Windows Log Parsing

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24659 – logparser 2.2 from MS

http://martin77s.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/evtlogparser/ - someone wrote an overlay for logparser

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=18465 – EventCombMT is what I used to use.

http://www.eventid.net/ - this is good if trying to find esoteric event codes

Thanks Charles!

Sorry, IT: These 5 Technologies Belong To Users

Sorry, IT: These 5 Technologies Belong To Users: GMGruman writes "The BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon hasn't been easy on IT, which has seen its control slip. But for these five technologies — mobile devices, cloud computing services, social technology, exploratory analytics, and specialty apps — it has already slipped, and Forrester and others argue IT needs to let go of them. That also means not investing time and money in all the management apps that vendors are happy to sell to IT shops afraid of BYOD — as this post shows, many just won't deliver what IT hopes."

Windows 2003 Server Domain Time

I have a system with a 5 minute time delay. It's domain joined but for unknown reasons it has a 5 minute delay. Now being an e-commerce system this is a bad deal. Credit Card companies don't like it when transactions are delayed by 5 minutes (can you say "man-in-the-middle"?).

Now I just need to figure out why it was off in the first place.

Here is the command to reset the time to the Doman time.

C:\Documents and Settings\wal>net time /?
The syntax of this command is:


NET TIME
[\\computername | /DOMAIN[:domainname] | /RTSDOMAIN[:domainname]] [/SET]
         [\\computername] /QUERYSNTP
         [\\computername] /SETSNTP[:ntp server list]


C:\Documents and Settings\wal>net time /domain:your.domain.com /set
Current time at \\server.your.domain.com is 12/20/2011 9:56 AM

The current local clock is 12/20/2011 9:51 AM
Do you want to set the local computer's time to match the
time at \\server.your.domain.com? (Y/N) [Y]: y
The command completed successfully.


C:\Documents and Settings\wal>

About Damn Time: Microsoft Will Silently Upgrade Everyone To Latest Version Of IE | TechCrunch

About Damn Time: Microsoft Will Silently Upgrade Everyone To Latest Version Of IE | TechCrunch:

'via Blog this'

Verify Email with Telnet

Stolen from: http://www.webdigi.co.uk/

We have all been doing email address validation for a very long time to make sure that the email is correctly formatted. This is to avoid users entering wrongly formatted email address but still they can accidentally give us a wrong email address.

Example of a correctly formatted email address but still wrong:
mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com [VALID email format but it does not exist]

Above case specifically happens when you take important customer email on phone and you type in the wrong email. So is there a QUICK solution to really check the email without sending a test message to the user? Yes.

The solution
A quick & simple check below can be implemented in most programming language including PHP, Python etc. It relies on using the same SMTP which is used to send emails.
To check if user entered email mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com really exists go through the following in command prompt.

First - Find mail exchanger of reddit.com
COMMAND:
nslookup – q=mx reddit.com
RESPONSE:
reddit.com      MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.reddit.com
mail.reddit.com internet address = 208.96.53.70

Second - Connect to mail server mail.reddit.com
COMMAND:
telnet mail.reddit.com 25
RESPONSE:
220 mail.reddit.com ESMTP Postfix NO UCE NO UEMA  C=US L=CA Unsolicated electronic mail advertisements strictly prohibited, subject to fine under CA law CBPC 17538.45.  This electronic mail service provider’s equipment is located in the State of California.  See http://www.reddit.com/static/inbound-email-policy.html for more information.
COMMAND:
helo hi
RESPONSE:
250 mail.reddit.com
COMMAND:
mail from: <youremail@gmail.com>
RESPONSE:
250 2.1.0 Ok
COMMAND:
rcpt to: <mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com>
RESPONSE:
550 5.1.1 <mailbox.does.not.exist@reddit.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table
COMMAND:
quit
RESPONSE:
221 2.0.0 Bye

NOTES:
1) the 550 response indicates that the email address is not valid and you have caught a valid but wrong email address. This code can be on the server and called on AJAX when user tabs out of the email field.  The entire check will take less than 2 seconds to run and you can make sure that the email is correct.
2) If email was present the server will respond with a 250 instead of 550
3) There are certain servers with a CATCH ALL email and this means all email address are accepted as valid on their servers (RARE but some servers do have this setting).
4) Please do not use this method to continuously to check for availability of gmail / yahoo / msn accounts etc as this may cause your IP to be added to a blacklist.
5) This is to supplement the standard email address javascript validation.

Importing Ringtones to iTunes

After you convert the song/sound to the AAC version (m4a), make sure to delete the AAC version of the song/sound in iTunes (while keeping the file). Then, after you rename the file to the Ringtone (m4r) version, you can import that file back into iTunes. Otherwise it won't show up in the "Tones" section and be 'syncable' to your device.

Microsoft Store Online

Download Windows 7 Media!

Microsoft Store Online:

Download: FSCT - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

File Server Capacity Tool!

Download: FSCT - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details:

Lion, iTunes, Airport Express, IPv6 Bug

I have a stumbled upon a problem with iTunes, Lion, IPv6 and using an Airport Express.

