Hard Core Lottery Player

Are you a hard core lottery player? (I'm not and I don't like that one rule they have - you know the one - you can't win if you don't play.) If you are a hard core player, and you live in Missouri, then you might be interested in the Missouri Lottery's new service. See the, Missouri Lottery Offers Text Alerts For Winning Numbers press release. Even if you don't live in Missouri you might be interested in the service as Missouri participates in the PowerBall Lottery, which is a multi-state game.

Did you know that 26 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands participate in PowerBall. The Multi-State Lottery Association is based in Urbandale, Iowa. I know that probably would have been where you would have guessed.

Member Lotteries:

Arizona Lottery
California Lottery
Colorado Lottery
Connecticut Lottery Corporation
D.C. Lottery & CGCB
Delaware State Lottery
Hoosier Lottery
Idaho Lottery
Iowa Lottery
Kansas Lottery
Kentucky Lottery Corporation
Louisiana Lottery Corporation
Maine Lottery
Minnesota State Lottery
Missouri Lottery
Montana Lottery
Nebraska Lottery
New Hampshire Lottery Commission
New Mexico Lottery Authority
North Dakota Lottery
Oregon Lottery
Pennsylvania Lottery
Rhode Island Lottery
South Carolina Education Lottery
South Dakota Lottery
Tennessee Education Lottery
Vermont Lottery
U.S. Virgin Islands Lottery
Wisconsin Lottery
West Virginia Lottery

What are your chances of winning Powerball: 1 in 120,526,770

Center for Digital Government

The Center for Digital Government has posted the top 25 digital states for 2004 and their 2004 Digital States Survey report. It is a free report, but they do have you register to download it.

Note: The reports was underwritten by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Picasa 2 is out.

Click the pic above to get it.

eWeek Extra - Lotusphere

Check out the eWeek Extra.

There are a couple of names you might recognize:

Andrew Pollack
Richard Schwartz

Error Messages

I had to try out the Error Message Generator that many have posted about.

Hey, I couldn't resist poking fun.




To make up for all of those that say, "An unknown error occurred." So how do you know that it occurred?

Slow Posts

Blogger has been posting slowly again. I hope they are not having more database problems. Yesterday the status page showed they were having router problems. They have had some mail-to-blogger issues lately too.

Mobile Phones for Work.

Interesting.

Ford replaces office phones with Sprint PCS wireless devices. (RCR Wireless News)

I don't think that will be happening at the State of Missouri anytime soon as there is currently a freeze on the purchase of cell phones.

Guess the Dictator and/or Television Sit-Com Character

Pretty funny. Click on the picture to try it, you'll probably be surprised how good it is.

PubSub

I posted on my Bloglines blog that Ed notes that he ranks 860 on PubSub and Bruce follows noting that he is 53,284 and OpenNTF is 81,643. I was surprised to see that I actually have a rank. It is 2,392,158.

Time Magazine Article - Blogs

See the Time Magazine article, "10 Things We Learned About Blogs".

Phil's got some recommendations

In a post today, Phil Windley, a former State CIO himself, makes his own recommendations on IT consolidation.

Interesting Part 2

Reading this post on David Fletcher's blog it appears that we have even more in common with Utah. This time it appears Utah is following Missouri and closing it's DC office.

Just a little dedication going out to Sara Radacati

Blog On by Vandenberg

Alright!
They say life is just a threat, they know what is good and bad
I know what I want, no one tells me what to do - alright!
They say life ain't just for fun, but my life has just begun
I'm not gonna waste it, I'll take my piece of the cake
Chorus:
I'm gonna blog on - gotta let yourself go, just let it blow
Blog On - gotta let yourself go, just let it blow
Let it blow, yeah
They say rock music's bad, well I'm not so sure 'bout that
'Cos if it's so bad, how come I'm feeling so good?
(chorus)
Ain't gonna listen to them, I'm gonna have fun
It's my life that I'm living, I'm gonna blog on, I'm gonna blog on
Give it to them!
(Solo)
Blog on - gonna let yourself go, just let it blow
Blog on - gonna let yourself go, just let it blow
Blog on - I'm gonna blog on, blog on
Why don't you blog on, why don't you let, why don't you let
Why don't you let yourself go

Interesting

On the same day that Missouri's new Governor, Matt Blunt, revoked the executive order which sanctioned collective bargaining for state agencies in Missouri, the Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, also rescinded an executive order that established collective bargaining.

