Today, I received a number of servers from our vendor. Normally, they would order all the parts, assemble and test the server, then ship it to us. Unfortunately, someone made a mistake and the PO got lost.

So, they did a drop-ship from HP directly to us (it’s faster that way). 3 days later… I was in possession of half a dozen beautiful new DL320 G3 SATA servers.

Since it was drop-shipped, they didn’t install the CD, hard drive, floppy, or ram… but hey… I can do that.

Or can I?

It seems that they forgot one small part… the SATA backplane (and it’s supporting cables). For those of you who are fortunate enough to not have made the computer industry, I’ll explain. It’s a board that the hard drives plug directly into that supplies power for the drives and hooks the drives to the motherboard.

So… unless I can figure a way to get data two and from the drives without power or cables… I’m gonna have to wait until tuesday at the earliest to set these up (that’s when they’re going to send me the backplanes).

So, Mr. HP man…. in the future… when someone orders a server with SATA support AND also orders SATA hard drives to go in it… please provide the part the drive actually plugs into. To make your life easier, I’ve colored the parts you forgot (please print and hang in your cubicle, mktks!).

Green = SATA Backplane, Red = Cables (in case you can’t figure it out)

Today has been one of those days that make you just want to curl into a ball if you’re a computer professional.

One of our servers got hit with a worm, a friends blog got defaced, and another friend sent me an instant message asking if wuamk032.exe, rofl.exe, and edit.exe were normal to see in your task manager (um… no… they’re not…. your machine is owned).

So… for the 50,000th time… I beg all of you in intraweb land who use Windows:

STOP CLICKING ON EVERY DAMN ATTACHMENT YOU GET!!
I don’t care if it looks like it came from your priest, your grandmother, or God himself… if you weren’t expecting a file… don’t trust it.

Also, if your running windows, turn off the “Hide extensions for known file types” option. This has got to be the worst idea Microsoft has ever come up with (after Windows ME, of course).

KEEP YOUR ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE TURNED ON AND UPDATE IT ONCE A FRIGGIN’ WEEK!!
This is like buying a gun for home security, not buying bullets, and keeping it in a safe in the basement. It can’t help you unless its there, on, and ready. If you can’t update it because you didn’t pay for the service… quit being a tight-ass and pay for it now!

RUN WINDOWS UPDATE ONCE IN A WHILE… IT’S FREE, DAMN IT!!!!
Bejesus… if there is one thing you can do to make your life easier, it’s to patch your PC for KNOWN SECURITY FLAWS! The thing that people try to exploit. So enable automatic updates. At a minimum you need the “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install” option so at least it tells you there’s an update.

If you don’t do the three things I just mentioned, you deserve whatever happens to your PC. And no… I will not help you.

Click to see animated gif (264kb) in new window.

Thanks to eddie for the image (don’t know where he got it from though).

We finally did it!

We decided that rather than pour more money into my wife’s ’99 Dodge Durango, it might be better to dump it and purchase another car. After looking at various vehicles on the net, we narrowed it down to a few. After taking the test drives, we had a winner…

2005 Jeep Liberty Limited
3.7L V6, 4×4, flame red paint, heated leather seats, heated side mirrors, tilt wheel, A/C, power everything, chrome wheels, built in garage door opener, electronic tire pressure sensors, cruise control, 6 disk in dash CD changer, yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s sweet! 🙂

Ok… it’s a known fact that I play computer games. It’s also fairly well known that I’m currently into the game Battlefield2.

I had a problem last week. I installed the patch (the good one, not the one that created a memory leak of monumental proportions) and launched the game to verify that everything was still working. It was, with one exception: my account was no longer valid.

There are two other accounts on that box (for my “daughter” and youngest son). They still work fine, but mine came back with an error message that stated it was an invalid account.

I sent EA Games the following message via their online tech support:

just updated my game using the bf2patch_v_102.exe file which I got from the official website. Now, when I attempt to log in, I get the following error message:
“Your uniquenick provided is invalid”

My account username is: bioland

I’ve been able to log in and play with that nick since the day I purchased the game. I don’t believe this is an issue with the game installation itself, as my son can log in and use his account just fine.

Is there anything that can be done to retrieve my account, or will I have to start a new one and lose my stats?

Thanks!

I got an email stating that I would have a reply within 24 hours.

Today (about a week later), I got a reply from the rocket scientists who staff the support center.

Hello,

Unfortunately you cannot change the name of accounts. You will have to create a new account with the desired name. We also do not have access to the tools to delete your accounts for you. You can however manage gamespy profiles/accounts with the gamespy arcade if you installed it, or at www.gamespyid.com. Thank you for your patience.

Um.. yeah… thanks! I guess I was confused when I said “please help me retrieve my account” when I apparently meant to say “please help me delete and/or rename my account”. I have suspicions that Landon F. of EA support lives in India and didn’t understand my question.

I got tired of waiting two days ago and re-created the account. Sure… all my stats are gone, but at least I still have my name in the game. I can build it back up…. and it’s only a game after all and not worth getting upset over.