Friday, May 23, 2003
Fell into installer geek mode. Installing Windows 2003 and Visual Studio 2003 (.NET), full-on Microsloth hell. I have no idea what they're pimping as .NET these days, so it should be interesting. It's been about five years since code was even vaguely interesting to me: up until a recent client forced me to dive back into HTML, I hadn't really coded anything for production in about 3 years. Maybe there was a data model or two in there, some test automation code, but that's mostly analysis and Visio, which isn't really work, is it?
Anyway, these days, to feed the family in this wonderful fucking economy, I'm now doin' The Bob Thing (of the The Bobs from Office Space). I'm a Consultant, along with a friend of mine, to a local smallish software company that is struggling with growth issues. It's going to be interesting; I've never felt so alien before. Yesterday was the first day, but it was mostly administrivia and scheduling, hardly real work. There's some interesting realities, but I'll get back to them as soon as I check on the VS2K3 (shit that's hard to type...gotta get used to it I guess) install.
...OK. After browsing around for a bit, I've seen enough that I realize I had better educate myself about both products a little bit more. My impetus is that MS is having a bootcamp on w2k3 (lowercase w makes that easier--guess what?) here in SD in mid-June; I'm goin' with a former partner of mine, and I'd like to have some pointed questions. Should be interesting: haven't been in a context like that in many moons. I didn't bear up well in my last classroom-like scene.
Interesting bits of w2k3. It's got IPv6 ('bout friggin' time!)! Lots of bad juju language about running the security update, but it focused solely on Win2k and XP releases--nary a mention of W2k3. Further, after exiting the installer (a nice departure from typical MS installers, in that it is useful) it asked me one more time if I wanted to check security updates, so I said "Sure". The check for updates came back to tell me that my security key was invalid. Whee! I love beta software! (Is this damn thing even "out" yet?)
It is plausible that two new products might not necessarily play well together, and the audience for vs2k3 is likely running w2kpro. I have yet to meet a developer on XP, but then again, I haven't been employed in an organizational IT context in about 18 months. (I spent 12 months doing ops for a small VC firm, and since the first of the year I've been building my own company, Immersive Networks, a wifi hotspot vendor.) So I have no real sense of what people are developing in these days (I know one guy doing some C#, but otherwise, it's a ghost town out there). I do know that nothing MS has put out has ever even been as close to stable as w2k is, so it's a reasonable bet that vs2k3 is looking to install on a w2k box.
I'm trying to think of a box with w2k around here that I wanna poison. I can't really think of one. Hm. Homehub is a wheezing pii running w2k, and does what it is called. If I ask it to do anything other than NAT, it gets all nervous and falls over. (I come by my hardware through random channels of goodwill, so it's a true test of living in the real world. Sorta.) Immersive is my core machine, and is named for my business. It's a P4 2.5, it's got a gig of ram, couple of big whomping IDE drives, and it feels slow as shit to me. It's even got an NVidia 4600 in it, so don't tell me the video is a problem. It's running w2k server: I might put plain old pro on it, just to see how it runs, but I'm doubtful. I just went through an XP Pro install on a another box, a no-name rackmount P4 1.6g server I just inherited from a friend; XP Pro does boot quickly, but it's really ugly, so I hosed it and am using the box for this little w2k3 adventure. Then there's DPBurn, which used to be a dual-processor Athlon board, but I smoked one of the two Athlon 1600s in it. It's running a lot of SCSI--burner, tape drive, internal 9gig raid. I know I should challenge that box more, but it's been kinda flaky since I baked the CPU. I have one more unnamed box, which may get christened with vs2k3 if it's within spec. There's cox cable broadband, a wireless AP supporting bear's machine (a laptop) and cam's box (a piii 500 with Hercules gf2, plenty fine for all his misadventures online). The PS2 downstairs also shares the broadband connection. Then there's the linux box I'm working on at Rackspace. It's kinda cool getting my *nix chops back together--it's been many, many moons.
Unfortunately, it looks like the unnamed latecomer to the party has to dance with the drunk guy. I hope it's in spec (another piii 500, 512mb ram, I think another NVidia card, maybe a gf3? We'll see, I guess.).
Some predictions:
- w2k3 proves Not Ready For Primetime. This is not so much a prediction as just the reality of Microsoft software. Never trust a x.0 release. Wait for the Service Pack.
- vs2k3, with it's new implementation of .NET, will turn out to be a huge security risk.
W2k3 has some of the XP interface, but none of the garish color (thankfully). The installer had a cool grey background with glowing green highlights (think Xbox branding rather than Windows), and I was looking forward to an interface inspired by a gaming mindset, but no. XP's evil spawn is w2k3.
I quickly groomed through Program Files and found some other innarestin' bits: Microsloth ACT. I quickly horked over to the makers of the infamous ACT! software package (the bane of IT departments everywhere: software only salespeople can understand), and didn't see any mention of a partnering agreement, so it remains to be seen what the hell MS thinks it is doing (again, the urge to go graze the media is strong)
There's a cool little HTML text editor in with the Help file builder; I was impressed with the zoom selection tool, as it's a good solution to a tough problem. Macromedia's Dreamweaver has pretty good selection control on the mouse, but you end up hardcoding the selection size anyway. Everyone else: Adobe, Paint Shop Pro, even IrfanView demands that you watch your X's and Y's: tedious as hell.
