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August 28 Microsoft Forefront - Completely and Utterly on EVERY level UNOFFICIAL Theme SongYeah, I got bored. Somehow I decided Microsoft Forefront needed a theme song. Sung to AC/DC's Big Guns from Last Action Hero A Special shout out and dedication to a team I almost joined last year at the big M in Winnipeg. You know who you are and this is dedicated to you. Malware screaming at the firewall Forefront Digital fires are burning around, Forefront "Alright we've got an inbound bogey, I'm seeing about 50,000 inbound" "I'm on it team leader. Locking into bogeys. Inbound UCE's are being tracked." "Crew chief, steady there we're getting an overload in the main firewall." "Roger that. Downing bad node. Cluster has switched over." "Bogeys quashed. I repeat bogeys quashed." "Good job team." ForeFront, Malware at Bay Forefront, stop 'em in time Forefront sent them packin' away. August 27 Letting the creative beast outI'm sitting here on a bus this morning realizing something. A monster is inside me just urging to run free. That monster is creativity. Sometimes it gets out of the cage and behaves itself somewhat. With an simple silly post. A quiet quip or joke. And yet other times it tears up the local country side with horribly off key music. Sendind visual Krakens to unsuspecting passerby. Rampaging and running free tossing out random twitters in it's path to throw people off and trip. Oh creativity, it's a scary beast. And it consumes just about anything. Time, novels, websites, common sense. And once you let the beast out, you'll find it incredibly hard to hold back. Once the beast creativity has been unleashed; it can rarely ever be locked back in it's cage. It yearns to continue and roam free, Taking you with it as well. If you're young, don't ever hold the beast in. Creativity must be taken on daily walks and talks. It must be fed pencils and paper and allowed to express itself. But it also needs to know respect. It cannot be allowed to wander and defecate onto the property of others. It must be taught to express itself in it's own place or when asked to do so. If you do not let creativity out on a regular basis it may die, making life drab and boring. Or in more extreme cases, a small nudge from somebody on the cage will cause it to tear free trying to find out what it can do. Having been caged for too long it will refuse to go on it's leash. You may find creativity a lot harder to tame. So please. Don't find out like I did the hard way. Let your creative beast out now. Or you might end up being a Friday Funny Guy... :) The Adventures of Hypaman - Episode 4 - A RevelationThe fight. Or it wasn't much of a fight. More of an accident waiting to happen. The robber that broke into Paul's apartment was still unconscious as he entered the tiny cubicle he called a bathroom. The walls covered in mildew from times long past stared at him. Paul could not stare back. He didn't have time for that game. Stripping down to nothingness, he turned on the old taps. The pipes howled in complaint to being put to duty, a shuddering of yellowish water oozed out of the shower head. He staggered under the filthy wanting water. His cheap mistress. She would cleanse him. Paul grabbed a bar of soap on the side. A few cockroaches scattered off to tell their friends dinner was postponed. The soap met Paul's body and began it's work.... *** About an hour later Paul emerged from the curtained Hell drying himself off with the cleanest towel he could find. Strange how a good shower could make you feel refreshed. The landlord must have screwed up royally. The water must have been slightly hotter than normal. He felt REALLY refreshed. Drying off what was left of his hair he looked in the mirror. "Damn!" muttering to himself. "Cleaning up must really give you a workout." He seemed a bit more buff than normal. Maybe it was just the shower. Wrapping a towel about himself he exited the bathroom. In his living room / bedroom / kitchen, Paul remembered about his little friend that had just visited. A slight moan reminded him of that. "What the?!" grunted the figured on the floor. A quick kick in the shins and he was out again. No way Paul was dealing with this. More refreshed, he still didn't forget what that rat did to his computer. His baby. His pride and joy. Broken. Dead. Quickly calling the police, Paul laid out the details. Arriving two hours later (prompter than normal for his area) they dragged off the moaning idiot in cuffs. Paul now looked in the corner. His poor hurt baby. Parts lay scattered across the floor. Ram chips snapped