The Bit Bucket

If you are still reading this blog

2007-08-10T12:50:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to let you know that I am not really updating this blog anymore. I started my new blog over at Port 16, and that is where I am doing all of my posting.

Why don't you come over and visit?

Gone away

2007-07-16T10:10:00.000-06:00

I'm going on vacation, read about it here.

Additions to Port 16

2007-07-14T15:25:00.000-06:00

I'm still working on getting the new blog, Port 16, squared away.

It is still looking pretty sparse, but today I posted an answer to a popular question, Why port 16? Also, for any new visitors, or any that never knew, I answered the other question, Who the hell is Mike Scott anyway?

Things are moving along, and I hope you'll come and join me at my new Blog.

The EarthCore Audiobook / Podcast was awesome!

2007-07-11T21:58:00.001-06:00

Note: I moved most of this post over to my new blog, and you can find the migrated post here. What is listed below is part of a conversation with Scott that I didn't include when I migrated the post. I didn't want the comments hanging out there, and you wondering why all that was said. Anyway, come on over to my new blog.

Hey Scott, what a great story! Like I said, I can't wait for the Sequel. Thanks!

I do have one question though, everyone who has a military background served in the Marine Corps. Is there some personal tie-in there? I'm a Jarhead, so I was curious.

I caught that you kept referring to them as soldiers, even though it should have been Marines. I figured it was because they were all in civilian employment now. Next time though, since they have Marine backgrounds, you can also refer to them as Leathernecks, Jarheads or Devil Dogs. They can run around shouting Ooh-Rah!, and referring to things by their naval terms, like bulkhead, deck and scuttlebut.

Just a suggestion.

The Only Constant is Change

2007-07-11T05:31:00.000-06:00

I was re-organizing the blog a little bit on Friday, so you may have noticed that I moved some things around. For the curious, here is what was accomplished.

Moved an Ad - First off, the large image add that was in the top right corner has been moved down under my "Some other Blogs" links and "Don't let Internet Radio be Crushed" banner. I put some text ads in their place, just for fun. (Art, you are going to have to scroll down now to see if the Helium ads have any new girls in it.)

The reason for this move was that although interesting, I wasn't getting any clicks on it. Even though it isn't that big of a deal, I figured I might as well try something new.

Added a Recent Posts Section - I get a good number of visits that end up deep in the archives. After that, they leave. I'm hoping that the "Recent Posts" section will provide some link bait.

Moved the Blog Archive - Since the "Recent Posts are in such a visible location, I moved the Blog Archive section because it seemed a little redundant. Between you and me (don't tell the Widgets), I think that the Technorati Widget is worthless, and I probably should get rid of it. I consider anything there or below to be in the "No one is ever going to see this stuff" zone of the sidebar.

Added some more Ads - Seems kind of pointless, but I keep getting this darn optimization report from AdSense stating that I should "Add more than one add unit on each page". I'm sick of seeing that, so I made the change and I hope they will shut up.

Maybe the next message will be "Post something that people will want to read" or maybe, "Find yourself a point, then get to it".

Asked my readers their opinion - Wait, I haven't done that yet.

What do you think? Feel free to let me know, you can email me (address is on my profile page), post a comment here, or ridicule my blog on your blog, and I'll see the link back. Heck, I may even give you a link back.

While you are at it, why not start a "5 things that Suck about The Bit Bucket" blog meme, tag your friends, and we could all have a good laugh. Some a little more maniacal than others.

The Next Internet Millionaire

2007-07-10T18:22:00.000-06:00

If you haven't had your fill of reality TV you should check out "The Next Internet Millionaire".

This is a web reality show, and currently, according to their blog, they are picking the 12 contestants. So far 3 have been selected.

New contestants are announced every Sunday and Wednesday, the list of 12 contestants can be seen here. The other contestants will be selected from this list of the top 50 contestants.

In my brief viewing of the site, I noticed that the competition is going to be in Colorado. I didn't see a mention of what city, but I'm sure it won't be Colorado Springs.

It looks like the contestants will be competing for prizes and money, while being taught by Internet millionaire "teachers", and the winner will be entering into a joint venture with Joel Comm.

According to the little bio on the about page, Joel has launched "dozens of online ventures", as well as writing "The adsense code", which was a New York Times Best seller.

Looks interesting, I may have to watch it.

June 2007's Most Popular Posts

2007-07-09T06:24:00.000-06:00

Let me just say, I was shocked and amazed to see two entirely new posts make it into the top 5 last month. So, let us welcome them into the top 5. They are:

1. "Move over Nigerian email scams, make way for something meatier" - Which made it into third place. Posted on June 16th.

2. "Windows Live Writer Beta 2" - Which made it into fourth place. Pretty impressive, considering it was posted on June 24th.

It was nice to see some new posts make it here, and considering that they were both posted after the halfway mark in June, I was pretty excited.

Even though I numbered the two posts above, here is the official list, in order of popularity.

1. How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP - Our old friend, and particularly useful post.

2. Strange SharePoint Team Services 2 Restore Issue - What more can I say?

3. Move over Nigerian email scams, make way for something meatier - Do you grow weary of Nigerian email scams, well this scam was new to me, and it was from Kuwait.

4. Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - Not only is it new, but it works! I actually use it for all of my posting now.

5. Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression - Couldn't be a most popular without this post on there.

The Bit Bucket is the Blog of the Day!

2007-07-09T06:11:00.000-06:00

Well yesterday we were.

Jennifer made The Bit Bucket her blog of the day over at "The Life of a School Bus Driver".

Thanks a bunch Jennifer!

Summary of iPhone media coverage

2007-07-08T07:46:00.000-06:00

Art posted a good summary of the iPhone coverage over on incoherentmumbling.

I haven't read PVP for quite awhile, but this strip had the line "Jesus has come back and he's a phone now" in it. I know that is how a lot of people were acting when the iPhone was just released.

It is interesting to see some of the "Oh my God! This phone completes me" coverage, and compare it to some of the more realistic iPhone coverage.

Get High Quality Stock Photos for free from FreerangeStock.com

2007-07-07T21:34:00.000-06:00

Sorry I moved this post to my new blog. You can find it here.

Feedburner Pro is now Free

2007-07-06T22:02:00.000-06:00

Way back in May, Google bought Feedburner. Even though I run into lots of people who look at me like I'm from another planet when I start talking about RSS feeds, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what a RSS feed is.

If you are one of those strange people who think that big, towering piles of money would be a really neat thing to have, reportedly Google paid $100 Million for Feedburner.

According to Tech Crunch, although you still have to "upgrade" to the "Pro", nothing is billed. If you already have a Feedburner Pro account, then nothing will be billed effective with the June billing cycle.

I have my feed through feedburner, but to be honest, I never do anything on their site. I will have to say, it works, and I haven't had to do much of anything with it since I set it up.

For more on the Google front, Google is continuing its buying spree, with the recently announced purchase of GrandCentral Communications. Of course, you already know that Google bought DoubleClick, and they really have been making some moves to build what looks like a health care network or portal (here, and here). Heck, if you are looking for a blog idea, you could probably have one that just reports Google stuff. Oh wait, there already are a bunch of those like Inside Google, The unofficial Google Weblog, Google Weblog, and too many others to list.

Fireworks

2007-07-06T06:38:00.000-06:00

It just isn't the Fourth of July without some good old fashioned fireworks. We stayed at home this year, and fired off some of our own. It was really great because the kids were old enough to really know what was going on.

I live outside of the city limits, so fireworks are legal for me, so long as they are on the approved list. If fireworks aren't legal in your area, here are some pictures, courtesy of flickr, for your enjoyment. I would suggest that after you look at them, say "BOOM" really loud, and it will be as if you were there. As soon as I upload them, I'll try and post some of my, much less impressive, pictures.

Who not to choose if you want to pick somebody's pocket

2007-07-05T18:19:00.000-06:00

Hint: a former Marine and Golden Gloves champion is probably not a good target. Even if he is 72 years old. The full story is on MSN here, but I found this YouTube video that is the actual surveillance. From a click on Detroit story:

"There was blood everywhere," said another manager on duty, Abby Ostrom, 25.
Barnes was a regional runner-up in Golden Gloves competition in the novice and open divisions before enlisting in the Marines in 1956.

Happy 4th of July

2007-07-04T08:08:00.001-06:00

Happy Fourth of July!

I love the Fourth of July, we get a day off work, cookouts, fireworks, and the celebration of our Freedom. I know that most Americans might forget what today is really about, but I don't.

Way back in 1776, our founding fathers unanimously declared that we aren't going to put up with Britain's crap anymore, we can do this better, and we can take care of ourselves.

I know that our country today isn't perfect, and lord knows we have made some mistakes, but it is our country, and if you don't like it, then change it.

That's right, I didn't say leave, I said change it. Hello, it's called democracy, if you want a change, get out there and try to make it happen. If you don't like the system, get off your ass, get out there, and make a difference. Your changes may not happen, but you can try.

A friend of ours grew up in East Germany, before the wall came down, and one of the big differences she noticed about America was that over there, and in other countries, although your basic necessities were taken care of, you couldn't dream. You were stuck with your lot in life, and what you could do or become was very limited.

Here in the US, we have the ability to try and make a better life for ourselves, and for our children. It isn't guaranteed, after all, it is the "pursuit of happiness", not "the achievement of happiness", or just plain old "happiness".

Enjoy today, have fun, shoot off some fireworks (where permissible by law), take some time to think about that today, what we are celebrating, and why it is so important.

Also, remember the people who decided they wanted to make sure that we can celebrate this day every year, and they were willing to risk their life to make sure that happens.

To all of our Marines, Soldiers, Airmen and Sailors who aren't home today to celebrate this day on American Soil, thank you, stay safe, and we hope you come back soon.

Get some Free Music, but hurry.

2007-07-03T19:11:00.000-06:00

Over at TechCrunch, they have a promotional offer to celebrate Amie Street's birthday. The first 5,000 unique signups get $2.50 in free credit, and 5 free song recommendations. Details here.

If you aren't familiar with Amie Street, the songs are sold in DRM free MP3 format. The songs also start out free, and go up in price as they become more popular, all the way up to the extremely expensive price of $.99. Apple made a big deal when they started selling DRM free music for $1.30 a song, and Amie Street has been doing if for quite awhile now.

I signed up, and received my credit. Woo-Hoo!

Burn Notice

2007-07-02T18:04:00.000-06:00

I just watched the premiere of Burn Notice on USA last night, and I'll have to say, I like it. Now, the show isn't as action packed as 24, not that I watch it, but it was quite entertaining. As a disclaimer, I am a fan of Jeffrey Donovan, who plays Michael Westen, the main character, ever since he starred in the ill fated "Touching Evil" series.

Although I watched the premiere last night, it actually premiered on Thursday June 28th, so you if you are interested in it, then you may want to check your TV listings to see when they are playing the episode.

To summarize the storyline, Michael Westen is a spy who works for some government agency, possibly the CIA, but through a contractor, or some other arrangement like that. One day, his employer decides that they no longer need his services, and they issue a "burn notice". Kind of like a pink slip, except not only does he no longer get paid, but they also suspend all of his bank accounts, drop him off in Miami (his hometown), place him under surveillance, and put his name on all of the FBI's watch lists. He is told, although not directly, that if he leaves Miami, there will be state-wide manhunts for him.

Not to spoil too much, but there were just some really neat things it in, like the timing of his burn notice (first 10 minutes of the show). He is making a deal with a wannabe warlord, where his agency pays the warlord $750,000 to provide security and "protection" for a refinery. The warlord agrees, and Michael gets on the phone to arrange the transfer, while the warlord gets on his computer to verify that the funds get transferred.

In the middle of the conversation, halfway through the account number, the person on the other end says something to the effect of:

I'm sorry, but there has been a burn notice issued for you.

After which, the line goes dead. Needless to say the warlord isn't particularly happy.

After escaping the warlord, and being dumped off in Miami, Michael is basically forced to take some private investigator work, just to earn money. In the process he gets to use some of his spy expertise, as well as take up the fight for the little guy. Almost an A-Team type of plot.

Although there is fighting and shooting, there isn't a whole lot of it, at least not for a spy show, but there is some pretty funny parts, as well as just some neat ways of doing things, like the whole bullet proof door work around.

I'm glad to see Jeffrey Donovan in another series, and hopefully this one will last. Like many of USA's other original series, this one is going to air in the summer, which should make sure that there is at least some audience willing to watch it. I really get tired of some really good shows just dropping off the face of the earth because they weren't popular enough to go up against American Idol.

Burn Notice Official Web Site

More Vista Ultimate Extras on the way

2007-07-02T11:44:00.000-06:00

This was really a "no update" update, The Ultimate Extras team posted an announcement that they are in fact still working on the extras that they talked about in January, specifically Dreamscene (animated wallpapers) and 20 language packs for the multi language user interface. Basically, they will be ready when they are ready.

