My view of everything.

Windows 7 HyperTerminal Gone!

2011-01-12T15:36:00.001-08:00

As I said, HyperTerminal is GONE in Windows 7. Gee, thanks.

I had completely forgotten about Tera Term: http://ttssh2.sourceforge.jp/

Does serial communications and works like a charm.

No more DB-9 RS-232 ports on computers, no more HyperTerminal. How in the world will I practice my Hayes command set?

Restoring Factory Defaults to the Cisco ASA5505 Firewall via the Console

2011-01-12T15:33:00.001-08:00

Need to restore an ASA 5505 to factory defaults? Here you go.

Thanks to the author!

http://www.mailbeyond.com/restoring-factory-defaults-to-the-cisco-asa5505-firewall-via-the-console

1099’s Need Surgery

2010-12-17T09:32:00.001-08:00

Thus far I have tried, and mostly succeeded, to stay out of the health care debate. This is mostly because I haven’t actually read the bill or fully educated myself on it so, from my experience, I am unable to intelligently debate the subject. That was true until today…

Yesterday I received the December issue of Grower Talks, perhaps my favorite greenhouse business magazine. While sitting in my office chair I came across an article on page 21 titled “Increase in Penalties for Failure to File Information Returns”. I am unable to find a link to the article in Ball’s site, so here it is:

“Unfortunately, the new small business jobs bill does not repeal the expansion of the 1099 reporting requirements passed as part of the new health care law. Starting in 2010, every business owner must issue forms 1099 to vendors of goods or services to which the business owner paid more than $600 annually. SAF (“Society of American Florists”, a greenhouse/florist lobbying group) is working to repeal the 1099 provision because it poses an enormous administrative burden on our members”.

Boy did this light me up.

Having been employed in Information Technology for the past 18+ years I understand the need for 1099’s, I have hired them and have been one. For those of us that are W-2 employees it (mostly) helps to keep independent contractors honest in their reporting of income. Like most people, I don’t like paying taxes, pay more than I should but I am honest to a flaw with reporting income. I know what happens when you piss the IRS off. I’ve seen it first hand.

However, to require business owners to report EVERYTHING over $600 annually across the board is ridiculous at best. If you don’t believe me, Google “1099 healthcare” and see what you get:

“Health care law’s massive, hidden tax change”
“Health-care Bill Surprise: 1099 Nightmare”
“Small business threatened with 1099 tax form tyranny provision”
“Health care bill includes Form 1099 Frankenstein”
“Health Care Bill’s 1099 Reporting Burdens Business”
“Health Care Law’s Hidden Tax Provision: 1099s Could Quintuple in 2012”

I have yet to read the plethora of pages regarding this part of the bill, but my immediate thoughts are:

What do 1099’s have to do with health care and why the hell is it attached to that bill?
How does me, as a small business owner, reporting a purchase of say a $700 furnace from a business that already reports profits from that sale help anyone?
How many additional IRS agents will be necessary to process the MASSIVE increase in paperwork and how much will they cost? From just my small business alone they will probably receive 25+ new pieces of paper.
Does Congress really believe this will result in additional revenue? I’m guessing that’s what they think and are after. What’s the NET revenue generated after cost?
What will be the loss of productivity for business and their cost to comply? Or, are they counting on that and hope to generate additional revenue from fines?

Since 1099’s have *nothing* to do with health care, I will also diverge to that subject for a bit…

I understand the need for health care reform, and “need” really isn’t a strong enough word. The following are not Congressional talking points, they are REAL and in MY HOUSE:

Our rates are going up 10% in 2011. They have done that consistently over the past 5 years.
Cost for my wife’s CVID treatment has risen 500% over the past 10 years.
50% of the doctors listed in our HMO plan are no longer accepting new HMO patients. Don’t try to find an immunologist covered in the entire Chicago area. There’s 1.
My mother’s (just for her) Government Run part A, B and D Medicare costs are the same as my privately run HMO for my entire family.

Now back to the 1099’s. I am a small business owner, a $1 startup in our back yard that we are building by hand (literally). I work a full-time job in addition to this and during the busy season I work 90+ hour weeks. 100% of our profits are put back into the business. If there’s not enough in the business, it comes from our pockets. If I had more money in my pocket, I would invest it in the business.

We cannot afford an accountant for everyday things like entering sales orders, purchase receipts and the like, we do it. For the past 3 years I have spent my Christmas vacation living in QuickBooks getting ready for tax time. Like many other small business owners, I wear every hat at some time. I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO FILL OUT 1099’s FOR THIS CRAP. I’m not complaining, that’s just the say it is.

Let me be clear on this: the time I will spend on 1099’s is time I am not building my business. If I’m not building the business I will not increase sales. If I do not increase sales I will not hire help. If I do not hire help unemployment will stay at 10%. 10% unemployment does NOT increase tax revenue.

