Ryan’s Blog

Hey, I have a blog!

Wow, how time flys when you’re working. I just wanted to give a quick plug for a great piece of software I just found. If you use Windows, you’ve likely used and been unsatisfied with the built in software for burning CDs. If you’re like me, you don’t like the price tags that come with most CD burning software packages.

Here’s the solution. CDBurnerXP is a free software package that I’ve been testing in a wide corporate deployment, and I can’t be happier. This software allows burning of ISO images, DVD’s, and all the other goodies. And, I don’t think anyone can argue with the price tag.

Check it out at http://cdburnerxp.se/

Recently, I was asked to get a “snapshot” of the NTFS permissions on a Windows Server 2003, File and Print server. My boss simply wanted screen shots of everything, and I knew that would be rather useless. I wanted to have a file that could be used to actually enter the information into the system, if I ever had to rebuild this machine. After about 20 minutes of, “Right Click”, “Security” and copying down the permissions, I thought to myself, “There is no way in crap I’m going to do this on this entire directory tree.”

So, I was off to visit my good friend “Command Line” to see if I could get it to tell me what I wanted to know. After about half an hour of playing, I finally got what I wanted.

I found the command “cacls” which is a new one to me. You can use it to display the NTFS permissions on an object.

In my case, I wanted to show all the permissions, for every directory in a rather large tree, and dump the info into a text file. well, it’s as simple as:

cacls * > filename.txt

Viola! Enjoy.

The good folks at Disqus (http://www.disqus.com) have helped me resolve the issues with the changes to my post URL format.

If you manage any type of website with a discusion or comments section, I highly recomend you check out their solution. The big selling point for me was the user profiles, that allow you to follow a commenter from site to site. There are plenty of other great features, such as your usual ranking systems, spam management and many more. Go check them out.

When I reconfigured Wordpress, I forgot to customize the URL’s that it generates for my posts. I didn’t think it was a big deal, until now. I’m tired of seeing that ugly URL in the browser, as /?p=”postnumber” isn’t very friendly. Not to mention, it’s difficult to post links to particular posts on other websites or in emails.

Granted, anything can be turned into a hyperlink, but that’s not really the point. I love sending plain text emails and IMs, because they are easy to read on just about any device or client. There’s something I like about being able to see the URL and know exactly what it’s (supposedly) pointing to.

I wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but a few of my posts are starting to get linked from outside sources, like other blogs. I don’t want to break these links, and just flat out change the way wordpress generates URLs. So, I think after this post, I’m going to try to change the way my future posts are stored.

Does anyone have any advice? I’m not keen on post numbers, obviously, and plain date stamps don’t do it for me either. I know Wordpress can link via the post title, but as the blog gets older, that’s going to get cumbersome. So perhaps maybe some hybrid of the two. /year/month/title maybe?

What schemes do you use on your sites?

*edit*

Apparently, WordPress is now smart enough to automatically create redirects when you change your permalinks structure. Sweet, eh? Problem solved.

Now, apparently I’ve broken the Disqus comments that were attached to the old URLs. Please forgive me while I try to correct this.

I’ve been studying to take the CCNA exam this summer, and it’s amazing to me. I’ve taken many Cisco classes at the local community college over the years, and I’ve had lots of hands on work with them over the same span of time. I feel that I have a solid understanding of what’s going on inside those famous green boxes, and the technology around them.

However, over the past 2 years, I’ve had almost no hands on Cisco work, outside of physical layer stuff, as it’s just not a part of my job anymore. I took a “prep test” this morning, just to see where I stand, and I was not pleased with the results.

Cisco is very much a “use it or loose it” skill, as are many of the specialized IT skill sets. Does anyone out there have any tips to stay on top of these areas? My only resource is to occasionally grab a book and reread it or browse through it. My old college textbooks and accompanying workbooks and labs are great for that. Take the occasional quiz or review, and read up on the areas where you are weak or slipping.

Surely, someone out there has a better, or more reliable way. Or am I already ahead of the game?

There was a great post on Slashdot a while back, that I just wanted to share. It offers a great insight into the motivation behind the automation of several tasks.  It’s a little long winded, so I’ve hidden the actual thread behind a break.

Just some food for thought…

(more…)

If you are like me, you’re dodging the bullet on upgrading your personal PC to Windows Vista. Maybe I’m just growing old, and resistant to change, but I just don’t like Vista. So, many people ask, “With Microsoft sending XP to an early grave, what can I do to keep it running on my PC?”

Microsoft isn’t killing XP entirely. They are just stopping the sale of new copies. If you don’t already have it, you’re not going to be able to buy it. If you already have a copy, it’s not a big deal just yet, as far as I can tell. The best thing to do is just follow a few basic rules of computing to keep your PC secure. A secure PC is a happy PC, and will keep you up and running for as long as you are willing to keep it that way.

First things first, everything I’m about to spew out is from my personal and professional experience. These tips aren’t meant for the corporate or enterprise network. This is for those of us at home with one or two PC’s around the house. Please don’t think this is going to work in any situation where you have more users or computers than you do fingers.