Of course they should wait until the extras are stable and work properly, and I don't want you to think that I am giving them any grief. If the extras are delayed because they aren't stable, then I think that is a good decision.

Although I like eye candy, I usually turn it off after a little while. You see, I use my machine to do work, and I don't particularly care about windows animations, etc. So Dreamscene isn't something that I'm holding my breath for. I do have some hope though , because the article says:

We also intend to deliver additional Extras in the future. In addition to Windows DreamScene and the remaining Language Packs, we plan to ship a collection of additional Windows Ultimate Extras over the next couple years that we are confident will delight our passionate Windows Vista Ultimate customers.

So maybe they will include something cool, like a backup utility that lets you specify what you want backed up. Kind of like every version of Windows since NT has had. (I know that you can copy the backup utility from XP over to Vista, look in the more reading section).

Free Audio Books

2007-06-29T06:12:00.000-06:00

This post was migrated to my new blog, Port 16. You can find it here.

Now with Folders - Google Docs and SpreadSheets

2007-06-28T06:24:00.000-06:00

I was very surprised when I accidentally clicked on the Docs and Spreadsheets link in Gmail, and realized that Google has added the ability to organize your items into folders.

Well, kind of.

They basically have taken the tags that you assign to items, and placed a little folder icon next to them. Items can exist in multiple folders, just like they have multiple tags.

This will fix one complaint that I hear over and over from people about GMail, they can't use folders to organize their email. I never had the problem, I view the tags just like folders. If you click on a tag, you get a view which only holds the items with that particular tag.

The advantage, of course, is that items can have more than one tag, where in a true folder system, the item can only exist in one folder.

Even though Google introduced folders, they didn't introduce sub-folders. They just don't work.

The layout for the new interface looks just like the folder layout that Outlook uses, and Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, and Windows Explorer, and File Manager (remember that one?) and well, you get the picture. It is a big improvement over the last interface though, and in the new interface, you can drag and drop items into the folders. Pretty nice.

The interface was announced tuesday on the Google Blog, and contrary to a previous post of mine, Google Docs might start to be some type of competition for Microsoft Office, especially if they enable Google Gears for it.

May 2007's Top Posts

2007-06-27T06:40:00.000-06:00

How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP
Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression
Strange SharePoint Team Services 2 Restore Issue - I actually change the title of this one because I wasn't specifying the Version of SharePoint, or that I was talking about SharePoint Team Services vs. SharePoint Portal Server.
Winamp Site Hacked?
The Outlook Dumpster - Adventures in Deleted Item Recovery

Some of these posts should be looking pretty familiar to you by now. Jeez, what is the problem with some nice fresh posts? I mean come on, these posts are mostly old. Here, let me suggest some posts for you to read:

For the Techies:

Folder Navigation in Vista - Happiness is a Hyperlinked Address Bar

5 Reasons to leave your Wireless Devices turned off at the RSA conference

For a little laughter:

Messing with the Idiots

Create your own warning labels

Mac Vs. PC Spoof

For the Civic Minded:

Help Save Internet Radio

For the nosey:

What have I been up to?

Mike has finally bought an IPod!?!?

Now, these are all perfectly good posts, that were created in May 2007 or earlier. Please read them, I don't think I can stand to hear the muffled sobbing of another poor post who feels neglected.

Internet Radio Observes a Day of Silence

2007-06-26T11:29:00.001-06:00

Attempting to draw more attention to the "Internet Radio Equality Act", many Internet radio stations are observing a day of silence today. Pandora is one of the more popular services, one which I use and love, and it too is silent today.

Pandora has posted a open letter to Internet radio users, written by Tim Westergren, here is a brief excerpt from that letter.

Ignoring all rationality and responding only to the lobbying of the RIAA, an arbitration committee in Washington DC has drastically increased the licensing fees Internet radio sites must pay to stream songs. Pandora's fees will triple, and are retroactive for eighteen months! Left unchanged by Congress, every day will be like today as internet radio sites start shutting down and the music dies.
A bill called the "Internet Radio Equality Act" has already been introduced in both the Senate (S. 1353) and House of Representatives (H.R. 2060) to fix the problem and save Internet radio--and Pandora--from obliteration.

Please contact your local representatives, and ask them to support the "Internet Radio Equality Act", you can find contact info for them here, and you can also visit www.savenetradio.org to see what else you can do.

Windows Live Writer Beta 2

2007-06-24T05:46:00.001-06:00

I'm not a big fan of composing blogger posts in the HTML editor. The editor works fine , but I just don't particularly care for it.

Previously, Blogger had a plug-in for Word that worked pretty well, although the HTML looked horrible. When the current version of Blogger went into Beta the plug-in stopped working, and there were no plans to update it.

I heard that Microsoft was going to include Blog support in the new word, which I was really happy about, but at the time, it didn't work either. I can't blame MS on that one, because Docs and Spreadsheets stopped working too. There was a workaround that worked for about 3 days. I wrote about it in "When Getting New Features Means that Old Features don't work anymore".

Enter Windows Live Writer Beta, a pretty handy blog post editor. To be perfectly honest, I don't remember why I stopped using it, as I remember the HTML that it creates is pretty clean. My dirty little secret is that I have been using OneNote 2007's "Blog This" feature. Which although handy, doesn't play perfectly well with Blogger.

A couple of features that have been added to the new version is the ability to save drafts to your blog, as well as blogger tag support. There are also a number of plug-ins available.

When I published this post, the HTML was really clean, and the formatting was correct. With OneNote 2007 or Word 2007 there would always be strange line spacing, as well as extra lines breaks in the post.

Links and References:

- Writer Zone (Windows Liver Writer Blog) - Microsoft

- Windows Live Writer (Official Site) - Microsoft

- whateverblog - Joe Cheng, part of the Microsoft Live Writer Team.

- Live Writer Plug-ins - Microsoft

The Onion's Take on iPhone Features

2007-06-22T18:02:00.000-06:00

With only 7 days to go, you have to take a look at the features listed on The Onion's Article: "Apple's New iPhone" (Via Internet Nexus).

My favorite feature is:

Exclusive link to Google Street View so you can watch yourself using your iPhone at all times

and

Comes with an iPhone hat, so people know you own an iPhone during the brief periods you're not using it

It seems like yesterday and today my inbox has been flooded with anti-iPhone newsletters. There are a lot of people worried about the iPhone in their network. Several of the articles point out that the devices only support iMap, and that Apple should license software from either Blackberry or Microsoft so that the device can sync more securly.

I really don't see how this is any different from the way things are now, except possibly for the fact that the iPhone is going to be more popular than most other iMap enabled phones.

Analysts: iPhone Has Neither Security nor Relevance - eWeek

Enterprise Hurdles Await iPhone - eWeek

The iPhone, our new security nightmare - 360° Security

Is The iPhone Insecure? - Forbes

Microsoft Surface

2007-06-21T23:06:00.000-06:00

I had heard about Surface, but hadn't went looking for anything about it, until I saw a YouTube parody on HellYeahBitch. I had to go and find some of the real videos. The Microsoft Surface Website has the official videos, although I'm not sure what is going on with the text they use.

Not to be a Microsoft fan boy, but surface sure looks cool. From what I have read, the price tag is all sorts of expensive, like $10,000 a unit. That is way out of my $19.99 budget. Maybe someone I know will get one, and I can stay at their place for awhile. Right now Microsoft is targeting places like hotels and casinos, hoping that in 3 to 5 years the prices will have come down enough for consumers.

According to this CNet News article, Microsoft is developing the hardware and the software for the device.

I'm kind of curious to see what technologies are being using for synchronization and data transfer, not to mention how long before those technologies are supported by a lot of manufacturers. Looks cool though. Below is one of the Microsoft Videos, with a parody of it below.

Microsoft's Teaser:

Finally, that parody:

Sources and Links:
- Microsoft Surface Website - Microsoft
- "Microsoft hopes 'Milan' table PC has magic touch" - CNet News.com
- "Microsoft Surface Confirmed" - GizModo
- "Its not an iPhone...its a big ass table" - HellYeahBitch
- "Surface computing - Microsoft Surface" - My-Knowledge-Share
- "Microsoft Surface - The Magic, The Power, The Possibilities" - Andrea Vascellari Weblog

Some Interesting Links

2007-06-21T06:30:00.000-06:00

In my recent web travels I have ran across some sites that I wanted to share. Here they are, enjoy.

StreetViewr - Since Google started its "Street View" feature on Google Maps, this blog / website has been pulling photos of note out of the stream. Here are a couple of examples:
Patrick Norton - Formerly of the Screensavers, frequent TWIT Panelist, now on DL.TV
A someone working on a house, with a really big ladder

My Favorite, the Google Van gets pulled over. Make sure you follow the post's directions to see it.
The Make ezine - Come on, haven't you always wanted to make a Margarita Maker, Ping Pong ball gun, or maybe just some bacon soap. The site has the Digital version of the Magazine, a blog, podcasts and Projects directory. Pretty cool.
Exchange Exchange - A Post by John Gruber about how the iPhone is going to make the Corporate world throw off the shackles of an oppressive Microsoft Exchange environment. Oh, by the way, I guess Leopard Server (Apple makes servers?!?!) is going to have a Calendaring Server called iCal. I think that is iTerrific.
Jumping Monkeys! - No, that wasn't a curse substitute, and as a matter of fact, I added the exclamation point. A very long time ago, I mentioned that I ran across Megan Morrone's blog, titled Jumping Monkeys, and if you have read many of my posts, I am a big fan of the TWIT Podcasts. Well, Megan and Leo now have the Jumping Monkey's podcast, focusing on parenting. The have something like 3 episodes out now, and so far it is pretty good.

Script to backup SharePoint Team Services 2

2007-06-19T19:02:00.000-06:00

Over at my very popular "Strange SharePoint Restore Issue" post, Rafael was having a problem with restoring a SharePoint backup. Unfortunately it isn't anything I have ran into, all of my experience has been with SharePoint Team Services 2. But Rafael asked me to post my SharePoint backup script anyway.

So here it is, but first, a little advice:

If you use this script to backup your SharePoint database:

As with any backup plan or device, Test out the restore procedure.
Backups are Version Dependent. There are various subversions. Here is a Penny Coventry (MVP) has a nice table that lays out the versions.
Make sure that the name remains the same. If you rename the backup file before you try to restore it, you will get a strange error.
Use this script at your own peril. I don't guarantee anything. This works for me, and I have tested it in my environment. You should do the same before you rely on it.
The script makes files named "YYYY-M-D-SharepointBackup.dat". You should only run it once a day, or it will error out the next runs.
I run this script on the sharpoint server. You may have to modify the strURL variable.
The path to STSADM varies by locale.

'** Begin Copy here
'******************* SPSBK.VBS ****************************************
'** Save this file with a .vbs extension
'**
'** Share Point Services Backup
'** This script is meant to be run periodically to create a backup of
'** a sharepoint site to a local folder.
'**
'** This script runs stsadm with the parameters needed
'** to create a full backup named after the date.
'**********************************************************************

'Create the Variables
dim strCmdPath ' Used to store the path where stsadm is located
dim strBKPath ' Used to store the path where backup files will be stored
dim strFileDate ' Used to store the date which is appended to the file name.
dim strCmd ' Used to hold the entire command sent to the shell.
dim strURL ' Used to store the URL for the Sharepoint Backup

'************************************************************************
' Here is where the location is set. Change these depending on Machine **
'************************************************************************
' This is the path where stsadm is
strCmdPath = "c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\" & _
"web server extensions\60\bin\"

' This is the path where backup files will be stored
strBKPath = "d:\SharepointBackups\"

strURL = "http://localhost/sites"

'************************************************************************
' Assemble the date string for the filename
strFileDate = year(now) & "-" & month(now) & "-" & day(now)

' Build the command line.
strCmd = chr(34)& strCmdPath & "stsadm.exe " & chr(34) & "-o backup -url " & _
strURL & " -filename " & strBKPath & strFileDate & "-SharepointBackup.dat"

' Execute the command.
Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
objShell.Run(strCmd)
'*** End Copy Here

A Good SharePoint Blog:
Penny on SharePoint - Penny Coventry MVP's SharePoint blog.

Move over Nigerian email scams, make way for something meatier

2007-06-14T08:23:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post over on my new blog.

