Busy, busy, busy...

I really shouldn't be writing right now...I'm sitting in GeoSci. But there are a couple of things that I've just got to jot down.

First, Dave, if you're reading this, welcome to Phischkneght (pronounced fishnet). This is where Leon, Eric, and Jake share ideas and just toss things around in general. It's a nice little outlet for frustrations and such.

Guys, Dave is my fellow Teachers Quorum Advisor. There's some dispute as to whether I'm his assistant or he's mine, but it doesn't really matter, because we're both assistants to the other guy no matter which way it goes. Personally, I like being the Assistant to the Assistant to the Teachers Quorum Advisor. I think I'll have some business cards printed up with that on them.

Dave is in the Army Guard, with a medical team. I forget just what exactly he does, but I know he's a CNA or better. I think he's studying to be a PA. Dave is also a full-time student and a daddy. I went to high school with his wife.

I've proposed to Dave that he could join our blog. He would give us a new point of view, as he is a non-technical person who is trying to understand all this technical junk. He's learning these things in school and he also has a personal interest.

So maybe with Dave's help, we can learn to better explain the concepts that are second nature to us in writing and we can help him make sense of all this computer stuff.

Moving on, the new Tablet arrived yesterday. As usual, Toshiba and Micro$oft have teamed up to make it as difficult as possible to put a fresh copy of the OS on, so I'm hacking my little heart out. So far, the easy ways haven't worked, so I'm about to try a copy of XP Pro with Tablet slipstreamed in for the virgin install. Then I'll have to put on drivers, programs, office, activations, blah, blah, blah. It's going to be a lot of work. But it will be worth it.

I'm also upgrading my server. All of the hardware is installed and runs well, but there are some hiccups that I'm dealing with. For instance, Partition Magic doesn't like Windows Server 2003, and if it detects WS2003 on any of the system's drives, it won't start at all, in both Win32 and DOS modes. And that sucks.

Additionally, Ghost 2003 won't start if it detects any SATA drives on the system.

The SATA drive and the drive holding WS2003 are different drives, so every time I want access to Partition Magic or Ghost, I have to pull power to the offending drive.

Furthermore, WS2003 logs the sizes and locations of each partition, and if anything changes, barfs instead of booting. So you'd better get the partitions right the first time, or it's a total re-install. Once again, Micro$oft is making life hard.

I should be receiving a new Celeron 2.4 Ghz chip for Sandy today. Her new motherboard is already in the system, and I've already re-wired the front panel headers for the non-OEM board. I somehow lost the hard drive light in the rewiring, but it's not critical, so I won't worry about it too much. If the power button didn't work, that would be a problem, and the power light would worry me too, but the hard drive light seems the best choice if I have to lose something.

Then it's just a matter of booting to Windows, installing her motherboard drivers, updating Windows and antivirus software, and re-imaging the hidden partition. Pretty basic, right? Probably a 45 minute job. If nothing fries.

Oh, and my other project, once I'm finished configuring the new Tablet, is to reconfigure my old Tablet for Leon. FedEx lost his computer, and I'm going to have to go to the seller for a refund.

Fortunately, a fresh install of Windows on the old Tablet will be easy, as I've already done all the hard work, and I have DVD Ghost images of what needs to be on there.

I guess I'm getting long-winded. Also, my GeoSci class is getting interesting. So I'll wrap this post for now. I'm trying to post more often, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job. Eric and Leon, let me know what you think of inviting Dave to contribute. If everyone agrees (shouldn't be a problem), I'll send the invite.