Meniscus

Despite having a lazy day yesterday, and spending a lot of it (especially during Internet outages or while waiting for other things) watching the first two-thirds of The Dark Knight (at least until Siobhan got home... not sure when I'll finish it if ever), I did manage to get my new file/print server Meniscus put into production.

There are still more things to load, most notably PaperPort, the scanner software. (If it won't work on Vista, I will need to install it somewhere else, probably Siobhan's computer Heraclitus.) But the must-have stuff is there. That includes:

• All the Windows updates, AVG, Defender, etc.
  
• File shares with shared documents, software, and all our media
  
• Our laser printer and its share
  
• TVersity to stream that media to the PS3 and other devices
  
• HomeSeer to handle our home automation system
  
• DynDNS Updater to ensure that the http://tricklebrook.dyndns.org/ address to get to HomeSeer works
  
• The backup drive and a scheduled backup job
  

HomeSeer was the thing that took all the time this time because the old interface I have used to connect it to my Z-Wave home automation system is not compatible with Vista, so I had to order a new one, and that also forced me to move to a beta version of HomeSeer. I got the new controller yesterday, and finally got HomeSeer installed and working.

If and when we get that T1 line up and running, HomeSeer will also serve as a makeshift web server in case we feel like hosting anything. For now, all it serves are the two main interfaces to my home automation system, the built-in HomeSeer one and Rover, the stripped-down, sped-up interface intended for use on cell phones, tablets, and other devices with limited hardware or software. (Rover's my own program, released as freeware.)

Vista is everything everyone says about it, a pain in the butt with few if any benefits and lots and lots of shortcomings. I wonder how things would have gone if I had Windows 7. (I imagine I'd've had even more problems just with getting compatible drivers for everything.)