phone tree to ‘legacy’ Veritas support, leave my info and wait. Problem is, backups run every night, as they should. Now I get to switch the hardware back right before I leave and hope that it works, and it does. In the mornings, I switch things over to the new hardware and wait for support, when no comes, repeat the process.

It takes THREE days for ‘legacy’ software support guy to call, and then I have to boot people from the server so that I can reboot the server at will. We try some steps: 1) uninstall drivers 2) shut down hardware 3) switch hardware 4) reboot 5) install drivers 6) reboot Doesn’t work. I email application and event logs, wait for his call back. Takes two more days, that means more switching to the old hardware for the backups to run. During the wait for his call back, I suggest upgrading to the newest, fully supported version of Backup Exec, version 11d.

We get the software, install it, switch hardware, reboot, now the hardware doesn’t show up, hmm. Was it the new software that isn’t working or the hardware? I investigate on late Friday night and Saturday and discover that with all of the cable switching, a pin has bent. Try to repair the pin, it breaks. Now I have to find a 6 ‘, external SCSI cable with 68 pins to 50 pins. There are none in Eugene, or Salem, so I drive to Fry’s in Portland, 2 hrs away, buy two cables, drive two hours back, replace the cable, the hardware shows up again.

The new tape drive still won’t write to the new tapes, so I wait for more Symantec support. Support tells me to try the same steps as before and change the backup jobs’ configuration, it works! Well, sort of… I can now back up the local server and some shared folders, but not other server’s drivers. Hmmm. I call support again, they tell me that you have to have a ‘Windows Systems Agent’ to backup remote server drives!?!!? With the Veritas version, there was an unlimited remote agent license, but now each server needs a license, and there are specific licenses for Exchange Sever, SQL, etc. This means that the backup saga will continue until we shell more money.

Fantasy Baseball:

This week I play Blernsball All-starts and go head-to-head with MAN Morton Dexter Beals, aka Oculon. Last week I barely lost to the place team, but still moved up to 7th place. The Blernsballers are in first, but statistical evidence (Joe Morgan’s most-hated words) shows that I should have done than I have- see dsjoonation. Let’s make it one for the ages and meet again in the playoffs Oculon!

Movies:

I haven’t been watching much of the Netflix with the long hours and new episodes of Entourage, but I finally got Pan’s Labyrinth in the mail and was I glad. Guillermo del Toro directs this Spanish civil-war fairy tale and it is easily my second favorite movie of last year, only beating out Cuaron’s Children of Men. Cuaron and del Toro are two of three famous Mexican directors, along with Alejandro González Iñárritu, making movies today.  del Toro seamlessly blends Ofelia’s fairy-tale world of fascist escapism with the brutal reality of Franco’s dictatorship.

Set in a mountain village, Ofelia and her pregnant mother come to live with Captain Vidal, her mother’s new husband.  Resistance fighters are living around the village and Captain Vidal is trying to starve them out with a strict rationing policy.  Ofelia is about 12 years old and is still full of curiosity of fanciful thinking.  As she wanders into the woods and the labyrinth behind the barn, her imagination takes over and she sees fairies, a faun named Pan, a magical toad and a pale monster.  As the movie progresses, Ofelia’s fantasy world feels more and more real and the resistance fighters come to a head with Vidal.  Multiple times I heard myself saying, why doesn’t she does do X.  But, the story is true to the characters and doesn’t change their actions or thoughts just because it might be more logical to a grown-up.  On top of the great story, direction and acting, the special effects feel perfectly in place.  Overall, 4.5 out of 5

People, I just ate some Chicken Tikka Masala and it was delicious. It’s the first time that I’ve eaten Indian food since coming to Oregon. There are apparently a couple of Indian restaurants in Eugene, but not near my office. We are rife with Mexican, Thai, Pizza and Burger joints, but BBQ and Indian are low in quality or sparse. So, tonight while in Portland, da big city, I chose Indian and was not disappointed. It was definitely on par with the India Buffet in Iowa City, but this was dinner so I couldn’t go back, like the pig I am, for a third plate. There was plenty of food anyways with each component, rice, entree, yogurt, vegetables, desert in separate cups and the nan, oh the nan.

