By noon today we will have a new home.
Calling VanDyke CRT from a Microsoft DTS
One of the things I have always disliked about administering Windows servers and workstations is their inherent inability to act as a basic terminal. You’ve got to use terminal emulation software to login to NFS based firmware and appliances. Recently this became a huge issue when we were required to delete the contents of a volume on a NetApp SAN at Dillon Supply. Here was the scenario:
We have a volume vol0/dscsql2db on a NetApp FAS270 filer. Every night all of the NetApp “snapshots” on this volume need to be deleted. The snap delete command native to the snapdrive service on Windows 2003 servers cannot perform the force deletion of an entire volume. The snap delete command in the OS of the filer can delete the entire contents of a volume regardless of a snapshots state or condition. More specifically, one of the snapshots we wanted to delete is mounted as a read/writable volume on a server (busy, LUNs). Therefore the arguments available in the snap delete command on the filer are required.
So we needed a way to log on directly to the NetApp filer from within a Microsoft SQL DTS (Data Transformation Service) and execute the snap delete command to remove the entire contents of the volume. Basically, I needed to run a Vbscript as a job executed by a DTS against the Netapp filer. That’s where VanDyke CRT came in. I could have used custom expect scripts and spent a long time figuring out how to get them to run through Telnet. Instead we set up a default Telnet session for the CRT application to use when called by the parent DTS (by IP Address) then it automatically executes the following login script:
#$language = “VBScript”
#$interface = “1.0”
Sub main
‘ turn on synchronous mode so we don’t miss any data
crt.Screen.Synchronous = True
‘ Wait for a string that looks like “login: ” or “Login: ”
crt.Screen.WaitForString “ogin: ”
‘ Send your username followed by a carriage return
crt.Screen.Send “root” & vbCr
‘ Wait for a tring that looks like “password: ” or “Password: ”
crt.Screen.WaitForString “assword:”
‘ Send your password followed by a carriage return
crt.Screen.Send “ya, you wish” & vbCr
crt.Screen.WaitForString “etapp1”
‘ ++++ Begin Production commands to delete snapshots
crt.Screen.Send “snap delete -a -f -q dscsql2db” & vbCr
crt.Screen.WaitForString “etapp1”
crt.Screen.Send “snap delete -a -f -q dscsql2logs” & vbCr
‘ ++++ End Production commands to delete snapshots
‘ turn off synchronous mode to restore normal input processing
crt.Screen.Synchronous = False
‘ This will wait 30 seconds
crt.Sleep 30000
‘ dismiss the app
crt.quit
End Sub
Notice the crt.whatever.wait and .send vb scripting objects. It’s these objects included in CRT that made this all possible. Once the script command executes to delete the contents of the volume on the NetApp filer, it closes CRT and our SQL DTS can proceed with creating a new snapshot of our production database volume, mounting this snapshot to a remote server where it is then attached to MS SQL as one of the last steps. Bang! The refreshed reporting server is on-line.
None of this would have been possible without our $35 copy of CRT.
David Joyner??? – Work Under Way To Promote Toll Roads Statewide
WRAL.com – News – Work Under Way To Promote Toll Roads Statewide
This article says “To help sell the idea, the state has hired public relations veteran David Joyner to lead the North Carolina Turnpike Authority.”
Is this the same David Joyner who leased my old band our rehearsal room off capital Blvd. I certainly hope not. That would be quite strange because he owns a downtown real estate company. Not a public relations company. Just read about one of his properties: Fox Ridge.
It must be someone different. Gotta be. I might email WRAL to find out.
UPDATE: It’s not the same Joyner (thank God). This David Joyner is the founder of State Capital Strategies in Raleigh.
What the ????
Last night I went to Taco Bell to get our dinner. I go two combos and a soft taco for Connor. I must have won the grand prize on that visit: A lifetime supply of Taco sauce. I thought the bag felt heavy but 38 packs of mild sauce?
Not funny ha, ha. Funny queer.
What’s Next For The N.C. Lottery?
The Lottery was signed into law yesterday. Now I’m gonna get rich quick.
The Seller’s Response
It appears the seller has agreed to have everything fixed that was disclosed in the Inspection Summary and a Structural Engineer is scheduled to go out later this week to look at the questionable foundation columns. The seller states that he had the house inspected at the time he purchased it and the county had to inspect it the first time the house was sold and the columns and girders presented no problems either time.
As long as I can get a statement from an Engineer proclaiming the foundation safe then we’ve bought a house. The underwriting mortgage company called me today and the rate’s been set so all that’s left is the repairs and the closing. Looks like we’re moving in a month.
Inspection Day
Now I know why thorough inspections are required when buying a house. One of the first things I found looking around the yard were three of these black and yellow Argiope spiders (an orb web spider). They were huge but didn’t even scare my niece’s, Hannah and Skylar, because they looked so peaceful hanging out in their cool webs. They may have been the best thing I saw yesterday. From there it kinda went down hill and got discouraging.
