Between semesters we format the student FireWire drives for the new students to use. I get a stack of them and re-initialize partitions (faster than deleting 20,000 files and emptying trash on each). Usually there’s someone who hasn’t yet backed up and needs me to save something. Working quickly, I got through the stack of drives until I got to the “marked for save” drive and found… the wrong data. Double-check that email… Sure enough I had marked the wrong drive for saving, and had just re-initialized the wrong drive. Ulp.

Spent the rest of the evening and this morning trying Tech Tool Pro, Norton Utilities, and Disk Warrior. None of them were able to find data on the reinitialized partition. Then mneptok came to the rescue with a URL he dropped into my phone (amazing!) — BinaryBiz’ Virtual Lab. Took an hour to scan the 80GB drive, but it found everything that had been there before the wipe. And the angels up above sang hallelujah.

Interesting licensing method – you can scan any volume for free, but then have to purchase a quota-per-GB you want to save. We’re buying a 5GB quota for $120. One use is all you get. Sounds pricey, but not when compared to what you can pay for professional data rescuing services.

Update: A few days later we lost power in our home office. When power came back, my 120GB MP3 drive wouldn’t mount. DiskWarrior was able to rebuild and restore the master directory, and I got my music back. Lesson: Journaling may make drives come up faster after a power outage, but it won’t protect from all types of damage.

Just wrapped up a long-simmering project to replace the J-School’s Events listings with a home-brew PHP/MySQL system which allows events staff to publish events (duh), centralize ticket and reservation info, generate announcement email, and separate public and private events between our public site and the intranet.

With that launched, today wrote a script to generate an Events RSS feed. Until now, all the RSS we’ve published has been MT-generated; this is the first time I’ve cooked it myself.

Maybe we’ll get to a redesign sometime in 2008.

I have been authorized to have my own University credit card (called a P-Card, P is for procurement), so I can do my own purchasing of software, domains, misc hardware, etc. That’s wonderful. But here’s the “Brazil” bit: Before they’ll issue it, I have to attend a three-hour training seminar. Three hours to learn how to… what? Shop responsibly? Pay off my monthly balance? This is so typical of the red tape and “hurry up and wait” m.o. of the UC system (which is only partially govt). I am so looking forward to tomorrow. I’d rather have my colon cleansed.

A heating/cooling unit is mounted to the ceiling above my head. It is responsible for the climate both in my office and in a suite of offices next door. The thermostat to control the shared unit is not in my office, but next door. To access it I need to leave and lock my own office, unlock the suite next door, remember the combo for the inner hallway door, and then use yet another key to get into the office where the thermostat is mounted. That’s four doors. It’s like I work at Get Smart HQ.

Did I mention that the heating unit above my head sounds like a jet taking off? Well, not quite, but it’s very loud. Loud to the point where it’s hard to concentrate when it’s on. Loud enough that I’d rather heat and cool myself with sweaters and shorts, windows and doors. Because the people next door don’t have to hear it, they apparently don’t feel the same. They’d rather turn it up. Turn it way up. Turn it up to an ungodly (and utterly wasteful) 78 degrees. No typo.

Did I mention that there’s seldom anyone in the office next door? It’s used by visiting scholars and for special projects, and most of the time when I go in, there’s no one there. On the other hand, I’m at work most of the time.

Despite the fact that people are seldom there, someone has been going in and turning the heat up to 78 and disappearing. I walk into my office, it’s roasting and loud. Do the Get Smart thing, turn it down to 68, return to my desk.

An hour later I hear it go on again. When I go over I never see anyone. So I decided to leave a note. A really nice note. Not a nasty note, but an honest note, with my name and phone number. Ring me up. Let’s talk. I posted the note. An hour later I heard the jet taking off. Went next door. The thermostat was on 75.

I guess this means war.

Update: My “war” found its way to administration. They are going to address the issue by sealing the thermostat in a plastic shell that no one can touch, not even me. The temp will be locked at a comfortable and energy-friendly 68 degrees.