razorslave

So I started the prep work for this certification, which involved RE-setting up my home network, i.e. wiping my DC installing virtual server 2005 on almost bare iron (didnt quite want to take the time to figure that out) installing a dc and another server and preparing it for being a study tool for the certification.

I have learned so much in this process it amazes me.

My home network is now consists of 3 virtual servers. housed in one physical server 1 freenas box, 3 Desktops, 2 laptops, 1 netbook and an ipod touch.

Wow. that's way to much electronics for three people.

all of this preperation is completed, and I'm just about through the first chapter of the book. I'm now preparing to do a WDS Server install on the third virtual server and progress on to the rest of the book.

I'm excited. :)

Rev

If World War Two had been an online Real Ttime Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this.

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right ***** im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj patton
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny~tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny~tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy ****holy****hoyl****!
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bull**** u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny~tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny~tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny~tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*

One of the hazzards of knowing the amount I do about windows, and PC Hardware is that I'm constantly being called by my family for assistance with their computers. I really don't mind, slightly over half of the people who call me pay me, and generally pretty well.

My Uncle Dick called me last week and scheduled me to come out and take a look at what was going on on Tuesday night.

I get there after work and he's having issues with BOTH his desktop and his laptop.

Tech Geek Scavenger Hunt & Triva

1 year old HP P4 512MB RAM 200GB SATA Drive looking at DOS window that says NTDLR is missing. Pull out the HP restore discs becase the restore partition doesnt seem to be there. Stick disc 1 in, reboot the machine and follow the prompts to do a non destructive recovery. Get error message that it is unable to write to the drive O.o Not good. Reboot check the bios, hmm, driv shows up, run S.M.A.R.T. tests everything works out fine. Says the drive is good. Try again, choose the option to repartion and reformat the drive and re-set up the HP restore partition. Get the Same Error Messages o.O Now I'm thinking dead drive. I end up taking the box home with me and utilizing Ultimate Boot CD I'm able to fdisk and reformat the drive. Restart the HP Restore process, choose the option to repartion and reformat the drive and re-set up the HP restore partition and the whole thing goes without a hitch. Total time spent on this little project: 6.5 Hours what I will charge him. $200.00

Any ideas as to what could have caused this?

I get to deliver it back to him tonight and pick up the laptop. When I got there it wouldnt connect to the wireless at all. I monkeyed about a bit, ended up attempting to re-installing the wireless utility and although it failed, it evidently got to the point where it re-installed what it needed. As it now connects to the linksys router. It is most definately in SERIOUS need of a fresh re-install. He's had it for 2 years and hasnt re-installed his OS since he bought it. The amount of CRAP that is loaded on it, plainly scare the piss out of me. A 2.4GHZ P4 should not take 45 seconds to load the control panels page. There's also undoubtedly a large amount of extranious and usless software shoehorned in by AOL and their, "I must control every aspect of the operation of this computer" mentality. He's going to have me re-install it, configure it, load Norton Ghost on it, and back it up creating him an image, so that if anything ever goes wrong, he can just restore it. Estimated time: 4-6 hours.

While I was there he revealed that when he had an issue 2 years ago and my dad looked at it, when he mailed the machine in to have Compaq take a look at it, my dad had removed the HD and when Compaq sent the laptop back. They also sent him another 60GB HD for the laptop. Which has been sitting in a box unused.

I'm thinking that I'll tell him that I'll configure and tweak the latop for $200.00 or $150 with the 60GB Laptop drive.

Rev

mmm wow, havnt felt this n00bish about an O/S since hmmm 6th grade. LOL. Humbling experience. But at least on teh intarweb there are good resources for assistance. It's not like the old day, where I was thumbing though a DOS Manual as thick as my leg looking for that elusive chunk of code.

Unfortunately, with a lack of net access for the laptop at work, I'm limited in what I can do.

Rev

My laptop is now running ubuntu linux dual booting windows XP. I was lacking a single peice of burnable media last night so I was dinking around with setting my USB Key up as a bootable device. My Laptop however was NOT cooperative.

I'm fairly impressed with the gnome interface. Going to play around with it some more and see what kind of fun I can have with it.

Rev

I think the DBC Website is actually done. . . well except for the live shows part, but when i get a DBC Live Show updated. . . I'll look into adding a calendar. . . but the Gallery, the Forums, the blog, everything even the cafepress site is now working and nested using IFrame's whee. I'm interested in some feedback on the whole damn thing. . .

Rev

http://www.bf2s.com/player/60211829/

only 4 unlocks to go. . . I love this game. . .


amd Ventrillo works FAWLESSLY with the new hardware set up, meaning my clan and I have full uninterrupted communication on the board. . . :)

Rev

Finally, after many many weeks, I got my laptop back from fry's. It seems to be working ok, but it does make this odd noise in the speakers, when I shut it down. Like all the power drains out of the capaciters before the shutdown happens. It didnt do that before.

Going through the process of re-installing all my software on it, whee, I can't tell you how much fun this is, also realizing that the puny little 30GB HD in the thing is not enough space. Especially after I section off 4GB to attempt to run Zeta OS 1.1 out of.