And guess what Uncle Sam, I’m not the only one. All these people, including the President, keep saying that the majority U.S. jobs come from small business, well, how about you start acting like it?

Fact: I continue to maintain a full-time job because I cannot afford health care on my own for my family. If there were affordable small business or personal health care I would leave my job, build the business faster and hire full-time employees. Perhaps we should say that repealing the 1099 part of the health care act is “stimulus”, that seems to work for everything now.

There, I sort of feel better now.

Windows Live Writer Keyboard Shortcuts

2010-12-16T14:40:00.001-08:00

I recently started using Windows Live Writer for blogging and since I avoid the mouse at all costs I wanted shortcuts. Microsoft has them documented however I like quick reference cards to print and tape up.

I have a quick reference here. Let me know if I made any mistakes or missed any. The “general” Windowsy shortcuts listed on the Microsoft site are not in here.

Blog and post shortcuts

Create a new post	Ctrl+N
Crete a new page	Ctrl+G
Open a post	Ctrl+O
Save a post	Ctrl+S
Publish a post	Ctrl+Shift+P
Post draft to blog	Ctrl+Shift+D
Insert hyperlink	Ctrl+K
Add picture from computer	Ctrl+J
Add picture from the web	Ctrl+Shift+J
See post properties	F2
Set categories	Ctrl+Shift+C
Update blog theme	Ctrl+F11
Change to edit view	F11
Change to preview view	F12
Change to source view	Shift+F11

Text formatting shortcuts

Bold	Ctrl+B
Italicize	Ctrl+I
Strikethrough	Ctrl+H
Underline	Ctrl+U
Subscript	Ctrl+=
Superscript	Ctrl+Shift+=
Bullets	Ctrl+Shift+L
Clear formatting	Ctrl+Space
Center text	Ctrl+E
Align text left	Ctrl+L
Align text right	Ctrl+R
New paragraph	Ctrl+Shift+N
Heading 1	Ctrl+Left Alt+1
Heading 2	Ctrl+Left Alt+2
Heading 3	Ctrl+Left Alt+3
Heading 4	Ctrl+Left Alt+4
Heading 5	Ctrl+Left Alt+5
Heading 6	Ctrl+Left Alt+6
(Only available in RTL mode):
Set text left to right	Ctrl+Left Shift
Set text right to left	Ctrl+Right Shift

After wondering what “RTL mode” was I looked around. It means “Right To Left” text mode. If you use a language that is in right to left, check this out.

AD Topology Diagrammer

2009-07-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

Been using this seriously cool tool for discovering and documenting AD topology. Free download from Microsoft is here. You'll need Visio installed for it to work.

Grab LDAP uidNumber from VBScript

2009-04-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

I had a need to grab a user's uidNumber from a Sun LDAP server on a Windows machine using VBScript. After fiddling around, here's the function:

Function getLDAPUserUIDNumber(username)
Dim conn
Dim rs
Dim uidNumber
Dim strSearch

strSearch = "(uid=" & username & ")"

Set conn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Provider = "ADSDSOObject"
conn.Open "ADs Provider", "cn=Directory Manager", "xxxxx"

Set rs = conn.Execute( _
";" _
& strSearch & ";uidNumber;subtree")

While Not rs.EOF
uidNumber = rs.Fields("uidNumber").Value
rs.MoveNext
Wend

conn.Close

getLDAPUserUIDNumber = uidNumber
End Function

Manually moving Virtual Center from one data store to another

2009-04-01T11:55:00.001-07:00

If Virtual Center is up and running, moving VM's from one storage location to another (with or without vmotion) is fairly straight forward. What if it's Virtual Center you want to move between stores? This applied to us today as our VCenter VM was on local storage and we needed to move it to shared storage. Why? So it can be HA'd and vmotion'd in the future. By the way, this article assumes you have access to the service console so this won't work on ESXi.

First, take the Virtual Center VM down and ssh to the service console of the ESX host.

For reference in our environment:
VM Name: gsbvcenter
Source Data Store: gsbhesx06-localStore0
Destination Data Store: vm_vol17
ESX host: gsbhesx06

Step 1 - Move the vm's disk to the new data store:
mkdir vmfs/volumes/vm_vol17/gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter.vmdk
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/gsbhesx06-localStore0/gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/vm_vol17/gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter.vmdk

Step 2 - Relocate all the other vm related files to the new storage location (cp command works).

