Sc@-tt3r-ed Thoughts

WE HAVE MOVED!

2009-11-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

WE HAVE MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION!

Please update your bookmark to the new URL:

HTTP://WWW.FOREIGNKID.COM

HP T5545 (Linux) VMWare View and USB Redirection

2009-07-02T15:15:00.001-07:00

Well, since I’ve just spent the past 6 hours trying to figure out how the heck to get USB Redirection to work on HP T5545 , I thought I would write up some instructions on how to set it up, and all the gotchas to avoid.

For the record, I only set this device up because I got stuck with 50 of them for one of my schools, and for anyone who doesn’t want headaches, I would recommend they go with XPe (no, not WinCE), I’m pretty sure, the additional premium you will pay for the device itself will be saved in time trying to configure/troubleshoot, and update it. This recommendation is based on my usage with VMWare View (formerly VDI), and where USB Redirection is absolutely needed. For any other purposes (ie: terminal services, ICA, RDP, etc..) , I cannot vouch for it, but I would suspect it would work just fine if you’re on a lower budget.

ok, so now that the complaining about it is over, lets move on to some instructions on how to set this up.

These instructions do assume that you know how to create a VMWare View Desktop Pool, and have an appropriately created template that contains the View Agent in it, etc… If not, there are some documents out there that describe this process, and you can see my post about Sysprep and VMWare View: the solution as well.

There are a few components that need to be setup correctly for this to work:

1- The HP RDP Multimedia and USB Enhancements (Server Side)

Now, this part, I’m not 100% sure on, but I think it’s only required when using an XPe client. In the case of Linux clients, the redirection is happening somehow within a Samba mount or something similar. If you find the need to install that, you can head over to HP Support site, and download the following file: http://bit.ly/bFKXS

Install this on your View Manager Connection Server, and reboot the server. no further action is required there.

2- Firmware and HP RDP Multimedia and USB Enhancements (Client Side)

This step was by far the most cumbersome, because I had to figure out HP’s way of installing their .hpk files, which are, I believe, essentially a modified .deb (Debian) package. so for this reason – being modified – the dpkg –install does work on that package.
This is where the confusion starts. If you are running any firmware older than M5ST0019 rev 1 (Oct 6 2008), you will have a command called hpkg to install packages. On that firmware you would need 2 packages to install for the complete View experience.

Unfortunately, all these package are not all available on the “downloads” page of the T5545. (don’t ask me why!). after researching, I ended up finding the new version of the View Client which had the Sound and USB Redirection built into it. Since I can’t seem to find it anymore, I’m making it available through my DropBox. Download it HERE. (this file may disappear at any time, but for now, it’s here) The other file is available on HP’s site, and that is the counterpart of the HP RDP Multimedia USB Enhancements… this time, it’s for the client. you can get it HERE

Even though, if you really want to follow my ideal way, this will not be necessary (see below). but if you really don’t want to flash the firmware of the device, you may be able to get things to work by installing both of the above files.

To install an hpk on the old firmware, you create a new XTerm connection, within the connection manager. On the old firmware you have to create a Custom… connection, then type xterm for the command, and now you should have access to the shell.

change the user to root: su - (the default password is “root”)
unlock the filesystem: fsunlock
install the package: hpkg –i <filename.hpk>
lock the filesystem: fslock

(In order to get the files to the thin client, you can do it in multiple ways, but I used the FTP method, because it was the simplest). if you know your way around the shell, you can always stick a USB thumb drive and copy the stuff from it. hint: it’ll get mounted on /media

ok, so now that I ranted on the old way, let me point you to the new way, and seemed to have been much less cumbersome. There are 3 ways you can do this, on a CD (you would have to connect an external optical drive to the thin client), a USB thumb drive (that’s how I did it), and for deployment … (haven’t figured out how to use this one, but I’m pretty sure, it’s meant to work with Altiris deployment packages.

What we’re going to do here is flash the firmware to the latest version. Don’t be fooled, as of this writing, HP did not have the latest firmware on their website, so I had to fish for it with Dr. Google’s assistance. I finally found it HERE. When you download this, you will need a flash drive that’s bigger than 512Mb (1Gb should be ideal). just run the file, and choose the “USB” option when it pops up. note: you will lose all data on your flash drive when you do this. The drive will be loaded with the new firmware. once this is done, stick the USB thumb drive in your thin client, and reboot. You don’t have to change boot order, as USB is already enabled as the first boot device. It’ll ask you if you really want to flash it, Answer “Y” , and wait about 5 minutes, the Thin Client will reboot and comes back up with the new firmware.

Now, your VDM client will be named View client, and will have more options on it. When you create a session, under “Options” there will be an additional setting called “ Sound Redirection” , and another one called “ Device Mapping”, which allows for mapping the USB Storage, Serial port and Printer mapping. for USB Storage, you can also select what drive you want the USB storage to map to. Enable whichever ones you want.

Prior to this firmware, the USB redirection hpk would’ve done what this one does natively. Though I never got the first solution to work fully, it looked to me like the HP RDP Multimedia USB Enhancements had way more options than the new View client. But I had no need for the other ones, and I couldn’t figure out how to install an hpk package on the new firmware, since the hpkg command no longer existed in the new firmware. Anyone that may have any insight on this, please share in the commends.

3- Your Virtual Machine template.

You may be thinking.. duh ! that’s simple. Well, that was one of the components that threw off for a loop, at least in regards to USB Redirection. You see, for USB redirection to function correctly, you need to have an actual virtual USB controller connected to the VM. you can install all plugins and add-ons all over the place, but without the controller, nothing will work.

When all is well with the USB controller, your VM should be showing all the items in the blue in addition to the items in the red box. Without the USB controller, and provided you had installed all the required add-ons on your thin client, you will see only the items in the red box.

4- Your Group Policies in Active Directory

This was a tricky one, and mostly due to the fact that USB Redirection on the Linux Thin Client does not work in the same as you would expect any USB redirect (at least I don’t think so) . What the redirect is doing, is really mounting the USB device to the Linux OS, and then the mechanism of the firmware (when USB redirection is enabled) somehow shares that drive as an SMB share, and makes it available to the connected View client. So this is where the drive letter comes into play. Of course, not knowing this, I had GPOs in AD that locked down printer redirection, COM ports, LPT ports, and most importantly for my purposes drive redirection. this was a no no, and was causing the whole system not work. So, what have we learned here? make sure you either choose NOT CONFIGURED or DISABLED on that option if you would like to stay sane.

When you have all this enabled, don’t expect a whole lot with USB redirection. For very novice users, it’s still going to be very confusing. The drive will get mapped by the volume name of the USB drive, or sometime by the Linux path, and does not get deleted when you remove the drive, though the user can actually delete the “ghost” folder, it’s still very confusing.

Also, it’s not instantaneous, when you plug in a USB device, especially if it’s a large capacity device with some data on it, the Linux OS has to scan it, mount it, and share it out, before the Windows OS can even figure out that it’s there. Bottom line, Windows does not see the USB device as a USB device, but rather, a SAMBA share.

I have not tested how that type of redirection will be affected by disabled USB access from VDI manager policies. That is something that is still up for testing. If I find something interesting there, I’ll make sure to post that.

Well there you have it, T5545 Thin Client USB Redirection, finally working.

Rowmote Pro for iPhone: Review and Demo

2009-06-21T12:43:00.001-07:00

If you’re like me, and you have done away with your cable subscription, and transformed your whole media center to Boxee, or Plex, then this review is for you. In fact, even if you don’t use Boxee or Plex, but have a computer connected to your TV that you’d like to control. This is also for you.

Since I got rid of my cable, I setup an iMac to take care of all my media. It was a nice setup, except I didn’t have full access to the computer, unless I had my laptop, and connected to it via LogMeIn or TeamViewer, or, for much less control, using the native Boxee remote for the iPhone, or even the Rowmote free application.

These were all fine and dandy, but I really wanted full access to the machine without having my laptop or another computer around. Before finding out about Rowmote Pro, or even before it ever existed, and I went and bought the Adesso Wirelsss Slimtyouch Mini-Mac, which I paid $80 for, and turned out to be a total waste of money, in short, very short range, and battery life lasts 2 days at best.

