Been awhile

I hadn't realized that it's been so long since my last post. Here's an update.

Saturday I hauled Gondor over to my parents' house and set it up for them. Aside from cleaning off all of Judith's files, I installed the hard drive from their old PC as D:\, thereby moving over their files. I setup D:\ as their data drive, leaving C:\ for Windows and their apps.

Other hardware I migrated over from their old PC included 2 Inland USB 2.0 PCI adapter cards, giving them 6 USB ports, and a 256 meg DIMM, bumping the box up to 768 megs of RAM total.

Since Gondor is built around commodity parts, e.g., standard ATX format mobo, 3.5" IDE disks, etc., it'll be easy for me to upgrade it when the time comes. But given my folks' needs, I suspect the old box will server them well for a few more years.

I tried to setup my old Linksys NAT router as a firewall for them, but something must've happened to it while it sat in my office for the past year or so. It didn't want to talk to the 3Com NIC in Gondor, so I trashed it. I have one more spare router to try, otherwise I'll have them pick up a new Netgear.

Saturday night Judith and I went out to the Lucky Dog Saloon in Whitemarsh for dinner, sans kids. My MIL volunteered to babysit and we took advantage. The ribs at the Lucky Dog are outstanding. I tried a pint of Arrogant Bastard Ale while we were waiting to be seated, but I found it too hoppy for my taste. The Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout I had with dinner, on the other hand, was outstanding.

Much of yesterday afternoon was wasted while I twiddle my thumbs, waiting for Pep Boys to install a new battery in my truck. Starting the Expedtion yesterday morning, it sounded like it was having a hard time turning over. Later, when I went to Pep Boys, it barely started. Apparently the battery was leaking around the negative terminal. So, for $79 I got a new Energizer with a 24 month free replacement warranty installed. The truck starts right up now.

This morning at work I tried yet another config on the SMC switches in my lab. I'm trying to get SMC's "private VLAN" feature working but as soon as I activate it, I lose IP connectivity to the box. I'm working with SMC on this but beginning to lose patience.