I just bought another toner cyan cartridge for my color laser for $140 less a $20 rebate. I think I need a magenta cartridge, too. I do not know why it took me so long to think of this but I changed the default options for the printer to print using black and white. When I want to print in color I can change the option to print in color.
Fixed my Blackberry SMTP problem
After upgrading to the latest version of the Blackberry OS I was testing out several features and I found I could not send email from my Blackberry. It said my service was blocked. I do not send email from my Blackberry very often but I would like that option to work if I needed to use it so I called T-Mobile support yesterday. They recommended that I modify my installation since I should be using the webclient access rather than the enterprise access. That fixed other problems I was seeing. When she asked me to go into the service book and remove the desktop CMIME that fixed the service blocked problem.
Oops! I do know enough about Active Directory to turn off my son’s PC at 11pm
Okay, here’s the problem. My son likes to play games on PC to excess. I asked him several times to restrict his game playing since he was avoiding homework and the late nights are disrupting his sleep time. He got a detention for falling asleep in French. He gave me his word that he would fix his problem. I reminded him that if he could not exhibit the discipline required to fix this problem that I would help him. Since he is running W2K and is using a login for our local SBS network I could enforce logoff times for school nights. He thinks he is pretty smart about computers but he did not see that one coming. Heh! Heh! My son has always been pretty smart about the boundaries I set up for him and my willingness to enforce boundaries. Now we can move on to other problems.
EFS on SBS2K3 & WinXP
A couple of weeks ago I decided to start playing around with the encrypting file system(EFS) that Microsoft provides with W2K and WinXP. I am not sure whether I got the idea from Susan Bradley post, < a xhref=”The Case of the Stolen ….well anything!“. She wrote her post in response to an article she had recently read a Microsoft article on encryption, The Case of the Stolen Laptop: Mitigating the Threats of Equipment Theft — TechNet Column – Security Management – February 2005. Until I started playing with EFS I avoided it like the plague because I did not see a business use for me and the risks from a mistake could be severe. When I finally realized that it is probably the best and easiest strategy for protecting sensitive data for both laptops and desktops. I finally bought in. The desktop benefits eluded me for a long time. The additional benefits from encryption to enhance the security around current access is subtle but straight forward. Even more subtle is the long term benefit from avoiding future unintended access when you want to dispose/reuse a disk drive or if the equipment is stolen. Now that I had settled in my mind that it was a good practice, I had to figure out how to get from here to there.
After my initial testing I was pretty happy with the results. Encryption and decryption was transparent. About a week later I decided I should backup the file recovery certificate and file recovery agent certificate and that’s when I found a couple of problems. The recovery agent could not be backed up properly. Things had gotten mucked up when I had said no to installing the certificate services during the SBS2K3. Since I am paranoid about really making a mess with encryption:
- I decrypted all my folders and files.
- Installed certificate services.
- Installed a new certificate for the Administrator and the recovery agent for the domain.
- Installed a new certificate for my workstation.
- Deleted the old certificates for the administrator and my workstation.
- Rebooted.
I found that I needed EFSinfo.exe to verify the EFS setup so I installed the WinXP support tools. Everything seems to be working and I have backups of the recovery certificates. Nothing has really changed when you look or use the encrypted folders and files in Explorer. You need EFSinfo to see the changes but I now have a warm, fuzzy feeling I can recover files in case of a disaster.
Poor Man’s Installatin(cont.)
Today I tried to store Knoppix image using the 2.6.9 kernel and it said /dev/hda1 was not mounted. I also found out that the k3b utility I was using to burn cd’s would hang when using the 2.6.9 kernel and not when using the 2.4.27 kernel It would be nice to run 2.6 but 2.4 works. So I have a 2.4 poor man’s install with a persistent home that works. K3B is clunky in 2.4.27 but it does work. I read that a new Knoppix version is coming out in a month so I am done. I played a litttle bit with Helix. It uses Knoppix 3.4 as its base and adds some forensic and disaster recovery software. Helix might be a useful tool to have in the bag.
