The weekend was a little shorter than normal, and while it had something to with Daylight Saving Time, it’s not what you think.

I maintain a number of servers (basically a whole NOC). One of our servers came with a new “feature” after the latest release of it’s software… if DST hits and changes the clock, and you have a scheduled job that was supposed to run but was bypassed because of the clock advancing 1 hour… freak out, do nothing, and don’t say why.

Of course, this is the same server that I spent all day thursday and friday reconfiguring so it will talk to another server (one server is on the internal production network, the other is in the DMZ, and they use a NAT’ed IP to talk… but there are issues), so I figured for sure I broke something.

After hours of going through xml config files, log files, beating my head against the rack, and sifting through the database, I finally got it.

Apparently, if there’s a job buried deep in the database, and this job is scheduled to run during the time period that you skip at the start of DST, everything will run fine, unless, of course, you reboot. Then it will piss you off and ruin your weekend.

Of course, I’ll forget about this by next spring when it all happens again.

Forums are cool, and forums are fun, but they’re also a monumental pain in the ass at times.

As you probobly know, I run a small forum, and we have some very interesting people, but we’ve also had issues as of late.

I’ve decided to limit registration to those who are 18 years of age or older. I’ve also stated that if you’re under 18 and lie on your registration, I’ll get very cranky with you, ban your ip and email address, and notifiy your ISP of online fraud.

Hopefully… this will increase the maturity level, and people won’t be quite so thin skinned (as things often get rather heated… expecially when we discuss religion or politics).

In other news
From the sounds of things, we had a shooting at the end of our block last night. While I don’t have the details yet, there was a lot of police activity around 11:30 last night. The joys of living in this two mule, olive pit of a town abound!

A friend of mine just sent me these pictures of the building I worked in for a few years:

When I worked there, it looked more like this:

The company was purchased by another company (Level 3) in a hostile takeover. They, in turn, gutted the company, selling off the various departments and contracts to other companies.

I don’t miss this place, but I do miss a lot of the people I worked with.

Aren’t there more important things going on in the world right now?

I’ve noticed that when it comes to hardware removed from your body, there are to kinkds of people out there:

1. Those who are interested and immediately grab it for a closer look
2. Those who freak out, hold their hands above their heads, and look like they’re gonna faint.

I’ve been showing the screws and rods that they removed around here at work and people deffinately fall under one of those two catagories. The interested people usually ask it see the picture I have of my x-ray, the ones who freak out usually look for the nearest exit.

Today has been kinda rough on my back. I’ve walked more in the last two days than I have in the previous 3 weeks, and I’m feeling every step in my back right now. I took a pain killer but now I’m all mushy and stuffs. Hard to work with a head full of oatmeal.

Other stuffs:
My wife has finally decided that it’s time to get rid of her Durango.

She’s been looking at vehicles online and believes she’s found what she wants: The 2005 Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

She want’s it in the Indigo Ink Perl color shown above, with heated leather seats and heated side mirrors (no more scraping the mirrors and messing up where they point in the winter!). I called the dealer and they expect these to start arriving at the dealer in around 2 months. We’ll look at the normal Highlanders they have in stock. Then, if my wife still likes them, we’ll put down a deposit and order one for her (in her color, with her options).

We did look into other vehicles: the Ford Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid, but neither one really did much for either of us. They don’t have much in the way of style, both are first attempts at a hybrid vehicle, and the quality realy isn’t there in those manufacturer’s products. They also got worse mileage than the Highlander Hybrid. So… once again I’m going with an import.