[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

We needed a system to monitor our phone system and do some basic reporting. Simple, right?

All it needed was some basics... and it needed to have Windows XP. Easy enough, I've done a few (150+) installs of Windows, this just isn't the imagewe normally use. This time it was using the actual CD and install it. I forgot how awful Windows is right out of the box, and how much of a pain it is to work with before you're "ready to go."

Step 1: Install from CD. It went normally, and I even got to put in the CD key! Ick. Once that was done, I found that there were no drivers for the video, audio, USB, or ETHERNET. Great, no way to get to the Internet. Even better is that it offers to go online to look for drivers. Better still is the nag screen for the activation, which tries to have me go online.

I was able to get some updates on one of my other systems, and copy/install them to the PC. No luck on all three... I had to "reinstall" the already non-existant driver and try three different places to get it working. Once that was done, I restarted and was able to get to the Internet.

Step 2: Patches, patches, patches (insert "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" reference here). I was able to get to Windows update and get the latest version of... the updater. RESTART. Come back up, then connect again, and install SP2 - I will admit, that went smoothly as far as the install. RESTART... into 640x480 4-bit ugliness. wtf. Windows offered to adjust my monitor settings though. Sure, thanks... but it did *nothing*. I had to go into the Device Manager and update the drivers for the video, audio, and USB. It worked, oddly enough, with only a little fighting. Dont't worry though, I had to restart before any of it really worked correctly.

Step 3: Getting SP3. That's where I am now. It failed once (after taking almost 15 minutes of "verifying files"), and I really hope it works this time.

All of this makes me appreciate the OSS (open source software) I use, and how far it's come along.
</rant>

Is mother nature on a bender or something? Is she recovering now?

Seriously. This has been one of the weirdest winter-ish seasons I can remember, and this is New England. We had a week in January where it was 55 F (12.8 C) one day, then a high of 18 F (-7.8 C) the next day. It doesn't normally go above the mid 30s in January and Ferbruary, and it's not unusual for there to be a two or three week period where the temperature doesn't go above 20 F (-6.7 C). We've gotten a lot of snow, but along with the huge piles of the white stuff that we've shoveled, there have been days where the snow has almost been sublimating (evaporating directly).

Then there was this week, where it's been in the low 30s F (around 0 C) over night, then in the 40s during the day... then it SNOWED this morning. That would be fine, except I just put my summer tires back on my car (only to pass inspection). I was planning on putting the winters back on for a few more weeks...

For some reason, Nature isn't the word I'm thinking of after Mother right now.

</rant>

it's a work-related thing

<rant level="mild" type="Win vs. *nix">
In talking to one of the guys who used to work at our HQ in Sweden, I asked why we didn't look at a *nix environment (we're all-M$, except for a couple of things I put together). He said there was no way to centrally manage systems in an all-Linux environment... Looks like he was WRONG (kind of). I was just looking at OpenLDAP and that would do a lot of what we'd need to do, I think.
</rant>

Am I even on the right track here? Was he right?

...there were others I would use to describe spam as well.

Yes, we get it. You can shotgun your garbage all over the place for almost free, so when that one person who doesn't get it falls for the trick and buys something, it's all worth it. There are plenty of places to get that done, but please don't do that here.

For anyone who's using Drupal, there's a great module to add called Spam module v2. Check it out and add it, even if you're not planning on allowing trackbacks...

I've been playing with Drupal for a couple of months (read my first couple of posts for more info), and ran into a problem with spam trackbacks. There are patches to fix the issue I was having (I couldn't select all, then delete all), but I wanted to try and prevent the issue as well. This did it all, and then some.

I now have the ability to filter the spam out, clean out my trackbacks and comments in one fell swoop, and make sure that I actually see the postings that I want to see. I'll probably post more in a few weeks once I've used it more and see how it's holding up. This will definitely be added to the other sites that I'm using Drupal on.