Archives September 2006

Saturday, 30th September 2006

Chip
Bugger... I haven't blogged for nearly a month!

Not much has changed house-wise. Liam is doing terrific. He went for his shots a while a go and was a little crappy for a few days but he's OK now. He's also rolling right over onto his tummy and back now, he tries very hard to crawl, but he needs to develop his arms a bit more - he doesn't quite have the strength to support himself yet. He gets very close! He also gets quite upset when he fails to crawl. He's a very determined bub!

On the work side of things, I've been offered a job doing website work and programming. I will also be doing a short  stint of retail work until we ramp up the work flow suitably. To start with I will be primarily working on websites/databases to bring up to date a backlog of customer requested modifications and updates. Some of these sites we will probably re-write making them database driven, providing interfaces for the customer to update their own content. Once all that is sorted, we are going to be working on the core business project - the POS. It's an Open Source Point of Sale program that is already implemented in a number of sites. Some of the things we will be adding to it are stock-control type operations - stock takes, adjustments etc. We also acquired code modules to interface with Ingenico EFTPOS PIN Pads. That will mean we get to do some interesting coding when we integrate that functionality into the POS!

Aside from those tasks, we will be doing network/POS installs, general tech-support and occasionally the odd custom PIC (I hope!) =)

I left Tandy in good graces, it was a difficult choice but I don't think I was doing the store Justice. I'm pretty tired of retail managing, my last few days were great though. It's unfortunate that I gained my motivation back when the new manager started. We re-merchandised a lot of the store in the last week. I even sold warranties and pulled descent sales! l33t!

Monday, 04th September 2006

Chip

My first Father's Day!

I finally got around to 7V modding the PowerEdge 2400 so that it's bearable. It's much, much quieter now! The spindle noise is whats loud now... 

Saturday, 2nd September 2006 - 20:36:31

CRW_1974.JPG

I'm looking after Liam this weekend. Kel has taken a casual job. She loves it so far, helps her get out of the house for a while. I also re-arranged the entire living room today. It was crappily laid out. I swapped where the armchairs were to where the cabinet is against the wall. That way Liam has more empty carpet area to play on and everything fits better. I bought a Cisco Catalyst 2924M with two 100baseFX (ST Fibre Optic) modules with two ports each. It's a 24 port switch with two slots for modules.

I currently use MiniCom and a serial console cable to talk to it. I thought I'd try to get that working rather than the boring old HyperTerminal in windows. /dev/ttyS1 ftw! I am slowly learning some commands and procedures with the switch. I have turned off the fiber modules because they are unused [orange lights]. I also turned off the port that the wireless router is on as it's not configured yet. I love it!

Before this switch could go in, I had to do something about the noise! This switch is designed to run in an enterprise situation in a rack, in a closet or data center where no one has to live next to it. It's got three 80mm fans that run at 12 volts. Full speed. It literally sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The noise is second only to the PowerEdge 2400s (Which will be treated to a similar mod soon).

To make this switch suitable, I unplugged the three fans then made an external power cable for them. I did this rather than modifying the internal PSU or tapping one of the 12V lines. That way the internals remain as original as possible. A big variable voltage lab power supply is currently running the fans in the switch and in the ADSL router until I get time to knock up a quick variable power supply.


The best way to go was to stick some rubber feet on it and run the cables underneath, then it's nice and tidy.

 

Daily archives