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Recently I ordered a server for one of our departments, and I just found it extremely amusing that when it came to picking the mouse option I wanted, it turned out there were no mouse options. Literally. I spec’d out a really sweet server – it’s just too bad no one will be able to control it.

In my district we use a program called Read180. My hate for Read180 seethes into the very fiber of my being as a person. But let’s save that for another post.

On the bright side, the good news is that Read180 has great online tech support, specifically via a Web chat where I’ve always ended up talking with some very helpful tech folks. After a particularly lengthy troubleshooting session, I double-checked with the tech to make sure that as we closed our Web chat, I would receive a transcription of it via email. He assured me I would, but once I hit the close button, I got:

I suppose I could fake my own fantasy chat script and show it to my boss:

Read180: Hi, what kind of problem are you having with our product?

Me: Well, I…

Read180: We don’t support Read180 anymore. I’d format the server Read180 is installed on, and then give the server a bubble bath so you never have to touch it again.

Me: Really? That seems a little stupid.

Read180: Well, that’s what our software is: stupid.

Me: Isn’t this kind of tech support approach bad for business?

Read180: No, our software itself is bad for business. We’d tell you not to buy it in the first place, but then our sales people would get angry.

Me: Good enough for me. Can I get a transcript of this chat session?

Read180: As long as you promise to never use our software again.

Me: It’s a deal.

Non-geeks can pretty much tune out right…now.

For the rest of us: I don’t know about you, but I have too many IP addresses to remember. My work IPs start with 10.blah.blah and external addresses are 67.something.I.can’t.remember. At home it’s 192.168.0.x and when I’m helping my parents out I try to keep track of 53.67.something.why.can’t.I.remember?!

A few weeks ago I decided to spoil myself and make my home IP scheme much easier to remember. I went into my router’s config and made it’s address 1.1.1.1, and all the IPs of my devices increment by one number after that.

Ah, it’s the little things that really make a geek’s life worth living.

You can’t tell me this doesn’t look fun! The folks behind Dance Dance Revolution released Guitar Hero today for the Playstation 2. The game has the feel of DDR except that you hold a guitar-like controller and play along to heavy rock music.

I’d say more, but I don’t have the game, nor do I think I can talk my wife into it very easily. If I do, I’ll be sure to post an update right away. Meanwhile, if your girlfriend/wife is a sucker, head to Red Octane’s site and pick up a 2-guitar game bundle for a little over $100. Drool.

Earlier I mentioned the SSH jerky who was toying with my machine while I was in training. Well, I forgot to mention that while I was dreaming of different ways to cause him physical harm, he screwed himself over on the last day of training when we were instructed to delete a directory off of our Mac OSX server. The command we were told to issue in Terminal was:

sudo -rf /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService

This command deletes everything in the DirectoryService folder and below it. The r means to delete recursively, and the f means to force the delete without asking “Are you sure?”

But he accidentally entered this command:

sudo -rf /Library Whoopsie daisy! No more Library folder for you, sucka! I was sarcastically going to ask him if he wanted me to SSH in and do a sudo reboot and see if that would help, but I decided to bite my tongue and bask in silent satisfaction.

In class today I ran into a frustrating situation when my classmates and I were working on server/client setups. In the class, each student has a client machine and a server machine to test out different configurations. I ran into a problem where my client machine would no longer log into my server, and then suddenly my server started freaking out at the same time – it kept rebooting at odd intervals. First every minute, then every three minutes, then 10 minutes passed before it happened again. I eventually gave up when it was time to eat lunch.

As our group started down the sidewalk, looking for a place to eat, one of my classmates leaned in towards me and asked, “So, did you finally figure out it was me rebooting your machine?” I didn’t know how to react. I mean, I certainly knew that my server was open to SSH (remote) connections so that if someone wanted to run commands on the server or reboot it (like ME!), that would be an option. But why on God’s green earth this guy would want to do this to interrupt my learning experience and think it’s funny is beyond me.

I considered nudging him in front of the city bus that was heading our way, or possibly doubling back to our classroom and format both his client and server machine, but I decided to be the bigger person by picking my nose and wiping it on him when he wasn’t looking.

Hi! This week I’ve got Mac OSX Tiger Directory Services Integration training. I’m pumped because it’ll hopefully give me a better understanding as to how my district’s LDAP works and how I can really get “under the hood” to troubleshoot/fix problems. Plus, my instructor looks like Santa Claus, so how can I go wrong? I’ll try to post any interesting nuggets I come across if I have a minute.

This week I’ve been installing some typing programs on our servers for the elementary school kids to use. I’m no security expert, but having a setup that keeps kids out of the administrative tools that the teachers use to manage this software is obviously a concern for me. I got the software all installed and tweaked and was ready to import some students into the typing software database when my heart sank. The first page of the “Teacher’s Area” section reads:

To enter the Teacher’s Area, click the Teacher’s Area button. The password to the Teacher’s Area is admin. This password cannot be changed.

The reaction I have is angry. My reaction cannot be changed. To end things on a positive note, I found out I can type 79 words per minute. Nerd alert!

For those of you who emailed me about the phantom, thank you.

Here’s how things turned out: the dudes at Guitar Center tried to talk me into a $300 mixer, saying that was my only option to get phantom power into that microphone. But on my way out of the store I saw an M-Audio Audio Buddy in one of GC’s featured item racks for $49! When confronted about this and asked why this wasn’t suggested to me as an option, the Guitar Center dudes were like “Umm…durrr…grr…ehh…I don’t know if that’ll do it for you…oh wait a sec, YEAH IT WOULD! Can I interest you in any guitar strings, by the way?” Frickin’ jerks! You’ve lost me as a customer, at least for today!

Last weekend I bought a fancy microphone so I could try some podcasting. I plugged it into my G5 and it didn’t work so I figured the microphone or cable was bad. I talked with some folks and found out the microphone needs phantom power to run (at this point, audio geeks around the world are slapping themselves in the face and screaming “Moron!”). Just to double-check that I at least knew what phantom power was, I pulled up an online dictionary which describes it as:

A means of powering condenser microphones. A current of (usually) 48 volts is sent along the mic cable from the mixing desk or, where the mixer does not have phantom power facilities, from a phantom power box, into which the mic is plugged and which, in turn, plugs into the mixer.

Good enough. So I headed to the local music store and described my scenario to the guy at the counter, who looked to be a high-school student. “Excellent,” I thought. “He works at a music store and is likely a music geek, so my experience will be a good one.”

Instead, Dude (I named him Dude because he called me “Dude”) wrinkled his brow, and bestowed to me these words of wisdom:

Dude: Dude, I’ve never heard of phantom power. But if I were you, know what I’d do, dude? I’d go home and do a Google search for “phantom power driver” and then install that on your computer. That should fix the problem for you…dude.

I wanted to tell him that you can’t download hardware over the Internet, yet part of me pictured him at home, searching for “sites to download smells” and “sites to download money.”

But instead I smiled, agreed to his suggestion and walked away, but not before recommending that he download a bag of common sense and strike himself three times in the face with it.

My search for the elusive phantom power continues…