We found several little things like this broken toilet tank, excessively hot water (140 degrees) and leaky outside water spickets. None of these things are really big or expensive problems for the seller to take care of. In fact, under the terms of the purchase contract they don’t have to repair such small things unless all repairs exceed $1500. But unfortunately not everything was a small problem.
They also had a few mid-range, somewhat expensive problems to address with the air conditioners. The downstairs air condenser had a rusted drip pan – no biggie. But the upstairs condenser had a broken PVC drain pipe thanks to someone throwing luggage on it when they used the condenser access area as storage. Yikes. The big problem is the water leaking from the broken pipe overflowed the drip pan which saturated the sub-flooring. Luckily it hadn’t soaked through to the ceiling below. We brought this to seller’s attention immediately so he could get it fixed quick.
But the real problem, and possible show-stopper, is the foundation. The first time we looked at the house my dad noticed the floor seemed to sink towards the center of the house. I couldn’t tell very much but did notice it felt like I was waking down hill in the entrance foyer. But according to Don, my inspector, this was just “the tip of the iceburg.” As he was describing the problem I quickly recalled from my experience framing houses during college that a floor girder must be located in the center 1/3 of a foundation support column.
As you can tell by this photo one girder of this house is clearly located on the right 1/3 of the support column and is even hanging off a little bit. Why is this a big issue? Because as the house settles the support column will settle to one side creating dips in the floor system as the floor joists bow. And it’s already starting.
So now we have to get a structural engineer to look at it. If he recommends fixing it then the seller will need to hire Ram Jack or some other foundation specialists to make the repair by setting another column. That won’t be cheap and it will be interesting to see if they’ll actually pay for it or back out of the sale. They might as well fix it because any future inspector is going to find the same problem.
More pics of the house.
Here are a few more pictures of the place we’ll call home at the end of next month. There’s a lot of painting and wallpaper removal to take care of. I might even take off the last week of September to get it all done if I can squeeze in the time between projects at work. Right now I’m slammed on all fronts. But there is more good news this week… Amy got a job! She starts Monday in the claims department of an insurance company I can’t think of the name of right now.
Kitchen, Living Room:
We bought a house!
It’s been 10 days since my last entry because I have been extremely busy this month, just like in July. Our offer on this house in the town of Wendell was accepted last night. I searched all over the Internet and discovered you can buy A LOT more house for your money outside of Raleigh/Cary/Apex. In short, once the deal goes through on this property I will have saved almost $60K over any comparable house I’ve seen in Raleigh.
We’ll have half an acre of yard and 2200 square feet of living space. The first floor has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, kitchen, living room and dining room. The upstairs has two 15×16 bonus rooms and a full bathroom. It’s located about 10 minutes from where Dillon Supply will be located after the move in December (so I’ll be just as close to work as I am now). The best part is that there will be a lot of yard space between us and our neighbors, something unheard of in Raleigh subdivisions.
It’s not a done deal but if the contract goes through we’ll be closing on September 23rd (one day before Connor’s birthday). I told Amy that once we move it’s the last time we’re going to do it for many years. Later we can add a kid or two to this house and still have enough room to keep our sanity. I just don’t know how I’m going to afford to furnish it.
July Recap
This month was hotter and busier than any I can remember. At work, at home, even at my parents house something was going on all the time. We started off by taking Connor to see fireworks for the first time. He jumped straight into Amy’s lap when he heard the first explosion and didn’t get out until they were over. But he liked them. And I managed to get out of the fairground parking in under 45 minutes so I didn’t mind it much either.
The weekend following the 4th we threw my mom a surprise birthday party. Amy and Mary Kay organized it and had well over 50 people there. When mom walked around her house into the back yard she was genuinely surprised. It was a well kept secret. Then later that week I had a Colonoscopy.
The next weekend I lost my wedding ring in the deep end of a diving pool. I noticed it missing from my hand that night after we got home. I went straight back the following morning but despite all my self-proclaimed genius I did not bring a snorkel, goggles – nothin’. But I did spot the ring on the bottom.
First Amy dove to try to get it. She felt around on the bottom but couldn’t grab it. I watched it drift around on the bottom for about ten minutes and told Amy to go get a mask. The trip took her about thirty minutes. During that time a bunch of other people got in the pool and stirred the water. I lost site of the ring and never saw it again. I wished I had never seen it on the bottom to begin with.
Later on in the month Connor took a couple of trips to Pullen Park to ride the choo-choo, boats and merry-go-round. Last weekend when we went I saw a guy I know on the choo-choo with his daughter, Ava. Dawson Roark, if I remember correctly. The last time I saw him was last year in St. Louis at the Prophet21 convention. So we talked about work and P21 for around thirty minutes.
Speaking of work; this month Dillon Supply officially moved the forklift division across the street in downtown Raleigh so I turned up a new segment of our wide area network. Very smoothly if I might add – 1 minute 45 seconds total down time on the core router; a Cisco 3745 which now supports three T1 circuits (two are bonded) and a 45Mbps DS3. Tomorrow morning I’m installing the first component of our new storage area network, a 1TB NetApp FAS3000.
It’s been a helluva month.