Monday, Monday, Monday!

This is a repost from my daily work journal. I thought I'd share it here. I'm all kindergarten like that:

After spending the weekend feeling as if I had been run over by a monster truck or two (read, sick!), I got to work this morning, checked in for the layout of the day, then headed to Texarkana for a supply run.

I never really thought buying some "knick-knack" shelves (for video cameras) and a few cables would be such an adventure. I started the trip at Home Depot. Did you know Home Depot does not carry anything shorter than 23.5" in the way of shelves? I didn't. In fact, I think they used to. Oh, well. I figured I would try another store.

I went to Best Buy to look for an S-Video extension cable, a couple of VGA extensions, and to see if *they* happened to have shelving for speakers (that I could use for video cameras). They did not have an S-Video extension. In fact, they only had a 6-foot standard one. So, I bought two VGA extensions I needed and a small switch for the Sympodium cabinet (way too many network connections wrapped up in one unit for me!).

After Best Buy, I drove over to Lowe's to look for shelving. I actually found a two-pack for $20 that had two black shelves with hardware for mounting it "bracketlessly" to the wall. Very slick! I picked up two of those and headed for Radio Shack.

I arrived before Radio Shack opened, so I checked my phone messages and had one from an area tech. I returned the call and he was having trouble getting some users to log in to his Novell network. He said users could log in to "Workstation Only (WSO)" mode. I suggested that he have one of the WSO users login in using the Novell system tray icon once they were logged in to WSO mode. It worked - the users could read mapped drives and get to Groupwise. Now that we had a way for users to function, the next step was to isolate the problem. I said that I thought the problem was either in a login script or was happening as part of the login process. He told me that some users had received an anti-virus message that a couple files on the server were infected. It's important to note that not all users were having trouble logging in. Because the users could login through WSO (which runs scripts as part of logging in), I had eliminated the login scripts as the culprit. The tech said he would call me back later.

Though Radio Shack did not have an S-Video extension cable, they did have an S-Video coupler, which would serve the same purpose.

I got back to the co-op and worked with Josh to install the shelves in the Conference room, do some cable management and get wires ready for the Panduit I have coming. After that, we worked on the Distance Learning room. From there, I began moving telephone lines around in the telco closet. We've been having trouble with the fire alarm/security system and the elevator not playing nicely with each other. So, like a teacher in a classroom, I separated everyone. The elevator is now on its own line and the security system is on two completely different lines than it used to be. I had never used a 66-block punchdown tool before. It's not quite the same as a 110-punch. I kept getting the wire turned sideways, so it wouldn't cut. I finally showed it who was in charge. It wasn't me. Just kidding.

I spent the rest of the day checking email and answering phone calls (which amounted to about 30 minutes total. It was a full day!)