Paul Begley Web Log

GoDaddy UCC Cert for Exchange 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:28:00 +0000

I used a GoDaddy Standard UCC Cert for my latest Exchange 2010 install. It was $90, and it works. We used DigiCert's Exchange 2010 CSR Tool to generate the PowerShell certificate request script.

Microsoft has published a good article on the subject entitled “Unified Communications Certificate Partners for Exchange Server and for Communications Server” - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929395

I have not tested with OCS 2007, but plan to do so in the next few months, and there are several articles that note it does work, even if GoDaddy is not on Microsoft’s approved UCC Partner list.

Technorati Tags: Exchange,security,SSL

Windows 2008 R2 is awesome

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:51:00 +0000

There are a lot of reasons to upgrade to Windows 2008 R2. Testing and understanding all the features of an operating system is the key to optimizing a corporate infrastructure as well as completing integration projects.

This week I learned about a new feature of Windows 2008 R2, restoring a system image.

My primary home/lab server runs Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. The system has four SATA II disks:

(1) 80 Gb system disk
(2) 1TB drives – Data
(1) 750 Gb drive – VM’s

Naturally, the 80 Gb drive was not mirrored, and pulled from another workstation. And it was not mirrored. And it failed. Actually, it had disk errors and the system would not boot.

So…………

I pulled the 80Gb drive and imaged it with Acronis TrueImage Home 2010 and restored the image to a spare 750Gb SATA drive. After installing the new drive with the restored image to the server, I restarted the system. On boot, I found the SYSTEM hive was corrupted and the system went into Repair Mode. It prompted me to look for a system image, which I have on an external USB drive as well as on the D: partition. The System Image Wizard found the image (along with a time/date stamp), and I selected it to restore to the C: drive.

The restore took about 30 minutes, and the wizard can restart the system automatically. I’m up and running and will run updates to make sure I get the latest Microsoft Updates for the server.

Lessons learned:

Always have a current image of your server system drive.
Use a dedicated system drive that you can image reasonably. A large system drive (500 Gb, for example), would be a hassle to image and would take a dedicated internal and external drive. My 80 Gb system drive was fast and easy to image and backup to an external USB drive.
Always have a current image of your server system drive.
Always have a current image of your server system drive.
Retain copies online as well as offline (USB or eSATA).
Restore took me under two hours, including the backup and restore of the 80Gb drive, testing three drives to find one that was large enough and SATA II, and Win2008R2 image restore.
Always have a current image of your server system drive.

Technorati Tags: hardware,Win2008R2

Is the Periodic Table just a theory?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:53:00 +0000

The Discovery Institute is a religious group opposed to science. They believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, that the earth is 6000 years old, and that man and dinosaurs co-existed.

If they believe this is true, they should publish a paper on the topic in a scientific journal for peer review, but they won’t because their ‘theories’ aren’t valid and won’t survive peer review.

An update, I found this image should be credited to Dr. Loren Williams, a Georgia Tech professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry-Williams, L. D., "Revised Periodic Table of the Elements", Skeptical Inquirer, 29, 68 (2005)

I’m not attributing because Sarah graduated from Georgia Tech, or that I attended for most of the 70’s (but it would take a lot longer if the source were the University of Georgia…).

Technorati Tags: Science,Evolution,Darwin,Religion

iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:59:00 +0000

Technorati Tags: hardware,Apple

Verizon Wireless

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Reviewing our cell phone plan. Wireless plans have become yet another monthly/quarterly task we have to take on so you don’t find yourself with a $500 monthly cell phone bill.

Another part of this ritual is to discover how Verizon (or enter name of your mobile provider) have changed the plans they offer. This month, our plan I found out several things:

Verizon only offers 700, 1400, 2000, and UNLIMITED plans online.
Online Chat confirmed my only option was to upgrade from my current plan (2100) to the Unlimited plan.
I tried to upgrade to Unlimited, but the online system required I add a data plan to a Samsung i760, which I own, and does NOT require a data plan.
Calling Verizon Customer Service, the automated attendant offered 700, 1400, 2000, and 3000 minute plans.
The Final Solution was selecting the 3000 minute plan, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Verizon,phone

Happy Birthday, Robert Frost

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:21:00 +0000

OK, I’m a day late, but its been a busy month. Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets, and “The Road Not Taken” is one of my favorite poems.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Technorati Tags: poetry,art,religion

Suitable label for OTC medication

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:47:00 +0000

This is the type of label I want to see on over the counter medications. It clearly states it’s claim, and backs it up with results of a scientific study.

Technorati Tags: science

I’m special, Google told me so…

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:52:00 +0000

Below is my notification e-mail from Google regarding the shutdown of FTP support next month. I always knew I was special, but now Google quantified it for me (0.5%). I’m not one in a million, but five in one thousand isn’t bad.

