Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

MMS 2011 Day -2

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 20:34:00 +0000

Note to self. 9am flights are still darn early. Luckily I slept most of the way from IAH to Vegas. Smooth, quiet flight. The Mandalay Bay is pretty nice. I haven't gotten used to the layout and such yet but I'm sure that will change over the course of the week.

A proper Irish pub just opened up in the hotel named Ri Ra. The beer selection is excellent. I had a Kilkenny which I would say was probably an Irish red ale. Very tasty! Next up was a red dog stout. Never heard of it before but it was prety tasty. Lots of caramel. Very nice coffee and chocolate notes. The head was a nice dark tan color and dissipated quickly. It would have been nice if it stuck around a bit more. The beer tasted a bit thin with very litte body and mouthfeel. Not one I plan to go back to while they still have others I haven't tried yet.

Several of the staff are irish, accents and all. Very friendly and great service. I'm sure they'll do great here. I had their shepard's pie. It was made with lamb and was very tasty. Not as "lamb-y" as I would have liked but it was nice and meaty with the perfect amount of potato on top.

After gorging myself on tasty Irish delicacies, I went over to New York New York to meet my cousin James whom I had't seen in nearly 2 decades. It was great to see him and have a chance to catch up. We really shouldn't wait another 20 years to catch up again!

Since i was already half way there I mad the trek over to Gilley's in Treasure Island. Had a great evening dancing with a bunch of lovely ladies. You really have to love that about country, you can walk up to just about any lady in the place and ask her to dance. The music mix was pretty decent but not quite as good as I was last year. The place got pretty packed later in the evening and the music mix deteriorated a bit further. There was a lot of line dancing going on with much less 2stepping. Still all in all it was a good time and a nice cap on the day.

Who knew yard work could be so tasty!

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:54:00 +0000

I spent some time (and money) last night at my second favorite beer drinking establishment the Flying Saucer downtown. They were tapping a keg of Weedwacker the first of St Arnold’s Moveable Yeast series of beers.

After a bit of a wait to snag a table as is unfortunately typical for the Saucer in the evenings, we were able to order a half pint of Lawnmower side by side with a half pint of Weedwacker.

The concept of the Moveable Yeast series of brews is to take one of the brewery’s well know beers and brew them in exactly the same fashion as normal with the exception of using a different yeast. Everyone knows that grains will affect the Color, flavor, body and mouthfeel of a beer; that hops will affect the flavor and aroma; and that the specific processes used can definitely impact the resulting beers. However, many people don’t realize as readily how much of an impact the specific strain of yeast used can have on the beer. The Moveable Yeast series is an attempt to improve on this situation. Weedwacker specifically is made from the same wort as Lawnmower (hence the yard work related name) which uses a Kolsh yeast for it’s distinctive cool, clean and refreshing flavors and substitutes a Bavarian Hefeweisen yeast.

Weedwacker is an extremely satisfying beer. Immediately you notice that it is cloudy (mostly due to lack of filtration) which I suspect is as much a chill haze as it is residual yeast and a protein haze. The bright white head has quite a bit of staying power and is very tight and fluffy. As you lift the glass you quickly smell cloves in the nose, this is the single most prominent aroma to the beer (Lawnmower is very lightly hopped as it is) and indicates that the beer was fermented on the cold end of the spectrum for the yeast (warmer temps would have produced a banana aroma). The first taste of it is almost tart but more accurately described as bright with a slight tart bite to it. The beer is very light bodied and lacks the biscuit and grainy flavors from it’s brother, Lawnmower. I was very pleased with this as those are the flavors I enjoy least about Lawnmower. The beer finishes very clean, crisp and refreshing.

TL;DR: WOW, this is a really great beer. I wish it were a standard because it could easily be a gateway beer for all those YFB (Yellow Fizzy Beer) drinkers.

MMS 2009 Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:22:00 +0000

So I’m back at MMS this year in Vegas and staying at the Venetian. Spent most of the day yesterday traveling and getting settled in. Minor difficulties at check-in due to date changes but nothing Ryan couldn’t handle expediently. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the bowels of the Venetian. No really.. I was on floor 0.5. Yes .5 as in 1/2. That’s where they keep the servers for CommNet. All kinds of other nifty stuff in there as well. There was a Cell site in the room, I have no idea where the antennas are but all the gear was in the room so I had AWESOME cell reception. A bunch of other comms gear including a tiny UHF repeater probably used for in house comms was there but the cell site was the one thing I thought was really cool. (Yes I’m a giant geek, but you should already know that if you’re following my blog!)

