Bedside gun rack

As if gun racks in trucks weren't hillbilly enough, here's something for ya. Just in case your significant other pisses you off in the middle of the night. "I swear to Christ if that bitch snores one more time!"

Quotes

As I'm writing this I'm waiting for a .vmdk file to move to another hard drive on my ESXi server so I figured I'd share some quotes with you that make me laugh...

"The old woman was not only ugly with the ugliness age brings us all but showed signs of formidable ugliness by birth - pickle-jar chin, mainsail ears and a nose like a trigonometry problem. What's more, she had the deep frown and snit wrinkles that come from a lifetime of bad character."
- - - P.J. O'Rourke "Holidays in Hell"

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable soddingrotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is so watery it's a marvel they can breed."
- - - D. H. Lawrence, 1912

"America is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all the scum floats to the top."
- - - Charlie King

"Outside every thin girl is a fat man, trying to get in."
- - - Katharine Whitehorn

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
- - - Abraham Lincoln

"If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn't be surprised."
- - - Dorothy Parker

"Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other."
- - - Neil Simon

Bill Birnes strikes again

I got stuck watching the new episode tonight. I just had to see what crap Bill would make up. They upped the ante by traveling with a "skeptic". Bill Birnes would go off on one of his, "UFO's are mining our gold and using it for their spacecraft", BS stories and the skeptic guy would say, "that's a little far fetched don't you think". What a lie.

Look at this artifact from around 1,500 years ago found in Columbia. Looks kind of like a jet airplane right? I'd say a good 20-30 minutes of this entire episode went over how the people of South America 1,500 years ago saw this so they recreated it. Bill said they saw a time traveler come down from space and immortalized it in sculpture. BS!









Look at this picture of an Exocoetidae or Flying Fish. Look familiar?









How bout this picture. This came from the same location as the artifacts that Bill Birnes says prooves the existence of time travelers or UFOs going back 1500 years. By the way, Flying Fish are found all over the world but guess where they are the most prevalent? Yep, South America by the Ocean.

Why wouldn't there be any mention of this through the whole episode? Not even a peep at the end. Why wouldn't this "skeptic" bring it up? Either he is just ignorant, or he wasn't a skeptic at all but Bill's puppet. I think this guy wasn't skeptical at all but he was saying these things on purpose to make more believers out of us. I hate the fact that people are stupid enough to fall for this. And we let these people vote for who runs the World.

16 Ounces Nu-Metal Band

I was listening to some tunes from the hikeschool days with my girlfriend today and we were talking about this band. My friend Andreé found these guys probably around 1998 when we were children of the KoRn. We would sit around at his house and go ape listening to them. 16 Ounces never made it past their demo album which we found on some underground site. A Google search now returns nothing unless your Google skills are better than mine. Please let me know if anyone has info on these guys.

To resurrect them I've hosted these mp3s and a zip with all the songs. Sorry for the crappy quality but that's all I have.

• 16 Ounces - Alone.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Broken.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Endless.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Filling Out the Cracks.mp3
• 16 Ounces - I Will Come.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Innocence.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Make Up Your Mind.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Rot In Hell.mp3
• 16 Ounces - Sick Of You.mp3
• 16 Ounces - State Of Mind.mp3
• ALL SONGS (zip)
  

Vibe Streamer is way cool

This is quite a handy little app. The idea is, you have a file server somewhere in the house and all your music is neatly organized there. This app installs on the server and you can access a neat music player through a web browser from anywhere.

Tonight I was looking for a way to easily share music from my Windows server to my Mac through iTunes. Something I've learned since I got my MacBook is that you better have either all Mac PC's or all Windows PC's. What a pain to get them to work together. Well since Apple can't just make it easy I am no longer even using Apple software for music. I'm using Vibe Streamer.

It's a very small app. The installer is only 662KB and installed only takes up 2MB. Running it takes 0% CPU on my dual core Xeon and 8MB of memory. It runs its own web server so it doesn't use IIS. I'm not sure I like that. I would rather have more control over the service. Once installed all that needs to be done is configure users and groups and point it to your music. By default it uses port 8180 so it won't interfere with other Web sites you may host and you can set up port forwarding and firewalls for that. The interface needs work but there is skin support and I'm sure it'll get better. Funny thing too. It doesn't work on Safari. Big surprise right? I hope they keep developing it because I like the idea a lot. They'll probably get shut down by the stupid RIAA.  EFF forever!