Enter Rowmote world. If you have an iPhone, you’re going to be blown away by what this app does! It’s only $4.99 – well, $4.99 + $199 or $299 at best if you don’t have an iPhone yet :) You may be familiar with the regular interface of Rowmote which looks something like this:

However, you may not know this interface:

Yup .. you’re getting a sweet interface to control your mouse and keyboard straight from the Rowmote application. In its original interface, Rowmote now supports over 17 applications, and obviously, anything you can do on the PC outside of the native Rowmote controls.

Check out the video below for a live demonstration of Rowmote Pro. It’s definitely worth the $4.99.

Rowmote Pro Demonstration

VMWare View (VDI) client for HP T5540 (WinCE)

2009-06-19T21:22:00.001-07:00

So, here I am sitting at my office trying to get VMWare View to work on an HP T5540 thin client. Had no idea where to get the client for. the 11Mb file that you get from VMWare is entirely too big to be intalled on that client. This is a Win CE operating system, which is so horrible to deal with anyway.

Google searches failed me left and right, everywhere I looked. People said that the T5540 can only be used in a remote desktop environment, which, of course, will lose out on the capability of VDI, dynamic provisioning, multiple desktop availability, Multimedia, and USB. Essentially, all the advantages of VDI would’ve gone down the drain. so that was not an option for me.

Some mentioned JRE version for Win CE, on which the VDI client will run. I had 2 problems with this one:

I couldn’t easily find a free JRE client for WinCE
For the life of me, I could not figure out how to get VDI Manager to use JRE.

So, I went ahead with my research, until I stumbled upon something called the VDI Broker Add-On for Microsoft Windows CE. That can be found here: http://bit.ly/16M38p

If you look closely at the description of this download, however, you will find that it says this:

"This is an Altiris package that contains the VDM Broker Agent for the supported thin client models running a supported operating system.”

Hmm.. I thought I’d try it anyway. Downloading the file wasn’t a problem. Running the file, however, was. It just plain wouldn’t run from the T5540.

So poking around some more, I finally got the solution. Unzip the EXE that is supposedly designed for Altiris, and you will find a little file (145Kb) called VDMClient.cab, which will do the trick. Now, copy this to your T5540, and run it, and you shall have your VDI client available.

This took me about an hour of research to figure out, since there is absolutely no documentation I could find about it anywhere!.

Hopefully this will help someone that may be having the same problem.

Sysprep and VMWare View: the solution

2009-06-19T20:58:00.001-07:00

I’m in the process of implementing VMWare vSphere 4.0 at work, with an add-on for VMWare View.

I had been working with ESXi for a while, so the switch to ESX 4 wasn’t too hard. On the View side, the learning curve was quite easy as well. There’s little that needs to be done in VDI Manager, and the rest is managed just like it would be managed on a physical machine deployed.

For those techies reading this that haven’t dealt with sysprep yet, it’s a Microsoft utility, which you can install, and it ends up residing in C:\Windows\System32\deploy.cab , unzipping this cab will reveal a set of files required to sysprep a machine.

Essentially, sysprep is used when mass deploying desktops on the same network, this could be problematic, because each computer has a SID which is a long number that identifies the computer on the network. By imaging a hard drive without sysprep at all, there will be conflicts, especially if this machine is part of a domain. Part of sysprep’s job is to strip out these SIDs and regenerate them when the machine is re-imaged. Other things sysprep can do is unattended installations, by automating entering the Windows license key, joining to the domain (which is the main point of this article), setting time zones, IPs, etc … (If there is any interest in speaking in more detail about sysprep, post it in the comments, and I can write up an article dedicated to that.)

For those who ARE very familiar with sysprep, you would know that it’s not the most reliable tool to join the machine to the domain when a workstation is booted up with the mini-setup.

Let’s skip ahead and get into VMWare View world. For VDI Manager to work correctly and create desktop pools, the process of creating machines and provisioning them for users has to be flawless, otherwise, the purpose of VDI manager is in vain. The fact that sysprep wasn’t working, meant that the machines weren’t joined to the domain. One failing step is enough to fail everything.

So I decided to create a solution that will allow me to do so much more than sysprep because it creates a framework of setting up a machine through a script that can be expanded as needed. All this while keeping the number of my templates to a minimum. In my case, for a basic user template, a total of ONE!

Keep in mind, in my environment, I have 3 domains, (forest root, and 2 child domains), Machines that are in the VDI Manager desktop pools have to go to their corresponding locations in Active Directory, and even more broadly, to the correct domain.

I decided to leverage the information in the customization wizard in vCenter to provide the information needed for the script to know what domain to add the machine to, and what OU to place it in.

The customization specification manager looks something like this:

In the settings one of these templates, 2 key screens that need to be setup correctly:

This first screen will tell the virtual machine to call itself by the same name as the VDI pool naming scheme is setup as. So if the VDI pool is setup to name the machine as labmachine- with an increasing sequence, my machines will start to automatically pop up with the names: labmachine-1 , labmachine-2, labmachine-3 , for as many machines that I allow in the pool.

The second screen is very simple, and often overlooked:

The second part in this screen is the one that doesn’t work. The part I want to direct your attention to is the “Workgroup” field. In this screenshot, the workgroup is set to “WORKGROUP” for our purposes, I’m changing this workgroup to the NetBios name of the 3 domains I have. I know this will not join the machines to the domain, but this will be leveraged by the script that will get that name and perform the appropriate actions.

Now that this environment is ready. I create a script with Kixtart (which very much like VB, only more geared towards login scripts).

   1: ;region Script Settings

   2: ;<ScriptSettings xmlns="http://tempuri.org/ScriptSettings.xsd">

   3: ;  <ScriptPackager>

   4: ;    <process>kix32.exe</process>

   5: ;    <arguments />

   6: ;    <extractdir>%TEMP%</extractdir>

   7: ;    <files />

   8: ;    <usedefaulticon>true</usedefaulticon>

   9: ;    <showinsystray>false</showinsystray>

  10: ;    <altcreds>false</altcreds>

  11: ;    <efs>true</efs>

  12: ;    <ntfs>true</ntfs>

  13: ;    <local>false</local>

  14: ;    <abortonfail>true</abortonfail>

  15: ;    <product>VDI Workstation Joiner</product>

  16: ;    <internalname>VDIWKJoin</internalname>

  17: ;    <version>1.0.0.1</version>

  18: ;    <versionstring>1.0.0.1</versionstring>

  19: ;    <description>Script to run at the startup of a machine after being sysprepped that will join it to the domain, and install LANDesk on it. </description>

  20: ;    <comments />

  21: ;    <company>Chino Valley Unified School District</company>

  22: ;    <includeinterpreter>false</includeinterpreter>

  23: ;    <forcecomregistration>false</forcecomregistration>

  24: ;    <consolemode>false</consolemode>

  25: ;    <EnableChangelog>false</EnableChangelog>

  26: ;    <AutoBackup>false</AutoBackup>

  27: ;    <snapinforce>false</snapinforce>

  28: ;    <snapinshowprogress>false</snapinshowprogress>

  29: ;    <snapinautoadd>0</snapinautoadd>

  30: ;    <snapinpermanentpath />

  31: ;  </ScriptPackager>

  32: ;</ScriptSettings>

  33: ;endregion

34:

  35: ;

  36: ; Script Packager Template

  37: ; Creates variables For dynamic use by packaged executables and normally executed scripts

  38: ;

  39: ; (C) 2004-06 iTripoli, Inc.

