Four weeks later ....

... we've kinda settled into the swing of having a puppy again, but boy, are they hard work. Young Enya is very curious ... and very quick. In her first week here she managed break out of her puppy pen by scaling it's 3 foot walls. Her breeder's reaction to this - well you wanted an agility dog :-) So the pen now has a roof on it. That and other learning curves means we've been very busy here, hence the lack of updates.

However there was a comment that the first pictures posted here were of a sleeping dog - so this update is of an awake puppy, a very awake puppy :-)

Less than 12 weeks old and she already has that collie intensity. I know most of the pictures are of her still, but that's only because as soon as you pick up a ball she flows off, stops, half turns and looks at you.

We can't take her out for a walk yet, she's still completing her vaccinations, but she has been coming with us ...

Though some times she does doze off

And life isn't all walks and play, sometimes you get bathed - yuk

But you do get to play with the Labrador ...

And snooze with the Collie ...

She's here....

The newest edition to our family has arrived.

This is Enya ...

It's been a hard day !

If in doubt, find a foot and sit on it.

 She's very people orientated, and if she starts to get unsure or worried will find a foot to sit on. She also likes going to sleep on feet, probably because you can't sneak off.

Meeting the residents ...

Enya with Kira

Enya with Becky

She's has been sniffed and growled at. Mostly when trying to stand on top of Becky and when she tried to nibble Kira's foot. However all went well as she is quite respectful of large dogs when they growl. Heather's excellent pack socialisation is showing through and stopping problems already.

The Caged Beast

It a tuggy ... but I need my beauty sleep ...

She's survived the first night and so did we :-) She went to sleep after 10mins howling, but woke up at 6:30 literally as I was putting on my trousers to go down and check on her. 'Cos she started howling  I couldn't go downstairs and say "Hi" - you have to wait until their quiet so they don't associate the noise with your return.

She's met our vet who thought she was lovely, and was very complimentary about her human socialisation. No nasty jabs this time, they like them to have a week to settle in before they do anything, this was just a physical which she passed with flying colours :-)

She's snoozing in her crate at the moment, hence I've been able to write this, but I'm expecting she'll explode out of the crate any minute. The door's not closed so she can wake up, romp out and not feel frustrated :-)

Only 5 more sleeps ....

... until the newest member of the family arrives.

 This is Enya (Kilnhurst Cadhla) and she's a Border Collie.

She's been breed by a very good friend of ours. We haven't actually met her yet, as unfortunately she's several hundred miles away and a few snow drifts away at the moment, but we've known the mother, the grandmother and the rest of the Kilnhurst clan for a very long time. We're looking forward to a very entertaining and fast time :-)

The will be our second puppy (and third dog in the household). I guess it's a bit like a second kid, having been through the process once already, there's a lot less unknowns and of course you won't make the same mistakes you made the first time .... this time it'll be different! This time we'll make a whole bunch of new mistakes :-)

As the saying goes - watch this space ...

Recovery Stress (Part 2 of Christmas Crashes)

Recovery of the AV File Server took longer than expected (click here for part 1 of this saga) - to start with it took 6 days to get the replacement motherboard which was pretty good considering it was Christmas and it shipped and delivered in the 3 working days between then and New Year.

So new motherboard arrives, an Intel D510MO Fanless Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX. At this point it should just be a matter of dropping it into the AV File Server, connecting it up original disk, firing it up and letting Plug'n'Play sort out the drivers. Looking forward to everything being sorted in an hour or two. Ho, ho, ho.

The new motherboard won't talk to the existing disk. It goes through POST but then hangs. The disk has been working perfectly in another machine so the disk is OK.

OK, it's a mini-ITX board so perhaps the PSU isn't delivering enough power for this particular motherboard and disk combination.

"Borrow" a PSU from another machine to test that theory - nope it's not the PSU, the motherboard still doesn't like the disk.

OK, try a couple of other disks. Yep, the new motherboard likes all of those, so it just this particular combination that's causing the problem.

Right, next thought, clone the existing disk on to a new hard drive that we know the motherboard likes. We do have a spare 1TB disk but at the moment it's in the Drobo waiting to be upgraded. OK, replace the 1TB drive in the Drobo with a new, larger 2TB drive. Wait for the Drobo to rebuild it's array. Don't want to use the 1TB drive we've taken out just in case the rebuild goes pear shaped and we have to put the original drive back into the Drobo. The rebuild takes 24 hours, but is successful - hooray, something is going our way at least.

Hook the 1TB drive up to a machine with the existing disk from the AV File Server and kick off the cloning process. It hangs part way through. Doh! Try again.... nope, it hangs again in the same place. Fiddlesticks and other such words. New motherboard doesn't like the original disk and apparently we can't clone the data onto a new drive.

