Tom at 16

Week of April 22nd, 2002

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Friday April 25, 2002

[Posted Friday PM, oh-late-hundred. But you won't read this until Saturday as I'm working on my laptop without any Internet connectivity. Read on for full story...]

Bah. Morons. Idiots. Cretins. [mutter-mutter-mutter]

A month ago I phoned SaskTel, informed them we were moving, gave them the new address, explained my current packages and needs, and asked the following:

Will our phone number change? Answer: No, you can keep the same number.
Will my IPs change? Answer: No, we can move them for you to the new location
I want a service overlap; I want my DSL connected at the new house Friday morning, and the phone service disconnected at the old house Friday afternoon. Possible? Answer: Yes, sir, we can arrange that.

I then reinforced that I made my living on the Internet, and that if any of the above changed I need to know right away so I could make appropriate arrangements. The service agent reassured me she'd call if any problems arose.

I was pleased. Another checkmark on my To-Do list. Another arrangement handled. What a fool I can be at times.

THURSDAY morning about 10am my home network went nuts. Nothing would resolve, all my machines had a seizure. I, of course, thought it was something I had done as I'd been tweaking and re-re-re-configuring the box I was working on -- I've been heads down for the last week trying to get Samba to authenticate from an LDAP service; more on this in a bit...

I was pulling my hair out trying to finger out what was wrong when the phone rang -- it was SaskTel. It was a customer service agent phoning to tell me my new phone number. MY WHAT?? Note the first bullet in the above list. I won't bore you with the gruesome details of the conversation we had, but suffice to say I was NOT amused. After I vented for a few minutes, I stopped to ponder the big picture. I ask him if SaskTel had chopped off my DSL connection about an hour ago. "Why yes sir, we did." Now I was REALLY not amused, as I knew that it would not be worth the time and energy to get the line reconnected (Thursday afternoon) only to have it moved again Friday morning. Sigh.

In the end I told him to go and triple check that my IPs were not about to change with the shift in service; I did not want any more surprises. He phoned back an hour later and reassured me my IPs would be moved.

And there I sat, no Internet, all my computers borked cuz they couldn't resolve, pouting over my situation.

Everything *could* have worked so perfectly. I was planning on putting up a short post Thursday afternoon, reminding everyone I was going to be done for at most an hour on Friday while I moved Hydras. By Thursday night the tutorial I had been working on all week would be wrapped up. I would then do the Buzz that night, post it Friday AM, meet the installer at the new house, yada-yada and yada. You get the picture.

But no, someone at SaskTel didn't like my plan of action. I wonder aloud if Murphy works for SaskTel...

Bother.

Anywhoo... on to bigger and better things. My "Samba as a PDC" tutorial went live Wednesday AM. When I turned my laptop on at 8:30 I already had 20+ email complimenting me on it. It was announced on the Samba Mailing list. And nary a bad comment anywhere. Gosh I like it when things work like that. Thanks to all who wrote. My mail server's been done for two days (mutter, mutter), but when I get things rocking again I will definately respond to all who took the time to write.

Next, I've been working my tush off for almost two weeks now on my next tutorial -- Using LDAP to authenticate a Samba PDC/Domain. This is one of the hardest pieces I think I've ever written. First, there's only about a half-dozen HOWTOs out there on the topic. Second, each article is only about 30% correct. Which 30%? That's what I've been doing for two weeks. Testing, fumbling around, and blowing up perfectly good Red Hat installations when I followed the wrong 70%.

So that's what I've been up to. Today Leah and I got all the little stuff moved. Tomorrow a neighbour and I are going to move the big stuff. Hopefully by tomorrow night (Saturday) by this time we'll be settled, mostly unpacked, and sipping on a cold beer. Wish us luck.

I'll check in late Saturday and let you know how things went.

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