Sunday, January 27, 2013

Something New

This is my 10th blog entry, and I figured I'd do a bit of e-celebrating by giving it a special title. "Something New?" one might say. Not particularly original, especially since I'm using it in the context of the Beatles' 10th album release, according to a Beatles discography on wikipedia. So, huzzah! Or, as John Lennon so famously put it,  "For our last number, I'd like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands, and the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewelry." 


The Beatles actually are the perfect segue into today's thrilling database update. After many months, I've started to populate the Songs table! I decided to start with The Beatles because there are songs that on more than one album, so in addition to progress, I've got some real time testing going on. So far, everything looks good here. Another table, however, has a problem that I was aware of but hadn't chosen to address until now. The Time table has 43.2K records, which is twelve hours in one second increments. I was so happy when I created this in Excel- it was exactly what I needed for the database. The only problem was I was looking at Excel formatted values. When I imported it into Access, I discovered that my simple solution was only a partial solution, because Excel might have displayed 00:02, but Access displayed 12:00:02 AM. So, unless I can figure out a better way, I am looking at no fewer than 43.2K edits to this table BEFORE the table is usable.

I pretty much hate data entry, but really enjoy working with tables, so it's okay. Still, 43.2K+ edits is a BIG number. The good news is that this particular table does not contain data which is vital to the database. But, its 43.2k+ of edits.

In other news, I'm having a time getting Microsoft Office 2010 charts to present data properly. So far, every time I create a chart, Office inverts the data in the chart. No biggie, as I can just resort the data, but its somewhat annoying as a chart should present data as it is presented.






Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Outpatient Postoperative Status: O.K.

"What is this, the Dark Ages?", asks Dr. Leonard McCoy, in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home".

It might not be the best Star Trek film, but Star Trek IV is near the top of my favorites list. Dr. McCoy  pretty much nailed why I haven't been to the dentist in some time. To make a long story short, I found myself in an oral surgeon's chair at high noon today, and I left the office about an hour later with two fewer teeth. What amazed me, though, was the relative speed and comfort of the procedure. First, a panoramic x-ray- and not a lead suit of armor anywhere! Then, the actual procedure: a shot of a novacane-type numbing agent, and I was completely numbed in less than a minute. Then, the procedure: two teeth removed... total time- less than five minutes. The total bill was even a bit less than I had been earlier quoted! Snookums and I drove home, and I had to have gauze in my mouth for two hours before the bleeding was reduced to a bit of seepage. This, of course, threw the rest of the day off a bit more than I had planned. I was concerned about opening the suture at work, so I took the evening off, and the day job is also going to be an unpaid sick day, but, barring any unforeseen issues, I'll be back at it tomorrow night!

I had some soft food, some tea, and finally got down to the Secret Underground Lair. As the Playstation upgrade has been verified, I deleted the 160GB transfer/backup folder from my 1TB portable HD. I thought to myself, "Hmm. That's a lot of data. I haven't defragged this HDD since... um, since I bought it. Over a year ago. Well over a year ago- and it's in daily use. May as well do that now." So, I did. Normally, we use Defraggler here, but this PC doesn't have all of our standard suite of utilities, and I ended up using the native Windows XP defrag utility.

It took around five hours. Well, it's not like I was going anywhere.

Other news/updates: I hope to have Ubuntu news and a database update next edition. I've not done much due to dental situation (which actually dates back to last Thursday), so my fuzzy schedule is still fuzzy. I also found a monitor stand, so before I do any more wiring, I need to mount that on the desk. We also may have one more PC to deploy; if I do that, I'll more than likely try to get another two port KVM when finances permit. I also need to download the latest versions of ubuntu, Fedora and possibly Mint. The database has only had a few new items added, statistically insignificant even for me.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Friday night in the Secret Underground Lair

Well, here it is Friday night. Getting ready to go to work, doing my part to save Western Civilization as we know it by ensuring that you receive the highest quality junk direct mail. Yes sir, I do quality control on a product that most folks don't seem to want. Today has been odd, to say the least. I finally got around to replacing an energy-sucking, ancient 21" Samsung monitor with a nice 17" Compaq in preparation for deploying our Linux box. That'll have to wait until  tomorrow, though.

Right now, no updates for the database, as the external HDD that holds that data is being used by our two sons to do a HDD upgrade on a PS3. Our younger son just got up on his soapbox and waxed long and eloquently about the horrendous transfer rate for the data backup- approximately five hours  for ~160GB of data. And, since our cats love cables, the entire process is going to be babysat. It's going to be a long weekend....

Time to head out. At this time tomorrow evening I should be sitting here working on a Linux install.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Like Data, we are- in an I.T. sense- fully functional.



Three PC's
 
Today was a severely and serenely eventful day. I actually had to search for Lt. Cmdr. Data's quote- I thought it was from the movie "Insurrection," but it was actually from "Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 episode 3, in which Tasha Yar sexually assaults Data.

I'l bet ya never thought of it that way!

Anyway, in recognition of the contribution that Star Trek has made to what passes for a geek "community" (I used quotation marks because the naturee of the geek comunity often reminds me more of Sandra Bullock in "The Net" rather than an actual community), I have for the tme being named our "fully-functional" PC's that have found their home in our secret underground lair. PC #1 is named LANDRU, and PC #2 is named VEE-JER, of course. These are definitely Nimoy, and not Shatner, PC's. Captain Kirk just has a way of hosing things up... well, when he's directing the movie, at least.