Vibe Streamer

Palm Pre - iPhone competitor finally?

I'm a little late but take a look at this. I've always hated Palms. The OS makes my eye's hurt and forces my brain to twist in ways that make me sick. They may be finally getting somewhere with the Pre. Maybe even so far as to finally bring some competition for the iPhone.

I really like what I've seen so far. Here's a list of some things that really stand out.

1. Based on Linux (although I can't find more than 1 source to back this up)
2. An actual desktop with capabilities to see multiple open apps
3. OS seems quite intuitive for a Palm
   
4. Multitouch screen and gestures
   
5. Exchange support
6. Nice calendar
7. Very fast full web page browser
8. WiFi
   
9. Slide out full QWERTY keyboard
   

What I don't like

1. Based on Linux but developed by Palm
   
2. It's chunky
3. Too much Java
4. People in videos seem to have problems using the touch screen
5. HTML/CSS/Javascript SDK doesn't allow for low level coding. Many people will be releasing crappy software for it.
6. They better have a good processor in this to do what they say it can do
7. No zoom for the camera
8. No removable storage (fixed at 8GB though)
   

Exchange 2003 mailbox corruption after move

I'm gunna geek it out today. I want to document some problems I recently encountered in hopes that it can help someone out and save a lot of time and money.

SITUATION:
An Exchange 2003 environment. Old server hardware being replaced with new on a backend server or could be a single server. You need to move mailboxes to the new server. Users have large mailboxes, over 500MB. You have the new server configured and a test mailbox shows that all your configurations are correct. It's time to move the mailboxes.

SCENARIO 1:
20+ Mailboxes

Circular Logging
You go a head and move 20+ mailboxes in one night. You will quickly run out of drive space on the destination server. According to Microsoft every 1 MB of mailbox moved will create 2MB of log files on the source and destination servers. When I did this I only saw the destination server's log files increase in size but I didn't check it very closely during my tests. To fix this issue you will need to enable circular logging on the source and destination server. This is very easy because all you need to do is check a box for the Storage Groups on the servers to enable it in the System Manager. This creates another problem though. It wipes out any chance of restoration from an incremental or differential backup. You need to perform a full backup just before you enable this. Once complete with your move, disable circular logging and do another full backup. You can then continue your normal backup schedule.

Moving mailboxes
This is easy enough because you can just select a group of mailboxes, right click, Exchange Tasks, Move, Select destination server-storage group-store and go. What Microsoft doesn't tell you is that afterward you may have some mailboxes that are corrupt. When a move is initiated it decomposes the database and moves the pieces it needs to make the mailbox functional on the other end. Say you have an internal user that sends a message with an attachment to 4 other internal users. Exchange stores 1 copy of the message and 1 copy of the attachment but assigns them to the 4 users the message was sent to. See my fancy diagram...


When you move one of these mailboxes Exchange splits the message and attachment into 4 pieces and recomposes the mailstore on both sides. With very large mailboxes this can cause corruption. When this happens fixing it is not fun.


This happened to me with about 5% of the mailboxes I moved. Nearly all of these had MBs over 1GB in size. When this happened it caused the following...Mailbox corruption, Outlook profile corruption, and Cached Mode was not usable for the users. To fix this problem I had to do the following.

1. Use Exmerge or Import /Export from Outlook to create a PST file of the mailbox. (Exmerge has a limit of 2GB for PST. You can use Import / Export with Outlook or run Exmerge with Archive option, watch the file size, when it gets close to 2GB and log file grows kill process then start over.)
2. Use ADUAC to remove Exchange attributes. This disconnects the users mailbox.
3. Run the Cleanup Agent of the Exchange store from System Manager. May have to do this multiple times until a red X is shown for users mailbox.
4. Create a new mailbox for the user with ADUAC.
5. Wait for the recipient policy to be applied and mailbox to be created.
6. You may need to apply recipient policies, add SMTP addresses, etc.
7. Log into the users PC via RDP or physically log onto it as them.
8. Close Outlook and open Mail from Control Panel.
9. Create a new Outlook Profile and set it for use automatically.
10. Open Outlook. Mailbox should be empty.
11. Import the PST file you generated earlier.
12. Rebuild the Offline Address Book on the Exchange server.
13. Test (The OAB will be a problem. You just have to wait or delete .oab files from each PC.)