  40: ;

41:

42:

  43: If %ISEXE% = "1"

  44:     $HKCU = %ASEHKCU%

  45:     $CURDIR = %ASEEXEPATH%

  46:     $SCRIPTARGS = %ASEEXEARGS%

  47:     $FullID = %ASEUSERID%

  48:     $UserID = Right($FullID, ( Len($FullID) - (InStr($FullID, "\")) ))

  49: Else

  50:     $HKCU = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER"

  51:     $CURDIR = @CURDIR

  52:     $SCRIPTARGS = "n/a" ; KiX lets you specify variable values, but not open strings

  53:     $FullID = @DOMAIN + "\" + @USERID

  54:     $UserID = @USERID

  55: EndIf

56:

  57: Break ON

  58: Global $DEBUG $DEBUG = 0

  59: $ = SetOption("WrapAtEol","ON")

60:

  61: If Exist("C:\Windows\system32\stage1.dat")

  62:     Use Z: /DEL

  63:     Use Z: "\\do-ld-core\wwwAgent\Windows_Agents" /USER:CVUSD\username /Password:*****

  64:     Shell '%COMSPEC% /c xcopy "z:\Windows_Agent_and_Antivirus_with_status.exe" "C:\"'

  65:     Use Z: /DEL

  66:     Shell '%COMSPEC% /c start /wait /d"c:\" Windows_Agent_and_Antivirus_with_status.exe'

  67:     Shell '%COMSPEC% /c echo "Ready" > c:\windows\system32\ready.dat'

  68:     Del "C:\Windows_Agent_and_Antivirus_with_status.exe"

  69:     Shutdown("", "Computer shutting down - Ready", 5, 1, 1)

70:

  71:     Exit 0

  72: EndIf

73:

  74: ; Get Workstation name, and school number

  75: Global $ComputerName $ComputerName = @WKSTA

  76: Global $Prefix $Prefix = (Trim(Left($ComputerName, ( InStr($ComputerName, "-") - 1 ))))

77:

  78: ; Get WORKGROUP NAME

  79: Global $WORKGROUP

  80: $wmiColl = GetObject("WinMgmts:root/cimv2").ExecQuery("Select * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem ")

  81: For Each $wmiObj in $wmiColl

  82:     $WORKGROUP = $wmiObj.Domain

  83:     If $DEBUG = 1

  84:         ? "DEBUG: WORKGROUP: " + $WORKGROUP

  85:     EndIf

  86: Next

87:

  88: ; Check to make sure that the combination of the Computer name and the Site match. A machine name starting with "DO" can only be in the CVUSD domain.

  89: If ($Prefix = "do" And Not $WORKGROUP = "cvusd")

  90:     $ = MessageBox("Machine name indicate that it needs to reside in the CVUSD domain. A different domain has been specified." + Chr(13) + Chr(10) + "Domain name specified: $WORKGROUP" + Chr(13) + Chr(10) + "Machine name specified: $ComputerName", "Domain and machine name do not match. ", 16)

  91:     Exit 1

  92: EndIf

93:

  94: Select

  95:     Case InStr($Prefix, "do")

  96:         Global $NetDomCmd$NetDomCmd = $Prefix

  97:     Case isNumeric($Prefix) = 0

  98:         $SchoolNumber = $Prefix

  99:         If $DEBUG = 1

 100:             ? "DEBUG: School number detected, running SQL Query"

 101:             ? "DEBUG: School number: " + $SchoolNumber + " - Prefix: " + $Prefix

 102:         EndIf

 103:

 104:

 105:         ; Get School OU for adding in Active Directory correct OU

 106:         $cnstring = 'Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Password=*****;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=username;Initial Catalog=UserNameStore;Data Source=do-mgtweb;'

 107:         $cmdtext = 'SELECT TOP 1 OUName, SchoolNumber FROM AssetInfo WHERE (SchoolNumber=' + $SchoolNumber + ')'

 108:         $cn = CreateObject("adodb.connection")

 109:         $cmd = CreateObject("adodb.command")

 110:         $cn.connectionstring = $cnstring

 111:         $cn.Open

 112:         $cmd.activeconnection = $cn

 113:         $cmd.commandtext = $cmdtext

 114:         $rs = CreateObject("adodb.recordset")

 115:         $rs.cursortype = 3

 116:         $rs.locktype = 3

 117:         $rs.Open($cmd)

 118:

 119:         While Not $rs.EOF And Not $rs.BOF

 120:             Global $OUName $OUName =  $rs.Fields.Item("OUName").Value

 121:             Global $SchoolNumber $SchoolNumber = $rs.Fields.Item("SchoolNumber").Value

 122:             $rs.MoveNext

 123:         Loop

 124:

 125:         If $DEBUG = 1

 126:             ? "DEBUG: OU Name: " + $OUName ? "DEBUG: SchoolNumber: " + $SchoolNumber

 127:         EndIf

 128:

 129:         $rs.Close

 130:         $cn.Close

 131:     Case 1

 132:         $ = MessageBox("Unrecognized machine format - Cannot continue. Machine name needs to start with DO or the School Number. " + Chr(13) + Chr(10) + "i.e: do-machinename or 309-machinename", "Unrecognized machine format", 16)

 133:         Exit 1

 134: EndSelect

 135:

 136:

 137:

 138: Select

 139:     Case $WORKGROUP = "CVUSD"

 140:         Global $OU $OU = $OUName

 141:         Global $Domain $Domain = "CVUSD\do-dc2.chino.k12.ca.us"

 142:         Global $DomainAdmin $DomainAdmin = "CVUSD\username"

 143:         Global $DomainPassword $DomainPassword = "*****"

 144:         If $DEBUG = 1

 145:             ? "DEBUG: OU: " + $OU ? "DEBUG: Domain: " + $Domain ? "DEBUG: Domain Admin: " + $DomainAdmin ? "DEBUG: Domain Password: " + $DomainPassword

 146:         EndIf

 147:         domainjoin($Domain, $DomainAdmin, $DomainPassword,, "Do")

 148:         Shutdown("", "Computer shutting down - Stage 1 Complete",5, 1, 1)

 149:     Case $WORKGROUP = "STUDENT"

 150:         ;? "IN STUDENT"

 151:         Global $OU $OU = 'ou=workstations,ou='+ $OUName + ',ou=Schools,dc=student,dc=chino,dc=k12,dc=ca,dc=us'

 152:         Global $Domain $Domain = "STUDENT\do-studc.student.chino.k12.ca.us"

 153:         Global $DomainAdmin $DomainAdmin = "STUDENT\username"

 154:         Global $DomainPassword $DomainPassword = "*****"

 155:         If $DEBUG = 1

 156:             ? "DEBUG: OU: " + $OU ? "DEBUG: Domain: " + $Domain ? "DEBUG: Domain Admin: " + $DomainAdmin ? "DEBUG: Domain Password: " + $DomainPassword

 157:         EndIf

 158:         domainjoin($Domain, $DomainAdmin, $DomainPassword, $OU, $SchoolNumber)

 159:         Shutdown("", "Computer shutting down - Stage 1 Complete",5, 1, 1)

 160:     Case $WORKGROUP = "STUDENT2"

 161:         Global $OU $OU = 'ou=workstations,ou=' + $OUName + ',ou=Schools,dc=student2,dc=chino,dc=k12,dc=ca,dc=us'

 162:         Global $Domain $Domain = "STUDENT2\do-studc2.student2.chino.k12.ca.us"

 163:         Global $DomainAdmin $DomainAdmin = "STUDENT2\username"

 164:         Global $DomainPassword $DomainPassword = "*****"

 165:         If $DEBUG = 1

 166:             ? "DEBUG: OU: " + $OU ? "DEBUG: Domain: " + $Domain ? "DEBUG: Domain Admin: " + $DomainAdmin ? "DEBUG: Domain Password: " + $DomainPassword

 167:         EndIf

 168:         domainjoin($Domain, $DomainAdmin, $DomainPassword, $OU, $SchoolNumber)

 169:         Shutdown("", "Computer shutting down - Stage 1 Complete",5, 1, 1)

 170:     Case 1

 171:         $ = MessageBox("Unrecognized domain - Cannot continue. Domain is not recognized. This should have been specified in the Customization Specification in vCenter" + Chr(13) + Chr(10) + "Valid domain names: CVUSD, STUDENT, STUDENT2", "Unrecognized Domain", 16)

 172:         Exit 1

 173: EndSelect

 174:

 175: ; FUNCTIONS

 176:

 177: Function domainjoin($Domain, $DomainAdmin, $DomainPassword, OPTIONAL $OU, $Location)

 178:     If $DEBUG = 1

 179:         If $WORKGROUP = "CVUSD"

 180:             $OU = "CN=Computers,DC=chino,DC=k12,DC=us"

 181:         EndIf

 182:         ? "Fn DEBUG: OU: " + $OU

 183:         ? "Fn DEBUG: Location: " + $Location

 184: EndIf

 185:

 186:     Select

 187:         Case $Location = "do"

 188:             Shell '%COMSPEC% /c c:\windows\netdom.exe join ' + @WKSTA + ' /d:' + $Domain + ' /UserD:"' + $DomainAdmin + '" /PasswordD:' + $DomainPassword

 189:                 If $DEBUG = 1

 190:                     ? ? 'DEBUG: Shell "%COMSPEC% /c c:\windows\netdom.exe join ' + @WKSTA + ' /d:' + $Domain + ' /UserD:"' + $DomainAdmin + '" /PasswordD:' + $DomainPassword

