Cricalix.Net

Went karting last night with the guys from work (work paid).  It was a blast, but I’m paying for it this morning.  My boss, ever so smartly, has taken today off - but some of us have to be in to keep the department running!  Arms hurt, back hurts (bruised on the spinal area), shoulder isn’t happy (wrenched it getting out of the kart), muscles on top of my shins hurt and there are a few more bruises around my hips.

I came to the conclusion by the end of the practice laps that karts are made for people under 6′ tall, and who weigh less than 180 pounds. At 6′ 4″, and past the 220 pound mark, I had distinct trouble keeping my foot off the brake, especially as I went around right-hand bends.  Power:weight ratio was quite low as well.  Best personal lap time was 21.80 seconds, best lap time for the group was 20.09, best lap time on the track is 18.35.  Can’t complain.

As the title says, cars are black holes on land.  Money just disappears when it comes in contact with a car, especially an older car.  Case in point - I took my car to a local garage to get a full service done on it.  They called me back later that day and said they were still finding problems, and hadn’t actually serviced the car yet.  In total, there were 17 defects found on my 1996 car:

1. Front wipers smear screen. I’ve fixed this with new wipers, and I tell you now, Peugeot 406s have some of the most cuss-awkward wiper fittings I’ve had the displeasure of meeting.
2. N/S plate light inoperative. I’ve fixed this as well. Bulb didn’t want to come out at first, but a bit of judicious wiggling and it came.
3. N/S/F flasher white. I can possibly fix this, but it means delving into the engine compartment, so I’ll ask them to fix it if it’ll cause problems with the MOT in May.
4. N/S/F washer jet partially blocked. That’s been like that for ages - at least a year. Keep meaning to take a needle to it.
5. Power steering fluid leak from resevoir. That’s bad.
6. Cambelt replacement. Few thousand miles left before this is required at least.
7. N/S + O/S front tyres low on outer edge. Supposedly indicative of soft tyres, but I keep mine at pressure.
8. N/S w/cyl leaking. Brakes, ’nuff said.
9. Rear brake shoes required. Brakes again.
10. O/S/R brake shoe adjuster incomplete. And again.
11. Wiring fault on immobiliser. Couldn’t start the car the other night because of this.
12. Front brake disks corroded on inner surface. Pads and disks required. Brakes yet again.
13. O/S anti-roll bar drop link noisy.
14. N/S anti-roll bar drop link slight play
15. Power steering ram leaking. Bad.
16. Engine oil leak possible rear main. Could be bad.
17. N/S drive shaft seal leaking. No idea if this is bad or not.

Grand total to fix all of that?  £1000.  The car is worth about £500 part-exchange.  I’ve sorted 2 of the defects out, but brakes and power steering are beyond my meagre skills.  The cambelt, anti-roll bars and a few other items aren’t too critical yet, so I should be able to get the bill down a bit - it’s cheaper than trying to find a new old car.

Of course, I just bought a bike on Saturday, so I’m fairly sure a posting in the future is going to be ‘Bicycles are black holes on land’.

In the current job, I’m dealing with Microsoft-based administrator more than I ever have before. I don’t mind too much, it gives me a few more skills, and another bullet point or three on the resume. Today, however, Exchange has been driving me batty.

We have Exchange 2003 - it’s not bad once it’s had all of the service packs applied. We also, until today, managed our meeting rooms on a bit of paper. This morning, the request came through to investigate the use of Exchange as a meeting room management tool; shouldn’t be too hard to do really, and it isn’t.

1. Create a new Active Directory user, and stick it in a service account OU.
2. Assign the user a rather long password, it’s only going to be used on occasion.
3. Create a mail profile for Outlook, and log in to the meeting room account.
4. Configure the account to automatically accept meetings and cancellations, and also provide conflict detection. Oh, don’t forget the rights for Authors and Editors (create/edit own and edit all respectively).
5. Log back in to a regular Exchange account, and schedule a meeting, with the meeting room as an invited attendee.
6. Remember to throw the flag that says the meeting room user is actually a resource. Every. Single. Time.

It’s step 6 that gets me - why can’t I tell Active Directory, and thus Exchange, that I want a new object of type resource, rather than new object of type user? Why do I have to remember to change that flag for that user every time?

Argh.