Once Tom got in and I had wrapped up most of the CommNet upgrade we decided to go wander around. We caught the new Volcano show at the Mirage. Very impressive!

After wandering around the strip we decided food sounded like a good idea so we headed over to Postini. At the bar we talked to the bartender and gave him a vague idea of what we wanted and asked for his advice. The advice was spot on. We had a bottle of Grgich 2005 Chardonnay out of Napa Valley, popcorn shrimp and crab cakes. The shrimp was cooked perfectly, very crispy without an excessive amount of batter and well seasoned. The Chardonnay was excellent and went very well with the food. The crab cakes were the real star of the evening. The crab cakes were simply insanely good. There was very little filler and the crab was nicely shredded with a fabulous texture. The flavor of the crab tasted like it had been grilled which was totally unexpected and part of the reason it was so amazing.

TL;DR: Great start to the week.

System Center Virtual User Group meeting on November 13th

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:48:00 +0000

I'm going to be presenting at the upcoming System Center Virtual User Group meeting on November 13th. This will be my first User Group presentation, luckily it's virtual so they won;t be able to see me sweat.

I'll be presenting content from my recently published document covering how to deploy FCS agents with SCCM, how to maintain FCS signature updates with your existing SCCM WSUS infrastructure and monitoring FCS configurations via DCM. It'll be a brisk 30 minutes with a bunch of technical content. Hopefully brisk enough to keep me from realizing it's happening!

This should also be a good warmup for my presentation at the Jacksonville, Fl System Center Users Group on the 19th. More on that later.

Wings Over Houston 2008

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Very early October 24th I drove down I-45 though Houston on my now annual trip to spend a weekend at Ellington field. This year was a bit different as I was working Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday. Once again I would be working with the most excellent and insane crew at the show's Motorpool. Having been there before, it was rather easy to navigate my way around the field and sneak over to park by the Motorpool rather than the normal Participant Parking. This was helpful since we're first in and last out in Motorpool.

Early Friday made for a bit of a false start, as my wife had locked her keys in her car. at $250 per key we only have the 2, so I had to drive back to home and unlock her car and turn around and drive back to Ellington. Not my idea of an enjoyable morning since it was now about 7am and rush hour traffic was in full swing. I was however lucky enough to be able to avoid most of the traffic. I had Kelly check the Transtar Traffic maps and decided to run east around the city on the 610 loop. Brillian choice if I do say so myself, the traffic was nearly non-existant and I maintained fast highway speeds the entire time. Everybody back at the field figured they woudln't see me again until Saturday Morning. Boy did I prove them wrong. An hour and 15 mintues later I walked back into the Motorpool smiling. Traffic was really running well for me (it helped that I checked the maps and took a few alternate paths and stayed with the fastest flow of traffic I could).

Once back at the Motorpool, things we proceeding calmly. Most of the hectic work had been done but there was more to be done.

The Motorpool at the Airshow "owns" all of the golf carts that the show staff uses to get around the field to do their jobs. This ranges from the carts the Programs group uses to distribute programs to the people hawking them, to the carts that drive around with Water and Poweraid coolers strapped to the back to make sure everyone at the show remains hydrated. This is why we have to be in before everyone else. The carts are checked out and back in on a daily basis so that we can make sure none are lost and take are of any matinenance and get them ready for the next day. This year was far easier than in the past since of the 155 carts, only 9 were electric. In past year's we've had to spend a lot of time getting all the carts plugged in so they could charge and drag the charging stuff off the carts in the morning.

Checking the carts out in the moring leads to a severe case of Wet Butt but that's a small price to pay for a fun weekend (and somewhat avoidable if I could rememebr to bring a pair of shorts to change into when it warms up).

The show this year seemed to run even more smoothly than past years. The core staff has been doing this a long time and seems very committed to learning something from every year to make future shows better. Don't get me wrong, things do go wrong and there are problems but nothing major and it was all handled very well by all parties.

I was a bit disappointed by the Ham community this year as we were significanlty short on operators. I'm sure this has largely to do with Ike but it's still unfortunate.