 191:                 EndIf

 192:             Shell '%COMSPEC% /c echo "Stage 1" > c:\windows\system32\stage1.dat'

 193:         Case isNumeric($Location) = 0

 194:             Shell '%COMSPEC% /c c:\windows\netdom.exe join ' + @WKSTA + ' /d:' + $Domain + ' /UserD:"' + $DomainAdmin + '" /PasswordD:' + $DomainPassword + ' /ou:"' + $OU + '"'

 195:                 If $DEBUG = 1

 196:                     ? ? 'DEBUG: Shell "%COMSPEC% /c c:\windows\netdom.exe join ' + @WKSTA + ' /d:' + $Domain + ' /UserD:"' + $DomainAdmin + '" /PasswordD:' + $DomainPassword + ' /ou:"' + $OU + '"'

 197:                 EndIf

 198:             Shell '%COMSPEC% /c echo "Stage 1" > c:\windows\system32\stage1.dat'

 199:         Case 1

 200:             $ = MessageBox("The location passed to function is not recognized. " + Chr(13) + Chr(10) + "value passed need to be - do - or a school number. ", "Function error", 16)

 201:             Exit 1

 202:     EndSelect

 203: EndFunction

 204:

 205: Function isNumeric($var)

 206:     If $DEBUG = 1

 207:         ? "Fn DEBUG: Reached iNumeric Function"

 208:     $IsNumeric = Not IIf($var = 0.0 + $var, 1, 0)

 209: EndFunction

 210:

 211:

 212:

 213:

 214:

 215:

 216:

What this script does is run on the first login after the Virtual Machine has been deployed by VDI Manager and will do the following:

It will check to see if the machine name starts with a prefix acceptable, in my case, it was either DO for the district office, or a 3 digit number for any of the schools. This means that any of the provisioned VMs have to match this naming convention or an error will be thrown upon login.
If the machine starts with “do”, then it’s a valid workstation name, next, the script will check for the WORKGROUP that we specified in the customization specification manager, by doing a WMI call to root/cimv2 database, and get the computer workgroup name. This workgroup returned, will correspond to one of the 3 domains. Anything else will fail.
In the case of DO, not much is required, all machines are dumped into one OU. In the case of the schools, it’s more complicated: in my case, computers sit in different OUs, so in the case of a computer name that starts with a number (corresponding to a school), a database (that I created) query is made that will get me the corresponding OU for the school in question.
Now that all the information is gathered, the script will continue on to run the Netdom command to join the machine to the domain.
After this is done, the script will raise a flag to create a file to let the system know that it’s been already setup.

This script is very flexible because it’s being run independently from sysprep. I trigger it from the Programs/All Users/startup.bat, which calls another batch file:

   1: @echo off

2:

   3: IF EXIST "c:\windows\system32\ready.dat" GOTO DELETEWSSETUP

   4: IF EXIST "c:\windows\system32\wssetup.exe" GOTO SETUP

   5: GOTO END

6:

   7: :DELETEWSSETUP

   8: DEL C:\Windows\system32\wssetup.exe

   9: GOTO EXIT

10:

  11: :SETUP

  12: c:\windows\system32\wssetup.exe

  13: GOTO EXIT

14:

  15: :END

  16: GOTO EXIT

17:

  18: :EXIT

19:

This script will trigger the main vbscript which is represented as wssetup.exe. I encoded it in an exe, to hide any sensitive information in the script. i.e: database and domain passwords.

The rest of it just monitors the environment to make sure that everything has been ran. Once it has, and it finds the flag specified by the original script. It deletes that original script leaving no trace behind it. At this point the machine is ready to go.

This setup is very flexible, because it allows the adding of any number of functions to run at the setup of the machines prior to the users even touching them. Think, install applications, anti-virus software, customization, etc…

ODBC Connection Error and VMWare View Composer 4.0 installation

2009-06-11T16:03:00.001-07:00

I was working on creating an installation of VMWare vSphere View Composer 4.0 to connect to MS SQL 2008 Enterprise database. This install requires an ODBC connection to exist on the server.

Since my SQL server resides on the same server that vSphere is installed on, I thought I would create an SQL native client connection via ODBC.

Creating this connection with the Native Client always threw an error when specifying the ODBC DSN. In order to troubleshoot, I had to remove and recreate the ODBC connection, which brought me to the first issue:

ODBC Connection cannot be deleted!

That’s right, anything I do to remove or reconfigure the ODBC connection would give me the following error:
The setup routines for the he login. The login failed. ODBC driver could not be found

Looking up some info regarding the error, I found that the ODBC drive may have gotten corrupted, and the MDAC drivers need to be reinstalled. To do that you go to c:\Windows\INF and find mdac.inf

Right Click –> Install –> mdac.inf (You need the windows 2003 CD for that to work)
Once the CD is provided, all the original files pertaining to the ODBC drivers will be reinstalled.

Unfortunately, doing this didn’t resolve my problem. The next step was try to find the source of this ODBC connection, and deleting it from the registry. There are two location under HKLM/SOFTWARE/ODBC/ODBC.INI

From ODBC Data Sources: Delete the DSN entry in question
Also Delete the ODBC specific connection under ODBC.INI

Now, go back to the Data Sources (ODBC) under administrative tools, and you will see the stubborn System DSN is no longer there. Hooray!!

Now, re-create your ODBC connection

That was only the first problem.

Connect Composer to MS SQL 2008 via ODBC connection!

the second was related to the connection from Composer to the database. For a minute there, I was thinking View Composer does not support SQL 2008 yet, as it is not listed on the compatibility list.

now that I could mess with the ODBC connection, I decided to re-create it with a SQL Sever connection (instead of Native client), user the SQL Authentication, with a DB user that has db_owner privileges on the database. Woo hoo! that did it! the connection was successful.

In searching google, I couldn’t find anyone dealing with this sort of issue, and especially not a whole lot dealing with VMWare composer 4.0 and SQL 2008. So hopefully this will help someone in their quest to install these 2 products.

MsiGetProductInfo failed to retrieve ProductVersion for package during install

2009-06-10T16:08:00.001-07:00

Today, I was trying to upgrade SQL on one of my servers from 2000 to 2008. Fortunately, that process went so smooth, in fact smoother than I had expected it to.

However, knowing the nature of IT, I had to be skeptical that absolutely everything was going to run smoothly. Sure enough, I go to the part where I was upgrading the Server Management Studio from 2005 to 2008. That process didn't exactly go as smooth.

As I was doing an upgrade install of the tools from 2005 to 2008, I would get the following message:

TITLE: SQL Server Setup failure.
------------------------------
SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error:
MsiGetProductInfo failed to retrieve ProductVersion for package with Product
Code = '{AEB9948B-4FF2-47C9-990E-47014492A0FE}'. Error code: 1608..
------------------------------
BUTTONS:
OK
------------------------------

Well, that certainly was interesting. When I went to try to uninstall SQL 2005 from Add/Remove programs, It acted as if everything was working fine, though, the uninstaller would do its thing, and quit pretty quickly, without removing the program. I tried to use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, unfortunately, the SQL installation was the only one that was not showing in there. Running some additional google searches revealed some articles that were related to my problem, though, non of which actually resolved my problem. The problem here referred to MSXML6 MSI being corrupt, and using the Orca tool to tweak the MSI. In my case, MSXML6 was installed correctly, and was able to uninstall and reinstall it without any problems.

Some other articles I ran into are here and here. Unfortunately, non of those helped my situation.

At the end it dawned on me to try the one thing I still hadn’t tried. I whipped out the SQL 2005 CD, and reinstalled the 2005 tools on top of the supposedly corrupt version. Once that installation completed, I re-ran the SQL 2008 setup, with an update option. and bam ! the installer seemed to work this time. I guess not all complex problems have to have complex solution.

The only caveat to this process is that I was still able to see the 2005 instance in Add/Remove programs. So, I guess 2008 doesn’t really do an in-place upgrade. I just had to uninstall 2005, and leave 2008, and everything was dandy.

Hope this process helps someone if they ran into the same issue.

New model for finding posts on this blog

2009-06-10T15:17:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since there have been a new posts on this blog. Life has been happening… quite fast.

