No one warned me that context sensitive menus require bit sizes to match. This means that shell extensions (like GPGee) which only supply a 32-bit version will not install on your right-click menu on a 64-bit version of Windows. GPGee, apparently, isn't really updating their software since about 2006 or so, and thus I had to go looking for a new GUI front-end for my gpg processes.

GPGshell:

GPGshell is a graphical interface for GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard). It requires an already working installation of GnuPG v1.4.x (v1.4.9 or later), because it does not have any cryptographic code itself, and some basic knowledge about the GnuPG command-lines and functions. Included translations: CS, DE, FI, EN, ES, IT, NL, NO, PL, RU, SV, ZH Additional or updated GPGshell-related files (incl. translations) may be available here.

GPGshell suffers the same "no 64-bit version" issue, but it's not just a shell extension, there is a key manager, a system-tray bit, and a tool bar for quick encrypt/sign/decrypt in addition to the shell extensions (which don't work on my 64-bit Windows). It's not perfect, but it should save me a ton of typing. Interestingly it says it requires 1.4.9 or later, but it seems to work with my v1.2.3. Why don't I upgrade? For some crazy reason the command line switches changed dramatically in 1.4.9 and I have programs that I've written that work with the v1.2.3 command line switches, and I haven't gotten around to re-writing my stuff so until I do I'll have to put up with a warning each time I run GPGshell. Still easier than dropping to a command line...

Index related DMVs and DMFs - sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats:

Examining statistics of indexes is useful for optimizing the performance of queries. Statistics help us determine the usage and worth of indexes. There are many different methods to determine their usability; , which gives core statistics of indexes. The first article in the index-related DMVs and DMFs series discussed the output of sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats, while this, the second of the series, will explore some output columns of the sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats DMV.

And some indexes are taking up a ton of space, only to have no queries actually care about the information, so useless...

Found this Windows only solution!

Input Director:

Input Director is a Windows application that lets you control multiple Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer. It is designed for folks who have two (or more) computers set up at home and find themselves regularly sliding from one system to the other (and wearing out the carpet in the process!). With Input Director, you can share a single keyboard/mouse across a set of systems. You switch which system receives the input either by hotkey or by moving the cursor so that it transitions from one screen to the other (in a very similar fashion to a multi-monitor setup). The idea being that you can position the monitors from two or more systems in a row and use a shared keyboard/mouse to control all of them.

A comment by poster "Zaphod Beeblebrox III" helped me find it:

Microsoft Showcase: Windows Media Center: Netflix and The White Gloves:

...you have to go to Tasks -> Settings -> General -> Automatic Download Options in Media Center and then click the button to run the update manually. Then, a new option for Netflix shows up under the Movies section and the prompts guide you through an easy Netflix installation.

However this wasn't obvious, I even went into the "Automatic Download Options" page, but it appeared to just be for album art and such, it wasn't until this comment sent me back that I saw the manual update button, which then prompted me to "setup Internet", which seems odd since I can't figure out what the setting up process did...

I had been using Microsoft's Live OneCare. It seemed to have less issues than McAfee or Norton when I first got it, and then I discovered that I only needed 1 subscription for the entire house, I liked that. However no one else seemed to like it, so Microsoft is killing it. Enter Microsoft's new plan:

Virus, Spyware & Malware Protection | Microsoft Security Essentials:

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Now I'm not sure how a bad selling product being replaced by a free product makes a company more money, but I need to find something to replace the sunsetted Live OneCare so this is as good a place as any to start...

Initially when I named my PC I picked the generic "StudioXPS" which is the model of dell, or so I thought I did. Actually I named it "SudioXPS" as if I am a huge Phil Collins fan... I know it's a pain to change names, and the places that machine name gets carved in stone, but the OCD kicked in and I NEEDED to fix it. And, as expected, SQL Server wasn't so happy.

SQL Learnings: Can't Modify/Delete Maintenance Plans in SQL 2005 after Rename:

After renaming SQL Server 2005 server the maintenance plans couldn't be deleted. When trying to delete or modify a plan user gets an error. Using the SSMS there is no way to delete the plan. I thought it might a similar issue to I had encountered with SQL Server 2000 Jobs (link); so I searched to see if Maintenance plans table was storing server name and couldn't find anything.

Not so fast, my machine didn't even seem to like that, so let's manually delete all jobs first:

Sql Server 2005 Delete Maintenance Plan Error « Gediminas (Gedas) Gudenas:

Below is the manual SQL fix to address this error: Drop failed for Job ‘XXXXXXXXXXXXX’. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo) The DELETE statement conflicted with the REFERENCE constraint “FK_subplan_job_id”. The conflict occurred in database “msdb”, table “dbo.sysmaintplan_subplans”, column ‘job_id’. The statement has been terminated. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 547)

Then back to the first page, and voila! We're ready to do the Maintenance Plan Wizard from scratch. Thanks Hive Mind that we call the Interwebs! *bawk* *bawk*

Took a few times too, all your ducks really need to be in a row. One thing I missed is turning off SQL Agent, which I needed to do since I have transaction log back ups every hour, and the process of a full backup, copy, restore takes close to that...