Yes. The 13 steps from hell.

SCENARIO 2:
Less than 20 mailboxes

If you take anything from this it should be to just use Exmerge in a 2 step process if you don't have that many users. Create a PST file of the user's mailbox. Remove Exchange attributes. Create a new mailbox and import. This way you have a fully intact mailbox on the old server just in case.

Exchange 2007 cmdlets summary

Exchange 2007 cmdlets on Google Docs

I had a wonderful evening last night speaking with Indian Microsoft Exchange support for 7 hours. During that time we got to talking and he was asking me how I liked Exchange 2007 so far. I said that it appears to work well once it's set up properly but getting there can sometimes be not so fun. The GUI seems to be somewhat unfinished and some tasks can only be completed using the Exchange Management Shell where powershell commands are used. Microsoft refers to these commands as cmdlets, pronounced command-lets. These commands are arranged in a verb-noun format where you specify the action on the noun separated by a '-'. Options are then specified after this pair. For example to grant full access permissions on a mailbox you would use the following command.

Add-MailboxPermission "Mailbox" -User "Trusted User" -AccessRights FullAccess

'Add' is the verb
'MailboxPermission' is the noun
The rest is the option associated with the verb

Anyway back to my talk with the Exchange God at MS. During our conversation he offered to share with me a cmdlet cheat sheet that he has made over his time working with Exchange 2007. Of course I took him up on his offer. I told him he should publish that on Microsoft's Technet site and he said something I couldn't understand. Because of this I've offered this document up to you. Below is a link to the .xls file and above is a link to the version I published to Google Docs.

Exchange 2007 Cmdlets .XLS

Oh my f****** dumb

There are no words for this video. I can only hope it was staged.

Open source iCub robot

This is kinda scary. Just look at some videos. This baby version of iRobot, there's a good idea, funded by the European Commission is starting to look almost alive. The best or maybe worst part is that all the platform code and software is open source. RobotCub.org makes their code freely available via their Wiki. They have procured almost $9.5 million to build this thing and they probably still have a ways to go before the money runs out. Just imagine what Bill Gates could make. hmmm. It probably wouldn't work for very long but it sure would be interesting.


The iCub is supposed to be able to learn. I have yet to see any of these actually learn but it sure would be cool. So far from what I've seen iCub can recognize objects and store them into an internal database. It can then remember these and look at them when they are in its field of view. I think it would be very interesting to program something like this with a multitude of basic human functions and watch it try to use them all at once. These demonstrations seem to have all functions off except what they are currently using. I still think that the underlying architecture needs to be built from the ground up for it to learn. You can't make a decision based solely on facts. Sometimes we improvise. They should try to model the circuitry after the human brain. Certain parts do certain functions then all the components work together to make a conclusion based on probability gained from experience. I doubt that can be done with any current software development techniques. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.

Graduation Ring

I received a very special gift today from my parents and I just had to make a post about it. My mum gave me a graduation ring back in 2001 but I couldn't wear it for very long because it hurt my finger. Completely unknown to me my parents decided to add to it with a white gold ring with an even bigger birth stone and White Sapphire's surrounding it. Not only that but they had it engraved with "To Our Son" along the inner rim. What a great surprise it was today when I went to visit. If it wasn't for DHL going bust I would have had it much sooner too.

I took a bunch of pictures before it gets all dirty but my camera is crap so they don't do it any justice. Thanks again guys!

---

Something else that happened tonight...
Me: "Oww!"
Jen: "What?"
Me: "I tripped"
Jen: "How?"
Me: "Trying to get to the door"
Jen: <laughter> "On what?"
Me: "On the top of the trash can"
Jen: <rotf laughter>

Bill Birnes

I just have to vent about this guy, Bill Birnes from the show UFO Hunters. He annoys me to death. Don't get me wrong. I believe there is a very good chance of intelligent life existing somewhere. There are estimates that say there are billions of Earth-like planets. Even if these estimates are off by 10,000% there is still plenty of chance.

