Hmm…slipping a little, aren’t I?
It’s kinda funny – I get annoyed when I go to read my favorite blogs and webcomics and discover that they haven’t updated…and I haven’t posted in forever. Time to remedy that a bit.
Work:
I feel I have now fully investigated every way in which you cannot resurrect a deleted email account. The short story is that if the computer has been nuked, and the server has deleted the account, the only way you are going to get that Exchange mailbox restored is to either spend money or time, take your pick. With a couple of software tools out there costing less than $1000, it will probably be cheaper to buy the software than it will be to build a virtual server and mount a backup of the database.
Luckily for me, I was able to log in to the original workstation, configure Outlook 2003 to launch in off-line mode, and then export the mailbox from the .ost. Un-luckily, I spent about ten hours of headache getting to that point by going at the problem the hard way. This comes from not having done it before and not having any training in the mysteries of Exchange 2003. Now, I know, and you can bet your sweet ass I won’t be walking that fucked-up road again. A bit of advice: if there is not a need, under NO circumstances will I ever delete a mailbox or profile for 30 days. And even then, I’ll wait another 30.
Home:
Cruising right along. Things are going pretty well for us here at Chez Wolfe, and I’m enjoying the peace. The Rat is working and being a good lad when he’s about, Pookie is dealing with her little bro well, and I still have The World’s Best Girlfriend. Now the “New and Improved” model, with wonderfully BLUE hair!
This is not some wimpy-ass Anime-style sky blue, either: this is deep, rich and vivid, and damn near glows in sunlight. This is definitely a WOW! color, and it looks great. A round of applause for Chop-Chop the Stylist for a job well done :)
I’ve got a little “New and Improved” going on around here as well. I managed to snag an appointment at an eye doctor last week, and then took Tolerant there Saturday to help me pick out my new specs. I have fairly simple requirements in specs – they should fit, and they should be lighter than what I have so they don’t hurt my nose by the end of the day. Tolerant came along to keep me from looking like an idiot.
The shop in question is Eyes! On Broadway and I’ll give them a little pimping because the doctor was not only thoroughly professional, he was even more of a perfectionist than I and extremely patient. They will be getting return business from me. The only bummer is that they don’t have their own lab on-site, so it will take about two weeks for them to build my new specs.
It’s hard for me to spend $375 on something and walk away from the store without it. Yeah, that’s a lot of scratch for something you don’t want scratched, but I got the transition tint and a frameless design that weighs about nuthin’. If I ever get tired of how much these ones weigh, I’ll have to either get contacts or surgery.
Considering how much time I had spent the other night in front of my CRT at home working on the aforementioned email problem and getting both stress and eyestrain headaches, I thought it would be a good idea to invest a little more in keeping my eyes from getting any worse by replacing the that large chunk of radiation.
So I dragged tWBGF with me down to Mecca and bought a flatscreen. A friggin’ HUGE flatscreen – 22″ wide format, DVI inputs, 5ms response time. And it’s bee-yoooo-tee-fulll, lemme tell ya. Two years ago, this would have cost about twice as much as it did, so I’m glad I waited until now to buy it.
I had also planned to build my Sweetie a new computer this year, but she worked hard to convince me that I shouldn’t spend that much money on something she doesn’t use that much – hers is old enough that nothing short of replacement will speed it up, but she doesn’t need all that much more power with her current usage habits. So, I’ll build me a mostly-all-new computer and rebuild the old parts into a new machine for her. After all, the motherboard is only a couple months old since I RMA’d the predecessor, and I haven’t stressed the rest of it out that much.
So, the new box will be AMD dual-core and faster, but otherwise basically the same. RAM and mobo will be replaced with the move to a socket AM2 proc, but I am staying with 2GB of memory. The DVD drive is being replaced due to it being elephantine: it won’t forget the last DVD you used until you reboot. I’m replacing the video card as well, since the move to the new display has made DarkStar One a little finicky. Just too much monitor for the card, it seems :)
I read a review from a G.I.in Iraq who claims Newegg shipped his gear to him there in 7 days, so I should have mine by the end of the week. Looks like next Sunday will be spent worshiping technology :)
Hollerings