Servers, restraint, Angels in the offing, apostrophe games and this just in

Last week the new switch and associated cables arrived.

Dell's smaller peripherals and accessories ship from a different location than the systems so if you order a desk top don't be shocked if the mouse and keyboard precede the CPU and monitor.

Their arrival got me wondering where I'd put that router I bought but never installed the last time my Linux box dropped a power supply. I found the not terribly helpful all Windows based instructions, the box it came in but the router has gone to ground.

Oh well, all of my current research tells me that the whole put a physical firewall in front of my software firewall and mail server might way over complicate an already rather complicated setup. My biggest concern is that the Linux box and, more particular;y, my mail server config might suffer an identity crisis if the router and the box were suddenly dueling who was the real domain IP.

Twisted sort that I am, I 've toyed with the idea of combining the router and new switch between Linux box and the rest of my network so the Windows machines are in the private LAN are more stealth on the net. But again, router has gone to ground making it all a bit of a musing without meaning.

Server arrived earlier this week. I took it out of the boxes, verified that there was no obvious oops in shipping and have been trying to figure out how I can make the totally dysfunctional computer room not only work for the current computer/network configuration but also accommodate the new server.

Just how hard it is not to bring it in, fire it up and start exploring this new Red Hat distribution is something only another twisted computer geek can really understand. It is especially tough since my cygwin interim solution to the dying monitor is increasingly an on again and off again solution with the Windows box randomly misinterpreting permissions -- snarl, snarl.

Anyhow, I am determined to put things in order so that once I start the course work, the network will be configured, the room will be streamlined and a picture of peace rather than chaos.

So the current chaos is about how to get from make do that doesn't do actually work. Yes, that was written without my usual visual cues of underlining etc. so you may have to read it a few times to parse it correctly.

Speaking of putting things in order, today's message on MySJSU assures me that pending Angel account and the 203 enrollment should be on target and done by the 26th.

While I'm not holding my breath that the estimate of completion will happen on time, I'm not moving forward with contacting the lovely Amanda at the Bursar's office to finalise my installment payment plan options. If it doesn't hit by the 26th or shortly after the T-day holiday I will have to just suck it up and deal with the rogue registration and associated fun with fees whenever it hits. I'm certainly not going to pay an additional $33 to split that payment so I may need to do some account shuffling to make the cash flow work.

In other annoyances, my time and the digital camera are holding a number of images hostage at the moment so I'm hitting the digital image archives for images that should have been blog entries way earlier.

The photo's file name is apostra_hey and it is really good example of the signs along the way stuff that both amuse and annoy me. Unless there are multiple Cesars involved in the business, there's nothing wrong with the second (and larger apostrophe) but apparently Cesar and crew, at least as far as the punctuation on the sign shows, are not building customers, plural, but best construct without just acknowledging the when in doubt leave it out rule of random apostrophes, they are building some sort of "for life" product for a single customer.

Making it just that much more absurd is that the sign is on the railing of a mortuary so the whole "for life" thing is just the sort of lost in translation and/or unfortunate punctuation moments I not so secretly relish.

This just in, General Francisco Franco, who died on this date in 1975, is still dead.