SQL 2005 Database Mirroring Tutorial:

Forget about Windows Authentication or Domain Account.....   just use Certificates is good enough.

 

What you need is:

- 2 Servers and 1 Witness

- Create a database on Principal Server

- Backup the database 2 times: 1st time do a "FULL" backup, 2nd time do a "Transaction Log" backup

- Restore the database on Mirror Server, MUST use option "NO RECOVERY" !!! After restore, the mirror database will not take any request, that is completely normal.

- Fully Qualified Domain Name for all 3 servers.....  you can do this by: 1. Setup a domain, or 2. Change the computer name and modify the "HOSTS" file on the 3 servers (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc)

 

OK ! Now we shall start!

 

HOST A = Principal Server

HOST B = Mirror Server

HOST W = Witness Server

 

You need to copy the certificate between the servers manually.

System Volume Information - Vista Forums:

I have noticed that my System Volume Information folder is very big. I cleared the restores and it went down to 600MB because it has to leave the lastest. However, after 4 days, it has already risen to 5GB in size. My hard disk is 160GB capcacity. How large should the folder be and will it rise to a certain point and then stop? What proportion of the drive does the folder take up.

Apparently some people are concerned about every last byte, I went looking to see what the SVI folder should be restricted to, as on my machine it had taken about 150GB of space. Apparently it was set to "unbounded" and not restricted to 15% or so of my drive. I set it to 1GB to clear out the old (since I'm doing a full system backup for just the purpose of having a system restore) and then set it to about 10% of my drive (26GB). Now I'm questioning my decision to move my iTunes library to the NAS device...

How to use rdesktop (Windows remote desktop connection) - Ubuntu Forums:

rdesktop is a client program that allows you to connect from your Ubuntu computer to your Windows computer to remote control the Windows computer. In other words, while you are sitting in front of your Ubuntu computer at home, you can log into and access your Windows computer as if you are sitting in front of the Windows computer.

Wow, I have to say that Ubuntu is really ready for prime time. It works on my old Laptop without having to hunt down odd laptop drivers, it comes with productivity software installed, the package system for downloading additional software is easy to use, it can access my VPN, it can RDS (as seen above), and more! Really outside of MS SQL and MS VisualStudio I could do all of my work on an Ubuntu 9 machine.

Twitter Blog: Down Time Rescheduled:

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

I have to admit in my 17 some years in the admin business I have never had to reschedule any kind of system update due to political unrest.

Axantum Software AB | AxCrypt | Frequently Asked Questions:

Does AxCrypt run on XP/Vista/2008 x64? Yes, it does. However, the Shell Extension (the right-click menu) is a 32-bit component and requires that it run under the 32-bit shell that is available in Windows x64. You need to run the following command: DriveLetter:\Windows\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate

Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Click Start, type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

2. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, verify that the proposed action is what you requested, and then click Continue. For more information, see Additional Resources later in this document.

3. In the Group Policy Object Editor console tree, click Local Computer Policy, click Administrative Templates, click Windows Components, and then double-click BitLocker Drive Encryption.

4. Double-click the setting Control Panel Setup: Enable Advanced Startup Options. The Control Panel Setup: Enable Advanced Startup Options dialog box appears.

5. Select the Enabled option, select the Allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM check box, and then click OK.

   You have changed the policy setting so that you can use a startup key instead of a TPM.

6. Close the Group Policy Object Editor.

CF5 under Vista:

Re IIS7 not running ASAPI[sic] filters. Sure it does, its just not in the default installation. (At least on Vista, which I've been running for 3 days now, you have to go into: Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows Features on or off/ Internet Information Services/ World Wide Web Services/ Application Development Features and choose ISAPI Extensions and ISAPI features.

I really have to get out from behind this CF5 Eight Ball. We have a plan in place to migrate everything to ASP.NET, but even once the new site is done it will be years before we turn the old CF5 system off...

Configuring Server Bindings for SSL Host Headers (IIS 6.0):

In addition to installing a wildcard server certificate on SSL-enabled Web sites, you must also configure the SecureBindings metabase property on each site so it contains the host header name of the site. All SSL-enabled sites that use the same IP/port binding and are distinguished only by host header name must use the same wildcard server certificate.

I guess it's nice that even though this property isn't editable via the GUI that there is a way to set it with what is required, but it just seems like such an odd thing to have to do. Especially since I'd expect to be able to set the hostname in my WCF code and/or configuration and not have to touch IIS, perhaps this is "fixed" in IIS 7...

Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2005, 2000 and 7.0 Builds:

This unofficial build chart lists all of the known KB articles, hotfixes and other builds of MS SQL Server 2008, 2005, 2000 and 7.0 that have been released.

Deepest Sender is a client that will allow you to post to blogs from directly within Firefox. It is primarily a LiveJournal client, although it supports Blogger (GData) and WordPress (metaWeblog) too.

This is the fourth add-on I am trying. Deepest Sender has one thing on it's toolbar that I kind of thought was important, the "increase indent" and "decrease indent" buttons. ScribeFire only had a "quote" button which is essentially the "increase indent", to take something out of a "quote block" you have to edit the source. Weak. Deepest Sender also supports categories, so here's hoping that the "Post" button actually does something.

Update: Not only did the post button work, but the above portion of the post remains unchanged from what Deepest Sender posted. I think we have a winner!

As I mentioned, I previously used an IE extension to select text and "blog it". It would pull me right up into a new entry (though only if I logged in first) but it certainly helps me get entries up quickly that relate to a webpage. Now that I'm of the FireFox 3 set, I need a replacement for my old quick-blog system, and the third add-on I am trying is ScribeFire:

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

[ Getting started with ScribeFire - ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging ]

Third? Yes, third. First I tried "DashBlog", I think it was called but that appeared to not do much of anything. Then I tried "ClipMarks", got much further but it doesn't appear to like the dasBlog Publishing API.

I was behind on my dasBlog version. I had been running v1.8, now I'm up to v2.1. Not sure what they've changed, but it's been quite a while and there were known issues with the old code base. In addition I've removed my tweaks to the code and I'm running an "out of the box" version. What's this mean?

The following is gone:

• Integration with my IE right-click extension to make blogging a tiny bit easier (I use FireFox 3 now anyway)
• BBCode for comments (new code allows some HTML)
• My "Power Toys" page (no developers use IE anymore)
• My "What I'm playing" page (no one ever looked at it anyway)
• My "redirect my comment in response to other comment code", you want an answer to your comment? Subscribe to have all comments emailed to you.
• My theme. Now you can select a theme if you want, and I'm only using themes I remotely like
  

What is gone, but may come back:

• Amazon.com "link up a bunch of crap" code
• Google stats code
• MyBlogLog code

So far I like what they've done. Some new bells and whistles here and there. Bunch of stuff fixed. If there is something I've forgotten and you desperately want it, let me know.

SQL Log Rescue is an award-winning log analysis tool, allowing you to explore your logs to view information on database transactions. Additionally, SQL Log Rescue should be kept on hand in case of a potential disaster – if you have accidentally deleted, inserted or modified your database, SQL Log Rescue will help you get the data back.

[ SQL Log Rescue - Undo for SQL Server ]

And now free!

Why blog about this now? Nate says I should have blogged about it when I first discovered it, so if you didn't know of it's existance, now you do.

Zero-width positive look ahead assertion

ATOM\@=

Zero-width negative look ahead assertion

ATOM\@!

Zero-width positive look behind assertion

ATOM\@<=

Zero-width negative look behind assertion

ATOM\@<!

[ Searching in VIM ]

And will blogging about it help?

Beginning in 2007, daylight saving time (DST) will be extended in the United States. DST will start on March 11, 2007, which is three weeks earlier than usual, and it will end on November 4, 2007, which is one week later than usual. This results in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than in previous years. Unless certain updates are applied to your computer, the time zone settings for your computer's system clock may be incorrect during this four-week period. In particular, you must make sure that both your Windows operating system and your calendar programs are updated.

[ Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center ]

Can't we all just agree that Daylight Savings is stupid and be done with it? Though if we don't all install these updates, we'll likely all die!

The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. If you have a question about a tool or how to use them, please visit the Sysinternals Forum for answers and help from other users and our moderators.

[ Microsoft TechNet: Windows Sysinternals ]

Here's hoping that Microsoft doesn't:

1. Kill any of these great tools
2. Charge for any of these great tools

'cause I loves me some Sysinternals. And yes I know that you brought these to my attention, many people did, and no I don't remember who was first (though if I had to guess I'd say it was Gruska).

The two that I just had to reinstall 'cause I can't imagine my Lappy without them?

• autoruns
• process explorer

So you've been backing up your server, and it fails. You restore all of your databases, but onto a fresh install. You don't restore the system tables because you aren't using the same OS or Hardware or something, and aren't sure that's a good idea. But where are your DTS scripts? You need them, and don't have any other copies since they're a friggin' pain to develop in a development environ.

This article will try and explain the different ways you can transfer (DTS) packages between servers and other storage locations, either directly or as files. The most common requirement is to transfer between two SQL Servers, and this is the main focus here, but some methods can be adapted for any of the other storage locations....