everywhere. Hard drives pulled. The system was a mess. A howl burst from his lips to the skies. A howl of agony. He closed his eyes in pain, willing that this should never be or have been. Synapses flew apart in his brain as a tornado of anger ripped through him. He looked down to begin the recovery. To try and get data together again. To start anew. A gasp fell from his lips. The system was completely re-assembled as if nothing had happened. Next Episode : the Discovery Live Video and Audio in your Windows Live Spaces accountThink Myspace is the only system that can play background music? HA! In your Windows Live Spaces, sign in and choose "Customize" and "Rearrange or Hide Modules" Select the "Modules" hyperlink on the left, and examine the list in front of you. If it's not already expanded, choose "Photos Music and Video". the Module you need to add is called Video. Add it in, drag it to your choice of location. And *Voom* you have an application that can play Video and Audio files. Great. But where do I GET them?! Ooops! Forgot about that. What you need my friend is a hyperlink to a site that has content. Some podcasting sites have them, if you're hosting video anywhere it may have it. When you host video with Silverlight, you will have two links. One is the embedded video link, the other is a direct link to download or access the streaming video. I'll give an example. I use a little site called www.mypodcast.com. It's a free podcast service. Now on my podcasts, there is usually a link to download the file. If you copy that link and it contains the actual file name as part of it, there is a chance you can you use it. So armed with a hyperlink to a Sound or Video file, Click "Edit" on the Video module, add your hyperlink in the provided line. Note you can you also get the file to autoplay by checking on the "Automatically start playing the video or audio clip when people visit my space". With that running, the next time somebody starts up your site, it will start streaming audio or video (as you so chose) from the source site. August 26 Blogging via e-mail on Windows Live SpacesHere's a test posting over email I am trying out. It should be interesting to see how it works.
What I am trying out is a simple but incredibly nice feature of Live Spaces which is posting via e-Mail. A simple and effective way to blog via Cell phone or any mail enabled device.
How did I get it? How does it work?
First off. I signed up for "Hotmail Plus" on my Live.com account. The cost is really reasonable ($19.95 per year) and you get a few extra features on your normally free account.
1) You can hide those ads when people visit your page
2) More online storage available for e-mails and photos
3) Publishing of Blogs and Photos via e-mail.
To get it was a bit cryptic, a negative I'll have to pass along to the Live Spaces team. One of very few.
When you're in your Spaces page and logged in, find your "Options" button and choose "Spaces Settings"
On the screen, scroll down near the bottom to find "Premium Settings", just below there, click on the words "Hotmail Plus". It will open up a new Window which will take you into the Sign up Wizard for Hotmail plus. Have a valid credit card ready for this purchase.
Seconds later (it was actually pretty quick) You now have new features on your account. Now under your "Options" and "Spaces Settings" there is a new option available to check off. It was there before but greyed over.
"Don’t' show ads to people who visit my Windows Live Space". Click it, save done. No more ads.
Now there is also an extra option under your Windows Live Spaces. E-mail publishing.
Select E-mail publishing, choose "Turn on Email publishing", key in three addresses the system should be expecting e-mails from. Theoretically, if your cell phone has an SMS/SMTP gateway (Fido did once) and you knew the identifying address, you could add it in this list and blog via SMS (Isn't THAT frightening!)
It will ask for a "Secret Word" which is actually just part of the e-mail address Windows Live Spaces will be accepting posts to. You'll see later in the page when you finish.
By default Windows Live Spaces, sets these type of posts as a draft posting. Select publish Entries immediately if you're really hard core and don't CARE what the output looks like...
Once you're done, you'll have a list of e-mail addresses to send TO. Your default one for your blog posting will be based upon your Windows Live Spaces name combined with your secret word.
IE:
contoso.spaces.live.com
Secret word
rubberchicken
Email address for blog posting will be
Now sign up and start blogging out of control!
