New Web Server

I bet you didn’t even notice, but we’re now running on Windows Server 2008 R2, which is 64-bit only.
Yay!
This is has been an ongoing project which I started a while back when 2008 came out. I wanted to migrate all the sites from 2003 to 2008. I got bogged down and then R2 was [...]

40

No, not the U2 song, but Friday, I turned 40. It’s an eye-opening experience and I frequently wonder where the time has gone. I mean: I don’t FEEL 40… except after I work out too hard.
This year, after saving up lots of money by selling off old books, I was given a gift card to [...]

Server Room: Complete

Upon arrival back from our trip to Houston, it was good to arrive back at the house to see that our basement work was complete. The wall was done and painted, the wall trim installed, and the door put in place.

It looks like it was always there. Here are some pictures of the [...]

Saved By The Elephant

I have a spreadsheet I keep on my laptop with which I keep track of my billable hours for work. The company has a tool, but I like to keep an independent check on it with my own records. Just in case, right? I click on the desktop shortcut I have setup for it and [...]

Email Is Back: With A Vengeance

After about 5 days without email, I was finally able to restore our email service – and even get us upgraded to Exchange Server 2010 Release Candidate. All it took was a complete destruction of the old Exchange environment (twice) and rebuilding from scratch. Good thing I was able to take a backup of the [...]

Email: Bad

So, in the process of upgrading my email server to Exchange 2010 Release Candidate, the power went out [it was out for a whole day] and now it’s VERY messed up. I’m trying to restore services, but we cannot send or receive any new emails right now…
So, I’m not deliberately ignoring you. This time.

Additional Media Center Woes

Things were looking up with the media center now that I got the cable card tuner and a new video card. It was looking great, that is, until the technician left. It seems that Cox has implemented Switched Digital Video on their digital cable network. That totally broke my media center. I can get a [...]

Media Center: Phase 2

I’m now beginning the second phase of the new media center effort. We’ve ordered two things: a cable card tuner and a new video card. We need the new video card to be able to view HDCP content, such as HD video from the tuners, and a future BluRay drive if we go that route. [...]

Database Migration

I know many of you won’t care too much about this, but I’ve migrated my web site photo gallery from MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server 2008. It’s now working on the new server. It was actually rather painstaking to get it set up correctly, but it’s done now.
The only thing you might miss is the [...]

Even More Fun With Windows Media Center

I mean it this time!
Previously, I had used our old [really only] desktop as a media center PC only to fall short of our goal. After you read that, you’ll find that I got to the point where everything was great – except for the digital encrypted channels… which was most of them. I [...]