You can also use a simple DataPump task to transfer the contents of sysdtspackages directly between servers...

[ Transferring DTS Packages ]

Come on, could it be that easy? Seems to be so far...

Thank you Internet, bawk bawk!

A bit of googling and it seems that Comcast frequently has issues with their DNS servers.

Comcast has ocassionally messed up its DNS servers - last year they had a series of systemwide DNS outages that lasted several days. (My Comcast DNS servers are 68.80.0.12 and 68.80.0.5.) Today Comcast DNS is being slow - but not out. That is good, because it means I can still get to Google and I can still use it to find other DNS servers.

[ davidbau.com: Memorable DNS IPs ]

Based on this guys comment about OpenDNS, I switched to using that. I haven't a clue what OpenDNS is, or why they do it, but I can look into that after my deadline...

Symptom: When saving a file in Visual Studio 2005, the entire IDE becomes non-responsive (ie. freezes) for about 10-15 seconds. Meanwhile, the save icon in the status bar is animated. After 15 seconds, the file is saved and the IDE is responsive again.

Solution: "With the help of a network packet analyzer I was able to find out what stalls Visual Studio. I found that whenever I saved a file, in my web project, Visual Studio did a DNS lookup on a host on my local network. This host was offline so although it managed to resolve it's IP address, there was no response from it. After a timeout period Visual Studio stops trying to connect to this host and goes on with it's business of saving the file.

I searched my registry to find the source of this host name and found it to be present in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\ProjectMRUList. This registry key is where Visual Studio stores all recent projects that have been opened. In that list a project, located on a remote computer, was found. When I removed that item from the registry, Visual Studio no longer took 20 seconds to save it's Web project files."

[ Slow VS.NET 2005 Editor is driving me nuts - Rick Strahl's Web Log ]

Not only has my IDE been freezing up like crazy when I saved, it was also doing it on a regular basis due to the "auto recover" saving every 7 minutes. This fix has brought my VisualStudio back to where I expected it to be, but just deleting the offending items from this "ProjectMRUList". In my case a project that I loaded remotely off of Nate's laptop, which now that we are working remotely, is no where near me or my home LAN.

Example:
:args *.[ch]
:argdo %s/\<my_foo\>/My_Foo/ge | update
This changes the word "my_foo" to "My_Foo" in all *.c and *.h files.  The "e"
flag is used for the ":substitute" command to avoid an error for files where
"my_foo" isn't used.  ":update" writes the file only if changes were made.

[ Vim documentation: editing ]

This one item is the timesaver that is my "killer app" for using vim above all other editors. If you combine this with searching in windows for all *.html files (or some such) and then right-click and "edit in single vim" you can set up the args to be all the files in a webroot or somesuch. Perhaps for changing links everywhere.

After years of development this feature packed editor is waiting for you. For the impatient, go directly to the download page. For the curious, read the announcement. Happy Vimming!

[ welcome home : vim online ]

Oddly it looks like vim 6.3, but tons of new goodies await:

NEW FEATURES

Vim script enhancements

Spell checking

Omni completion

MzScheme interface

Printing multi-byte text

Tab pages

Undo branches

Extended Unicode support

More highlighting

Translated manual pages

Internal grep

Scroll back in messages

Cursor past end of the line

POSIX compatibility

Debugger support

Remote file explorer

Define an operator

Mapping to an expression

Visual and Select mode mappings

Location list

Various new items

[ :help version7 ]

Though it appears that vimdoc isn't up to date on the v7 help.

VMware Server is a robust yet easy to use product for users new to server virtualization technology. VMware Server enables companies to partition a physical server into multiple virtual machines, and to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization.

[ VMware Server ]

And it's free! So you install it, you love it, you need it, but the demands on your systems require more stability, better fault tolerance, next thing you know every solution is based on their ESX server and you don't know how you lived without it. Welcome to the future.

OK, I'll admit it, I don't know much about Macs. And, it seems, I'm not a wizard at Active Directory either. Googling how to "connect" your Mac to AD (on OS 10.4) has helped a bit, but I'm not sure how much I can trust the "this is how I did it" type how tos...

So, my fine readers, who also know about Macs and such, what book will give me the answer to this and provide me a good reference to the correct ways to run Macs in a Windows LAN environment? I'm putting you to the challenge, and I'm expecting big things...

If you are using dasBlog 1.7 or 1.8 and have been using the MoveableType Blacklist to block spam referrals, then your site is having issues too. On some sites it seems to block all access, on mine it only blocked most links to my site.

The setting to turn off in site.config is false as seen in the screen shot above. If you don't have this setting, or this file then you're not affected.

[ DasBlog Alert! Referral BlackList has changed! ]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I've stopped using the MT Blacklist functionality, and hopefully someone will come up with a genius idea to replace it.

