After Hours

IT and radio engineering are becoming one and the same with computer
automation, computer editing, computer this and that.  Networking
is a big thang too.  <br />
<br />
Currently I am remodelling a studio.  My first challenge is how to
run new CAT5 into the room.  Not an easy task with metal
enclosures with little access.  Tried plan A today and
failed.  I think plan B is going to work.  For a 20 year old
sound isolation enclosure it is good, but by modern day practices it is
not practicla at all.<br />
<br />
Computers planned:  Enco DAD32 digital storage system (client),
VoxPro digital phone editor (on a WinXP box), internet/info system
(WinXP), and many monitors.  Even the new phone system runs on
CAT5.  Our new router is run on CAT5, an SAS 32KD router which is
configured by yet another WinXP machine.  Fun fun fun.<br />
<br />
Later!<br />

I'm working on this studio remodel and I am 2 1/2 days behind where I
want to be.  Why?  My boss.  I have an agenda and he
comes in and wants to do something else.  I just don't understand
why or how to tell him that he GETS IN THE WAY.   This guy is
very reactive and impulsive on one extreme and on the other he analyzes
everything to death!<br />
Has anyone else out there have a boss that gets in the way?<br />
<br />
Dude, I think I should get power run before we start pulling cables.  Uh, yeah.<br />
<br />
Back to work.<br />

Well, my CCNA expires next year, so I am on track to study and recert
on this one.  My goal some day is to jump up to CCNP, but
unfortunately I do not get a lot of hands on with the stuff.  I do
help with our PIX at times as I have a better grasp of Cisco IOS than
our IT guy.  <br />
Since I don't have room for a real lab at home I purchased the CCNA sim
software that Cisco now puts out.  It was the former Boson
software.  I may purchase the Boson software since it can do a
little more and would be good for constant practice and CCNP study.<br />
<br />
Any thoughts on this?<br />
<br />
Later.<br />

Our IT guy is out this week and I came across something that really
baffled me for a bit.  This person was having issues opening up
Word docs from Outlook.  Things took a long time.  She even
did the customary reboot, so she obviously has experience with these
things.  Win2K workstation.  While I was messing with this
machine I noticed the slow down, too.  It was weird to me since
these types of slow downs occur with the Dell laptops.  The damn
dadtray.exe process will run amok.  Well, this time I catch the
thing dogging down good.  100% CPU.  I check the processes
and rtvscan.exe process was running away.  I could not stop it,
either.<br />
<br />
Norton Antivirus Corp. Edition.  I went into this and stopped the
realtime protection for the time being.  I then noticed it was set
to scan ALL files.  It was scanning the network drives!  I
stopped that in a hurry and reconfigured it to scan the local machine
only.  Everything went back to normal and Word began to work
normally, if you can say normal about MS Word.<br />
<br />
Wacky stuff continues dat to day.  <br />
<br />

My new arrived last week. A treo 650! Why and new one? I broke my 600. Must have sat on it wrong and busted the keypad or portion thereof.<br /><br />I find this to be a handy device as it syncs with my Outlook wirelessly, so my contacts and lists of things to do are with me all the time. The web surfing is slow, but that is to be expected. Messenging is not too bad. I'm getting used to that and has come in handy when contacting the boss on not so important matters.

<br /><br />I read today that Palm and M$ have made an agreement and soon, next year, the Windows OS will be on Treo's. Does this mean I will have to reboot my phone many times a day to make it work? I have never used a Windows mobile OS before, so maybe I will get that, but for now I am quite happy with my Palm OS. It's a bummer that Palm did not hold out longer.

<br /><br />Have a nice evening.

First I don't know why I have to type in HTML mode here, but that's besides the point.<br /><br /> Today I was working on an interesting problem that I still have not found a solution. On this laptop/workstation when the person logs onto Outlook, she gets a prompt that her password has expired. Well on the server, Exchange 2003, the account does not show it is time to change the password nor does it say it's locked out. We've tried to uninstall Outlook 2003, clean up the registry, and then reinstall. Yeah, our company did not get the Office Suite, so it is just Outlook 2003. After the installation, it still does the same thing.<br /><br /> An interesting note on this is when you open Outlook it prompts for a new password, when you click OK to change it, there is no name in the user field. How does it know that this account is due to change passwords if the account has not been accessed?

Could it be an Exchange issue or a DC replication issue? DNS is working, all machines have connectivity. This is the only client that has an issue, too. We think that there is some residual left over from the upgrade to Outlook 2003 client. We've checked, but cannot find anything that is helpful. We are talking of wiping the drive and starting fresh at this point.
<br /><br />The weird and wacky world of PC troubleshooting!<br /><br />

I was unable to learn from the experience today being busy with other
fine stuff.  I asked Joe IT what seemed to be the solution to our
problem yesterday.  As it turns out an account in Exchange was
removed, the Self account.  I do not recall doing it, but our IT
guy remembers, so it may have been on his watch during the tag
team.  At the same time there was another domain account that was
missing.  Now this was really wierd and must have gone when the
upgrade to Outlook 2003 happened.  <br />
<br />
At least we know what it is and can fix it now.  Well, we know who
to attack when this necessary domain account disappears when we do
upgrades!<br />
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