The Thunderbirds performed excelently as always as did all of the other performers. This year feature even more "Pyro Goodness" from the Tora Tora Tora pyro crew which was very cool. They do an excelent job of setting off car alarms every year (with explosives mind you, not by breaking into them!).

I want to thank the entire Motorpool crew for another great year. I'd especially like to thank Tom and Cory for stepping up to cover for some last minute cancelations on Sunday. As well as Bryan for letting me stay on the Katie Girl (It's a boat.. don't get any bad ideas) down in Seabrook which made the 0500 start times far easier!

I now realize that I should work on shorter blogs instead of writing a novel each time. Maybe I'd actually blog more that way!

MMS Session SS03 Manage Your Environment Using Microsoft Forefront Integration Kit for Network Access Protection through FCS to SCCM Integration

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:08:00 +0000

Make sure you stop by Titian 2201B at 10:15 on Thursday to watch me attempt to keep from looking like a deer in the headlights while I present the document I wrote on integrating Forefront Client Security (FCS) and ConfigMgr. I look forward to the opportunity to show off the documentation that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. I have gotten some pretty good feedback on the document and nobody has complained that it set their datacenter on fire (phew!) but MMS is a tough crowd from a technical perspective. I hope to see some of you there!

Automating ConfigMgr Query Creation with Powershell

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:26:00 +0000

I'm currently working on implementing a fairly large System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr or SCCM depending on who you ask and the time of day) hierarchy. The hierarchy spans multiple domains on the workstation side of the house and we are targeting and tracking client deployment on a per domain basis. With 11 domains and 4 queries per domain on 3 site servers I wanted to make my life a little easier so I spent some quality time with the ConfigMgr SDK and the PowerGui Script Editor to hack out a script to do it for me.

The script simply has 2 arrays that it iterates over, one for domains, and the other for the queries to create. The array for the Domains is a plain vanilla list of strings. The Array for the Queries is a bit more complex since it required more than a single piece of data per query. I used an array of hashmaps for this. There may be a more elegant way to handle this (an array of custom objects perhaps) but my days of perl have made me relatively comfortable with complex nested data structures.

All of that was simple. But issues with the Put() method on the WMI class gave me quite a bit of trouble. Apparently, the put method occasionally fails to function for no apparent reason. To resolve this I had to trap the exception and re-call the put method. That worked splendidly. After figuring out a bit more of the structure of the objects returned I was also able to spit out a nice bit of text if the creation succeeded of error out if it failed.

One major item to note, the SDK will allow you to create duplicate queries. So be prepared to delete some stuff if you play around with this script. And now what you've probably been scrolling past all of this text to find...

$site = 'SMS'
$siteserver = 'SCCMServer01'

[array] $domains = @(
    'DOMA',
    'DOMB',
    'DOMC',
    'DOMD'
)

[array] $queries = @()

$queries += @{
    'Name' = '|DOMAIN| - All Workstations';
    'Expression' = 'select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSAssignedSites, SMS_R_System.IPAddresses, SMS_R_System.IPSubnets, SMS_R_System.ADSiteName, SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserDomain, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserName, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.NetbiosName from  SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.Client = 1 and SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup = "|DOMAIN|" and SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like "Microsoft Windows NT%Workstation%"';
    'TargetClassName' = 'SMS_R_System';
}
$queries += @{
    'Name' = '|DOMAIN| - All Client Workstations';
    'Expression' = 'select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSAssignedSites, SMS_R_System.IPAddresses, SMS_R_System.IPSubnets, SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserDomain, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserName, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.NetbiosName from  SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like "Microsoft Windows NT%Workstation%" and SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup = "|DOMAIN|" and (SMS_R_System.Client = 1 or SMS_R_System.Client is not null )';
    'TargetClassName' = 'SMS_R_System';
}
$queries += @{
    'Name' = '|DOMAIN| - All Non-Client Workstations';
    'Expression' = 'select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSAssignedSites, SMS_R_System.IPAddresses, SMS_R_System.IPSubnets, SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserDomain, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserName, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.NetbiosName, SMS_R_System.ADSiteName from  SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like "Microsoft Windows NT%Workstation%" and SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup = "|DOMAIN|" and (SMS_R_System.Client = 0 or SMS_R_System.Client is null )';
    'TargetClassName' = 'SMS_R_System';
}
$queries += @{
    'Name' = '|DOMAIN| - All Computers';
    'Expression' = 'select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSAssignedSites, SMS_R_System.IPAddresses, SMS_R_System.IPSubnets, SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserDomain, SMS_R_System.LastLogonUserName, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.NetbiosName, SMS_R_System.ADSiteName from  SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup = "|DOMAIN|"';
    'TargetClassName' = 'SMS_R_System';
}

