Today at work I created some scripts to automate a daily process that commenced Monday.  Basically, it’s a combination of stored procedures, a couple of DTS packages, a simple vb.net application, all glued together with a batch file, which is scheduled to run on weekdays at 7:00 AM.  Tomorrow will be the first day it is scheduled to run.  I’m excited to go in tomorrow morning to see if it ran successfully.

I have another job that needs to be automated, and I can’t wait to get started on that one.

HP EX470 Home Server

I’ve been thinking of having a better solution to backing up my digital pictures + documents.  Currently, I have a 160GB external hard drive that is backed up to my computer’s hard drive on a weekly basis, using Microsoft’s SyncToy.  I’m O.K. with this solution, but eventually I’m going to run out of space on the external hard drive, and I really don’t want to purchase another external hard drive.  I just hate having so many different pieces of hardware lying about, when it can all be housed under a single unit.

So that’s when I decided to look online to see what was available.  I wanted something with a RAID 5 configuration, ability to tack on additional hard drives, and ability to be networked so I can just plug it in and hide it in some corner.  I looked through different options, but the one that I fell in love with is the HP EX470 Home Server.

This little sucker comes with Windows Home Server, and has 4 hard drive bays.  You hook it up to the network, and start backing up your data to the server.  From there anybody in the household network can access the files from their PCs.  I mean I’m not going to much into detail of what it can do exactly, since you can just read about it through all the other reviews posted online.  But this thing is just too cool.

I want to get one right away, but I first have to pay of my credit card bills, and then I can get this baby.

There is one thing though, which is another reason why I’m waiting.  Apparently, there is a bug (KB946676) that can corrupt user data.  Microsoft expects to get this bug ironed out by June 2008, so after that, this machine will be perfect.