April 2007's Top Posts

2007-05-27T10:16:00.001-06:00

I realized that I haven't listed the top posts for April yet, and here it is almost the end of May already. Jeez! Breath easy, your wait is over. Here they are:

How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP - An oldie but goodie. Lots of people have experienced this problem. There is hope though, from what I have seen so far, Vista's Offline Files behave much more reliably.
Strange SharePoint Restore Issue - When I was trying to restore a SharePoint backup, I ran into this weird error, and it turned out to have a silly cause. I'm glad to see that a bunch of people have found this post helpful.
Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression - Yet another error (are we seeing a pattern here?) when I was writing some VBScript for Access.
User Submitted War Pigs Video Contest - I haven't actually looked to see what the results were for this contest, but I probably should...
Working with SharePoint Offline - Review of Revelation and Colligo for SharePoint - An old review I did for a handy application that lets you work with SharePoint offline.

Microsoft Offers Visual Studio for Free ?!?!

2007-05-25T11:56:00.001-06:00

Sorry, but I have a new and improved version of this post over at my new blog. You should check it out.

Messing with the Idiots

2007-05-20T16:45:00.000-06:00

I looked this video up on youtube because I saw a clip of it, and it looked pretty funny. Basically the Westboro Church was picketing, and a correspondent from a show decided to mess with them.

The clip below is about four minutes long, and it looks like it came from an Australian show.

If you aren't familiar with the wackos at the Westboro Church, they like to picket, holding signs with such lovely phrases as "God Hates Fags". For some reason, they keep coming to Colorado Springs, but it seems that they travel the country showing the entire nation what ignorant, hateful people they are. I'm sure that Kansas would like to see them leave permanently, and start claiming another state.

I did want to point out that they are protesting at a soldier's funereal, and a couple of the signs that I read were:

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers"
"Billy in Hell" ( with a picture on it. I assume that it is Billy's funereal.)
"Billy is a lying Whore"
"God Hates Cripple Soldiers".

I'm pretty sure that this display of freedom of speech isn't exactly what the founding fathers meant to defend.

Anyway, it is pretty funny to see someone mess with them. Enjoy.

Folder Navigation in Vista - Happiness is a Hyperlinked Address Bar

2007-05-02T20:49:00.000-06:00

I almost panicked when I couldn't find the "up" button in Vista. I was never a big fan of using the back button, because when you start following shortcuts, or entering UNC paths in the address bar, it can get a little confusing.

I was pretty disappointed until I realized that all of the items in the address bar can be clicked on. I think that this is a really nice feature, and I'll explain why.

In this picture of XP's Windows Explorer, If I wanted to get back to the root of C:, I could either press "up" 2 times, or I could click in there and delete the "windows\system32" and then press enter.

The picture below is Vista's Windows Explorer, you'll notice that "Local Disk (C:)" is highlighted, and if I click on it, Explorer will jump directly to the C: drive. It gets even better. The arrow to the right of C: is a dropdown menu.

As you can see from the picture below, you can now see all of the folders available to you on the C: drive, and clicking on any of them will jump directly to that folder.

Even better, the menu to the left of "Computer" is also a drop down list which can be used to get to some other frequently used items (see image below).

Even though it's going to take a little getting used to, I think this change will really save me some time.

Rinbot.BC Worm Exploits Un-Patched Microsoft DNS Vulnerability

2007-04-19T07:16:00.000-06:00

I heard about this vulnerability recently, and according to search security, there is now a worm, Rinbot.BC, using the exploit. I haven't heard any reports yet on how widespread the worm is, but it is probably a good idea to use the workaround mentioned in Microsoft Security Bulletin 935964.

The vulnerability was announced last week, and there is talk that Microsoft is going to issue a out of cycle patch to fix the issue. Windows Server 2000 SP4, and Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2 are effected. Of course clients don't run a DNS server, so Vista, XP and 2000 are not affected.

The security bulletin lists several ways to work around the vulnerability, I thought the easiest way was to use the method that uses the registry to disable remote management of the DNS server through RPC. Terminal services (including remote desktop), and the local machine will still be able to manage DNS settings.

Help Save Internet Radio

2007-04-18T11:38:00.001-06:00

If you have been listening to or reading any Tech related news sites, then I'm sure that you've heard about the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board to increase the royalties that internet radio stations have to pay.

If you aren't familiar with the decision, here is a fun breakdown of the change:

Will almost Triple what internet Radio stations pay now.
The new fees are more than four times what Satellite Radio Pays.
Broadcast Radio does not pay these fees at all.
They are retro-active back to 2006, although at a slightly lower fee.

I think this is a big crock.
SaveNetRadio.Org has a nice little form that you can use to contact your elected officials, so flex your democratic muscles and take a minute to fill it out.
Some more reading:
Save Net Radio.org

Net Radio: 'New Song Royalties Will Kill Us' - PCWorld

What have I been up to?

2007-04-12T07:12:00.000-06:00

Well, you probably can tell that I haven't been blogging, and I sure haven't been reading my RSS feeds either. So what have I been working on? Well:

Sleeping.

Last week I actually had 8 hours of sleep each night. It was crazy. I usually get about 6 hours, not counting what is taken away by interruptions such as:

- Whining dogs that need to go outside.

- A Meowing cat that also needs to go outside.

- Kids who have had nightmares.

- Carrying those kids to our bed, so they will stop being scared.

- Carrying those kids back to their bed, so they will stop kicking me in the back.

Trying to find something to organize my notes with.

I finally had enough when I was looking for a piece of information that I had just seen the other day, but it was able to hide from me in its deep dark file folder, beneath a nest of other file folders.

In looking for an application, I actually found some really neat stuff, and I settled on 1 really good application. I then spent some time migrating many of my notes over to the new application. Of course, then I found 1 really great program, and I had to migrate over to that. I think I'll stick with this one though, and I plan to post about what I found, eventually.

Watching Movies

I watched Sin City, Man of the Year, and Idiocracy, all very good.

Some other things I can't remember

Where does time go? I actually can't remember much of what else I was doing since my last post on the 1^st, or the span between that post and the one on the 27^th.

March 2007's Most Popular Posts

2007-04-01T09:18:00.000-06:00

1. How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP - This is one of my favorite articles, since I can never remember how to do it, and it is easier to come here then to search somewhere else. If you are receiving "incorrect function" errors when trying to sync, this is a handy trick to know. This makes 2 months in a row that this post has been in the Number 1 slot.

2. The Outlook Dumpster - Adventures in Deleted Item Recovery - Very handy to know how to use the outlook dumpster. This has been the second most popular post for 2 months now.

3. Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression -Pesky problem which took a good deal of research, but ended up having a nice straightforward fix. This post has been in the top 5 for 2 months now.

4. How to Find your Google PageRank - This post points to a couple of tools that will tell you what your Google PageRank is.

5. User Submitted War Pigs Video Contest -I haven't actually gone looking for any of the videos that were submitted for the contest, and the free MP3 giveaway has ended now, but people still keep finding this post.

Create your own warning labels

2007-03-27T12:18:00.000-06:00

Oh, so many fun labels can be made from this. I didn't know about this site when I went around labeling our safety equipment at work with funny stuff. Now I am going to have to go back and do it all over again.

Warning Label Generator - Thanks for pointing it out Gadgetophile!

Feel the Link Love

2007-03-17T07:42:00.000-06:00

The purpose of this list is to get some crazy link love going, the instructions are simple, and if everyone participates, then the results should be very good.

To Continue this Link Love list:
1. Copy and paste the list below into your blog post. Hopefully your blog editing software will be smart enough to copy the links over. If not, you can always look at the page source to get the HTML.
2. Add any blogs you want to the list, including the blog that listed you (this blog).

That's all there is to it, if the list continues, then everyone should get a bunch of links from other blogs, and everyone will be happy.

The List:
- Making Money on the Web
- Steve Wilson Marketing
- The Thinking Blog
- Affiliate Marketing Wave
- Your Blogging Guide

Google Bombing Still Lives?!?!

2007-03-14T20:50:00.000-06:00

I could have sworn that I heard that Google had made changes so there could be no more Google Bombing.

However:
I did the "Win a Nintendo Wii from John Chow" post to enter John Chow's contest, and one of the requirements was to refer to him as the "root of all evil", and have that phrase linked to his blog. Currently, if you do a Google search for the "Root of all evil" (in quotation marks), his blog is the 3rd result.

Is this more John Chow evilness?

Technorati likes me again!

2007-03-14T07:48:00.000-06:00

In the post I did last night, "633 days of Technorati Ignoring me", I mentioned that I had posted to the Technorati forum about my problem. Well, when I checked this morning, they had started to crawl my blog again.

I had an email from a Technorati Support person, Jose, apologizing for the problems, and someone even commented on my blog to let me know it was fixed.

The final count was 634 days, and to be fair to Technorati, I had only put in a trouble ticket about a week ago. I'm glad that they are indexing me again.

Also, my blog's rank in their index went from 2,831,421 to 1,282,695, whatever that means. I'm curious to see if I start getting traffic from Technorati.

Related Posts:
- 633 days of Technorati Ignoring Me
- Tecnorati is Officially off my Christmas Card List

633 days of Technorati Ignoring me

2007-03-13T18:41:00.000-06:00

In February I posted about how Technorati was off my Christmas list, and as of today they say that I have not updated my blog in 633 days.

I'm kind of curious how long it will continue.

I have deleted my claim, then re-claimed my blog, and a week ago today entered a support ticket, but all to no avail.

Now, what I was going to do is compile a list of all the people in the forum who have that they are having the same problem, but everyone I looked at is now being updated. Hmmm....

Let me post there, and see what happens. Here is the Forum Post.

Win a Nintendo Wii from John Chow

2007-03-13T05:52:00.000-06:00

That evil blog mogul John Chow is at it again.

I think this man is the root of all evil.

This time, he is giving away a Nintendo Wii to some random blogger who is able to follow the intricate rules of his contest. The rules are so complicated, that I doubt there will be many posts that qualify, and only the most pathetic blog monkeys will be able to jump through all of the hoops necessary.

You can see these ridiculous rules at "Evil Blog Contest - Win a Nintendo Wii", evidently the Wii was given to him by a promotional pens company 1234Pens.

Daylight Savings Time Havoc

2007-03-11T12:43:00.000-06:00

This video gives us a glimpse into the living hell that we may have had to live through if armies of Techies didn't intervene on the worlds behalf.

Saw this on Incoherent Mumblings

How to use Google Analytics Video Series

2007-03-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

If you have a web site or blog, Google Analytics is a pretty powerful tool for web site statistics. It provides you with a good deal of information for the low low price of free. You just place a little piece of code on your pages, and then sit back and watch the statistics come in.

The eMoms at home site pointed me to a set of really great videos posted by Ian Laurie on how to use Google Analytics.

Part 1 - Signing up for an account and placing the code on your site.
Part 2 - Essential Stats
Part 3 - Digging Deeper
Part 4 - Goals

Definitely something you want to check out if you use, or are thinking of using Google Analytics

- Ian Lurie Posts Google Analytics Video Tutorials - eMoms at home

How to find your Google PageRank

2007-03-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

In a comment on my Technorati Post, the helpful rip referred to some of her sites as being a PR4, PR6, or PR7. I didn't think to ask, but after I replied I was wondering what that meant.

In short, PR is PageRank, and the number following it is the actual PageRank. If you would like to find out the page rank of your site, then you are reading the right post. I ran across this PageRank Lookup tool on the site SEO Tools which allows you to find out.

In case you weren't sure, the higher your page rank is, the better off you are. Also, in case you were wondering, SEO is "Search Engine Optimization"(I had to look that one up a couple of weeks ago).

Unfortunately for me, it isn't like Golf, if it were I would have people asking me what I did to get such a great page rank.

Just to see if my PageRank from this tool was a verifiable result, not some random number pulled out of the air, I went ahead and checked it with PageRank Checker at Top25Web and the results were the same. Not entirely scientific, but good enough for me. Thanks to an anonymous commenter on this post, I also tried the "Verify Google Page Rank" site, and it confirmed the number.

Now SEO Tools has a great deal of stuff packed onto their page, lots of links topics and some ads, but Top25Web looks like they fell out of the AdSense tree and hit every branch on the way down. The tool still works though.

I'm not terribly worried about my PageRank, at least not yet. I'm still working on just getting some content on the site, and maybe even start posting on a regular basis. Once I have that straightened out, then I'll start to put some time into PageRank, Keywords, and all that jazz.

Now, if you found this post because of the SEO and PageRank keywords, I don't want to leave you disappointed.

My Opinion
I think that the most read blogs in the blog-o-verse, or intra-blog-o-sphere-orama-2.0 are the ones about how to make money with your blogs. Of course, like any blogger with dreams of making a Scrooge McDuck pile of cash through blogging, I have read my fair share of "blogging for money" blogs, and "make your blog popular blogs". To sum it up, there are a lot of "blogging about blogging" blogs out there. So let me point you to a couple of blogs that I think are very worth reading, and that I bet you will find helpful in this area:

Some Recomendations
- The eMoms at Home Blog - Don't let the "Mom" in the title throw you off (if you happen to be a guy), this is an outstanding blog, with tons of great tips. She even has a free blog traffic e-course. When I first found this blog, I just went crazy following links, and I think that I gave her a ton of pageloads those days. The e-course also has some really great tips. Nothing underhanded about her tactics. Thanks Wendy!