Lately I’ve been going through quite a few technical issues that I haven’t found resolutions for as I did my research on google. Since some of these issues are highly technical, and I know the audience of this blog is of many different levels of interest, and technical knowledge, I decided to add a specific set of tags to the blog that would point out the level of difficulty, and expertise required to understand a particular article.

I will be sticking with the generic: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert.

So if you are looking for some real challenge, just sort through the blog posts by the “Expert” tag, and you will be able to find posts that would match your desire.

Hopefully this will allow my readers to tailor their reading based on their interest.

Skype for iPhone is now available!

2009-03-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

Today (03/31/2009) Skype released their iPhone app. I was quick to go and download it. I had heard some stuff about it. Some was true, some I had misunderstood, and now that I have the app, all is clear.

Here are a couple of things that I noticed:

The interface is very similar to the desktop version of Skype, has the same logon sound, and feels very similar in the navigation.

There was some talk about Skype for iPhone not having text messaging. This is where I had some confusion, I had thought that the chat feature wasn’t available in the iPhone version, turns out to be that SMS text messaging isn’t available. I heard a lot of people complain about that, though I’m not sure that it’s a big deal, given there are other methods to sending text message via the phone (through email, for instance).
The chat was very fast, even on my Edge network. I had all my history of that chat pop up (I was also logged in on my laptop). The profile of the user is viewable, and basic actions like “blocking” a user are also available.
Trying to make a Skype call the Edge / 3G network was a no-go. Apparently this is something related to the agreement of data usage with the carrier or something to that effect. The message is detailed when it comes up on Skype will connected to Edge or 3G
Skype calls were very crisp and clear on WiFi though. I love the fact that it can be used on both the speaker phone as well as the phone ear piece.

Given all I’ve seen at first glance, I’m very impressed with Skype for iPhone. It’s quite stable for a first release. I haven’t had a single crash yet, and connectivity is fast. Also, my SkypeOut balance is available, and can extend my credit straight from my iPhone. Same goes for my voicemail account as well.

If you’re an iPhone owner, then Skype is definitely an app you want to download. best of all, it’s free… can’t beat that price!

The switch from cable TV to internet TV

2009-03-19T22:14:00.001-07:00

For as long as I remember, I have had some sort of TV at my house. Most of the time, it was cable, but even when I was a college student, and couldn’t afford cable, I still had regular broadcast TV.

For the past 5 or 6 years now, I’ve had Cable, DirecTV, you name it, I had it. In the recent months, I’ve been looking at TV, and wondering why I pay close to $65 / month for programming that I rarely watch. Then I thought back, and realized that I only had TV for a few shows that I watch on a regular basis. Could not justify the cost. So I went on the hunt for my TV shows online to see if it’s possible to make the switch.

The search was really not hard at all. With the help of a bunch of articles from Lifehacker, I had a good idea on where to find shows. My first stop was Hulu.com which has 90% of the shows I watch. The rest, I found them on ABC, which Hulu already has links to. Not too bad. Now I had the problem with switching from my 42” Plasma TV to my 17” MacBookPro, so I went again on the hunt to find some solutions for that. It wasn’t long before I stumbled on Plexapp.com and Boxee.tv. These happened to be applications that have quite a lot of online content, consolidated into one nice application, which also includes my music (iTunes) libraries, as well as my photo (iPhoto) libraries in it. Those, in addition to quite a few sources for online content.

I decided to try both Plex, and Boxee, and keeping my opinion short on this, since this article isn’t quite about these apps: I’d have to say, I love the concept, though they still have a lot of room to grow, the functionality is still unstable, though they’re heading in the right direction. I especially love the remote control software they wrote for these applications. Namely, Rowmote, and Boxee Remote for the iPhone.

That said, I decided to stick it out with Boxee and see where they take me. Of course, there was the ordeal with Hulu dropping Boxee as a content provider, which was a bummer, but we still have (for now), the Hulu feeds on Boxee.

Now that I have access to all the stuff online, I realized that I’m having trouble keeping up with my shows. I came from a spoiled DVR world, where I used to turn on my TV, and see what was just recorded and watch it. Now, I have to know when these shows air, so that I can catch the online episode, which actually doesn’t get posted until after the show airs. Having to go through all the shows every day to see what has recently aired proved just too much work. So once again, I headed out to our friends at Lifehacker, and I found this great site called, Crap, I missed it!. I know the name sound pretty funny, but it’s quite a useful site. it’s almost like an on-demand scheduler that I have on the DVR, only free.. Nice!

So I went and searched for the shows I watch, and created email notifications for them to be delivered to my mailbox! Yay, now I don’t have to worry about what’s playing when. I just look at my latest “Crap, I missed it!” email, and know what show is playing next, and I can watch it on Boxee.

Another little nifty trick, was to grab the RSS feed of all the subscriptions I have on there, and dump them on my NetVibes page. Now that… is sweet!

I do have to admit, that I’m having slight withdrawals by not having the DVR, but with the new setup, it only takes a little bit of getting used to, before having a great experience.

Now one more cost will be involved in this, and that is to purchase a dedicated Media PC/Mac to be connected to my Media center.

Have you made the switch from cable yet? how’s your experience with it? what are tricks and ways you’ve set yourself up for it? Share in the comments.

Cable Management DIY

2009-03-12T19:58:00.001-07:00

I was just about to leave work today, and one of the helpdesk ladies brought over an old iBook for repair. she put it on the table and left, I didn’t pay any attention to it, until I was packing up to leave work, and I glanced at the power supply, only to see the cable wrapped in something I had never seen before. well… I had seen it, just not in this context. It’s either that I’m way behind the times, and most people already know this, or, I’m sharing a new idea with someone who’s always frustrated with their laptop cable being all over the place in your laptop bag.

As I looked closer at the concoction, I noticed that it’s the toilet paper roll cardboard holder. you can tell it’s a lady that created that one, since it has some girly design on it, but your imagination is the limit on what you could print out and stick on the roll, to make it look uber cool!

I’m not sure how sturdy it is, and how long it’ll last before it starts tearing apart, but honestly, who cares, when you print the first design for the first roll, print 5 more copies, and I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding the toilet paper roll thingies :)

Texter, it’s a beautiful thing…

2009-03-09T10:40:00.001-07:00

Texter is a sweet little utility that allows the text expansion. There are many other products that do the same thing, though the cool thing about Texter is that it’s absolutely free, it has virtually no foot print and works like a charm. ok, almost like a charm. This app has been published by our friends at Lifehacker. you can find some more information about it, and download it from here.

Now to my problem, and to anyone that has seen this, and may have a solution for it, for some reason, every so often, especially when I’m using some Remote Desktop software, i.e: vRD 2009, I get a sweet little error message that looks like this:

Hmm, so perhaps it’s some variable that vRD is setting that is conflicting with the %Bank% variable. I’m not sure. when this error happens, Texter is still alive, though not really functional, I’d have to relaunch it.

So, what’s the solution to that, if any? ideas? thoughts? comments?

The question of wireless profiles on laptops with new users

2009-03-04T12:40:00.001-08:00

This post is a bit more of a technical nature…so if you casually read my blog, this may fly over your head :)

I was at work today, and a very interesting question came up from one of my colleagues… here’s the scenario:

We have a couple of laptop carts in some labs in the schools, and these laptops are to be used by students who have their individual Active Directory logins. These laptops connect primarily with a Wireless connection.

Given:

We know that that in order to connect to a network account, you need a network connections.
We know that a wireless profile on a computer is profile based, not machine based.

Problem:

In order for a user to have a wireless connection, they need to have a profile, and in order to create the profile, you need a network connection. The verdict: it’s a catch 22!

Workaround:

There’s always the possibility to connect the laptop to a wired connection in order to login for the first time to the computer. However, given that there are hundreds of students, and each of those students may very well grab a different laptop each time they visit the lab, there will be a constant plugging, unplugging, questions, confusions, you get the idea…

Ideal Solution:

Have a wireless profile setup in Windows Group Policy to allow for the wireless setup automatically on the machine: That’s a great idea IF:

All the machines logging in have Windows XP Service Pack 3
If the servers on which the GPO resides have Windows 2003 servers or higher . (Windows Server 2008 and Vista natively have this functionality, and no schema changes would be required for them.)
If the servers have Windows 2003, that you are willing to make some changes to the Active Directory schema, following the instructions in this article: http://technet.microsoft.com/bb727029 , that’s pretty high risk if you ask me.