But this guy Bill, can take the most easily explainable event and turn it into a vortex of energy that exudes from the Earth and refuels alien spacecraft. No Bill, the guy shook the friggin camera! Sometimes you can see the other guy on that show look at him like, your wrong but I’ll try to make it seem like you’re not stupid.

They were in the middle of the desert opening up a pit covered by a metal plate. He started going ape talking about this gooey substance at the bottom. Oh what could it be!? Bill, it’s OIL! You’re digging around in a damn underground tank.


This has to be a UFO. Look at the trail of pure energy streaming off for miles. No, the dude’s camera is in night mode so the exposure is longer. Just stop it.

From his own mouth he says that he knows where the UFO is, he knows where they are hiding it, and that’s the truth he is going to get out. There have been 26 hour long episodes aired with a third season currently in production. You would think that after 2 years he would have divulged this great knowledge he has and it would be all over the news that UFOs exist and there is proof once and for all. I guess it takes him 3 years to remember where he put it.

Here’s a quote from an interview on BoA.

"There it is it’s done. Don’t worry about it. Has the government admitted there are UFOs? Yeah, read the tabloids. There’s your disclosure. It’s in the tabloids. Look at ah ah look it Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, Invaders from Mars, all there. The-da-the-da there’s a grain of truth."

What an idiot. I should start an idiot of the week rant.

Google as a child

I was just checking out some geek pages on the web and came across some information on Google's beginnings. I will more than likely post a bunch of stuff about Google as the company fascinates me for some reason.

Anyway I came across a couple interesting pages. I archived them on my server because who knows how long they will continue to exist. I hope no one minds.

The First page is from Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page's old Web site at Stanford U when they were working on their research project that became Google. I found it on geektechnique.org and it was archived there since Wayback doesn't have the images. It's pretty cool what they started with back in the day.
Link

The second link is what I presume to be the actual research paper they wrote explaining the search engine they've created. It is still hosted by Stanford University. I didn't read through the whole thing yet but I'm sure there is some really interesting details in there.
Link

Conan

The week is over and I'm in a pretty good mood. I finally got FTP transfers from Blogger working. I was getting the same problem many others were getting.

The problem was that the Blogger server could make the connection but it would issue an MKD command on a directory that already existed. This would then show a permission denied message and the server would then time out without actually copying any files. It would build the directory structure but that is all. At the same time I would get "PASV command failed:" in my logs. My FTP server is behind a Coyote Linux Firewall using a 1 to many NAT. My initial configuration had ports 1025-3500 forwarded to my FTP server which always worked fine with IE using PASV and better using Total Commander or something that would use Active FTP. I also had firewall rules allowing googles blogger servers access to any port on the FTP box. Those server IPs can be found here...
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41485&topic=12518

I made 2 changes to fix this problem. Either, or both may have fixed the problem. At the time of my troubleshooting this 72.14.206.132 was not listed as a blogger publishing server or I was experiencing selective sight. I added the whole block of IPs that Google owned containing that address which was 72.14.192.0/18 to my access list. I also expanded my port forwarding range for passive FTP to 1024-3500. After this I had some minor issues but after a few minutes the publishing went off without a hitch. It is working good now.

I don't know why but I have this urge to watch Conan the Barbarian today so I must watch it. I obtained it via completely legal means too.

The animal

More fun today. Our ISP decided to crap out just after people began complaining of email problems happening since yesterday. Of course I couldn't troubleshoot anything past the Exchange server without Internet access so I got to wait and sweat it out. It turned out to be multiple unrelated non-Exchange issues so no problem there. I got to poop the rest of the day away with wiring and billing stuff.

That's not interesting though. My GF got side-swiped by a deer. Yeah. Side mirror is gone and a bit of a dent. She is yelling at me now. Bye.

First entry

I've created this blog yet I have nothing to say. I'm kind of working at the moment also. The wonders of being a systems administrator have struck again and our Exchange migration project has to be expedited since the old server is out of drive space.

On a side note...Is it proper blog etiquette to capitalize only the first word of a blog entry title? I know grammar isn't...And what is the word for a blog entry? See.