Wish I had the patience to make something like this, what a project

http://chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/

Wow check this out, archives, we love archives!

Lots of stuff on WWII in there,

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/487.htm

Yep I've done it again, using my expert language skills, witnessed by Chris, Omar and Paul (who were in sheer awe of my creative ability), I've come up with yet another jaw-droppingly inspiring, entirely focused and understable term!

We wanted to stop all SMS and SQL services on a server so we can take her down and perform some hardware maintenance ... switching her off, stopping and disabling services, these are not elegant ways to describe what is happening, so, without much further ado, here is the latest term coined by Marshall industries:

Parked

Yes, it is that simple! I'm going to "Park" a site server, now doesn't that sound far more rizty than saying you're going to stop and disable all SMS related services eh

"This server is parked" meaning it's been prepared for an outage and not providing a production service.

Feel free to spread this term like the plague :-)

And for a few of you, this series of blog postings on new terms is tongue in cheek, humour? i don't expect you to bow down and revere me but you can if you want

Check out the latest VHD release for ConfigMgr v.Next Beta 1, awesome that you don't have to deploy the infrastructure and layer eveything on to test drive the product, just fire this thing up as a VM or even boot off it:

Hello everyone, we wanted to get this information to you as soon as possible.  We now have released a fully configured virtual machine for ConfigMgr v.Next Beta 1.  Based on a Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 OS, this is a fully built virtual machine ready to import into your Hyper-V environments.

This is something the ConfigMgr team has done for a few major releases, starting back at the ConfigMgr 2007 RTM timeframes.  We are really excited to get you guys this type of access, to help you evaluate the latest and greatest ConfigMgr v.Next release.  We are also in the process of uploading the hands on labs for ConfigMgr v.Next as well, look for that announcement soon.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2010/08/18/configuration-manager-v-next-beta-1-now-on-vhd-test-drive-program.aspx

On the 17th of August, 05:42am BST Henry Marshall put in an appearance, after spending several months exploring a small space, much to the annoyance and often frustrations of his loving mother, he came out a healthy baby weighing 3.5Kb (7.71lb) and working those lungs like a 10 year old working a Nintendo DS.

Here he is, moments after delivery

And his first few days at home

Its been an Incredible experience. I’ve been power levelling over the last 7 days, and am now a Level 3 dad, just need a few more XP points, say another 20 nappy changes, to move on up to Level 4 :-)

Enjoyed all my time off, back to work soon and I'll only be sharing evenings and weekends with the little fellow. He makes us very happy.

I just thought up (without any RedBull, other energy drinks or Omega 3 supplements) a great new term on how to describe the patches that need to go on to a machine.

Let's posit that The patches that need to be installed on a target machine are dictated by the applications installed ...

We all know that right, but have any of us verbalised it beyond saying "patches"?

I have, and I call it the "Patching Profile"

Yes indeed ... I Rob Marshall thought this one up, it will enter the ConfigMgr canon, the lexicon of terms to describe a patching state and may very well end up in the OED next week :-)

Gather around, revere me for my ability to come up spontaneously with amazingly insightful and description terms :-)

Just had to perform an interesting task, was asked to check out why a few machines still have the Windows Internal database still installed (messes with compliance funnily enough) ...

The Windows Internal database seems a bit unapproachable unless A) You are me and a total genius (arf arf I know, you gotta have a good sense of humour ...) or B) you have SQL Server Management Studio Express installed.

I didn't want to add another footprint to this machine, so opted out of installing the IDE so I could peruse the internal database, so put my thinking hat on and pondered how I'd get to find out what has registered into the database.

Bing! (not the search engine!) I realised I had an easy path through to do this because a full blown SQL 2005 installation was also present, which gave me the idea too ...

1. Open a CMD prompt and navigate to the SQL 2005 BINN folder which would be <DRIVE>:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn if you've chosen the default path for install(*).

* SQL 2000, SQ2008 will be in different paths, work out where they are installed

2. Type the following SQLCMD.EXE -S \\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query –E

3. Type select * from sys.databases and press enter

4. Type GO and press enter

You'll get some output like this:

master

tempdb

model

msdb

SUSDB

There's the reason for Windows Internal database being installed on this server right there, SUSDB ...