Poor Man’s Installation of Knoppix 3.7 and CD-ROM problems
I was reading my email yesterday and I saw a review of Knoppix hacks. One of the hacks was the Poor Man’s Installation of Knoppix. I decided to give it a try. With a little more research I found a little more detailed version of the hack that was titled, Poor Man’s installation. Now my situation is slightly complicated due to an old CD-ROM that is used for booting. I have a much newer DVD/CD-RW writer but it is not used for booting. A couple of months ago I found out that my old CD-ROM drive locks up the Knoppix boot process when DMA gets enabled and boot process tries to access it. Knoppix automagically enables DMA on it so I had to use a cheatcode to disable the DMA. This was an unsatisfactory solution since it disabled DMA on all drives and this resulted in quite a performance hit. The other problem is that the CD-ROM does not like all CD-RW disks. My Ubuntu disk worked. My Knoppix 3.7 did not work.
By accident I left the Knoppix 3.7 CD-RW in the CD-RW reader and the CDR version of Knoppix 3.6 in the CD-ROM reader. When I booted and something interesting happened. It booted from the CDR(Knoppix 3.6) and then mounted Knoppix 3.7 on the CD-RW since it found it first. My CD-RW likes DMA so instead of locking up it proceeded to continue with the boot process off of the CD-RW(Knoppix 3.7). This worked because I was booting using the 2.4 kernel. It kind of worked with the 2.6 kernel but there were problems. After storing a Knoppix image(2.4) on /dev/hda1 I found that I could boot without specifying a “fromhd=” cheatcode! In fact I recommend this. In my setup Knoppix scans my hardrives first so the boot delay is pretty minimal. If you specify the wrong location it will dump you down into a restricted kernel and stop the boot process. Now the kernel used to boot with and the kernel image on the disk must use the same Linux kernel version for this to work.
Okay, one problem was solved. The next problem was creating a CDR version of the boot disk for my funky CD-ROM reader. For some reason I created a bad CDR version using CD Creator under XP. So I went into Knoppix and created a CDR version there. To give it the best chance at working, I restricted the write speed down to 4x and told it to verify. It took a long time to copy and verify but it works. Now I can boot the 2.6 kernel cleanly from the CDR. So now I am in the process of going back and re-creating the persistent home and a kernel 2.6 image.
The main reason I am going through this process is so that I can use Ethereal, Nessus, and QTparted in Linux. I still have this desire to see which ports are used by America’s Army and which ports are getting through my ISA firewall. Sometime in the future I will probably check out Linux virus checking. I actually learned some useful information about burning and reading CDR disks. If I can boot it using my funky CDR reader, I suspect the CD is bootable on most PCs.
Review: RSS Bandit v1.3.x (Wolverine) Beta Installer Available
We are now feature complete for the next release of RSS Bandit. Interested users can download it at http://rssbandit.sourceforge.net/. All bugs specific to the previous alpha release have been fixed. The next steps for us are finish working on documentation, translations and fixing any bugs that are reported during the beta with the intention of shipping a final release in the next two weeks. (1 comments)
[Via SourceForge.net: SF.net Project News: RSS Bandit]
Okay, I am a fan of RSS Bandit so this review is a little biased. This is my primary RSS reader and I started using it early last year so I have some experience with it. It basically has all the features all the other readers have and a few extra features that I use regularly. I think it started out looking a lot like SharpReader but it appears to diverged and added more features that I like. Since it is a SourceForge project I consider that a plus. In this new release the features I have started using are:
- Newspaper view is a handy way to skim the headlines. This view has improved from the alpha release to include all feeds in a category. The format of the newspaper view is visually appealing without much overhead. I have actually started reading Boing Boing since the newspaper view has made it so convient.
- I like the option to “Mark All Items as Read on Exiting a Feed”.
Those two features have made my RSS reading a lot more efficient. Some old features I like that may or may not appear in other readers.
