Thursday, September 30, 2004

Exporting the Active Directory User Accounts

Here is one that I am posting just so I can remember where it is at:

Exporting the Active Directory User Accounts

We currently do an export from Exchange and then pull that file into an application on our intranet which uses the individuals smtp address. As we move towards Active Directory some day it may be good to know how to export from Active Directory.

600 two hour feature length films sent in a second

The title of the post refers to a statement made by Pei-Cheng Hu, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley, in this article when talking about the 20 terahertz of bandwidth that fiber can provide.

Wow. That is pretty quick. As if you didn't already know, I would say the Security industry will stay busy.

Just mentioning a single positive, just imagine how quickly and easily all of your data could be backed up off site at such speeds, then again the same positive can be turned into a negative. Just think how much damage an individual could inflict in such a short amount of time with such speeds. As you can quickly backup all of your corporate files offsite with such speeds someone else that can get to your data could also have it copied offsite quickly and easily. Much more damage in much less time. Ouch.

Of course, someone has to figure out how to be able to utilize that bandwidth first, so you have time to think of more security strategies.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Not very nice!

I reported this one to Yahoo.



Clicking on the e-mail takes one to this site:



Which at leasts initially looks to be in Australia, but I am no expert on this kind of stuff.

DON'T FALL FOR IT!

Picture It! and Digital Image security update.

I have my home PC updated, how about you?

You can find out more about it here.

Additional resources discussing the jpg vulnerability below:

Hackers use porn to target Microsoft JPEG hole

Picturing the next Net exploit

Notes/Domino 6.5.3

Guess what I am doing right now. I am downloading Gold code of Notes\Domino 6.5.3.

I should have the Notes\Developer\Admin Client loaded on my test machine by the end of the day.

Update @ 4:55pm: Currently installing.

Update @ 5:08pm: Up and running fine.

Deception

Siemens


You know how you just type in the name of a company sometimes expecting that you will likely be taken to the companies website. Today I typed in seimens (I guess I should have gone with the old "i" before "e", but didn't). At the top of the page it says seimens.com and "Brining you the best mobile phone resources on the net". Of course, I was actually looking for Siemens. A casual browser may think they found what they were looking for. Of course, this appears to be one of those sites that fully expects to get some of Siemens traffic. It kind of follows what Libby talked about in her post: More unethical behavior. A bit of deceptive.

Under the Main Categories they actually have "Siemens phone" listed. The link there simply does a search on the seimens site for "siemens and phone" and displays the search results within the frame to the right of it. Of course, none of the links there will get you to Siemens either.

It is not the first time I have seen this type of behavior either.

I have also seen instances where the real name is actually registered to a lesser known company with a similar name. Big money companies have often been able to get those respective names, but not always. Case in point would be Uzi Nissan's site nissan.com. He can't use it for his computer business anymore, but he still has the domain name. I would say he keeps it just to spite Nissan after the whole fiasco of them trying to wrangle it from him. He never claimed to be the car company or tried to deceive anyone in that regard. It would not hurt for him to simply add a link to his site for those trying to find the car company as I imagine that is what produces 99.999% of the hits on his site, but that is his prerogative (Okay, get the old baggy pants Bobby Brown tune out of your head).

Yamaha R1



I commend those that may have similar names, that do not try to deceive the browsing public and make note up front that their site should not be confused with another and/or put a link to the other site. An example here I believe would be the Yamaha site, although one might make the case that it is a bit deceptive as it does not make mention of the difference in companies, it does it in a well intentioned manner. As I enjoy automobiles I know this one got me when the net was young. I believe, Yamaha, the company that makes musical instruments, has had the domain name along. How can one fault them for that. I am sure that the other yamaha that has to do with motorcycles, atvs, watercraft and the like would like to have the domain name. I don't believe the companies are actually related, but I have not taken the time to actually research that either. At some point links were added to the music companies site that will take you to the other Yamaha (yamaha-motor). I don't know if this was per a genuine act of understanding by the musical instrument company or if money played into it, but one can easily see the link to the motor site and seamlessly head in the direction they intended from yamaha.com.