And perhaps what I should have done in the first place. I've just downloaded the new FreeTextBox and recompiled my site.

FreeTextBox 3.0 is a free ASP.NET server control written in C# for use in ASP.NET applications. You can use FreeTextBox in any product with no obligation for payment.

[ FreeTextBox Forums ]

Though the RSS Enclosures, ability to edit dates or blog a different day than it is, upload images directly, and who knows what else, are all nice things to have too.

Which is always a bit of a pain, due to my hacking of the system.

dasBlog Community Edition is an ASP.NET weblogging application. It runs on ASP.NET 1.1 and is developed in C#. dasBlog, an evolution of the BlogX weblog engine, adds lots of additional features like Trackback, Pingback, Mail notifications, full Blogger/M

[ SourceForge.net: Project Info - newtelligence dasBlog Community Edition ]

And, it appears, that I took so long a few minor upgrades were made as well. Originally I did this because my IE 7 at work isn't sensed correctly by the FreeTextBox control, and I'm not even sure this upgrade fixes it. The "Add Image" functionality returns, so I won't have to use the crappy image library screen, which is probably worth the price of admission. RSS enclosures have been added as well, so I guess I can do a podcast, but I really don't get them, so I won't...

We've begun to analyze non-Microsoft database solutions, and (surprise) a little application called MySQL has risen to the top of the heap:

The MySQL database has become the world's most popular open source database because of its consistent fast performance, high reliability and ease of use. It's used in more than 6 million installations ranging from large corporations to specialized embedded applications on every continent in the world.

[ MySQL AB :: Why MySQL? ]

I know that my readers are super-nerdy, and I'm sure dozens of them have MySQL success or horror stories. Why not share them?

I've been using this on a few machines that aren't attached to a domain, and think it works pretty darn good:

Our freeware Atomic Clock Sync utility can help you keep your local computer up-to-date with the exact current time.

[ Free Atomic Clock Sync utility from worldtimeserver.com ]

Can't beat the price, either.

Perhaps just come up with better guides. It took me close to 20 minutes to find any sort of site/page that had a decent explanation of forged email headers/addresses geared toward the non-technical.

e-mail forgery is easy-to-do and not unusual, and, at this point-in-time, little can be done about it

[ MFCF/CSCF Frequently Asked Questions: Dealing with Email Forgery ]

First, props to U Waterloo, I should have just checked the Canadian internets to begin with.

Second, if you are in a position to hire, make sure you hire good IT staff. Don't skimp. Really.

Third, if you are responsible for sending spam, shame on you.

My PC seemed always have issues when I was away for a time being. It would be slow to "revive". Granted, I am a bit of a "power user". I have my wallpaper cycling every 15 minutes, which I suspect is a large part of the problem. It likely forces much of my system onto the scratch disc, which then requires a bit of work to pull back. Recently, Rhapsody has made it worse. It seems to like sucking quite a bit of RAM too. I had tried out some RAM freeing up program with mixed success before, but thought I'd try one again. This is what I found:

Our first and very popular product, FreeRAM XP Pro, optimizes computer RAM (Random Access Memory). Our software is available for download from CNET and Simtel, among many other sources.

[ YourWare Solutions: Quality freeware and home of FreeRAM XP Pro ]

After one day, I am still pleased. Sure that's not much time, but this morning it was much easier to log into my machine and get to work.

Yet frustrating.

Windows SharePoint Services is a collection of services for Windows Server 2003 that you can use to share information, collaborate with other users on documents, and create lists and Web Part Pages.

[ Sharepoint Products and Technologies ]

Clearly a lot of time and effort has gone into WSS and SPS. Clearly it allows some great collaboration. And clearly there is much to learn.

I just want to know how to import and export from a Discussion Board. I'm sure I'll eventually want to know how to import and export from all sorts of Lists, Document Libraries, etc. And I'm sure this is one of the first things that everyone has to figure out, so why don't they make it a wee bit easier?

I have a PC that seems to have a horrible clock in it, and it's always running about 5 minutes slow. It's certainly possible that something on the box is messing with the date and time, I'm not sure. I do know that the Windows XP time sync that's built in just doesn't run frequently enough to fix the issue, so I went looking:

TimeSync is an NT service that keeps your system's clock in sync with an accurate network server.

[ TimeSync ]

I'm actually surprised I never found this one before. It's easy to install, works great, has tons of options, runs as a service, seems to be freeware, and seems to have correctly my clock issue for the short term.

I did disable the XP service that was syncing time, to ensure that this program was doing the work, which I think I'd recommend for anyone else.

I know nothing about OS X, and it's blatantly obvious when I read something like this:

This article explains how to set up a Mac OS X client machine to authenticate against an Active Directory Server without implementing any schema extensions to the AD server. Note that the management capabilities with only basic authentication implemented are limited.

