one man short

Today CMC lost a technician.
Such things happen in life.
Right now, the store is busy rescheduling items that will need to be taken care of this week to ensure that everything our former tech was assigned to gets done on time. Rush rush rush. I guess that's the way things are in business, regardless if that business is IT or pet grooming. It looks like the Apple Reseller program we've been looking into is going to be put on the back burner for a while. ~sigh. I was looking forward to getting the ACT, but I guess doing a standard MCP will be fine as well.

what a day at cmc

Once again, there's been some trouble at CyberMedics. Why is it that the business I'm so tied to has such an abundance of luck?

First, I had to rush to a service call in Chesaning, Mi today... About a 20 mile drive. But, first came the delays. Customers rushing in and bosses leaving the store required me to stay at CyberMedics up until 2:30 (I was scheduled at Chesaning at 2:30). I managed to get a call to the site before it got late... Our reason was two: 1) our primary wiring tech was out sick... He had even spent some time in the hospital too (but is getting better) and 2) we were out of Cat5e Ethernet (I didn't inform the customer of this, but it was a cause for us being late).

Since our tech was out sick, I had to quickly pick up the pieces and get someone that didn't have much of an issue with heights to come along with me... That person was Steve. Zack was also supposed to show up, but he didn't make it to the store before 3pm, so I went ahead without him.

As soon as we left, we head off to our local Ethernet vendor, and it was after 3:30 before we were able to get the correct wire! The gods of fortune just weren't with us today! Even when we went to pay, we weren't even able to get though the registers with any expediency... The system wasn't taking our $100 bill, so the cashier had to do some adjustments to get our order processed though, taking twice as long as it should have at the register.

Leaving from Owosso after 3:30, we finally arrived on site at 4pm. Our 10' ladder was about 2' too high to use on site (which was also about how much of the ladder was sticking out of the back of Steve's truck on the drive over here as well), so we ended up having to stand on chairs at the site instead to do all our work, which looked horrible, but at least allowed us to get our work done. I spent most of the time I was there trying to make Ethernet cables to go from the wall jack to the computers. I was having no luck, spending most of my time cutting the wire and re-cutting it, trying to get it to fit correctly in the Ethernet head. ~sigh. I never even finished that... I ended up helping Steve every few minutes anyway, which caused a lot of slow down in my progress.

Steve was spending most of his time there drilling holes for the cabling to go though, since it had to go from a panel in the wall, up the wall, across a dropped ceiling, and then down again to another wall drop about 30' away (total distance is approximately 50' or so). We were doing okay with our work until we go half way across the room, when we ran into a rather tough piece of wood that prevented us form being able to drill though. We called Joel (the boss back at the store) and asked him what we should do... He said that we should reschedule it for another day to finish it, and then we can bring along some more powerful drills.

So, we talked to the receptionist, and scheduled a follow-up visit on Friday to work on the cables. We cleaned up our mess and finally began to head home. Packing up our stuff took quite a while, since we had so much of it, and that damn ladder was sticking out about a foot or so from the end of the truck, but at least with it being bright orange no one was going to hit it on the drive home.

Since it had been a rough day, and especially since Steve hadn't had anything to eat all day, we thought it would be nice to stop by Burger King to get a snack. We both ordered the same thing, that chicken tender sandwich thing. Whatever it is. We were there for 15 to 20 minutes before heading back to Owosso, spending most of our time chatting about work and relationships (Steve found out I was gay the other day, so I feel much more at ease talking about such things around him now). Steve finished his meal before I did, but I tossed the last half of my fries and we headed out. We had to do a quick acceleration out of the BK drive way to avoid getting hit (the speed limit out there is 45 or so). And then again we had some issues at the first stop sign we came to (who ever heard of a stop sign at a busy 4 lane intersection anyway!??!?!). We turned from that and accelerated quickly again. That's when Steve noticed a problem. He had looked in the rear view mirror to ensure that our networking equipment and ladder were still snugly in position for the drive home.

This time, there wasn't a ladder in the back. Our 10' ladder, which is not able to fit completely into the back of Steve's truck was missing! I told him we should turn around, and that it probably fell out at the intersection or when we pulled out of Burger King. I watched the side of the road intently and I kept watching for traffic behaving oddly (such as swerving to miss a ladder in the middle of the road) but I noticed nothing. Our bright orange ladder wasn't on the road/side of the road! It wasn't in BK parking lot, it wasn't around back or off to one side as a practical joke, and the management had no clue (apparently there aren't cameras out there).

I called Joel, he suggested we just head home, the police wouldn't really respond to a $139 ladder that we bought on sale for $99. It would just be a little report and that would be the end of it. Chances would be slim that we would ever see that ladder again. However, the BK manager wanted us to file a police report, so she called them and they said they would send an officer out to take our report. The police station was just two blocks away, so it wouldn't take long for them to get there at all, and even if they sent the State Police (which have a station in Saginaw, just a few miles away) we should hear from them in less than half an hour!

Riiight. An hour later and the cops weren't even there. The manager suggest that she take our contact information so we could get back to Owosso before the store closed. It was almost 7pm before we left the restaurant anyway, but I was getting tired and had some in-store systems to work on after hours anyway. So, we left all of our names, including Don and Joel, just in case they wanted to talk to them. Along with the address for CMC, and then we headed off back to the site to see if we managed to drop the ladder there (which we didn't) and then right next door to that is the police station, where we stopped by to chat with an officer to give them the information, but no one came to the door when we rang the door bell as requested by the note posted on the door. So we left, once again scouring the sides of the road to see if a bright orange ladder was tossed to the side, and once again, we found nothing.

