A Budget
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A Budget Last Updated: Wanna buy a pen?
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Update At When I was a kid, a school day took forever - a summer went by in a blur (except for August when you didn't have central air), and Christmas Vacation was broken into two parts - the part you were sentenced to before Christmas day, and the fraction of a second you got from the opening of the presents to the return to school. Now there are days when I look at my watch when I'm in my office, gape, check the phone, and realize yes, it's 3:30 pm, my day has flown by.
[Link] Tonight I took a call from a nice lady named Joanie from a nearby hauling firm. The quote was $12.95 a month, guaranteed for three years. Weekly recycling pickup, use our own bins, and, oh, yeah, we get three months free for signing up, and another month free every year we're with 'em - so the total works out to about $36 a quarter. Let's see. I'm paying $70 a quarter now, and that's due to go up to $90. Sometimes it pays to get pissed off and do one's homework. On another front, yes, I admit that I was suckered when it came to Thursday's fish pictures. No, they weren't really from the tsunami. It just makes an old saw timely. In my defense, I admitted "...I can't vouch for the validity of the pictures..." Oh well.
[Link] I was talking to one of our arborists today, and he said "well, in a month, things will start heating up." Shortly thereafter, I found myself listening to the original "Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum. It tossed me back. I never heard WSoP when it first made the rounds. I heard of it when I was in college, and researching a term paper on the Beatles. No, it wasn't a bit of fluff - it was a freshman lit exercise in college fluff-making. In college, all of the freshman of my time had to take a class called "colloquium" - this essential and required class was the frosh equivalent of "College Babysitting 01" - attendance was not (officially) taken, but you came in and discussed a topic near and dear to the prof's heart. Befitting my status as the second leftover bastard stepchild of a University's industrial complex employee, I was "fortunate" enough to register in the last group of freshmen (when I registered the first time around) at SJU. Add to this I had the only avowed card-carrying communist as my faculty advisor (what I knew about communism you could pack into a duffle bag and still have room for a set of overnight things. I was smart enough to know it was a socio-political movement, and that few modern "communist countries" were truly communist - most were totalitarian - and I knew some of the fundamentals. Beyond that, the prof's communist bent made about as much sense to me as it would a Duck on the Las Vegas strip). The Communist, seeing my deplorable gap in foreign languages, undertook to have me learn one. My choices were hebrew or greek. Right. He also registered me - an avowed business major - in an intro to accounting class, a business law class (er, I'm a freshman, and in the registration, it clearly stated "UPPERCLASSMEN ONLY"), Colloquium, and one other utterly forgettable class - and band. The language class I dropped before I even reached the registrar's office with the paperwork. Swapped it for a Stats class. The business law class lasted a few weeks before I lobbed the towel in (like a Roger Clemens fastball "lob"). Colloquium, though - that was rough. I was stuck with the only one left open - theology. Yes, each colloquium class was on a different subject. Some were history, some were science, some literature, some other sciences, business, etc. And I, the business major, landed in a theology one. Yech. While it did come in handy so I could quote Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" and spell the old fart's name without looking it up (boy, that's worth a couple of grand), and intelligently discuss other thorny theological concepts (such as the fact that bothers many of my friends in St. Cloud that the Order of St. Benedict is not subject to the lead of the local bishop, but directly to the Holy Father in Rome through the Abbot Primate - which pisses off the St. Cloudites, because they're terminally conservative, and the Benedictines have always been just a little out of step with everyone - so it goes), but otherwise, it didn't do much to keep me in school. And I dropped out. When I returned, I went hunting for a class I could stomach - as a returning freshman, I needed a colloquium credit. And so I grabbed onto one that was about music (hey, I did my time with the dry and dusties). Early in the term I had to come up with a subject for a final term paper. I figured I'd push the envelope. I came up with a thesis which said, essentially, that the lives of the four members of the Beatles were seriously and detrimentally affected by their over-the-top superstardom. I was so certain this thing would be shot down that I barely bothered to check for resource availability. I was so certain that the project would be dumped in favor of something like "the origins of monastic chant" that I made the thesis statement broad and rather weak. Foolish mortal. The prof loved it. I crafted the introduction (first three paragraphs - laying out the premise, the thesis, and an introduction to the arguments) and figured "That'll be that." Nope. The prof loved it. So I went to work. The reason "Whiter Shade of Pale" stuck in my head was because of the nine books I read about the Beatles (everything to which our library had immediate access), the most useful mentioned only about five non-Beatle songs - and one of them was Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale." It was the only one I hadn't heard. I hunted high and low, but in a college campus dedicated to "cutting edge music", there wasn't much chance to find, let alone hear, that sort of "oldies" music. I searched, high and low, and found nothing. I finished the paper. For good measure, I also taped a number of selections from my Beatles collection (I had most of their albums at the time, including the Red and Blue "Greatest Hits" albums) that showed their evolution. I got an A++ on the paper. The prof positively crowed about it in class. I was embarrassed, to say the least. But I finished the paper and scored a point for my Colloquium class. Didn't need to take that ever again... Some years later I managed to stumble across a remake (using, IIRC, Sammy Hagar - I could be wrong) of WSoP, and was appalled. That was inspiring to the Beatles? It wasn't until years after THAT that I heard the original - and I liked it. All of this is tangental to my point, which is that while I dearly love the next few months of the year coming up (March through August are about my favorite - warm temps aside, I like the "potential" rather than the actual harvest portion of the exercise - perhaps that's why I'm in computers and technology - there's a hell of a lot of potential - not all of it reached, unfortunately). But it's also somewhat wistful and sad. Spring usually marks the point where you say goodbye to someone or something - in my case, it was usually some family funeral that happened in the spring (my Grandmother died near Mother's Day), but also the friends that I managed to make through the long school years - most of whom I've now forgotten. Weird. Oh well. It was nearly forty today. And it'll get warmer this week. Now THAT'S weird...