We know we were using ITMU with the Windows Internal database some time back, and since moving to WSUS this has no longer been the case. So, we can take the Windows Internal database off the system with no impact to services. Removing the Windows Internal database from the server is as easy as going to ARP and selecting it.

Two very useful links helped me fill in any gaps in the process such as which string to use to connect to SSEE and how to find out what databases are present:

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1577 - Shows how to connect to the Windows Internal database, the string you need to provide SQLCMD

http://www.extremeexperts.com/sql/Yukon/sqlcmdUtility.aspx - Shows how to ask for a list of the databases installed

Fancy taking a MIT degree without attending?

Mighty handy for those of us not living in Massachusetts and able to attend the Institute of Technology :-)

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

View the courses here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

Plenty to choose from ... this one looks like fun! I know a few people like that, hard to get rid off, almost like a pathogen :-)

Or this one on Rome, or maybe this one on unified engineering! So many to chose from, even if you don't take it seriously as in treat it like a course or degree, you could pick through here and find tons of useful info :-)

I’ve been looking in to setting up a home pc security system.

I just need to monitor the car parked outside the house and the entrance hallway, the first to catch anyone damaging the vehicle, the other to spot burglars coming or going ... so i just need a couple of cameras and some home security software to manage them.

I found this, Zone Minder, free bit of software, runs on any Linux distro and is seriously feature packed, even more features than some of the commercial software out there.

http://www.zoneminder.com/documentation.html

I also found a few wifi cameras but wasn’t impressed by their price or spec really, but when you do find some good ones you just need to locate these wifi cameras near a power source and they can feed in to Zone Minder as a managed camera. Depending on whether the manufacturer has obeyed standards, Zone Minder can also “manage” custom features such as Tilt\Pan\zOOm ... motion detection is included in the software so this isn’t a camera-specific feature, also you can create zones for motion detection taking to stop false alarms, very clever. Auditting seems quite good, key thing for me though is ability to upload videos to an out of the house system in case the security PC gets stolen during a break-in!

What I’m looking for is a camera without bells and whistles, what does that mean? Read on ...

This wi-fi camera supports live viewing of video from anywhere in the world - it has a built-in CPU and web server. Movement can be recorded and saved to SD card, hard drive or a VCR. Supports infrared for night-time viewing.

What this really means is the manufacturer has a relationship with a company, or has this in-house (unlikely), so that you’re camera is pretty much just sitting on your network and using the router to contact the service to store pictures. You subscribe ($$$ or free) and to view your camera you visit an external URL, huh!!!! I’ve read a fair bit about these services and most reviews are very poor indeed, as are the comments regarding most wifi cameras quality to be honest unless you start looking at real commercial solutions.

If anyones interested in building out a prototype system with me, feel free to get in touch ... I want to bring whats available now with a view to being rugged, getting the job done, producing crisp\clear video output with no real fancy features, supports NAT and doesn’t want to hang off a DMZ or directly off the internet, and for less than £100 per device (I’d sacrifice here and go higher ....), all managed by this Zone Minder.

Simple search showing some of the cameras available:

http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=wifi+security+cameras&safe=on&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=siFcTInVJYz24AaS5biFAg&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CD4QrQQwAg

I've fallen out of the routine of announcing the patches each month, I felt that if it wasn't a notable release, well, then there is no reason to duplicate what a zillion other folk are happily duplicating, instead I assume you've signed up to the bulletin announcement mailing list and are getting these announcements straight from the horses mouth (Microsoft). To sign up for an email announcement, click here

So, without much further ado, here comes August, a notable month indeed :-)

Looky here, 14 patches have been announced, but for some of us it is going to be 15 if we haven't already deployed the out of band release that was released at the tail end of July ...

This is an advance notification of security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on August 10, 2010.

The full version of the Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for August 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-aug.mspx.

This bulletin advance notification will be replaced with the August bulletin summary on August 10, 2010. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/advance.mspx.

To receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft Security Bulletins are issued, subscribe to Microsoft Technical Security Notifications on http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/notify.mspx. <--- Yes that means you! Sign up and get this kind of information in a timely manner direct from Microsoft

Microsoft will host a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on August 11, 2010, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register for the Security Bulletin Webcast at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/summary.mspx.

Get Ready!

Wow check this out:

1. Monitoring and Planning: Power Management collects information about computer usage and power settings for computers in the origination. Reports are provided to allow the administrator to analyze this data and determine optimal power management settings for computers.

2. Enforcement: Power management allows the administrator to create power plans which can be applied to collections of computers. These power plans configure Windows power management settings on computers, and different power plans can be configured for peak and non-peak working hours.

3. Compliance: After applying power plans to computers in the organization, the administrator can run reports to validate that power settings were correctly applied and to calculate power and carbon footprint savings across collections of computers.
In addition to power management, ConfigMgr07 R3 will provide customers with enhanced scale and performance support (scale to 300K managed clients per hierarchy, Active Directory delta discovery, dynamic collection updates), as well as enablement of further capabilities for operating system deployment. A full list of the R3 features can be found on Microsoft Connect at the “What’s new in R3” post.

Check it out here!

http://blogs.technet.com/b/schadinio/archive/2010/08/05/sccm-released-configmgr07-r3-release-candidate-rc.aspx !

!

!!

!!! :-)

Steve rattles out another quality write up, this time on Direct Access and ConfigMgr (please stop calling it SCCM folks!)

Do you have internet based clients that you want to manage?  Does the idea of switching to SCCM native mode to manage those client make you nervous?  Do you have Windows 2008 R2 servers in your environment and are the internet systems you want to manage running Windows 7 (Enterprise or Ultimate) or Windows Server 2008 R2?  If you said yes to all of these questions then you might just be interested in taking a look at Direct Access (DA).

Direct Access is NOT a feature of SCCM but is a feature of Windows 2008 R2.  There are several advantages to choosing Direct Access over native mode configuration in SCCM 
1.  There is no requirement to implement SCCM native mode 
2.  The feature is part of Windows 2008 R2 so likely would be supported by other than the SCCM team – yet SCCM can take full advantage of the service. 
3.  The SCCM team does not need to worry with certificate infrastructure support.  Yes, there are certificates required by Direct Access but this is generally not something the SCCM team needs to worry about. 
4.  The SCCM client managed through Direct Access is just like a client installed on the internal LAN.

<Read more ...>

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London has introducted a new Bike rental scheme today, here in London, and I thought I'd run the figures and compare them against a scheme that is known to work and be cheap in the Netherlands. Although they do actually lose quite a few bikes over the year, they still manage to keep the prices respectable. I don't think Boris's pricing scheme is respectable, in fact it's an outright insult and represents "the big hand" blatantly helping itself to the contents of your wallet if you so much as slip out of the agreement by a minute (late return).

So here is a quick, loosly put together run through of the costs of Boris’s new bike scheme in London, compared to the existing scheme in the Netherlands ...

Netherlands             Daily rate      12,50  euros (about £10)

Boris                      Daily rate      £50

Boris is FIVE TIMES more expensive!

Penalties: Late return charge (I book for 30 minutes, return on the 31^st minute) = £150 !!!

Any damage caused = £300 !!!

Non return = £300 !!! huh a damaged but repairable bike costs the same as a non return?

So if I damage the bell, £300, they replace bell, £1, rent back out a bike that can possibly net another £300 plus any rental it can rack up before being decomissioned or truely junked. Complete joke. No idea of the charges in Netherlands to contrast this with but doubt they cripple your wallet like good old Blighty does.

It could feasibly be cheaper to rent a bike in Amsterdam, train to the port, bring it over on a ferry, use it for a few days then ferry it back and train it to Amsterdam, . Ferry tickets = £20/50, some snacks for the journey, £20-30, train tickets probably less than £20, and all importantly 7 euroes to rent the bike for the week. The figures are not real, just estimates, but it does seem to work out far cheaper than it costs to rent one here for a week (5 x 50 = £250 a week).

Amazingly expensive scheme!