Growing pains

As the blade server environment is new in the shared data center, we have hit a few growing pains.

An example of that would be this past weekend when a UPS failed causing our box to crash hard. We take care of the day to day Domino administration, but there are two different groups responsible for the physical server, operating system, backups and Domino Server upgrades within the shared data center where our server is housed.

The blade environment is new to the shared data center and they have been trying to get a handle on who is responsible for what and who does what. This has caused a few problems, but luckily they have been willing to work amongst themselves and with us to resolve things as they come up. One area in the database section is basically responsible for the Domino Software on the box and the Operations Area is responsible for the physical server, operating system, and backups. The operating system group has been trying to lock things down and I would say rightly so, since they are held responsible for keeping the box up, but upon doing so have gone a bit to far a couple of times. After the forced reboot do to the UPS problems the server would not start as a service as it had done before. The backups also would not run. It turns out that the OS group had locked it down a bit too much.

The server was brought up manually until the OS group could get the permission issues straightened out. Unfortunately, we did lose connectivity a couple of times after it was brought back up. Evidently part of the configuration for the D-Link Switch was missing. They edited the switch, made a change and saved it. Bounced the blade and all is well again. Yeah!

Friday, September 24, 2004

Chandler

OSAF Logo


I don't hear much about Chandler anymore. Is it because Friends is over? Actually I am not talking about that Chandler. I am referring to the Chandler product that the Open Source Applications Foundation has been working on. I have not gone to the site for some time, but did today and glanced at the status reports. It doesn't look as though they have put out any status reports since 2003, but yet they are still hiring. I wonder if it will ever actually make it to a production version. I guess only time will tell.

Update: I mention more on the comment posted to this post here.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Download Picasa Software for Free



An excerpt from an e-mail I received yesterday.


As you may have heard, Picasa, Inc. was recently acquired by Google. This change means we can now offer Picasa 1.6 (the current version of our software) for free. We're thrilled that millions of people will now be able to try both of our revolutionary products - Picasa and Hello.


Although limited it isn't bad for the price. I have previously posted about the free Hello software. I post most of my photos with Hello now.


Friday, September 17, 2004

Post Deleted

The post below is just a joke linked to via my comments on Captain Oblivious aka Rob McDonagh's post concerning blogging and how one could face their blogging past again someday when running for a political office.

As many blogs are started, left to die, abandoned, etc. I think one of the most difficult tasks, especially if it would be years down the road, would be proving the authenticity of a post and attributing it to a specific individual.

And will you believe the politician that says, "I tried it once. I made one post, but I did not publish it."

Political Opinions

This post has been deleted and all evidence of said post has been destroyed. :-)

Although there may be a slight chance that someone at CBS has evidence of such a post.

Redbook RSS Feeds

Warren Elsmore mentioned in a post the link to the RSS feed for all Redbooks, but if your interest is not that broad you can subscribe to specific Redbook content. Click here to see the available feeds.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

DeveloperWorks RSS Feeds

It is nice to see that IBM/Lotus has the alphaWorks and developerWorks content available for subscription via multiple formats (RSS, XML, ATOM).

Domino blogging

Developerworks Logo


Cool to see Domino Blogging as a top story on the IBM/Lotus Developerworks site.

Search terms

I decided to follow Ben Langhinrichs (pronounced lang HEN rix), Thomas "Duffbert" Duff, and Rich Schwartz's lead and post some of the search terms that brought people to my site (I did not limit it to Google searches).

I don't get to many hits so it isn't real difficult, but I only went back 5 days as the Free Sitemeter is good for my needs, but kind of a pain when wanting to simply find search terms that got one to your site. It may only go back 5 days anyway.

