journaling: enabled

Today at work:
– tweaked permissions for film scanner software so students can use it (it couldn’t write temp files)
– repaired disk catalog problems, installed IE, and upgraded OS on a Mac in Psych dept
– upgraded Novell Netware client and Eudora on a PC in Psych dept
– assisted one of my student techs with troubleshooting a Novell Netware client problem (turned out that user didn’t have an account)
– installed new HP LaserJet printer in one of the Mac labs (including configuration of printer and workstations)
– tweaked memory settings for a Logo application

Things that didn’t get done at work that I had intended to do today:
– memory order for Journalism dept chair
– gripe call to Quark inquiring about where my software is

Things that got done at home:
– garage tidied up so I can park in it (I don’t like scraping snow and ice)
– bathroom cleaned
– kitchen cleaned (including dishes done and table junk taken care of)
– living room cleaned and vacuumed
– bed prepped in spare bedroom
– several CDs converted to MP3s

Not too bad a day, but too long. I’m going to regret it tomorrow. Tomorrow night I’m going out with liz4jc4ever and others to Buca di Beppo in St. Paul to celebrate her 3 yrs of cancer remission.

Work today started off not too badly. This is a good thing since it was my first day back from vacation. I spent some time helping a coworker record some voice tracks for some theatre performances. I learned that it is difficult to hear a fire alarm when you’re in a sound isolation booth.
This afternoon was also fairly uneventful, though I learned of a problem that has apparently cropped up with the slide scanning software … my guess is that it is trying to create a temp file in a location that lab users don’t have access to do so. I need to get that fixed tomorrow since there are a number of students who need to make use of it for an assignment. It would be nice if some things that work when I set them up would stay working when they’re needed.
Tomorrow night is probably going to be house cleaning night. I will have guests (my girlfriend’s parents) staying over on Thursday night. Thursday night is a celebratory get-together at Buca di Beppo’s in St. Paul. Not sure what’s going on for the weekend. If the weather is decent, I’ll try and replace my driveway light with one that has a motion sensor on it. I should also do some tidying up in the garage so I can actually make use of it when snow flies.

I think today was a better day at work. I got to get out of the office and work with some of my technicians on fixing some trouble calls. It’s generally good to make people happy. Of course, I pissed somebody off too. I told her she had to go through one of our Windows XP training sessions before I’d let her have her new laptop. She signed up for the workshop tomorrow and I agreed that she could have it after she was out of the workshop. We’ll see how well that works.
I stayed late at work tonight to load the iMovie tutorial in one of the labs that has an iMovie workshop tomorrow. Last year this would have been a simple process … this year I had wonderful things like permissions and a script that rebuilds login directories to deal with. I think I have it figured out and am also well on my way to implementing something that was requested for the Educational Technology Center computers. I need to figure out how to when the contents of a directory were last modified tho.
Since I was late getting home, I didn’t get any video editing done tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some tomorrow night. I did manage to get the map to Karges Center posted on the Dance Theatre website. That little project reminded me that I need to set up something so that the DT site can make use of my server for hosting pictures and video from older concerts.
Anyway, bedtime for this rabbit. Hopefully tomorrow is less stressful. ttfn.

Well, I guess I haven’t posted in a while. I’ll just touch on some recent events. This past Thursday, I took liz4jc4ever to The Machine Shed in Woodbury for dinner. It was very yummy and of course we have leftovers. Friday evening I don’t remember much about. Not sure why (no, it has nothing to do with drinking). Saturday was pretty busy … got up and finished my homemade coffee tables. I’m not completely thrilled with the results, but they’re functional. After that I took a break and putzed on the computers for a while before going out and mowing lawn. After that was lunch and wash up before heading to pick up Liz, flutterbyefred and tinytom to head to Buca Di Beppo’s in St. Paul for dinner. That was very yummy. After that we headed into downtown to find parking for Blast! at the Ordway. We sat around in Rice Park for a while and got to see an awesome sunset behind the cathedral. Very cool. The show was suitably awesome and I recommend it to anybody.
As far as projects go, I have started digging into editing the video from this past spring’s Dance Theatre concert. Apparently I have the only decent video footage of the concert available. Unfortunately the audio track has some issues, so I’m learning how to dub over it … which is a challenge because of course the concert is set to music and I have to get it sync’d up perfectly or it won’t look right. It would be nice to include some elements of the original audio track in the final version, but I’m not sure I can do it reasonably. For example, some of the pieces feature some jumping that the mic on the camera picked up the sound of … plus there’s the applause, though I think I’ve edited that out in the past. Anyway, all this editing would be a lot more fun on a faster computer, so I ordered myself a new computer … dual 2-GHz processors, so it should have plenty of ponies to meet my needs for a while.
As far as other computer projects go, I’m thinking of trying to develop a calendar system … sorta. I installed php icalendar on my server and decided that I really like it. Unfortunately, unless I get webdav going and convert all my friends to Macs (okay … I have to admit that’d be nice, but it’s not likely to happen), there really isn’t a way for friends to add items. So, I am thinking of creating a mysql database from which an iCalendar file can be generated. I think I’m going to tackle that after my video project is done tho unless that becomes not-so-fun.
Work continues to suck the big one. One of my student employees gave two weeks notice last week. Unfortunately, he was my most experienced Windows technician and a good worker. I can’t blame him for leaving tho … he has to cut back on work hours to keep up with school (= organic chem, calc-based physics and calculus!!). So, instead of hiring 2 new technicians I get to hire and train 3. This will keep me very busy. I wanted to do some training with one of them today but there seems to be an epidemic of sick children at work, so two of my coworkers were out of the office leaving me to back up the HelpDesk. Ick. I spent pretty much the entire day doing paperwork for new computers. The depressing part is that the paperwork isn’t even all done! I still have to create inventory database records and print off data sheets for the new orders. Bleh!
Well, I think I’m going to turn in now … I’ve been sleeping like a stone the past few nights. That’s a good thing, but would seem to indicate that I really need more sleep. Sleep good…. mmmm …. zzzzzzzzz