An IT Pro - Crossing the Line - SILLY - NO LINK TO REALITY!PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS A COMPLETE AND UTTER WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PEOPLE REAL OR IMAGINED IS JUST A CO-INCIDENCE. OR JUST BAD LUCK. THERE IS A CHANCE A LARGE MOB OF ANGRY PEOPLE FROM MICROSOFT CORPORATION MAY COME AND MAKE THEIR WAY DOWN TO MY FRONT DOOR AS A RESULT OF THIS STORY. SO IF NOBODY SEE'S MORE POSTINGS ON THE LAND OF SILLY, IT MAY BE AS A RESULT TO A QUICK FLIGHT TO BERMUDA. Crossing the line A quiet coffee shop. An innocent quiet nameless IT Pro named Sean is sitting there sipping an Espresso (fine CHUGGING five!) at a table. He has gone to meet a few friends. Donuts and Espresso. Yes wonderful. His two friends enter. One mid height sporting Glasses and slightly reddish hair. The other one, hair blackened with too many bottles of shoe polish, glasses on with eyes perpetually locked in "Leonord Nimoy stance", questioning the logic of everthing about the universe. They sit down. They look. Rodney blinks. "Just what do you think you're you wearing?" The befuddled IT Pro Sean, half shaven and running off three hours sleep looks up. "Huh?" "Your shirt. What is that mess on your shirt?" The "Trouble"some fellow looks down at a Grey t-shirt with Orange logo. "Oh that. It says 'Developers Night in Canada'. Neat eh?" Rodney shakes his head. "My God man. You're an IT Pro! That's ... That's BLASPHEMY!" The little fat bald fellow looks down scratching his head. "Hmmm? What do you mean by that? I always wanted to be a coder. I started my training in that direction and..." Rodney stares him down "Yes and you turned AWAY from the Dark Side. Your powers are growing each and every day as an IT Pro! That shirt is from 'Them'... You know ... 'MSDN'." At this point the dark-haired one (who strangely enough is dressed COMPLETELY in black) looks over. "And just WHAT is wrong with developers?" Jean-Luc asks with that Mr. Spock gaze. "Nothing." returns Rodney. "It's just you know, you're usually really good at one OR the other. You usually don't 'switch sides'." The dark cloaked Jean-Luc looks across at the creature. "Yes this is true. Our two worlds do not mesh well. Why do you choose this path funny one?" The befuddled creature glances up and states simply. "Because there are more jobs at Microsoft for developers than IT Pros. " Rodney shrugs his head. "You've got a point there I suppose but.." Jean-Luc stares across "You do know that once you go down this path, you can never be an IT Pro again. You will despise it. You must give up THEIR ways." he points with a crooked finger, a result of carpal tunnel from too many games on old Atari VCS joysticks. The silly little man shakes his head. "Nope. I wanna be both." Rodney bolts up! "HERETIC! You are with us or *THEM*!" jabbing a finger at Jean-Luc. "Correct." adds Jean-Luc playfully kicking Rodney in the shins. "You MUST choose..." "No." the simple response comes back. "Eh?" They look at each other. "NO!" the little creature states more defiantly. "I will be both! No! No! No! No!" he screams jumping up and down. Rodney looks over. "Remind me, block him from John Oxley's twitters." A nod. Jean-Luc looks over at Rodney. "You know as well as I this cannot be. This creature must be cast out." And with that, Jean-Luc whips out 100's of pages of source code on hard copy. Rodney's eyes begin to burn as his skin visually crawls. The little creature begins to drool. The source code is dropped and Rodney pulls of pages of security guidelines and restrictons. Jean-Luc wraps his cloak about and hides himeself from the sight. The Troublesome one simply looks and says. "Ok." Jean-Luc then starts with incantations. "In the name of Pascal, HTML and Comal! I cast thee out! Structured Procedures, Recursion, NESTED arrays! Out ye spawn of Tramiel and ancient past!" Rodney is writhing about the ground screaming in agony. Clothing burning. The little one pipes up. "You forgot LDA $DE and RTS from the 6502 Machine Code scriptures. It's part of the holy words." "Aiiiiiigh!!!!" screams Rodney. "He recognizes MACHINE Code! Aiiiigh! My ears!!!" "Your turn." mutters Jean-Luc running to a corner determined not to face Rodney's painful fate. Rodney begins the chant. "D-E-L-L H-E-W-L-E-T-T P-A-C-K-A-R-D U-N-I-S-Y-S." He intones deeply. "Ethernet FibreOptic Arcnet. Modulate Demodulate Integrate." The little fellow begins to float and spin. "Wheeeeee!" Jean-Luc hisses "Huuury up! It hurtsssssss...." Rodney continues. "Tcp/IP Netbeui IPX! ActiveDirectory! Bind! Artisoft!!!" A glow forms about the creature as he spins about madly in mid air. "Woohoo! More more! w00t!" Jean-Luc peeks out. "It's not working he's absorbing it!" "Christ!" spits Rodney "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" And then it happened. He started to sing. "Coding until Midnight! Debugging 'til the dawn!" "Aigghhh! My ears! He's singing about code!" shrieked Rodney with his hands up to his ears. "Crappy lans done by a Creep!" Jean-Luc's cloak began to smoke. "The 'L' word! This cannot be! Arrrgh!" as he began slapping it down to control the problem. Rodney screams through the growing Sonic maelstrom. "YOU MUST CHOOSE! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! THAT PATH WILL DESTROY US ALL! YOU INCLUDED!" "I know..." Sean, Mr. Trouble grins evilly. "I know." "WHAT DO YOU WANT!?" cries out Jean-Luc. "WHAT WILL MAKE YOU STOP?!?!" "*H-E K-N-O-W-S*" Rumbles Sean pointing a glowing finger at Rodney in a deep and impressively scary voice including cool echoey sound effects from Audacity. Quickly Rodney gets his Smartphone dialing. "555" John Oxley answers. "Yep?" Rodney wheezes into the mouthpiece. "Sir! Sorry to bother! We've got a real situation here! A full blown inspiration overdrive! Sean the Friday Funny Guy is spinning in mid air singing and glowing and..." "Ahh..." mutters John over the mouthpiece, "So another It Guy trying to be a developer at the same time. Heh. So what do you want from me?" "SIR! He's SERIOUS! This is bad! He's glowing!!!" "Worse than at Energize IT 2008 and 2007? Worse than Influencers?" John remarks calmly. Jean-Luc gasps. "No! He's bursting about like the Flash now!" John yawns. "So what do we need to solve this? Schwag? Coffee mug? Maybe some t-shirts?" "A job." mumbles Rodney. "Anything. Poutine spreader, maintenance... Doesn't matter. But it has to be for Microsoft." "I see...." mutters John. Well I'll to put you on hold while I start asking. "What?! The world is about to be split in half by a caffeinated maniac applying for a job and he's putting me on hold???!" *Hold button pressed* Calm soothing elevator music plays the Carpenters. *Hold button unpressed* John returns. "There is one job. It doesn't pay anything, there are no benefits, a lot of dirty work. But he gets an official Microsoft corporation shirt and e-mail address. All he has to do is keep doing funnies. And maybe sing and twitter just a little less. Mark Relph's phone melted the other day from his twittering. If he behaves, someday...Maybe just SOMEDAY we'll consider a real position. Only if he really behaves." Suddenly the glowing stops. Sean grabs the Smartphone from Rodney. "Throw in a coffee mug and an autographed picture of Steve Ballmer and you've got a deal!" The phone hangs up. Sean is grinning like a Cheshire cat after having eaten a gross of catnip. "So." states Jean-Luc brushing himself off of debris and burnt clothing. "What path are you choosing?" Sean grins evilly. "You'll find out... SOMEDAY." August 24 Arnold Schwarzenegger vs the Cobol Paycheck Program - Podcast
August 22 Dealing with scheduling in the modern day.Most of us take for granted the power we have in our hands. In our organizers. Why even in our cellphones. The ability to have a digital alarm clock. An electronic reminder system to poke us when that important time needs to happen. Is it not difficult to stretch back to a time "OH So long ago...", Say just about 1999; when this was NOT common place? I'm remembering VIVIDLY still writing notes on paper invoices, trying to keep track of my schedule in my head. Forgetting things still because there was so much to do at the same time. And now I look in front of me. I am staring at a device easily 1,000 times more powerful than my first home computer. Barely even 5 percent of its original size. Scary. I can quickly type my appointments in on the fly. It can alert me in a moments notice all the things I was trying to put off. My boss can even add to this list without my knowing and it appears by magic. My friends can even see what I'm doing on the web if I've put it in! Now this is all fine. But just how are these smarty pants computer people going to deal with this in the future? Multiple dimensions? Time rifts? Alternate realities? Just how do you get a scheduling system to deal with THAT?! I submit to you a theoretical conversation in the future. "So when shall we get together?" "Anytime…except next Thursday…oh wait…not Monday either…shoot…forget the weekend too….yeah…come to think of it…Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday are bad too!" "Fine fine. I'll book it 3 Wednesdays after the Saturday that occurred sometime next fall during a blue moon in the month of Peteruary." "Fine let me get that down...You're booked in!" "No wait! I think I'm due to meet myself sometime for a meeting of the minds." "Universe XU-139?" "Huh? No! Oh that just won't work. I'm due for a side stop into the side quadrant of Ritalyn 42 for peanut developers conference. Hmmm.... Maybe if I were to throw some random element like reality this might work. I really should get this into my Exchange calendar but the 5 dimensional aspects of this type of scheduling just ren't part of SP1 on Exchange 3010. We should ask Damir Bersinic the 53rd about that in September WWITPRO." "For sure…I think quantum scheduling is slated for SP3..but only in 4.5 dimensions" "Damn. I'm still stuck on SP 1/0." Can you not see the nightmare before us?! I put it to you now future developers! THIS IS A PROBLEM! It is more monumental than Y2K and it needs to be dealt with today! Solve it before it's conceived of happening. I'll mark it down as "to done" for you. August 20 Microsoft JobsBlog Unofficial (COMPLETELY UTTERLY UNOFFICIAL!!!) Theme song