function New-SMSquery {
    Param (
        [string] $SiteServer = '.',
        [string] $Site,
        [string] $Name = $(throw "Missing required parameter (Name)"),
        [string] $Expression = $(throw "Missing required parameter (Expression)"),
        [string] $TargetClassName = 'SMS_R_System'
    )
    Process {
        trap [System.Management.Automation.RuntimeException] {
            if ($_.Exception.ErrorRecord.TargetObject -eq 'put') {
                $newquery.put()
                continue
            } else {
                break
            }
        }
        $eap = $ErrorActionPreference
        $ErrorActionPreference = 'stop'
        $QueryClass = [wmiclass]"\\$Siteserver\root\sms\site_$($Site):SMS_Query"
        $newquery = $QueryClass.CreateInstance()
        $newquery.name = [string] $Name
        $newquery.expression = [string] $Expression
        $newquery.targetclassname = [string] $TargetClassName
        $newquery.put()
        $ErrorActionPreference = $eap
        return $newquery
    }
}

foreach ($d in $domains) {
    foreach ($q in $queries) {
        $newq = new-SMSQuery -SiteServer $SiteServer -Site $Site -Name $($q.Name.Replace('|DOMAIN|',$d)) -Expression $($q.Expression.Replace('|DOMAIN|',$d)) -TargetClassName $($q.TargetClassName)
        $newq | gm
        if ($newq[0].IsInstance) {
            Write-Host "Created query: $($newq.Name) ($($newq.QueryID))"
        } else {
            Write-Error "Failed to create query $($q.Name.Replace('|DOMAIN|',$d))"
            exit
        }
    }
}

A sad day for Fantasy gaming

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:50:00 +0000

It is a sad day for Fantasy gaming, Online, offline, single player, multi player or tabletop. The great Gary Gygax has passed away this morning. Gary is responsible for great amounts of joy for many people across the world. He will live on forever in the works he set in motion.

Roll a hand full of dice in his honor.

Not all bots are evil

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:25:00 +0000

There appears to have been a malicious compilation of the EnergyMech IRC Bot that is currectly "in the wild".
The SANS ISC has reported this. Unfortunately the diary entry is not entirely clear and can be read that EnergyMech itself is a malicious bot. I have spoken with another handler about it and he will be speaking with the handler that wrote the entry regarding the wording.

News like this makes it even harder for legitimate users of IRC bots and even IRC in general to find hosts that allow these legitimate bots, clients and servers to operate on.

IRC is not evil
It is used by thousands a day for discussions just like Forums and IMs.

IRC bots are not evil
They provide channel control services where the network does not provide it, as well as other services. Some examples are RSS reading, Stock Quotes, Web Services, Weather information, Trivia game and Dictionaries.

IRC is not dead
On one of the neworks I am currently connected to there are 43,757 other users connected. That's more than some towns.

IM is realtime but cannot replace the ability to have a central gathering place for numerous people to discuss a shared interest.
Forums are central gathering places for people to discuss shared interests but are not real time.

I'm officially published in Beta

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:23:00 +0000

Some of you may know that I've been working on some documentation for integrating MS System Center Configuration Manager and MS Forefront Client Security so that they could play nice together. Well the document has been delivered to MS and posted as a Beta on Codeplex. Assuming it doesn't turn anybody's network/servers into smoking rubble, it should be posted on the main Microsoft site in the next couple weeks.

The Verdict is In!

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:43:00 +0000

Many of you probably already know that my absence from life in general over the last few months has to do with the fact that I was selected for a Jury in a large criminal case in Federal court. After 8 and a half weeks of testimony and 3 days of deliberation we reached a verdict and were finally released to go back to our normal lives.

For info on the trial and the results see the following article from chron.com: Former El Paso Corp. traders are found guilty.

