Frankly Speaking

I cannot imagine how much time he put into creating this, but he is definitely my new hero.

h/t IMAO

Labels: geek talk, general stuff

Consider this my continuing adventure with Vista. I use the Windows Server 2003 admin pack to, you know, administer my 2003 servers. It keeps me from having to use remote desktop to do it or to actually get up and walk into the server room to do something stupid, like unlock a user account or change a password. I hit the little shortcut on my quick launch bar, do what I need to do, close it out and I'm back to what I was working on previously. Everything is good.

And then along came vista. First I couldn't get any of the admin pack tools to work at all. They all gave errors that the path was not found. Fine, I made new shortcuts and had them run with administrative privileges. Then I got the error that the MMC snapin couldn't be found. That's when I found out that the .dll's don't register properly in Vista, so you have to do that yourself. So I did.

Okay, now we're finally working. I can actually open up something useful, like Active Directory Users and Computers. However, it now has limited functionality, meaning I can't find a way to edit or create group policies.

Oh sure, I could download the Remote Server Administration Pack for Vista SP1, but wait! I'm not running Server 2008 yet, so it won't let me do that.

Why the fuck does Microsoft constantly do stupid things like this? You provide a free tool with your sever to make life simple for everyone and everyone loves it. Then you upgrade the OS and decide that free tool that everyone loves should just go away, or not work the way it always has.

I am not a happy man this morning.

Labels: all about me, geek talk, my love/hate relationship with Vista

So I finally took the plunge and upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista Ultimate last week. Why Ultimate, you ask? Shut up, that's why.

My impressions thus far; I love it and I hate it.

The good

• My computer loads much faster on start up. That's even with me doing the ultimate No-No and actually running the upgrade over my XP Pro instead of wiping the hard drive clean and loading a fresh copy.


• I love the Aero Interface. It's silly, I know, but little things like that make a difference.


• Gadgets rock. I have two or three loaded that I am using just about every day, including watching the throughput on my network and watching the performance of my CPUs and Memory.


• The instant search. It took me a couple of days to get used to it, but now I use it constantly to find programs and files. I'm a believer.

Now for the bad

• I don't like the layout of the Start menu, or whatever you call it now. There are some things I use infrequently, and I spend too much time scrolling through the list of programs trying to find them because I can't remember what they're called.


• Right Click, Run As Administrator can Kiss. My. Ass. I know it's a security thing, and I understand the reasoning behind it, but damn is it annoying. Half of the programs I run require me to be an administrator, mostly because I'm administering various servers, and those extra steps are starting to wear on my nerves. If I tell you that I'm the administrator, then give me the administrator rights and get the hell off my back about it.


• I don't like the non-existence of the file tree when I Save As. There are too many extra steps to finding the folders where I want to save various documents, pictures, etc. If I was saving them all in My Documents, it wouldn't be a problem, but I have half a dozen network drives to deal with as well.

Well, I think that about wraps up my thoughts on Vista for now.

Labels: all about me, geek talk

1. Receive copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium
2. Realize that the 80gb hdd in my laptop is nearly full
3. Purchase 200gb SATA drive to replace it
4. Wait 3 hours while Norton Ghost creates an image of my hdd
5. Go eat Polla con Crema for lunch while I wait for the image to finish. Make sure to add extra jalepenos and habenera hot sauce because they make it really bland for the gringos around here.
5. Get back from lunch, pull old drive, replace with shiny, new one
6. Boot from CD and restore drive image to shiny, new drive
7. Spend another 3 hours watching the little line go across the screen
8. Boot up the shiny, new drive and, wonder of wonders, everything worked right the first time
9. Try not to act surprised that everything worked right the first time
10. Start installing Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium so I can start acting like I know what I'm doing with Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver.

And that is a day in the life of this computer nerd. Doesn't that sounds like fun?

Labels: all about me, geek talk

Barack Obama, the messiah and hope for the future, is apparently not capable of thinking things through ahead of time.

Charles Johnson at LGF found a few security holes on my.barackobama.com. After posting several of the holes he found, Obama is now advertising for an information security expert.

Obama for America is looking for a network security expert who wants to play a key role in a historic political campaign and help elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.
In this role, you will be responsible for:

* Analyzing the network architecture for the My.BarackObama website
* Leading an overhaul of existing security systems and architecture, including policy, firewall, VPN, and networking equipment
* Developing a strategy for responding to hack attempts, DDoS attacks, and other potential threats
* Establishing and managing the security posture of the online campaign My.BarackObama

My question: shouldn't they have thought about this, I don't know, before they started launching websites?

Information Technology is my field, specifically Information Security. There is absolutely no way I would have ever let their site go live the way it was. They have made some of the most amateurish, rookie mistakes you can make. Half of their directories were left wide open for the internet to browse. Who knows what else they've left. I would bet dollars to donuts that if you searched their servers you would find more than one piece of malware and probably a nice collection of pr0n that somebody has stashed there.

So, if Barack can't even plan enough to make sure he has adequate security for a simple campaign website, are you really ready to put him in charge of the free world? You think he'll plan a little more when negotiating with Achmanutjob than he has planned for protecting his donors from identity theft*?

Me, I'm not so sure.

*I'm not saying that anyone has lost their identity because of making donations on his site. However, if his campaign can't even secure a directory, what do you think the chances are that their SQL or MYSQL databases have adequate security? I'm guessing it's not much.

Labels: all about me, geek talk, obamessiah, presidential politics