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preferred never learning
Saturday, March 28 2009
I spent most of the day in the laboratory surrounded with increasing numbers of computers as I built up a dummy computer lab domain centered around a Windows 2003 server (a respectable 2.5 Gigahertz Celeron machine I'd salvaged from the side of Dug Hill Road not 300 feet from the house). For workstations, I added various laptops and crappy half-assembled computer towers attached to my monitors and input devices through long KVM cables. I tried out different scenarios using this setup to see if I could get roaming profiles to work. Outside the oppressive clanking of the prison environment, with access to the ever-helpful Mr. Google, it wasn't too hard.
By evening, Jed (the guy in the prison program I've been working with) had found me a consultant in the city who couldn't come up to the prisons but was willing to work remotely. He was the kind of overcaffeinated guy who could talk for ten minutes without once pausing for a grunt of feedback. At first he was freaking out, thinking we'd have to get the servers out of the prisons and onto an internet connection where he could work on them remotely. But I told him the servers were already set up and functioning well, that my main problem was with workstations running Windows Home. This was when he told me the most important information I needed to hear: Windows Home is useless in a domain-based environment. We'd have to upgrade all the Windows XP Home workstations to Windows XP Professional. It's such details of Windows networking that I would have preferred never learning, but here I am learning them because I am the guy thrust into this world.
Meanwhile the day had been absolutely gorgeous, and every minute spent indoors had been a crime against nature. We had highs in the mid-60s and plenty of sun. Such days are about as good as this particular climate can deliver; any warmer and suddenly the air is full of tiny biting flies, at least in this season.
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