Initial steps with Scripting System Center Configuration Manager

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:42:00 +0000

I've begun delving into the ConfigMgr SDK to start writing some scripts for it. My primary interest is in working on a set of Resource Kit tools for Desired Configuration Manager. I've found that everything I've looked so far has been in WMI. Which is both a blessing and a curse. It certainly makes it easier to access from Powershell's native Get-WMIObject Cmdlet.

Obviously the first thing I needed to be able to do was figure out the right namespace. Easy! root/sms looks good. Wait there's almost no information here... Time poke around some more. Hey look an object named SMS_ProviderLocation What could that be? Turns out it lists the sites that it knows about and most importantly it has a flag on which one is the local site and where the namespace for that site is.

The method to my madness scripting wise is to break down every task in to the smallest reasonable chunks and create scripts or functions out of them. This is what I have done for getting the sitecode.

get-sitecode.ps1

Param (
    [switch] $Verbose = $True,
    [string] $ComputerName = '.'
)
Begin {
    if ($Verbose) {
        # Set verbosity
        $VerbosePreference = 2
    }
    $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
    # Constructed Variables
    $script:Namespace = $("root\sms")
    Write-Verbose $("Namespace: " + $Script:Namespace)
}
Process {
    #get baselines
    $q = 'select * from SMS_ProviderLocation where ProviderForLocalSite = true'
    $wmi = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $ComputerName -Namespace $Script:Namespace -Query $q -ErrorAction Stop
    Write-Output $wmi.SiteCode
}

So it's been a while since my last post...

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:43:00 +0000

It's been quite some time since my last post. So I figured I should put something out here so Blogger doesn't think I died or something.
I'm right now siting at a bar in the Denver airport waiting for my flight to start boarding.

But that's the end of my story, let me begin at the beginning.
About 2 months ago now I got a phone call on my cell. Totally out of the blue and unexpected I was being asked if I would be willing to entertain the possibility of leaving my comfortable position at The Bank and move to a small, young company. The company had the benefits of being small, young, growing like a weed and being pushed as the go to partner for security monitoring by an exceptionally large and prosperous company we all love to hate.

The next day nobody could piss me off. There's nothing quite like somebody you respect as really knowing their stuff calling because they want you to work for them. An interview and trip to the office later and I'm pretty well hooked. We worked out the details of an offer I simply couldn't refuse and I put in my notice. They encouraged me to put in an extra week as a courtesy to The Bank which I also agreed was for the best. To top it all off I left that week to head off for a week of vacation. Promising new job, a little more financial freedom and vacation all at once? I must have dome something right in a previous life!

Once I finish off the rest of my time at The Bank, which seemed to pass instantly and drag on forever at the same time, I showed up at my new office. Oh I actually get my own office now? Start poking around and find that they simply haven't had a systems admin and there's a ton to be done from that perspective as well as the job they hired me for. Within the week I felt like I was contributing to the Team (very unusual for me to feel that way in my experience).
The hours have been flying by. This is the busy season so there's been a lot of work to do and not enough hours to do it in. We rush to complete a project that the Aforementioned (not so) "Evil Empire" hired us to do because they looked to us as the experts. Then I fly to Redmond, the seat of the Empire.

The Empire's dominion is everything you could think of it to be. They set me up in the product lab and gave me a run through of the tool they use to build their lab environments. My jaw drops, the clouds part, the sun shines, angels sing and life becomes so much easier. Of course it'll be available internally everywhere in the Empire in a year or so and not to see the light of day outside for a few years. 15 minutes of "work" later my lab is building itself with nothing for me to do but watch and listen to the people around me.
It was amazing, the tool and the conversations both. These people were me. (NOTE: Had to shut down and actually get on the flight. Frontier has a cool feature, along with doing the Jet Blue thing and offering DirectTV in-flight, they have a channel that shows your current position, speed and altitude. I'm presently at 458 MPH at 36472 feet ASL.)

Where was I? Oh yes, listening to the people around me in the lab. They were talking about random stuff related to testing the products the lab was centered around. Their conversations were very technical and enthusiastic. They had fun playing with their toys, reveling in the chance to make life better for Tech Geeks everywhere. I ate lunch and had drinks with various Peon Geeks as well as Product Managers and architects. All of them truly loved the products they were working on. They expressed a desire to understand how their products were used in the real world and what the deficiencies were. It is apparent that the rumors of the Empire taking good care of it's people are true. Refrigerated cases with Sodas and juices were on every floor, every office had been uniquely marked by the inhabitant, there were pool tables and foosball tables that one would occasionally during lunch or near the end of the day see see Geeks playing at while discussing what they were working on.

