Month: August 2004

I have Boris curled up on my lap as I write this, purring like a happy V8 engine. I realized that I missed kitty over the weekend. As much of a pain as he can be when he has the wind up his ass, he's a real sweetie when he's purring away, eyes closed, sleeping on his back on my lap :)

reminds me of this: http://www.flubu.com/comics/Non_Sequitur_pan.269.g.gif

1. Who are you?
2. Are we friends?
3. When and how did we meet?
4. Do you have a crush on me?
5. Would you kiss me?
6. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
7. Describe me in one word.
8. What was your first impression?
9. Do you still think that way about me now?
10. What reminds you of me?
11. If you could give me anything what would it be?
12. How well do you know me?
13. When's the last time you saw me?
14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
15. Are you going to put this on your LiveJournal and see what I say about you?

I got home 20 minutes ago. Michel and Steph took me out to sushi for my b-day, and then we went to see Collateral at the Paramount. It was a fun evening. Dead fish was uber-good tonight, and the movie was a decent one. Not the best I've ever seen, but it kept me soundly entertained for the time we were there – though I was really annoyed with the number of people who kept coming and going and talking on their friggin cell phones.

Got back here and introduced Steph to kitty. She wanted to take him with her. Sadly, I had to say no :) On that note, I'm going to bed now. I need to get up way too early to go to Ottawa this weekend. Nighters all.

Failure is not an option. It comes with the software.

Ladies and gentlemen, I rule.

The cube works. Did a clean reinstall from scratch, and now everything is hunky-dory. It's my firm suspicion that XP SP2 was being a nasty bugger and messing something up.

Anyway, everything works and life is good. This merits a happy dance.

Woke up at 3:30 this morning, completely fucked up, having work-related nightmares again. In my dream, I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the friggin server I'm trying to install. I hate it when that happens.

Those dreams seem to vivid, and they're really frustrating. it's the sort of dream where you have to get something done, but everything is working against you, and you feel like the world will end if you don't get it to work… I woke up really tense, with a nasty pain in my shoulder – the one I usually get when I'm turning into a big stressball.

Must seriously contemplate a career change.

Today will be the suck.

How do I know this? Because I'm doing something innately stupid and time-consuming. Bossman found us a client. Of course, he gave impossible deadlines for little money. Go boss… The project isn't all that hard. We need to port a commercial website written in ASP running in IIS and based on MS SQL Server to one written in Java/JSP in Apache/Tomcat based on mySQL. For those of you who aren't that tech-savvy, it's no big deal to do.

Except that, bossman being well… a boob, he told the guys we'd be willing to host their servers at our office. The only windows machine we had was a coworker's desktop – really not the best place to host a production website! So we buy a new windows box, and I've been assigned to install all the crap that needs to run on it. Now bear in mind that I've never worked with IIS/SQL Server, but I figure I'm smart enough to muddle through the basics.

So after walkies yesterday with Josie and MJ, I get back to the office, roll up my shirtsleeves and have at it. Install XP, no worries. SQL Server, no problem. IIS, simple. Migrate the old website to the new box, fairly straightforward. Try to migrate the database from the old machine to the new one? All hell breaks loose.

Seriously.

My coworker and I – whose cumulative experience with SQL Server is roughly 6 hours in total – encounter the most frustratingly weird set of problems we've ever come across. Things that should work… don't. Things that work one way don't work in another. And to make matters worse, in our tinkering to try and get the new server to work, we killed the old one. You could beat us to death with a stick and we wouldn't be able to tell you what we did wrong. Which, considering WE'VE NEVER WORKED WITH THOSE TECHNOLOGIES, is quite normal.

And, of course, the only two people who have worked with them are not in the office and probably won't be until monday. *throws hands up in the air*

So today, I am starting the whole process from scratch, and hopefully I will get the damn thing to work. Honestly, I don't really care if I do. That's a problem…

So I'm coming out of the metro at Peel this morning, head in a book as usual, when I catch the perfume of some random person in the train. It was delicate, flowery…. feminine. I couldn't help but smile, and now I'm in a good mood.

Go perfume!