Should I put my servers in the ceiling?

So, during some renovation here at work, a mysterious box was discovered in the ceiling. Since this box had wires coming out of it, it was naturally assumed to be my responsibility, and I was called in to take a look.

Climbing up on a ladder, I found a piece of paper taped to the top of this mystery component, though any sort of sticky-like quality to this tape had long since disintegrated. "Oh, it seems to be some sort of communique!" I said.

The note makes reference to two researchers who haven't been at UAB in many, many years. It also makes reference to the "ninth floor," while this device was discovered on the third floor. The amount of cables running out of the back of this box led me to believe that it was possible they did rise six floors through this building.

Ignoring the warning on the communique, I did in fact unplug it, then disconnected the cables, probably inhaling large amounts of asbestos, and pulled the device out of the ceiling. I found out that it was a DECServer 200/MC, thanks to this helpful label:

I didn't know what that was, as this piece of equipment was clearly produced when I was in middle school and not climbing around in ceilings. So, I did what any self-respecting geek would do -- I took it apart!!

And inside, I found.....the Lindbergh baby!! No, just kidding. I found a bunch of wires and processors but no hard drives, indicating some sort of network switch. The word "server" used to be used in a different context, I guess.

Some enterprising researchers and/or IT guys installed this thing in the ceiling in the days before the building was officially networked, and used it to send data back and forth across six floors.

The Wikipedia article I linked above indicates that the 200/MC was first produced in 1986. So this box has likely been living in the ceiling for some twenty years. I'd love to know how much it cost back then....probably in the thousands.

Anyway, it's on the scrap heap now, though I must confess I did quickly check eBay to see if it was a collector's item or anything. No such luck.

Now that's a big TV!!!

Our new toy, a 42" Vizio LCD. :)

Don't use Windows for embedded systems!!

A McDonald's drive through screen with a Windows registry error prominently displayed. When will people learn?

Got it!!!!!

It's OPEN!

Not so wormy, after all?

So, in my previous post, I expressed my displeaure over the way Apple was handling a problem with my boss' iMac G5. Later that same day, I spoke with our local Apple Authorized Service Provider (Perry Computers), who indicated that the problem might in fact be with the power supply instead of the logic board.

This both pleased and annoyed me. Pleased, because a power supply replacement is about one-fourth the cost of a logic board replacement ($150 versus $600). Annoyed, because Apple's information on the website and the info the technicians gave me on the phone led me to believe that it was definitely a logic board problem. And we simply weren't going to pay $600 to repair a 2.5-year-old computer with a history of failure, particularly since the new part would only be warrantied for 90 days.

So, I was really just calling Perry to get a price, thinking that it would be outside our budget. However, given the information that it might be the power supply, I took it in to Perry on Tuesday morning. Sure enough, with a different power supply swapped in, the sucker booted right up. I asked the guys at Perry to order a new power supply and left the iMac with them.

When I got to work, I found an email from Apple waiting for me -- a link to a survey "concerning my recent technical support experience." Heh heh.

I filled out the survey quite harshly, indicating my disappointment in Apple, and in the way I was treated, particularly by the second person I spoke with. I also indicated my frustration that Apple never once suggested it could be a power supply problem. I even included a link to my bitchy blog post.

So yesterday, I get a call from Apple's Customer Service department. Imagine my surprise when they tell me that not only are they going to cover this repair, they are going to extend the warranty on this machine for an additional year!!! I was blown away -- I guess Apple does want to keep its customers, especially in the educational market, in the fold.

And, it did seem that someone from Apple has visited my little corner of the blogosphere. Between 11:47 AM and 12:04 PM yesterday, my access logs for rzeszut.com indicate multiple visits from IP addresses of the class 17.104.xxx.xx.

A little traceroute shows me that 17.104.x.x belongs to apple.com. :)

In total, the visitor(s) from apple.com viewed 24 pages at rzeszut.com. Wonder what else they looked at?

