Of course, right on schedule, Achroite fails.  It wasn't planned, and as far as I can tell, it wasn't my fault, but it has happened nevertheless and I must live with the situation as it is.  The disk controller failure that wiped out the drive contents actually happened last Tuesday, later on the 10th.  A new controller were purchased on the 11th, but has no sign of appearing anytime soon, since the order has yet to be processed, let alone shipped.  I'm going to be gone from the 12-22 to 12-29, so even if the shipment were to come in over the holidays I wont be here to recieve it.   This is all just great.  At least now I have a good idea what was really behind those upgrade problems.

In terms of definite site changes, I don't have anything yet.  The web server is going to be completely rebuilt, since there was a lot of shared data/structures that is now completely toast.  And at some point I really am supposed to get the Tablet PC (hah! even HP doesn't seem to know any more than me on that issue...), plus being able to print would be nice...  So, I think a complete network architecture rethink and redesign, and reimplementation, is in order...at some point.  For now all I can do is sit back, use Azure and learn more about OpenVMS since it's now my primary working environment.  Oh what fun!  Using a platform that has its inadequecies as a desktop-type system being fully exposed to me!

But that's enough of this rant/ramble for now.  I'll try and get more news and info up before I leave so that at least one week's notice can be given.  Until then...

Well, the issues with Achroite seem to have resolved themselves, after enough hard resets and crashed disk checks.  But the upgrade will still wait until I'm on winter break; I really won't have the time before then to work on it as deeply as is necessary.

With Ach' back up and running, I was able to FINALLY get around to doing some more site maintenance.  There was the usual round of minor bug fixing (I finally don't have to restart IIS everytime I want to update this file!), but the big news is the completely revamped/rewritten personal page.  Check it out and find out more than you ever wanted to know about me (eventually...the development framework is there, but the content is ...well...lacking).

Until the next crisis event (currently preemptively scheduled for this weekend),

Okay, maybe I lied.  That'll be within the next three weeks rather than one.  You see, I seem to be having some issues with 'upgrading', namely it seems to have hosed Achroite.  Ouch...  You know, I really have been meaning to come up with a set backup cycle...honestly...

Yay!  I'm now 18!  I can arm, smoke, vote, and be drafted!  All the true American values that really matter...

And now for some actual news...
Yesterday Windows.NET Server 2003 build 3718 was released (RC2).  At some point in the next week, this server will be going down for the upgrade.  At this very moment, I'm already running the deployment on Achroite.  So drop me a line about when you think I should upgrade it (and this time I have provided one week advance notice, so no complaining from all the people who will be reading this after the fact!).

Sorry for the short notice, but some issues have arrisen with the server that need addressing as soon as possible.  So, this server will be going down tomorrow morning, starting at 00:00 (-00:00).  I plan on looking into the lost mail messages problems, and doing some new product installs.  I had been planning to do the product installs over Winter Break, but I am now assuming I wont get the new .NET Server build by then, and that as little downtime as possible is best.

Well, I missed my own personal deadline to update things.  At the moment, I essentially nothing done on my updated personal pages.  Well, actually, I've evaluated several Treeview Controls, and several Menu Controls, and decided that the best approach is going to be to create my own.  But that means a lot more coding for me, and a much longer delay until you get to see something new (assuming you ever return to this site, which is a big stretch for all the spammer's email address collection 'bots).  I still haven't gotten around to implementing the bug fix for the updating of this page's source file (I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with schoolwork and my job and 'regular' server management); however, I can get around it using an old NT4 utility called 'InUse.exe'.  Having a heritage (and experience) can be so useful sometimes.

Now for the real news.  I'm considering publishing documents to this server in additional formats to OpenOffice.org.  If you think this would be a Good thing, drop me a line and I'll more strongly consider the move.  Technically it's not any harder for me to do since I need to export to PDF anyway to print.  Oh, and I'd rather not publish MS files, at least not right now.  I dislike proprietory formats when I can help it, and MS isn't opening up and using an XML based solution until Office 11 is out next year.

I finally completed the ardurous (spelling? bah, I don't have to worry about compAp for another hour...) task of completing a new version of the Directory Lister Web Control.  That's the thing that allows me to create the nice nice directory content listings for the WLHS Docs and CertStore.  The new version primarily adds better exception handling, so if there's some error creating the listing a nice error output will come instead of that nasty default "exception occurred" page that ASP.NET uses by default.  I also made my life easier by having the control set the physical and virtual directory properties to the one where the parent page is in (duh...how long did it take me to make that obvious change?...no snide remarks from the peanut gallery, please).  So on the whole, it's a decent upgrade.

One of these days I would also like to get my new personal page done.   I'm tentatively predicting that it will be sometime in the next week and a half, but, as you've learned by now, don't take my word for it.

It's taken a long time to get here, but some of the site changes are finally manifesting themselves.  This page is obviously no longer a plain old static file, it's a dynamically generated page consisting of the three most recent site comments.  The source data file is /sitenews.xml.

In other news, the site has been down for almost a month.  There was one final "disagreement" with InsightBB (a cease-and-desist type letter...), and I had to switch ISP's immediately.  Well, that took a while.   I'm now using DSL via Verizon and Purdue.  Hopefully everything will be all better now...

As for me, this year is quite busy, and looks like it's only going to get busier.  So don't expect timely site updates; I've already skipped out on writing a late paper to get this page working and the servers up and running!  But it's been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to the big move next year.   If I ever get the college applications done...and next year will involve much more change than merely switching ISP's.

At 00:51 today, the Windows.NET Server Family RC1 builds were put up on the MSDN download site.   I've just finished downloading Standard and Enterprise, and will be test deploying Enterprise on Achroite within the next 20 minutes (woohoo! for fast turnaround times!).  Sometime early tomorrow morning, if all goes well and I don't get caught up moving my sister into her apartment for the school year, I'll be deploying Standard on Gatekeeper.  That should be all for this little "heads-up" announcement.  If you need further information, I can be contacted up until tomorrow morning.  Oh, and note that all dates/times given in this message, as in all messages unless otherwise spec'd, are UTC.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the Windows.NET Server Family had entered the Release Candidate stage.  Today Microsoft shipped RC1 to beta testers.  By my estimations, sometime next week I should find myself in possestion of a copy of Windows.NET Standard Server RC1 and Windows.NET Enterprise Server RC1.  So, following in my tradition of being on the bleeding edge, I'll most likely be rebuilding this web server with Windows.NET Standard Server RC1 sometime next week.   I'll have more precise estimates at some point in the future (hopefully before the outage).

In other news, I have purchased a new server.  It is primarily geered towards my personal developmental usage, and will only be pressed into public service after I have had a long time to get acquainted with it.  The delay is due to the radically different architecture of 'Ametrine' (as it has been christened): it's a DEC AlphaServer 4000 5/300.