Original Music "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZtop Stand and Shout - Hyper-V's out NowMaybe I should put something negative sounding so the Product manager for Hyper-V notices this. Hey it worked accidentally on Jeffrey Snover! :) Hyper-V is like A Highway to Hell? Nah that won't work. HORRID! EVIL! Doubt that will work twice... :P I couldn't try to reproduce that lightening. And yes, I'm trying to contemplate a video. Listen and enjoy Sung to Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" http://landofsilly.mypodcast.com/2008/08/Stand_and_Shout_HyperVs_Out_Now-134895.html Original song by Green Day - Wake me Up when September Ends Re-written by Sean Kearney the Friday Funny Guy aka ye110wbeard Stand and Shout - Hyper-V's Out now System has gone and passed Archive the ancient ones Pentiums and MFM's The night it goes and cools away System has gone and passed Load it up right on the core Pentiums and MFM's No more wasted megawatts Extra licenses thrown right in The future's goodbye to past Microsoft Applicant Blues
http://landofsilly.mypodcast.com/2008/08/Applicant_Blues_Yeah_Baby-134641.html Sing yer bad days to the Blues to feel better. August 17 Windows Photo Gallery and Flickr.com!Ok poking about in the system, found a little gem sitting there I never noticed before. If you use Windows Live Photo Gallery, normally you just use the Live Spaces account. But I clicked on "Other accounts". Found a bonus. Did you know you can link Windows Live Photo Gallery to Flickr.com for publishing? What is Flickr.com you ask? Unless you've been in the dark ages (I was for until about a year ago) Flickr.com is great service for storing and displaying photos. The nice part Flickr offers is the ability to view a photo in sizes as big as the original you uploaded, or small enough for Grandma and Grandpa to view over dial up internet. You can just send a link to the photo or list of photos. For a few dollars more you can display and customize multiple libraries. And you can do that with Live Spaces too. But it's nice that you have that Flickr.com account and Microsoft provides a way to directly upload the photos. So how difficult is it to use and setup? Can you type? Can you click a mouse button? That's the complexity level. Start up Windows Live Photo Gallery. Choose the pictures you wish to publish (or entire folder) as you normally would. Then on the top menu bar choose "Publish". Instead of "Publish on Live Spaces" or "Publish on MSN Soapbox", choose More Services and then "Publish on Flickr" Follow the step by step instructions. Provide you Flickr account when asked Once you're done, you'll have an additional choice on "Publish" which will read "Publish on Flickr". Works the same way as publishing to Live Gallery. Just a nice additional option available to you. You can get free tools from Flickr to do the same thing, but this is nice in that it is a) Native to the Operating System and b) Keeps it working the same as Live Spaces making it easier to explain to others a nice simple way to get to their photos. And free too Sean August 14 Dealing with a Blacklisted email server
You've been blacklisted on the internet. Something slipped by security and a worm blasted it's way out. (And blast it did!) You've isolated and cleared out the problem but now you have to deal with the mess. The Blacklisting. The inability to send out e-mail because your public IP address is being rejected by every client. So how can you confirm this? A quick search of the internet on your choice of search engine will yield several results. What do you need to know? You need to know the public Internet IP address your MX record, your mail server that is sending mail. I found a very effective site www.mxtoolbox.com Choose their tab "Blacklists" and type in the suspect DNS name or IP address. If you're on the "HOTLIST" it will show up as a "RED" on their particular site (Other sites may show it up as "LISTED" or "BAD" or "MOST EVIL MAIL SERVER ON THE PLANET" (Haven't seen that particular one) Most of the sites will have a hyperlink to the particular provider. Most of the particular providers will have a fairly easy method to remove your address from the list. (Some others bill and 'Express fee') to remove it immediately. In some cases you will have clients that reject you simply based upon mail flow. TrustedSource.org is one such provider. They actually track the flow of email on the internet and web access and track 'Naughty sources'. Some clients subscribe to this particular type of service to determine who to reject mail from. Government of Ontario is one such place I have heard of using this service. Dealing with trustedsource.org is not a pain either. A quick email to trustedsource@securecomputing.com with Domain and IP address details from a NON blacklisted email address will resolve the blacklisting from their system. Take note, in most cases, the removal will take time. Your network goofed, it is YOUR problem and you cannot rush any of this. So how do you avoid this from happening in the first place? Yes obvious. Security. Keep your patches up to date, keep your antivirus and malware up to spec, make sure your firewall is as restrictive as possible to keep potential problems from flowing out. And diligence above all, will keep you protected. Remember, almost any problem can be solved. Just about every problem can be prevented. Sean August 08 Magic Words uttered by Computer Professionals (and others)Magic Words
It Pros, Developers and Managers. Stand up. We've all had those days.