- Pro Blogger - Everyone links to this site. Go visit it and you will see why. This is another blog that becomes a click fest once you get there. On top of all the great tips and content, the guy is bald too. Fellow follicle challenged bloggers unite!

References:
- PageRank Lookup - SEO Tools
- 10 Related page Rank Tools & 136 SEO tools - SEOCompany
- PageRank Checker - Top25Web
- Verify Google Page Rank
- eMoms at Home
- 10 Days to a Better Blog - eCourse from eMoms at home.
- ProBlogger

February 2007's Top 5 Posts

2007-03-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

1. How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP - This is one of my favorite articles, since I can never remember how to do it, and it is easier to come here then to search somewhere else. If you are receiving "incorrect function" errors when trying to sync, this is a handy trick to know.

2. The Outlook Dumpster - Adventures in Deleted Item Recovery - Very handy to know how to use the outlook dumpster.

3. Winamp Site Hacked? -This was one event that my friend Art pointed out. I posted about it, and within 2 hours the site was fixed.

4. Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression -Pesky problem which took a good deal of research, but ended up having a nice straightforward fix.

5. Remove a Service with the Command Prompt -Another post that I end up looking up more often then I care to admit. I'm glad that others have found it useful.

Technorati is officially off my Christmas Card List

2007-02-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have a cousin that you met once at a family reunion? Maybe you talked it up some, and really enjoyed the conversation. Then after the reunion, well life gets in the way, and the next thing you know, you haven’t talked to that cousin in a very long time. Maybe you feel like a big heel for not calling.

OK, if you are still with me, imagine that the cousin has made attempts to contact you, letters, phone calls, yet when you see the name on the caller ID, you let the answering machine answer the call.

You also make sure that you are really quiet, since you never tested to see if the microphone on the machine is actually off when it is taking a message, and you would hate for him to hear you and start yelling “I know your home; I can hear you breathing in the background!!!”

In this case, Technorati is the one being quiet, and this blog is that ignored cousin.

What I am referring to is the inability of Technorati to find my blog, and the stubborn refusal of my pings. As you can see from the image above, Technorati doesn’t think my blog has been updated in 620 days. If you scroll down a little bit, you will notice, that I have in fact posted in 2006, and shockingly, in 2007 as well. Granted, I haven’t posted with any consistency, but come on, there have been posts!

I don’t quite understand why, I use their handy dandy ping button, and when I use Performancing, I set it to ping Technorati, but for some reason, Technorati continues to ignore me.

So I say to you Technorati, in front of ~~all~~ my loyal ~~readers~~ reader, no soup for you! You shall remain without soup until you update your stats on my blog. At such a point, there will be soup aplenty, but not until then.

Some blogs that Technorati and I both love:
- The How to Geek
- Tech-Recipes
- Windows Connected
- LifeHacker
- 43 Folders

Update: Johnny Cash over at "Making Money on the Web" posted a comment that he has the same problem with Technorati. A quick look in their blog directory says that his site hasn't been updated in 52 Days, and I am up to 626 days without an update. He also has a post about his problems titled "My Technorati Woe"

Google offers all of its free apps now as a service

2007-02-23T11:53:00.001-07:00

On the Google Blog they announced the availability of their applications in a convenient subscription model. Now you can pay $50 per user, per year, and get all their wonderful free apps. They are calling the bundle Google Apps Enterprise.

They are also offering editions for families and groups, small businesses, and schools.

Wait a minute, I can pay for something that they have been offering for free? Let me jump on that train.

I'm not sure how successful this is going to be, of course Google has eleventy hundred gillion users, but really, are the apps that good?

I haven't used Calendar or spreadsheets, and only briefly used Talk. I use Documents sometimes, but if they discontinued the free service and started charging $1 a month, I would quit using it so fast that my Google cookie would be left hanging in the air, spinning around.

I had joked that one day in the future I would reminisce about the good old days when Microsoft almost had a Monopoly on operating systems and software, because now Google controls everything. Maybe this is the beginning. Maybe next it will be Google Democracy.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out.

Update: Wired News has a article titled "Google Apps: Should you switch?" and there were a few things that I thought were wrong about it.

1. The Article States that:

"Pricing is set at $50 per user per year, less expensive than Microsoft Office but with much the same functionality. Microsoft has its own web-based suite of tools in Office Live, but the company's offering doesn't match Google's. And Google isn't going after Office Live, it's going after Office."

Um, no Offense Michal Calore, but have you actually used the two sets of applications?

Google Docs isn't even close to Word. I haven't used spreadsheets at all, but I'm sure that it is limited as well. Sure, if you need a word processor, then go ahead and use Docs and Spreadsheets, but I just could not imaging using Google Docs and Spreadsheets exclusively.

2. He does mention that there isn't a PowerPoint equivalent, although I thought I had read that there was a Google Presentation app coming out, I haven't seen it. Yes, PowerPoint is a hugely popular program, but let's not forget Access. I know Google Base can't compete with that.

I also think that there isn't an Outlook killer either, at least not for a corporate environment. Outlook has a whole slew of nice features that GMail and Calendar just can't match.

A Couple of Interesting Sites

2007-02-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

Bloglines Image Wall – Not Work Friendly

The Bloglines image wall crawls a bunch of blogs, and takes an image from them, which it then places in this wall. Each Image is linked to the blog which originated it. The Wall is constantly updated, and sometimes you will see an image and just have to click on it to see what the heck is going on. The first time I looked at it there was some weird pictures, and the second time there were some adult images.

The wall itself is 6 images wide by 4 images tall, but before you view it you have to agree that you are an adult, and that you understand that you may be exposed to horrific adult images (Gasp).

Bloglines Wall of Images

Yahoo pipes is a “do your own mashup” platform. It looks like you can do some really crazy stuff with it. It has a very interesting GUI interface which you use to build your pipes. One of the pipes on the site takes headlines from the New York Times, and searches for key words. Then those keywords are used to search through Flickr.

After you create a Pipes set (not sure of the exact terminology), you can publish it, and subscribe to it via RSS. You can also take Pipes that others have made, clone them, and modify them to your liking. All in all, I think some really neat stuff is going to come out of this. The one think I don't like very much is the name, and only because it sounds strange to refer to single items with a plural.

Me: "I built some neat pipes today"

My imaginary friend: "Oh, how many?"

Me: "Just one."

Oh never mind, just go check it out if you are into this type of thing.

- Yahoo Pipes
- New York Times through Flickr

Mac Vs. PC Spoof

2007-02-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

I heard part of this video on Net@Night, and had to see it for myself. It was just pretty funny. I'm not a big fan of the Mac vs. PC commercials, they were funny at first, but then they really started to grasp at straws.

This next one is a little long, about 4 minutes. It is supposed to be a bunch of rejected ads, and some of them are pretty funny. I'm glad to see Amiga make an appearance.

I would still like to see a spoof where the Mac has a midget, maybe Mini me from Austin Powers, and when asked Mac replies "Oh, this is my Market Share".

Other Links:
- iTunes doesn't work on Vista yet?
- Mike has Finally bought an iPod

5 Reasons to leave your Wireless Devices turned off at the RSA conference

2007-02-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

This is all from the article "RSA: Attendees drop ball on Wi-Fi security" over at ComputerWorld. The wireless security vendor AirDefense Inc was monitoring the Wireless networks during the conference. Here are some of their findings, and the reasons I would have my wireless turned off if I were at the RSA conference.

1. 30 Devices pretending to be access points.
Not only were they pretending to be access points, but they were pretending to be access points from the conference network. One of them even had a self-sign certificate made to look like the conference authentication server. Others were configured to look like T-Mobile and IBAHN access points, as well as the access points of local hotels.

2. I like my service, so please don't Deny it.
There were 57 Denial of Service attacks on the first day of the conference, including jamming and de-authenticating clients. What fun.

3. Lots of Scanning
NetStumbler and similar programs were scanning for access points regularly. The article says that it was by attendees, but who can really be sure.

4. I don't want anyone else controlling my computer.
On the second day of the conference, one attacker had taken over 8 machines, and was using them to launch attacks on other machines.

5. I should be the only one who knows my password
A whole bunch of the clients connecting to the bogus access points were advertising domain information, including authentication server, user name, computer name, as well as sending out the authentication hashes which contained username and password.

Making it a little easier for the bad guys
AirDefense Inc, also found that more than half of the wireless devices in use at the RSA conference were not secure. Remember, the RSA is the security division of EMC, and the attendees are the people responsible for their company's computer security.

This would be like finding out Bill Gates uses Linux, that Steve Jobs has a Windows Logo tattooed on his rear, or going to a hair stylist who has a mullet.

Some other things they found were unsecured wireless access points with two notorious names, one named "Free Internet Access" and one called "Linksys". Not only were these access points out there, but 70 devices connected to them on the first day, and 87 on the second day!

There were obviously other "security experts" in attendance
Obviously there were hackers there, trying to mess around with the experts. I think that I will make sure to turn my wireless off anytime I go to a big conference like this one. I remember reading something about all the stuff going on at the last DEF CON.

I wonder if anyone was checking this at CES. I know there were a whole slew of people blogging from there.

ITunes doesn't work on Vista yet?

2007-02-08T05:21:00.000-07:00

I found this CNET article kind of strange, evidently Apple is telling iTunes users not to install Windows Vista. Evidently, there is a patch to fix some problems specific to music which was purchased from the iTunes store, but it doesn't fix any of the compatibility issues, one of which is corrupting your iPod.

Although not a conclusive number by any means, and it may be affected by the gaining popularity of the iPod, in October 2004, CNet reported that since iTunes was ported to Windows, Apple's iPod sales have more than doubled. I don't think Apple has released these numbers, or at least I haven't been able to find them. If you know what they are, feel free to post a link.

What I found strange about this whole thing, is that Microsoft made 2 release candidates available, and there is still an issue with iTunes? Didn't apple bother to get one of them and test iTunes out?

I am sure that if I can get my hands on one, so can Apple. Heck, the release version of Windows Vista has been out for over a month, just not to retail. I know Apple has to have at least 5 Windows Licenses, they have to have a Software Assurance package, or at least a MSDN subscription.

Maybe I am way off base here. Maybe at the last possible minute, Microsoft changed the way everything works in Vista, and told Apple that everything was hunky dory. Maybe Steve Jobs was way too busy with the iPhone, maybe John Gruber over at Daring Fireball can fill me in on what is going on here, or at least call me a jackass for saying something negative about Apple.

UPDATE 3/6/2007 : Apple has released an updated version of iTunes, version 7.1 (you can get it here) which is supposed to address the issues mentioned above with Vista. Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out. His thoughts on it are available here. More information from Apple.

Related Links:
- Mike has finally bought an IPod!?!?

References:
- Apple Whistles a happy iTunes - CNET News
- Apple Releases Vista Compatibility Patch For iTunes, But Problems Remain - CRN Australia
- Speaking of Clowns - DaringFireball.net
- iTunes and Windows Vista - Paul Thurrott's blog
- iTunes and Windows Vista - Apple
- iTunes Download - Apple

Mike has finally bought an IPod!?!?

2007-02-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

I just purchased an iPod, which is really amazing for me, because I don't get to buy gadgets, mostly because I'm cheap, but I finally broke down and bought a refurbished Nano.

It is really nice to add some really enjoyable content to the parts of my life where it fits. Ever since I ran across the TWIT Netcast network, I started really getting into some of the excellent Podcasts or Netcasts that are out there.

I had tried to listen to podcasts at work, but to be perfectly honest, I can't sacrifice that much of my brain's CPU cycles to actually paying attention to the podcast. After all, I want to really listen to the podcast, not just have it as background noise, and since I am at work, I am really trying to cram as much "work" into my time as I can, so I am already doing several things at the same time.

So Podcasts just don't fit well into my time at work, but I will tell you where they do fit, they fit very nicely in the 40 minutes to an hour each day that I spend driving back and forth to work, or the time I spend cleaning the house and yard. I mean come on, how much brain power do you need to pick up dog turds (in the yard, not the house).

So far the battery life is pretty darn good, it lasts me several days but of course I am not listening to it non stop. I was also surprised that the Nano supports a calendar, contacts, and can be used as a USB drive when it is plugged into your computer. It even has a couple of games on it.

The only thing that I don't like about the IPod is the tremendously huge ear buds that come with it. They pop out at the slightest head movement. I think I am going to have to find a replacement for them, although I think I may be getting used to them.

