Advance notice; I am in a bit of a rant-and-rave mood so… Keep that in mind while you read.

What the f*ck? I think that sums it all up.

Today at work I had a pretty productive day and was even very proactive. I installed and configured all the required software for Exchange 2003. I did the forest and domain prep. Ensured there were 2 Global Catalog servers, installed and configured WINS on both DC’s and made them replication partners. Integrated WINS into DNS and configured all the servers to reflect this change.

In short, the entire works for Microsoft Exchange 2003. Installed it, updated it with all the latest patches, applied Service Pack 2. I also installed the SMTP Diagnostics, TroubleShooting assistant and Exchange Best Practice Analyzer. For matters of good measure I even installed Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.

After a few hours of installing and configuring the first sections of Exchange (store, transaction logs etc) and applying all necessary tweaks and improvements - the server disconnects me. Huh? I hate seeing that blinking “disconnect” in Remote Desktop. A few seconds later I receive email-alerts from the firewall that a NIC is down. I remote desktop to the firewall and LO-AND-BEHOLD; the ever-joyous ‘cable disconnected’ warning appeared on the LAN-port (I connected via WAN as I was doing remote monitoring/installation)

So I dial the place up only to hear they are doing some maintenance and had informed everyone; except us… Grr. Then again, I think we scored points in this scenario. It can’t be more then 5 minutes between their cable-yanking tactics and me being on the phone calling them. Got to love monitoring software

Since I was informed that it would take at least 30 minutes for them to get things done I figured I might as well seize the opportunity to work on the firewall and iron a few things out. 11 updates later on, and a reboot I can’t connect anymore. WTF? Then my own notebook started acting up so I figured as much and decided to call it a day.

I arrive at home to some really loud music, a vile stench and trash everywhere. Now, if you read my blog frequently you’d know that that is pretty much a given at this place. But now it just accumalated it all. I checked the bathroom where the sink was still a very unpleasant and unappeasing brown. You know, the kind of brown you get when you try coffee in it, but don’t run the tap to clean it up - so the coffee just dries up. Eck. I go to my room only to find someone has used the vacant room as their storage…? OK, GTFO my planet. Please!

 15 minutes later I am so worked up I started to clean my own room, and in aggreviation I grab some chlorine, rubber gloves, a squeeky and some windex. I go to the bathroom and clean the sink and mirror…. Yeah I know, I was surprised too. I had almost forgotten we had a mirror. A couple of minutes later the mirror and sink are clean. And I mean C-L-E-A-N. I go back to my room, and take out the trash, picking up more as I go downstairs; since some of my roommates just put it in a bag and leave it outside their room for someone (me being that aforementioned someone 99.999% of the time) to pick up. So I bring it all downstairs and throw it in the bin, only to realize that there is more trash then I can put in my trashbag. OK, WTF?! Never fucking mind….

Walking back upstairs it dawned on me; my roommates really don’t give a flying fuck about this place or anyone as long as they don’t have to lift a finger…. Gaah!

Anyway, yesterday I performed a BIOS-update of my motherboard - which went fine. I also checked the BIOS and changed a few settings to see if I can tweak some more performance out of my system. Then it dawned on me again; I used the Resource Manager and had seen that I am getting 100+ page faults/sec at times, or in excess of that. Now, in layman terms that means - GET SOME MORE RAM! Well at least I know what to buy for my computer next then.

Today I also received my copy of Supreme Commander which I will be installing shortly.

I also installed iTunes and Quicktime today - which also reminded me Vista isn’t completely - blah blah blah… nothing is. Shut up and install. After installation it asked me to reboot. OK, WTF? Why would I need to reboot for a simple video and music program? Sheesh…

Still… Today was your typical - WTF!?! day. Gah!