The Contrarian Technologist

Category Collaboration
After what seems like years of going back and forth with IBM support about the problems with the Workplace Managed Client provisioning server, they still have no solution to my inability to complete the installation. Earlier this week IBM support requested remote administrative access to the server. I pointed out that with my satellite connection working over VNC would be very slow - but they assured me that was the only way to get this resolved. I implemented VNC and sent support the various passwords etc. Sure enough, yesterday, someone accessed the server (the monitor came out of sleep mode) while I was watching, and whoever was at the other end of the connection moved the mouse across the screen and opened the cloudscape command prompt window and then.........nothing. About 20 minutes later I got a message from support that said "your connection is too slow for us to work on the server - is there anything you can do to speed it up?" I wish I had the luxury of sitting at an IBM location with 45Mbs speed at the desktop so I could get frustrated with slow access after less and 30 seconds of trying

Posted by Kit Davis At 11:23 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
On my first attempt at installing the Workplace Managed Client Provisioning Server, I noted that the instructions while confusing, required a two part custom install because I was using the IBM HTTP server installed on the same box as the WCS server. After a dozen or so failures, I contacted support and was told that I had misread the directions, and I should use the "typical install" option. I debated the issue, but they were insistent that I was wrong. Of course when I used the "typical install" the installation failed with exactly the same symptoms as it had previously. Finally after 2 weeks of trying numerous approaches and failed installs, I received a trace string to implement, and I produced a number of logs etc. that were sent off to Level 2 support last week. Today support sent me a message that they had heard back from L2 support that I was doing the install wrong and that I should be using the 2 part custom install that they had told me earlier was wrong. Just to add insult to injury, I was instructed to take screen shots of the installation screens to prove I am doing the installs as instructed! I'm hoping that the problem will get resolved before the next version is released - it has now been over a month.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:30 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Life in Cape Breton
The Calendar says that spring will be happening soon but most people will tell you that Cape Breton never has spring - it's winter one day and summer the next. So while it will be warmer and the days are certainly longer, we could still have cold wintery weather well into April (last year we had a freak 6" of snow on May 15th). But regardless of what the weather the calendar says it's spring next week which means that burning season is over, and road weight restrictions are in effect. The end of burning season means that all the brush and fallen trees need to be cleaned up and the remnants burned or the work will need to wait until late next fall. The road restrictions don't impact me, but this is the only place I have ever lived that uses them. Basically, once the ground starts to thaw, large trucks are prohibited from the secondary roads to eliminate wear and tear. If you saw some of the roads here you would probably wonder what additional damage they could sustain as they seem to be constantly decaying. Since I had the final remains of a giant maple tree to get cut up, I decided I might as well deal with next year's firewood all at once. So I ordered 3 cords of wood which came in 1-2 foot tree sections. The large maple had unfortunately been cut down during the process of clearing for the house and most of it had been cut up last year. However the base remained which was about three feet in diameter and basically too large to completely cut with a chain saw. The only way to cut it up was to cut down through a section as far as the saw would go and then use a wedge and a sledge to split off a chunk so the saw could be used. My friend Donald and his able assistant Johnny showed up last Friday and we spent the better part of 4 hours cutting up the tree. Once we had it in big sections, I spent a day splitting the blocks into cook-stove sized pieces. It was a lot of work, but I now have almost half a cord of what looks like 2x2 pieces. I'm working my way though the other firewood pile with the splitting mall and have so far managed to split and stack about 2 cords. Again, a lot of work, but when I'm done, I'll have almost 3 years of wood stored and drying. The little Jøtul 3B can really heat the house very well all by itself, but by using it to supplement the radiant floor system seems to be the best combination. (My feet stay warm, my heat bills are lower, and I don't have to spend all day hauling firewood into the house.

Of course interspersed with all of this physical activity - if I keep it up for another 20 years I'll be a real buff old guy -- I'm finally getting requests relayed to me from L2 support asking for WMC server installs with various trace switches turned on - so hopefully I will have good news on that front soon.

Posted by Kit Davis At 11:09 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
It is no secret that my internet connection sucks. Unfortunately the only option that is available to me is satellite which works well for broadcast services like TV and pagers, but is technically inadequate for anything that requires two-way interaction such as telephones and the internet. Collectively a number of us are working hard on implementing some optional connectivity technologies but I suspect I will have to live with satellite connectivity a while longer. Even after taking the inherent deficiencies of satellite transmission into account, my service here is less than I contracted for. I've heard from a number of friends and associates who report this site is constantly plagued by time-outs and is practically unusable. Despite my complaints, the ISP dismisses the issues saying that they see nothing wrong on their end; what I lacked was hard evidence of the problem. Luckily for me, I have discovered MySpeed from Visualware (http://myspeed.visualware.com).

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:57 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category Collaboration
Well, another week has gone by without a solution to my problem installing the IBM Workplace Managed Client Provisioning Server and to be honest, no substantive contact from support. I did get a call late last week asking for copies of my installation logs for Portal which I thought was a good sign. Even though I had already examined the logs looking for installation problems I thought that maybe support would identify an issue with the installation I had overlooked. My hopes were somewhat dashed when the support person called back to tell me I had sent the wrong versions because they didn't have the same date time stamp as the logs I had sent for the WMC install. I explained that portal gets installed along with the rest of Workplace and then the WMC server is installed separately. I'm not sure I convinced the support person of this, but he did not press the issue further. I asked what he thought a customer would think if it took this long to get an answer but he wisely ducked the question. I'll keep waiting and trying different configurations.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:55 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
A year after moving north, my 1300+ CD collection is still in boxes out in the garage and will remain there indefinitely. In the year before we left, I slowly converted every CD to WMA files on a hard disk, and every CD is now stored on an 80 GB drive on one of the servers. When I first converted everything to digital files, I used a small ATX style PC as a network attached music player. I used a USB attached SoundBlaster card with an digital optical output to route music to the stereo system. This method worked pretty well, but using a whole PC was certainly overkill, looked out of place, and generated a lot of heat and noise. I started evaluating the various network attached music players with the intention of purchasing a TurtleBeach AudioTron. Along the way, I thankfully discovered the Squeezebox by SlimDevices (http://www.slimdevices.com). This device has revolutionized the way I play music and has been one of my favorite products this past year. It’s about the size of an external floppy drive, and has an Ethernet and two digital output connections. (it is also available in a wireless configuration). Using the remote, I can play, rewind, skip and otherwise manage my collection of music stored on the server’s disk. (The is separate open source software that runs on the server and streams the music to the device) But organizing the music in various playlists, I can choose a selection of music for what ever mood I am in. I have a second device installed in our detached screen-room which is synchronized with the one in the house so that the same music plays in both locations (or I can easily unsync them and play separate streams of music).

Posted by Kit Davis At 3:59 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category Opinion
****** Warning - this entry denigrates one of corporate America's favorite pastimes ******

Posted by Kit Davis At 8:05 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4)