The good news is WPA2. Most Verizon routers support WPA2.

Setting up WPA2 on your Verizon router

1. Connect to the router with your web browser – http://192.168.1.1 and login
2. Click on Wireless Settings in the top bar
3. Click on Basic Wireless Settings in the left nav bar
4. If Wireless is off – turn it on
5. If WEP is on – turn it off
6. Click Apply at the bottom
7. Click Advanced Security Settings in the left navigation bar
8. Select WPA2 under Level 1
9. Select Pre-Shared Key for Authentication Method
10. Select ASCII as the format for the Pre-Shared Key
11. Enter a good pass phrase* for the Pre-Shared Key.
12. Select TKIP and AES for the Encryption Algorithm.
13. Click Apply at the bottom.
14. Test the new settings.

• Verizon security update
• Compatibility Issues
• Verizon’s instructions for enabling WPA2
• PC Magazine article on Verizon’s WEP problem

* Use a good Pass phrase

• Use a good, strong pass phrase. wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength
• Don’t worry. The pass phrase is only used the first time a computer accesses the network. It doesn’t get entered every time.
• Do not forget to write the passphrase down.

Removes large or troublesome blobs like git-filter-branch does, but faster. And written in Scala.

$ bfg --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M --replace-text banned.txt repo.git

Replace all passwords and listed in a file (prefix lines ‘regex:’ or ‘glob:’ if required) with

***REMOVED***

wherever they occur in your repository :

$ bfg <strong>--replace-text passwords.txt</strong>  my-repo.git

Delete all files named ‘id_rsa’ or ‘id_dsa’ :

$ bfg <strong>--delete-files id_{dsa,rsa}</strong>  my-repo.git

 

Using BFG on Windows:

• Use Git Bash or Windows 10 Bash.
• Download and install Java from here.
• Download BFG here.
• Make an alias for BFG:

java -jar bfg.jar $*

• Make a replace.txt file:

PASSWORD        # Replaces PASSWORD with ***REMOVED***
PASSWORD==>TEST # Replaces PASSWORD with TEST
PASSWORD==>     # Replaces PASSWORD with blank
                # You can use Regular Expressions also

• Run this command in the repo folder from Git Bash or Win10 Bash:

bfg –replace-text replace.txt

• When bfg is done run these commands

git reflog expire –expire=now –all && git gc –prune=now — aggressive

git push                   # -f may be needed

Notes:

• I had already pushed the repo and shared it.  That got complicated by multiple branches.  My fault.  It would have been much simpler to run bfg before sharing.
• I fumbled a bit trying to get bfg running in Windows command shell.

Resources:

• StackOverflow

• Removing Keys, Passwords and Other Sensitive Data from Old Github Commits on OSX

• BFG Repo-Cleaner – Removes large or troublesome blobs like git-filter-branch does, but faster. And written in Scala.
• Using BFG Repo Cleaner tool to remove sensitive files from your git repo

• The BFG Repo Cleaner

Visit Github to download.

• I developed Clipboard-Link from end user need. It is a reliable method to create links to files and folders on Windows network drives.
• Spaces and special characters break Outlook’s ability to create hyperlinks to network files. Clipboard-Link eliminates that problem.

How do I get set up?

• Get Cliplink from => GitHub.
• There is no configuration
• There are no dependencies
• No database configuration
• Save the contents of this repo to a network drive or share.
• Tell users to run setup from there.

How does it work

• Locate the file or folder on the network.
• Right-click and select Send To > clipboard-link
• Cliplink creates a safe link to the file and puts it on the Clipboard.
• Paste the link into Email, documents, etc.

To make a friendly link

• Create a link to a network file or folder with Clipboard-link and paste into a message
• Select the link part and Cut
• Select the name part between the brackets
• Select Insert menu > Hyperlink
• Paste the link in the URL box
• Click Ok
• Clipboard-link copies the file / folder name and shortened link to the clipboard

             [Engineering Documentation]                  file://F:\ENGINE~1 



                      ^ Name ^                               ^   link  ^

NOTE: **Cliplink will not create links for executables [files ending with .EXE, .COM, .BAT, etc.].

Who am I?

• Developed by dkurman@netsnbytes.com with lots of help and feedback. I had jobs as I.T. Manager, sysadmin, helpdesk and programmer for several companies.
• @davekurman on Twitter
• LinkedIn

Introduction

Years ago, I was the new system administrator at the company. I had to get a handle on the multitude of systems, servers and software. My predecessors did a great job of documenting the details in Microsoft Word. Because of the number of documents it was hard to find stuff. It was time consuming to keep details up to date as software and systems changed.