Winamp Site Hacked?

2007-02-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Strange thing today, I tried to download Winamp, and as soon as you make all of your selections, and click download, instead of a download screen, you get this:

I thought at first that this might be displayed while I am waiting for the download to start. The URL listed was:
http://download.nullsoft.com/

It gets a little bit stranger, I pinged download.nullsoft.com, and it is resolving to 172.30.74.154, which is in a reserved address range. A ping from www.network-tools.com resolves it to 172.20.149.50.

If you do a whois on nullsoft, the ip address is 205.188.234.120

I wonder if this has anything to do with the DNS Root Server attack yesterday.

Update 11:30: Winamp fixed the problem. The site is now resolving to 149.174.36.119 and the page is a directory listing of the site. Downloads work fine now. I'll be curious if they ever say what happened.

Undo.tv

2007-02-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

Wow! I had almost forgotten about Undo.tv, but today I received an invite! My profile page says that I am member number 3159.

I don't see any way to invite other people, so please don't ask me for an invite. You can register for an invitation code on the Undo.tv web page. I can't even remember how long ago it was when I first signed up. The site has a banner, after you log in, that states that they are in "Private Beta".

I remember listening to either Net@Night or Inside the Net (which is not net@night), and Chris Pirollo was on the show talking about UndoTV. They also had someone from PikSpot, which is the company hosting the site. It sounded to me like UndoTV was going to be the first real big launch of PikSpot. If you go to the PikSpot site, you can register for a invitation to PikSpot there (don't confues it with an invitation to UndoTV).

I went in to update my profile, and I was utterly amazed at the amount of personal information, and site memberships that you can enter into the form. They include:

Communications
- Yahoo
- AIM
- MSN
- ICQ (I didn't even know ICQ was still around)
- Google Talk

Site Memberships
- Flickr
- LiveJournal
- MySpace
- SecondLife
- Upcoming.org
- LinkedIn

They have spots for sites you own, favorite links, and a bunch of other stuff too.

I was looking through the members, and of course, Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo are on the site (they were the driving force behind the creation of the site, if you didn't already know), but Amber Mac is on there too.

As far as I can tell, besides just searching for content, you can subscribe to content that particular members are creating. Each piece of media has links and code on it so that you can embed it on your web site, and the system seems to work with "Kudos". If you like something, you can send them a Kudo, which I think may be like Diggs, but both the member and the media collects the Kudo.

Looks pretty interesting, I am looking forward to poking around some more.

Twit, Screen Size, and Cory Doctorow

2007-02-04T21:24:00.001-07:00

I was listening to "Twit Episode 84: Hahn, I'm Home!" and I will have to say that I was very impressed with some of the things that one of the guests, Cory Doctorow said. TWIT has had many guests, and although all of them are likable, I will have to say that I don't think I have ever been as impressed with any of them as much as I was with Cory.

One of the first things that made me kind of sit up and take notice was when the group was talking about viewing media on various screens, like the ones on IPods and cell phones, and John C. Dvorak didn't think that there was much of a future for smaller screens, and that he would never watch a movie on a smaller screen like the one on an IPod.

Cory was talking about how the computer, being as much of a multi-function device as it is, really demands media that doesn't require much of an attention span. This was mentioned as kind of a backup to what many people had said about E-Books, that no one would sit in front of their computers long enough to read a book, which really isn't true, as he points out.

Of course, partly because of my job, and partly because of my love of computers, I spend at least 8 hours a day in front of a computer, which is more than long enough to read a book.

Of course, what I am doing is looking at or reading things which don't require large blocks of time. Web page snippets and other items related to what it takes to do my job. I'm not even going to talk about some other things that people spend an ungodly amount of time doing on a computer, such as World of Warcraft, or blogging :-)

When it comes to all of these screens that we are seeing in cell phones and IPods, it isn't Screen size and resolution that is important, and this is also something that Cory pointed out, what is important is the context that the screen is being used in.

If I am waiting in line at a DMV, then I would be extremely happy with a screen the size of an IPod's screen, of course if I am in my living room, then I probably will not pull out that smaller screen in order to watch a different show. Leo backs it up with saying that what we as consumers are really after is a wide selection of screens, we want the screen that fits where we are, and what we are doing.

After listening to the Podcast, I decided to go ahead and look Cory up. They had mentioned on the air that he just released a new book of short science fiction stories called "Overclocked", but I was really surprised to learn that you can download the entire book online, either in print or in podcast form for free. He also has a whole slew of other stories available for download in print or podcast form, for free.

So I went ahead and subscribed to the site, and I plan on checking out his writing. You should too.

Related Links:
Cory's Website - CrapHound.com
Twit.tv - The Twit Netcast Network
Twit Netcast - The Week in Tech
TWIT makes Time Magazine's Top 10 Podcasts
The TechTV Crew

User Submitted War Pigs Video Contest - Free MP3

2007-02-01T08:50:00.001-07:00

3/15/2007 UPDATE: The newsletter that announced the availability of the Warpigs MP3 file has come and gone, and the track is no longer available. I really liked it though, it is definitely their style, and still very recognizable. Currently the "B-Sides and Rarities" CD is on pre sale, for only $10 (plus shipping). I pre-ordered mine.

(We now bring you back to your regularly scheduled post)

One of my very favorite bands is a band called Cake. They had a hit or two back in the 90's, and then maybe one or two more a little more recently, but I have every one of their albums, and have to say that each and every one has been worth the money.

They have another album coming out called "Rarities", and one of the songs on it is going to be a remake of the Black Sabbath Song "War Pigs". In the last newsletter, they are starting a contest, where users can create their own music video to the song, and entries will be posted to You Tube.

It sounds like you can get the MP3 of Cake's War pigs by signing up for their newsletter, and they will be sending out a link to download it.

I am pretty sure that I will not be trying to create a video myself, but I sure want to get that MP3.

Clearing Snow Clouds

2007-01-12T05:59:00.001-07:00

Clearing Snow Clouds, originally uploaded by Jim's outside photos.

This picture was taken at Yosemite National Park. What a great photo to liven up your desktop. For some more terrific pictures, check out Jim's Outside Photos on Flickr.

Time Magazine's Top 10 Podcasts - TWIT made the List!

2007-01-08T21:55:00.001-07:00

Amber Mac did a post on this, and If you can get past the repeated clicking (you have to hit next for the Podcasts) there are some interesting Podcasts listed there. The surprise for me was that Time was smart enough to place The Week in Tech (Twit) in the list, unfortunately it was the ninth in the top 10.

I have really started listening to a bunch of Netcasts and Podcasts lately, and the TWIT network has many of my favorites on it. Just to name a few:

- The Week in Tech (TWIT) - A Weekly review of Tech news storys, with many of your former favorites from what used to be TechTV. It is funny, smart, and although it runs a little over an hour sometimes, never long enough.

- Net @ Night - Featuring Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur, features all sorts of fun stuff, interesting web sites and stories, always very entertaining.

- Security Now - With Leo Laporte and the famous Steve Gibson of GRC. Ahh, I remember when Steve's sight was shut down by a DDOS Syn attack. I hung the letter to his attackers on my wall. Steve has been around forever, and caught a lot of bad press because of his problems with Microsoft Fixing the TCP/IP stack, but his worries turned out to be very valid. Just ask the hundreds of thousands of computer Zombies out there now.

- Windows Weekly - With Paul Thurrot, focusing on Windows and other topics in the Microsoft World. I had ran across Paul's Windows Super Site once or twice, but didn't recognize the name. Great Podcast though.

There are plenty more Podcasts on Twit.tv then I have mentioned here, your really should check them out if you are into technology.

Congratulations to Leo and the whole TWIT cast!

Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T20:51:00.001-07:00

You know I have to post it, if I want to be a good blogger, so here goes.

Happy New Year Everybody!

Here is wishing that 2007 is going to be a terrific year. So get your resolutions in order, because they start tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

Personally I only have a few resolutions.

To Gain Control of the entire world.
To re-grow hair on my head.
To finally be able to fold the space time continuum.
To not mess up a single check by writing 2006 instead of 2007.

I know, almost the same resolutions as last year.

Enjoy 2007!

The CJ7

2006-12-26T17:55:00.001-07:00

The CJ7, originally uploaded by ms.thenetworker.

This was during the first blizzard of 2006, it was just really funny how the snow piled up on the bumper and hood to make that opening. You can just barely see the headlights in there.

Great Picture - The temple

2006-12-26T17:35:00.001-07:00

The temple, originally uploaded by Juanillooo.

If you are in need of some wallpapers, you have to check out Juaniloo's Photos. This is one of my favorites here.

Merry Christmas Everyone

2006-12-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to take a little bit of time here to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I have particularly enjoyed this Christmas, both of my kids are old enough to really appreciate the season, and this year we almost found a balance between giving too few and giving too many presents.

No, there weren't any Nintendo Wiis, Playstation 3s, or X-Box 360s under our tree this year. I was really happy that my wife and I were able to peg exactly what they wanted.

Merry Christmas!

When Getting New Features Means that Old Features don't work anymore

2006-12-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

You can categorize this post under "whining". The new blogger is out of beta, and I thought "Woo-Hoo". I have been using the beta for a little while now, and I bet the finally fixed the problems so that I can now publish using the Word Add-in and Google Docs and Spreadsheets like I was able to before I switched.

Wrong.

It still doesn't work, and I found in their help info that they don't even know if they are going to upgrade the word plug-in.

But wait, there's more...

Luckily, I did a quick little search, and I ran across this post on TechNirvana, what a life saver. Thanks Abhishekg!

Now if only Docs and worksheet would place the title of the document as the title of the blog post, and fix the insertion of an extra space after making a hyperlink.

But remember Mike, this stuff is all free. OK, I feel better now.

Free Screen Capture Utility - MWSnap

2006-12-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

MWSnap is a must have if you do any sort of documentation. As the title of the blog says, it is a free screen capture utility, and allows you to grab only sections of your screen, and save or print them. This utility is just full of neat features, including a color picker, automatic saving of captures, and automatic printing.

One of my favorite features is that when you use the Ctrl+Shift+A shortcut key, a little zoom window pops up which is zoomed in to the cursor's location, so that you can make really accurate selections. No more thin lines around the pictures for your documentation.

Thanks Mirek, you wouldn't believe how much time this has saved me.

Microsoft Robotics Studio - Free Robot Development

2006-12-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post on my new blog. You should check it out.

Happy Birthday Marines!

2006-11-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

Today I checked my email a little late, but sure enough, there they were. Birthday greetings from my Brothers. Today is November 10th, and the Marine Corps is 231 Years old. I have been out of the Marine Corps for almost 9 years now, but I still think about the Corps every day.

Year after year, when I see the birthday greetings from my friends, I am still glad to know that I am not the only former Marine who still remembers the Marine Corps Birthday, it seems like every year I meet another former Marine who doesn't celebrate Nov 10th. I don't know about the rest of you Jarheads out there, but every year I get all the Marines I know locally, and hoist a few in honor of the Corps. Usually we only number 2 or 3, but all of you that I served with, and all of my other brothers and sisters out there who I have not met are there with me, if only in thought.

So Happy Birthday to all of you Hard Chargers!

Semper Fi!

And remember, if you want to help out some terrific Marine Corps related charities, and get a great book about steak, read this post about "Command of the Grill" , or visit the Command of the Grill web site .

Weber's Command of the Grill - A Salute to Steak

2006-10-20T15:32:00.000-06:00

So as you probably know, my Birthday is coming up, I'll be 231. OK, I've been around for awhile, but not quite that long. What I'm talking about is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. You see, Marines care about the day their beloved Corps was founded, November 10th, 1775, and celebrate it every year, and even though I haven't been on active duty for quite awhile, I'm still a Marine, and I still celebrate the Marine Corps birthday.

As a matter of fact, I believe that I am legally obligated to have at least a few beers on that day with any Jarhead I can find, and trust me, there are at least a few everywhere. They may not be wearing a sharply pressed uniform , or sporting a motivated high and tight, but they are there, just yell out "Semper Fi!" and I bet you'll at least get an "Ooh-Rah! " back.

What brings this up, is I have been long awaiting the release of Weber's Command of the Grill - A Salute to Steak , so long in fact, that I forgot all about it until I was on Weber's web site. This book is the result of grilling competitions held for Marines, go ahead, find out more, I dare you.

Now, I love to grill, I love steak, and I love the Corps. What could be better than a book that combines all of those. I'll tell you what could be better, every single penny of this $10 book goes to supporting Marines wounded in action, or the families and children of Marines who were killed in action. The Charities supported are:

- The Injured Marines Semper Fi Fund - Provides financial assistance to injured Marines, and other service members injured while assigned to Marine Units.