My Workaround:

The following is a theory at this point, as I haven’t implemented it, though I have pretty high confidence that I can bring it to fruition.

1- Setup a Default profile that's configured with the appropriate Wireless configuration 2- Create a local, no privilege account on the laptop with no password or a very simple password. 3- Place a batch-file and/or other script that launches on login, that asks the user for their network login and password: The batch file/script will contain a routine to trigger some process that will "RUN AS..." that user, therefore, triggering the creation of that user's profile on that workstation using the default profile which contains the wireless configuration, and then logs off. 4- Now the user can logon with their network account, to which the default profile has been copied, and the Wireless configuration has been applied. 5- (Optional) Enable the GPO to wait for login until network connectivity has been established.

I will post a follow up to this post if and when I decide to implement this solution. What do you think about this workaround? do you have any better ideas to implement wireless configuration for non-logged on users aside from the GPO method?

Restaurant Omakase... what an experience!

2009-02-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

I went to Restaurant Omakase with 9 people for my friend's birthday. It was a suggestion from my friend initially, and I had some reservations at first due to the $$$$. Before I say anything else about this place, let me get the cost piece out of the way. It's expensive. For a minimal satisfactory experience, don't think about spending less than about $70 / person, with wine pairing, about $110 / person. That being said, if you have reservations about the cost, but are really in it for a culinary experience, then I promise you that this will be a well spent $70!

Decor and atmosphere: The decoration was very modern, it gives you a warm feeling when you enter. it's very simplistic, yet makes a statement. It's pretty quiet, all candle lit, could be great for a party, or a tête à tête evening with your loved one.

Service: The service was excellent. at the door we were greeted by the Maitre D, and our party was seated at the table. During the meal, there were 2 waitresses for our party, and they were literally waiting on us the whole night. Granted, there was almost only us in the restaurant at the time (We went at around 6:00pm) , but with our party of 10, we literally almost filled 1/3 of the total capacity of the restaurant.

The Menu: the menu was not very long, it's categories into 5 sections, Salad, Appetizers, and Entrées, desserts and drinks. They also have a full wine list, though we didn't really look at that. Their specialty is the Chef tasting menu, which consists of a salad, 2 appetizers, 1 entrée and a dessert. I wouldn't recommend anything but this, even though the other individuals may sound appealing, if nothing else, price-wise. You would need at least 2 of the items to even fill you up. The Chef's tasting menu is portioned perfectly, and you will leave with a beautiful rich taste in your mouth.

The Food: That was the highlight of this experience. I have to be honest, when I went in to this place, I had no idea what to expect. But when I started, I started seeing the worth of this place. All their food is home grown, they have their own gardens to grow their greens/herbs, etc ... They have their chicken for the eggs and other things. the food is delightful. One thing I HAVE to recommend, it's going to sound silly, but you will know exactly what I mean, is the croutons in the salad. pay special attention to those, and I promise they will be the best croutons you have ever eaten in your life. we had 10 people in our party, and every single one of us commented on these croutons. This must tell you something about it.

Overall, the experience at restaurant Omakase has exceeded all expectations I've had. my girlfriend is a professional chef, and after going there, she was really wanting to see if she can get a job there. from a Chef, that is saying a lot. Forget about the price, it's a priceless experience, and the $70 you'll spend will be the best one you've spent for a fantastic culinary experience.

Twitter and TweeterGetter? bad idea?

2009-02-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

In the past few days, I've been seeing quite a buzz on the TweeterGetter site. There's also been a lot of talk about its existence, and whether it is a good idea to subscribe to. I have thought about it for a while, and finally decided not to sign up for it, and here are my reasons:

Impersonal: Though I know that not all twitter followers are people I know, they are still people that have likely followed me for a reason and a common interest. I believe that with TweeterGetter, this factor will get lost, and I will end up with people that I may have nothing in common with.
Quality over quantity: Some people may find satisfaction in having 20,000 followers, and get a sense of accomplishment from it, and these are sometimes the one that would find satisfaction in a service like TweeterGetter. Although, sometimes, these same people are the ones I see posting Twitts to the effect of: "Cleaning up my Twit Spammers, not fun", etc ... I would like to try to not become one of those people, and have spam control that I manipulate.
Really? 10000?: I mean seriously, I don't run a known blog, I believe in networking, and I have a fairly nice LinkedIn profile, and Facebook profile, but these are network connections that are meaningful. From a Twitter perspective, 10000 followers, or even following 10000 people sounds absurd. I have always wondered how people can even keep track of 10000 sending updates. Right now, I only have a couple of hundred followers, and I myself following about that much as well, and I find it overwhelming to keep in touch with everything that's going on.
TweetDeck API Hog!: so, I have followers in the hundreds only, and sometimes I find my TweetDeck API hit its limit per hour. Yeah, yeah I know I can change the request intervals, and fetch use profiles in a browser to save on APIs, but imagine with some 10000 followers! I would think I'd need to check maybe once every 15 minutes to keep under my API call limit. Of course, that is a bit of a mundane problem, but as far as I'm concerned, it still is one.
Username and Password: TweeterGetter is one more place I'd need to plug in my Twitter username and password. That being said, I have to admit, that it irks me that people always complain that they have to input their username and password for a 3rd party service. I happen to see this on Lifehacker often times. People, if you don't want to try the new service which requires your username and password, then don't, there's no use in complaining that this 3rd party company is doing you a disservice by offering a service that would require your username and password. You want your cake and eat it too? I digress....this is a topic for another post.

If you are one who is serious about networking, I really do discourage you from using tools such as TweeterGetter, as it will only increase the likelihood of spam, and would be counter productive to what you are trying to accomplish. These are my 2 cents on this topic. What are your thoughs?

A cool notepad trick

2008-10-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I found a neat trick to do with notepad. At this point, I'm not sure if there's any purpose for it, other than to brag to your friends about it, or if you have some text to hide. This trick simply uses Notepad that is built into windows. Usually, in order to create a text file from the command prompt, or the run command, you type:

notepad myfile.txt

You would now have a normal text file. But if you want to hide some text within that text file, you can actually create a (hidden) file, within the visible file. How? you ask .. well, comin' right up. Simple open up a command prompt, by going to start / run... and type cmd. Then type the following:

notepad visiblefile.txt:hiddenfile.txt

This will open up the file that is hidden within visiblefile.txt. hiddenfile.txt will not show up if you browse to the directory, or look at it in explorer, it's embedded within the visible file. So now if you want to edit visiblefile.txt, you simple double click on it within explorer, and if you want to edit the hidden file you created, you just type the same command line above to open it. Note, that if you delete the visiblefile.txt file, your hiddenfile.txt will also be deleted with it.

Great Utilities and Sites

2008-10-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

As I was looking at my list of utilities that I usually use with friends and clients, and I realized that I have quite a list that could be helpful to anyone that is looking for solutions in any of the following areas: Remote Control File Sharing/Syncing/Backup VPN Connectivity. File / Picture Sharing (Quick) Following, you will find a few sites and software that assist to accomplisht he above, and the best part is that they are all free: Remote Control and Remote Assistance:

PC/Mac: LogMeIn (http://www.logmein.com) This is one of my personal favorites. It has a clean interface, and works flawlessly. It runs as a windows service, which means that usually, when all else fails, it's still possible to connect to the computer and reboot it, or power cycle it. The free version of it only allows remote control, but that is usually enough for remote control and basic support. For additional functionality, you can always look at the other products from LogMeIn, (Pro, IT Reach, and Rescue, which come at a significantly higher price point, though depending on your purpose, it may be worth it for you.
PC/Mac: Teamviewer (http://www.teamviewer.com) I was introduced to TeamViewer when I was on a support call with Microsoft, and their Easy Assist server was not available, so that was their fallback method, little did I know that I would really love that solution. Unlike LogMeIn which requires quite a few steps to install the agent, TeamViewer is a painless installer, it's as simple as downloading a small plugin, and following the instructions to give remote access to your IT person. It also has functionality of File Transfer, Presentation mode, and VPN all bundled in. It also has the option to install an agent that will allow conecting to it without having the user download and run the plugin everytime. I find this one to be very slick!
PC/(Mac) : Remote Desktop deserves an honorable mention because it remains one of the IT professionals' main tools to access remote computers. It's free with the Windows OS, but of course, it not as easy to set, especially if the target computer i behind a firewall. The 2 pregious solutions do not require any modifications on the firewall to function correctly.
VNC (http://realvnc.com) This one has been around forever, and within a LAN environment, it's fairly easy to setup, but to support people outside of your own LAN, it has the same caveats as RDP, where you would need to open up ports on your firewall, and not as easy to instruct someone to install it.