- Interface to w.bloggar
- Subscribe in default aggregator option in IE
- Tabbed views
Dr Dave’s Blog » Introducing Spam Karma
Dr Dave’s Blog » Introducing Spam Karma
Spam Karma works by running every new comment through a battery of filters and checks. Each of which increase or decrease the comment’s Karma’ value. Depending on the final score, the comment is either:
- Approved
- Discarded silently as spam (no email is sent to you, unless you specifically require it, but a digest is sent to you every X spams deleted).
- Placed in Moderation mode. With the possibility for the commenter to auto-moderate his own comment by proving he’s not a spammer (by filling a Captcha or checking a confirmation email).
- This whole process insures (by order of priority):
- No deleted false positive (bad bad bad).
- Extremely few moderated false positives (annoying): uses Captcha and email auto-moderation to keep these at a minimum.
- No published spam.
- very little spam held in moderation (must be destroyed directly: really annoying to have to moderate it).
Further more, Spam Karma works in an intelligent way to automatically update its filtering database and grow stronger with each spam it catches…
In short: blocks spam with no unnecessary annoyance, for you or your visitors. The way it should be.
I decided to give this comment spam killer for WordPress after Kitten’s latest version decided to stop working. So far so good! 🙂
RE: Notepad++ v2.7 released
Notepad++ is a free (under the GPL license) source code editor which supports several programming languages under Windows environment. It’s also a lightweight replacement of Notepad.
The version 2.7 contains several new features and fixed bugs,
[Via SourceForge.net: Front page news]
This looked like an easy thing to test so I downloaded it to compare it to my current favorite, Jedit. I have to say that I was impressed with the speed it loads. The interface is nice and clean. It has tabs, syntax highlighting and folding. In general it is pretty slick and faster than Jedit. I think I will give this guy an extended tryout.
RE: OS 4.0 Released for 7100t
T-Mobile users with the 7100t can upgrade their handhelds from 3.8 to 4.0.
[Via Blackberry Cool]
I took a trip on the wild side and upgraded my Blackberry to 4.0. It works but…I am having problems sending emails. I don’t use this feature but in testing it I found out that it does not work I tried resending the service book but it does not appear as a message so I am not sure it was sent. I also had to re-enter my speed dials and the info in Berry411. I guess I will have to call support to get the email sending workiing. I know they have changed stuff but they did not change anything I am enterested in. My #1 feature I would like is being able to read html email.
Configuring default email to drop email with bad addresses
I was browsing the help files at my web host/email provider and found that I could either drop all email with bad addresses(:blackhole:) or bounce the mail(:fail:). From my previous experience with bounced spam I opted for blackhole. I have found zero false-positives so this is a reasonable setting.
Rebuilding Eclipse
I finally bit the bullet and downloaded a 3.01 to replace my upgraded 3.0. I had tried to perform a little maintenance a week ago and was not happy with the results. It seemed to be slow and the plugin upgrades did not seem to be upgrading properly. Everything worked but a couple of the plugins were not uninstallable. Experience has shown me that funkiness is best appreciated in music not in software upgrades. Since I have a broadband connection I downloaded a new file of the 3.01 installation and re-installed my plugins. This installation and upgrade process was a lot faster than upgrading the 3.0 installation and everything is working as expected. 🙂
Berry411 Search Tool
Now this is a useful tool! I am still developing my opinion on the userfulness of web access via a webphone. A good webphone application I have used is looking up local vendors. A couple of years ago when we were building the farm I kept an old copy of the Yellow Pages in the car just for this purpose. Recently I went out to get the supplies to fix a broken window. I went to Home Depot and found all the supplies that I needed except for the glass pane. For some reason Home Depot does not sell glass. So as I was walking back to my car I looked up local vendors using Yahoo. It took me several menus to get to the search screen but I finally found a local glass supplier. The Berry 411 Search tool gets me to the answer several screens faster and formats the results better. It provides gives you quick access to yellow pages, white pages, movie times, Google, and Froogle results. Now thats what I call a cool webphone application!