On my main site "Bonj" here were the terms (Most were single hits. I found it interesting all of the things they hit me for, I guess it goes to show that my posts do follow the subtitle of my site, simply thoughts, ramblings, etc..):

Beck Motorsports 550 Spyder
bonj
candidate zero commercial
connected photographer
domino move nt w2k3
domio photos
Installing Domino 6.5.2 on Microsoft Windows Server 2003
lotus notessql ms batch files
lotus sametime alert sounds
maximize screen display undocking
Michigan State Identity Theft
mobitv battery life
notes 5.0.13a
nupdall
sanyo 8100 , setup
sprint PCS & network settings
Teamstudio
teamstudio serial
treo domino everyplace 6.0
Yourware Solutions
zapnotes 6.5
zinio need crack

On my photoblog "A Visual Life" the terms were:

Ford 601 Workmaster - This one is by far the biggest one I get for the site. I didn't know the old tractor was so popular. It is not like someone is trying multiple searches either. They are coming from different search engines (Google being the predominant one) and different domains.

Kitty Joe - Our cat. His name is Joe Kitty, but we interchangeably call him Kitty Joe.

LeCliff - A restaurant we ate at in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico last March.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Acura website down

Sure, I post something about Acura automobiles and then their site goes down for maintenance. Oh well.

Acura TSX

As with so many automobiles, I like the new Acura TSX.

Acura TSX
Acura TSX

I can understand, as they don't want to compete with themselves by bumping the horsepower up on the TSX to the levels of the TL, but I think it would be nice to see a TSX with all wheel drive and 240-250 hp. Are you listening Acura?

Acura TL
Acura TL

I feel bad for those that laid down the extra money to step up to the old TL Type S, which bumped the horsepower to 260. Acura dropped the Type S model this year and now all TLs come standard with 270hp. You were looking for an excuse to trade up anyway.

The 2005 RL is pretty sharp too, but in a totally different class. Hopefully they'll have a gallery of pics of the 2005 model out there soon. If they simply overwrite the current gallery with the new one then you should be able to see new RL pics here at some point. Right now the gallery still shows the 2004 RL.

Help Make Blogs More Visible!!

Just a bit more about the post below. I have been busy and am behind on my reading. Trying to catch up on some of it via Mark Fletcher's Bloglines (still a great web-based aggregator and it only gets better - Thanks Mark!). I actually saw the post mentioning GoMeme 1.0 on Mark's own blog, wingedpig.

I followed the link to GoMeme 1.0 on Nova Spivak's site, Minding the Planet, and noticed it was up to GoMeme 4.0 now, so I went ahead and posted that one even though I wouldn't have known about it without reading Mark's post.

It is interesting how topics do propagate via blogs. Nova points to a post by Greg on Nodalpoint.org, a bioinformatics weblog, which analyzes the results of GoMeme 1.0.

I think one of the things about the way some topics propagate is that they could actually become somewhat dormant and then simply re-emerge once again when picked up by one person starting the spread all over again. I could see this happening more as more people join the blogging world and as more people rely on web-aggregators let them catch up on their blog reading at their leisure.

As I look closer at the GoMeme 1.0 page I notice it states:

NOTE: This experiment is now finished.


I don't know if that is for all versions as they are all mentioned in the post or if that is just for 1.0. Anyway, as I just pointed out, even if it may be over, it may still live on.

I think the notion of everyone pointing back to a story can definitely help market that story and increase the story sites hits, but I am not sure how much more traffic that would send to a small blog like mine. I guess if I see a significant increase in hits on my site as a result of the post below, then I'll know.

I did find it interesting that the instructions were to cut and paste the post, but browsing I noticed some examples of GoMeme 4.0 that were different in the first sentence alone.

There are by some estimates more than a million weblogs.


As I saw it posted on Nova's site.

There are by some estimates more than 3 million weblogs.


So "more than a million" versus "more than 3 million".

Nova points to the current results of Version 4 (I guess we are to simply go by the number of results found).

Out of curiosity I did a Google search based on the first sentence in the different formats and find the "more than a million" showing up more.