[ Mike's Mac OS X Management Software and Tips ]

Step One: Open the Directory Access application located in the Utilities folder.

Open the what? In the where? Can't find either of these, nor can my "Finder".

I used to know how to do this sort of thing, then OS 9 came out, oh wait X. I guess I'm a bit behind...

Update: this page did it. Eventually I read this close enough, and soaked up some "Applespeak" and got the integration working. I must say this was much easier than trying to get OS8 to use a Novell 3.12 server...

I have completed the upgrade, and it appears to be successful. And, although the dasBlog homepage is in a sad state of confusion, the dasBlog wiki appears to be back up for the mean time:

DasBlog is an ASP.NET weblogging application. It runs on Microsoft .Net 1.1 and is developed in C#. DasBlog, an evolution of the BlogX weblog engine, adds lots of additional features like Trackback, Pingback, Mail notifications, full Blogger/MovableType API support, Comment API support, fully customizable Radio-style templates, Mail-To-Weblog/POP3 with attachment and embedded picture support, web-based DHTML editing, web-based OPML editor, web-based configuration editing, and other goodies to the BlogX codebase. And it's free without restrictions.

[ DasBlog.HomePage ]

My guess is that newtelligence just doesn't have the time to keep up with this, but Omar Shahine does. What I don't get is why newtelligence doesn't have the time to redirect dasblog.net to the wiki site.

Since I've hacked the code, I have to spend a good deal of time merging the changes in, and this usually means that I have a good grasp of all the changes. There were large sections, however, that I didn't review since I knew I had no code in those parts. I believe that a large part of this version is tightening of code. Some anti-comment spam features have been added. Pingback and trackbacks have been touched, and there are comments that lead me to believe that they now work. Comments can now be shut off on an entry by entry basis. Draft entries can be saved, which is welcome by me, sometimes I want to save to make sure nothing gets lost, but I know that I'm not quite ready to go live with an entry. The login has been reworked, it's just a link to a login page, with just a note that it was done for "many reasons". I did have to hack that work, the "Sign in" link wasn't inside a div like the login box was before, and it wasn't lining up correctly. Admin functions have been tightened up, and now referrals are intelligently parsed, splitting out search engines, and just displaying keywords, and all referring stats can be accessed, not just todays.

All in all I'm pleased, if you like to hack .net code, and you are looking for blogging software for a home page, I would recommend dasBlog. (Though I do run .Text on geekprime.com, I'm frustrated with the delay on Community Server :: Blog and the migration tools for .Text .95)

The small shop that I work for is large enough to need automation, but not large enough to need the sorts of automation that I've researched so far. SUS was very welcome, it replaced the SMS server that we were trying to use, but took way to much time to implement, and the hoping that people would visit Windows Update on a regular basis. SUS now allows me to know that systems have been updated when I need them to be (and it successfully did that with XP SP2 just this week). However it only does windows updates. I think I'm about to be pleased:

Available now as a public beta, WUS was recently evaluated by Mandy Andress of Network World's Lab Alliance (see link below) who pronounced it "a definite improvement over Software Update Services, the product it replaces," as well as "a credible alternative to existing patch management products such as BigFix and PatchLink for cost-conscious, Windows-only shops." This last means that, while very good, WUS is not as feature rich as many of the third-party commercial products available to you.

[ What's inside Windows Update Service ]

Isn't it great that there are journalists who take time time to report this sort of thing... ;)

Don't know why this was so hard to find. Gruska even had the correct name, I think. But this is, apparently, the only decent freeware program to report hard drive usage in a manner conducive to freeing up some space.

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders.

[ JAM Software - Windows Freeware ]

Wow, lots changing in my blogroll these days.

Recently removed JoyStiq or whatever it was called, thanks for the tip Bull, but 19 out of 20 posts seemed to be straight off of slashdot's game feed (which I already read).

Recently added many game links. Video Fenky had a few, I've added the ones that looked good and had RSS feeds, hopefully some good stuff in there. Also added T-Dub and Thug AKA Tina Wood and Laura Foy, they are co-hosts of G4TV.com on the swell G4TechTV (née G4TV, and I've heard could revert as well).

I wonder if there are any good blogs or news sites that focus on coffee...

But I like it!

Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over 50 ways spyware can enter your PC

[ Download details: Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) ]

It did seem to require a verification of my Windows license, so if you don't have quite a legal copy, you might not be able to get this. I have little information on the database that Microsoft (previously Giant's) has put together, and how it stacks up against Ad-Aware, but so far I am impressed. It lets me set some options on how I want it to run, if I want automatic, and when, and then finds spyware for me. It registered my VNC as possible spyware, but since I installed it (and only use the client) I told it to ignore that in the future.