Once we arrived at the store, it was pretty much business as usual. Don was on the phone, Joel had left for the day, and Steve and I tried to get caught up on a few things before heading home for the night. Steve left before I did, leaving just Don and I in the store.

While Don was in the middle of a conversation and I was working on a computer, we heard a knocking at our back door. Both Don and I went to check it out, I figured it was one of Don's guests knocking on the back door, but this time it wasn't... There was a young woman in her late 20s saying that an older woman fell outside the store and needed some help. Both Don and I went to assist. Don wearing short-sleeved scrubs and me wearing my long sleeve tee-shirt. It was quite cold in our sub-zero Celsius mid-Michigan winter, but helping was more important. We helped her to her apartment and she thanked us. While I was helping her up, I recognized her as the dog lady who frequently walks a black Labrador as I'm leaving CMC every evening between 7 and 9pm. I had only talked to her once, when her dog really started barking at me once when I was leaving the store. But, at least she was okay. A scrape here and there, and a few bruises, but nothing major. I was glad we didn't have to call the ambulance or something! What and end to a day that would have been.

Now I'm at home, listening to The Postal Service [alt link] trying to relax from this trying day. ~sigh, I'll be glad when tomorrow comes.

Parallels, it's swankin' (or not...)

I've been tinkering with Parallels, a software similar to VMWare and Virtual PC, but used primarily on Mac OS X. The software can do some very interesting things... Just look at this photo here, and it demonstrates me using the software... It's called "Cohesion" and if that isn't an interesting screen shot, I don't know what is.

Unfortunately, I've been having some trouble with the software... Most recently, I've been getting this when I boot into Windows XP. ~sigh, this is going to be an annoying thing to fix... if it's possible to do so at all. Stupid XP SP2 upgrade *grumble, grumble*

The eMac Horror

Today, Steve (one of my co-workers at CyberMedics moved his eMac from home down to the store. It's a G4 700 Mhz system, not the latest eMac, but still a nice little machine, and quite speedy when booting into Mac OS X 10.4.

The only issue is that this beautiful, although, oddly designed:

system kept booting into Open Firmware (Windows users, think BIOS). Occasionally, the eMac, wouldn't even boot up! He was not in the greatest mood over it, especially since recently the system was functioning normally.

So, since the issue of the eMac booting into Open Firmware at each power on is a symptom of bad memory, he decided to take the back side of the shell off and take a look at the innards, revealing an image similar to this:

Needless to say, doing a minor memory adjustment is not cool on an eMac, but it needed to be checked. As Steve was tinkering with the eMac, he found what was really causing the trouble: a small part on the back of the power button had broken off, leaving the eMac thinking that the power button was being held down each time the unit was powered on. The part requires soldering, but is way too small for our utilities at CMC, so Steve is just going ahead and ordering a new power button. But man, was that eMac ever troublesome!

Vista Vista bo Bista banana fana foe Fista, mi my moe Mi-sta... Vista.

What do you do when your state-of-the-art OS on a high-end laptop won't connect to the Internet? Ya call CyberMedics.

We just had a laptop come in, exceptionally new laptop, with Vista Home Premium pre-installed on it. The computer was able to get online for a while and then it wasn't able to. Our "Triage" diagnostic (performed by yours-truly) came up with a preliminary report that Norton Internet Security or the built in Windows/Internet Explorer security settings were set so high that they prevented the laptop from getting online. Triage showed that the laptop was able to get online, and was able to ping the router and DNS server, but it wasn't able to ping any domains, use IE7, or utilize any third-party programs to access the Internet.

After working with the laptop for a while, I was confused to say the least. I lowered much of the security related to connecting to the Internet, including Norton Internet Security. I even went through some of the automated diagnostic software included with Windows to check the system over (which seemed to work well, but in turn, revealed nothing of consequence). However, at one reboot of the system, MySpace IM was able to get online, however no other applications were. Thinking there must be a software issue going on, I restarted the computer in safe mode.

It was the first time I attempted to boot Vista into safe mode. I managed to hit the wrong key the first time, which brought up the Windows Boot Loader, much like Grub in Linux, upon hitting the correct key on the Grub screen will allow the user to pass different startup options to adjust how the OS boots. Now, it seems that Windows has a similar feature. I quickly showed by boss who was quite surprised and pleased with this new feature of Vista.

Not to become distracted by a new feature, I moved right along to get the system into Safe Mode. The first thing I noticed about the new "Advanced Startup Options" menu was that there was a "reverse print" title bar at the top that said "Advanced Startup Options," anyone who has used the Linux "man pages" knows what this looks like, the centered black text with the white "bar-like" background stretching from one side of the screen to the other.

There was also a new option, "Repair your computer" [link]. This looks like the Windows XP repair installation that has so many times saved a system that has crossed my bench at CyberMedics. If it is, and I am having trouble finding much details on the "repair your computer" option in the Vista ASO, then it would simplify matters from XP, which always had to be run from the CD after going through the preliminary section of the Windows XP installer. By the way, one should take note that the "Repair your computer" options is not always on the ASO screen, it seems that the option is only available if the system has the necessary system files stored on the computer itself.

The last thing that I noticed about the new ASO screen is that as you move between options, a section at the bottom (in bright white text) displays a description of what the option will do. This should help decrease the number of people that select Debugging or Directory Services Restore Mode... Neither of which are really needed on the average home user's computer.

Oh, and that customer's computer, after entering safe mode, the Internet was working correctly. 10 to 1 odds: the Internet isn't working correctly in Vista because of a conflict in Norton Internet Security.