There was an obvious desire to "tell all" but alas every company must keep it's secrets about what lays ahead. What we did learn was both exciting and encouraging.

The future looks bright for the Corporate IT Geek. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to be involved even at the fringes of the groups who are the movers and shakers of this industry.

Signing off from 520MPH, 40647 Ft ASL somewhere over Colorado, K5WTF

Windows Home Server Install

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:09:00 +0000

So I found a machine laying around last night that met the modest specs required by WHS. After popping a bigger hard drive in it I started the install. It was a relatively painless install with no choices required (both good and bad) . The lack of choices is a small annoyance.

I'd like to be able to name my server whatever I want for instance but you do not get a choice there. The name is chooses incidentally is Server. While accurate it simply doesn't fit with the names of my other machines.

Also of a greater annoyance is the extremely high number of reboots required during the installation process. I didn't count but wish I had at this point. I'm surely hoping this is a Beta artifact.

Once it finished rebooting for the 47millionth time, it started up and I was able to login as administrator with a blank password which it immediately prompted me to change. It did allow me to continue with a blank password which I found out accidentally. As always when this is released as an embedded appliance, default passwords will be the primary security weakness. The first client to connect should force a password change from the client side (appliance units will be totally headless) to make this seamless and simple for the user.

I had some pretty significant difficulties getting the client installed and working on my first machine. However, these were all issues with my network at home. Recent updates of Fedora had broken my DDNS setup on the DNS domain I'm using internal to my home network. This kept the client from being able to resolve the server's name properly. After correcting this issue, the client connected up flawlessly.

Due to the late evening start time and the DNS problems, I didn't have time to delve any further into my new toy. I do however look forward to playing with the backup system in the next few days.

Windows Home Server Beta

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:48:00 +0000

You may or may not have seen the recent news that Windows Home Server has gone Beta 2. I applied for and received an invitation to the Beta.

I'm 60% through the 1755.4MB download of the most recent build package with all of the accompanying discs for client software and recovery etc.

Nothing much to say about it yet but I'm quite excited to see how it plays once I get it home and installed.

Get your lecture on... Online

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:59:00 +0000

There's a new search engine for much of the Educational Podcast/Video contact.

Check it out here.

You learn something new every day...

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:37:00 +0000

Every day you learn something new. Whether it's something small or big. Sometimes if you're very lucky you learn something that although it's small, brings the bigger things into focus just a little better.

Today was one of those days for me. I finally after years of griping understand why Windows uses a \ instead of a / like it "should".

To sum up Larry Osterman's blog entry:

So that's why the path character is "\". It's because "/" was taken.

Read all about it at Larry's Blog

A Humorous look at Employment Ads

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:31:00 +0000

MyITForum.com has a humorous look at IT Employment ads. Learn to figure out what the employer REALLY means by that ad!

Open Source .Net Image Utility

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:26:00 +0000

http://www.getpaint.net/

Paint.Net started as a replacement for the standard windows Paint utility but became oh so much more. And it's Open Source to boot. Definitely worth a download!

2006 Wings Over Houston

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:51:00 +0000

This past weekend I had the pleasure of working Communications for the Wings Over Houston Airshow. The featured performers were the USAF Thunderbirds. They certainly put on an excellent show.

After thumping the snooze button a few times Saturday morning, I rolled out of the house at around 05:45 and screamed down the highway to Ellington Field on the southeast side of town. Luckily the light morning traffic allowed me to make it there by 07:30 when I was expected. After collecting my tickets and parking passes for both days and getting parked in the volunteer parking field, I finally walked onto the taxiway where all of the aircraft for the show were parked. Right away I noticed that there were more aircraft on the field than last year. Among the notables were a KC-135 Tanker, a C-5 Galaxy, a pair of A-10 Warthogs, a C-17 Globemaster Hurricane Hunter, the 747 NASA uses to carry the Shuttle around and of course the F-117 Stealth Fighter.

I spent Saturday and the vast majority of Sunday working with the Motor Pool. The Motor Pool has to be the craziest and most fun group in the entire airshow. They're closer to a wonderfully dysfunctional family that gets together for a reunion one weekend a year than a group of volunteers giving up a weekend for a good cause. We were in charge of all of the Golf-Carts assigned out and running several larger (6 seat) Golf Carts around to ferry Pilots, Volunteers, Distinguished Heros and Legends and so forth around the field.