Then I discovered MediaWiki, the Open Source software that runs Wikipedia. An old donated PC was host for Linux and MediaWiki. I copied the Word documents into the wiki. It was easy and natural (for me at least) to build easy to navigate links to the IT documentation. MediaWiki keeps older versions so it is easy to see the history of changes. Wiki markup is weird and unnatural to normal people but a few folks at the company took to it. The help was welcome for maintaining the IT processes and procedures. Contributors logged in to MediaWiki so we could see who made changes.

Unlike the Word documents it was easy to search and find information. We could email hyperlinks to folks in need of support. That saved time for me and other power users. And normal folks would some times let us know when documentation was out of date or wrong. MediaWiki reduced the friction of sharing and managing the documentation.

I looked at SharePoint a few times. SharePoint is well integrated with Windows and Microsoft Office products. It seems like a natural extension for folks familiar with that world. SharePoint’s wiki didn’t work for me though. And the easy extensibility worked against using it for documentation. That lead to a lot of rabbit holes to get lost in when the focus should be elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I am very good in the Microsoft world but it felt like more friction to get things done.

Atlassian Confluence

I came across Atlassian Confluence while exploring Agile development methods. Confluence is like a polished MediaWiki.

Working together on documentation is well thought out. Instead of emailing the author about changes a user selects text on the Confluence page. A popup presents the user with the option to comment right on the page. Comments are part of the documentation. That is much better than email silos.

The real time collaboration is great. When more than one user edits a page at the same time the changes synchronize between them in real time.

Like MediaWiki, Confluence keeps track of previous versions of the pages. Having that history gives users more confidence. They do not have to maintain many copies of a document. The history is all right there with that page in Confluence.

Embedding and attaching pictures is easy in Confluence. Users can also attach Word, Excel, PDFs and other files.

A cool plugin for Confluence is Gliffy. It is like a web based Visio for creating diagrams, flowcharts and so forth. Many times IT documentation is better with a network diagram or a business workflow. The Gliffy plugin tracks versions as well. Users have that history of changes which helps with complex diagrams.

Confluence benefits from tight integration with Atlassian JIRA. That is good if you use JIRA. JIRA is an issue tracking tool that is great for software development. Many use JIRA for business project management and managing service.

Confluence and JIRA are both available as cloud services from Atlassian. No servers to maintain.

Having time on my hands I went with installing Confluence and JIRA on my servers. Well, actually Hyper-V virtual machines running Linux. The install process is well documented. I ran into a few problems but Atlassian had intuitive help to get through them. The price made me smile. My self-hosted servers were $10 each for 10 users. That’s a good value and a low barrier for these tools.

Confluence helps my efficiency with the DRY principle (Don’t Repeat Yourself). Having the notes and documentation online means they’re available almost everywhere. And Confluence reduces the friction of maintaining documentation.

The problem

The parts

The solution

The primary reasons LinkedIn is the mustached, trench coat and wire frame glasses wearing mouth breather of the internet are the “People You May Know” and “People Also Viewed” features.

• interactually – LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

Recently I noticed “People You May Know” displaying plain email addresses instead of LinkedIn profiles.

The plain email accounts do not have actual LinkedIn profiles. My guess is that LinkedIn wants me to try to connect and then send that email address an invite to join LinkedIn.

The creepiest part of it is how LinkedIn is connecting email addresses to my LinkedIn account. I never imported contacts though the prompts appear at nearly every login. I installed the iOS LinkedIn app but never actually launched it (just deleted the LinkedIn app). I use Firefox with No-Script and only allow LinkedIn scripts while on their site.

I do not use LinkedIn much. There are a few subscribed groups with the weekly email digests. After scanning the digests the emails are deleted. Search is only used when the mostly random marketing people or Indians send invites. I check them out.

At what point did LinkedIn go from being cool tech to creepy. A lot of the stuff they were building was interesting from a tech perspective. I guess I'm not liking the direction their heading.

How to create the bookmarklet in iOS


1. Create a new bookmark using the Safari Send to button (bookmark this web page).
2. Name the bookmark “Search with Google”.
3. Select and copy the bookmarklet code below.
4. Open Safari’s bookmarks and locate the “Search…” bookmark.
5. Edit the bookmark, deleting the URL/link and paste the copied code.
6. Save the changes.


Using the *Search Google for…* bookmarklet in iOS Safari

* Highlight text or a phrase on a web page.
* Click the Search… bookmarklet to open results in new tab.

Search with Google Bookmarklet code