- The Wounded Warrior Project - Provides programs and assistance to severely wounded service members.

- The Fisher House - Provides a home away from home for the families of patients receiving medical treatment at Military and VA medical centers.

- The Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation - Assists the Children of Marines and Law Enforcement who were killed while serving their country.

If you know a Marine, buy this book for them, if you know someone who likes to grill, buy this book for them. Hell, buy one for yourself. Give something for those who sacrificed everything. Just don't buy one for me, I bought 2 of them today.

Semper Fi!

10/23/2006 Update: Big thanks to the Grill Junkie for helping to promote Command of the Grill. If you like to grill, make sure you put Grill Junkie on your "to check often" list, or subscribe via RSS.

Ms. Dewey Search Engine

2006-10-19T12:32:00.000-06:00

I saw this on Chris Pirillo's Blog.

I guess if you have a whole lot of bandwidth to spare, or are very lonely, you may want to do your web searches on Ms. Dewey (hmmm... maybe I should have said at Ms. Dewey's site?).

What is the world coming to. I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. I bet I can guess what comes next...

The Outlook Dumpster - Adventures in Deleted Item Recovery

2006-10-19T11:26:00.001-06:00

If you are a Outlook user (on a Microsoft Exchange server) and don't know about the Outlook Dumpster, whoa Nelly are you going to be glad that you read this post.

If you manage an Exchange server, and don't know about the Dumpster, then you may want to mark this day on your calendar, so that you can celebrate it in the years to come.

As many of you know, when something is deleted from Outlook, it goes into the handy dandy Deleted Items Folder, but what many users don't know is that even after you empty the deleted items folder, the data still hangs around for awhile. How long depends on what your exchange administrator has decided. This is specified in the Mailbox and Public folder limit policies on the exchange server. Personally, I keep everything for 120 Days.

Recovering Items from an emptied Deleted Items Folder

So you are a good user, and you regularly empty your Deleted Items Folder, when suddenly you realized that you accidentally deleted your favorite Kim Chee recipe, and it was the only copy you had. All you have to do to recover it is:

Highlight the Deleted Items Folder
Click on Tools Recover Deleted Items
Look through the list, and find that Kim Chee recipe, then highlight it.
Click on the "Recover Deleted Items" icon (it looks like an envelope with an arrow on it).
Go back to your deleted Items folder, and there it is.
Make the Kim Chee , eat it a week or two later, and apologize to your co-workers for the smell.

Sounds good, nothing can go wrong right?

It does sound pretty good, but there are some instances when items don't go into the deleted items bin, this is referred to as "Hard Deleting" an item. There are several ways that this may happen. If you use shift + Delete when deleting an item, or if you move an item from a folder to either a personal folder file or to another mailbox. If this happens, then you can not recover them using the above method, because the "recover delete items" option is not available.

Well, that isn't so great.

Don't fear though, you can use a simple registry change to make the option available everywhere. Just follow the below instructions, but be careful, editing your registry can have some really bad results if you do it wrong.

Close Outlook (and all of the outlook windows).
regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftExchangeClientOptions
Right click on the right side of the screen, and choose New DWORD Value.
Type in “DumpsterAlwaysOn”
Double Click the value and enter 1 into the Value Data, then click on OK.
Open outlook again.

If you want to read the steps for this all on your own, as well as Microsoft's Official "bad stuff can happen when you edit the registry" spiel, then just follow the link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article and see for yourself (see if I care).

So what do I care, I'm an Exchange Administrator?

I'm pretty sure that no one would actually ask this question. This is a must have registry change for a Exchange Admin, but more importantly though, is that you set up your Exchange Server to maintain deleted items for some reasonable period of time. This way when your CEO syncs their new handheld, and it hard deletes all of their calendar, contacts and task information, you can swoop in and fix it in a few minutes. Of course the alternative is to load up some backup tapes (you have those right?), and restore the data, and hope that the CEO didn't make a whole slew of changes since your last backup. This is also handy when someone accidentally deletes all of the items from a public folder, and you don't find out until a month later after the fact. Of course, we need that information now.

Here is an excellent article about How to Implement System Policies in Exchange 2003 , and it also covers the Deleted Items retention policy.

Writely Post

2006-09-29T08:39:00.000-06:00

Well, I am checking out Writely, and let me tell you, it is really cool! First off, it looks very similar to a Word like interface, but all inside of a browser of course. I also noticed the really neat tabs across the top, Collaborate, Publish, Blog, and Revisions, but you have to check out this file menu! Not only can you save it in 5 different formats, but I can even get an RSS Feed!

I wanted to check out the blog posting features, so I thought I would just put a picture in here, and try to post it. Blogger has a nice add on for Microsoft Word that I am a big fan of, but it doesn't support the posting of pictures. So lets see....

Holy Cow! That is just the coolest. Not only does it support it, but it allows you to set the column size of the preview so you can see exactly how it will look. Pretty sharp.

So anyway, go check out Writely. Now if I could just figure out how this whole tag thing works...

Update: For some strange reason, after it was posted, the title did not show up, so I had to edit it again in blogger in order to have a title, although the URL contained the title correctly. Hmmm...

Free Word Processor?!?!

2006-09-28T08:48:00.000-06:00

I just saw a blurb about Writely on GeekBrief.TV, and I had to check it out for myself.

Maybe there are a few reasons why this isn’t huge news, I mean after all, doesn’t Open Office have not only a free word processor, but also a whole office suite for Free? Well, yes.

Doesn’t Open Office let you access your documents securely over the internet from any computer? Well Ye… er… No.

Zap! That's the ticket! I guess Google has gobbled this application up, when they gobbled up a company called “Upstartle” (what a cool name). Here is nice little blurb about from Jen Mazzon, although this post is pretty old, March was so months ago. The post says that Writely has a wait list, but right now if you have a Google account, it will let you sign up for it.

I guess that not only is Writely a free, but it is also a collaborative product. Is that cool or what?

I so have to try it out. I’ll post more as I move along.

2007-01-26 Update: Well, quite awhile ago, writely was officially pulled into the Google Family, and is now called Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It isn't a bad product, especially since they integrated spreadsheets in there too. It is missing some features that you may have come to expect from a word processor, but still, it is free, and widely accessible.

I haven't checked on it in a little while, but when Blogger Beta became the official blogger, I wasn't able to get it to work, and then I was, and then I wasn't. I have since started searching for other blogging tools. Want to see if it works for you, try "When getting new features means old features don't work anymore". There is a good link to an article with instructions that worked (sometimes) for me.

The Tech TV Crew

2006-09-27T12:50:00.000-06:00

I used to love to watch TechTV, and I was sooo broken hearted when it was pulled. Well, technically it wasn't pulled. G4TV bought it, and then shut it down. I'm not sure why, G4 Sucked.

Anyway, I stumbled across the TWIT site because I was looking to see what happened to the podcast, and boy am I excited to hear that the crew from TechTV is still making a living. I sure do like those guys. It sounds like Leo Laporte is the one who got things going, what a guy. Patrick Norton is also on the show, and some new voices.

I also saw that Megan Morrone was one of the hosts on Inside the Net. I checked out her web site and it was just really cool. When I moved I couldn't get TechTV, and just before I had to stop watching it, Megan was pretty far along in her pregnancy, and now to see that she has at least one very cute daughter. Here are some of their BIOS listed in the Twit site. I am just really glad to see all of the familiar faces, or hear their voices as the case may be.

Update 2006-01-09 - The TWIT Netcast made Time Magazine's Top 10 podcasts!

The 7 Deadly sins of Email

2006-09-21T18:22:00.000-06:00

I was listening to the MCPMAG’s MCP Radio podcast a little while ago, and Michael Domingo mentioned a list called the “7 deadly sins of email”. Many of the sins I have seen other people commit, so I decided I would go out on the vast wealth of information we call “the internet”, and start looking at web pages at random, until I found this web page.

Several days later, I decided to just use google. My only other idea was to send out a chain email to all my friends, stating that if they knew of this list, and would send it to me, then they would win dinner with Salma Hayek or Matthew McConaughey (the winner’s choice of course), and that if they forwarded the email on to 10 friends, than Microsoft and AOL would send them 1 hot dog with onions, and a half eaten Twinkie.

Anyway, I found Lifehacker’s 7 Deadly Sins of email, which is pretty practical, and I also found one on an IT Management web site that seems to be aimed at avoiding legal problems when composing email. Although both of these lists were full or some really good suggestions, neither of these are what I was looking for.

Then the BBC had this list which was also pretty practical. All of a sudden, I found the list I was looking for on GeekLikeMe.net. I have to bookmark this one, because I see every one of these sins frequently.

So please, go ahead and read the 7 Deadly Sins of Email.

09/22/2006 - Update
I just ran across "The E-mail To-Don't List" in Men's Health. It is another one of those good advice lists.

How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP

2006-09-09T13:54:00.000-06:00

Usually when I have to use this trick, it is because I was synchronizing a laptop, and I get the following error message:

“Unable to merge offline changes on “ %share_name% “the parameter is incorrect”.

Quick little warning
The fix is pretty straight forward, but don't do it if you think you have changes that haven't been synchronized to the network. If you think you may have some, then scroll down to the section of this post which reads "Finding out what files need to be synchronized". If you ignore this warning, don't blame me when someone bounces the laptop off your head because you just lost days worth of work.

The Fix (if you don't have changes that need to be synced)
After performing the following steps, the offline files cache will be cleared, and anything which was made available offline will need to be made available once again.

Now, if you are sure that you don't have any changes, just open any Windows Explorer window (my computer will work too), and click on:
Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files.

Now hold down Control and Shift, then click on "Delete Files". You will get a message letting you know that all unsynchronized changes will be lost (hence my warning above), and that afterwards, no network files or folders will be available offline. It will ask you if you wish to re-initialize the cache. Pressing OK twice will agree to this, and agree to a restart.

Bookmark this because ...
I would like to say that this fixes it forever, but I won’t say that, because it doesn’t. To be honest, I am always looking for this article, because about once every two months or so, I have the same problem and have to figure out how to do it again.

I am willing to bet that a format / reload would fix it, but the machine is some weird tablet from a small company, and I don’t feel like messing with it. The last time I called the company, they had a total of 1 support person, and he was on vacation.

How this fix can divert yet another synchronization disaster
Sometimes I have used this solution to straighten out another problem I have seen, on the same computer strangely enough, when I connect to the network, there will be thousands of files that the system thinks are modified and it wants to sync up. Unless that user is really productive, then that would probably be a bad idea (as you can imagine).

If you are having either of these problems
You may want to ask the user if they have modified anything since they were last on the network. When you reset the cache any modifications will be lost. You can also look in the Offline Files Folder and sort by date modified or Synchronization status.

To view your offline files, in a easy to sort by modified date and synchronization status, just open any Windows Explorer window (my computer will work too), and click on:
Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files, then click on the "View Files" button.

Finding out what files need to be synchronized
If you are having problems with seeing the modified / cached files, just disconnect the system from the network, then you should be able to view the files in their original location or in the Offline files Folder, copy the modified files anywhere on the local disk, then after clearing the offline files cache, you can bring the system back online and put the modified files back where they should be.

References:
How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database - Microsoft TechNet Article

THRIVE! | Why Survive When You Can THRIVE!

2006-09-08T11:48:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not, I happen to read a good deal of material about personal productivity. Thrive! has a newsletter that they put out every Friday, and not only is it valuable and insightful, but it is also very entertaining. Matthew Poepsel has a style of writing that I find very enjoyable.

Don't believe me, try reading the current newsletter. I really liked the following line:

"Many of us are very caught up in what our boss thinks, what our mom thinks,
what our neighbor thinks, and what the
guy-in-line-next-to-you-at-the-supermarket-who-you'll-probably-never-see-again-but-who-you-still-don't-want-to-see-you-buying-Vogue
thinks."

Of course, as with anything, some issues are funnier than others, but I can't say that I have read a single newsletter that didn't offer something worthwhile. (If only I could say the same thing for my blog)

Do yourself a favor, sign up for the newsletter, you can find the signup box on the top right side of the main page.

ITtoolbox Blogs

2006-09-08T09:36:00.000-06:00

ITtoolbox Blogs
Ok, this is kind of funny. I took a look at my own blog, and in the adsense link at the top, there was a linkt o IT Toolbox blogs. It looked interesting, so I followed it.

I just recently gutted my bloglines subscriptions so that I could start adding ones that I read, and it has been kind of hard to find some good IT related blogs. I don't have a whole lot of time to scour the internet looking for blogs.

If I find any really useful or interesting blogs on this site, I will let you know. I will warn you though, don't think that if I haven't posted anything about ITtoolbox Blogs by next week that I don't think there is anything interesting, it may just be that I haven't had a chance to read anything.

Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression

2006-08-03T08:11:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you just can’t win. I went through writing this super duper module in Visual Basic, which does all sorts of fancy stuff. I made sure that it can handle any error, and keep right on going. I am worried that if Microsoft sees this module, they will try to buy me, and copyright my brain. Ok, it isn’t quite that good, but you get my point.

Now when I open any of my queries, I receive the error:
“Compile error . in query expression ‘val(nz([proj_name],0))’”

It seems that the error is with any of the built in functions. If I remove the val statement, I receive it for the nz statement.

Of course, being a modern information worker, I used half of Google’s bandwidth to search for an answer, and I found some really great ones, just none that helped me. Generally, this type of error deals with a missing reference in the visual basic editor. Allen Browne has a terrific page about Solving Problems with Library References (thanks for that page Allen).

He also points to another incredible resource, Doug Steele’s Access Reference Problems

In my case, none of these steps worked for me. I did manage to narrow my problem down to one single statement. It seems that when I use the call statement to run a sub procedure, I get that error. The really neat thing is that I don’t even have to touch the module, all I have to do is have that call statement in there, and magically, none of my queries work.

I even tried converting the sub into a function, and I still get the errors if I have any code in my module that invokes the function.
I have made a post to the very helpful people that read the Microsoft Newsgroup Server. Unfortunately, I posted to Microsoft.public.access.modulescoding, and it doesn’t look like Google carries it.

Update: My post on the newsgroup was answered by Allen Browne. What a helpful guy. He had me choose compile in my vb module, and fix all of the errors, after that, it worked like a charm.

Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible

2006-04-04T11:43:00.000-06:00

A friend sent me a link to an article where Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible, and it is a really good read. It looks like the meat of the article comes from Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft. He was giving a presentation at an Infosec conference.

Page 2 has a terrific quote on it, "Phishing is a major problem because there really is no patch for human stupidity." They also say that Microsoft is getting 2000 attacks an hour. That was pretty amazing too.

The US Plans to build a Moonbase?

2006-03-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

I saw this little blurb about how the US Plans to build a Moonbase, and it struck me a couple of ways. First off, let me admit that I don’t get a whole lot of news; I just don’t have the time. So maybe I missed it, but shouldn’t this have been a bigger story? One of the obstacles listed in the 5th paragraph is how to reacquire our “culture of exploration”. How little press this topic received helps to illustrate how big of a problem that is.

I know that when I was a kid, we actually watched shuttle lift offs in class. It was something that was supposed to help kids get motivated, and make them want to study math and science. These days, I don’t think that I can tell you when the last shuttle lift-off was. I don’t know if it hits the news unless there is some disaster.

Microsoft Has Stopped Competing with Linux?

2006-03-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

I read a interesting article on LXer stating that Microsoft Has Stopped Competing with Linux. I wasn't really sure about it to start with, but it made a whole lot of sense.

It does seem that on the Desktop front, Linux is really just trying to catch up with windows, rather than innovate. Linux still has a number of strengths, but it isn't on the desktop.

One other thing that the article points out is that Microsoft is changing their push, and moving more into markets like Enterprise Solutions for collaboration and resource management. This is something that I have noticed with a release of a whole slew of new products, like BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, and Small Business Accounting, just to name a few.

Free ScreenCapture Utility

2006-03-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

If you write instructions and/or documentation, then I guarantee you will like this Great little Screen Capture Utility, especially if you are on a budget.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't stay memory resident, and when you hit the capture hot key (Ctrl + Shift + A by default), you get this handy little zoom window, so that you can get a nice clean capture that you will not have to crop later. Then you just copy it, and paste it into your documentation program and you are good to go.

Of course, the price is right, it is free! Go ahead, give it a download.

Remove a Service with the Command Prompt

2006-01-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post on my new blog.

The Specialist vs. the Generalist

2006-01-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about some of the advantages of getting to specialize in one aspect of technology. Specifically, being the "Exchange Admin" for a company, or the IIS guy, or anything along those lines, being able to learn a product or technology inside and out. You see, I am a Network Manager / Admin for a small company, about 60 employees. I have worked here since it was less than 20 employees, and basically whenever there is a problem, I am the one who gets called.

Don't get me wrong, there are some really neat things about working for a company of this size. Primarily, I get to do a little of everything, I run Server 2003, SQL, IIS, DNS, WINS, AD, SharePoint, and basically fix anything in the building that runs on electricity. Yesterday I was writing scripts to pull values from our "insert company name here" accounting system, and dump them into excel, today I was installing a demo copy of SharePoint portal server, and tomorrow I will be installing a couple of Windows machines, and loading Oracle on them.

I started thinking about specialization because the last few days have been a little rough. I basically was given more work than I can possibly do, and the method of delivery was a series of meeting which ate up half my already overbooked day. Of course, everything needs to be done ASAP, and I already have a “to do” list a mile long.

To me, this is the biggest disadvantage of working for a small company. There really isn’t anyone else to do all of the jobs. I was finally able to get the company to hire someone that I can dump most of the smaller stuff, like desktop support, etc. He is overloaded with work too, so it is a case of the amount of work expanding to consume all available manpower.

Generally I don’t sweat this too much, I mean, I am only human. I make sure that I spend plenty of time with my family, even if I have to get back on my machine after the kids go to bed. Thank goodness for remote desktop, and the power of scripting. I don’t have any idea how I would keep up, or at least as close to “up” as I am, without them.

Really, I just wanted a chance to vent a little bit, so if you are still with me, and can sympathize with my pain, post a comment and let me know. On the flip side of that, if you get to specialize, and want to list off all of the downfalls there, let me know.

One of my new favorite internet authors has this post about being a generalist. It is a good read, and may I suggest checking his blog daily, as well as his terrific project, DIY Planner.

Working with Sharepoint Offline - Review of Revelation and Colligo for Sharepoint

2006-01-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Well, my company has been using SharePoint for a little while now, and of course the question has come up, “How can I get access to files while I am offline?” Like a good network guy, I tried to use the standard stuff, trying to make the folders available offline, but it didn’t support that.

Also, like any good Network guy would do, I googled it, and ran across Colligo for SharePoint, and it looked pretty sharp. So I followed this link, and downloaded their demo, which according to their sales people, was really stable. After a nice little 3MB or so download, I was ready to roll.

The install was quick, and pretty painless. Unfortunately, the beta doesn’t support Events, or threaded discussions, although they do plan on implementing it in the future. There are a few other items it doesn’t support, such as Surveys and Picture libraries, but I was not too concerned about that.

When you set the program up, you map “Workspaces” to your various SharePoint sites. It is a little bit of a pain, because you have to enter the URL in manually, thank goodness for cut and paste, and the program doesn’t support searching for sub sites to synchronize. Colligo plans on implementing additional web part support, as well as site searches, into the product in the future.

Besides those two limitations, I don’t really have any complaints about the product. I had no issues with crashes, and the interface is easy to use. I talked with sales, and when it retails in mid February, it will sell for $149. Although if you contact sales, they may sell it to you now for half price, if you are willing to say a couple of lines about the product that they can use in marketing materials later on.

Because of the lack of threaded discussion support, I figured I would search on.

While reading an article by Chris Johnson, I noticed he had a trick using Microsoft’s Sync Toy, which seemed like it would work for a Techie like me, but I didn’t think the employees who needed offline access would be able to use it effectively. Although the price (free) was right for me, Chris also mentioned Digi-link Revelation, so I figured I should check it out.

The web page for Revelation had a flash-type demo, but it looked a little cumbersome to me. The list price was only $30, so I emailed the company asking for a real demo, and they quickly sent me a temp registration key. After a heftier 40MB or so download, I had a copy of it in my hot little hands.

First off, I noticed the install kicked off the install for the Microsoft Desktop SQL Server (MSDE), which didn’t make me to happy, everyone remembers Slammer, right? After install, I entered the SharePoint server, and was happy to note that it found all of my sub sites, and gave me an option to add them in my sync list.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the application to work on a Virtual PC. It installed correctly, but once you start the sync, it doesn’t do anything but use up memory and CPU time.

After installing it on my desktop, it worked fine. That is when I realized that the only thing you can sync is document libraries, which explains the reason for the cheaper price tag. The interface for it looks like SharePoint, and has a nifty view option, so that you can see what is on the server vs. what is on your machine. The method used to sync it was a little confusing. There is a sync server option, which really sets the options that the program will use when you sync that server. Then there is a big honking “sync now” button in the top corner which actually starts the synchronization.

I had pretty much decided at that I was going to get the Colligo for SharePoint, and had uninstalled Digi-link Revelation. That is when the fun began. The install complained that another application had the database open, which strangely enough was the database server that Revelation had installed (imagine that). I went in a stopped the service, and was able to continue with uninstalling Revelation. Once that was done, I noticed that the SQL icon was still in the systray, and when I looked in the add/remove programs, realized that it was a separate item which had to be uninstalled.

While typing this mini-review up, I realized that Revelation may be enough for some of my users, and I think I will play with it a little bit more before I decide against it. After all, every dollar I save by purchasing Revelation

**** Update 8/30/2006
- I haven't had the time to do another full review of Colligo for Sharepoint, but I have in fact installed the new release of Colligo for sharepoint, and they have fixed everything that I had an issue with it. What is even better, is that if you only want to read Sharepoint content, you can get Colligo Reader for Sharepoint for free! It is a great product.

Also, I think that I may have to say that Barry Jinks, the President and CEO (or someone masquerading as him), is the first confirmed reader of my blog! Congratulations Barry!

Strange SharePoint Team Services 2 Restore Issue

2006-01-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Like a good administrator, I was testing my SharePoint site backups, and was having a devil of a time getting it to work. Before I go into too much detail, if you are not familiar with backing up and restoring SharePoint using the stsadm command line tool, then you probably don’t want to read any farther.

If you are reading this, than you probably already know how to use it, or have looked at this Command Line Operations guide to stsadm.

To continue, I was testing the restore of my backup, and kept running into an error "Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040E2F”. I tried the usual, creating a site, and then deleting it, and verifying the versions, all to no avail. Of course I have gobs of free time, watch out for the puddle of sarcasm over there, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.

I had tested the backup and restore very thoroughly when I set up my neat little script, which backs up the entire SharePoint site every night, with the convenient file name of year-month-day-sharepointbackup.dat. As it turns out, what I was doing was renaming the backup file to sprestore.dat so that I didn’t have to do all that typing when I tried the restore. Once I stopped renaming the backup file, it worked like a charm.

Oh well, we live and we learn.

PS: If you have any interest in the script, reply to this post, and I’ll be sure to clean it up a little, and post it.

You may also like:
- Tools to work with SharePoint Offline – Review of Revelation and Colligo for SharePoint
- Script to Back up SharePoint Team Services 2

Creating A Certificate For Outlook Web Access 2003 Using SelfSSL

2005-12-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

If you haven't run across msexchange.org yet, you really should give it a look. A huge amount of good articles, as well as discussion board.

I was browsing around on the site, and I ran across this neat article about how to Create a Certificate for Outlook Web Access 2003 Using SelfSSL. I know I am not really keen on buying a certificate for my company from VeriSign, and this seemed like a cost effective way to get some good security for employees using Outlook web access.

Great Quote - Happy Holidays

2005-12-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

I know the subject is a little misleading, but I ran across this quote on Google one day, thought it was terrific:

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

- Ellen Goodman

It doesn't have anything to do with the holidays, but I figured that since I haven't put anything else up on the blog, I might as well put something. I hope all of you are ready for the holidays, I know my brood is. Luckily we have all of the shopping done, well at least all of the shopping for the kids. I still have to get my wife something.

If I don't post anything else, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Need some reading material?

2005-11-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

If you really want to do some reading, then let me suggest FindArticles.com. They index so many articles, magazines, and web sites, it isn't even funny.

I know by now, we can all find whatever we want with Google, but if you just want to browse, this is the place.

Windows Desktop Search - Enabled for Enterprise

2005-11-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Windows Desktop Search - Enabled for Enterprise ?? Hmm.... I just heard about it, so I figure I better check it out.

More Later...

Kitty Litter Cake

2005-10-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

Ewww... I was reading a post with a bunch of recipes and ran across "Kitty Litter Cake". It sure looks interesting. If you read the ingredients, it sure looks tasty too.

http://www.chamomiletimes.com/recipes/littercake.htm

I'm still here

2005-10-10T08:11:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I am still out here doing that
one thing. I saw a similar quote to the one below, but thought mine was
funnier.

