No good, very bad, then ok but messed up day.

The best laid plans.   Interview downtown at 9am.   Snow and ice storm don't scare me.   Until someone stops unexpectedly in front of me, and I can't avoid sliding into them, having just passed into my second hour of travel for a normally 25 minute trip.  Busted the front plastic cowling in my truck, missed my appt. pfft.

Came home to try to get some work done.  Had a remote PDC with a going-bad hard disk.  Time to transfer the DHCP, FSMO, set up the VPN and change the IP's and make the member DC the PDC.  This plan came together so well, only one person knows, because he did the final IP changes for me on site.   The best Sysadmin tasks are properly performed when nobody notices. Lovely.

Started to sit down to study SQL and hear, HEY DAD THE GARAGE DOOR is messed up!  I head up to look at a now trapezoidal shaped 4 part metal 400# door hanging like a leaf 6" low on one side and the roller off the top on the other side.   OH BOY says I.

Seems one of the spring cables picked today to rust through, and then in trying to get the darn thing down, we bent our vertical rail on the other side into a twisted pretzel.

Just in case this ever happens to you, the method requires another person (dragged my son away from the Biggest Loser and then Parenthood... eventually).

I carefully unscrewed the hinges on the top section and let it hang till help came.  Clamps help to hold it in place.   Took it off and laid it down.  Then did the same with the second top section.  Lifted the two remaining up on the rails as high as they went, got my 3# hammer and an adjustable wrench to bend and pound the twisted rail into a reasonable facsimile of straight.  I popped the cable that was now slack off the side that was still good.

I was surprised that the side where the spring was still working was the pretzel side.  hmmm.


So having dragged my son into the cold again, I reassembled the door in place and clamped it down to lock it.

Did I mention that Windows 7 started to blue screen today?  I hope that is the third thi