Those unbelievably bad days where the fire of Hades burst through the walls of your serenity.
The days that even the kindest and most devoutly religious of us learn magic words.
And I don't mean just the REGULAR batch of magic words. The type commonly used for everyday situations. Not the boring ones for times like when you get a papercut, stub your toe or the cat decides your new hat needs a friend.
No.
I mean the ultra special magic words. Reserved for supremely bad occasions.
The magic words, that when uttered will cause floors to open up, skies to darken and Mac and PC users to smile at each other.
Yes, THOSE magic words.
The ones you utter on site where the client's key database is on a spanned array with no backup and two of five dead drives.
The magic words that burst forth to create an auditory palette of sonic distortion after the new trainee just wasted 150 Cat6e network ends by putting them all on backwards.
The uberly crafted words of the elders used after spent six months designing and perfecting an application, only to find out the client has decided it needs to be ported to CP/M 2.2.
Those oh so eloquently released bits of wisdom when 95 percent of your staff tell you to go fly a kite about your new purchases AFTER asking for them.
MaGiC wOrDs!
We're not supposed to use them but we do. Why?
Because the magic words were a gift from the computer gods. It was deemed we should, nay we must use them.
For once, just once. On those rarest of occasions. Sometimes they work.
For no other reason than that. Occasionally the computer gods grant power to those magic words. Power causing the unbelievable and completely implausible to happen.
And so we use them. Each and every day. We Wizards of technology.
But I'll tell you one thing.
I'd probably use them even without magic.
Do you know why?
Cuz they're just plain fun to use. Just save them for the truly special occasions.
Then their magic stays strong.... :) August 04 The Power of Command - Adding features and roles to Server 2008 CoreIt must be the caffeine. I can't be this excited. My Server 2008 Core box is just blinking away at me, beckoning me. Calling me. Add FEATURES! I'm ready to play! "But Duuuuuuh! I just got a command line. I can't do ANYTHING!" Yeah right. What a load of malarkey! Everything in Core that you can do from GUI land can be done from command prompt. Sometimes GUI land makes more sense. But Core Command world is easier to automate. And it's all DOCUMENTED! There's a fantastic Blog at Microsoft that points you right into the directions you should go if you're interested in Core and what your can do with it. And it ain't no Apple Core either! (Sorry Mr. Ballmer, pardon the pun) http://blogs.technet.com/server_core/ Yeah seems pretty obvious right? But inside this blog are words of wisdom from some of the very wizards behind Server 2008 Core, tips tricks. Unfortunately they DON'T show how to make a fondue with it. Now for a simple trick. You want to add features to Core right? Make it a little more than "Pretty and Solid?" Two magic commands are OCSETUP.EXE and OCLIST.EXE. I have no clue what the "O" stands for than maybe "options" But OCLIST (Options Core List) shows you all the features and with the word "installed" if the feature is in there. "But it went by too fast... WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" No problem. Just run OCLIST > LISTOFTHINGS.TXT and that will dump the output to the current folder you're in. If you want to put it somewhere more useful then MD C:\SOMEWHEREMOREUSEFUL OCLIST > C:\SOMEWHEREMOREUSEFUL\LISTOFTHINGS.TXT (Fine! Not programmatically the BEST and most EFFICIENT wording, but you get the idea). Just substitute "C:\SOMEWHEREMOREUSEFUL" with the directory name of your choice and "LISTOFTHINGS.TXT" with a better looking filename you fussy person... :) You can use NOTEPAD.EXE to open that file up to browse it in a more sensible manner (What you weren't going to scroll up and down the Window? But that's so much more fun!) Now that you have that list, you can see what to add. The "adding part" is easy. Just run OCSETUP with "Whatcha wanna add" So I've decided I want my Server Core to be a DHCP server. Cuz I want to. Cuz I don't like the router guy and I'm takin' over see? So to add this feature into the system I need simple run OCSETUP DHCPServerCore "Hey wait a minute Mr. Smarty Pants! Where did you get THAT from?" Well look into that big file that we dumped out before "LISTOFTHINGS.TXT" (or whatever your mindset chose) and you'll see a pile of names with "Not Installed" or "Installed" to the left. The names are pretty self explanatory