So after our meeting today Brad asked me to install Solaris on an IPX for a new contractor. Once we found the machine (stuck into a corner in an otherwise empty cube) I discovered that the hard drive was only 200MB. This is nowhere close to enough room for Solaris.

Armed with this knowledge, I trekked to the cage to get a hard drive, only to be confronted by about 40 people in suits with visitor badges. I made a strategic retreat, returning later to discover less visitors but also a lack of Rob, the man who hands out things like hard drives. Another strategic retreat. On my third trip I found Rob, got the hard drive, and made my way back across campus to the cube where the machine was lurking.

Have you ever tried to take apart an IPX and install a hard drive? I hadn't. The stupid screws were so tight that it took me, on average, ten minutes per screw just to get the thing out of the box. Getting the new one in was simple in comparison ... until I discovered that the hard drive needed another jumper, or else it could not be set to SCSI id 3, which is what the IPX was expecting.

Augh.

After beating my head against a wall for a bit I realised that Cadence, in its infinite wisdom, had an install script just for these sorts of situations. So now I'm sitting here, forty minutes before I'm supposed to meet Rachel, fussing mother-hen like over the installation.

Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? I don't, really. I just spent a year at Silicon Graphics doing helpdesk work -- high-level stuff, granted, but all on the software side. Prior to today I'd never even take a machine apart, much less attempted to install a hard drive or fuss with jumpers. I'm pretty much learning everything as I go ... fortunately, nobody here seems to be holding that against me.

Ten minutes to Rachel-meeting, and the IPX hasn't even finished the first part of the install. This is a bad sign. Rachel and I have been planning for weeks to buy our Pilots tonight -- a ceremonial event celebrating our new jobs.

All right. The IPX can install merrily away. I've left a note for my long-suffering cubemate to please look at it when he comes in tomorrow morning. I'm off!