Which is a whole diffrent ball of wax. I'm hoping I'm able to track down a copy of the Zeta 1.2 and hoping that the most current version of the OS is more compatable with my laptop than the old.

I can get it to boot with a VESA Video Drive at 1024x768x16 but it does not like the onboard audio on the laptop. In fact, I'd venture to say it hates it, as activating the Conexant AC-Link audio cause Zeta lock hard. Requiring a reboot. Grrr. . . I also need to figure out how to get the Radeon IGP 320M Drivers installed correctly. As the only ones I'm able to find are Intel Build and don't seem to like the Athlon Processor.

Rev

Dropped Laptop back at Fry's on 2/22/2006. Called today on 4/13/2006 for an update. They say that the laptop is in and back on their bench, which hopefully means I get to pick it up tomorrow or saturday. And then spend a good chunk of time re-installing the portable stuidio on teh bitch. Wheee geekdom.

Rev

In the process of trying to re-do my whole computer setup, while avoiding having to do a whole flatline and re-install.

Not having much luck as of yet. Getting odd Errors from my Quantum Atlas 10K2 SCSI Drive, so I decided to low level forat it wit the SCSI Bios. Note to self a 70GB Drive takes a LONG ASS TIME to low level format and there is no indicator of what point the process is at.

Maybe I'll go to bed and see if it's done by the morning. .

Although this program on the History Channel on Declassified: Radical Movements which covers everything from the KKK, to the Anarchists, to the Whether Underground. . . it's pretty interesting. . .

Rev

So, as i want to have the laptop set up completely for the digital djing thing by Friday night when I'm supposed to be over an B and gwyll practicing 2 x 4's I last night had 6K of the 18K MP3's set up in Traktor Dj Studio 3 and was happily analyzing the files, for almost 16 hours.

So traktor does the following routine when analyzing files. Analyze list of files, write tags and stripes to update individual files, on close of software, update collection to reflect changes in files.

Now the fun part, Traktor had completed the analyzing of a the selected files, and was in the process of writing the files and stripes when I get a BSOD. . . FUCK. it lost off of that.

Set it up to do a smaller chunk and hopefully it will be done when I get home from work today.

Rev

So I went in to fry's, they actually produced a laptop as a loaner for the 6-8 weeks it will take to repair or replace my laptop.

What I had. . .

Compaq Presario 2103US
Athlon XP Mobile 2800+
768MB RAM
30GB HD Space
DVD/CD-RW

pulled my 512MB SODIMM from the machine before I turned it in. . .

what I recieved.

HP Pavillion XE2153US
Athlon Semperon 3000+ (64Bit Woot!)
512MB of Ram
60 GB HD
DVD-R/RW / CD-R/RW

I wish they'd just let me have this one, as it's just a BIT nicer than my old machine. . .

but they did say it was ok to wipe the drive and install whatever on it, as long as they were able to restore to the factory install they would be happy.

Rev

No call recieved in the promised 24 hour period for descision on loander which started at 6:19:15pm 1/1/2006

Called Frys at 6:24pm

Ian placed me on hold twice to check status last time @ 6:32pm. Was on hold for 28 minutes. Called back provided number and had and answer available within 3 minutes to come and pick up my loaner laptop, They say, all I need, is a valid credit card [X] Id [x] and my body [x] I'm also bringing the origonal service contract.

Rev

the backlight on the LCD for my laptop just died. Was working fine yesterday, go to boot it up today, and screens not responding, not a big deal, it's done this before when I've closed the lid without powering it down. I restart it after hard powering it off. Nothing, I punch in my password, let it run, and am leaning back in my chair when I notice that i can see windows in the backgound with the screen tilted just the right way. . .

I purchased an extended 2 year warranty from fry's, it does not cover accidental damage to the laptop, I have dropped it before, but it's worked fine, and it defiantely shows the wear and tear of being a mobile dj rig for over a year. I just hope they don't try to give me to much shit or we will be getting pre-paid legal involved . . . again.

Reviewing the contract now. . . looking at whether I can take it in tonight, or if it will have to be tomorrow. . .

**update**

4:15pm Called frys with faxed coy of service contract, they could no locate the invoice number in their computer system. I have faxed them a copy of the paperwork and await a callback.

4:42pm Frys' called back says I can bring the laptop in and it will pull up in the system. I'm going to run it over on my lunch, once things calm down here after about 6;00pm. Hopefully that doesnt take to long, and hopefully they will provide me with the "loaner" laptop that I can hold hostage until live up to the terms of my service contract.

6:42pm Just got back from Fry's, watch them hem and haw and cluck over the cosmetic damage to the laptop. showed them that the laptop still worked, only the backlight was out. They will be calling within 24hrs to advise whether or not they will provide a loaner as per the service contract. Will have a lawyer ready to fax them a letter if they do not. LCT Backlights can fail from physical trauma, but expect the LCD to be shattered in that case.

Rev

OMG, I'm going to have to buy Half Life 2

http://www.dystopia-game.com/

**drool**

Something to use my Logitech G5 with.


**twitch**

Rev