A trip to Lansing?

Today, Mitch (one of my best friends) called me up from his work place in Lansing. We were doing some basic checks of his server... He needed to open the case and check to see the motherboard model and if all the RAM slots were full. He was planning a RAM upgrade, and I needed details, especially since I was getting different information about his server from different sources. Opening the case would be required.

He said he would call me back once he got the information. I told him not to break the server -- I was headed off to a service call in East Owosso, and would talk with him afterward. The roads were bad, a good 3" (7 cm) of slushy snow. Driving back, it was a little worse, but not too bad. The snow was tapering off, but still, I made the decision that all other service calls were canceled, save for mission critical support.

Once I walked into the store, returning from my service call less than an hour after I left, Mitch was already on the phone with Joel, co-owner of CyberMedics. First words out of Joel's mouth: "Mitch is on the phone, apparently the southbridge heatsync fell off... the server has shut itself off."

This was critical in Mitch's work environment. They only had one server, and everything was loaded on to it. Exchange (mail), Data Server, Domain Controller, everything. It simplifies administration, but it also is one whopping single point of failure, and it was down.

I stopped Joel as soon as he finished speaking and instantly responded, "Transfer him to me." I needed to speak with him immediately to get the details. I was quickly regretting not polishing off my cup of coffee before heading into work.

Yes, it was that bad. Mitch opened the case and the heatsync just fell off... No apparent reason why, it just fell off. It took only seconds for the server to over heat and shut down. And now, the server was unable to boot. Thoughts rolled though my head: circuitry failure from over heating, power supply failure, motherboard failure. All of which are hardware related, none of which were a quick fix.
Status: Server is Down, support required, mission critical, productivity has been stopped.

I was to prepare for a trip to Lansing, a 35 mile (55 km) drive. There is now nearly 8" (17 cm) of slushy snow on the ground. Calls were going crazy, authorization needed to be made before I headed out to work with Mitch, and I needed to schedule things with CyberMedics before heading out.

Within half an hour, a strategy was made, and the trip was planned. I was to head out, stop by my apartment and grab a second set of clothes, a blanket, some food, and something to drink (all but the first were in case my car broke down or I got into an accident, as well as planning on staying the night on site, since the roads were to get worse until after 1 AM) -- if I could, Mitch asked me to pick up some Cheetos for him, if I passed a convenience store, we were planning for a serious all-nighter. The 2-mile drive home took me nearly 20 minutes. While I was there, I took a moment to leave a note for my roommate with emergency contact information, in case I was in an accident or didn't return from Lansing within a day or so; I told myself, "Just in case, ya know?"

Upon leaving with my supplies, I got a few blocks before I determined that the storm had become a lot worse, there was now around 9" (22 cm) of snow on the ground. The snow had picked up visibility was down to nearly nothing, and my little car, basically a Ford Escort without anti-lock breaks, was unable to safely navigate the roads in town... The 35 miles to Lansing seemed quite impossible without getting into an accident or losing control of my car. And I was really beginning to think that those emergency contacts I left my roommate would need to be used if I did go to Lansing this evening. My logic stepped in full force, I had serious doubts that I'd be able to drive though town, let alone to Lansing, without getting into an accident. I needed to cancel on Mitch.

I felt bad. All I could do was call Mitch and talk with him over the phone. I really wanted to be there and help him with his network in this critical state, but it was too dangerous to drive this evening... I told him that I would try to come out the following day if he wasn't able to get the server up and running that evening, if the roads cleared up. I told him to call me with updates as he worked this evening.

The roads were so bad that I even called into work and talked with Joel, I told him that it was unwise to drive my car presently and would not be returning to work. It took me another 10 minutes to drive the half mile back home, down a single road, sliding with each turn, sharing a near-miss with the Shiawassee river at one point.

I just hope Mitch makes it home safely. I'm going to call him later this evening just to be sure.

100th Post! Good Bye Vista, Hello XP?

Today at work, the Vista machine started acting oddly. We hate Vista at work. It's system requirements are too high for our used hardware and the system is sluggish. Worst of all, we didn't install XP as a boot option with Vista, so we didn't really have an XP option to use at work, outside of our register.

Well, we finally had it today. Vista had lost all it's network shares, connection to the internet, it's desktop background, and a few other minor things, along with the problems we have been having using the Vista operating system instead of XP. So, we backed up what was necessary and reinstalled Windows XP. Vista just wasn't cutting it, and we weren't about to spend hours running through the software to get it up and running the way we want.

So, we've got our new Techroom system, which Mitchell has dubbed "Milton" after the doofusy character from Office Space. A fitting title for our strange an unusual Tech Room system.

We'll probably just run Vista in an emulation mode, but more on that later, after it has been implemented.

BTW: the odd behaviour in Vista turned out to be more related to a bad network cable than a problem with the OS, including the desktop background, which was being loaded from one of our network drives. Ahh 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.