Radicati Posts Flow Freely

As Sara Radicati, or should I say the Radicati Group, has made more predictions the posts in response appear to have risen.

I must say that the predictions don't seem to be to far reaching. Maybe using a Crystal Marble instead of a Crystal Ball.

It would be nice if they would follow each of the items listed with a little bit of background or reasoning kind of like this (Statements following the items in parenthesis are simply my additional comments):

We expect IBM Lotus Notes/Domino to continue losing market share to MS Exchange and other players. - This one we simply listed to piss off the Domino Community

Phishing attacks will get worse before they get better. - Hey this is the pattern for a lot of things. You don't usually hear of a lot of things getting better before they get worse.

Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news. - We say this because it never really made it to the corporate world. (This appears to be a short-sighted prediction to me. I guess it depends on your view of what blogging is and how strong it can be coupled with RSS and Atom feeds.)

Microsoft will speed up development on the next version of Internet Explorer, and release an update before Longhorn - the current plan is to release the next version of IE with Longhorn in 2006. - Because this was already talked about before the new year we figured it would be safe to list. The Longhorn part might be a Longshot.

Microsoft will enter the anti-virus market in a year when the severity of virus attacks will reach an all time high. - Hey they follow the trends. (Some equate Anti-Spyware and Anti-virus together and they bought Giant and released the Beta Anti-Spyware tool and they had a recent update (KB890830), which some would say is anti-virus software, so they met that one. Have you noticed that it seems some people like to interchangeably use the terms Spyware and Anti-Spyware? This makes one have to stop and look at the context of what is being said and what is really meant. Hmm, wonder how this fits in on the MSN side of things. Right now Microsoft offers McAfee Virus Protection with an MSN Premium account. Unless they buy the company or simply license it under a Microsoft name it would seem silly to spend the time on coming up with an Anti-Virus product, although there is money in it.)

Malicious Software Removal Tool - January 2005 (KB890830)
This tool checks your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any variants found. You should also use an antivirus product to remove other malicious software that may be present. This tool helps maintain your computer, and its appearance does not indicate that your machine is infected with malicious software. After you run this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Biometrics will become the latest trend in security systems, for network access, desktop access, and physical building access. - Hey just as good as any other guess and it gets a lot of play in the press. Besides everyone carries all of the biometric pieces around with them all of the time. You usually don't hear employees say, "Oops, I can't login, I left my finger at home today." (HelpDesk, could you reset my password, I can't remember if it was my finger or my eye?)

Hosted Email providers will see strong growth, as more and more companies look to email as a service, considering the rising costs and complexity of in-house systems. - Having somebody else do the work always sounds good. We could have said hosted email solutions would take market share away from Microsoft and Notes, but we didn't want to reflect Microsoft in a negative light, although it would have been fun to have another dig at the Domino community. (And the hosting sites aren't experiencing the rising costs and complexity? Not sure what one's definition of strong would be, but I would think that companies would go into this cautiously, watching how it works out for those that do. What happens when they want to move providers, or bring it back in-house? What happens when the host has you hooked and raises your cost? What happens when the host can't get something back that you need? What happens when the provider gets caught in a legal case and all of their equipment is seized, including the server, SAN, etc.. that your companies e-mail is on? What happens if your ISP goes belly up or has all of its equipment seized for some reason and you can't get to your e-mail? What happens when the virus of all viruses takes down the Internet for a week, thus loosing your connectivity to your mail?)

Google will introduce an IM client that will do surprisingly well. - There was already talk about this in the forums before the end of the year, so we figured it was a good bet.

IM Management vendors will continue to be the biggest winners in the IM space, as more and more companies will have a need for better IM security, archiving, and retrieval. - Duh, trying to control all of those free clients that are a potential security threat is going to cost you some money and managers are finally realizing that yes their organization is using IM even though they keep telling everyone that it doesn't.

In the email archiving and compliance market, we expect consolidation of features in the form of all-in-one appliance solutions. - We needed this one to make the list actually come out to ten. It is kind of vague and we didn't figure everyone would read this far. We hoped anyone that did might just give a quick puzzled look and move on.

Saved searches

From the Bloglines Newsletter. A neat feature:

Search Into The Future

Today's Topic: Save That Search!

You know how search engines work: enter keywords and you'll get results from today back into the dusty archives of the web. If you want to follow a topic going forward, you've got to return to the search engine and type in your request all over again. Who's got time for that?

Bloglines will search into the future for you.