File Sharing / Syncing / Backup There a lot of products out there that do the job, but here are my favorites, mostly because they're mostly very cheap or free

PC Only: GoodSync (http://www.goodsync.com) This is one of the first products that I had ever started using for syncing files. Given that I do a lot of scripting, even 10 minutes can make a difference in what I have backed up. Good sync is quite robust in the way it does syncing, and is very user friendly. You can use it as a backup also, by not allowing it to delete files that you delete on your source, but I rely on other software to do backups, this way I have synced data, AND backed up data to revert to previous dates. GoodSync, will run you $29.95, and the 2nd license, only $9.95, in my opinion, well worth the money.
PC Only: Cobian Backup (http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm) I know, the site for this seems kind of obscure, I have gone through quite a few backup products, and Cobian seems to do the job best. it's very regularly updated, and best of all is 100% free! I use it at my work, because we're lacking an enterprise solution. Moreover, I recommend it to all my clients who don't have a budget to purchase a bigger product. It supports notifications, all the basic functionality of backups (Full, Differentials, Incrementals) , and central management! (this only showed up on in the last few versions)
PC/Mac: Foldershare (http://www.foldershare.com) This is part of the live package from Microsoft. it actually works really well... Once it's setup! However, if the folder is renamed and foldershare doesn't know about it, then you have to go through the setup again, which requires multiple steps. All in all though, it's a very good product, I actually use it with my girlfriend and my dad (who is in another country), to share files.
PC/Mac/Linux: DropBox (http://getdropbox.com) This one, I discovered only a couple of days ago. It's also free, and multiplatform. you have the ability to share files with people who don't have dropbox, however, the beauty of this is for use when you need to have some files synchronized at all times. In 3 words.... it just works! In my opinion, this one is more geared to sync your own files, rather than collaborate: The sharing is based on one email address login. So unless you create one common address between you and your collaborators, it's probably not a very handy solution for that.
Box.net (http://www.box.net) Box.net, on the other hand seems to allow collaboration. I personally have not really used it yet, so I'm not sure what features it has, but it looks promising, I may check it out sometime soon.
GBridge (http://www.gbridge.com) This one is more of a VPN/Filesharing product. it's made by google, and is actually very seamless as well. It has an IM interface, and it extends the GTalk service to provide VPN connectivity. Obviously, you need to have a google account in order to use this. But give it a shot. So far this is only for PC, but who knows maybe a Mac version is coming up.

VPN Connectivity

PC/Mac/Linux: Hamachi (http://hamachi.cc) A very user friendly VPN product, that is free for the basic version. It creates a secure tunnel, to your other networks, or clients, through which you can establish any number of connections. It is one of my personal favorites. The basic version has worked for me for years without the need to subscribe to the premium version. you would only need the premium version for these reasons:

you have a large number of computers (more than 16) to connect to the hamachi network.
you need Hamachi to run as a service, so that you can connect to even if the user logs off
you have a mission critical operation that needs priority in logging in, in case the service goes down.

TeamViewer (http://www.teamviewer.com) This one, mentioned above, also allows for the establishing of a VPN tunnel. it works very nicely, though, the VPN functionality only works when connecting to a PC. The multiplatfrom bit only works for the remote control and file transfer. but not VPN
GBridge (http://www.gbridge.com) Also mentioned above, provides VPN connectivity.

File / Picture Sharing on the go

Web: Dropio (http://drop.io) A great filesharing website that allows you to share a big (or small) file with people. It quite robust actually, and allows faxing from there, and for a small fee, you can even receive faxes. The best part is that you can assign drops for each individual and give certain permissions to each of the boxes. I would check it out if you are looking for a convenient way to share files.
Web: FileShaker (http://www.fileshaker.com) Seems to be a new kid on the block, but allows up to 10Gb file uploads, so it makes things very convenient.
Web: YouSendIt - DropLoad (http://yousendit.com , http://dropload.com) These ones started as being good free products, but as soon as they got popular, they became payware, and since I always look for free products, these ones sort of fell off the list. they were good while they lasted though :)
Web: PipeBytes (http://www.pipebytes.com) This one has a slightly different concept than the rest of the file sharing sites, in that it allows for a "receiving code" that will show the sender when the receiver started downloading the file. it's a very good solution for when a video is being sent, as it treats a video as a streaming one, and the recipient can start watching before the full download is over. quite handy...
Web: rarhost (http://www.rarhost.com) This one sort of falls in a the "specialty" category. It only processes RAR files. Though it claims to do it quite well, and can even process split rars, etc ... I haven't played with this one yet, but it looks pretty cool, if you're dealing with rar files. Unfortunately, rar is not a very common compression format for the average user, hence it belonging to the "specialty" category.
Web: TinyPic (http://www.tinypic.com) That's a nice way to be able to quickly share a picture. it's simple: you upload a picture, and you give the URL to the recipient. The URLs (or code) that you get back after the upload actually work for a direct link, html, or embedded object, and a number of other formats, so it makes it convenient to share the picture wherever you are.
Web: Picoodle.com (http://www.picoodle.com) Picoodle is almost exactly like TinyPic, only, you're able to have an account and keep track of which pictures you uploaded and resend their links at a later time. With TinyPic, if you lost the link, then you'd better re-upload the picture

Online Video Downloading / File conversion

ZamZar (http://www.zamzar.com) One of my personal favorites, it pretty much can convert anything to anything, and even allows downloading an online video, convert it to any format you want, and send you the link to download it (good for YouTube downloads)
Media-Convert (http://media-convert.com) This one also works, and is very close in its functionality to ZamZar.
VidDownloader (http://www.viddownloader.com) This one is not as veratile, it's only for downloading online streaming videos to your computer. I haven't tried it many times, but the couple of times I did, it seemed to work good.

I hope you found this list beneficial. I use one or more of these tools at least once a day. Do you have any cool tools that you use that you'd like to share?

Better Gmail 2 v0.5.1 now supports HTML Signatures!!

2008-07-03T07:54:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited! Finally, Better Gmail 2 support HTML Signatures. there's a couple steps to it, but once it's setup, it's beautiful, and gets seamlessly inserted in new messages. I can now send email from web-based gmail, as well as outlook/Mac Mail, and have my outgoing mail look the same! Yippeee!!

Also, as a side note, if you download this version of Better Gmail 2 (0.5.1) , check out the redesigned skin, it's on a black background, and it looks amazing!

iPhone 3G Pricing ... It's aggravating!

2008-07-01T18:41:00.001-07:00

So, I was reading some information about the release of detailed pricing from AT&T today, and I found out some information that irritated me.

First off, if you're not too familiar with the pricing plan that AT&T has, here's the skinny: If you're a current AT&T customer, and eligible for an upgrade, you can get the 8GB iPhone 3G for $199, and the 16Gb for $299. However, if you are NOT eligible for an upgrade, and you are an existing AT&T customer, you would have to:
1- Pay $399 for the 8Gb, and $499 for the 16Gb
2- Reset your 2 year contract with AT&T.

As a side note, there also seems to be some rumors that there will be a no-contract option for the iPhone purchase, which will be $599 for the 8Gb and $699 for the 16Gb. This apparently, may not be available for a few months though.

Now, the reason as to why I'm aggravated. I used to be a happy Verizon customer, and had the XV6700 with which I was extremely happy for the most part. Due to Apple striking the deal with AT&T, and due to the fact that I really liked the iPhone, I decided to bite the bullet, and move to AT&T. This was before there were any rumors of the iPhone 3G roaming around. When I moved, I decided to get the Blackjack as a backup phone, while waiting to get my iPhone. During that time, I heard that a new version of the iPhone will be coming out, so I decided to lay low until the new one was out.

Well, for me, as a new AT&T customer, I had moved carriers just to get a handset that I really wanted, and now, I get stuck with, not only having to pay the full price of the handset of the first generation phone, but also an additional $10 / month for my data plan.

Even with the $299 price-point for the iPhone 3G, and the $10 increase in the data plan, I would still be short some $150 or so by the end of my 2 year contract. Now, I guess I have to do the math for what the iPhone would end up costing me by paying the full premium for it, as well as the added plan cost. Not to mention the additional, (optional... ridiculous! ) text plan, which will nicely tack on another $20 / month !