And for power users there are some “Advanced Tools”, including some “System Explorers” which allow you to view Downloaded ActiveX, Running Processes, Startup Programs, etc. And the software informs you what it might be, and if it might be safe. If you agree to assist their little network, you can submit programs to them to review for “spywaredness”, I sent in the one ActiveX component they don't seem to be aware of (that I have installed) Bitstream's TrueDoc plug in.

Certainly good value for the money. (Though I think I'll still give Ad-Aware a run every now and then).

The tweaking continues...

Seems like a bunch of websites are tweaking their designs...

[ New Year, New Design ]

To address some of the criticism of my new design, I've changed the font again, Arial or Helvetica, should look much better, and I've reduced the complexity quite a bit. I've also removed the “What I'm Playing” piece, and aim to have a whole page dedicated to that shortly.

Seems like a bunch of websites are tweaking their designs, must be something in the air because on a whim I redid my site. Gone is the big fat table that provided the structure of the page, replaced with a CSS solution. It's not as elegant as it should be, but I only played with it for a few hours. It is still very understated, but no longer in bright “safety yellow”. I'm not sure about the font, though, as on my box I have “Eras Medium ITC” but haven't a clue where it came from, I back that up with “Trebuchet MS” but I'm guessing that Macs don't have that one. If anyone has any font suggestions, feel free to speak up.

Full Disclosure: I used a web-based tool to assist with the color palette.

Update: apparently my sub-conscious bogarted the quote graphic design concept from Joe Grossberg's site.

A bit more digging and I realize that this isn't truly a bug in IE, but in an ActiveX component that ships with IE.

I set all of my ActiveX, signed or not, approved or not, to prompt and this fixes that problem

[ davidkearns.com - Scary: my little slice of opinion and triviality ]

This means you simply need to disallow the use of that one component. If you have XP SP2, you're in luck, since ActiveX components are a type of add-on, and you can now disallow add-ons. Go to Tools/Manage Add-ons... Change the “Show:” to “Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer” and find the “DHTML Edit Control Safe for Scripting for IE5” and set it to “Disable”. This is bound to break something somewhere, but better that then having your financial info snagged or something.

Interesting thing to note, though. After the above jerry rigging my IE would no long fall for the test, however my SlimBrowser still happily runs the add-on. Perhaps a reboot or something is required due to some sort of caching of background process or something, but if not this exploit is still obvious due to the brand new IE window that SlimBrowser spawns via the test (and thus alerts me to the odd behavior, since SlimBrowser usually doesn't do that).

Update: After a reboot and an upgrade to SlimBrowser 4.03.007 it still falls for this exploit. One odd bit about the exploit is that although the wee little yellow lock appears, which should indicate that the page has been encrypted, double-clicking on the lock displays a dialog that indicates “This type of document does not have a security certificate” which certainly sounds like an error exists in IE as well.

I hope they fix this one soon.

Paul has reported a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct sophisticated cross-site scripting attacks against any web site. Please see the test below for an example of how this vulnerability can be exploited.

[ Secunia - Internet Explorer Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability Test ]

I set all of my ActiveX, signed or not, approved or not, to prompt and this fixes that problem, however it then breaks my gmail. (Of course I then just “trusted” gmail, hope they don't abuse that trust...)

ieHTTPHeaders is an explorer bar for Internet Explorer that will show you the HTTP Headers IE are sending and receiving.

[ blunck.info ]

The easiest way to debug the protocol traffic that surrounds your webpages...

Yet another thing that should already have been in Windows:

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

[ Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000 - Process Explorer ]

This one is almost frequented as much as gvim on my computer. If you are any sort of SA or Developer, this is a must. (And G$ will agree)

Shiny Donkey now has TWO XML feeds, courtesy of Matthew. The first is "feed.xml", which gives recent threads & the total # of comments. The second is "recentblogfeed.xml", which gives recent threads AND replies. I'll update the template soon with links to both.

[ Shiny Donkey: .NET, SQL, bad jokes & lots of Bull... ]

Insiders say that the new “comments included” feed is more popular than the original. That begs the question, do readers of this 'blog crave comments in their feed? What about jimmies on their ice cream?

I've upgraded the site to dasBlog v1.6.4121.1 by merging changes in from the source. For the most part, I expect no one to notice the difference. And now that I've reviewed all that they've done, I'm not sure that I'll even notice the difference too much.

Of course I may have introduced some fun bugs with the upgrade, so I'm sure folks will notify me of any entomic issues.

quickSub is a Javascript function that adds intelligence to the feed button on your web page. Just roll your mouse over the example above, and you'll be instantly greeted by one-click subscription links to the most popular aggregators.

[ quickSub ]

Now used on davidkearns.com where the Radio's “coffeecup” URL used to be.

The error:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

Specified driver could not be loaded due to system error 126 (Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)).

Is driving me crazy. Dependency Walker was recommended by a website, and it looks like it will be doing the trick nicely.