OK, decided to just bite the bullet and re-install the O/S on the AV File Server using the new 1TB drive. Start the Windows 2003 Server installation process, all goes well until the second reboot when it's trying to install the drivers for the devices it detects. It hangs. Rats. Try again, same result. OK, it's an original installation disk so it might be a lack of device drivers or out of date ones. Download SP2 for W2003 and slipstream that and the motherboard's device driver into a new installation disk. Try again. Nope, same problem.

OK, the new motherboard is not certified for W2003, perhaps for good reason given the problems we're having.

Right we already have the same type of motherboard, an Intel D510MO, running Windows 7 on a different machine. Decide to clone the drive from that machine onto the new 1TB drive and try that. Also decide at this point as we're going with a new motherboard, new disk, new O/S, we might as well go the whole hog and get a new case/PSU. That way it'll be a completely new machine. Fortunately one of the local shops has a suitable mini-ITX case that'll fit in the rack.

Clone the Windows 7 drive ..... finally, success, it clones, hooray.

Assemble the new AV File Server, with it's new motherboard, new disk, new case/PSU and press the power button. HOORAY, it boots. On the home stretch now. Just need to update the serial number of the O/S to a new license, load the software it needs, and attach the Drobo. All of which takes another day of course :-(

Finally we have a running AV File Server again .... total time: 9 days. While I very happy that it's all working again, I could scream - nothing huge went wrong, and we didn't lose a single byte of data, but nothing about the recovery went smoothly and it chewed up a huge amount of time over Christmas. Not to mention the frustration. Could we have made it any quicker - probably not, the only way I can think of, would have been to start building a new machine immediately and I really didn't want that expense just after Christmas.

Anyway Happy New Year to everyone !!

A New Year and A New Arrival ...

A New Year and we have a new arrival :-)

Her name is Ausdan Amber Angel and she's a 6 month old Norwegian Fjord Horse

She arrived on New Year's Eve from Wales ... fashionably late. She was supposed to be here before Christmas, but several feet of snow and then a good thick coating of ice delayed her departure. So she finally arrived the day before yesterday, a little bewildered and very unsure about her new home. However a new field of fresh grass, a bale of hay, and especially a large grey Welsh Cob/Arab mare for company (and to hid behind) she seems to be settling in. After sticking like glue to Becky (the aforementioned Welsh Cob/Arab) she's now starting to investigate fields and people and started doing little foal canters round the field. We're confidentially looking forward to her becoming a little madam .... I mean charmer :-)

Christmas Crashes and Other Tales

Another year, other Christmas. Technically it was even a White Christmas ... technically? Well it didn't actually snow on the day, but there was still plenty of white stuff still on the ground from earlier in the week.

A Christmas Dog Walk!

However it wasn't all tinsel, turkey and presents - with an absolutely immaculate sensing of timing our AV File Server (Audio Visual) decided to crash on Christmas morning. Well it didn't so much crash as die ... completely, utterly and irretrievably. I was adding some extra storage to it and this required a reboot. Everything was going smooth and by the numbers, until the server didn't restart after the reboot. Some fairly rapid and frenzied diagnoses later it was determined that its motherboard was completely kaput. For those in the know, not even beep codes. Ho hum.

Open heart surgrey on a mini-ITX server

 If it was mid-year you could get a replacement motherboard next day, however given it's Christmas and half the country is buried in snow, the earliest we can get a replacement here is Thursday :-(

For once I can feel fairly smug at this point as all the data was backuped before I started and anyway it sits on an external storage array - a Drobo (www.drobo.com).

The Drobo temporarilty sat on a desk

So the Drobo was moved from the rack to a temporary home on the office desk and hooked up to one of the desktop machines. This was renamed and re-IPed so, like Clark Kent emerging from a phone box, it's now masquerading as the AV server. Serenity, films, photos and music, has been restored to the household.

So the moral of this Christmas Tale? - Always backup your data!  This was just an annoying inconvenience for us, which ate a bit of time. It could have been much, much worse; the data on this server is all our digital photos (~50,000), music and various home movies. A thousand, thousand memories. I know you never think it will happen to you, but one day it will. PCs break, disks corrupt, CDs and DVDs fade. Remember, data isn't real until it exists in at least two places, so always, ALWAYS, have a backup.

So a final thought for Christmas - where does the rise of the mobile phone and the subsequent demise of the phone box leave Superman? Caught short and exposed? Don't let your data be ;-)

Merry Christmas!

Snuggle Dogs

Collies and Labradors are very different dogs. One was breed to herd sheep and is very good at it. The other was breed to swim and is also very good at it. They're also both very good at snuggling ... but they do it in very different ways.

Our Collie likes to drape herself across people. And of course being a collie she does it 100%!

Our Labrador also likes to snuggle but prefers to sit beside rather than drape.

How small can you curl?