The shear size of the airshow is impressive and exhausting at the same time. Saturday morning was a bit worrisome as there was a good bit of rain and there was a good chance it was sticking around. Luckily the rain cleared out and the clouds lifted enough by late morning for the airshow to carry on as usual. The Tora, Tora, Tora display was excellent as always. The pyrotechnics really make the show. Feeling and Hearing the blasts so distinctly really makes it far better than a bunch of planes flying around each other trailing smoke.

The barnstorming was pretty good as well. Those guys are patently insane and make airplanes do things they really shouldn't do. It's amazing the control they have over their aircraft. The only problem here was that they would occasionally break into the lower clouds and were hard to see.

The clouds and rain didn't deter the crowds from showing up at all. The public was out in force. Personally I think the great attendance was largely due to the media attention that the show got this year. The news stations have really been pumping the show up more than they have in past years.

Finally at 15:00 the Thunderbirds took possession of the airspace. The performed their "Low Show" Saturday and their "High Show" on Sunday.
Neither is a better show, they are both excellent. The High Show focuses on the maneuvers that send the aircraft higher in the sky where the Low Show is maneuvers that are closer to the ground. They both have their benefits. The High Show is probably prettier and can be more awe inspiring in that way, whereas the Low Show with it's focus on keeping the aircraft below the cloud ceiling shows you extremely difficult and impressive much closer where you can really see things better.

Overall it was a great weekend. I'll definitely be back next year. Rumor is that the Canadian Snowbirds may come down for it. Sound like fun eh?

Unix Style Background Jobs in Powershell

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:59:00 +0000

Ripping from the original source...
PS> new-job { get-date; start-sleep 5; get-date }
Job 0 Started

#
PS>
Job 0 Completed
PS> jobs 0

JobId Status Command Results
----- ------ ------- -------
5 Completed get-date; start-sleep 5; ... 8/30/2006 4:47:32 PM

PS> (jobs 0).results

Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:47:32 PM
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 4:47:37 PM
Looks very cool to me. Now to find some uses for this! :)

Wake on Lan in System Center Configuration Manager 2007

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:57:00 +0000

Great info on the upcomming Wake On Lan (WOL) features in ~~SMS v4~~ System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM 2k7) from the SMS Team.

I really like the feature where it will not turn it off and will let the power policy handle that.

The Configuration Manager 2007 WOL solution will not turn off machines after they have been woken up. This allows other processes that may have been triggered after the machine started up to complete whatever it is they need to do without the system shutting down on them. The Configuration Manager 2007 WOL process will register as a busy service when it wakes up a system and then unregister itself once the process is completed allowing existing power management processes and templates to shut the machine down. Group policy can be leveraged to configure power management options for your systems in accordance with your own WOL needs.

I think this will give administrators the features they need without over complicating things. Set a power policy in Group Policy and forget about it. Less power consumed and an increased mean time between failure on workstations. Not to mention the benefits of rebooting XP machines on a regular basis. Sounds like a "Good Thing™" all around to me!

Bravo Zulu!

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 03:11:00 +0000

The men and women that volunteer to put on the uniforms and serve our county, to serve us, deserve our respect, admiration and thanks.

This is a short video about 2 Navy fighter pilots.

Tropical Storm Chris heads for the Gulf

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:14:00 +0000

Tropical Storm Chris is poised to enter the Gulf of Mexico in the next 5 days and is expected to reach Hurricane strength by 08:00 EST on the 3rd.

Anyone in the Gulf Coast region should start paying close attention to this storm as once it enters the Gulf it will be a crap shoot as far as where it strikes. Now is the time to finalize your preparations for a storm.

Hams in the Houston area should be advised that if there is an event, information about the Ham response and various other relevant information will be given out via information net on 147.000 (+offset 103.5Hz PL) at a minimum of 4 times per day (09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00).

Image courtesy of http://www.wunderground.com/

SSH Tunnels made easy

noreply@blogger.com (TBD Brewing) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:51:00 +0000

SSH tunnels are great happy things and MyEntunnel makes them even easier by starting them up and maintaining them via PLink. Putty made even easier.. it doesn't get much better than that!

*EDIT: Corrected the software name