| Friday,
May 28, 1999 I will be going down to the beach house this afternoon to
work. That means updates will be sparse to sporadic for the next few days. I'll try to do
some, but I won't get to it often. Mail is going to pile up, too.
Before you can do anything you have to do three other things, at least one of which is
impossible. Maybe it's not quite that bad, but it seems so.
First. some press releases on negative gravity and other odd cosmology. I
haven't time to discuss them. That clears the Word file I use for conditioning stuff to
post here. Now I can write up the log:
So. I want to get out to the beach house and write, but first I need to back up those
3000 sound objects in Roberta's machine. Due to the geography of Chaos Manor, we haven't
strung a Level 5 Ethernet line from her office to up here. Her two machines are networked
with a crossover cable. Today I wanted to do backup things to both of them. So:
Take out a new Bay Networks NETGEAR FE 108 Fast Ethernet Hub which I got on sale at
Fry's with two 10/100 PCI cards and 25 feet of Level 5 cable for $160 the other day. Take
that down to her place and install it temporarily; disconnect her orange crossover cable
and connect her two machines with regular cables. Test. It works. Plug a 100 foot Level 5
cable into the uplink port on the FE-108 and be sure that the button is pressed to make it
uplink (it crosses the data lines just as a crossover cable would) and string that along
the floor to upstairs, where it plugs into an open port on the NETGEAR DS-108 (the
difference between the FE-108 and the DS-108 is that the DS will accept both 10 and 100
lines and automatically takes care of the speeds).
Go to Praetorius, the Pentium III running Windows 2000 and see if I can now see Joizy
and Scarlet, Roberta's two machines. I can. Copy her big file. Go to breakfast while it's
copying.
Got it. Now install the new DISKMAPPER for NT on Praetorius and use that to map
Roberta's C drive on Joizy (if this isn't very clear it's because this is the log and it
will all be explained in detail in the column). Lots of stuff I can remove, and the system
is very short of drive space, but calling Roberta at the Beach -- she went down yesterday
so as to be able to practice with the choir group she sings with (All Saints, San Diego)
when we're down there -- got no answer so I can't be sure I can eliminate some of the
stuff. NO problem. Suck it up the stairs to Praetorius. Easy enough to do.
Now I want to ZIP her big (3000 sound wave files) folder and make a CDROM archive of
the ZIP. Hmm. No ZIP on Praetorius. Get out ZIP Magic. Install. Must reset the machine. Do
so.
First problem: for the first time in his life, Praetorius with Windows 2000 does not
shut down properly. Something there is about Zip Magic that it doesn't like.
Run. Humpf. It barfs and dies when shown a 3,000 file name (some very long file names)
folder even though I have not selected a single file yet. Control-alt-del, task manager,
yep, ZiP Magic not responding, close it. Probably doesn't work on Windows 2000 thought I.
Well, I have a Pentium II I know it works on, I can map the Praetorius C drive to that
machine, and make my archive remotely.
First uninstall Zip Magic from Praetorius. Wants to reset to complete uninstall.
Interesting.
Go to Parsifal. Network neighborhood. Yep, there is Praetorius. Only I can't log on.
Apparently no one added me to the list of authorized users on Praetorius. Go study up on
how that's done. It is easy enough once you figure out what to ask for, but it takes a
quarter hour to find the proper help file, then about 2 minutes to add myself to the
authorized user list. Map Praetorius C to Parsifal's drives. Now try Zip Magic on
Parsifal.
Zip Magic barfs and dies when shown that big file folder. Ctl-alt-del, task manager,
yep, Zip Magic not responding. End task.
Now look around for WinZip. Where is it? I know I just got a new copy, updated, but
things FLOW here so. Can't find it. Ah. It is on Princess. I'm using Princess. Transfer
the files to Praetorius. Install on task bar. Yep. Works. Try it on that 3,000 long file
name directory. Opens it. Make a new Zip Archive and add a few files to it to see if that
works. Yep. Works fine. OK, use WinZip to archive the whole mess, 3,000 files and 2
gigabytes of data. Let's see how big a file that makes…
Hmm. It won't do them all at once. But it will do them in bunches. I can't tell it to
do the entire huge folder in one gulp, but it does do a few hundred at a time. This gives
me a hobby, but it's working…
And I am still at it. Oh well…
More things to log. Robert Bruce Thompson reports problems with Windows 2000. Blue
screens. I am not having any such problems. The difference seems to be memory: I have a
full 256 meg, he has 64 meg. I suspect that's it, because I never had fewer problems with
a system than with the Pentium III and Windows 2000. ZipMagic is the only program it that
has given it problems, and that was cured by task manager. I have never SEEN a blue screen
on Praetorius. I bet it's memory…
And that's it. I am off for the weekend. If I can manage to get on again, I will, but I
don't make no guarantees nohow until next week...
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