for the roles, if they're not, a quick search online through live.com should yield the answer. And yes, it's case sensitive. So I run this OCSETUP DHCPServerCore and soon I have a DHCPServer! But I want to manage it! I want to create scopes! "I WANT I WANT!" So quit yer griping! We'll get into managing this Power box next article. For Now, I'm done my work, and I'm having my dinner Sean A Hidden Gem for IT ProfessionalsI need to stand up and say something. Technet Direct is one of the biggest hidden gems you will ever find. It is the BIGGEST BANG FOR THE BUCK from Microsoft you can get (short of the Action Pak of course) So you need access to software, you need to play with Exchange 2007 or 2003. You need media and access to resources. What if I were to tell you there is a cost effective solution for you? What If I were to tell you it would run only about $25 a month? Maybe less? The actual cost is about $350 per year, but look online, Microsoft often has specials bringing that to $250. But Why? That's what I used to say? Technet used to be "Beta software, Service Packs, and Timebomb software" Not anymore. You get access to just about EVERY KEY APPLICATION an IT Professional could ever want need. Whether to test, play with or whatever. You can legally use the software for a full year. But there isn't a time bomb killing the apps. So you can safely work on your test servers and forget about. Just renew the subscription in a year. To make things sweeter you get two of those REALLY expensive product support incidents. This puts you in touch with the premier specialists at Microsoft who can trouble shoot why things go wrong. Catch 22 is you have to download the ISO's yourself so you'll need a high speed connection. But for $599 you can get all that shipped STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOUSE! So if can't have highspeed for whatever reason, this also works. Check it out Sean Excellent Free resources from MicrosoftYou know Microsoft gets a LOT of bad press. A lot of knocks and pokes. But they do a lot of good and offer a lot of free resources to the community. And they are constantly trying to improve. Let's start with internal points of contact. If others would like to add they are quite welcome to. Here in Canada there are FOUR KEY blogs you can start off with and jump off from there For Canadian IT Professionals (Ok, Nerds that play with wires, workstations and activedirectory or just think a blinking light is neat) there is http://blogs.technet.com/canitpro For Developers and Code Monkeys (or whatever the appropriate word for programmer is nowadays and people who can speak in pure binary) For People who are involved which trying to make websites, software and the overall environment actually USEFUL to regular humans For People who have to DEAL with all these idiots (I know I am one of the idiots in question getting managed) http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers Check these resources out. They're free. They don't cost you a penny other than internet access. There is an email button at the top of each of these pages. Yes. These people DO actually answer you too. The blog resources not only contain information from Microsoft but also stories and tips from NON Microsoft people who work in the field and have absolutely no affiliation with Microsoft. And just simply going to or and you can do a search into one of the biggest free libraries of resources Microsoft has. Their own people. Sean The Power of Command - Making a 2008 Core Server a Stand Alone DCYes. I feel alive. I feel evangelistic. I feel energized. I'm playing with my Server 2008 Core install and I've decided to myself, I would like to have a domain. Now one of the key ideas for 2008 Core is to have it as a RODC (Read Only Domain Controller) in a branch office. Which is a fine and excellent idea. But what if, just what if you're a Small Business and you need a file server and have limited resources? The beautiful part is you still have a file server running Core all by itself and a REAL secure active directory domain. "WHY?!" you're screaming at me. "WHY BOTHER?!" One word. Security. Both job security and server security. Somebody logging into a Server 2008 core box will be baffled with the lack of Active Directory to play with. If you're a consultant managing a site for a client who is INSISTENT on the password and PLAYING with the password, this can be a benefit to you. It's REALLY REALLY hard for somebody to screw up a server they can't really mess with. Keeps foreign consultants who don't know their head from a hole in the ground from messing