[Link] I keep banging my head on the one incontrovertable factor - there is a fine line between discovering the installed software on one's network and the malicious inventory of one's network. Since I'm behind the firewall, I should think it well within my rights - yet at the same time I'm fully aware that I don't want the "M&M" approach to the network. Hard shell, and that's that. Anyone got any tricks they're willing to share? I thought I could query the registry, but some machines have had multiple versions of office running on them. One has had a new version of office installed, then an older version of Access installed over the new version of access - ugly, but it works. Any thoughts/ideas/inspirations would be appreciated... |
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Update At Of course, if Jackson had stuck with the chimps, their testimony isn't admissable in a court of law. Yet. Though if any state in the union were to admit testimony by monkeys, I'd put my money on California... Further content will have to wait until I look less like a tire tread (or something a tire tread - trod? - whatever - upon). Rough days, yes...
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Update At At least, on a work/home front level. Which is why I'm not going to bore you with them here. Instead, I shall leave you with a thought that crossed my desk at one point today...
...and in modern medicine today, more money is being spent on erectile dysfunction and breast enhancement than on Alzheimer's. So in about 25 years we'll have a large population of elderly with perky breasts, huge, permanent erections, and not even the slightest clue what to do with 'em.
[Link] Let me back up. On Monday, I asked if anyone knew how to determine on login what someone's application versions were. That's pretty vague. Here's what I'm really looking for. I want to run a batch file when someone logs into the network. Based on the version of installed application, I want the batch file to do certain things. What I was hoping for was some sort of reg hack or little tool I could query - or a check on the size of the file, or something like that. What we ended up doing was both more and less elegant than I'd hoped. When a user starts our primary application, we dump various values into a table. We grab the version of Excel, Word, Access, DAO, Outlook, the operating system, and other essential pieces. We compare them to a table. If user %UNAM% has logged in before, and if all of their versions are unchanged, then we simply increment a login count by one. If user %UNAM% has not logged in, then we grab the information, dump it into the table, and write out a wee batch file in a folder everyone has on their hard drive. The login script for every user has a line which says IF EXIST C:\FOLDERNAME\EXENV.BAT C:\FOLDERNAME\EXENV.BAT EXENV.BAT is a simple file - SET MSVA=9.0 SET MSVW=9.0 SET MSVD=2.5 SET MSVS=Win2K SET MSVO=9.0 SET UNAM=%Username% There are other variables, but that sets up Access (MSVA), Word, DAO (Data Access Objects, installed by MDAC), the Operating system, and Outlook - along with the username. Then, later in the login script there is a call to "MAUPG.BAT" MAUPG.BAT starts out with the following @ECHO OFF IF %MSVA%!==! GOTO :NOTSET IF %MSVA%!==8.0! GOTO :97OFFICE IF %MSVA%!==9.0! GOTO :2000OFFICE etc. (note - I could be wrong on those version numbers - I'm doing them from memory). The :97OFFICE routine copies the Access97 version of an application to the user's hard drive. The 2000Office routine does the same for the Office 2000 version of Access. And so forth. There are problems with this routine - if there's an upgrade, the user needs to go into the application before I'll find out about it - so that's bad. Then again, if the user goes into the application, we have a chunk of code which (I think) will report an error, and tell the user to reboot. It'll have stored the file by this time, so that works. It's not pretty, but hey, it's functional.
