Last Tuesday (July 26th), our network at work went totally down. Turned out a really old hub crapped out. Tuesday isn’t a good time for that to happen. It’s the last day that Mom’s Meals clients can call in orders for their next deliveries. In other words, it’s wicked busy. Ashley and her co-workers are busy entering the orders they’ve taken. Orders are of course entered into a database via a custom application.
They obviously can’t enter orders while the network is down. We were probably set back about 2 hours by the whole thing. Anyway, I quickly got a temporary network up so the girls could at least enter their orders. Then, after determining that the router wasn’t the cause, I removed one really old hub from the picture and things started looking better.
I headed off to staples to pick up a Linksys EtherFast® 4124 24-Port 10/100 Ethernet Switch. Before we had this, some people’s pc’s were hooked into the router. Others were in that old hub. Now, the only cables going to the router come from the modem and go to the new Linksys switch. Two CAT-V cables going to the router, that’s it. What’s really nice is everyone is now on a 100Mbit network. And everyone is on the Linksys switch.
I also discarded a bunch of unused cables that didn’t seem to serve any purpose other than adding to the clutter. I wish we didn’t have to have all that stuff in the packing room. Ideally, it would be up here in the office somewhere. They wouldn’t get unplugged all the time if it was all up here.
Ashley and I are gonna be going to Almont, Colorado this weekend. We’re leaving Friday the 15th and will be returning Sunday the 23rd. Her family has annual reunions there, I’m going along for the ride this time. Actually, I’ll be the one driving, but you get it. We’re planning on going white water rafting, which I’ve never done but am very excited to try.
I lost my old Teva sandals, which I was pissed about for weeks. I would go through every box in my closet looking for them on a weekly basis. Never found em. I wonder if I left them somewhere. It’s OK now though cuz I bought some more yesterday. They should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday. I also got Ashley a pair.
I had been looking for an iPod to take along with us. I couldn’t spend $350 on one though right before our trip. Had I had that idea a month ago I’d have one by now. It’s gonna kill me not having any tunes. Our cabin’s don’t even have television.
I fear I may end up having to rent a car for the trip. Enterprise says I can rent one of theirs for a total of $209. For the entire trip. That seems kinda cheap considering gasoline prices these days.
We aren’t leaving for a couple days yet but I just wanted to give you all a heads up. This blog will be totally inactive while I’m gone unless I’m somehow able to get internet access. I don’t know who else would want to blog here. I’m gonna take lots of pictures while I’m there. I’ll have some goodies to show when I get back.
UPDATE: I take it back, I don’t have Teva’s on the way. RidgeBound, the store I bought from, isn’t open yet. Their site is up just for testing. They just sent me an e-mail saying the refunded my money and they hope to be officially open soon. Sucky cuz it’s a kick ass outdoor store that accepts PayPal.
I think I may have saw something on this a few days ago, but Of the Mind brought it back to my attention this morning.
Anyway, it seems some senators would like to increase the retirement age in the U.S. to 69. It’s currently at 65. To me, it really doesn’t matter. I’m not stupid enough to rely on social security to retire on. In fact, Michael, from Of the Mind, thinks the way I do about this. Every penny I pay into social security I look at as a complete loss. I never expect to get that money back, and it really pisses me off.
Now, I’m ok with paying taxes, but not social security taxes as I’m not gonna get to see any of it. It’s totally bogus that all the working people in America are basically working to provide for the senior community, which is gonna be extinct in another 20 years or so.
Where’s that leave me? Poorer than I should be and very angry. Social Security should be gotten rid of for the sake of Americans that’ll be alive in 20 years. It’s not a real way for providing financial security to retired peoples. We should instead be teaching people good investment techniques and how to save their own damn money. I’ve managed to save $500 in about 3 weeks. Saving at least a few million by the time I’m 50 shouldn’t be a problem. Be sure that’s not all I’m going to rely on for financial security though. I plan to invest some of the money I’m currently saving. In what exactly, I dunno yet.
I’ve not been very active with this site during the last week. There’s lots of stuff going on at work, some of which I will discuss here. As some of you know, I setup an order verification system a couple months ago. I’ve been doing a whole lot more work on that lately. I had to be to our warehouse in Ankeny at 7:00AM on Saturday.
Anyway, we’ve purchased a couple more scanning systems. I’ve almost got two stations in production now. I still have to program a few features into the second flatbed scanner, but that’s no problem. Probably will do that some time today.
I’ll probably start setting up the third and final scanning station sometime today. I’ve also setup a database server in the office in Ankeny. It’s running Slackware 10.1, kernel 2.4.30, and MySQL 4.1.12. It serves all the order data for the verification stations.
That database server is located almost a 1/4 mile away from the actual scanning stations. I setup a wireless network in the cooler/warehouse last week also. I purchased a few Linksys WUSB54G wireless cards for the scanning PC’s. I absolutely love those cards, I even picked one up for myself at home.
Having the database server in place makes my life so much easier. Previously, I’d have to e-mail the order verification data to our warehouse manager nightly and depend on him to upload it. He wouldn’t always upload it and I’d end up getting in trouble. I setup a nice web frontend to the database server. Once our browsers are pointed to the database server, we just select the file that contains the orders from our desktop and upload them to the db server right through a web browser. I don’t have to worry about other people doing their jobs anymore.
Previously, the database was running on the actual verification system. I wanted to have a central place for all the data since we decided to add a couple more scanning stations. I didn’t want one of the verification systems hosting all the data and having the warehouse guys worry about which PC’s they have on. The way it is now, the only machine they have to worry about turning on is the one they choose to verify orders with.
We also re-designed the scanning “table”. It’s much better now. Before there wasn’t much room for them to set their pre-picked food. Now there’s plenty of room. We also purchased LCD monitors for all the stations. They look really slick now. I’ll probably take a couple pictures later on in the week.
So, that’s been the story of my life for the last week. I don’t expect I’ll have to work as much this week as I’ve got most of the hard work done now.
Yesterday, Ashley and I went to Hickory Grove. It’s a little local lake. We just sat out there for about an hour or so. It was really nice out but way too damn windy. Supposed to get up to 90 degrees today. First time it’s been this warm since August of last year.
Fewer people than expected are actually switching to using something other than Internet Explorer for web browsing. I kept hearing all over the place that Firefox usage would grow to overtake IE. This may still happen, but it’s a long ways off from what I’ve experienced.
This site shows 62% of you are using IE and about 21% are using Firefox. And 59% are running Windows XP, while only 3.4% run Linux. Windows 2000 is second highest at 13.6%.
I suppose the number of IE users isn’t suprising looking at the number of Windows users. About 80% of the people who visit here run some form of Windows. Om Malik’s Broadband Blog elaborates on this topic a little bit more.
I wish I’d see more Firefox users here. I use it as my default browser on Windows and Linux. I can’t believe how much better than IE it is, but some people refuse to switch.
I’ve tried getting people at work to start using FireFox. They’ll use it until I leave the room and then they’re right back with IE. Maybe they just forget how to open FireFox. I mean, I only put an icon on their desktops…
