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A lot has been going on since I last wrote. I hardly know where to start...

Windows. The last round of updates has been unusual: I actually had problems with the update. However much I detest MS and their operating system, at least the updates have behaved well when applied. But this month's caused one computer to freeze up entirely and another to pop up annoying "Object Not Found" windows after booting. I had to back out the patch from the first one -- and then its power supply and hard drive died a few days later, so I had to replace that and reinstall Windows. This was a relief, since I really didn't like having the patch unpresent. (Sure it's a word, look it up.) The second one is still mystifying me. At least MS has admitted that there are problems with the one patch; with any luck we'll get a replacement.

And not a moment too soon, either -- by the looks of things, we're due for another big worm. (Links to be filled in later -- all my bookmarks are at work.) Of course, I do tend to worry...

A while back I was asked my opinion on getting a Linux box to boot via a USB CD-ROM. I did some quick Googling and found that yeah, it was probably possible, and said so. Last week I was asked to make it happen, preferably by the end of the week. Oh, and we have a new person starting on Monday. Oh, and by the way our oscilloscope runs IIS 4.0 on Windows 98. Aieee!

Took care of the first part, though it took me a few days: I was able to modify a stock Knoppix by copying the USB modules from a booted K. system onto MINIROOT.GZ, which lives in /KNOPPIX/boot.img. Mostly it took that long because the motherboard I was testing needed not only the UHCI drivers but the EHCI drivers -- the root hubs would show up with the first, but the CD-ROM drive would only show up when the second module was loaded. I'm bright, but eventually.

The new guy needed FreeBSD, so that was good -- I've got FreeBSD installation (almost completely) automated now, so I can have a new workstation up in a few hours. Sweet. A while back I found a tool that uses Linux and Perl to automate W2K installation -- holy crap! -- but have not had a chance to get it working, so W2K installs still take a day and are done by hand.

As for the third thing...Jeezum Crow, couldn't believe it. Not only do we have W98/IIS4.0 on one oscilloscope, we now have two more running 2K and XP. Fortunately they don't have IIS on them -- but I really don't feel comfortable running Windows Update on these things. And but so not only that, but for 25 kilodollars what do you think happened with the one running XP? A window popped up explaining that we have 28 days to register with MS. Jesus Christ!

I've bought li'l firewall boxes for each of them and am trying to find time to set them up. The plan is to duct-tape them in place and break the fingers of anyone who hooks one of 'em up to the network without it. Barring a big purchase of managed switches, which has been put off indefinitely, this is the best I can do...they're pretty mobile, and if I tell people to only plug them in on this here plug here it simply won't last.

I've also been setting up User-Mode Linux for a couple developers on our RedHat box so that they can have root without me hyperventilating. Pretty spiffy stuff, but for some reason it fscks its hard drive every time it boots, no matter how it's shut down. Can't figure out if it's me or a bug.

Yesterday I had to explain to someone why granting them write access to /usr/X11R6/share/foo/bar/baz was just not gonna happen, and that the program in question must have some ability to save its settings in their home directory, probably in a dotfile, and that this really is The Right Thing.

On top of all this, I'm supposed to be replacing our oldest (K6, 300MHz, 128MB RAM) and most important server with a brand new spiffy rackmount multi-gigahertz P4 box, and I have not had time to work on it barely at all. It took me two weeks to create a Makefile to test its functionality -- not because it's two weeks of work, but an hour's work, two minutes at a time, becomes two weeks' work.

The plus side of all this is that spring is sprung and I'm riding my bike to work -- about 20km each day -- and it's gorgeous outside and work is still fun.