I’m pretty sure now why it is that I consider myself a software developer and not a system administrator. I get to do both to a degree at work and ever damn time I touch a server something goes wrong. Maybe I’ll relay the LDAP directory server upgrade debacle some time, but tonight it was just a typical upgrade that bit me in the ass. I needed to upgrade an Apple Xserve from 10.3, Panther to 10.4, Tiger. The server has nothing special on it. Just a web app I wrote and Filemaker Server. Christ, I need to get home. Anyway, I created a disk image of the server as a backup (it took an hour and a half) and then ran the upgrade. The damn thing died during the upgrade. I reboot and all I get is kernel panics. So I had to restore the disk image (45 minutes) and try again. This time it took. So now I am just running some updates and then going home. Oh, and I started the upgrade at 4:00 this afternoon. Fuck me. The login window just froze. I gotta say, I haven’t been too impressed with OS X Server lately. Seriously, why the fuck is this so hard. This was a Panther server that was running fine. Nothing weird on it at all. I needed to perform a simple upgrade. Why is this so fucking difficult? Rebooting. Back up now, it seems fine. Looks like a couple more updates are available. Installing. Rebooting after the updates… Back up now, checking for more updates. There are none, testing a few things to make sure the fucking thing isn’t broken. FUCK, MySQL isn’t running for some reason. It is running, it’s just that the 10.4.4 update “fixed” an error they had in their bundled PHP. Now I have to do the reverse of the “fix” in order to get their PHP to see my MySQL. Okay, everything works. I am going home. I hate server upgrades.

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We went to Wal-Mart this weekend. Wal-Mart is totally the Mos Eisley spaceport of the United States.

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I think the fates are conspiring against me. Or I’m just dumb. Last year the wife and I built a deck. We decided not to bother with a building permit. Between my father in-law who has been building houses for over 35 years, and my brother who has spent several summers building decks for peoplewe figured we had gotten enough advice that we didn’t need to worry about an inspection. Well guess what, we were almost done and one day I see the building inspector had stopped by when he noticed our unfinished, non-permit having deck. Damn it. So we got a permit, no big deal. Fast forward to a month ago. We started finishing our basement. Again we make the decision to not get a building permit. Well, yesterday while the drywall was being delivered the building inspector drove by. Busted. So $90.00 later we now have a building permit and inspections are scheduled. Yes, for being two pretty smart people we are really dumb.

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Well Apple updated their .Mac service this week. They upped storage capacity to 1 GB, which is definitely a nice change. Of course, at last count I have something close to 20 Gigs of personal data on my work PowerBook that I would love to stick on my iDisk but I’m not holding my breath for that much storage. A new feature was added, called Groups. Basically, a mailing list and “group” web site. A very cool idea with one major flaw. You must have a .Mac account to use it. You can sign up for the free 60 day .Mac trial and even after the 60 days are up you can still use that account for iChat and any groups you are in, but it is a bit confusing I think. I think many people will have a hard time realizing they can set their .Mac account to use their regular email address and they will be turned off. Apple has a similar system for non .Mac users for their support services called an Apple ID. .Mac users can use their .Mac ID as their Apple ID, but you cannot use your Apple ID as a .Mac ID. Signing up for an Apple ID is as simple as giving your name and email. A .Mac account requests much more information. People do not want to give so much information for a simple account. It’s too bad. I can think of several good uses for the groups feature, but I know the people I would want to join would be turned off by the registration process.

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I am at a security conference today. Over lunch we had a little trivia contest based on the game show The Weakest Link. Guess who won? Hey! You’re right, it was me! Guess what I won? A 1 GB iPod Shuffle!

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Well, the first day of the 2005 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference is drawing to a close. There is a reception a half an hour but the sessions are over. Of course, the big news is Apple is switching to Intel processors. It was kind of funny when Steve Jobs confirmed the rumor during his keynote. Usually when he announces something there is this giant cheer and applause. This time is was kind of quiet and I think I heard a slight gasp. 🙂 It looks pretty cool though. Most of the demo machines they’ve been using are running Intel processors so it works. Apparently Apple has been producing Intel versions of OS X for the last five years in secret. Transitioning to the new architecture should not be a huge deal. Anyway, there’s a press release if you want more info. The OS X State of The Union session was pretty good. Basically they talked about writing apps to take advantage of the technologies in the OS. All it did was make me want to really sit down and learn to write native OS X apps. Damn you Apple! The Enterprise IT State of The Union session kind of blew really. Another example of Apple not really doing a good job with their Enterprise customers. It was basically this: “Yup, we make a server OS based on our desktop OS, and it’s good. We make good hardware that has a really good TCO. Now, here’s some Enterprise customers who are worse speakers than me if you can believe it to talk about their implementations.” I’m really excited about other sessions this week though so it should be fun. I left the good digital camera at home because my daughter is graduating from kindergarten this week (and I’m going to miss it 🙁 ) so the pictures I have (here are from my phone. So low quality to say the least.

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