TweakUI and OPIE2
A couple of days ago I got fed up with the Standard shortcuts displayed in most Save As menus and the My Places displayed in the Office 2003 Save As menu. TweakUI fixed the standard menus so that I now see:
- Downloads
- Favorites
- Desktop
- My Documents
- My Computer
OPIE2 did not really work for me so I ended up creating the list manually. It did create smaller icons and more slots but did not fill the slots correctly. 😥
These are the five places I go to a lot on my computer so I wanted my shortcuts to reflect my preferences. I think I have them in ordered by frequency of use. I use a shared directory called Downloads for downloaded programs, non Windows Update patches, and reading material I want to review later. The Favorites link gets me to the projects and company files I am working on. I use the Desktop for temporary items I am working on and other current items that do not have a project directory. My cvs directories are located on my Desktop since tortoisecvs does not create sandboxes on network file shares.
New version of wbloggar is available
One of the blogs I monitor is w.bloggar since it is the home of wbloggar. I started using this tool when I found that RssBandit supported it for blogging news items. I got it to work with wordpress and userland. I kind of wish I could use it with phpwebsite’s article manager. I think it has the right amount of features to make content creation with article manager easier.
ISA log file getting out of control
A while back I followed an article, ISA Server & SQL Server – Brothers in Arms, to store my ISA log data into a SQL server database. I created an Excel spreadsheet to help me parse the data base so I could debug some problems I had encountered. His instructions were good but they did not discuss how to periodically clean out the data. By the time I decided to solve this problem my log file was over 2 GB and over 700,000 rows in the webproxylog. I tried to use the SQL Query Analyzer but I kept getting ODBC timeouts. I had a little more success with OSQL but the key was to delete fewer rows in each query. I started deleting by day. As I succeeded in reducing the table size a bit I went on to deleting by week and finally by month. After I had completed all of this I still had a 2 GB file. So I tried to shrink the database using SQL Enterprise Manager. It did not work so I went into Files option of shrink and ran it. My database was now down to 400 MB. Before the week is out I am putting together a SQL job to delete rows older than 30 days and report the space used in an email back to me. I actually have all the queries ready although I really do not like the format of the spaceused procedure. When it exports to a text file it pads the variable length character fields to their maximum which causes unsightly text wrapping.
AlternaTIFF TIFF Plug-in
AlternaTIFF is a web browser add-on (ActiveX control or plug-in) that displays most of the common types of TIFF image files.
I could not resist to play a little. Once of the solutions offered in the fax viewing problem was to use an alternative tiff viewer, such as, alternaTIFF. This viewer comes as an activex and a plugin. I knew this would be a fast test so I checked it out. First of all this viewer is free. Second and most importantly it is fast and does what it supposed to do in both IE and Firefox. Now that’s cool!
Are faxes not opening right on your SBS 2003?
Are faxes not opening right on your SBS 2003?
If your faxes are not opening right, it’s probably because Quicktime was loaded up. Try uninstalling Quicktime.
I tried to looking for a file association or Quicktime configuration problem. I did not find a problem so I uninstalled. It works correctly. It brings up Microsoft’s Fax and Picture Viewer which is want I wanted.
Upgrading my son’s PC to PC-cillin Internet Security 2005
My son’s virus checking software, NAV 2003, was about to expire so I decided to investigate the options. I decided on changing to PC-cillin Internet Security 2005. It received good reviews and TrendMicro was offering a competitive upgrade. For the price of a NAV upgrade I could add some extra features I was interested in, such as, personal firewall. I really wanted to add a firewall since I have hung my son’s PC outside of the Microsoft ISA firewall so he can play games. Since he is running W2K he was running kind of naked.
Encrypting financial directories
Today I decided to take the plunge to encrypt the directories containing the Quicken and QuickBooks data files. So far I have seen any problems with either program. After playing with various types of disk cleaning programs in that past, I have come around to the thought that the best course of action is to encrypt sensitive data. If encryption can be nearly transparent to a user like me then this should be a very pragmatic decision.