Maybe someone should grab 600 from Amsterdam, pay the rental, rent them out in london for a zillion times more, return them at the end of the week or make so much money you can pay for the bikes as “non returns” in Amsterdam where I’m sure the non return fee isn’t so high, and with all the £££ you’d make in london you could probably afford to buy the 600 bikes in a week and have your own system up and running like Byke below (minus the docking stations, or any infrastructure at all really lol)

Amsterdam Bikes

http://www.amsterbike.eu/prices.php

Bike rental per day             prices in Euro

3 hours rate                      8,50

Daily rate (24 hrs)              12,50

Two days                          10,00

Three days                        9,00

Four days                         8,00

Five days                          7,00

Scooter rental Daily rate   49,50

Boris Bikes (complete ripoff\joke)

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14811.aspx

 £1 for 30 minutes, £2 for an hour, £5 for 90 minutes, £7 for two hours and £50 for 24 hours.  These figures include the £1 access fee for the right to use the service.

Up to 30 minutes                FREE

Up to an hour                    £1

Up to one and a half hours   £4

Up to two hours                 £6

Up to two and a half hours   £10

Up to four hours                £15

Up to six hours                  £35

Up to 24 hours (maximum)           £50 (wow you can rent a scooter in Amsterdam for that money!)

More info:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14808.aspx#

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23681383-400-places-to-pick-up-your-hired-bicycle-but-not-one-at-rail-stations.do

Bykes competing with Boris 150 million pound bike scheme (active until the thieves steal all the bikes from peoples gardens\sheds\alleyways et al)

http://www.pressport.co.uk/pressrelease/Bike-Sharing-Rival-Out-To-Beat-Boris-10665.aspx

Update: Garth Jones (another ConfigMgr MVP geek such as I) sent me over a URL to a system being run out in Montreal, Canada, not yet compared this to the other two

http://montreal.bixi.com/subscription-and-fees/online

A collegue of mine is currently tasked with looking at inventory for some clients, and he needs to invoke Resource Explorer quite a bit ... it's a time consuming process, as he has to first ID the client in the console (slow), right click (context menus can sometimes be slow to render) and launch Resource Explorer, all of which incurs a significant time penalty across the day.

Anyway, he could work this a bit more efficiently, so I showed him how:

' Script to launch Resource Explorer against a particular machine using a WMI query to return the ResourceID

' R Marshall - 2010

Dim strComputerName, WshShell

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

strComputerName = ""

While strComputerName = "" or strSiteServer = ""

 ' Ignoring cancel, requires input for both input boxes or cannot run

' strSiteServer = "<YOURSERVERNAME>"

 strSiteServer = inputBox("Enter the Site server name", "Connect to site server")

 strComputerName = inputBox("Enter the Machines name", "Launch Resource Explorer")

 WshShell.Run("mmc G:\sms\AdminUI\bin\resourceexplorer.msc -s -sms:ResExplrQuery=" & CHR(34) & "SELECT ResourceID FROM SMS_R_SYSTEM WHERE Name = '" & strComputerName & "'" & CHR(34) & " -sms:connection=\\" & strSiteServer & "\root\sms\site_ric")

Wend

Set WshShell = Nothing

You can hard code in the Site server name and comment out the prompt for Site Server name to shave some time off using the script ..

Took a few minutes to write this up, here's the resource I used to figure out how to call Resource Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693736.aspx

Leave you to work out the permissions needed ...

Finding it hard to give up smoking, and with the baby just 4 weeks away, I want to be out of the habit of nipping out for a quick one by the time he arrives.

So I'm trying Champix, a Pfizer (hey didn't I work for them?) drug, initially just two weeks worth, but once I get past two weeks I get a more regular supply until I no longer need them.

Some rather negative but mostly positive reviews to give a good balance on the results from this drug: http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews155148.html

Tally ho :-)

Update: Day 9 ... The urge to smoke is reduced, no hit from a cigarette anymore, just like smoking smoke, nicotine is having no effect. I use to get a real punch from my first cigarette of the day, has no effect at all on me now. None, nadda, zero! I still roll a cigarette and take a couple of puffs just so I can get rid of these mildly nagging "have a cigarette" thoughts ... getting there, by the end of week 2 I should be good to go.