Oops. (new job, day two)

[da]

I was just cleaning my office phone. One of the buttons links me to the voice-dial directory. I apparently hit that, and the sound of me cleaning the phone sounded sufficiently like a name, and dimly through the earpiece I heard something like, "Do you wish to talk to Kim Chopper?"

Thanks but... not really.

My old office is just as I remember. Except it's missing a filing cabinet. Which could leave me room for a comfy chair, though I think that might be politically tricky since nobody else in CSCF has a comfy chair. *pout* (Murphy bed in file cabinet? Hmmm.)

I have a brand new iMac, with a wide-screen extra monitor (2x1680x1050 desktop yay), and I've got a project to start with, making improvements to the department's DHCP services. Also: I have coworkers! They make geeky jokes and are glad to see me!

It's good to be back.

Challenges on day one: my work calendar (Oracle Calendar) isn't compatible with gmail calendar, iCal.app, or my phone. [ETA: maybe. I can manually import/export .ical files, and maybe there's a way to subscribe to Oracle's data. But probably not.]

My personal task-tracking system isn't compatible with the hacked-up version of RT we use. I have no idea how I should record my work tasks, since our RT isn't exactly compatible with the "Getting Things Done" method of making a new item for everything that will take longer than a few minutes.

Comments

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Morlock, denier of network services, is curious about this non-centralised DHCP service of which you speak. Locally tweaking something which probably can be run centrally (I am aware of network installs as an exception) strikes me in the bindi and makes my eyes go all crossly looking for the hammer.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh yay! My first political mouth-foot operation! ;)

The DHCP is populated by our Equipment and Inventory Database. For a bit more information, https://www.cs/twiki/view/CF/DHCPInCS appears to be a public document...

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Serbia and Montenegro?

I'll read it at work and review the Maintain3 pseudo-APIs. There should be an opportunity for chatting about DHCP and automation over a warm beverage during working hours, but not this week for me.

I can put some of my foot in my mouth, but the whole thing is kinda big.

[ckd]

Oracle Calendar might be convinced to talk to your phone if the SyncML support is turned on (and actually working; ours never got to that point, and I won't care in three more days). I don't know what (if anything) is used at the new place. I'm half-tempted to set up Darwin Calendar Server myself and just run that.

I haven't found a better way to use iCal or anything else with Oracle Calendar. Some of the other folks here have weird lash-ups that export from OCal and import into iCal that they run regularly, I think. Oracle is supposedly in on the CalDAV stuff, but it's not like they've actually shipped anything that uses it....

(This reminds me that I need to export my OCal upcoming events into an iCal-compatible file and mail it to myself so I have all my future appointments &c. Thanks!)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Our Ocal supposedly works with Palm devices, but my phone's not one. My phone works perfectly with iCal, so I'd be happy getting it to work with iCal.

I found "OraCal2iCal" but its host site seems hosed. Only: the author seems to be abztrakt, so I'll ask him there.

Why, back in the day, much of the internet was weird lash-ups...

Yeah. Anyhow.

Have fun in the new job. :)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

Want one of my filing cabinets? I've been pondering ditching one.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hm. Tempting. Big or little? ...Under the desk would preserve option of comfy chair. :)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

Under desk. I can give you one of those ones with two small and one big drawer.

Um. Not sure if the keys match, but jk probably has another for mine if they don't.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

and what's incompatible in our RT, btw? I've not found anything better so far. :( Even RT3 is teh suck.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Vis-a-vis GTD, Tracks rocks my world. It's not a group-project system; it's an overgrown todo list with various views for categories, projects, and colour-coding for timing. Feel free to drop by and see my (um, overdue) lists some time.

And it serves .ical URLs, so when I open iCal, it grabs my "errand" todo list, and then I run iSync to sync it to my cellphone.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

When I was writing this, I mostly meant that 'Tracks' wouldn't be able to import items via the RT items (so it's incompatible with getting data from, say, emails).

In RT: I wish there were different views of the same item.
Such as to collapse comments that weren't relevant to me (or replace them with a one-line summary). The best options are changing the Summary at the top, or starting a parallel RT item that has the bits that are relevant to me, but that has always felt hackish. Fundamentally: my summary / list of responsibility is going to be different from the next participant's, so my view of the item should possibly be different as well.

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

DEFINITELY get the comfy chair. Who cares whether other people have one? It IS your office, after all. Why would it be "politically tricky?"

Your job sounds fun! Except for the fact that Oracle Calendar doesn't play nice with, well, anything else. Maybe the world is waiting for you to write the interface?....

(Sometimes I really miss all the geeky stuff I used to do......)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

I just should. I was thinking it might be sensitive because one of the managers was advocating for a couch in the kitchen and it never happened. Though that was more a space issue.

There's a campus surplus sale next week, and I understand there's a couch for sale. If I could get a two-seat couch in here, for $20 or something, that would be sort of neat.

Oracle Calendar is annoying- but I found OraCal2iCal, which cleverly uses mac's "accessibility extensions" to automatically run the export-to-ical-file feature. So I've got one-way sync.

I've hacked it a bit to save the file to somewhere that's exposed as a webpage, so google calendar will automatically pick up my oracle calendar data. And I think I can run it to update under cron every morning at 6. :)

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

So resourceful! Now THERE'S the Daniel that we all know and love!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Heh. We will see about that. 1) I'm picky enough about size and shape that I probably won't end up with a couch... 2) google insists my private events should list on my private calendar as "Busy" and I've not taken the time to figure out the best way around that.

And I really ought to be spending that time on, y'know, my project. :)

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

But if you get your calendar working, you will be more productive in the long run. And it would probably be a useful solution for someone else in the department who is getting, say, in iPhone, and will need to sync it with the Oracle thingy. :-)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll definitely document what I learn; but google's being stupid about silently failing to read the .ics feed, so I need to do a few tests and post to their help group. Is all.

Also I just got dumped *whump* a fairly substantial project and a deadline. (Yay?)

ps- he insists on using a blotter for his calendar. (Yes really.)

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

I suspect he does that JUST to be contrary.

[driftingfocus.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how does Spaces work with multiple monitors? Have you tested it?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

I had previously considered spaces, decided my pair of 1600x1000 monitors had enough real estate for me to get lost in.

But I just tested- spaces works fine with two monitors- it uses both as a single element of the n x n.

And then I turned it off, because I don't need a 6,400 x 2,000 desktop. ;)

[driftingfocus.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah, that'd be a bit much.

I do wish the 15in Macbook Pros had the resolution that the 17in ones do. There's no real reason why they don't.