So anyway, two (relatively) new PC's have been added to the network. One is an XP machine; the other is a 7 box. There is a third which will eventually be a Linux box (we think). All are HP boxes- top one is a DC7600 (Win7, 1TB HDD, 4GB), under it is the "new" DC7800 (Win XP, 500GB HDD, 4GB), and the one to the right (with the K&N decal) is an XW4200 workstation (OS TBD- probably Ubuntu and some iteration(s) of Windows; I don't remember what HDD is in there, 4GB) The display is a Gateway FPD 1730, which has been around for some time. Very highy rated when it was young, it still gets the job done. Tying the PC's together is a Trendnet 2 port TK-209K KVM. I bought the KVM (keyboard/video/mouse switch- electronic) a year or so ago, but never got around to installing it. Lava Lamp® is on top of the PC stack, but not in the picture. Lastly, in the upper right of the photo there's an A-10 Warthog, most likely keeping Soviet-era T72's at bay.


Now that there are a plethora of PC's to use, I may be able to finally get back to more development work on the database, and start doing some programming, although #2 son noticed that both PC's were online, and reminded me thst this IS the Secret Underground Lair, and he might need to install Steam on one (or 3-4 PC's- there's another one waiting in the wings... another KVM might be warranted) of them. I'm starting to think maybe we can do some experimentation with 64-bit systems- probably on the workstation.

Right now the database is very music focused. As I write this, I have Windows Media Player running, and I have the entire thing sorted by number of plays, most to least. Tonight's featured cutoff date is Dec 5, 2012- any song that has a Last Played Date that falls on or before that date gets played. Right now, Barry Manilow is crooning "This One's For You". Tonight was the first time I think I truly realized how much a part of the 70's music scene Barry was.  

Okay, hard data. Between the last time I took a count (12.04.12) and the most recent count (01.14.13), the number of tables remained constant at eleven, and 161 records were added. Somewhat impressive, especially since I'm very definitely not the swiftest on the keyboard, but that only comes out to a .2961% increase.

Lastly, I started a temp day assignment this past Monday. It's an association, non-profit, which is a first for me. I'm helping to put together year end reports, and so far it's been a blast. The culture of this organization is fairly mind-blowing: it is not top-down management and directives (at least, it isn't in the area I'm in), and my input is valued and sought after, not only because they're fairly good, but because I'm an outsider looking in with a fresh set of eyes.   

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Who does that, anyway?

Before the rest of the story on the Christmas PC, I have an odd dream to relate.

I don't think I've ever had a dream in which a famous personality was a character, not even after the time I met Alex Trebek in Germany. The celebrity in my dream was Betty White. I get all the luck. I think what triggered it was a sale at Game Stop.

Our older son said to me, "Hey, Dad, they're having a buy two, get one free sale. Any PS2 titles you're interested in?" I jumped on Amazon, and found an interesting title: "Naval Ops Warship Gunner". Hmm, a tactical ship to ship, highly rated title. When I was in high school, I used to play Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame with 1/700th and 1/2400th scale ships. Lots of fun, but pretty high brow. I'd always wanted a decent PC or console simulation, and this game looked like it might fit the bill. We drove out to the store and got the game, along with a few others. I had to work, so I didn't get to try it out for a few days. When I finally did, I went through the tutorial, which was a bit frustrating- it's got more stuff going on than Gran Turismo. At least in Gran Turismo your opponents don't shoot at you.

The tutorial seemed to take about half an hour, by which time some of my initial enthusiasm had waned. Still, I played a game, and predictably lost. It was not unexpected, so I will be back to play again.

That night, I went to sleep, and dreamed a few dreams in which I was travelling to various places to play video games. In one dream, I was sitting there, minding my own business, controller in hand when Betty White walks up to me with a controller in her hand. "I just can't land that 707 at LAX for anything" she says in the exasperated Betty White voice. "Show me," I offer, and she says, "Watch." So, the next thing I know she's piloting a 707 in some unidentified flying sim, except the viewpoint is outside the plane.

"There. Damn!" she says. Not only can she not land the plane, she has belly-flopped into the Pacific Ocean, about a mile from shore. End of dream. Wow.
PC test in the laundry room!

The Christmas PC has a happy ending: the vendor sent another one out with a return shipping label. I tested it out, and everything was fine. I set it up at my wife's desk, get everything plugged in and... flashing cursor! Being the astute semi-I.T. guy that I am, I chose the path of least resistance, and unplugged the power to the external hard drive and rebooted. There ya go- PC booted right up. So something was wrong with the external HDD... maybe Western Digital will warranty it. But... when Windows is up and running, I plugged the power back in to the drive, and the PC recognized it. Back to square one. Power the drive down. Shut down the PC and reboot. Hit F10 until the config screen comes up and...

Whoever it was that configured the machine had the boot sequence as follows: ATAPI optical drive, USB, HDD. When I saw that, I just shook my head. I told our younger son about it, and he said, "Who does that, anyway?" I went back and tried the first PC- it works just fine, and has the same boot sequence.

Next time, I'll be back in the database!