Delayed Start

The weather is still kinda ugly and the roads aren't cleared so rather than being on my merry way to work, I'm going to telecommute for a couple of hours. I'm sure I will be at the office by later this morning but I'll wait for the other impatient nut jobs to get off the roads first.

I suppose I should go set an example for my neighbours by clearing our own sidewalk and walkway...

Delayed Start

The weather is still kinda ugly and the roads aren't cleared so rather than being on my merry way to work, I'm going to telecommute for a couple of hours. I'm sure I will be at the office by later this morning but I'll wait for the other impatient nut jobs to get off the roads first.

I suppose I should go set an example for my neighbours by clearing our own sidewalk and walkway...

Office Ghost Town

There's me and one other sysadmin in the Urbana data center today. After a quick exchange of e-mails, I've found precisely two others in our Reston data center. I'm now frantically reassigning work tickets to the available bodies --myself included-- so we don't have to reschedule a lot of work.

Traffic was light although the few commuters on the road were clearly terrified of the slush. In a couple of spots, I'd agree: I270 northbound effectively was two lanes wide the entire distance to my office, even though there's 3 lanes and 4 lanes of physical pavement... the MVA simply hasn't plowed some lanes at all. There's also one major spot where the drains are clearly blocked: there's a swimming pool of water across all lanes which could easily trap small vehicles.

It was a source of great amusement to see that all of the vehicles --and there were lots-- which had spun out and were abandoned in the snowbanks and medians were all SUVs. :-)

Office Ghost Town

There's me and one other sysadmin in the Urbana data center today. After a quick exchange of e-mails, I've found precisely two others in our Reston data center. I'm now frantically reassigning work tickets to the available bodies --myself included-- so we don't have to reschedule a lot of work.

Traffic was light although the few commuters on the road were clearly terrified of the slush. In a couple of spots, I'd agree: I270 northbound effectively was two lanes wide the entire distance to my office, even though there's 3 lanes and 4 lanes of physical pavement... the MVA simply hasn't plowed some lanes at all. There's also one major spot where the drains are clearly blocked: there's a swimming pool of water across all lanes which could easily trap small vehicles.

It was a source of great amusement to see that all of the vehicles --and there were lots-- which had spun out and were abandoned in the snowbanks and medians were all SUVs. :-)

C1 Dancing Cancelled Tonight

The last of our regular C1 Wednesday night workshops has been cancelled due to road conditions. Bummer.

Ah, well... AC/DC is this coming weekend. Some of my newly composed C1 material won't have the benefit of a test-drive before presenting it Saturday evening but that's the way it goes... Memo to self: Keep it really simple.

C1 Dancing Cancelled Tonight

The last of our regular C1 Wednesday night workshops has been cancelled due to road conditions. Bummer.

Ah, well... AC/DC is this coming weekend. Some of my newly composed C1 material won't have the benefit of a test-drive before presenting it Saturday evening but that's the way it goes... Memo to self: Keep it really simple.

iMac Memory Update

Still no joy trying to figure out why my iMac only recognizes 256 MB of a 512 MB memory card. I have a service call placed to the RAM vendor to see what they advise.

On the good side, I bravely opened the rest of the iMac shell to find the other piece of RAM. The people and web sites I had consulted previously greatly overstated how difficult it was to get to the DIMM: only an extra layer of shielding and electronics needed to be removed to gain access. Imagine my surprise to find that the internal primary DIMM is not only utterly different RAM format from the secondary SoDIMM, but also it's the same type my older XP box utilizes.

Alas, my XP machine only has 256 MB DIMMs so swapping them into the primary RAM slot wouldn't help the iMac. I ordered two 512 MB DIMMs for the XP machine last Saturday and they should arrive any day now... I could plunk one immediately into the iMac to increase its memory while I get the secondary SoDIMM issue sorted out. I'm currently bidding on an additional 512 MB DIMM on eBay (currently $20) so the XP box will get fully upgraded eventually.

Who knew this minor RAM upgrade would become such a pain in the ass? True, this is the sort of system engineering foolishness which keeps me gainfully employed, which probably explains why I have this cumpulsion to shower every time I delve into these kinds of issues...

iMac Memory Update

Still no joy trying to figure out why my iMac only recognizes 256 MB of a 512 MB memory card. I have a service call placed to the RAM vendor to see what they advise.

On the good side, I bravely opened the rest of the iMac shell to find the other piece of RAM. The people and web sites I had consulted previously greatly overstated how difficult it was to get to the DIMM: only an extra layer of shielding and electronics needed to be removed to gain access. Imagine my surprise to find that the internal primary DIMM is not only utterly different RAM format from the secondary SoDIMM, but also it's the same type my older XP box utilizes.

Alas, my XP machine only has 256 MB DIMMs so swapping them into the primary RAM slot wouldn't help the iMac. I ordered two 512 MB DIMMs for the XP machine last Saturday and they should arrive any day now... I could plunk one immediately into the iMac to increase its memory while I get the secondary SoDIMM issue sorted out. I'm currently bidding on an additional 512 MB DIMM on eBay (currently $20) so the XP box will get fully upgraded eventually.

Who knew this minor RAM upgrade would become such a pain in the ass? True, this is the sort of system engineering foolishness which keeps me gainfully employed, which probably explains why I have this cumpulsion to shower every time I delve into these kinds of issues...