It seems that when upgrading to Lion you lose the ability to "disable" IPv6. After upgrading to Lion your IPv6 config will still be set to "off", but if you change it, that choice goes away. You are only left with Link-Local, Automatic, and Manual as choices. None of these will allow you to connect to an Airport Express.

According to this post on the Apple forums, setting it to "Link-Local" will disable it. However your iTunes doesn't think so. So following these instruction from that same post you can return it to the "off" setting that allows iTunes to work properly with your Airport Express.

I had to change both the Airport and the Ethernet configs to __INACTIVE__ before it would allow me to connect to my Airport Express.

Hello,
Here is what worked for me in Lion.
I edited /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
and changed the IPv6 ConfigMethod's string to __INACTIVE__ manually for the appropriate adapter. This is what I believe the GUI would change in SL10.6. Looks like it still accepts the option, Just dosen't provied it.
sudo vi /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
The section under your unique adapter key will look like this when you're done.
When completed reboot. Your inet6 address should not show for that adapter in ifconfig anymore.
Hope this helps.
<key>IPv6</key>
<dict>
<key>ConfigMethod</key>
string>__INACTIVE__</string>
</dict>

3.5 Million People Are Still Using AOL Dialup (!!!) [Factoid]

Too scary.

3.5 Million People Are Still Using AOL Dialup (!!!) [Factoid]:

EEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRNDguzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzdungahdungahdungahhhhhhh. That sound you hear isn't a 56k modem, it's the sound of my brain collapsing upon itself as I read AOL not only has 3.5 million dialup users, but added 200,000 since last year. How can this be? More »

PaperCut 11.5 is now available for download

PaperCut 11.5 is now available for download:

Cashier Updated!

Along with usual collection of enhancements and fixes comes PaperCut Web Cashier. This feature will be useful for educational institutions and other organisations who want to offer a simple mechanism for users to purchase good and services, such as binding, using PaperCut accounts. As well as purchasing items, users can also make over the counter deposits.

Behind the scenes at PaperCut we have new staff member in Australia. Alec is joining the team as a technical project manager and many customers will get to hear from him over time. Not only he is already planning the next release but also committing code to our Subversion repo (using git-svn). Even the project managers need to be geeks here! Alec’s details have already been added to the about page so head on over if you want to see his important qualifications in coffee appreciation.

The full list of changes in version 11.5 can be found on the release history pages:

• PaperCut NG Release History
• PaperCut MF Release History

Photo credit: Ivy Dawned. CC Licensed

Release: VMware View Client for iPad v1.2

Release: VMware View Client for iPad v1.2:
Fresh off the upgrade to the vSphere client for iPad comes an updated View client. You can head right to the download in iTunes here for the upgrade. As always, here’s the What’s new from iTunes:

What’s New in version 1.2

• Optimized for VMware View 5 with improved performance
• Support for iOS 5 including Airplay
• Presentation Mode for use with external display and Airplay
• Embedded RSA soft token simplifies login to desktop
• Background tasking to move between Windows and iOS apps
• Updated look and feel
• Integrated online help
• Buffered text input for multibyte text entry
• Now in French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese
• Bug fixes

Geektool and Todotxt Desktop

I recently started using Geektool on my Mac for my background. I can't say enough about it. It really makes my desktop look nice. Apple should really look at incorporating this into the operating system if they haven't already.

One thing I have done that I haven't seen on many other examples is using the Todotxt todo list application for displaying my Todo list right on my desktop. I have it set to update every 30 seconds so it keeps things up to date and lets me know what to do next.

Just create a shell tool and have it run todo.sh. It is very simple and easy with no custom scripts or tools. Using custom shell scripts you could create many lists that display different projects, locations and priorities.

Here are a couple examples.

Tasks to do around the house:
todo ls @home

Stuff to do at work:
todo ls -@home

Buddhist task list:
todo ls @monastery + renunciation +harmlessness +goodwill

Firefox 6 patches 10 dangerous security holes

Firefox 6 patches 10 dangerous security holes: "The vulnerabilities are serious enough to allow an attacker to launch harmful code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing."

Another Malware Victim

Yesterday I had a visit from a family friend and of course, they brought along an infected laptop. His daughter's new Toshiba laptop was all shiny and fresh out of the box but it just wasn't working like it used to. Of course not; it had over 50 infections of various breeds of malware and trojans.

This was a brand new PC running the latest version of Windows and fully patched. There were two well known AV programs installed not to mention Microsoft Security Essentials.  The reason she was infected is simple: "click this box to save the world".  No amount of security in the world will protect people from their own infallible minds.  We can try to protect people from all sorts of threats in the world; virus, terrorists, crime, even taxes but in the end we are all victims of our own gullible minds. Let's face it, if bad people can design a web page to look legit, they can just as easily make an application look identical to any number of seemingly safe applications. One errant click and "it's goodbye Seattle" --Steve Martin. 

Microsoft Security Scanner is a frequently updated tool (it is only valid for 10 days) that can be downloaded and copied to an infected system either in safe mode or from a secondary boot method. This tool should find and remove most malware or virus.