Worms in the Apple.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a Mac guy. I obviously like their products -- between office and home I have a Mac Mini, a G5 Tower, an iBook, an Xserve, a MacBook, an iPod Nano, and I'm drooling in anticipation of the release of the iPhone. I've been to MacWorld twice, hold multiple Apple certifications, and I occassionally teach Apple courses for a small consultant firm in Las Vegas.

So, I like Apple. But today, I like them a little less than I liked them yesterday.

My boss has an iMac G5 on her desk, about 2.5 years old. The machine is now on its third logic board (also known as a motherboard, the "brains" of the machine). Over the weekend, the machine failed in the exact same way it has failed two previous times. Completely dead as a doornail, refuses to boot. Pressing the power button does absolutely nothing. For the third time in less than 30 months, the logic board needs to be replaced.

The first time it happened, the machine was still under its one-year warranty, and the replacement was free. The second time it happened (last January) was less than five months later and the machine was just barely out of warranty -- two weeks out of warranty, to be exact. After stating my case to an Apple technician on the phone, they agreed to make an "exception" and replace the part for free.

At the time, we attempted to purchase an extended warranty on this computer, believing this problem to be chronic and likely to return. Unfortunately, Apple will not sell an extended warranty on a computer that is out of its original warranty period, and they would not make an "exception" for that policy.

So, now that it has happened for a third time, 14 months later, there are no more "exceptions" to be had. I just got off the phone with a helpful and sympathetic technican, as well as his much-less-helpful and useless supervisor. Both of them basically said that we were shit out of luck, though the first guy said it a nicer way.

Look, I understand, maybe better than anyone, that computers break. It's what they do, and it keeps me employed. But three failures of the same part in less than 30 months? An average of one logic board failure every 9 months? Doesn't that seem excessive, perhaps an indication of a design flaw in this particular product??

Apple's default one-year warranty has always been a little on the chintzy side, although a lot of other PC makers are following suit and shortening their own warranties. But, here's the worse part -- replacement components, such as this logic board, are warrantied only for 90 days.

So, if we were to shell out the approximately $400-500 for a replacement board, we're only guaranteed this computer will work for another three months!! After that, all bets are off.

I just can't do it, can't recommend to my boss that we spend that kind of money on an unreliable computer. It's better to put that money towards a new computer, and the extended warranty. But I'm disappointed with Apple, and I said this to both Jeff and Ben on the phone, that they don't stand behind their replacement parts for longer than 90 days. That's just absurd.

Apple's weakest point has always been its warranty and service policies, and that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.

Why I love my Mac.

So, a lot of people at work are asking me about Windows Vista. And, even though UAB has not officially sanctioned it yet for on campus use, us IT geeks were allowed to get early copies of the UAB-licensed version.

Today, then, I repartioned my hard drive to make room for Vista, and then installed it. The visuals throughout the installation and configuration process are gorgeous, Microsoft has taken a lot of clues from Apple on how to make an operating system visually appealing.

And yet, you can't polish a turd. Within 60 seconds of my first log on to Vista, the PC completely and utterly locked up, requiring me to use the physical power button to shut the machine down. As of yet, I have not been able to successfully reboot into Vista.

I dream, someday, of working in an office where there are NO Windows machines, so I wouldn't have to deal with this crap.

This is so true.

Wikipedia is the greatest time waster on the Internet, I think.

From a great geeky webcomic called "xkcd."

MacWorld, Day 3

So it's Day 3 of MacWorld. My eyes are starting to glaze over a bit, as even I can get to the point of tech overload. Part of me thinks they should rename the show to "iPodWorld," as so many of the vendors here are iPod-only. Cases for your iPod in every possible variety, from stuffed animal cases to integrated headphones to armbands to clothing.

Still, seen some cool stuff today. An excellent presentation on Mac OS X Wizardry, and a slightly-disappointing sneak peek at Office 2008 at the Microsoft booth. Disappointing only because it focused almost exclusively on Word, where as my main concern for Office 2008 is Entourage -- is it going to get better? The only mention of Entourage was to show off a new mini-app called "My Day," which sits on your Desktop and shows today's calendar appointments, to-dos, etc. Can run even when Entourage is closed, so it must access the Entourage DB at all times. Pretty cool. Office '08 for the Mac is supposed to be out in the second half of this year, September seems to be the best guess right now.