Step 3 – Find the UUID's of the data store volumes:

[root@gsbhesx06 volumes]# ls -l /vmfs/volumes
total 9216
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 1120 Apr 1 06:30 47b9e964-f71a7fb8-7f02-001d09677bf6
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 980 Apr 1 06:44 47b9ee61-9d49a8b5-f812-001d09677bf6
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 980 Apr 1 11:01 47c72a83-4613e78e-49bd-001d09677bf6
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 980 Apr 1 06:29 47cf26a2-9041b567-6fc1-001d09677bf6
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 980 Apr 1 06:44 48333fb2-9cfcd611-2241-001d09677bf6
drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 2240 Apr 1 06:07 4963cc67-9a2121e0-17a0-001ec9ad3118
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 1680 Apr 1 06:24 49652475-6b20d5dd-c389-001ec9ad3118
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 2800 Mar 13 03:51 49652718-816b40f4-f300-001ec9ad3118
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 2100 Apr 1 13:03 49acc4b9-3e289c76-d32d-001ec9ad317c
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 gsbhesx06-localStore0 -> 47b9e964-f71a7fb8-7f02-001d09677bf6
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm-gsbhav0v -> 48333fb2-9cfcd611-2241-001d09677bf6
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm-gsblgh1 -> 47cf26a2-9041b567-6fc1-001d09677bf6
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm-gsblnxam01 -> 47c72a83-4613e78e-49bd-001d09677bf6
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm-gsbrdb01 -> 47b9ee61-9d49a8b5-f812-001d09677bf6
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm_vol14 -> 49652475-6b20d5dd-c389-001ec9ad3118
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm_vol15 -> 49652718-816b40f4-f300-001ec9ad3118
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm_vol16 -> 4963cc67-9a2121e0-17a0-001ec9ad3118
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Apr 1 14:07 vm_vol17 -> 49acc4b9-3e289c76-d32d-001ec9ad317c

Take note of the symlinks from that.

Step 4 – Modify the new vmx configuration to point to the new data store. Edit (using vi) the vmx file (gsbvcenter.vmx in our case) and look for the following:

sched.swap.derivedName = "/vmfs/volumes/49acc4b9-3e289c76-d32d-001ec9ad317c/gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter-b00a2b32.vswp"

And change the UUID in there to reflect the UUID of the new volume you just moved the files to. Save and exit.

Step 5 – Unregister and register the VM's

vmware-cmd –l

Verify the VM is in fact registered on that host.

Unregister that VM from the host:
vmware-cmd –s unregister /vmfs/volumes/47b9e964-f71a7fb8-7f02-001d09677bf6/gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter.vmx

Register the new one (new UUID path):
vmware-cmd –s register /vmfs/volumes/49acc4b9-3e289c76-d32d-001ec9ad317c /gsbvcenter/gsbvcenter.vmx

vmware-cmd –l to verify the change has been made

Step 5 – Power on the VM and answer the question

http to the ESX host and login locally.
Power on the VM
Answer "keep" to the question regarding the machine file locations

I know there's a way to power on and answer the question from the command line; we didn't figure it out completely. At this point you should be able to connect to the VC server from the client and do whatever you want. We then vmotion'd the VM to another host.

ESX Firewall Configuration

2009-03-17T09:27:00.001-07:00

The firewall on ESX, which appears to be Linux IP Tables, can be manually maintained via the esxcfg-firewall command on the service console. From what I can tell, the service definitions that are fed to the command are defined in the file /etc/vmware/firewall/services.xml, at least on our ESX 3.0.2 U1. On our ESX systems that file contains the following rule set definitions:

<id>sshServer</id>
<id>sshClient</id>
<id>ftpServer</id>
<id>ftpClient</id>
<id>nfsClient</id>
<id>smbClient</id>
<id>snmpd</id>
<id>vncServer</id>
<id>nisClient</id>
<id>ntpClient</id>
<id>telnetClient</id>
<id>LicenseClient</id>
<id>CIMHttpServer</id>
<id>CIMHttpsServer</id>
<id>CIMSLP</id>
<id>swISCSIClient</id>
<id>vpxHeartbeats</id>
<id>AAMClient</id>
<id>veritasNetBackup</id>
<id>veritasBackupExec</id>
<id>TSM</id>
<id>commvaultStatic</id>
<id>commvaultDynamic</id>
<id>activeDirectorKerberos</id>
<id>kerberos</id>
<id>legatoNetWorker</id>
<id>rshClient</id>

To enable one of these rule set profiles, run the command esxcfg-firewall –e 'name'. As in, esxcfg-firewall ntpClient

ASA/PIX Console Message Monitoring

2009-03-11T07:38:00.001-07:00

To watch log messages while attached to a PIX or ASA running 8.x.

To start monitoring:
config t
logging monitor <level> I like warnings
terminal monitor

To stop monitoring:
terminal no monitor
no logging monitor

Pidgen MSN Problems

2009-01-12T09:31:00.000-08:00

Walked in today to Pidgen 2.5.2 on Windows receiving "Unable to retrieve MSN address book" error messages. Upgraded to 2.5.3 and had the same error. Downloaded msn-pecan (Windows exe) from http://code.google.com/p/msn-pecan/downloads/list, changed to WLM for that account and it's working now.