Since my new job is going to require me to commute roughly 30 miles to work every day, we’ve been looking at getting a second car.  Initially we thought we’d pick up something used and cheap…  But my father wanted us to get something solidly reliable.  So he’s giving us a chunk of cash to help pay for a new car.

I’m not real familiar with the whole “shopping for a new car” process…  We’ve only ever owned used cars and we’ve never had to do much bargaining or financing.  So I was kind of surprised.

We looked at a number of cars that claimed to “start at” $14,000 or so…  But once you’d added automatic transmission, cruise control, and air conditioning they were closer to $18,000.  And then we’d talk with a salesman and discover that the price on the manufacturer’s website was not what they were being sold for.

Very confusing.

Eventually we settled on the Kia Soul.  It’s got decent gas mileage, good safety rating, a couple consumer awards…  It comes with cruise control and power windows and all that good stuff…  It looks nice…  And it’s right around $16,000.

So then we started trying to make a purchase, and things got a little weird.  I didn’t realize just how quickly a dealer would sell you something that costs that much.  It seems to me that there should be more deliberation or something…

But they just took my information over the phone, ran some numbers, gave me a price, and they’re driving it over to me as I type this.  I should be signing papers and taking possession of our new car in just a couple hours.

So weird…

It seems to me that there are certain things every IT department ought to have on hand…

A few spare HDDs, an assortment of boot discs for various operating systems, a couple power supplies, a power supply tester, a multimeter…  Stuff like that seems pretty basic to me.

I’d also recommend that pretty much any IT department keep some duck tape and super glue on hand…  Maybe a soldering iron…  Some superglue…  A Dremel is always useful…

One of the major frustrations I’ve had with my current employer is that we never have the tools I need to get my job done.  I’m constantly improvising, or waiting for somebody to go buy something, or making-do without something.

Our backup server is a cruddy old system that’s been cobbled together from spare parts.  It’s got a cheap little SiI SATA controller in it…  An old Pentium processor…  512 MB RAM…  An old PSU with a bunch of molex-to-SATA converters…  And a pile of 1.5 TB SATA HDDs.

Over the weekend the RAID array died and didn’t want to come back up.

Initially I thought it was a couple failed disks, and I told my boss that.  Generally speaking, you’re supposed to keep a couple spare disks on-hand for just such an occasion…  But, of course, we didn’t have any spare disks.  Nor was my boss willing to go out and buy a couple 1.5 TB HDDs at our local Best Buy or Staples.  So, instead, I had to wait while they got in touch with Seagate and got an RMA issued.

In the mean time, I’ve changed my mind.  I’m now thinking that the problem may simply be how all these cables and adapters are crammed into the case.

I’ve noticed that the molex-to-SATA power adapters are a little touchy…  If I just bump the case it’s possible for one of them to come loose and take its pair of disks offline.  And, to be honest, the SATA cables themselves aren’t holding on very tightly either.

So I thought I might superglue the molex-to-SATA adapters in place, so that they couldn’t go anywhere…  And I thought that I might secure the SATA plugs with hot glue, which would be more secure, but ultimately removable…  Except that we have neither superglue nor hot glue here at the shop.

So I am once again waiting for parts to show up.

Which really isn’t as frustrating as it could be since I’m still waiting for the array to sync and the partition to fsck, so I couldn’t really shut everything down and glue it all together right now anyway.

But it’s still kind of galling.

My job has been to fix things that are broken, and I’m constantly stymied in that because I don’t have the tools I need.  Can you imagine calling a plumber to fix your broken sink…  Only to have him stand around, twiddling his thumbs while his buddy runs out to buy a wrench?

Obviously, that does happen from time to time…  You might have some weird fitting that isn’t very common, or they may have broken their wrench, or whatever…  But around here it is a weekly occurrence.  And not because we’re constantly running into strange fittings – but because we simply do not have very basic and common tools that we should have.

Laptops used to be a nightmare to work on.  Half the time the RAM was hardwired onto the motherboard…  And if it was possible to upgrade the RAM you’d have to virtually dismantle the laptop to get at it.

Things have gotten better over the last few years…  These days the RAM is generally accessable from a panel on the back of the laptop.  Just screw or two and you can swap out the RAM.

Usually the HDD and the wireless card are similarly easy to get at.  And the keyboard isn’t usually too hard to remove either.

We just got in an HP ProBook 4710s and I am absolutely amazed at how unfriendly this thing is.  It seems like they intentionally made it as difficult to work on as possible.

I needed to slave up the HDD to run some scans on it.  Normally this is very easy – just remove a screw or two and slide the drive out.

On this laptop, however, the HDD is hidden underneath the palm rest.

Firs you have to remove the switch panel…  Normally these things just kind of snap in place, but not this one.  This one is secured by seven screws.

Then you have to remove the keyboard, which is secured by two more screws.

Then you have to remove the palm rest, which is secured by three more screws.

Finally you can remove three more screws to get the HDD out.

Seriously, who designed this thing?

I had to stop using my Logitech MX 5000 cordless mouse…  Great mouse.  It’s been terrific for years.  But the response time just isn’t there for an FPS like the new AvP.

So I hooked up my old MX 510…  Which also served me very well back in its day.  But there was a reason I stopped using it and bought the 5000 in the first place.

The middle mouse button is very unreliable.  I have to click it two or three times before it registers a single click.  And the left mouse button is just plain flaky.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

So, it looks like I’m going to have to find myself a new mouse…  Something wired, with lots of buttons.  I wonder if they even sell wired mice anymore?

Looks like there’s been an update to the nook’s firmware.  I’m not entirely sure when it was released…  I’ve been too busy and too exhausted lately to do much more than crash in bed at the end of the day.  But there’s an update out, and it’s been downloaded and installed on my nook.

The first thing I noticed was a new GUI.  The buttons look more like buttons now…  Everything has a slightly rounded and contoured look to it.  Frankly, I liked the old style better.  The interface was much simpler.

There’s also the ability now to sort your “My Documents” section by author’s name or book’s title.  This is very handy because previously that section was sorted by file name, which wasn’t always helpful.

What I’d really like to see is the ability to organize my ebooks in some way – to be able to tag them, or sort them into folders, or something.

I’ve got roughly 150 books on my nook.  Some of those I’ve read, some of them I haven’t.  And I’d really like to get the read ones out of the way without removing them entirely.

With books purchased on the B&N website you can “archive” them…  This removes the book from your nook, but leaves it in your on-line library, so you can download it again.  And the book’s title on the nook gets grayed-out, so it is obvious that the book has been archived.

With the books that you add from other sources, however, there is no such functionality.  The ebooks all wind up in your “My Documents” section, and there’s no way to categorize them beyond simply sorting by title or author.