You can see for yourself:

"more than a million"

"more than 3 million"

Hmm. I wonder if it would propagate even quicker if you mentioned that Microsoft was trying out some new tracking software and by posting this on your blog you might have the chance to win a trip to Disneyland. ;-)

Help Make Blogs More Visible!

There are by some estimates more than 3 million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few "A-List" blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don't get noticed. But this posting could solve that. Let's help the smaller blogs get more visibility!

This posting is GoMeme 4.0. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0, spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog.

Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add your URL to the end of the Path List below. As the meme spreads onwards from your blog, so will your URL. Your blog will be part of the pat for everyone downstream from you. That way they can see where they got this message from. Everyone in the Path List below benefits in a similar way as this meme spreads. Try it!

Instructions: Just copy this entire post and paste it into your blog. Then add your URL to the end of the path list below, and pass it on! (Make sure you add your URLs as live links or HTML code to the Path List below.)

Path List
1. Minding the Planet
2. Bonj
3. (your URL goes here! But first, please copy this line and move it down to the next line for the next person).


(NOTE: Be sure you paste live links for the Path List or use HTML code.)

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

My 1st Speeding Ticket

I guess I should be happy that I was able to hold off getting my first (and hopefully last) speeding ticket until I was 39. I really can't say that I am happy though. I am guilty, I was speeding. It was not on purpose, I was headed down a rather steep hill and was simply not pay attention. As I almost reached the bottom I looked down quickly as I saw the police cruiser a couple of cars back in traffic coming from the opposite direction. To late. He already had me. 12 miles over. It doesn't seem to sound as bad when you are talking 42 miles per hour versus say doing it on the highway and going 82 miles per hour, but either way it is 12 miles over. Or should I say $81 over. Yep, that is what it cost in a non school zone. Ouch!

The officer said that he doesn't like giving tickets, but they have been told to crack down since they got some new federal grant. He said he could tell that I was a good driver from my record and he noticed that I realized that I was speeding. Oh well, I guess I hope they don't get anymore grants.

This was actually my 2nd ticket (1st speeding). I got a ticket around 1985, when headed to Rolla (my hometown) over a Holiday weekend. A State Trooper pulled me over. He asked if I saw him as I passed him on the side of the road. Yes, I did. There was a bit of a hill that I popped over. He was on the shoulder at the bottom. I pulled to the other lane and proceeded onward. He pulled me over and stated that I was doing 57 in a 55. He let me off with a warning, but my wife and I got tickets for not wearing our seatbelt. That was back in the day when we didn't think much about it. We wear our seatbelts religiously (and make our kids as well).
The seatbelt tickets were $10 bucks each.

Anyway if you are cruising through Jefferson City, Missouri, you may want to keep an eye on you speed and buckle up. Happy motoring!

Monday, September 13, 2004

Ford 601 Workmaster

It is kind of interesting. It appears that the old (early 1950's?) Ford 601 Workmaster tractor that I use when helping my father-in-law brush hog or pull the manure spreader is a fairly popular search item for my photoblog. I often find that people have ended up on that site by searching for Ford 601 Workmaster in various search engines.

These are posts from my other site for those that don't know what one looks like:









Blogger & Adsense

Are you a blogger? You might want to check out Google AdSense. There is AdSense for both Content and Search.

I think one of the big things to keep in mind is something that Google AdSense also points out. This is not a get rich quick (or slow) kind of thing, but every little bit can help. I just found out that you can also put the code on mutliple sites that you publish. Of course, the sites do have to meet the program guidelines.

It you want something substantial for nothing then maybe you should check the reservation availability on the Oprah show.

Friday, September 10, 2004

AFI Plate?

This has been in my drafts folder for some time. I finally got back to it and finished it.

Not sure if it is actually an Italian plate on the little Ford Focus that a serviceman or NATO member is driving around with in the US. The plate just looked out of place as I have not seen one before and tried to find some info on it. It was outside Mexican Villa (Great Salsa) in Springfield, MO of all places. I found this article talking about AFI plates a bit. Not sure if it is the same or not.