I’m moving to WordPress (wordpress.org), but the import (Blogger, and RSS) both failed. I took a break and will revisit the issue this evening.

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/.

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows.

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing[1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.
Three years ago we launched Custom Domains[2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.
For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Regards,

Rick Klau
Blogger Product Manager
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

[1] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[2] http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/01/blogger-custom-domains.html
[3] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[4] http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373
[5] http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/

----
This e-mail is being sent to notify you of important changes to your Blogger account.

Technorati Tags: Blogger,WordPress,PaulIsSad

Bye Bye Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:41:00 +0000

Blogger is eliminating support for FTP publishing as of March 26, 2010. For once in my life, I’m not waiting until the last minute to change.

I previously experimented with WordPress, then had the mySQL database explode when I attempted an upgrade, so I reverted to Blogger, and have been fat, dumb, and moderately happy since.

After a quick review, I’m looking at WordPress (again), and Movable Type. I considered using Drupal, and it looks interesting, but I don’t have the bandwidth this year to go deep geek with Open Source.

I have installed WordPress 2.9.2, and I’m having issues importing ten years of Blogger posts. I don’t want to retain 150 Meg of redundant posts, so I’m looking into alternate methods of exporting and importing Blogger data.

Any input is appreciated.

Technorati Tags: Blogger,WordPress,Internet,blogging

Windows 7 RC (build 7100) expires March 1, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:35:00 +0000

“Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. You'll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data."

I didn’t realize I still had the RC Build running on my primary workstation. I have also been very busy and am *not* keen on spending a day doing an entire system rebuild.

Although Microsoft (and most IT Pros) recommend a clean install with the production code (Build 7600), there is a way around the problem.

If you attempt a standard upgrade by running setup.exe using the latest build, the upgrade fails, and you receive the message below:

The way around this issue is to copy the contents of the DVD (3.01 GB for Ultimate x64) to a folder on your drive.

Next, edit the source\cversion.ini file using a text editor like Notepad.

Edit so the MinServer and MinClient values match the example below and save the file.

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0

Run setup.exe, and proceed. You will need a valid license key for Windows 7 and your system will be upgraded. You can confirm the new version by typing the command “ver” from the command prompt.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,software,Win7

Yes, it snowed in NJ

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:57:00 +0000

Here’s the before picture, December 2009:

After three feet cumulative snow, February 10, 2010:

For reference, the wood fence in the foreground is 5’ high, and the white fence is 6’ high.

Technorati Tags: weather,NJ

Nick Bradbury

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Nick Bradbury: "Introducing FeedDemon 3.1"

FeedDemon is my preferred RSS reader. It integrates transparently with Google Reader, it has tons of features to efficiently process hundreds of feeds in short order. It's also stable, fast, and integrates with all of my existing tools.

Girl Scout Cookie Time!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:22:00 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/holyjuan/3326572579/

This is how Girl Scout Cookie nutrition labels should be updated. Am I the only one who eats a box at a time?

Technorati Tags: nutrition

I am pbegley

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:16:00 +0000

I am registered on almost every major site as pbegley and I registered the e-mail address pbegley at gmail dot com while Google Mail was in beta.

Off and on, I have run into problems with some other Begley either giving my e-mail address to family (Patricia in Kentucky), or signing up for various services (jobs.com, Pat Begley in Wyoming). Tonight it was someone attempting a password reset for Ubernote.

I’m hoping that posting this so it shows up in the major search engines.

Technorati Tags: identity,Internet

Tonight Show = 11:35PM

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:11:00 +0000

Technorati Tags: media,culture

I’m with Coco

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:09:00 +0000

The Tonight Show should remain in its 11:35PM time slot.

Technorati Tags: TV,culture,media

Fear and Loathing on Sesame Street

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:52:00 +0000

I don’t know why I like this so much, but the more I look, the more I like it. Hunter S. Thompson used to write amazingly insightful political pieces in Rolling Stone, but I wouldn’t want to have him as my neighbor.

Update: Original link from Imageshack gone, removed link

Technorati Tags: literature

Phishing e-mail today

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:22:00 +0000

Below is the body of the message I received. It’s obviously malicious because I control all the services for paulbegley.com, but I was intrigued.

Dear user of the paulbegley.com mailing service!
We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (rants@paulbegley.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:
http://paulbegley.com/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=rants@paulbegley.com&from=paulbegley.com&fromname=rants
Best regards, paulbegley.com Technical Support.
Message ID#T1SYDT2B4BVZJ72

First, I looked at the header information and the entries below flagged this as fake. It originated in Japan (.jp TLD), there is no reverse lookup for the IP address 119.152.104.119, and it’s part of APIC (Asia-Pacific Information Center).

Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: best guess record for domain of transitioning unquotingpoy4@strl.nhk.or.jp does not designate 119.152.104.119 as permitted sender) client-ip=119.152.104.119;
Return-Path: <unquotingpoy4@strl.nhk.or.jp>
Received: from CAWADZSGG (unknown [119.152.104.119])
Received: from 119.152.104.119 by iron.nhk.or.jp; Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:45:04 –0800

Also embedded in the message is the real link to some server in Korea (.kr TLD):

http://paulbegley.com.yhuttte.ne.kr/owa/service_directory/setting

Last, if you have a modern browser installed and configured correctly, your browser (at least Chrome and Firefox) flagged the link as a malicious site and blocked any connections. IE let you through, but blocked the automatic download. Screen shots below.

Chrome

Firefox

IE 8

Technorati Tags: Security,Internet,phishing,e-mail

Verizon software update ‘bug’

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:49:00 +0000

I recommend that everyone update their Verizon phones using the *228 feature on a regular basis. My daughter did this last night, and after the software update (option 1), her phone reset. No problem, this is often required after a firmware update. However, after the reset, her security code changed. It took us a few minutes to guess that is was reset to the last four digits of her phone number.

Is this a bug or a feature? This is a feature, but not well documented. I found it after searching the Verizon forums.

Technorati Tags: Verizon,mobile,firmware

Verizon Responds To Erroneous $1.99 Fee

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:46:00 +0000

More interesting is the phantom $1.99 fee Verizon's been hitting consumers with for doing absolutely nothing. The fee was first exposed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer last summer. It only gained the FCC's attention after David Pogue at the NY Times posted a column featuring a Verizon insider -- who claimed Verizon was aware of the glitch -- but was too in love with the millions in additional revenue it generated to do anything about it.

Verizon Responds To FCC Inquiry On ETFs, Erroneous $1.99 Fee - And the excuses are just as lame as you thought they'd be... - dslreports.com

Technorati Tags: wireless,Verizon,finance

Encryption busted on NIST-certified Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:56:00 +0000

At first I thought this was hyperbole from ZD-Net regarding encryption of some popular USB flash drives.

After reading the article, I’m very surprised at how simple the crack is to implement:

When the correct password is supplied by the user, the authentication program always send the same character string to the drive to decrypt the data no matter what the password used. What’s also staggering is that this character string is the same for Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives.

UPDATE: To clarify, my concern is that the NIST security specification doesn’t include a protocol for how the authentication token is managed. I expected it to be unique between vendors at a minimum.

Encryption busted on NIST-certified Kingston, SanDisk and Verbatim USB flash drives

Technorati Tags: encryption,storage,security

Happy Birthday, Isaac Newton.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:50:00 +0000

Thanks for Calculus (with Leibniz), the laws of motion (Newtonian Physics), and your work with light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

Technorati Tags: Science,mathematics

The TSA is not interested in science

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:54:00 +0000

Thank you, XKCD

Technorati Tags: TSA,science,politics

We are doomed, I say…

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:23:00 +0000

Thanks to source…

Technorati Tags: politics,Lieberman

Droid Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:44:00 +0000

I have a few minutes and wanted to tabulate the Android applications I have installed on my Droid.

The more I use the Droid, the more I appreciate the integration and utility it offers on a daily basis. As an example, today a co-worker sent me an IM through Google Talk asking me to call him along with a phone number. I touched the phone number, which cross referenced the phone number and it was the office phone for another co-worker. So I knew where he was before he picked up the phone.

Applications I’m using on a regular basis

Google Apps
- Google Maps – are just awesome, and is the basis for navigation, Latitude, and other features
- Latitude – very neat, people can track your location in real time. The tracking is granular enough to show me walking through a town.
- Google Talk – Google IM client
- Google Mail – seamless integration on the Android; Contacts sync automatically
- Google Calendar – automatic sync
- Google Contacts – configurable sync, supports tags, can merge with ActiveSync contacts
Find Starbucks - self explanatory
twidroid for twitter - Twitter Android client
Google Voice - VoIP phone calls and manage Google Voice account
Periodic Table - yes, it's a periodic table for your Droid
PdaNet free edition - tether your laptop for Internet access
gTasks - beta - Google Task sync
My Tracks - use Droid and GPS as a training tool – bike
Tone Picker - MP3 ringtones - I have Star Trek and Star Wars alerts
GDocs - Google Docs sync
Barcode Scanner - scan bar codes (UPC) and look up product info and compare prices on web

Applications I’m testing or are just interesting

PaderSyncFTP - FTP sync tool - still testing

Key Ring Reward Card - scan reward cards

Applications I tested and uninstalled

SugarSync - sync files from desktop to phone. Documents are read-only, and I have some minor issues with file formats (line wrapping, and tabs).

Technorati Tags: Droid,Android,apps,software