I am currently digesting the food and keeping track of fantasy baseball stats. Baseball has been quite exciting. The Mariners still stink, the Cubs are still hopeless (Prior to have surgery) and the East has the only exciting divisions in MLB. I’ve been doing more calculated research and statistictioning (is that a word?) with the help of Baseball Prospectus. The NFL Draft is coming up, but I won’t even be tuned in for highlights since I get to help a coworker move tomorrow. It doesn’t matter though since the most exciting sport right now is soccer or futbol or real football. I’ve been quite keen on Premiership and Champions League happenings. I watched my first Champions League match last year around the same time and I saw a brilliant and crazy finals between Arsenal and Barcelona. I’ve been hooked ever since, watching the World Cup as often as possible and now watching Premiership matches whenever they are broadcast live. The matches usually start around 7:30 am PST on Fox Soccer Channel on Saturdays. The only way to keep track of Champions League games is to watch the live text via the BBC. It’s pretty crazy that the EPL, Champions League and FA Cup could all come down to the Chelsea and Manchester United. Very exciting indeed!

In other news, I’ve continued the Netflix journey.  I won’t give full reviews, but I can recommend: Borat, Who Killed the Electric Car? and The Squid and the Whale.  I HIGHly recommend: Elizabeth I and Empire Falls, both HBO miniseries with fantastic casts and great storylines and execution (no pun intending Mary Queen of Scots).  I am eager to see Pan’s Labyrinth and Volver.  I have Volver sitting at home, but I’m waiting for the right moment to watch an Almodovar film.  After previous gems such as: All About My Mother and Talk to Her, I am stoked.  Plus, Penelope Cruz is hot.

Lastly, Music.  The Arcade Fire show is less than a month away, so that’s great.  I got the new Modest Mouse and Bright Eyes CDs.  Both very good and fairly main stream for Brock and company and more folky from Cono.  The new Wilco album arrives next week, so that’s a must buy.

Btw, if another one of my closers blows a save, I’m gonna have to break something.

It’s been a while since the last post, so there’s a lot to talk about. Firstly, I hope Kevlar is having fun in NYC. I have never been to the Big Apple, but I’m sure it will happen as my list of contacts there continues to grow.

This last weekend I traveled to Klamath Falls, OR and then Bend to visit relatives. I saw my cousin Marcy for the first time in about 10 years and her husband Kevin for the first time ever. They live near my uncle Mark and aunt Darlene. The weather was great, about 65 degrees and sunny. I got to see the ever-growing Bend suburbs and city and eat at the famed SuperBurrito. It’s fairly comparable to the Burrito Boy of Eugene, but the prices are a little cheaper and the burrito is bigger, if you can believe that. I got to see Marcy’s office and their company SmartCar.

Update: Las Vegas

I keep getting pictures in from John and James of the Los Angeles/Las Vegas trip over New Year’s. Below is the chicken pasta dish from Hash-House A Go Go. The picture doesn’t do it justice as it contained a bowl of pasta with a skewer of 2 pieces of fried chicken and half of an apple standing in the middle. We all got the same dish and ate it all I got crap for not eating the dried vegetable foliage garnishing the plate. Either way it was good stuff and I recommend the Hash House (not that kind fockers) to those wanting lots of good food for a decent price.

Finally, I have two movies to recommend: Children of Men and The Departed.

I saw Children of Men on my laptop while riding to Bend and loved it.  It was high-energy, a good story, great acting and wonderfully shot.  The premise: It’s 2027 and humans haven’t been able to procreate for 18 years, until rebels of the British government find a pregnant woman and try to smuggle her out of the country for protection.  There’s great twists and turns and the story feels real even in an improbable world in the near future.  4.5 out of 5

The Departed has been on my NetFlix queue for a month or so and it was finally released to DVD after winning the Oscar for Best Picture.  The film was quite good, not as good as Children of Men, but the stars were out in force.  The cast was Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Ray Winstone (awesome in The Proposition).  The movie is a big cat-and-mouse game between Matt Damon, a corrupt Boston cop working for Nicholson’s mob boss, and Leonardo DiCaprio, an undercover cop moving up the ranks of Nicholson’s mob.  The movie starts to feel long, like all Scorcese ‘epics’ but the story is good and twists are believable.  4 out of 5

People,

Much has happened in the last few weeks month. Major project milestones were completed, movies were watched and enough food and football for a king will be consumed. Since my last post I have watched three movies: The Prestige, Stranger than Fiction and Casino Royale. I highly recommend all three and won\’t even attempt to place them in quality order as they are three different types of movies.

Summary:

The Prestige - A mystery murder? thriller starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Davie Bowie!!!!

Stranger Than Fiction - A Will Ferrell rom-com with Maggie Gyllenhall, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson and Tony Hale. “Hey bruuuuuther”
Casino Royale - High action, high style and a good story. The newest James Bond film starring Daniel Craig and Eva Green. Some have said that this movie is too long, but I disagree. Spoiler alert: The movie ends with Bond in a short-lived domesticated role, but still kicks ass to the finale.

I shall write more about Thanksgiving break and finals once they are over. After that I will be moving to Oregon and starting the rest of my life.

-Peace!