Before I go on about my frustrating day I will mention this one nice thing that happened: I got my Fantasy Football League invite. Can’t wait to get started on another season of fantasy football. This will be my third season with these guys. I’ve come second place both years. Somehow, I also managed to come in second in the two other leagues I was in last year. Yes. I was in three leagues last year. Yes. That is a little overkill. I’m gonna try to keep it two this year.

Otherwise, I’ve had a thoroughly useless day. I couldn’t get anything accomplished at work. Nothing went wrong really. But things didn’t really go well either. Little nagging things like errors in the back up log. I was able to resolve some of them, but I didn’t get them all so there will be more tomorrow. Its not that backups aren’t working, The data is getting backed up, but I hate errors in the backup log, and errors like that make my manager (rightfully) nervous. So they have to be dealt with.

But after that I can start working on one of the big and interesting projects. Like the new software package (maintenance management) that launches in 3 weeks. Nope can’t work on that because I need to get the vendor on the phone and have him work with me. Part of the solution resides on Palm based rugged handheld computers, and our vendor was supposed to load the software on all of the handhelds and get the individual handhelds registered with the database on his last visit. Well, of course, he did not (for many reasons not all of them his fault either.) So now instead of working with the maintenance department on testing the handhelds, I have a stack of Palm’s sitting on my desk that all need individual registration codes and all need to be integrated with the database. And all of that needs the vendor on the phone. Fun! Nothing like being a slave to someone else’s availability.

OK, how about a simple little Project then. I know, I’ll set up the Network management feature of the Smart UPS (back up battery.) The idea is set up the NIC that is in the UPS unit and have the UPS send a signal over the network to the Server(s) telling them to shut down when the UPS stops receiving current. Cool. Right? So I run the software that puts an IP address on the card ( so the card can communicate on network) and the it reports: ok completed successfully. Now all I have to do is launch a web based management tool pointed to the New IP address … but there nothing there. I ping the new IP address … nothing. I try to rerun the software … nope. This isn’t supposed to be rocket science. So tomorrow I’ll be digging for documentation.

The long and short of it is this. My To Do List for tomorrow looks way to much like my To Do List for today did and I hate that.

I also received one of the many email newsletters that I subscribe to. It invited to join the discussion on the new Microsoft certification: the MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician.) Which is kinda of an entry level MS cert. I thought it was cool little cert for guys just getting started. So I go to the discussion board, and these guys are using it as an excuse to knock all Microsoft Certs. Well, that didn’t sit well so I actually shot back my own retort. I never post on those things but it struck just right so I did it.

Anyway, that’s just a couple of example of the little things that got to me today.