Soulless & Feral

Hey, guess what? I have a new job!

But more importantly, my new file server is arriving in bits and pieces. Now that I have a positive source of income, I’ve decided to suck up the cost of it and ditch the patchwork faux server I am currently using. It isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it isn’t too shabby either. I’m running a newish motherboard and a 2.5ghz dual core, DDR3 RAM, and a whopping 3TB of hard drive space. My intent is to install Server 2008 with Tversity for media sharing, a local domain, and a centralized antivirus solution. I’ll also likely install Hamachi for my own remote access purposes.

Fun stuff!

On the education side, I’ll be pursuing MCITP as planned, but I’ll also be knocking out Security+ before summer.

This past weekend, I upgraded our network to bring it closer to what I envision it being over the next few months. More specifically, I upgraded all of our client machines to Windows 7, took our acting server and installed Home Server Power Pack 3, and set the server’s shares up to better reflect the way I intend the network file structure to be.

So… my thoughts on Home Server. The good? It works as advertised, and seems to run faster and more efficiently than, say, running windows 7 and setting up a half-assed server. The bad?

Aah, the bad. For some reason, Windows Home Server did not recognize my dynamic drives as being “real.” Being new to the WHS interface, I assumed that adding a drive to the data tab was simply adding it as a listed drive. Alas, this was not the case… and as the drive was not formatted as a basic drive, it just went ahead and formatted the drive without asking.

Have you ever recovered data from a spanned drive? No? I don’t recommend it. Not. Fun.

That was the only major fuckup in the whole process, but there are a few nitpicks I have.

One: I cannot disable the PC backups manually per machine. Not that I will want to when I get our real WHS, but space is at a premium right now. I may be missing the option, though.

Two: Setting up shares is very dumb-proof, but I would prefer to be able to set manual mapping without having to do some Admin Panel tweaking. Along the same lines, I’d like the WHS client console to support mapped drives. My network relies heavily on mapped drives on the client side (it makes managing data deliciously simple.) I can has mapped drives?

Three: WHS does not show the drive space on the data drives properly. This is really, truly a nitpick… but how hard would it be to reflect the correct drive space?

The add-ins installation and documentation could use some work too… and despite promises, I have yet to get my 120 day trial key.

Other than that, I think it’ll be a go. Why not just install Server 2008? Media streaming and the automatic back ups.

Hooray for my new laptop!

I finally received my HDX laptop today, after literal weeks of waiting, customs delays, and annoyances all around. I could not be more pleased with my purchase; the laptop is even better than I thought it would be and runs Windows 7 flawlessly. I’m currently running through the ever-fun process of getting all of my apps up to speed again, which (despite a network hitch) has gone pretty smooth for what it is.

Complaints? None. None at all. I’m not looking forward to setting up iTunes (I’d dump it if anything else synced my iPhone properly) but other than that I’m just about set. Setting up iTunes is bound to be a crap sandwich. Ah well.

As for the name, my new devices have been decidedly Norse. Munnin, my iPhone, is now complemented by Huginn, the HDX. As they are my connection with the sum total of human knowledge, I felt it appropriate to name them after what were essentially Odin’s search engines.

As for Tyche? Predictably, she threw a fit this morning and burned out her power supply. Perhaps it was chance… or perhaps she was sentient and didn’t like that I was dumping her for a hot new dish. We’ve made up, though… she’s serving as a temporary media server before heading into a gracious retirement to the spares closet.

And that, folks, was pretty much my day. Squee-worthy new gear, followed by a whole lot of setting up said gear.

“My new Windows machine doesn’t support my 7 year old printer and my 6 year old computer with 64mb RAM runs SLOW. Microsoft is evil, PCs are crap, and I’m moving to a Mac!”

“My brand new Mac only supports these 5 video cards. Isn’t Apple great? They restrict what I can use so I don’t have to think! Oh, and they wisely made my 2.5 year old Mac obsolete so I knew it was time to upgrade.”

–

“PCs come with tons of software I don’t need…. M$ is trying to shove this mail thing down my throat. What if I want to use an alternative program, you fascists!”

“Macs come with tons of software I don’t need… but what if I want to use it someday? Apple is just looking out for me! Why would I want to use an alternative program, you fascist?”

–

“Why can’t my PC make french fries?! Windows sucks!”

“Having a proprietary output for my external video is a FEATURE.”

–

“What? Microsoft can’t mount .DMG files natively? LOL, Microsoft is lame!”

“Macs can’t write to NTFS; I blame Microsoft. Or George Bush. George Bush’s Microsoft machine!”

–

“The programs available to do this task on a PC don’t match my preferred methods. Microsoft sucks!”

“The programs available to do this task on a Mac don’t match my preferred methods. I blame myself for sucking.”

–

“UAC is the devil! Stupid program popping up to protect me against being dumb. I hate you, M$!”

“Requiring the admin password to do anything major is orgasmic! Thank you, Apple, for protecting me against being dumb!”

–

And so on. I’m half-joking… but only half.

Meet my new laptop! I look forward to her arrival.

HP HDX16t Premium Series customizable Notebook PC

• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit) <– Which will be removed so I can install Windows 7 Ultimate.

• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P7450 (2.13GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)

• 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)

• 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection <– I was going to do the 500GB, but most files will be on the network, stored on a Synology box.

• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT

•  16.0″ diagonal High Definition HP Ultra BrightView Infinity Display (1920x1080p)

• Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer <– Not something I need, but the upgrade was free!

• Webcam + Fingerprint Reader with HP Imprint Finish (Fluid) <– Nothing a bit of duct tape can’t solve.

• Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card with Bluetooth

• Backlit Keyboard <– Win.

• 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery