Today, one of the hard disks in my work computer decided to take a dump. It's the only SCSI drive on the system. And now, even with that drive removed, the machine refuses to boot, since apparently the NTDETECT program is hanging because it can't find that drive, even though I have the BIOS set to boot off the IDE C:\ drive. *shrug*

Anyone have a spare SCSI drive they would be willing to lend me for a few minutes to see if I can get the machine to boot? LOL!

So, it looks like I will be working off my work laptop until I go to Chicago at the end of the month. Hopefully, there isn't anything too critical on my desktop that I can't work without... I don't think so. I'm in the process of FTPing some work files down to the laptop from the network across the VPN, which is somewhat painfully slow, but necessary.

I am spoiled... I will miss the dual-monitor setup and speed of my work desktop. I am spoiled... I have both a desktop and laptop for work.

Hmm... maybe I should just look into getting a docking station and larger monitor for my laptop... and an external enclosure for the other IDE drive. That would certainly make things a little more portable.

On the plus side, though, that's one less computer that's running in my office, so there will be that much less heat being generated.

Woke up this morning to wind-chill of 25.

And now it is snowing. There's about 1/8" of snow on the cars, bushes, trees and grassy areas. And for a few moments, it was even white-out conditions.

Oh, joy.

Hopefully the drive home on Saturday will be snow-free.

In other work related news, this time more positive...

We use a product called Goldmine as our Customer Relationship Management software. It's a decent product with a few quirks. The quirks become quirkier when you add in the messed up business rules that my company likes to use.

Anyway, the web-based interface that comes with the product sucks, to put it nicely. So I wrote my own inteface for it.

My buddy C (our network admin) demoed it to the guys at the consulting company that helped us with our installation and handle our support for Goldmine. Apparently, they absolutely loved it and were practically drooling over it.

They want to work out a resale and licensing deal with us so they can sell this to their other customers. We would get royalties/residuals/kicjk-backs/whatever-you-want-to-call-them for each sale. They would handle marketing, selling and all first-level support for it. I would never have to deal with their customers - they would just funnel questions and feature requests to me.

Hopefully, any money earned would stay in the IT dept and boost our budget, but I have my doubts. Too bad I can't work a deal with this on my own, without involving the employer. I don't remember signing any intellectual property agreement, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.

But anyway, *yay me*!