I really should go get a grounding before I continue much further along on this adventure. More as I know it.
(And I'll just have to continue the Bob story later. It's a good one, too.)
-h8ful
Anyway, these days, to feed the family in this wonderful fucking economy, I'm now doin' The Bob Thing (of the The Bobs from Office Space). I'm a Consultant, along with a friend of mine, to a local smallish software company that is struggling with growth issues. It's going to be interesting; I've never felt so alien before. Yesterday was the first day, but it was mostly administrivia and scheduling, hardly real work. There's some interesting realities, but I'll get back to them as soon as I check on the VS2K3 (shit that's hard to type...gotta get used to it I guess) install.
...OK. After browsing around for a bit, I've seen enough that I realize I had better educate myself about both products a little bit more. My impetus is that MS is having a bootcamp on w2k3 (lowercase w makes that easier--guess what?) here in SD in mid-June; I'm goin' with a former partner of mine, and I'd like to have some pointed questions. Should be interesting: haven't been in a context like that in many moons. I didn't bear up well in my last classroom-like scene.
Interesting bits of w2k3. It's got IPv6 ('bout friggin' time!)! Lots of bad juju language about running the security update, but it focused solely on Win2k and XP releases--nary a mention of W2k3. Further, after exiting the installer (a nice departure from typical MS installers, in that it is useful) it asked me one more time if I wanted to check security updates, so I said "Sure". The check for updates came back to tell me that my security key was invalid. Whee! I love beta software! (Is this damn thing even "out" yet?)
It is plausible that two new products might not necessarily play well together, and the audience for vs2k3 is likely running w2kpro. I have yet to meet a developer on XP, but then again, I haven't been employed in an organizational IT context in about 18 months. (I spent 12 months doing ops for a small VC firm, and since the first of the year I've been building my own company, Immersive Networks, a wifi hotspot vendor.) So I have no real sense of what people are developing in these days (I know one guy doing some C#, but otherwise, it's a ghost town out there). I do know that nothing MS has put out has ever even been as close to stable as w2k is, so it's a reasonable bet that vs2k3 is looking to install on a w2k box.
I'm trying to think of a box with w2k around here that I wanna poison. I can't really think of one. Hm. Homehub is a wheezing pii running w2k, and does what it is called. If I ask it to do anything other than NAT, it gets all nervous and falls over. (I come by my hardware through random channels of goodwill, so it's a true test of living in the real world. Sorta.) Immersive is my core machine, and is named for my business. It's a P4 2.5, it's got a gig of ram, couple of big whomping IDE drives, and it feels slow as shit to me. It's even got an NVidia 4600 in it, so don't tell me the video is a problem. It's running w2k server: I might put plain old pro on it, just to see how it runs, but I'm doubtful. I just went through an XP Pro install on a another box, a no-name rackmount P4 1.6g server I just inherited from a friend; XP Pro does boot quickly, but it's really ugly, so I hosed it and am using the box for this little w2k3 adventure. Then there's DPBurn, which used to be a dual-processor Athlon board, but I smoked one of the two Athlon 1600s in it. It's running a lot of SCSI--burner, tape drive, internal 9gig raid. I know I should challenge that box more, but it's been kinda flaky since I baked the CPU. I have one more unnamed box, which may get christened with vs2k3 if it's within spec. There's cox cable broadband, a wireless AP supporting bear's machine (a laptop) and cam's box (a piii 500 with Hercules gf2, plenty fine for all his misadventures online). The PS2 downstairs also shares the broadband connection. Then there's the linux box I'm working on at Rackspace. It's kinda cool getting my *nix chops back together--it's been many, many moons.
Unfortunately, it looks like the unnamed latecomer to the party has to dance with the drunk guy. I hope it's in spec (another piii 500, 512mb ram, I think another NVidia card, maybe a gf3? We'll see, I guess.).
Some predictions:
- w2k3 proves Not Ready For Primetime. This is not so much a prediction as just the reality of Microsoft software. Never trust a x.0 release. Wait for the Service Pack.
- vs2k3, with it's new implementation of .NET, will turn out to be a huge security risk.
W2k3 has some of the XP interface, but none of the garish color (thankfully). The installer had a cool grey background with glowing green highlights (think Xbox branding rather than Windows), and I was looking forward to an interface inspired by a gaming mindset, but no. XP's evil spawn is w2k3.
I quickly groomed through Program Files and found some other innarestin' bits: Microsloth ACT. I quickly horked over to the makers of the infamous ACT! software package (the bane of IT departments everywhere: software only salespeople can understand), and didn't see any mention of a partnering agreement, so it remains to be seen what the hell MS thinks it is doing (again, the urge to go graze the media is strong)
There's a cool little HTML text editor in with the Help file builder; I was impressed with the zoom selection tool, as it's a good solution to a tough problem. Macromedia's Dreamweaver has pretty good selection control on the mouse, but you end up hardcoding the selection size anyway. Everyone else: Adobe, Paint Shop Pro, even IrfanView demands that you watch your X's and Y's: tedious as hell.
I really should go get a grounding before I continue much further along on this adventure. More as I know it.
(And I'll just have to continue the Bob story later. It's a good one, too.)
-h8ful