Also talked to the people at the Parallels booth a bit, they continue to make amazing refinements to that product. The new version features Parallels Transporter, which can run Windows applications directly from the Dock, without launching a full version of Windows. So literally, the demo computer had PC apps like Outlook, IE, etc. sitting in the Dock with their familiar Windows icons, and a small Parallels icon overlapping the bottom corner. Way cool.

Couple of neat pictures:

The ginormous banner at the Apple booth for the iPhone. "We need to talk," get it??


The booth for "mophie," a really cool company out of Vermont. Love the name, of course, since Raya and I often call our baby girl "Sophie Mophie." (The company name actually came from the founder's two dogs, Sophie and Molly!) But they are doing something unique to MacWorld, or any other tradeshow for that matter. They make iPod cases and acccessories, and invited MacWorld attendees to sketch out their own ideas/designs for a new product. They picked the best three, and are then allowing people to vote for their favorite until the close of show today. Overnight, they will mock up a prototype of the highest vote-getter, and by noon tomorrow, release a mock-up of the product.

They will then produce it and sell it. Very cool!!

More MacWorld

Blogger is having issues with mobile posts again, so here are a couple of pix I was unable to send directly from the Treo today:

The new Apple iPhone, causing quite a stir here at MacWorld and everywhere else, even though it's not available until June. In fact, they won't even let us touch it. Apple's booth has two of them, both sealed in glass cylinders, with two security guards who politely but firmly warn people not to touch the glass.

My yummy lunch from In-n-Out Burger at Fisherman's Wharf. After hearing Drew rave about these burgers so much, I had to try it. I must say, for a two-dollar burger, it was pretty damn good. The fries, however, were nothing special -- back home, Milo's are better.

MacWorld First Thoughts

So....I saw Steve Jobs' keynote this AM. Well, sort of. When I got to Moscone West around 8:20 (for the 9:00 keynote), there were, no exaggeration, at least 1000 people in line ahead of me. The line snaked around and around the cavernous first floor of Moscone West.

Eventually, by 8:45 or so, they started letting us file through the lines and upstairs. I was near the end of the line, probably only 100-200 people behind me. And, I guess the main auditorium where Steve spoke was full, because they routed the last few hundred of us into an overflow room, where we watched the keynote on closed-captioned TV screens. Cool, but not exactly the experience I wanted.

So, saw the introduction of the "AppleTV" set top device, and the introduction of the long-awaited iPhone. It's no hyperbole to say that it is the best. phone. ever. People here are salivating for it, crowding around to see the demo unit, which is sealed in a plastic cylinder and off limits for us. The phone itself will not ship until June, and will be available only on Cingular Wireless, which may not do me any good. It also seems like it is going to have half-assed support for Exchange mail, requiring an IMAP connection to an Exchange server. Not what I would prefer.

In the "Microsoft Bloggers' Lounge" now, on the exhibit hall floor. Lots and lots and lots of people here, very cool products. A little classier than CES, haven't seen any half-naked women yet.

Hundreds and hundreds of people waiting....

....to get into Steve Jobs' keynote!!

No Mo' Moblog?

So, since we got our first camera phones (and Raya had one before I did!) we've been using Textamerica to host our mobile blogs ("moblogs") [R] [E]. They provided this as a free service, and it worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, TA has decided to discontinue the free service as of 12/31/06. Big fat bummer. Some of the pictures we've posted to our blogs (each of us have over 200) don't exist in any other place, as we've both gone through multiple phones, run out of memory, etc., in the past few years.

So, this week, I found some useful scripts to download and save all of the pictures from each of our moblogs before they disappear forever. I then painstakingly integrated my 200+ pictures from the moblog into this blog, even going so far as to ensure the date/time remained consistent with the original picture. It was a pain in the butt, but at least it's done now.

