I spent the last few days rewriting a login flash app in php. It was quite fun and still needs a little tweaking but the end product is pretty decent and is much more reliable actually authenticating. Check out the comparison videos:
I had fun over winter break freaking out the college kids who work for us by booting an Xserve from an iPod. Is this easily possible by any other OS? It took me approximately 15 minutes to clone an OS X Server install DVD image to my 80gig iPod. Then hook the iPod up to the Xserve via a Firewire cable. Finally select the iPod as the boot disk and restart the server.
You may be saying cool, but why would you do this? Main reason, was because I was updating the server to Leopard server. Leo server only comes on a DVD. The Xserve G5 only has a CD optical drive in it. Second, I don’t use the iPod and it was a free 80gig storage device with Firewire connection.
To take it one step further… I wanted to do an upgrade install. This would not work because the Xserve had a striped RAID and would not upgrade to Apple RAID 2.0. So I had to make a disk image of the boot drive. Copy it to the iPod. Boot from the iPod/OSXS Leopard Install disk, destroy the RAID. Create a new striped RAID with Leopard, then restore the boot disk image back to the drive. Then the Leopard upgrade went off without a hitch.
Gotta love the ease of Apple products.
Here are some fun photos from my office area. This post gives me a chance to try out the Wordpress iPhone app too. 
Yay, when I got to work this morning the floor outside our office finally looked like a normal school hallway. They started work on it on June 19. Since that time we’ve had to walk through all sorts of muck, water and chemicals. Only 37 more days until the school opens for fall, it is going to be close.
This is the latest photo from my work environment. The entrance I use is the one with the plywood entrance. The water drainage or lack of has been a problem since the snow started melting. Once the ground thawed the construction continued, and the first thing they did was remove the drain, that wasn’t working so well anyway. So now there is absolutely no drainage at all.
After today’s nice steady rain for about 4 hours and now the huge snow flakes we have our very own moat. That’ll keep those end users away from us. Now we just need to get some gators…
I was waiting to get an iPhone before I wrote my first app. It only took me about a month before I got around to coding it and getting it done. This will be the first of many. I’ve got lots of ideas for little apps that will help me while I’m mobile. This also helps me keep my coding skills sharp.
So this is a pretty basic app, it is written with php and talks to my work helpdesk database, which runs on MySQL. The hardest part was the interface stuff. There are a lot of good examples out there to look at though. Sorry I can’t give you a live demo since it only works on my work network. Here are some screen shots though, using the iPhone SDK.
You know it seems kind of weird to see a bulldozer sitting in the same spot you used to sit at your desk. This was the scene as I walked into our new office across the path from our old digs.
During the weekend of Feb. 9-10 I worked about 20 hours to move 2 full 8′ racks of equipment to our new office and get everything back online before Monday morning. We worked about 12 hours Sat and another 8 on Sunday and went home about 5 on Sunday, with everything working except one wiring closet in the old high school.
This included splitting everything up into 3 racks, moving around 2100 lbs. of UPS batteries. The following week all I did was move boxes and other items from our old office to the new. Until Friday when I came down with the stomach flu (it was a great week).
Here are some photos, http://gallery.mac.com/mspidle3#100015 more to come of the finished new office.
dead switch stack
It was yet another busy day at work. With following the live blogs of the MacWorld keynote and all. After that though things went south. We had one elementary go offline. We’ve been having problems with it for a week now and today it just decided to give it up. So I spent the better part of 2 hours trying to determine what component of the 5 stacked switches was broke. I determined it was switch 2 but called it a day, since we needed to contact Extreme support to see what they wanted to do.
No backup software
I had a full plate waiting for me tonight to starting with something simple (yeah right). I headed over to one of our pastors homes to help him install a Western Digital MyBook hard drive and included software. I route the power cable through his desk and plug it into his MBP power it on and nothing. I hear it spinning but no lights on the drive. OK, I’ll try my MBP, still nothing. I finally just unplug the power for a minute then it starts working. Now lets move to the software. He already had it installed, so I fire it up. I get a warning that the trial period has expired please purchase a license or enter the code. Just for kicks I click the buy link, then find info on the page that says if this came with a hard drive just enter the code that came with it. No code. It is either lost or never existed. So I’ll try using the software that came with the one I have at home (if I can find the installer). It feels like a wasted trip.
wrong hard drive/tools
Now on to stop 2 for the night. I head to our lead pastors house to swap out his MBP 100gig hard drive for a 160gig. It’s all going pretty well until I need to take out 2 screws to get the top cover off. I have a T8 torx and these are T6. Hmmm, well they weren’t in very tight so my philips screw driver worked. So I continue on. Finally get out the hard drive and I say, “well before I take out the screws on this lets make sure the one you bought will work”. You can probably guess the answer. I told him to buy an ata drive, just like every other Apple laptop I’ve worked in the past 10 years. The MBP uses SATA. Hmmm, we call around, head to Best Buy, pick up a 250gig SATA, get back, unbox it, yes, right connectors it will work. Whew! Oh wait, whats this you need a T6 torx the get the screws out, and yes they are torqued down, no philips trickery here. Hmmm, again. OK I decide I’ll put it back together so he can work, and I’ll pick up a T6 at Sears and come back another time. I won’t bore you with how it wouldn’t power on the first time after putting it back together 
So I roll into home and it is time to veg. That was one day I’ll never get back.
Tuesday December 11th. I got to stay home today with the boys, since going to work is kind of moot. About 97% of the staff won’t be there and since my job is supporting those people, there isn’t a lot to do on snow days. I’ll get to catch up on some projects for church and write some blog posts.
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This is the latest photo from my work environment. The entrance I use is the one with the plywood entrance. The water drainage or lack of has been a problem since the snow started melting. Once the ground thawed the construction continued, and the first thing they did was remove the drain, that wasn’t working so well anyway. So now there is absolutely no drainage at all.