[Link] I listened for a while, then grunted after one particularly stupid comment. At this point they started asking me why I was grunting. "You don't join the military to support a president." "Yes, you do - you join to do what he tells you." "No, not really, no. Look at the oath you swear. All military branches require an oath, and every oath requires you to uphold and defend the United States, it's constitution, and follow the lawful orders of your superiors." "So you think the war in Iraq is legal?" "I didn't say that. Look, I've had many friends in the military - you do not sign up because of the President. You sign up to do a job. You defend ALL OF US. And the Constitution, and what it stands for. You're not defending the President. Right now there are men and women dying in Iraq because the President ordered that we do something - and we did it. Done. But if you get into the military, you won't be supporting the President - or not him or her alone, at any rate." "That's not true." "Okay. Good luck with that, then. Sorry I snorted." I could see the kid looking a whole lot more serious the rest of the night. Good for him. I'd much rather have him think something like that through. I've never been in the military - sometimes I wish I had. But that's water under the bridge. The bottom line is that it's not for everyone, and you had damned well better understand what you're signing up to do. If you don't, you're in for a long, ugly couple of years. So, once break ended, I went into the back room - and ended up pulling the plastic off an entire seven-foot rack of thongs. And I have finally landed in that nasty, ugly little place that all fathers eventually end up - I'm looking at lingere that's about my daughter's size, disgusted I'm even touching it, and should my daughter ever show up with any of it before she's married, I will personally kill any male she knows... Unless they can prove they didn't buy it for her. Should one young male be stupid enough to admit to his dastardly deed (possible; we males aren't particularly well-known for higher brain functions when certain other impulses engage), he won't die. He'll wish to, but he will not. At least, not quickly.
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[Link] I'll take them in reverse order. Thursday night, I failed to explain myself here completely - I was more clear to the young men in the break room. My point to them was that it matters little who the president is - it matters little that there is a president. The important thing is that one part of the President's job is Commander-in-chief. If many of the other tools fail (under normal administrations - this one's bloodthirsty), the military becomes the blunt instrument of change. And it matters little who the president is - all that matters is that he has given an order, and it is every military person's duty to carry it out. The average grunt (which I expect this guy to become) can occasionally question an order as being lawful - if he has to do it more than once, he'd better become more well-acquainted with the law, because he's going to be looking at a general courts martial if he screws the pooch that many times. In regards to the trash issues, I've signed up with the new hauler. I start the new service on 2-19. My trash pickup will be Wednesdays. I will be paying $36 a quarter, rather than the $67 I was or the $80 I would be. And I get the first quarter free. AND the company's phone number also happens to be their home number, which they answered friday evening. Slick. In regards to the computer issues of the week, I had a couple you'd probably love to hear about. My favorite was the computer that went absolutely schizo. It went a little something like this. We installed Office 2003 and a new version of our core database on this computer. One of the nice benefits of Outlook 2003, which comes with Office 2003, is the ability to limit what systems have access to your Outlook data - address books and the like. So there's this wonderfully neat little deal where you allow a program access to the Outlook data, but only for a defined time period. Wonderful, right? Unless you're trying to schedule appointments and query schedules. I'd call the developer for this little feature a goat-fornicating son of a seven-times illegitimate attorney who was himself the object of an amorous hippopotamus's affections when the hippo OD's on Cialis (or ©1aLi5, as the pr0n spam promises), but I'm sure I'd get sued. So I'll just rest assured that said developer will be soon romanced by a ninth-hell demon, and leave it at that. No, I won't. Porcine-fornicating illegitimate offspring of a prostitute. Anyway - I had a consultant whose last day was Wednesday. And, as we all know, the very worst time to try something is the last day... which is what happened. He thought "well, Outlook 2000 is close to Outlook 2003..." No. Not really. No. Which is how, I suppose, Windows came to believe that there were two complete versions of office on this machine. But I could not remove Office 2000, because "there is an install in progress which must be completed." Okay, so try to complete the install. "There is an install in progress which must be completed." Right. Let's try yanking Office 2003 off the machine. "There is an install in progress which must be completed." Oh, diddle. In the four-letter sense of the word. So I whipped out my 24-inch registry scalpel, performed a backup, and then ripped out any registry key that mentioned office, outlook, or anything related. Then I was able to remove BOTH versions of Office (I guess once emasculated, the brain surgery wasn't that big a deal), and then re-installed Office 2003. And I was FINALLY able to access calendar items (the original cause of the "Hey, John, can you come look at this?" was "unable to access this resource. Please restart Outlook and try again."), click on links in e-mails and get to web sites, and all the other pieces. Except for that barnyard-loving idiot's ideas of "security." This week I'm staring down the ugly quad-barrel of an NT-4 server with no defrag tools, no recent backups, the inability to allow saving or copying TO the server of large files, and a broken tape drive. Can you say "bend over, it's going to be both ugly AND expensive?" I looked for a defrag tool - which at this point the recommendations are running - well, twelve to none in favor of Diskkeeper - which happens to be $994 for a single-server edition. Don't know about you, but my budget isn't often in the habit of excreting various thousand-dollar expenditures like this without some pain. Then again, a thousand dollars beats holy hell out of fifteen for two new servers to replace it... Anyway, I also owe a very large tip of the virtual hat to Mr. Hellewell, who pointed me up the weird road with the REG QUERY tool - nice. I wish it worked for me. Oh well. Tomorrow starts another hellishly long week - double-booked Monday, triple-booked on Tuesday, work Wednesday, off Thursday, possibly off Friday, and then a busy weekend. Whoosh.
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