Dependency Walker is a free utility that scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules. For each module found, it lists all the functions that are exported by that module, and which of those functions are actually being called by other modules. Another view displays the minimum set of required files, along with detailed information about each file including a full path to the file, base address, version numbers, machine type, debug information, and more.

[ Dependency Walker (depends.exe) ]

My daughter caught a bit of something at school, and has been “selling Buicks” a good deal of the night. Since I'm home with her today, I figured I'd tweak a few bits of the site, which always seems to take longer than you expected in the first place.

Updates to the site are few, but significant to me:

• Comment GUI has changed, so the auto-email of the comment can be redirected by me to whomever I am responding to. Some day, if I feel especially ambitious, I'd like to build a whole system to email comments to everyone who would like to receive them, but until then at least I can easily email my comments back to you.
• Killed the wish list in favor of “cool stuff”. Amazon seems bent on not refreshing their cache of wish lists via their web service, so I will have to maintain a separate list of items to fuel my pseudo-advertising system. One advantage of this is stuff that I think is cool and own can be displayed, and stuff that I want that's not so cool won't have to be.

What too so long?

• A connection string that I forgot to update allowed part of the system to work locally but not on the live site
• A conceivably endless loop that pulled a random number went a bit haywire
• An empty database that allowed said loop to be endless
• A system that doesn't have infinite processing power slowed and got cranky

What have I learned?

• Not much. I'm sure I'll repeat the same dumb mistakes again.

Update: Joe Grossberg notes that Amazon's wish lists are seriously out of date.

If you are a frequent visitor to my site, you should notice that pages are loading quite a bit faster. Originally I had my “Wishful Thinking” item pulling from Amazon.com directly and caching the results for a short period of time. Now I have this pulling from a database. Eventually I expect to fill the database automatically, but for now it is just manual (of course since Amazon.com has frozen my wish list in November 2003, it won't need to refresh ever).

I've tweaked the comments page a bit. The uber-ugly email link has been replaced with the trimmed down text [email] and the mailto link has been altered a bit.

The comments box still won't take HTML, and still gives a way-ugly error if you try, but it now allows just over ½ dozen BBCodes.

And my aggregator is now searchable, but that only affects me, so don't worry if you can't find that one.

Whether or not you think that Microsoft is serious about security, you can take them up on some free protection for your Microsoft OS based computer. Anything less is madness, and can infect your computer with bizarre homepages and wacked out accessibility settings, not to mention complete denial of service (DOS) of your machine or whole sections of the Internet.

There are three steps you can take to improve your computer's security. You can follow the three steps online, or print them for easy reference.

[Microsoft]+

Update: I recommend, however, that if you have a few bucks to spend, get a hardware firewall.

Or, I should say, I've integrated that version into my site, since I do have a somewhat modified version of dasBlog running.

Not a tremendous amount has changed that is noticeable from the public functions of the site. Just a few items admin-wise have changed. The GotDotNet site claims that there are numerous bug fixes, but I didn't notice too many.

I did see that it now supports NewsGator, and categories in the MetaBlog API. And the “shadow boxes” are used in more places in the admin.

It seems that a search has been added, but since I've just integrated the Google API for my searches (which will search my entire site), I'm not using the dasBlog search.

And it appears that the system now differentiates between last updated content and last updated comments, but I'm not sure where that information is published.

There is one bug that I had noticed yesterday, regarding stories missing from the comments page at times, this appears to have gone away with this upgrade, so I won't have to go looking for it. Yea!

All-in-all it was a rather painless process.

I've completed the merging of dasBlog 1.4.3297.1 into my code and it all appears to be running fine.

The biggest changes are a new WYSIWYG editor, courtesy of FreeTextBox, cross posting functionality added (which is little use to me), additional statistics (referrers, click-throughs, rss tracking)

There also appeared to be some improvements in the APIs that can be used by blogging clients, but there are few details on the dasBlog site regarding this, so I'm not sure what they are. In addition to syndicating to RSS and ATOM, dasBlog now syndicates to CDF, not that I know what that is...

UPDATE: The CDF lets you “subscribe” in the IE favorites via IE's Active Content system. It shows the site and expands to the items on the page. Kind of like a budget RSS aggregator.

UPDATE: My permalinks appear to have all changed to a new format. This leads me to believe that if you aggregate my site, all stories will appear to be new again. I'm not sure who made this decision, but the trouble doesn't seem to be worth what it gains by being reformatted. Any-which-way, my apologies if you have to mark all items read again.

If you are a network admin, email admin, systems admin, etc. you might need to check your blacklist settings:

As of today, Osirusoft, distributer of the SPEWS and open relay blocklists, among others, is no longer operational. Servers using these lists (including the FTC) are currently rejecting ALL email. [slashdot]