Bloglines Saved Search feature is a gem that captures a requested search for you and then persistently watches millions of active blog and RSS feeds for new references to that topic. Save your search once, and Bloglines will automatically watch the relevant activity for you. When something new pops up on that topic you're searching for, we'll grab it and present it to you on your My Feeds Page. It's as easy as that.

* Monitor emerging news, medical or technical developments.
* Follow the conversation around your favorite sport.
* Track your company's online reputation.
* Keep an eye on your competition.

Another Good Cause

Not sure if it was the first, but the Yellow LiveStrong bracelets sold to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) sure made them popular. As many as you see it appears that it has been successful and brought about an awareness, so much so that others have followed suit.

Another organization following Lance's lead is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The idea behind the bracelet is to MAXIMIZE AWARENESS, MAXIMIZE HOPE,and ultimately MAXIMIZE LIFE.

There are many other bracelets showing up, such a breast cancer awareness, autism awareness, etc..

You can find out more about the orange braclet shown above here or here. It raises money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Phil's take on combining positions

Phil Windley, former CIO of Utah, gives his take on bringing the CIO into Administration within Utah. This has recently been done within Missouri.

IT consolidation was a campaign topic. I am not sure how far reaching the IT consolidation plans are, but I would guess they could take it a step further, such that all IT within the different agencies organizationally report back up the chain of command to the State CIO. I believe Phil has commented in the past that it is tough to be the CIO and set direction when you do not have a hold of the purse strings to make things happen or possibly stop other things from happening. Combining the two CIO positions would give the single CIO control over the largest shared resources within the State, possibly giving more leverage in the State CIO capacity and a greater ability to bring about change and set direction.

I guess we will stay tuned and see how things go.

No Blogging Representation Here

David Fletcher mentions Utah State Representative Steve Urquhart's blog (it didn't want to open for me within Firefox, but loaded fine with IE) in his post, "Representative Blogging".

I think it would be good if more Representatives had a blog. I think it could be a great tool for them to communicate with many of their constituents. I am not aware of any of Missouri's Representatives openly advertising a blog, of course, that does not mean that they do not have one. When viewing the roster and clicking on the Representatives name there is a location for the Representatives personal e-mail address as well as their personal website. Several do have their personal e-mail address listed, but I only noticed one having a personal website listed and that individual is the Speaker of the House, Rod Jetton (state listing/personal site).

Rod Jetton

Moving In

The new administration is moving swiftly in their transition. It appears that our new Governor, Matt Blunt, has moved into the Governor website without a hitch. Now one can view his press releases here. A fair number of those named in the new administration have been around within state government, but are now serving in new capacities, as is the case with our Director. I received an e-mail from our new director today and expect many to follow.

Cruzer Titanium

I received a SanDisk Cruzer Titaniuum USB Flash Drive for Christmas. It is cool enough on it's own, simply having 512MB of storage on a little stick that will withstand 2,000 lbs, keeping it from being easily crushed. Connect to a device that supports USB 2.0 and transfers absolutely scream (15MB/sec read and 13MB/sec write speeds). The connector slides back into the body for protecion as well.

What makes this thing that much better is the software that comes with it.

CruzerLock for securing files.

Cruzer PocketCache backup software with snapshot technology.

CruzerSync by DMailer for taking your Outlook with you. Unfortunately it only works with Outlook only. Not Notes, not Groupwise, not Outlook Express, etc.., just the full blown Outlook. Although it is a bit limited as it only supports SMTP addresses in regards to sending from it, it can basically bring everything over from Outlook, including attachments. It can even bring over favorites. I did download newer versions of the software from SanDisk of software that came on the Cruzer. You run the apps right from the device not from your PC. It syncs pretty quickly and works much like Outlook. Even though an e-mail may have come from a corporate account, if the individual has a corresponding SMTP address and you know the address of an SMTP relay (that will allow you to route mail through it) then you can actually reply to the e-mail and send it directly from the device. If not looking to close the recipient probably won't even realize it.

See the brochure.

Adobe Reader 7.0

So much for my nice remarks on Adobe Reader 7.0. Here are the system requirements.

Adobe Reader 7.0 system requirements
Windows

* Intel® Pentium® processor
* Microsoft® Windows 2000 with Service Pack 2, Windows XP Professional or Home Edition, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
* 128MB of RAM
* Up to 90MB of available hard-disk space
* Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher

Macintosh

* PowerPC® G3 processor
* Mac OS X v.10.2.8 or 10.3
* Up to 35MB of RAM
* Up to 125MB of available hard-disk space


In other words my Windows 98SE machine is stuck with the slow 6.02. Come on, my old machine is slow enough, give me a 7.0 version that loads faster too.