Power Corrupts. Absolute power should have a UPS on it.
- Mike Scott

The Joy of Scripting

2005-09-01T08:50:00.000-06:00

Way back in the early 90’s, I found myself in the Marine Corps Computer Science School where I was being trained to be a computer operator. Evidently the Marine Corps thought I would be good at this computer thing. Their definition of a computer operator was the guy who maintained the print queues, watched and fixed production jobs, and mounted tapes on a mainframe.

There was this big debate at the time about who was better, operators or programmers. The programmers were the ones who wrote the code which did all the nice things, and the operators were the one who made sure that those jobs ran correctly, and fixed everything when they didn’t work.

When I thought about programming, I just didn’t think that it was for me. As I matured, I took some programming courses in college, and it was interesting, but it still didn’t seem like something that I wanted to do for a living.

About a year ago, I started dabbling with some scripting. This was really lucky timing for me, since Microsoft really started putting some man power into educating the public about their scripting technologies. I found the “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column, and I realized that with what I had already learned with Visual Basic, and looking at my text book (whew, I sure am glad that I didn’t sell that one), I could really do some cool stuff.

The thing that really makes me enjoy scripting is that the programs aren’t being used by everyone in the world, so I don’t have to validate everything that is entered. If I use a command line argument, I don’t need to make sure that it is only so many characters, or that it is a numeric value. I write the scripts for myself, or for a very limited audience, and if I don’t know what to expect from it, then I guess I shouldn’t be using it. Don’t think that I don’t check and double check the results of my scripts, because I do need them to be accurate.

The beauty of a script is that if you do something over and over, a script can probably do it for you, faster, sometimes better, and all you have to do is double click on it, or better yet, schedule it to run periodically. If it takes you four hours to write a script to do a task which usually takes you 10 minutes to do manually, then it will pay for itself after being used 24 times. I wrote a script called “tap” that will ping the computer I specify 1 time. It took me probably 10 minutes to write it, but now instead of typing “ping computer –n 1” I just type “tap computer”. I know that might seem a little silly, unless you ping computers 20 times a day, then you may think it is pretty useful. Heck, I have a batch file called “x” that just types “exit”, it saves me 3 keystrokes, but I use a command prompt about 100 times a day.

I write all of my scripts for Windows based computers, and you can write scripts in all sorts of languages, but I use Visual Basic Script. Visual Basic is not the same as Visual Basic Script, but it is close.

Now the bad part about being a novice is that sometimes, I really have to bang my head on stuff before I figure it out. The other side of that is every time that I really bang my head on stuff, I learn something, and I get better.

As far as actually writing the scripts, I know that the hard core scripting guys will say that all you need is a text editor like notepad, and yes, that is all you need. I have heard the same thing over and over about writing HTML. I still see a great benefit in using a nice editor. I know that there are some really nice editors out there with great features, but I don’t much like spending money on stuff if I don’t have to. The editor I use is Crimson Editor, it’s free, and I like it. If you happen to know of a better one that is free, post a comment.

Now I don’t want you to think that I am some scripting Guru, I don’t do this to make a living, I do this to make my job easier, and I thought it might be useful to make this available to others. Also, when you are looking at my scripts, I would not use them as a reference on how to write code. Let me repeat this one more time, I am not a programmer.

The first place that I would like to point you to is the Microsoft Script Center. This is one place where you will find some really good scripting resources. I love to take scripts out of the Script Center Repository, and modify them just a little tiny bit, or better yet, use them as a sub routine in another script. Another favorite thing to do is to get a wrapper template, for an example, a script that grabs all of the computers in my domain, then throw in another script, that checks them all for a particular version of office. So in just a few minutes, I can check all of the computers on my network for office.

Another terrific thing about scripting is that I will create a script for one purpose, and then the next script I write I figure out that I can use the first script again. The next thing you know, I am using that script as a sub routine in a whole slew of other scripts.

OK, I already gave you a few links, so let me pile on some more. The “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column is a great place to find solutions for problems that you didn’t even think about solving with a script yet. The Microsoft Developer Network has a bunch of resources, especially if you want to start modifying scripts or even creating your own. The Scripting section of MSDN has a huge amount of Resources, including the VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide, a reference for Windows Scripting Host (WSH), The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference, and of course the Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference.

That should be enough to get you started. Good luck.

Find Scripts:

- “Hey, Scripting Guy!” – Terrific Column at Microsoft Technet.

- Script Center Repository – Lots of great Scripts from Microsoft.

- ScriptingAnswers.com – Lots of good scripts.

- W32Scripting – Many more good Scripts.

Scripting Resources

- Scripting Section of MSDN

- Microsoft Script Center - Lots of Resources, and tons of tutorials and columns.

- VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide

- Windows Scripting Host (WSH) Reference

- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference

- Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference

The Great Jeep Mishap

2005-08-18T21:40:00.000-06:00

I really haven't posted much of anything since I came back from vacation, but I finally got around to doing a post about my big Jeep mishap.

Way back in June, if you can remember that far back, I took some vacation. I never really talked about it here, so don't be too surprised that you are just now hearing about it.

Anyway, in a earlier post about jeep concept vehicles, I mentioned that I love Jeeps. Granted, the things that I do with my Jeeps are severely limited by the constraints of my budget. So on one rare occasion, I was up in divide camping, with some friends, and decided to do some four wheeling. This is when my Jeep mishap began.

Just to give you a little background info, I have a 1984 Jeep CJ-7. She is pretty much stock, and it is about all I can do to keep her running. Aside from things breaking, I am trying to get the vacuum lines and sensors straightened out. After a good deal of work, I had her running pretty good. I had rebuilt the carburetor, replaced the dead computer, among a whole laundry list of other repairs.

So to continue my sordid tale, we were in Divide (Colorado) four-wheeling, and we were plowing through some pretty deep water and mud, at least for stock vehicles. After driving around and having fun, we decided to get out and take a break. I was standing there talking to my friend, when I noticed that there was oil pouring out off the bottom of my Jeep.

Just in case you didn't get that:
THERE WAS OIL POURING OUT THE BOTTOM OF MY JEEP!!

Now, being fairly level headed, after spouting a string of curses I opened the hood to find that a pipe that comes off my catalytic converter, and runs next to the firewall, had come loose, and banged a hole in my oil filter. Oil had then proceeded to spray out, coating the engine compartment. Later on, after getting a new oil filter, and some more oil, I realized that I had blown a little over 5 quarts of oil all the place. The Jeep holds 6 quarts. I don't know when the oil indicator light comes on, but at this point I assume it must be broken.

Note: If anyone from Green Peace or any other conservation group is reading this, I didn't mean to get oil all over the forest floor. I'm not a bad guy, heck, I even recycle.

At this point, I don't know quite how low the oil is, I just know that I want to get back to camp to assess the damage. After all, it was only a little hole, right? So I try to get going, but now my CJ won't start, not even a good sputter. Luckily, I have a tow strap, my good friend Scott is there to help, and he too has a Jeep.

We successfully get to Camp, and I find out that my distributor isn't nearly as water tight as I thought it was. After a little time to dry out, some starter fluid, 5 1/2 quarts of oil, and a filter, my CJ is running.

Just to use a technique called foreshadowing, as well as a healthy dose of irony, while I was taking the air cleaner off to use the before mentioned starter fluid, I decided to put the wing nut back on the post of the carburetor, so I wouldn't lose it.

I had the good sense to cover the opening to the carburetor with my hand, so just in case I dropped the wing nut, it wouldn't go into the carburetor.

As luck would have it, I did drop the wing nut, but it couldn't have gone into the carburetor.

Right?

Anyway, I didn't find it in the dirt under the Jeep, so I marked it up as lost.

On the way home, everything is going great! My CJ is running, the sun is shining, there is a loud clanking coming from the engine, and birds are singing.

???? A loud clanking is coming from the engine ????

I figure that I must have thrown a rod, since I had dumped 5 and 1/2 quarts of oil out of my 6 quart oil pan. Let us just say that at this point I am not a happy camper. After a very interesting time at a gas station, waiting on the tow truck, which is another story all together, I started the process of discovering what damage had been done.

Now the rest of the story takes place over my week of vacation. Everything up until this point had happened during the weekend. I start disassembling the engine, and I get my first glimmer of hope when I pull the spark plugs. If you look at the picture below, you will notice something different about the spark plug on the right. First off, it is missing the center piece, and it is all bent to hell.

As I said, this was my first glimmer of hope, since I had thought about the possibility that the wingnut from my carburetor had probably fallen in the carburetor. If you are curious, the two pieces of metal is what was left of the wingnut. It had worked its way back to cylinder 6, and the piston stamped it flat.

Here are a few more pictures:

This is the engine of my Jeep without the head.

Below is the intake/exhaust manifold (top), and the bottom of the head (bottom of the picture).

Now, I would like to say that everything is perfect now that I re-assembled my Jeep, but the truth is that it still does not run very well. Below is a picture the ridiculous number of vacuum hoses that I had to sort through.

I did my best to try and document the process of taking the hoses off, but when I was putting everything back on, it didn't seem to make much sense. I looked in the Chilton's book, but my diagrams make more sense than the diagrams there did. I am still trying to sort the whole mess out.

I just finished my school semester, and am taking a semester off to catch up on this, and some other things around the house that I have had to put off. Hopefully I will have it all straightened out soon.

Guides for Midsize Businesses

2005-07-18T13:36:00.000-06:00

Greetings All !

Well, I am back from Vacation, and am still in the process of wading through my inbox. Looking at the most recent TechNet Flash, they have a link to the Technet Midsize Business IT Center, It looks pretty neat, with guides for various guides and solutions based on how many computers you have.

More Vacation

2005-07-01T14:59:00.000-06:00

Well, I am going to be on vacation for a couple of weeks again. So I think the already sparse postings will become even sparser. We are going to be visiting a bunch of stuff here in Colorado, so it should be a great deal of fun, and I sure can use the time off.

I'll try to post some things here and there.

Radio-Locator

2005-06-29T10:59:00.000-06:00

What a great site! A friend forwarded this site that lets you find radio station information by city or state, not to mention if the radio station is on the internet or not.

You can even search by country or station format or country.

Thanks Brent!

WSUS Update

2005-06-24T08:46:00.000-06:00

I have had WSUS installed and running since Monday. On Tuesday, I had finished playing around with my test group, and I decided to go ahead and use it on the whole company. Let me tell you, I really like it.

Reporting Capabilities:

WSUS has some really nice reporting capabilities. You can pull reports on all of the computers that need updates, and then drill down to see what updates. One useful option is to pull the reports on all computers that have updates with a failed installation. This report even lists the error code for each of the failed updates.

The error I have run into is 0x80070643, and KB Article 836937 lists some methods to fix it.

FIX: Search results may be unusable when you search a network location in Windows 2000

2005-06-23T08:57:00.000-06:00

I was just reading my latest Technet Flash, like the good Microsoft Flunky that I am, and I ran across this hotfix "FIX: Search results may be unusable when you search a network location in Windows 2000".

I know that I have run across this behavior a few times. Glad to know that there is finally a fix for it.

WSUS is here!!

2005-06-20T11:18:00.000-06:00

WSUS is here!!

I for one, have long been waiting the release of the new update services from Microsoft. I had played around with SUS, and never had much luck with it. So now that it is out, I have downloaded it, and will try to start using it in my network.

For a little back story, SUS is Software Update Services, Microsoft was planning on giving it the ability to update not only windows, but also office and other MS apps. For some reason they didn't want to continue using the name SUS, so they were going to rename it Windows Update Services, I guess they didn't check out what the acronym sounded like. I heard many complaints along the line of "I don't want to be called the WUS administrator". Anyway, it looks like they went with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which is better, but I think it is a little misleading. Oh well, as long as it works.

The install went pretty smoothly, with the dialogs screens explaining what is going on. WSUS uses MSSQL for its database, it offers to install the SQL desktop engine, but I already had it running on that machine, so it created a database for itself, all on its own.

It looks like the default is to download all languages for the selected updates. I changed this to only download the English updates, to conserve on disk space. By default, Critical updates and security updates are approved automatically. This was ok for me, so I will leave it as is for now. There were several types of downloads which are not synchronized, and I included pretty much all of them, such as feature packs and security rollup packages. I did not however, include drivers. I bet that would eat up some serious disk space.

After the install, I set up the group policy for a few machines. You can test it out by running wuauclt.exe /detectnow from a command prompt, and then the computers should show up on the WSUS machine. It allows you to create groups of computers for administration.So far it all looks pretty neat. It looks pretty easy to work with, I will be playing around with it over the next few days, and I'll make sure to post anything interesting that I find.

Photoshop Competition

2005-06-17T13:30:00.000-06:00

Have you heard about Microsoft's Acrylic? Evidently it is going to be some competition for Adobe. It would sure be nice if they included it free, either with Windows or with Office. They both are lacking a good graphics editing package.

Download the beta here.