AFI license plate


Maybe someone out there has more insight on these plates and if the one shown is actually an Italian plate.

HMO Humor

I belong to an HMO and overall have had pretty good luck and can't complain to much all things considered, but one can still find the humor in following that my wife forwarded on to me.

Three Stooges


Q. What does HMO stand for?
A. This is actually a variation of the phrase, "HEY MOE." Its
roots go back to a concept pioneered by Moe of the Three
Stooges, who discovered that a patient could be made to forget
about the pain in his foot if he was poked hard enough in the
eyes.

Q. I just joined an HMO. How difficult will it be to choose the
doctor I want?
A. Just slightly more difficult than choosing your parents. Your
insurer will provide you with a book listing all the doctors in
the plan. These doctors basically fall into two categories -
those who are no longer accepting new patients, and those who
will see you but are no longer participating in the plan. But
don't worry; the remaining doctor who is still in the plan and
accepting new patients has an office just a half-day's drive
away, and a diploma from a Third World country.

Q. Do all diagnostic procedures require pre-certification?
A. No. Only those you need.

Q. Can I get coverage for my preexisting conditions?
A. Certainly, as long as they don't require any treatment

Q. What happens if I want to try alternative forms of medicine?
A. You'll need to find alternative forms of payment.

Q. My pharmacy plan only covers generic drugs, but I need the
name brand. I tried the Generic Medication, but it gave me a
stomach ache. What should I do?
A. Poke yourself in the eye.

Q. What if I'm away from home and I get sick?
A. You really shouldn't do that.

Q. I think I need to see a specialist, but my doctor insists he
can handle my problem. Can a general practitioner really
perform a heart transplant right in his office?
A. Hard to say, but considering that all you're risking is the
$20 co-payment, there's no harm in giving him a shot at it.

Q. Will health care be different in the next century?
A. No. But if you call right now, you might get an appointment
by then.

New BlackBerry

Research In Motion has a new BlackBerry, or as some in our Tech Support would call them, Dingleberries. Our Department uses some of the older devices.

It is the 7100t model, which does the whole Phone/E-mail/Data thing.

BlackBerry 7100t



A new competitor for PalmOne's Treo 600. I don't own either one, but just from glancing I would say that I still like the Treo 600 better.

Treo 600



I wish PalmOne would integrate the antenna so that it was flush with the top of the device.

I think I would have a bit of an issue with the QWERTY keys that one would uses with their thumbs. I am good and quick enough with the QWERTY keyboard using all of my fingers, but have done it for years and don't have to think about it much. That doesn't mean that I would be able to transfer that knowledge strictly to my thumbs. Just thinking of using my thumbs to type on my regular keyboard I think I would be just as quick typing on my cell phone, which for many characters requires multiple clicks of the key, but is in alphabetic order. Maybe someday I'll get the opportunity to find out.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Do you know these people?

Secretary of Housing and Urban DevelopmentSecretary of AgricultureSecretary of Agriculture



Just my curiosity. These are photos of just a few members of the President of the United States Cabinet. I wonder how many people can name the current Cabinet Members and what office they hold. If you are curious, you can find out who they are here.

Client Install Update

Tech Support did not get the installs done by 8/20/04 as they had planned. The latest target date is 9/15/04. Let's hope they get it done. Knock on wood, we really have not had any problems since moving to 6.5.2 from the server or client end.

The index task did hang at one point, but we were able to stop it and restart it without incident. We did go ahead and bounce the server that evening just to have things totally running clean. Superstitious I guess. I like to have the server running from a clean start after experiencing any kind of glitch, even if something like stopping and re-starting a task fixes the problem.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Look stupid

I just wanted to say this to all of those people standing behind reporters, jumping around, waving, making weird faces, etc.., while calling friends and family on their cell phones to say look at me I am on TV: YOU LOOK STUPID! Just thought I would let you know. You see this happening on many of the morning news programs, you saw it at the Democratic National Convention and now at the Rebublican National Convention.