up the good structure you've put in place. Yes, I know. You're not supposed to share servers and server passwords. But the world is not perfect, nor are all client relationships. So how do we do this beautiful piece of art? So how many of us here run a DCPROMO with pure command line parameters (Ok you Enterprise guys, put your hands down! Stop that) No matter. Microsoft has a wonderful reference article on this and all the fun parameters you can use with DCPROMO. DCPROMO under Technet.COM I'd like to save you that extra click, but the details run a few pages. But in a nutshell you need to make a DC on a Server 2008 Core. And Microsoft automates this process beautifully. So let's pretend we're going to make a domain called "MYDOMAIN" for the NetBios name in a DNS tree called "MYLITTLEWORLD.COM". We'll stay away from the ".LOCAL" or ".COM". I need to keep as many friends as I can... ;) The command line you need to run is DCPROMO /ReplicaOrNewDomain:Domain /AutoConfigDNS:Yes /DomainNetBiosName:"MYDOMAIN" /NewDomainDNSName:"MYDOMAIN.MYLITTLEWORLD.COM" /SafeModeAdminPassword:Stup1dP@ssword! /NewDomain:Forest Yes this is one looooooong line...:) Again we are "ASSUMING" you have A) Credentials to do this, B) Are supposed to be doing this and C) are allowed to do this in the first place. The end result is we have a stand alone Domain Controller with a DNS server installed. Nice bonus to this as well is when you configure your DHCP server, and you have this as your primary DNS (UHhhh yeah, you have to do that to get your computers to join the domain properly) It also helps on surfing the internet I find as it caches my queries on the internet, so I'm only crossing the net for content. It's a small thing but nice. Also helps when your ISP's DNS server goes down and crashes. But that would never happen. Would it? Incidentally, your default password for Administrator is the same as whatever the original Core Server password was BEFORE you did all this. Oh you're NOT the Admin? You weren't supposed to this? The admin left the console unlocked?! Well I guess somebody's getting fired today. Sean Movable Type Blogs with Windows Live WriterYou know I love using my free Windows Live Writer for blogging. Simple effective. Part of the operating system. I like keeping it clean. But I ran into a snag. I normally use Community Server and Live Spaces for my blogging. Just convenience and they're both excellent platforms. But I wanted to start up this new blog you see here, and decided for the whopping $3 a month PAIR.COM was asking to host Movable type as a blogging solution, I thought what the hey. It's nice. It works. Like most good blogging solutions should. However I hit a snag. Live Writer stubbornly wouldn't talk to my new blog site. A little online searching ran into this excellent blog post. Erno de Weerd Setting up Windows Live Writer with Movable Type Follow the instructions he's provided. I was a little confused about the "WindowsLiveWriter.EXE.Config" file. Dig into your default folder which is usually "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\" Just fire up Notepad to open the file and add the changes. But BACK IT UP FIRST. It's easy to fix and undo but having the original NEVER hurts eh? Mine looked like this before. <configuration> After the edits requested in the blog it should look like this <configuration> Note if you are running on Vista the UAC will prompt you on resaving the file back. If you have setup Vista properly and are NOT running as Administrator then you need only save the file elsewhere and copy it back to the "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\" folder. You will get prompted for administrative credentials. If you don't have them, you should ask your administrator to politely key them in, unless you're violating a corporate policy. In which case don't bother. You shouldn't be doing this. Bad employee. If you forgot your own administrative password, shame on you. *SWAT* And make sure you follow the instructions regarding the secondary posting password. The author is correct, there is a second password involved in using Movable Type. So your UserId/Password for administering the site is NOT the same password for making posts. When you get that section of the Movable Type site, look for the little link on the right that says "Reveal" to the right of the password. It will produce a popup box. You will NOT be able to copy and paste this information. Start typing... :) Once done, you'll find Live Writer happily exist with your other blogging sites. Wheeeeee! Sean |
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