Thursday, April 20, 2006
Features, Failures & Veggie Ground Round
So L&Y has a serious case of featuritis lately. Understandable given the amount of time it has taken us to get the toolkit system underway. Now that we seem to have a group of people using the system, we are also having some regular meetings with a group around a laptop / projector and going through things. It already does a ton of things for the office (DMS, BBS, LMS, In/out board, Commercial Prospects, Statistics, Calendars). There's a lot to be used, and a lot to learn. It just so happens that now when users are actually "using" it they all the disease which cause involuntary "can't it do it this way?" and "wouldn't it be better if".
I admit this is the kind of feedback I have been after for months. I keep telling them I am not an insurance professional. I have no idea what works for them ... I need to learn that. I can make it do just about anything, but what I think it should do is probably not best suited for you. I also realize this sounds like complaining. I really am excited about it, but every time we have a meeting my old TODO list gets pushed back, and the new TODO list takes precedence.
I am keen on adding some features into the PHPFWK framework. Reparenting of folders in the DMS is going to be nice. I don't have my list handy, but there's lots of cool things to be done. It's going to be so useful for them when it's all good and finished. I did just finish a global contacts section (searchable of course). And the DMS searching has google similar results. Nice.
So as I had been doing all of this work on new toolkit features one of the hard disks in the producers fax server died. Dwayne said he could hear the sand grinding 15 feet away. Maybe that's why I couldn't ssh into the machine. Pings fine, port scan shows the right services. I couldn't get down there, luckily Ray could. Pulled out the IDE cable on the master drive, the slave (SW RAID 1), picked up nicely. Funny how our report that afternoon suggested replacing that server ;-)
We also had a new server air shipped in. A nice Dell DL380, 3x36GB hard disks, double RAID 1. Ray has it all setup for me today. I'm going to go in and rebuild the server for them. I am downloading RHEL4-U4 to use right now. It was a task to track down the discs, and Dwayne couldn't burn the CDs for me before he left, so 4 hours of downloads later I might have disks. hi-ho, hi-ho ... you know the rest.
I got adventurous last night and was going to try veggie ground round (soy based replacement for ground beef). I decided to make some meat sauce (spicy Mexican style). I had the Mexican style ground round, some spicy salsa and all the veggies / sauces I would need. I turned out alright ... I however just wasn't in the mood for it after I was done. It tasted alright ... it does taste different. Maybe I'm just not into the "Mexican style". I mean I didn't want to throw up after putting it in my mouth, but I found it a little bit chewy. I almost would have preferred straight veggie sauce, no meat / meat substitute. I'm saving it. Will try again on another day. (At least it won't go bad in the fridge quite like meat would). I ended up having terrific tasty fish and potatoes instead.
Oh ... and NHL playoffs start on Friday ... better get my pools entered. ΒΆ 9:33:00 AM
I admit this is the kind of feedback I have been after for months. I keep telling them I am not an insurance professional. I have no idea what works for them ... I need to learn that. I can make it do just about anything, but what I think it should do is probably not best suited for you. I also realize this sounds like complaining. I really am excited about it, but every time we have a meeting my old TODO list gets pushed back, and the new TODO list takes precedence.
I am keen on adding some features into the PHPFWK framework. Reparenting of folders in the DMS is going to be nice. I don't have my list handy, but there's lots of cool things to be done. It's going to be so useful for them when it's all good and finished. I did just finish a global contacts section (searchable of course). And the DMS searching has google similar results. Nice.
So as I had been doing all of this work on new toolkit features one of the hard disks in the producers fax server died. Dwayne said he could hear the sand grinding 15 feet away. Maybe that's why I couldn't ssh into the machine. Pings fine, port scan shows the right services. I couldn't get down there, luckily Ray could. Pulled out the IDE cable on the master drive, the slave (SW RAID 1), picked up nicely. Funny how our report that afternoon suggested replacing that server ;-)
We also had a new server air shipped in. A nice Dell DL380, 3x36GB hard disks, double RAID 1. Ray has it all setup for me today. I'm going to go in and rebuild the server for them. I am downloading RHEL4-U4 to use right now. It was a task to track down the discs, and Dwayne couldn't burn the CDs for me before he left, so 4 hours of downloads later I might have disks. hi-ho, hi-ho ... you know the rest.
I got adventurous last night and was going to try veggie ground round (soy based replacement for ground beef). I decided to make some meat sauce (spicy Mexican style). I had the Mexican style ground round, some spicy salsa and all the veggies / sauces I would need. I turned out alright ... I however just wasn't in the mood for it after I was done. It tasted alright ... it does taste different. Maybe I'm just not into the "Mexican style". I mean I didn't want to throw up after putting it in my mouth, but I found it a little bit chewy. I almost would have preferred straight veggie sauce, no meat / meat substitute. I'm saving it. Will try again on another day. (At least it won't go bad in the fridge quite like meat would). I ended up having terrific tasty fish and potatoes instead.
Oh ... and NHL playoffs start on Friday ... better get my pools entered. ΒΆ 9:33:00 AM