1- Don’t trust anything.

Don’t know what it is? Not sure where it came from? Is that big name brand spelled wrong? Don’t install it, click on it, open it or read it. Unless you are 100% sure that it is legit, don’t use it.

2- Stay up to date.

I know they aren’t perfect, but stay on top of those Windows updates. It’s safe to be leary of major updates like service packs, sometimes it’s better to wait a day or two for the major bugs to be worked out. A couple Google searches for your model PC or laptop and the name of the update will usually turn up major bugs. Same goes for printers, network and video cards or even CPU brands or models.

3- Get a good anti-virus program.

Avoid the “all in one” type programs. It’s been my experience that the more tasks a piece of software tries to take on, the worse it gets. (Norton Internet Security Suite, anyone?) Stick with a good old fashioned anti-virus program. I’ve used AVG for many years with great success. (http://www.grisoft.com) The free version should be more than enough for most home users, but the Pro version really stands out if you like to tweak, or have a more advanced setup.

If you need something to keep the malware away, Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.spybot.info) and AdAware (http://www.lavasoft.com) are both tried and true. I think Spybot alone is usually sufficient, but you can’t beat the one, two punch combo.

4- Don’t set a password on your user account.

“Holy crap, are you kidding me? What are you, nuts?” Before you think I’m crazy, just understand this. When you don’t set a password on a user account, remote access is disabled for that user in XP Pro. Unless someone is physically sitting at your computer, they aren’t going to log in. And if someone you don’t want using your computer is sitting at it, you’ve got more problems than I can address here.

If you absolutely have to have a password on your computer to get the “Warm fuzzy feeling,” set a BIOS password, and leave your computer off when not in use. When you turn on the computer, you get prompted for a password. If you don’t have the password, the computer won’t even boot up. You shouldn’t be wasting electricty by having it run 24/7 anyway.

5- Don’t use IE.

Sure, Internet Explorer has gotten better with IE7, but FireFox is really a better solution. Just don’t go bogging it down with all those add on extensions. Do you really need to have the weather report constantly updating on your screen? They just end up sucking up memory and bandwidth. Opera is also another choice, if FireFox just doesn’t do it for you.

Sure, there are some sites that are designed for IE, and some will even force you to use it. Not a big deal, just don’t use it for your everyday, all the time browsing.

6- It’s not a matter of if something fails, it’s a matter of when.

I’m sorry to say it, but computers aren’t perfect, and something is going to go wrong somewhere. Whether a piece of hardware fails, you accidentally delete something, a windows update breaks something, a program you install crashes your computer, lightning strikes, you get a virus, or the kids decide that the computer is hungry and feed it a ham sandwich and glass of milk. The possibilities are endless.

How can I make sure I don’t loose my data? Backups. I recommend that everyone has an external hard drive of some sort.

I just bought a Western Digital eBook, which is a USB hard drive that you can hook up to any computer. Mine is 500 gigs, and it makes a great place to save pictures, documents, music or anything else you don’t want to loose, and isn’t likely to fill up any time soon. (My laptop currently only has a 40 gig hard drive in it.) I keep it hooked up to my laptop, and I make it a point to copy what important data to it regularly. That way, I have two copies of everything. One on my hard drive, and one on the eBook. If you want to be double safe, you can copy the data from the eBook and burn it to a CD or DVD on a regular basis, and have yet another backup, in case something happens to the eBook.

I love computers. I love technology. I especially love getting to play with the new toys. If you are here and reading this, then I’m sure you know this. Along these lines though, I just have to vent, and let the world know, “I hate working in IT.”

I was reading a nice article the other day, written by Michael Janke, at “Last in – First out http://lastinfirstout.blogspot.com” and it inspired me. He talks about how he surfs the internet with both java and flash, and basically everything he can, disabled. The only problem is, you’re hard pressed to find a useable “big name” website that can function like that. A great example, was his fight with trying to get information from the Acura website. You can read about that battle here: http://lastinfirstout.blogspot.com/2008/05/flash-javascript-and-clowns-that-design.html

At the end of the article, he makes a statement that ring very near and dear to my heart.

“I’ve got a solution though – Make all web site designers & testers use a 1Ghz Pentium with 256MB of RAM for their workstation. I’ll bet that they’ll design fast, lightweight web sites.

They’ll have to.”

I agree. Many people come to me with problems, and when I can’t duplicate them, they are quick to say, “Oh you work in IT. You’ve got the latest and greatest equipment.”

False. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I take pride in being at the END of the product replacement cycle. I want the oldest, slowest, dumbest stuff possible. I like to keep my users way ahead of myself, at least in hardware terms. In fact, I have NEVER owned a personal computer with more than 512 megs of ram, but that’s another story for another day.

My theory is, “If I can make due with the worst equipment, and make it work, then I know my users shouldn’t have any problems.” Am I the only one that takes a “Less is more” approach?

I found this new service called Jott. And it seems work pretty well. I just see if it post to my blog or not. listen

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