Hmm.. now I have to wonder whether the iPhone is a good investment? or would I be better off terminating early with AT&T and getting the Samsung Instinct from Sprint, at least, with that, I would get the new customer device discount..... plus, the Instinct is looking like a very sweet phone from the looks of it..

LogMeIn Setup Instructions

2008-06-19T15:20:00.001-07:00

There are times when I'm working with friends/clients where I need to access their computers to assist them with a particular problem. In order to make the process simpler, I created some step by step instructions on installing the LogMeIn agent on their computer, with some friendly screenshots. The following screenshots apply to Windows XP. Windows Vista instructions will come later

Please follow these steps:

1-Go to Start/Run

2- Type http://logmein.com/logmein.msi

3- Click on "Run". Optionally, you can click on "Save" and save it to the desktop, in case you need to re-run it later

4- Click Run...

5- Click Next

6- Select "I Agree"

8- Select "Typical" (Default)

9- Leave the computer description as the default.

10- In this area, type in the email address and password that I give you. and make sure you choose "LogMeIn Free"

11- Click "Next"

The installer will start ... let the it finish. during that time, your screen may blink quickly a couple of times. this is normal. don't panic!

12- Click on "Finish"

Once the installer is done, if you look on the bottom right hand of your screen, you will find this the gray icon with 4 blue dots in it (highlighted in red). this is an indication that LogMeIn has been installed

If you right click on that icon, the below menu will pop up. the second option is: "Disable LogMeIn" . This means LogMeIn is enabled. if LogMeIn is disabled, this option will say "Enable LogMeIn

In some cases:

a- if you don't have a password on your computer (in which case, usually LogMeIn will ask to assign one upon installation, and you wouldn't have to follow the steps below)
b- If you don't want to share your password with me

You will need to create an account for me In order to do so, follow these steps:

1- On your desktop, right click on "My Computer" and choose Manage.

2- The below screen will open up: Expand Local Users and Groups, Right click on "Users", and select "New User..."

3- Fill in the fields exactly as you see them below. The password will be one that you wouldn't mind sharing with me.

4- In the same menu, right click on the "Groups" item, and select "Add to Group ... "

5- In the screen that pops up, type in: LogMeInRemoteUser (just like below). Then click on "Check Names". the name should resolve, and will become underlined. then click on Ok.

You should see a screen like the one below. then click Ok.

Now you should be ready for me to connect to your computer and help you with any issues that you may have.

Creating secure passwords... easy! memorable!

2008-06-02T22:11:00.001-07:00

In my line of work, I have many passwords that I need to remember, and a lot of times I find myself juggling the passwords, typing and retyping to guess the correct password that I chose for the particular service/websites/ssh session, etc ....

So, as I thought about it, I figured that I should create some sort of algorithm that i could remember that would help in creating a secure password. As I looked up online, I found a couple of people that have created a similar system, but in this article I will share mine, as I think that it has nice variable to it that will eliminate the guess work from passwords. So, let's get started.

1- Choose any sentence that you find appealing, meaningful, or just plain fun that you can remember. Could be your life motto, could be the words of a song.. it doesn't really matter. As an example, I will use the sentence, "What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas"
This becomes: WHIVSIV.

2- Let's alternate the caps on that password:
WhIvSiV

3- Let's add a special character in the middle:
WhIv$SiV

At this point, you have created your base password. as it is right now, it's pretty secure. However, if this is all you use for all the websites you log in to, if this password happens to get compromised, the all the other websites are potentially compromised.
For this reason, we're going to add a variable that will completely protect you against this.

4- Every site that you access that has a password, has a name, of course, at this point, you take your base password, and you append the first and last letter of that site/service to the password.
For example: for your amazon.com site, the first and last letters are "a" and "n", now reverse them, and add them to your password. Now, your new password for Amazon.com will be:
nWhIV$SiVa
Similarly, for your paypal password, you'll get:
lWhIv$SiVp

At this point, it doesn't matter how many websites you've signed up for, and it doesn't matter if you remember the password, you'll be able to make it up, just as long as you remember your base password.

As a bonus/alternative, some sites do not allow you to have special characters in your password, so for these sites, you can have a different algorithm that you know to try: it's very simple.
First, remove the special character from the password:
For instance Amazon's password will now be:
nWhIvSiVa

Now add the last 2 digits of your birthday, REVERSED at the end of the password. So, if I'm born in 1976, the last 2 digits of my password will be 67, and therefore, my amazon password is now:
nWhIvSiVa67

I hope this small tutorial will help you try to stay on top of your passwords, and help you avoid writing them on a little sticky and slap them on the bottom of your keyboard in the office! :)

Twix attempting to sleep

2008-05-26T04:12:00.001-07:00

weird... can't he find a flat surface ? lol

- Posted using MobyPicture.com

uStream.tv ... a new way to broadcast!

2008-05-23T12:54:00.001-07:00

Notice the new uStream feed... on the right. This is an actual live video stream for when I am online on uStream.tv very cool to keep up with me, or maybe even chat with me when I'm on .. Online Video provided by Ustream

No blog. but yes twitter!

2008-04-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a blot entry in a while... that's true ... but that doesn't mean I haven't been posting anything. ..I have been updating my Twitter which has a feed right onto my blog .. (look on the right) Some new posts will be coming soon... stay tuned!

Forwarding mail: DO's and DON'Ts

2008-04-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

As email times progress, we all see more and more chain mail, letters, and just random forwards. Sometimes these are completely lame, sometimes, they have been around for years, and sometimes, they are just plain scams.... in this post, I will address some items related to proper ways of forwarding email, quickly checking the validity of a forward, and respecting the privacy of others... Forwarding DO's:

Address the email to yourself (in the "To") field, and put all your recipients in the "Bcc" field. This is especially important, if you are sending the forward to many people who may not know each other. This is a privacy issue, not to mention that some people may be irritated that their email is just flyin' around in forwards.
If the email you received is a forward, then make sure to clean it up before you send it. a lot of times, forwards will have the headers of previous forwards, which contain the emails of other people that you don't even know. of course, had other people followed the forwarding etiquette and put the recipient in the "Bcc" field, then this wouldn't happen. don't be like them. Also, emails tend to have the ">" before each line, and more of those everytime the email has been forwarded (if the client is setup to do so) , so now your forward is just a bunch of ">>>>>>>>>" with a couple of words on each line. Not very pleasant to read.
If the forwarded email was contained in many attached messages, make sure you open the very last message that actually contains the forward, and click on "forward" on that particular message. If you had to click 17 times before you go to the forward, don't make others have to do it as well.
Check for the validity of an email that sounds fishy, or even not, especially ones that either promise money, or as you for donations and whatnot. There are many sites that can help with that, one of which is http://www.hoax-slayer.com/, also, remember, google is your friend, just ask a question there, and 99% there will be an answer about that particular forward, and chances are, it WILL be a hoax.
If people people happen to ask you to remove them from the list, do respect their request, and remove them. There is enough spam out there that people can't successfully opt out of, don't make yours one of them :)

Forwarding DON'Ts:

Don't forward every single forwarded email that you receive. Remember, if you are a fanatic about reading jokes and whatnot, not everybody else is.
Don't forward all types of forwards to all your same friends. Some friends can tolerate more jokes than others, and some rather just get forwards that deal with a new discovery, or something else of their interest. An easy way to do this would be to create a couple distribution groups in your email client/address book , and selectively send the forwards to these people.
Don't send forward stuff to everybody in your address book, just because the email said that if you don't forward it, then you're going to be sat on by a big elephant, or you're going to have 13 years of bad luck. Trust me, it's not true, so don't worry about it. If you think that the contents of the email are intriguing to you and some/all your friends, then by all means, just don't do it because the email threatens you about it!
Don't overdo it!!!I don't care if it's your best friend, if you send them 15 forwards everyday, they're going to play the opt out card on you, as mentioned above, be selective, pick the best ones that you think your friends will enjoy, and do your cleaning up shananigans on it before sending it, they will enjoy the read much more than have to scroll 3 miles before reaching anything readable.

I hope this little guide helped a little bit. I am surprised everyday at the forwards I get. I had thought people would eventually catch up to good forwards, and/or good forward etiquette, but I guess not. Happy Forwarding!