Knowlege Transfer or Lack of Transfer

I think I actually taught a tech something today. I am not sure that she really took it in or cared about it though.

I got a note from her yesterday asking if I knew where a machine named ABC123XX was, as it showed that I was the last one that had logged on to it.

I definitely knew where it was. It is the name of my test machine. As I am not on the Support side of things anymore I don't have any say in what they do. I told her how she could easily tell where it was and what the naming convention had been. She stated that she disagreed with the new naming conventions that they came up with for machines, but that she did not win out. We are actually two removed from the way it use to be done.

Simply by looking at the old naming convention name I could tell where the machine was located. I did not have to cross reference anything as I would have to do now.

She said that she had to remove my machine from the domain and re-add it to get it to show up in the browse list. I told her that was not the case. As an additional security measure we use to hide PCs from the browse list on the network. Well, it appears that some products like McAfees e-Policy Orchestrator won't do their thing (or so I am told) unless your machine is in the browse list.

My machine was setup the old way. Hey, I set it up.

Here are the registry changes that we use to make.

The following two changes keep the machine from participating as a browser and from participating in a browser election.
--------------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Browser

Start

Change from 2 to 4.
--------------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Browser\Parameters

MaintainServerList

Change from Auto to No.
--------------------------

The following change keeps the machine from displaying in the browse list.

--------------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\Lanmanserver\Parameters

Add Value

Value Name: Hidden
Data Type: REG_DWORD

Data: 1

It is my understanding that this is the equivalent of doing NET CONFIG SERVER /HIDDEN:YES from the command prompt.
--------------------------

I simply set the registry entries back and rebooted and there it was (after waiting for the browse list to update). No removing from the Domain and adding it back in. Like I said, I don't think she really cared. Oh well.

There were a few additional changes that we use to make. Not sure how many if any are still in use. Of course many items are simply setup as policies.

Changed the the default password reminder down to 3 from 15.
Changed a policy so the login script had the rights to set the time on the PC.

We would also blank out the last userid.

A hacker (generally speaking) needs two things to gain access to resources on your system: a username and a password. In case you haven't noticed, Windows NT/2000, by default, offers one of those for free. In order to prevent your system from displaying the last username to log in, you can make the following change (or create the following entry) to the registry

For NT
Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key: \Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\
CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Name: DontDisplayLastUserName
Data Type: REG_SZ
Value: 1
Now when a user presses Ctrl-Alt-Del to logon, the username and password fields are both blank. As always, use caution and frequent backups when editing the registry.

For 2000

In Windows 2000, there is another place in the Registry where this can also be controlled:

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Name: DontDisplayLastUserName
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
A value of 1 will clear the last username, a value of 0 leaves the last username in the login box.

I have not looked at the entry in XP, but would not be surprised if it is the same as it was in 2000.

Wal-Mart Stung

I think the self checkout lanes would even make this scam that much easier. The things people think of.

See the eWeek article, "Wal-Mart Stung in $1.5 Million Bar-Code Scam".

More Anti-Spyware

Are you interested in Microsoft's Beta Anti-Spyware? You can get it here if you are willing to validate your copy of Windows.

I am still on a valid copy of Windows 98 SE. I guess that concludes my review of Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta!



Completed by saying, Na Na Nu Na Na, you can't install it.

New Administration

If you have been following David Fletcher's blog at all you have seen that Jon Huntsman was sworn in as Governor of Utah on January 3rd, 2005. Our (Missouri's) new Governor will be sworn in on Monday, January 10th, 2005.

David cites this article and mentions that New Hampshire's new Governor, John Lynch, may be looking at a reversal of IT Centralization. IT Centralization being a hot topic in many states, including Missouri.

He also lists some of the new cabinet members in Utah.

Missouri is going through this as well. To see some of the announcements/appointments you can go to the Governor-Elect Matt Blunt's Press Release site. I find it a bit interesting that the post concerning the Schedule of Inauguration Events even gives a cell phone number for the contact.

There are many more appointments (not sure if that is what they would officially be called) going on at lower levels throughout our State Government. Several down to the Administrator level within our agency.

Missouri has many RSS feeds available from it's different agencies. I would like to see the Press releases available in this fashion as well.

I would also like to see a simple search box on our main state page rather than have to click the Search link to bring up an additional page.