Raya hasn't decided yet if she wants me to set up a Blogger blog for her photos, which I will do as needed.

Unfortunately, Blogger's "mobile blog" function is having issues this week. Blogger is switching to a new system, just about to come out of beta, and so this problem is not unique to me. Since they have all the mighty resources of Google behind them, I'm confident they'll get it fixed. In the meantime, however, I can't blog from my phone. Hopefully they'll get it fixed before we head to San Francisco next month, as I tend to mobile blog more when we travel.

Anyway, here's one of the pictures currently "trapped" on my phone: the marquee of the historic Stardust Hotel and Casino in Vegas, which closed for good a couple of months ago. Sadly, I never set foot inside this place, which was a throwback to the old Vegas.

The largest blue screen of death I've ever seen....

So, this may not mean anything to many people other than me. But the image above is of a double-marquee on top of a CVS/Pharmacy on the Las Vegas Strip. Everything on the Strip has to be bright and tacky, even the drugstores, right?

And although you really can't read it in this camera phone pic, the top marquee is displaying what is known as a "blue screen of death" in the Windows operating system. A blue screen with white text, such as this one, indicates a very serious problem with a Windows computer, problems which are often not repairable. This one indicates "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME," an error I've seen many times.

Anyway, the screen was probably at least 10 feet wide and eight feet tall, easily making it the largest BSOD I've ever seen!! I was quite amused to see this shining over the Strip.

The new toy has arrived...

Geek post.

You've been warned....if you're afraid of geek posts, run away!!

Having an ongoing issue with my Apple XServe here at work that's been frustrating me for several months.

Ever since MacOS X Server version 10.3, Apple has claimed that OS X can function as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) for Windows clients. I've had this XServe up and running for 17 months now, and the PDC functions have been nothing but trouble.

I think that in a Mac-only environment, this XServe would be the greatest server I've ever used. But it doesn't always play nicely with PCs.

For about five months now, I've not had the ability to add new Windows PCs to my domain. When attempting to add a new PC, I get "access denied" messages, even though I know I am using a valid account with administrative priveleges on the XServe. PCs already in the domain continue to function normally.

This week, a new problem has cropped up. Actually, it's an old problem I saw about six months ago for a brief period. Twice this week, ALL PCs lost the ability to communicate with the XServe.

Even though the XServe insists that its Windows service is running normally, no PCs can find it on the network. It takes a stop and restart of the supposedly-already-running Windows service to repair the problem. Today I've developed a "kludge" of setting up an automated stop-and-restart of the Windows service every morning at 4:00 AM to try and get around this problem. But I hate having to do jury-rigs like that.

Apple's tech support is pouring a lot of effort into solving this issue, and I'm appreciative of their help. So far, however, it hasn't made a damn bit of difference. I'm on my second Apple Enterprise tech support representative, and today he made the dreaded suggestion that I might have to erase and rebuild the server.

This of course would entail visiting every single one of the nearly 150 PCs in my department, to unbind them from the old domain and rebind them to the new domain. I told him that I considered this to be the "nuclear option" and would avoid it at all costs.

Truthfully (and I told the rep this as well), if I'm going to rebind all the PC clients to a new domain, I'm not going to use this XServe to host it. I just don't trust Apple's Windows domain services. I'll either create my own Active Directory on my Windows server, or bind all of my PCs to the central campus Active Directory that UAB provides.

I'm attending a four-day Apple training session in Vegas next week called "Mac OS X Server Essentials." Between the course itself, and possibly brainstorming with the other students in the course, I'm hoping to get some good ideas for solving this issue; or failing that, suggestions on moving to a different domain model.

My dream is to someday work for an organization that has NO Windows PCs to support. Not a single one. Yes, I blame Apple for releasing a server product that doesn't quite live up to the claimed abilities. I think they vastly overestimated their readiness to sell a server product designed for a hybrid environment.

Still, if I didn't have any PCs (or at least not so many damn PCs) this would be a much less significant issue. Oh well, a man can dream...

No surprises, really, that I would score like this...

...on the The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test. They didn't ask if I had my own podcast, though. :)

Pure Geek
39 % Nerd, 69% Geek, 17% Dork

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 15% on nerdiness You scored higher than 90% on geekosity You scored higher than 16% on dork points

For The Record:

• A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
  
• A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
  
• A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Geek, earning you the title of: Pure Geek.

It's not that you're a school junkie, like the nerd, and you don't really stand out in a crowd, like the dork, you just have some interests that aren't quite mainstream. Perhaps it's anime, perhaps it's computers, perhaps it's bottlecaps, perhaps it's all of those and more. Your interests take you to events and gatherings that are filled with people you find unusual and beyond-the-pale, but you don't quite consider yourself "of that crowd." Instead, you consider yourself to be fairly normal.

Which, you are.

Podcasting

I have discovered "the next big thing." Podcasting.

What is podcasting? Basically, it can do for internet radio what the TiVo/PVR devices have done for cable TV. Imagine, being able to listen to radio shows from around the world, when it's convenient for you. Not being tied to the "airtime" of a specific show. (Indeed, lots of these podcasts don't have an airtime; they're simply recorded and put "out there," for listeners to enjoy at their own convenience.)

So podcasting has sprung up to make this whole process easy as pie. I stumbled across it thanks to a link on WWdN, and it's been mentioned at Leoville as well. It's being pioneered by people like Dave Winer and Adam Curry, one of MTV's early VJs.

Adam developed the whole iPodder concept. Basically, you run software on your machine that looks for the XML feeds of shows you like to listen to. The software can automatically download an audiofeed "enclosed" inside an RSS feed. It's a news aggregator, but instead of gathering RSS text entries, it's gathering audiostreams.

It can then move these audio files to iTunes and automatically move them to your iPod. (There are also hacks out there for other music players, for you poor unfortunate iPod-less masses.)

So for example, I've added Adam Curry's Daily Source Code into my iPodderX software, and it pulls his show into iTunes each day. I just strapped my iPod on and listened to his show while sitting at the Waffle House eating lunch. (I'm actually finishing it now here at work -- kind of bad because he's playing Georgle Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" bit.)

Leo Laporte has also just added a feed for his radio program, so I look forward to hearing his KFI show via my iPod. Since Leo left The Screen Savers, and since his new "Call for Help" is so far only broadcast on G4TechTV Canada, I'm not getting my Leo fixes like I used to.

This is the beauty of podcasting. In a way, it's a lot like satellite radio. You don't have to be tied to your geographic location when it comes to radio shows. You can listen to radio shows that are broadcast across the country (like Leo's), across the world, or not even "broadcast" at all in the traditional sense -- like Adam's show, which is net-only.

It also can make every teenager in America the equivalent of Christian Slater's "Hard Harry" character in "Pump up the Volume." But Harry had to have an FM transmitter and get the word out to his listeners: listen to this station at this time, etc. He could only reach people that lived within range of his transmitter.

Podcasting makes all of this so much simpler. Anyone with a laptop and a microphone can record their own radio show -- play songs, spout off against the government, review the latest Jackie Chan movie, whatever. This could completely revolutionize radio; indeed, it could make traditional broadcast radio even more irrelevant than it already is.

What this means is that broadcasters don't have to play by the rules of mainstream radio anymore. I mean look at Howard Stern -- he and his stations were fined millions because he said a few dirty words on the air. Big fucking deal. So now, he's moving to satellite radio, to get out from under the thumb of the FCC.

Podcasters have even more freedom than satellite broadcasters. Hell, Adam Curry sits in his home office in the Netherlands and smokes weed while he's on the air. Bet he couldn't get away with that on "107.7 the X"!!

This has the potential to be incredible. What if I always had the latest "Fresh Air," or "Car Talk" on my iPod, all downloaded automatically!?!?!

I might never listen to the "traditional" radio again.