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Feb. 7th, 2007 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogNo, I still haven't written about the trip to Detroit. It was good. It was really good actually. I covered all the highlights in the last bit of text I tapped out on the subject; maybe all the little details aren't significant enough to post about. I do have to note how amusing it was that, while inside Michigan Central Station, an imposing fourteen floor abandoned structure that, in addition to having a razor wire-topped chain link fence around it and being plastered with great big 'No trespassing' signs, was also not more than ten blocks or so from a large police station, Posi and I bumped into no less than two other multi-person groups who were exploring, and we may have heard a third one too. As Posi pointed out, it was like a convention in there!
The best part of it though, and probably the part most suitable as an illustration of the nature of the city we were in, is this. Posi and I were waiting for our chance to slip out of the entranceway we'd found. After several cars went by, we finally judged our escape to be safe and, one right after the other, popped suddenly out into the real world. We were met by a homeless gentleman who reacted to our sudden appearance with a, probably deserved, "What the hell!?" Posi apologized for having startled him and, apparently reassured that we weren't killers on the way back from having disposed of a body or something, asked us if we had fifty cents or a dollar for some beer. Yes, less than two seconds after extricating ourselves from one of Detroit's ruined jewels, we were hit up for beer money by a bum. Somehow, it was very fitting; Posi couldn't help but give him a dollar. I think it seemed like good karma.
I've been typically busy this past while. Laundry had gotten away from me again, so I put off visiting Posi today in order to work at home and ensure that I had something to clothe my carcass while at work tomorrow. Concerns of appearing at work nude not withstanding, I'm certainly not going out in this weather without a full compliment of body coverings, thank you very much.
I've been out to the hospital a couple times to visit a friend who's been in there for a few days now. I won't say much more on that subject since I don't know how much of what's going on he wants to be public, but I'm worried about him. I think he'll be okay, but positive thoughts are always appreciated.
I spent a while on Saturday at Seven Mile Faire with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serinthia and todd_riverden; that was lots of fun. I picked up a 100 piece security bit set that has tri-wings, offset Phillips, spanners, splines, security Torx, standard Torx down to a T-5 (wow, that's small!), security hexes, Pozidrives, Robertsons, and more! Nice deal for fifteen bucks if you ask me. I think it's going to be a good while before I find another product that I don't have the right bits to disassemble. Of course, I promptly left the case at Dwarf's house on Sunday.
Why was I up there? Well, his brother owns a small real-estate business, and he wants his appraisers to be able to VPN to the server at his office in Dwarf's house to access programs. I spent a while wrestling with the Windows VPN under Advanced Server 2000, but ended up getting nowhere. I don't know what the problem is, but I think it may be specific to that computer. So, I went home and set up an old P-Pro 200 machine with the same OS. I finally got that done, patched to date, and ghosted to a secondary drive on Monday night; I just haven't had time to do any testing yet. And if I still can't figure it out, Posi posted a link to a fantastic site that offers open source alternatives to proprietary software (www.osalt.com) wherein I found a link to an open source VPN solution; I have a backup if I can't make the Windows one work. Still haven't gotten back to my eGroupware install yet either. I'm making progress; I at least got to the config page. I just have to figure out how to make Apache load the MySQL extension. In any case, OSALT looks really fantastic from the brief perusals I've made of it; you should check it out.
It would be nice if I was getting some kind of consultants fee for the work I'm doing, but to be honest, I may not be good enough at it yet. The way I look at it, I'm helping out a friend and getting free dinner in the process, so I'm happy. I'm thinking though, that to prepare for similar requests for assistance in the future, I may take four of the small form factor PIII HP Deskpro computers I have down in the basement and set them up with basic loads of Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 server, and Windows XP, just so I have easy access to all of them as test environments. I'll have plenty of room to back up ghost images of them onto my primary server. I may just start doing that when I have some time.
I haven't had a lot of time recently. There are a bunch of little things wrong with the house we're in, and now the dining room light has stopped working too, which makes at least one middling-sized thing. I'm going to concentrate this week on cleaning up so we can have the handy man fix some stuff. At this point, I'm actually a little worried that the landlord is going to complain about us neglecting the place. I'm going to patch the small holes that I made upstairs in the plaster wall while moving a desk myself before the handyman goes upstairs to fix the light in the computer room, but we have a dripping faucet and broken door handle downstairs and what seems to be a loose step right below the stair landing. It's ok; I started cleaning downstairs tonight and it really wasn't as bad as it looked. We'll have everything looking pretty good soon, and then we can get the rest of the stuff taken care of.
