Inspired by Shane’s Video Blog, I have decided to post a short iMovie of my FSI workspace.

Here she goes: MyWorkspace

It’s been a while since the last blog post. The Fall TV lineup has been in full swing. So, I’ve been watch lots of 30 Rock, Heroes, Weeds, etc.

In sports land there has been the MLB playoffs. The Cubs lost to the Diamondbacks, who look even worse since the Rockies swept the Diamondbacks last night. Who knows if the Cubs will ever get it together. Their hitters always seem to be swinging for the fences, which does no good against the Brandon Webb’s of the world. The pitching is Carlos Zambrono (volatility) + Lilly, Hill, Marshall (mediocrity). The bullpen isn’t very good. Maybe Hill and Marshall will get better, but this hitting (Soriano, Lee, Ramirez) has probably already peaked, even though Ramirez will have more years left than Soriano and Lee. It’s almost like Boston Red Sox-lite. They don’t spend enough money to get the great pitching and good role-hitters, but have the few power guys (Ramirez, Ortiz, Lowell), at the same positions too. Problem is, Boston-lite won’t win the World Series, and it won’t get you out of the NLDS.

Onto better news…

My fantasy teams are starting to turn around. I had some bad luck early in the year with Bulger under-performing, and then injured. I made some trades to be better in a few weeks, and now I have a bye week. After that, barring injury, like always, I could make a run for the playoffs after being down 1-4 after week 5.

College football Saturdays, NFL Sundays are great. I have to balance that with the EPL. But the English have been off TV for two weeks with Euro ‘08 qualifiers and a weird TV schedule. This Saturday was quite crazy in college football with the #1 and #2 teams losing. Now Ohio State, South Florida and Boston College are 1, 2 and 3. I don’t think any of those three would beat LSU or Florida.

Finally. The biggest news of all. The new Radiohead album In Rainbows was released through digital download only. You choose the price, so it’s been getting more press than normal. I got the download after buying the disc box (vinyls: LP + B-sides, cds: LP + B-sides and artwork), so I paid a flat $80 fee. I’ve listened to the album about 15 times now and it is pretty great. Like all of the other Radiohead greats (OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac) it doesn’t get old. It ranks up there with Neon Bible and Boxer for my favorite albums of 2007.

6:30 AM PST.

I usually wake up at this early during the weekdays, but not the weekend.  Today is not just any Saturday, it’s the start of the English Premier League!

With the wonder of Fox Soccer Channel I can watch two, 2, TWO, live matches this morning.  The first match is between Manchester City and West Ham.  This isn’t likely to be the highest quality of games as both teams were in the bottom flight last year.  Analysts have predicted that both will probably do much of the same this year and some have even said that West Ham will be relegated.  The Hammers probably will be relegated because the only thing that saved them last year was Carlos Tevez and he went to Manchester United.

The next match is the real one to watch, Liverpool at Aston Villa.  Liverpool finished 2nd in the Champions League and 3rd in the Premiership last season and they should continue with similar, top-flight success.  Aston Villa were hanging out in the lower-to-middle part of the table for most of last season and finished in 11th.  Many analysts are predicting a top-6 finish since Patrik Berger is back and ready to play.  So, I’m really looking forward to this match.

FUTBOL! GOAL!

which is a good thing, because Tuesdays are great! Tuesdays are 10x better than Monday, so they have a built-in comparative advantage. Also, Tuesdays are Windows Update day in M$ land. The day has gone fast and it’s already lunch, even on the west coast. I’m blogging to you as I eat this wonderful spinach, sausage, and red pepper pizza from Mezza Luna, muy muy yummy. I also have a big salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette, yummy.

This weekend was pretty uneventful. I had been super tired the week before and still didn’t catch up on all of my rest. Today though, all caught up! Friday was passable because of fun post by Reka, so I was able to comment up a storm with help from Kevlar and Houston. Unfortunately, Thorette did not win the name contest.

Saturday came and went. The only thing of memory was the LA Galaxy v. Chelsea match. Although David Beckham wasn’t replaced by Harry Potter, he did alright in the 20 minutes he played, only one corner. Since I’m an avid soccer fan, I tuned in more Chelsea than anything else. After all of their chances in the 1st half, it should have been 4-0 Chelsea, but they were rusty and the Galaxy had Xavier. There was a lot of media hoopla, did you hear? Apparently Beckham likes to cry a lot, or at least that’s what he says. Given that, I don’t think he’ll help soccer into the mainstream. What will dad’s scream at their kids? “Oh, you’re crying, why don’t you play soccer then? Get off the diamond (or shed)!”

The lunch break is almost over. Time to catch up on some Desktop Tower Defense, the most addictive game EVAR!

I’m back in Oregon and I seem to have brought the weather back with me.  I arrived in Minneapolis last Friday and the tell-tale signs of Midwest were there.  Humid, check.  Hot, check.  Stale air, check.  As we drove down to DSM, and then skAnkeny, nothing had changed from my many years in Iowa.  The weather was muggy, the landscape was flat and the place ached for a healthy rain, think 1993.

We arrived in Ankeny and I ate dinner with the folks.  I proceeded to the happenin’ spot for drinking with college & high school friends, the Applebee’s.  No, Tyler Florence was not there for me to kick his ass, but the atmosphere was nothing short of middle-class boredom.  The day was long, and I was tired after 8 hours of flying and layovers and 4 hours of driving.  On the upside, quality beef is easier to come by in Iowa, so I would eat burgers and steak and nachos all weekend.  Yummy.

Saturday started off well enough, slept in til 10am.  Tried to watch Wimbledon but that damn thing’s been getting rained out.  Rented some movies with Mom, got Strangers with Candy, Children of Men and Music & Lyrics.  Can you guess which ones I chose?  At night I went up to Ames to visit more friends.  Saw Knocked Up, hilarious!  Got back online too.  I had been without internet since

Sunday, did some web work for freelance, drove around Ankeny, then went to Marshalltown to visit Grandma for her birthday.  Apparently the thing to do for your birthday in Iowa is to go to Ice Cream Socials in rural churches.  I had never been and it was interesting.  Sandwiches, beans and salad, topped off with homemade ice cream and pie.  Pretty good stuff, although the music entertainment was weird.

Monday, awoke for more Wimbledon, but more rain delays.  Serena Williams was saved by the rain.  Watched the Children of Men and then Strangers with Candy.  Children of Men was still great, and SwC was hilarious.  I first saw SwC at the Bijou and it totally pulls off the TV series to film transition.  The plot is stupid, but it doesn’t matter because the characters are awesome.  Colbert, Dinello and Sedaris, plus famous guest stars appearances by Allison Janney, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Dan Hedaya, Ian Holm, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker.  Don’t forget Principal Onyx Blackman.

Tuesday, slept in, watched more Wimbledon, then went to the Jordan Creek Mall.  Oculon knows what I’m talking about.  This monstrosity has been pumping out stripmalls and one-off stores around it’s perimeter for a while now and I think only the interstate will stop it’s advances.  Went to Ocean’s 13 with mom, pretty good.  Way better than Ocean’s 12, but there were some cameos from that movie.  Not as good as Ocean’s 11, but the plot made sense even if some things were glossed over.

Wednesday, got up at the ass-crack o’ dawn, again and waited at Des Moines International Airport for my Minneapolis connection.  Aside, I think you’re airport has to be able to fly to an international location in order for you to put in ‘International’ in title.  I think Des Moines fails to fly to directly to Canada, so they’re liars.  The Minneapolis flight was delayed, so I missed my connection to Seattle.  Amazingly the airports weren’t packed on the 4th of July, so I was rebooked to Portland.  I had to layover there for 2hr50m, but it was all good, free wi-fi!

Now I’m back at work and although my vacation is over, I’m loving the internet.  Oh internet, what would I do without you?

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

It’s Monday morning and things are relatively slow on the IT front, so I’ll get you up to speed on the technologies I’ve been working on/at.

Team Foundation Server:

This little gem is an MS server application that acts as a companion to Visual Studio desktop applications. The TFS allows developers to store and share code on the server with a TFS plugin in Visual Studio. Our developers are spread out between England and the US, so this was a logical upgrade from Visual Source Safe, where outside developers had to VPN in order to share code. TFS has a SQL back-end and Sharepoint Services reports and document storing area, which means you have install about 4 programs and 5 upgrades before actually installing TFS.

The problems:

1) The application had to be set up before a consultant got, but the dedicated hardware for the application hadn’t arrived yet. So, I had to set up the TFS on a server with another SQL back-end application already running. This other application was not production yet, thank goodness, so I could back it up and run TFS.

2) Day one of transfer: Once the consultant left and the new hardware arrived, it was time to back up the TFS and move it to the new server. Let me tell you, it’s not as easy as you would think. The MSDN forums were fairly helpful, in that other people had the same problems as me, but were unable to solve them.

3) Day two of transfer: MS documentation has faltered and I end up calling MS TFS support. They responded fairly quickly and were very helpful. Three days, two remote assistance sessions and nine hours on the phone later, it was fixed and ready to roll. Oddly enough, the application that ‘had to be ready’ a week before, could be down for three day without any complaint.

