Month: May 2005

Getting Perl Package Manager to work V2

In Getting Perl Package Manager to work I wrote that I could get Perl Package Manager to work if I removed the environment variable http_proxy. The reason it worked was because I had already installed a firewall rule that allowed anonymous access for http. If I specified the environment variable I would get slammed with 407 authentication error. Today I got a 403 error while running ppm. I eventually figured out that I did not have a firewall rule to allow anonymous http access since I upgraded to ISA 2004. I knew I had some trouble shooting in front of me when Firefox had a problem yesterday.

Installing SBS 2003 SP1

I just finished installing and configuring SP1 for SBS 2003. I ordered the cd-rom about a week ago and received it on Saturday. Today looked like a good day to install it. It took me between 4 to 6 hours to install and configure it. I had a little extra work because I have the Premium version which means I need to upgrade SQL Server and ISA 2004. Since I had previously migrated Sharepoint from MSDE to SQL Server, I had to install SQL SP4 twice, once for default instance and once for sharepoint instance.

I found the advice in the article How to install Service Pack 1 for SBS 2003 [Author Mariëtte Knap] to be helpful. I had to disable IISAdmin to complete the installation. Then I had to re-enable IISAdmin and make sure the IIS server was started to complete the Internet Connection Wizard without errors. ISA 2004 is pretty slick!

I also had to re-install the firewall client on my workstation. I was somewhat surprised I had to alter my configuration in Firefox to get it to work again. Oh well! I guess I have some more testing to do.

RE: In Addition to “Subst” …

Windows XP logoA good friend of mine, Ian, pointed out that in addition to Subst, there is another way to map drives. This one is specific to network shares, but you can use the command net from the command prompt.The syntax is pretty simple: net use {drive} \\{computer}\{Share}

Now you *can* replace {drive} with “*” to use the next available drive letter. If you use the command net help use, you can get more help on how to use it.

In addition, on the last blog post, and also from Ian, there is apparently a free tool that I haven’t used to create “junction points”. SysInternal provides a free utility.

[Via SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff]

This innocuous post lead me on merry chase. I was curious about junctions so I went over to Sysinternals. After some fooling around I ended up at a very nice article on Windows Symbolic and Hard Links at Shell-Shocked. Since I had read so much about junctions I decided to try them out so I downloaded and installed NTFS Link from elsdoerfer.info. I created a hard link to my temp folder on my Desktop. It worked. Jdiskreport says I have a temp folder on my Desktop which contains the same files and folders located elsewhere on my disk. I still do not know what to do with junctions. One thought is to enhance the My Photos and Videos folders. On my PC these are redirected to fileserver and synchronized. The inadvertent offline copies created with Adobe Photoshop Elements and Pinnacle Studio have caused me some headaches in the past as it quickly used up local disk space. My efforts to turn off synchronization for these folders have not gone well so this might be an alternative.

Microsoft Office Tools reviews by PC Magazine

Microsoft Office Tools reviews by PC Magazine

ASAP Utilities 3.08 (free) is a superb set of 300 menu items, ranging from deselecting cells to text-to-date conversions to HTML export for selected information. Many items roll multistep tasks—such as opening the folder of the current file in Explorer—into one-click commands. Others perform complex calculations. This is the one essential add-in for all Excel users.

I do not know why I never found this one! It has a bunch of useful macros. The one macro that caught my attention was creating a html table from Excel. Excel’s default method of creating html code adds too much “junk” for my taste. In fact I had moved away from Excel for my initial data entry because I had to do so much cleanup work. It was just easier to code it natively in html. Now I have an alternative and it is free!

Wiki for phpWebSite

I have started using the Wiki for phpWebSite on my main website as an alternative way to document some SBS procedures, QuickBooks tips, and Habitat research. There was a little learning curve for me since I have never used a wiki before but it is pretty handy. It definitely is a viable alternative to Article Manager.

Dr Dave » Spam Karma 2 is here

Dr Dave » Spam Karma

It is kind of difficult to keep up with some of these plugins but I do like Spam Karma. Spam Karma 2 is the latest version and it does a great job of keeping my poker spam in the trash bin.

Upgrading WordPress

I decided to upgrade WordPress to the latest version(1.5.1) by going outside of cPanel and installing it in a new directory. I am not sure how it happened but my version of WordPress was ending up at a blank screen after a successful comment. I do not get that many comments but I found it annoying. A clean install of WordPress fixed this problem Another result of this change is that the RSS feed has now changed but I am pretty sure this doesn’t affect anyone.The big things I needed to do to make it work were:

  1. Copy the wp-config.php to the new directory.
  2. To make my photo appear in the header I needed to copy the personalheader.jpg from my old theme over to the new images directory in my theme, change the image position to bottom to truncate the sky part of the photo, and uncomment the headerimg line in the header.php.
  3. I prefer the title to be positioned at the bottom left of the header box. I also prefer a smaller font. So I changed the h1 header in the style.css. The css I used for the h1 element is now:
    h1 {
    font-size: 1.6em;
    text-align: left;
    padding: 10px;
    position:relative;
    top:80px;
    }

Excel Round time to the nearest quarter hour

Excel Round time to the nearest quarter hour

I screwed up with my paysheet calculation for one of our employees on our farm for the last pay period. I was calculating the number of hours worked in my head. One of our employees pointed out the mistake and I decided to minimize future mistakes by letting Excel do the math for me. The hard part was rounding to the nearest quarter of an hour till I found this link. Thanks Mr. Excel!

I guess the next thing to do is to create an IIF file to import into QuickBooks.

SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff: One way to

SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff: One way to “send as” when using multiple domains

  1. Create a mail-enabled group (aka Distribution List) representing each one of the incoming addresses. The primary SMTP address (that is the upper-case SMTP type address that you see in Active Directory Users and Computers) should reflect the correct inbound domain. So, for example, you can create the following groups with the associated SMTP address:
    1. Group 1 – SMTP: Mailbox1@domainA.com
    2. Group 2 – SMTP: Mailbox2@domainA.com
    3. Group 3 – SMTP: Mailbox1@domainB.com
    4. Group 4 – SMTP: Mailbox1@domainC.com
  2. So, hopefully you can see what I’m doing here …the inbound mail destined for a specific mailbox and domain actually resolves to a group rather than an actual mailbox. From here, you can just add whichever mailboxes you like to the group, and of course, those users will receive the mail via the group.
  3. The next step is to allow your users “send as” permissions on each group object (you do this through Active Directory Users and Computers as well). So, when a user replies to a mail, then can use the optional FROM: box in Outlook to pecificy/choose the name of the group that they want the message to be from.
  4. When your user sends the reply, the message is stamped as coming from the group e-mail address, which of course will have the correct domain name stamped on it (this comes from that upper-case SMTP type address).

Okay, I did this today but there are some minor gotcha’s. Smarter folks than I would have probably blown right by these gotch’s but you do not need to repeat these for my sake.

  1. First question out of the box is what type of distribution group do you create. The answer is Universal. Better yet is to run the Add Distribution Group Wizard.
  2. If the email address you are planning on using for the group had been previously used for an individual user, you need to remove it from that user before creating the group. Mother Exchange was not happy till you cleaned up your mess. Uh..Duh!
  3. You have to turn on Advanced Features of the Active Directory Users and Computers. Then when you right click on your newly created group and view its Properties you can see the Security Tab. Why do you want to see the security tab you say? So you can enable the “Send As” property for your user or security group.
  4. When you create your message in Outlook, make sure you use your newly created distribution group name in the From field and not the email address for the group. Better yet, take a few more seconds and click on the From box. Drill down through menus to the groups and select the group. I thought I would save time by entering the email address but Mother Exchange rejected my email. It said I was not authorized to send to the recipient. An hour later I figured out that using the group name made it happy.

The business of trust

The business of trust

So what are some issues small business owners should be concerned about when they let someone else do the bookkeeping?

If you answer “yes” to any of these, you may have issues in segregation of duties:

  1. Is the person who handles your cash also responsible for recording the cash?
  2. Does the person who pays or orders inventory also receive the materials?
  3. Are two or fewer people responsible for the accounting function?
  4. Is only one person responsible for reviewing financial statements each month?
  5. Is your review of financial journals sporadic?

If you answer “no” to any of these, you may have issues with Bank Reconciliation:

  1. Do you review canceled checks and endorsements on a monthly basis?
  2. Do you compare payroll checks with your current employee records?
  3. Do you question funds transferred between bank accounts?
  4. Do you track the number of credit card bills you sign per month?
  5. Are bank reconciliations performed on a timely basis?
  6. Is someone responsible for reviewing the reconciliations each month?
  7. Do you verify reconciled items?

If you answer “yes” to any of these, you may have issues with documentation:

  1. Do you ever sign blank checks?
  2. Do you ever sign checks without original supporting documentation?
  3. Do you ever sign checks without canceling supporting documentation?
  4. Have funds ever been transferred between accounts without review or verification?
  5. Do you ever sign checks for new business vendors without knowing or verifying their name and association with your company?

If you answer “yes” to any of these you may have issues with employees:

  1. Are any of your employees extremely possessive of their work records and reluctant to share their tasks?
  2. Are any of your employees apprehensive about vacations and time off, while always being the first in the office and the last out?
  3. Have you noticed a substantial change of lifestyle in any of your employees?
  4. Do any of your employees have a possible substance abuse problem?
  5. Are any of your employees living beyond their means?
  6. Have you ever hired an employee before checking references?
  7. Do you permit your accounting personnel to work longer than a year without taking a vacation?
  8. Do you have any accounting staff or key personnel who have not been secured with a fidelity bond?

If you answer “no” to any of these you may have a problem with assets:

  1. Are blank check stocks and signature stamps safely secured?
  2. Do you restrictively endorse all checks when received?
  3. Do you deposit cash and checks daily?
  4. Do you maintain a list of office furniture, equipment, and company vehicles?

This is a good checklist for a small business and for a non-profit to consider. The biggest consideration for not implementing any of these recommendations is the financial and operational risk. As an example, our Habitat affiliate has a pickup truck that we carry at salvage value. The financial risk is minimal. It is convenient to have available but it is not going to stop construction if it is stolen or broken down. As a result our bookeeping of the truck is minimal. However, many of the other recommendations require us to just work smarter!

Getting Yahoo SMTP to work

I cannot tell you how long I have been using Yahoo mail but it is a long, long time. Today I was reading an email and noticed that Yahoo mail identified that the domain keys for the mail had been verified. It had a link to an explanation of domain keys so I followed it. I knew that my ISP blocked port 25 to other SMTP servers and if I could not get to Yahoo’s SMTP server then domain keys was not going to be very helpful. It was in the domain keys info I found that Yahoo had opened port 587 for authenticated SMTP traffic. Now that is cool!

So I changed my email account to support the new smtp port and not surprisingly it didn’t work. The error message said it could not find the server. That sounds like a firewall blocking access. Since Trend hadn’t popped up a message I was pretty sure ISA was blocking the port. My default configuration blocks anonymous access for most ports. So I created a protocol definition for port 587 and enabled it in my default rule. Now it works like a charm.