I'm hoping that once that's out of the way, I'll have more time to spend on my own projects, and online, in the evenings. I feel a little disconnected from from some people lately, and I need to try to get online more and talk. I've never been very good at that, and I should try to get better.
I guess that's about it for now. 'Till next!
The best part of it though, and probably the part most suitable as an illustration of the nature of the city we were in, is this. Posi and I were waiting for our chance to slip out of the entranceway we'd found. After several cars went by, we finally judged our escape to be safe and, one right after the other, popped suddenly out into the real world. We were met by a homeless gentleman who reacted to our sudden appearance with a, probably deserved, "What the hell!?" Posi apologized for having startled him and, apparently reassured that we weren't killers on the way back from having disposed of a body or something, asked us if we had fifty cents or a dollar for some beer. Yes, less than two seconds after extricating ourselves from one of Detroit's ruined jewels, we were hit up for beer money by a bum. Somehow, it was very fitting; Posi couldn't help but give him a dollar. I think it seemed like good karma.
I've been typically busy this past while. Laundry had gotten away from me again, so I put off visiting Posi today in order to work at home and ensure that I had something to clothe my carcass while at work tomorrow. Concerns of appearing at work nude not withstanding, I'm certainly not going out in this weather without a full compliment of body coverings, thank you very much.
I've been out to the hospital a couple times to visit a friend who's been in there for a few days now. I won't say much more on that subject since I don't know how much of what's going on he wants to be public, but I'm worried about him. I think he'll be okay, but positive thoughts are always appreciated.
I spent a while on Saturday at Seven Mile Faire with
serinthia and todd_riverden; that was lots of fun. I picked up a 100 piece security bit set that has tri-wings, offset Phillips, spanners, splines, security Torx, standard Torx down to a T-5 (wow, that's small!), security hexes, Pozidrives, Robertsons, and more! Nice deal for fifteen bucks if you ask me. I think it's going to be a good while before I find another product that I don't have the right bits to disassemble. Of course, I promptly left the case at Dwarf's house on Sunday.Why was I up there? Well, his brother owns a small real-estate business, and he wants his appraisers to be able to VPN to the server at his office in Dwarf's house to access programs. I spent a while wrestling with the Windows VPN under Advanced Server 2000, but ended up getting nowhere. I don't know what the problem is, but I think it may be specific to that computer. So, I went home and set up an old P-Pro 200 machine with the same OS. I finally got that done, patched to date, and ghosted to a secondary drive on Monday night; I just haven't had time to do any testing yet. And if I still can't figure it out, Posi posted a link to a fantastic site that offers open source alternatives to proprietary software (www.osalt.com) wherein I found a link to an open source VPN solution; I have a backup if I can't make the Windows one work. Still haven't gotten back to my eGroupware install yet either. I'm making progress; I at least got to the config page. I just have to figure out how to make Apache load the MySQL extension. In any case, OSALT looks really fantastic from the brief perusals I've made of it; you should check it out.
It would be nice if I was getting some kind of consultants fee for the work I'm doing, but to be honest, I may not be good enough at it yet. The way I look at it, I'm helping out a friend and getting free dinner in the process, so I'm happy. I'm thinking though, that to prepare for similar requests for assistance in the future, I may take four of the small form factor PIII HP Deskpro computers I have down in the basement and set them up with basic loads of Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 server, and Windows XP, just so I have easy access to all of them as test environments. I'll have plenty of room to back up ghost images of them onto my primary server. I may just start doing that when I have some time.
I haven't had a lot of time recently. There are a bunch of little things wrong with the house we're in, and now the dining room light has stopped working too, which makes at least one middling-sized thing. I'm going to concentrate this week on cleaning up so we can have the handy man fix some stuff. At this point, I'm actually a little worried that the landlord is going to complain about us neglecting the place. I'm going to patch the small holes that I made upstairs in the plaster wall while moving a desk myself before the handyman goes upstairs to fix the light in the computer room, but we have a dripping faucet and broken door handle downstairs and what seems to be a loose step right below the stair landing. It's ok; I started cleaning downstairs tonight and it really wasn't as bad as it looked. We'll have everything looking pretty good soon, and then we can get the rest of the stuff taken care of.
I'm hoping that once that's out of the way, I'll have more time to spend on my own projects, and online, in the evenings. I feel a little disconnected from from some people lately, and I need to try to get online more and talk. I've never been very good at that, and I should try to get better.
I guess that's about it for now. 'Till next!