4) Now that everything was working we still had the problem of VPNing for outside users. The main reason that TFS is pretty good is the HTTP(s) access works and there are instructions, but it still had to be setup. Having never set up an SSL certificate website for IIS, I had our friendly ISP walk me through it. The MS instructions for HTTPS/SSL setup were pretty darn good, so once I had the certificate, it went smoothly. Now all I had to do was open up ports in the firewall for the new SSL ports.

5) Now that TFS is working, I have to get the old application, an Incident Management application, working. While it’s not nearly as complex as TFS, I still had to call support. This was solved within a day.

Tomorrow: The on-going backup exec server saga…

I have a lot of catching up to do readers (passive post recipients).

I’ve been doing a lot more blog reading since Google Reader came into being. I definitely read more since I’ve been in college, is that wrong? Blog posts are hardly as well thought out as novels, or even short stories, but my attention span is short, hence my love of short stories, articles, blogs and foreign-language films.

Blogs I’ve been reading more since Google Reader:

Fire Joe Morgan: I first heard of this site about 2 years ago, but I only took a fleeting interest in it. Now that I consistently watch Sunday Night baseball with Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, I have a new appreciation for Ken Tremendous’ posts.

The Dilbert Blog: Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic has been my favorite comic for a long time. I’ve never felt a true understanding of the “truth” of Dilbert-like scenarios, even know that I work in an office. That’s definitely a credit to Adams’ humor and that’s why I read his personal ramblings at the Dilbert Blog. Topics include global warming, Iraq, your optimal age, happiness formulas, etc.

Dead Air Space: Radiohead’s new album is being mixed as we speak and you can keep track of all the studio details via this blog. DAS is the official Radiohead blog for LP7 and is usually updated twice a week. Nigel Godrich just posted a sample of the new album’s songs in mashup, mix format. Any reader of dsjoo knows that Radiohead is my favorite band, followed closely by Arcade Fire.

The concert:

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to the Arcade Fire concert in downtown Portland. My third time seeing Arcade Fire was on that Sunday night at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The concert hall was great and the opening act was pretty good too, Electrelane. The acoustics, the lighting, the stage and, not the least of all, the performance. The set mostly came from Neon Bible, but there were plenty of Funeral holdovers.

I’ll continue to update you all my super interesting life during the week.

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.

The Brainstorm

I’ve spent my last two weekends traveling to Portland to look at cars.  I decided that it’s time I get a car so that I can choose to take off when I want or take a long trip every once and a while.  I narrowed down my choices to a Toyota Corolla, Nissan Altima, VW Jetta, Mitsubishi Galant or Ford Fusion.

The Research

Two weekends ago I test drove an 06 Galant and it was pretty nice.  It had leather, 500 miles and some huge factory and dealer rebates.  Most of my shopping was online and last week my dad found a VW Jetta at a used dealership.  I am a fan of four-door sedans and fairly compact cars, but the Galant is a little on the bigger side than I prefer.  So, I test drove the Jetta on Saturday and was pretty sure I wanted it, now the dealer needed to not prevent me from buying.  These were the only two slightly used cars that were in a low enough price range and the right compactness.

The Sell

The first step was filling out credit check information: address, job, education, debt, etc.  The whole time though, Harvey, not to be confused to with Oculon’s cat, took the sloooooowed dictation of my statistics.  Every letter or number was scratched over at least three times, not to mention chit-chat about school, work, etc.  Then Harvey took the paper to someone with a computer to run the credit check.  While that was processing, Harvey came back to ‘talk numbers.’

This is where it got interesting.  Harvey decided to draw up a mini ‘pre-contract contract’ with the price of the car, my desired car payment range and an x_____________.  The phrase ‘If we can do these things, then do we have a deal?’ was uttered and then I had some questions.  ‘What’s the exact monthly payment?’ ‘What is the interest rate?’ ‘How many months?’ ‘How much for the down payment?’ and then a statement: ‘I’m not signing anything until I have exact numbers.’   Apparently Harvey got spooked and said that there was no pressure and then he let someone else who knew how to use a computer or a calculator crunch the numbers.

Now a manager comes out with different options based on down payment amounts and the number of months.   They asked how much I could put down now and I said I could put some down but that I didn’t even have a checkbook with me.  Manager guy immediately offered 0 down.  I decided to dwell on my options and whether I wanted a different make or model.  Harvey rushed outside and asked me ‘what my instincts were?,’ trying to stop me from walking away.  We drove around for a while and I came back and immediately went to the manager and started filling out paperwork and got some online insurance.  The purchase took less than the half the time Harvey’s fake contract gimmick and credit application combined.

The Result

I am now a proud owner of at most 60 payments on this beaut: