Baby lunch (shower)

So, we had the baby lunch (shower) at work today. Went really well, the game (we played Wheel of Fortune except, um, it wasn't quite like that, but anyways) was good, the presents great. I'm now washing all of our 0-3 month stuff so that we can use it, and getting the diaper bag, labor and postportum bags ready, phone lists, that kind of stuff. is 38 weeks this wednesday, so we're trying to be ready to go at any time. I don't think we'll get someone into work as the new DBA before I take off for the 1st week off for fatherhood, I have no clue what we're going to do. I'll be kinda available via cell phone, but honestly, I'm never going to have the chance to make it up in the future, so I'm not letting work get in the way of enjoying my firstborn. We're thinking of throwing a baby naming party, or as I call it, an unbris. Since we're not circumcising our son, it won't really be a bris, but an unbris. Hoping that our family/friends can come, see the baby, etc.. Mom took well to the "wear a smock over your shirts when you handle the baby because you smoke and it'll cling to your shirts" thing. I expected an explosion, instead she totally understood and actually suggested the smock bit (originally it was "change shirts to clean ones before you handle the baby"). We've finally gotten the last of the major baby stuff purchases before baby comes. We've got the crib, the playpen/crib, the car seat (installed, not yet inspected), the stroller, the clothes and the diapers. Someday we may post pictures. Or not. And finally, my project, PocketPoster is almost at 0.8. Added some features like friends list in the LJ User dialog and saving info for offline use (like group memberships, etc.). The only other thing I want to add is the ability to edit previous posts, but I may leave that off until 0.9. Dunno, we'll see.

Work is fun... not.

I hate Microsoft. Know why? Because, in their infinite wisdom, Exchange isn't really scriptable. This caused me to take over SIX AND A HALF HOURS doing something that should have taken two. Signal's migrating to a new forest and domain, for documentation / configuration cleanliness reasons. Whole new slate. I've moved over the other servers, but the Exchange can't just move over (because of IDs not matching). Okay, I can understand that. But, if they had just made it so that I could change those IDs myself, or copy the contents via a path, I could have made a small script/program to do that. There's only six, count them, SIX employees here. A couple of extra mailboxes, and that's it. Way too much .... time wasted while I copy contents around using our backup program (which, BTW, kills the job if there's an error in restoring the mailbox, THANKS for not making a "continue anyways" option CA!!) and PST files in one case (because a user had imported a PDF directly into their mailbox as an object, not as a message or anything, but directly in the folder. Which kills ArcServe and it's MAPI doohickey. Argh. Now I'm fighting with the fact that Windows 2003 can only take driver FLOPPIES. This is 2003 fer goodnesssakes, and it can't read a CD for drivers! WTF?! If Vista doesn't correct this, it will be huge. None of my new servers have floppy drives, so my workaround is such: Create a RAID array on the adaptec card with both drives. Remove a drive and the card, put one drive back on the builtin port, install Windows 2003, put RAID card back in, load drivers, use Disk Management to create a software-raid mirror on both "drives", then move the drive that's currently on the builtin back to the RAID, have it "repair" the mirror, then boot off of the RAID. Too much **** work. I'm not going to be able to leave until 3am, if I'm lucky. I was hoping to be out of here by midnight, maybe 1am. I am pissed. And hungry. And my wife, is hopefully sleeping finally. Oh, and the wireless router, which for me would be a nice "oh, I get to set this up today" sort of a balancer for the "I have to work late" thing, was delayed by UPS. Their website finally decided around 10pm that it wasn't going to be delivered today. Well DUH. And of course next week I've got plenty to do, and Monday will be hell with everyone coming in and wanting to get on and *hopefully* I'm able to get everyone's setup done and all I'll have to do is give people their passwords and have them login. We'll see.

work

An update to work: my old boss left the company. So now we can reconsider those technical decisions, like migrating to PHP. We've stopped that, and are now moving to ASP.Net. Much less bad stress. Although there's still a lot of stress, it's good stress, it's just because there's a lot to do, not "I have to do it all" stress. Knowing that my boss *works* and his casual demeanor, along with his strong work ethic really helps defuse my stress. Of course, getting a DBA in will help in the long run too.

baby shower

Well, we just got home from the baby shower. We got lots of stuff. (Thank you !) We like the playpen - we just put it together. Now we buy a bit more and get ready for boyo. Well, that's all for now.

I am Jack's newest LJ client

Well, the client certainly posts. A few bugs, but the core functionality is there. Once SourceForge approves the project, it'll be online (http://pocketPoster.sf.net). There's some functionality that I want to add next, like posting to communities and launching the browser for the friends list. It's got draft and offline functionality. Maybe a spell checker. Definitely tags, userpics and private/public. I'm putting it under the CDDL as I prefer it to the (L)GPL.

Fight club

In case I haven't said it yet, Fight club is something. Something. I'm not sure what to call it. I've been borrowing it from my brother in law. Weird movie, but I think I'm over my fascination with it. I think I'll put it on my birthday list, though, something to show the uninitiated, perhaps. My work is exciting now - I'm the only IS/IT guy at my company now. My boss left the company Thursday, so I'm now part of the Operations department. And our Director of Finance/Operations is bringing in a consulting company to take over some network admin stuff. (Although I'm being told that I'll still be involved with the network admin, that they're just free me from the day-to-day maintenance to focus on programming.) We're bringing in a DBA (YAY!! It's taken YEARS!), and at least for now so long as I don't mess up my job *should* be relatively secure, but I'm not so sure about the long term, none of us from the IS department (myself, my ex-boss and Dmitriy, an ex-programmer) think that it's possible to do it all with just one person, but that wouldn't stop management from trying. So I'll start learning different things in case I get encouraged to leave myself. At least I've got a little retirement money on the side as well as a little equity in the house (although not alot..). We're still expecting a little boy around mid-March. I just got my taxes accepted - should be getting back around $500 or so total. The dishwasher's broke (I am Jack complete lack of surprise) and and I will go window-shopping for some tomorrow. I'm loving my rx1955 iPaq from HP - it's going to be invaluable now that I've got a zillion tasks and projects at work and way too much to remember.