Adobe Reader 7.0

Did you see that Adobe Reader 7.0 is out now? You might want to get it. It appears to load a lot faster than that dog they call 6.0.

Ben's post on Desperate Housewives and Teri Hatcher Naked

I have not seen a whole episode, but from what I have seen I would agree with Ben's post that Desperate Housewives is not worth the time to watch. I would imagine viewership would be higher if Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) and the rest of the desparate housewives (Marcia Cross - Bree Van De Kamp, Felicity Huffman - Lynette Scavo, Eva Longoria - Gabrielle Solis, and Nicollette Sheridan - Edie Britt) did actually run around naked, but with all of the controversy in the US with even a hint of nudity on network television, I don't see that happening soon. Hopefully network television won't get to that level.

Google Groups

Have you looked at Google Groups?

Another good use for that 1,000 MB of storage space on your Gmail account.

Excerpt from 12/2/2004 Press release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Dec. 2, 2004 - Google Inc. today launched the next generation Google Groups on the 'Groups' link of the Google home page at www.google.com. This enhanced product enables users to create, manage, search and browse web-based groups, as well as subscribe to and track favorite groups. Building on the foundation of the original service that currently includes more than 1 billion searchable posts from the Usenet archive, Google Groups now offers users the ability to join and follow discussions among different groups, keep in touch with family and friends, and share information more easily.

Using Google Groups, people can search and participate in a variety of discussions. For example, someone looking to buy a new digital camera this holiday season can search for [digital camera recommendations] and find relevant posts from others about the best cameras to buy. A user can star (bookmark) this topic to watch and subscribe to receive posts from a group such as rec.photo.digital to regularly read more opinions on digital cameras. Similarly, users looking for advice on treating carpal tunnel or disputing a cell phone bill can find discussions from other people who have experience in these areas. In addition, family, friends, and official organizations like schools or community centers can keep their members informed via email lists and announcement-only newsletters through Google Groups.

"Google Groups enables users to easily gather groups of friends, acquaintances, and those sharing interests together, and communicate with them directly via email, newsletters and message boards," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president, Product Management, Google Inc. "These online communities connect people with information they care about, and that furthers our commitment to enhancing the online experience for Google users."

New features of Google Groups include:

* Create groups: Create, join and search email-based mailing lists, and designate your group as public (anyone can read the group's messages on the Web) or restricted (only members can read, respond or start new conversations).
* Dynamic conversations: Postings to all Google Groups mailing lists and Usenet lists appear within seconds and are indexed within minutes.
* Enhanced user interface: Track and mark topics using the "My starred topics" feature, and view postings by message summary, title, or conversation view.
* Email notification: Receive individual messages or read daily email summaries to participate in discussions via your inbox.
* Easy searching: Users can easily search for information within a group or across many groups.
* Relevant text ads: Google Groups displays only targeted ads that are relevant to user searches or the content on the page.

Some groups of possible interest:

comp.groupware.lotus-notes.misc

comp.groupware.lotus-notes.apps

comp.groupware.lotus-notes.admin

comp.groupware.lotus-notes.programmer

One can also subscribe to atom feeds for new topics and/or new messages for the groups. Simply follow the "About this group" link from a group page.

If you need a Gmail account, I have 5 invites left at the moment. Drop me a note and I'll send one out to you.

Photo Posted

Cool! One of my photos made it on the State of Missouri Official Website. I submitted a few Missouri photos via the "Find out how to submit your photographs!" link.

The photo was cropped and used in the banner on the homepage. If you click on the pic of the Capitol dome in the banner on the State Home Page it will take you to a page with descriptions about each of the Show-me Missouri Banner Pictures. They supplied the text. If you click on the Photo Albums link on the nav bar and then click on the Missouri Sites category you will see my "Capitol at Night" photo. You can click on the picture on the page to see the full picture, of course, it is scaled down to be quick to load, but you can tell what it looks like.



You can see a larger copy here.

TVR

Another interesting automobile company.

General Motors Autos

Hey General Motors, why not allow us to get all GM automobiles in the US?
Opel or Vauxhall. I guess it depends on where you are looking at them from. Anyway, Cool Cars!
Opel Astra GTC

Opel Tigra TwinTop




Follow this link to the bends commercial for the TwinTop. Funny. One they probably wouldn't be allowed to air in the US.

Vauxhall VXR220

Happy New Year

Here is wishing everyone a Joyous New Year!